Simple clarifying question: does giving a creature the Stunned 1 condition thereby prevent their using a Reaction (such as an AoO) on the turn before the 1 Action is lost? I assume the text saying "You can’t act while stunned" means that you cannot take reactions while the condition persists (i.e. before you have lost your Action on your turn), but I am not 100% sure as terminology is quite precise in most conditions and that descriptive comment in the second sentence might be a general comment which is clarified in terms of the mechanical effect of losing Actions (which might be excluding Reactions, in that case), and not to be taken as a mechanical description on its own.
Sorry if I am overthinking or unnecessarily complicating what would be an otherwise quite straightforward rule.
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Yes, it does prevent it, because of that "You can't act while stunned" line. The sidebar on Gaining and Losing Actions on the same page says "When you can't act, you're unable to take any actions at all." The first paragraph under Actions on page 461 defines reactions as one of the four types of action, so you can't take them when you can't act.
Thanks! I knew I was overthinking it!
Additional clarification : If you stun a creature while it's the creature's turn, it would loose the reminder of it's action for the turn. It will loose it's reaction also. Then, the next time the creature acts (assuming next round), the creature would regain it's actions reduced by the stun value. Correct ?
If so, this would make stunning a creature on a reaction very good.
Additional clarification : If you stun a creature while it's the creature's turn, it would loose the reminder of it's action for the turn. It will loose it's reaction also. Then, the next time the creature acts (assuming next round), the creature would regain it's actions reduced by the stun value. Correct ?
If so, this would make stunning a creature on a reaction very good.
If you stunned a creature while its in the middle of taking its turn, per RAW it wouldn't lose the reminder of its actions for the turn due to the Stunned (and slowed) Conditions only fire off at the start of their turn not during per side bar on GAINING AND LOSING ACTIONS these conditions alter how many actions you regain at the start of your turn; thus, gaining the condition in the middle of your turn doesn’t adjust your number of actions on that turn. <-- That's per RAW.
So its kinda silly because if you have a reaction that stunned a person that ran you by it should be applied right then but RAW states that it wont affect them till the next time they gain their actions. So if they ran past you and you got to use an AOO and it somehow stuns them they could run for 3 strides before it kicked in ;)
At my table the conditions affect you ASAP so if you got stunned 1 then it would remove your very next action.
Thanks for the response. You're right, the sidebar does mention that gaining the condition in the middle of the turn doesn't affect your number of actions for that turn. I find your example very funny. Will probably house rule the same way you do it.
Additional clarification : If you stun a creature while it's the creature's turn, it would loose the reminder of it's action for the turn. It will loose it's reaction also. Then, the next time the creature acts (assuming next round), the creature would regain it's actions reduced by the stun value. Correct ?
If so, this would make stunning a creature on a reaction very good.
If you stunned a creature while its in the middle of taking its turn, per RAW it wouldn't lose the reminder of its actions for the turn due to the Stunned (and slowed) Conditions only fire off at the start of their turn not during per side bar on GAINING AND LOSING ACTIONS these conditions alter how many actions you regain at the start of your turn; thus, gaining the condition in the middle of your turn doesn’t adjust your number of actions on that turn. <-- That's per RAW.
So its kinda silly because if you have a reaction that stunned a person that ran you by it should be applied right then but RAW states that it wont affect them till the next time they gain their actions. So if they ran past you and you got to use an AOO and it somehow stuns them they could run for 3 strides before it kicked in ;)
At my table the conditions affect you ASAP so if you got stunned 1 then it would remove your very next action.
I don't actually believe this is true. The part of the side bar you are referencing seems to be referring to Slowed, not stunned. Stunned outright states that you cannot act while stunned, therefore even if you still have actions, you cannot use them while you have the stunned condition. So if you had a reaction that stunned a creature, they would indeed not be able to continue their turn, and would lose additional actions at the beginning of their next turn. No house Rules required.
Case in point:
Quickened, slowed, and stunned are the primary ways
you can gain or lose actions on a turn. The rules for
how this works appear on page 462. In brief, these
conditions alter how many actions you regain at the
start of your turn; thus, gaining the condition in the
middle of your turn doesn’t adjust your number of
actions on that turn. If you have conflicting conditions
that affect your number of actions, you choose which
actions you lose. For instance, the action gained from
haste lets you only Stride or Strike, so if you need to
lose one action because you’re also slowed, you might
decide to lose the action from haste, letting you keep
your other actions that can be used more flexibly.
Some conditions prevent you from taking a certain
subset of actions, typically reactions. Other conditions
simply say you can’t act. When you can’t act, you’re
unable to take any actions at all. Unlike slowed or
stunned, these don’t change the number of actions you
regain; they just prevent you from using them. That
means if you are somehow cured of paralysis on your
turn, you can act immediately.
I believe that not having the Stunned condition "drain" actions on the turn that you gain it, assuming it happened during your turn, is intended to stop the Stunned condition from reducing in value until at least the start of your next turn. After all, if you are "stunned for 1 minute," the Stunned condition states that in that case you can't act at ALL during that duration, which would include the turn you gained the stunned for 1 minute condition.
From the text you just quoted:
Quickened, slowed, and stunned are the primary ways you can gain or lose actions on a turn. The rules for how this works appear on page 462. In brief, these conditions alter how many actions you regain at the start of your turn; thus, gaining the condition in the middle of your turn doesn’t adjust your number of actions on that turn.
Sure. And then I bolded the section wherein it states that any Condition that states you cannot act, means you cannot act whilst having that condition.
You’ve become senseless. You can’t act while stunned.
Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how
many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns,
from being stunned. Each time you regain actions (such
as at the start of your turn), reduce the number you regain
by your stunned value, then reduce your stunned value
by the number of actions you lost. For example, if you
were stunned 4, you would lose all 3 of your actions on
your turn, reducing you to stunned 1; on your next turn,
you would lose 1 more action, and then be able to use
your remaining 2 actions normally. Stunned might also
have a duration instead of a value, such as “stunned for
1 minute.” In this case, you lose all your actions for the
listed duration.
Stunned overrides slowed. If the duration of your
stunned condition ends while you are slowed, you count
the actions lost to the stunned condition toward those lost
to being slowed. So, if you were stunned 1 and slowed 2
at the beginning of your turn, you would lose 1 action
from stunned, and then lose only 1 additional action by
being slowed, so you would still have 1 action remaining
to use that turn.
Hence why I stated that I believe that the side bar is saying that the condition does not reduce your Actions on the turn that you are afflicted with it. This is so that the Condition is not immediately reduced, and possibly lost, as when the condition reduces an action it also reduces it's duration. This way, no matter what, a character who is stunned is "stunned" fully for one turn.
So, yeah, I still stand by that reading of the rules.
To summarize, if a character was in the middle of their turn, say after a move action, and becomes stunned, their turn effectively ends. They still technically have actions available, and if they were to lose the stunned condition due to another effect, say a spell, you can then:
That means if you are somehow cured of paralysis on your turn, you can act immediately.
However if you do NOT lose the stunned condition before your next turn, you would Lose actions up to your maximum number of actions and reduce your stunned condition's duration by the number of actions you lose, potentially removing the Stunned condition, and making you able to use other actions, like Free and Reactions.
Is that clear enough?
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I suppose a better way to look at Stunned is that losing actions on your turn is not the actual penalty of stunned. It's the cure.
The actual penalty is the fact that you cannot act AT ALL while stunned.
This means that even an effect that applies Stunned 1 to a foe is worthwhile, especially if it is applied during their turn, as it essentially ends their turn. The only downside to a low duration level Stunned effect is that it is over as soon as they lose 1 action on a new turn. But if applied during their turn it would in fact deny them an entire turn's worth of actions plus the one turn "spent" to end the condition.
!Bonus Point! Also consider: Applying Stunned 1 to a creature with AoO and then dancing around them to your hearts content, because they cannot use their reaction while stunned. Even if they are able to lose an action on their next turn and lose the Stunned condition, that still leaves them open while suffering from it. Could work very well to get ranged attackers or casters out of the line of fire.
*Edited for Clarity
*Double Edit for a Bonus Point of Consideration!
It is very much clearly explained in the sidebar that I quoted twice. If you gain lose a condition that says that you cannot act (note that Stunned for sure does say that. You can ignore it if you want, but it does. In plain text.) while you still have actions, you can then act immediately.
I will agree that the exact mechanics of that are a bit vague, but in general I would say that your turn in initiative order would be placed immediately after whatever was acting when you were cured of the condition, for the sake of simplicity if nothing else.
I will also agree that Stunned feels like a special case: it does make you lose actions which disagree's with the wording in the sidebar. However it does not directly conflict with the wording of the sidebar entirely.
Observe: In stunned it states that you reduce the number of actions you would regain at the beginning of your turn. This means that you cannot lose actions mid turn, the condition states that very clearly. Since you are reducing gained actions, and not losing already had actions, the condition simply CANNOT take actions that you already gained away.
*Edit: Another thing to consider, what if you are hasted while being stunned? In this corner case I would say that you would not gain the extra Haste action, and your Stunned value would be reduced by 1. Since you are gaining a new action, and Stunned even leaves room for the chance that you may gain actions at times other than the beginning of your turn, this makes sense and agrees with the rules as written.
Which means that during the period where you have "inaccessible" actions due to having been stunned during your turn, you are eligible to benefit from the wording at the end of the sidebar, that if you are able to lose the condition you get to act immediately using whatever actions you had before you gained the condition.
This is actually a pretty easy conflict to reconcile that doesn't directly conflict with the rules, and keeps Stunned in it's place as "Slowed but worse".
It's a case of awkward wording at worst, or at least a designer not remembering that there is a special case "Cannot Act" condition that Also reduces actions.
Beowulf, look at the sentence after the party you bolded here:
"Other conditions simply say you can’t act. When you can’t act, you’re unable to take any actions at all. Unlike slowed or stunned, these don’t change the number of actions you regain; they just prevent you from using them."
The text is as clear as it can be that slowed and stunned are treated the same (kicking in at the start of your next turn), and that it is only other conditions which say "you can't act" that go into effect immediately (such as paralysis).
That's a fair point, however it doesn't change the fact that Stunned stipulates that you cannot act while stunned. It could perhaps be an artifact left in after a design change.
But if stunned stipulates that you cannot act, and you have actions while being stunned for whatever reason, you cannot use them. Because you cannot act. This is easily a case of Specific Overrides General at the very least.
I will say that the sidebar should be errata'd to reflect this.
But my original intent was to post in reaction to a poster farther up saying that Stunned should take away actions on the turn you gain it. This is simply not true, since it is very clear that stunned does not remove actions you already have, it reduces the number of actions that you regain.
Instead it should "lock" those actions as unusable on that turn, and then reduce the number of new actions they gain in subsequent turns.
I will also point out that the phrase, "unlike slowed and stunned" does not preclude that section from including stunned, so long as stunned meets the requirements of that section. Which is why I said, in the corner case situation that you already had actions when stunned is applied, say due to a trap, you would not "lose" any of those actions and the duration of stunned would not be reduced. You would simply not be able to use those actions.
So the two ways we are interpreting Stun effects that happen in the middle of your turn are:
1) That you are not stunned IMMEDIATELY if you get the condition as part of the opponents reaction. The adrenaline surge of completing the action delays the onset of stun until the next turn (that can happen IRL) or the sequence of events are adjusted so that stuns always occur last in your turn. You complete your turn and then on your next turn you feel the effect of the stun and "shake it off" by losing actions. This is supported by the rules which say you do not lose actions in the middle of your turn and that stun has an explicit action loss value
2) You are stunned immediately and lose all remaining actions as well as additional actions in your next turn. This interpretation is based upon the phrase "you can't act while stunned." The rules explicitly state how stun is to be handled and then provides the loss of all actions rule for all other conditions not explicitly mentioned
Since interpretation 1 follows the explicit rules and interpretation 2 creates contradictions in the rules (ex. if you lose all your remaining actions in 1 round PLUS more so the Stun 1 is actual a Stun 3 effectively), I would hold that Interpretation 1 is correct
What part of "you cannot act while stunned" doesn't make sense to you? Interpretation 1 is that Stunned only matters because you "lose actions". This is patently false. As I stated earlier, losing actions is not the penalty of stunned, it is the cure.
The penalty of stunned is that you cannot act while stunned. So as soon as you become stunned... you cannot act. Ignoring that is far more ignorant than ignoring that a sentence in a sidebar, that doesn't even specifically preclude Stunned from taking advantage of itself I might add, does.
Lets take a closer look at that clause.
Some conditions prevent you from taking a certain
subset of actions, typically reactions. Other conditions
simply say you can’t act. When you can’t act, you’re
unable to take any actions at all. Unlike slowed or
stunned, these don’t change the number of actions you
regain; they just prevent you from using them. That
means if you are somehow cured of paralysis on your
turn, you can act immediately.
You will note that at no time does this say that Stunned does NOT prevent you from acting. It simply states that there are conditions that stop you from acting, but don't change the number of actions you regain. This is a true statement. What it does NOT say is that Stunned does not do both. Which it does.
And because Stunned ONLY effects the actions that you regain, and NOT actions that you already have, if you were to be Stunned mid turn, or even mid action, you would essentially immediately have your turn ended. This is because while stunned you cannot act. And when "you can't act, you're unable to take any actions at all."
You forgot to highlight the "unlike slowed or stunned" which means that the entire paragraph you are citing does NOT apply to either slowed or stunned.
Incorrect. That statement is only noting the difference between conditions that only say that you cannot act and those that reduce your gained actions. So long as Stunned meets the requirements of the rest of that paragraph, why would it not apply?
Reading comprehension is pretty important in pen and paper rpg's.
Look at it this way: Stunned is supposed to be worse than slowed right? We know this because it overrides slowed. If that is the case, why would it operate EXACTLY like slowed does, except worse? Slowed is always (as far as my quick search can find) for a set duration, so you would be Slowed 1 for X amount of time.
Stunned on the other hand is usually written, "You are stunned X". There are a few abilities that stun for X amount of time, but these are not the general case, they are a special case that is accounted for in the condition.
Anyway, why would stunned 1 be worse than slowed 1 for 1 minute ever? This is because while you are stunned, you cannot act. At all. With any actions. Like Reactions that stunned doesn't take away, but precludes you from using.
It's not that hard to understand.
Losing actions is not the "cure" for Stunned. It is, in fact, the penalty imposed for being stunned. "You can't act" is used to inform the reader that during those stunned actions, you cannot act.
And I believe that this is not the case, as when you reduce regained actions due to stunned, you also reduce your stunned value. Stunned 4 does not mean that you are stunned for 4 rounds. It means that you are stunned until stunned has reduced 4 regained actions, which is actually 1.33 turns. (assuming you don't have a hasted action to give up)
Ruling either that you immediately lose actions from stunned or that you can use any actions while stunned EVER are both directly contradictory to the rules. Specifically the "you can't act while stunned" rule, which in this case would be the specific rule that would override the sidebar anyway.
Ruling either that you immediately lose actions from stunned or that you can use any actions while stunned EVER are both directly contradictory to the rules. Specifically the "you can't act while stunned" rule, which in this case would be the specific rule that would override the sidebar anyway.The side bar on 622 explicitly states that stunned is a condition in which you do not adjust actions in the middle of your turn. It's right there in black and white...or white and black if your using the Archve.
Again, you are ignoring the "you can't act while stunned" bit of Stunned. There is a difference between losing actions and not being able to use those actions. Stunned does both. In some cases you can be stunned in the middle of a turn. In these cases it is my belief that the "you can't act while stunned" applies, and while you do not lose these actions, you cannot use them.
Also note, this does make it so that you can never use reactions or free actions while stunned, which makes sense. Stunned never reduces your reactions, but it is clear that you can't use them while stunned. If this is the case, why is it not possible that you could have "standard" actions that you cannot use while stunned?
Example of Stunned during your turn:
You begin your turn and move. You move into a square with a Stunning Snare in it. You critically fail your save. You are immediately Stunned 4. If you would be qualified to use a reaction or free action, you cannot because you are stunned.
You still have 2 actions to use, however are now stunned and so, cannot act. So you end your turn unable to act.
Next round: You begin your turn. You go to regain actions. Stunned reduces your regained actions by it's value, so 4. Since you only gain 3 actions, this leaves you stunned 1. If you would qualify to use a reaction or free action you cannot because you are stunned. You end your turn.
Next round: You begin your turn. You go to regain actions. Stunned reduces your regained actions by up to it's value, so 1. You are no longer stunned and have 2 actions to use. You can now use free actions and reactions.
This is the way I believe Stunned is intended to work step by step.
Again, you are ignoring the "you can't act while stunned" bit of Stunned.No, I'm not. I specifically dealt with that. Specific trumps general. There a several conditions which say you can't act. The sidebar tells us that Stunned is a one of three conditions that do not adjust actions "in the middle of your turn." That creates an exception that applies specifically to Stunned, Slowed, and Quickened.
Dude...it's right there.
Dude, you're right it's right there. Stunned does NOT adjust actions in the middle of your turn. It makes it so you cannot Use those actions. You still have them. If you use beads to denote actions, you can hold on to them. But you can't spend them. Or reactions, which stunned actually never takes away, it just prevents you from using them.
And that would require you "adjust" my actions to zero which is counter-indicated by the 622 sidebar.
You still have 2 actions to use, however are now stunned and so, cannot act. So you end your turn unable to act.
No it wouldn't. It would only require me as a gm to say that you cannot use an action that you have while stunned. No adjustment of actions needed, or called for.
It's not hard man. Not at all.
Dude, you're right it's right there. Stunned does NOT adjust actions in the middle of your turn. It makes it so you cannot Use those actions. You still have them. If you use beads to denote actions, you can hold on to them. But you can't spend them. Or reactions, which stunned actually never takes away, it just prevents you from using them.Funny. That's like saying, this axe to the chest isn't reducing your hit points to zero, I'm just making it so that you can't use them.
No because damage very specifically reduces hit points. Stunned only reduces actions regained. That is easy to understand.
What you are missing is that Stunned isn't ONLY reducing your actions. It is also flat out stating that you cannot use actions you have.
I've already mentioned that stunned does not reduce reactions. This is true. But you can't use reactions while stunned. So how do you reconcile that?
You have a reaction but can't use it. Why can't you also have an action and not be able to use it?
Paralyzed specifically does not reduce your actions. But it does state, in the same way that stunned does, that you cannot act. Using your logic, You can act just fine while paralyzed because you still have actions.
We can go ahead and agree to disagree if you want to. But one last thing to consider:
Any other condition would effect you immediately right? If you get paralyzed in the middle of your turn, you would't argue that you could continue acting for the rest of that turn, right?
If you were enlarged on your turn, you wouldn't argue that you don't take the clumsy condition for that turn, since you didn't have it at the beginning of your turn right?
So why argue that becoming stunned during your turn, say from a snare or some other reaction effect, doesn't do anything to you on your turn?
Slowed specifically states that it doesn't effect you during your turn. Stunned does not.
Cheers.
What you are missing is that Stunned isn't ONLY reducing your actions. It is also flat out stating that you cannot use actions you have.
STUNNED (p. 622) states: You’ve become senseless. You can’t act while stunned. Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being stunned. Each time you regain actions (such as at the start of your turn), reduce the number you regain by your stunned value, then reduce your stunned value by the number of actions you lost. For example, if you were stunned 4, you would lose all 3 of your actions on your turn, reducing you to stunned 1; on your next turn, you would lose 1 more action, and then be able to use your remaining 2 actions normally. Stunned might also have a duration instead of a value, such as “stunned for 1 minute.” In this case, you lose all your actions for the listed duration.
Seems clear, you cannot act while stunned, but the DURATION of the stunned condition varies. If you are Stunned 1, then you only lose one action during which time you are indeed stunned and can't act; after you forfeit that action, however, you lose the Stunned condition and have two actions left to use.
What you are missing is that Stunned isn't ONLY reducing your actions. It is also flat out stating that you cannot use actions you have.STUNNED (p. 622) states: You’ve become senseless. You can’t act while stunned. Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being stunned. Each time you regain actions (such as at the start of your turn), reduce the number you regain by your stunned value, then reduce your stunned value by the number of actions you lost. For example, if you were stunned 4, you would lose all 3 of your actions on your turn, reducing you to stunned 1; on your next turn, you would lose 1 more action, and then be able to use your remaining 2 actions normally. Stunned might also have a duration instead of a value, such as “stunned for 1 minute.” In this case, you lose all your actions for the listed duration.
Seems clear, you cannot act while stunned, but the DURATION of the stunned condition varies. If you are Stunned 1, then you only lose one action during which time you are indeed stunned and can't act; after you forfeit that action, however, you lose the Stunned condition and have two actions left to use.
This is true. You lose that action when you regain actions, which then drops the stunned condition from you. At that point you are no longer stunned and can act normally. But if you are stunned on your own turn, stunned very specifically does not reduce, because it does not reduce actions you already have.
During that turn, you would not be able to act, no matter how many actions you had left. That is my argument. So far no one has sufficiently convinced me that this is incorrect.
That is a good summary of my point of view Laran. I will be the first (or second or third) to state that the rules are not as clear as they should be. They rarely are in my opinion.
Errata is surely needed. However I do not believe that stunned operates like slightly worse slowed. It is meant to be a more harsh condition, and interpreting it any other way I believe is incorrect.
Stunned is instant and is removed after a number of actions wasted and slowed has a duration, so they work quite different. Not sure why you assert that "stunned is supposed to be more harsh".
Though maybe not RAW, I think the thing that makes the most sense for a mid-turn stun is for it to just remove remaining actions on your turn as if it was the start of the turn. If it removed all your remaining actions and you are still stunned you lose reactions, if it is gone you keep your reactions. I realize the rules do not support this, but to me this makes the most sense, certainly more than a Stun 1 removing a variable amount of actions depending on what time in your turn it hits (I think the "it's not removing actions, you still have the actions but can't use them" argument is a bunch of legalese that would make any player upset if you used it).
Stunned is instant and is removed after a number of actions wasted and slowed has a duration, so they work quite different.
Though maybe not RAW, I think the thing that makes the most sense for a mid-turn stun is for it to just remove remaining actions on your turn as if it was the start of the turn. If it removed all your remaining actions and you are still stunned you lose reactions, if it is gone you keep your reactions. I realize the rules do not support this, but to me this makes the most sense, certainly more than a Stun 1 removing a variable amount of actions depending on what time in your turn it hits (I think the "it's not removing actions, you still have the actions but can't use them" argument is a bunch of legalese that would make any player upset if you used it).
Not really when the other conditions that impose "you can't act" work exactly like that, and even have a special case where they are removed that allows you to act immediately after being healed.
That is fine as a house rule, so long as you are aware that it is a house rule. But rules as written and intended as far as I'm concerned, are that being even stunned 1 during your turn is the end of that turn.
It is important to note that the only effect that stuns more than 3 that I found with a cursory search is a crit fail from Stunning Snare. In fact most stunning effects are either stunned 1/2 or stunned for a specific duration, which is usually the case for spells. Your interpretation makes almost all other stunning effects, like stunning blows or most spells, largely less useful in the circumstances wherein they can be used as a reaction.
I will agree that being stunned on your turn is likely not going to be the Average use of stunned. However when it does happen, I do believe it is intended to be as harsh as it is written to be. I.E. at minimum the rest of a turn wasted, and part of your next turn.
I would be interested in seeing a developers opinion. Fat chance before the next round of errata, but stranger things have happened.
Stunned is instant and is removed after a number of actions wasted and slowed has a duration, so they work quite different.I guess I do have something more to add...
While I agree that Stunned works quite differently, it's actually not necessarily true that it's "instant." Why do I say this? Because Slowed and Quickened don't work instantly. It's specifically stated that neither work in the same round that they are applied. This tells us that Paizo has contemplated Conditions that don't work immediately. This opens the door for Stunned to work in the same way. Even though the definition doesn't include the same exact language, it is included in the 622 sidebar.
In other words, Stunned takes a moment to take effect and as such it doesn't actually take effect until the start of your turn. Why can we say this?
1. There exist Conditions that imposed during a turn, don't start until the next turn.
2. Stunned is grouped with two other Conditions that specifically work in this way and a rule specifically tells us that Stunned does not reduce actions in the "middle of your turn."
Laran touches upon this above.
So the two ways we are interpreting Stun effects that happen in the middle of your turn are:
1) That you are not stunned IMMEDIATELY if you get the condition as part of the opponents reaction. The adrenaline surge of completing the action delays the onset of stun until the next turn (that can happen IRL) or the sequence of events are adjusted so that stuns always occur last in your turn. You complete your turn and then on your next turn you feel the effect of the stun and "shake it off" by losing actions. This is supported by the rules which say you do not lose actions in the middle of your turn and that stun has an explicit action loss value.
Initially I dismissed this because I don't think it has anything to do with "adrenaline," but I do think that Paizo is wanting to simulate effects that kind of kick in.
So one way to...
I would agree with you if stunned had the same wording that both quickened and slowed have. But it does not, does it?
Saying that stunned is grouped together with quickened and slowed is less valid than saying that stunned us grouped with paralysis and petrified. All 3 of those conditions state that you cannot act while you have them. Stunned does not say that it takes effect on your next turn. The next time it stops you from regaining actions is on your next turn, but not the actual effect of stunned: not being able to act.
The aforementioned section where stunned is "grouped" with quickened and slowed only shows that all 3 effect the number of actions you regain on your turn. What it does not say is that stunned does not also act as paralyzed or petrified.
To say otherwise is refusing to read the rule in its entirety.
So the monk's turn should normally be move to melee into readying a Flurry of Blows with Stunning Fist for the start of the enemy's turn. If either attack hits and they fail the save they lose their entire turn, and one action the next turn.
So the monk's turn should normally be move to melee into readying a Flurry of Blows with Stunning Fist for the start of the enemy's turn. If either attack hits and they fail the save they lose their entire turn, and one action the next turn.
Sure. If the monk wants to forego a third and fourth attack, that is a perfectly valid tactic. Granted with stunning blow being an incapacitate effect, against higher level foes it's probably better to go for attacks.
I would agree with you if stunned had the same wording that both quickened and slowed have. But it does not, does it?It does. The sidebar says that all three of them do not reduce actions in the middle of a turn. As there is nothing that contradicts this, this holds true. Yes, it would be ironclad if it had the same clause in the actual definition, but failing to have that clause doesn't invalidate the sidebar.
Holding that you still have actions but can't use them as not violating the sidebar is simply sophistry. Paizo never uses this rationale with anything else in PF2 and it never used that paradigm with anything in PF1.
Stunned doesnt reduce your actions mid turn, even under my interpretation.
So you are going to tell me, that you think it is fine that 2 conditions, paralysis and petrification, do in fact end your turn mid turn, but stunned which uses the same wording doesn't?
That sidebar clause does not say in any interpretation that stunned does not operate like paralysis and petrification. It states that paralysis and petrification do not reduce actions. That is an important distinction that you are ignoring.
But feel free and rule it the way you want. You're wrong, but it's your table. Do as you will.
Saying that stunned doesn't reduce your actions mid turn, it just stops you from using them because you can't act, is a) in direct and explicit contradiction of the rules text, and b) the definition of a distinction without a difference.
So then how do you propose paralysis works then?
Hmm. Seems they errata'd the Gaining and losing actions side bar. Good thing it is up on Nethys.
Conditions can change the number of actions you can use on your turn, or whether you can use actions at all. The slowed condition, for example, causes you to lose actions, while the quickened condition causes you to gain them. Conditions are detailed in the appendix on pages 618–623. Whenever you lose a number of actions—whether from these conditions or in any other way—you choose which to lose if there’s any difference between them. For instance, the haste spell makes you quickened, but it limits what you can use your extra action to do. If you lost an action while haste was active, you might want to lose the action from haste first, since it’s more limited than your normal actions.
Some effects are even more restrictive. Certain abilities, instead of or in addition to changing the number of actions you can use, say specifically that you can’t use reactions. The most restrictive form of reducing actions is when an effect states that you can’t act: this means you can’t use any actions, or even speak. When you can’t act, you don’t regain your actions and reaction on your turn.
For those in the peanut gallery, note the lack of any mention of stunned. No more "grouping it together" with slowed. Also note the In addition to wording.
So to summarize: Stunned ends your turn provided you gain it during your turn, because you can't act while stunned. Then stunned, as a specific rule, overrides the end of the sidebar, and only reduces the specific actions that it calls out. Specific overrides general.
Check. Mate.