How do the Incapacitation trait + Evasion / Juggernaut / Resolve interact?


Rules Discussion


Is the incapacitation trait meant to interact with Evasion/Juggernaut/Resolve and similar class features? Does a failure become a critical success? Or does the trait not interact with those abilities?

Silver Crusade

They stack.


That seems broken.

Silver Crusade

Not in the slightest.

Read how Incapacitation functions (target has to be double the level) and what spells actually have it. It’s more often gonna come up against NPCs than players, which are the ones who have Juggernaut/Evasion/Resolve.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Rysky wrote:
They stack.

I'm not sure this is true:

See errata:
https://paizo-images.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/image/download/PZO2101+Erra ta+1.0.pdf

Changes to Greater Juggernaut, Greater resolve, improved evasion, and third Path to Perfection: all four of these abilities grant a two-tier benefit on a failed saving throw of the specified type, but (as always) no ability will ever change your degree of success by more than one step. To clarify, we’re making the following clarification to all four abilities. Change the beginning of the last sentence from “When you fail” the listed saving throw to “When you roll a failure on” the listed saving throw.

Incapacitate also states to treat them as 1 degree better/worse.
Rolling a failing becomes a success in both cases. It does not move it to a critical success if they happen to have both. They do not stack.

Silver Crusade

They do.

The errata mentions “no ability”, singular, these are two different things, and again are most likely not going to overlap due to who the targets are.

The Class abilities bump the save to a specific roll, whereas Incapacitation bumps your save by 1. Two different effects.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Rysky wrote:

They do.

The errata mentions “no ability”, singular, these are two different things, and again are most likely not going to overlap due to who the targets are.

The Class abilities bump the save to a specific roll, whereas Incapacitation bumps your save by 1. Two different effects.

Yes, though I'd switch the order.

Spell effects target less, then target's nature reduces/alters that.

Grand Lodge

Rysky wrote:

Not in the slightest.

Read how Incapacitation functions (target has to be double the level) and what spells actually have it. It’s more often gonna come up against NPCs than players, which are the ones who have Juggernaut/Evasion/Resolve.

The creature's level must be double the spell level, or higher than the other character's level. A level 3 monster has the benefit of incapacitate against all level 1 spells, and all level 2 character abilities, ie, everything just a single level lower. A party of four level 3 PCs would have the benefit of incapacitation bonus against a moderate encounter (3 monks @ level 2).

Running it as you interpret is just overbearing and I really doubt RAI.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I agree with Rsky. The Errata was to clarify that if you roll a Critical Failure, Greater Juggernaut and the like don't turn it into a failure, and then halve the damage of the failure. It has 0 bearing on the interaction of Juggernaut and Incapacitation.

Silver Crusade

Jared Walter 356 wrote:
Rysky wrote:

Not in the slightest.

Read how Incapacitation functions (target has to be double the level) and what spells actually have it. It’s more often gonna come up against NPCs than players, which are the ones who have Juggernaut/Evasion/Resolve.

The creature's level must be double the spell level, or higher than the other character's level. A level 3 monster has the benefit of incapacitate against all level 1 spells, and all level 2 character abilities, ie, everything just a single level lower. A party of four level 3 PCs would have the benefit of incapacitation bonus against a moderate encounter (3 monks @ level 2).

Running it as you interpret is just overbearing and I really doubt RAI.

Lover level threats can’t one-shot the party, how is that overbearing?

And again, Incapacitation only applies with abilities with the Incapacitation Trait, not all abilities.


4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

So, I originally was going to post agreeing with Rysky but looking at it again I'm not so sure.

The change to Greater Juggernaut is pretty important here "when you roll a failure", rather than "when you fail". This is abundantly explicit, what matters is what you roll, not what the check becomes after modification.

If you roll a critical failure against an Incap spell, Incapacitation turns it into a failure.

Incapacitation Trait wrote:
If a spell has the incapacitation trait, any creature of more than twice the spell’s level treats the result of their check to prevent being incapacitated by the spell as one degree of success better

Greater Juggernaut triggers, but what you rolled is a Critical Failure, and if you roll a Critical Failure, Greater Juggernaut says:

Greater Juggernaut wrote:
When you roll a critical failure on a Fortitude save, you get a failure instead.

So Greater Juggernaut turns the ability into a Failure, but since Incapacitation already did that, effectively nothing happens. It's not that the abilities don't stack, it's that both abilities do the same thing.

However, if you instead roll a failure:

Greater Juggernaut wrote:
When you roll a failure on a Fortitude save against an effect that deals damage, you halve the damage you take.

Incapacitation would bump that up to a success, but since you rolled a failure, Greater Juggernaut would still trigger. So you'd halve any damage the spell did on a success. Quivering Palm, for instance, would only end up doing 20 damage.

Grand Lodge

Rysky wrote:
Jared Walter 356 wrote:
Rysky wrote:

Not in the slightest.

Read how Incapacitation functions (target has to be double the level) and what spells actually have it. It’s more often gonna come up against NPCs than players, which are the ones who have Juggernaut/Evasion/Resolve.

The creature's level must be double the spell level, or higher than the other character's level. A level 3 monster has the benefit of incapacitate against all level 1 spells, and all level 2 character abilities, ie, everything just a single level lower. A party of four level 3 PCs would have the benefit of incapacitation bonus against a moderate encounter (3 monks @ level 2).

Running it as you interpret is just overbearing and I really doubt RAI.

Lover level threats can’t one-shot the party, how is that overbearing?

And again, Incapacitation only applies with abilities with the Incapacitation Trait, not all abilities.

I don't have a problem with incapacitate, or greater juggernaut, but this text from the FAQ is paramount in intention: no ability will ever change your degree of success by more than one step

stacking these two effects changes the degree of success by 2 steps. This makes a failure impossible even on a critical failure, and violates the stacking rules (If more than one effect of the same type (ie changes degree of success) applies use only the best. you might could parse out a RAW to justify this, but it clearly violates sidebar pg. 444 If one version is too good to be true, it probably is.

Clearly we are not going to agree on this, so happy gaming to you.

Silver Crusade

Correft, no single ability.

These are two separate abilities.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

We are all in agreement that no single ability/trait will change the tier of success/failure by more than 1 step.

Rysky is absolutely right the trait is separate from the abilities.

Now does it necessarily follow that they stack with each other? No. One doesn't necessarily mean the other. It's a valid line of thought that they might stack, but after reading the ideas posted here and double-checking the errata I think Squiggit has the right of it.

The errata shows an intention by the developers to emphasize the roll itself, not the modified tier of success/failure.


(I'll also note that part of the wording from the errata was people would look at these abilities and say, "So I rolled a 1, but that means that [X] makes it a failure. Also [X] says that when I get a failure I instead get a success." So the language was addressing that bit of nonsense, not this bit of nonsense, but I also agree with Squiggit.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Juggernaut affects the result based on the roll, then incapacitation adjusts that result.


Yeah the errata was addressing Greater Juggernaut and similar making a critical fail into a success. Incapacitation would then had make it a critical success.

As it stands now after the errata. Greater Juggernaut and similar work of the roll; Incapacitation however is based on the result, so it works after all other abilities are applied. So Greater Juggernaut gets applied to the roll improving the save from a critical failure to a failure, and then Incapacitation gets applied to the result making it a success.

It also means that if you have something like: "the target gets a worse effect than the roll" incapacitation would still make a critical failure roll into just a failure. But if its a "target gets a worse effect than the result" Incapacitation would cancel it out.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

How would this work if there was a curse that made it one degree worst. There is an item in a published adventure that makes saves against any sleep type spells one degree worst. The pc that has this curse is a cleric with resolve. This is coming up soon that I will need to know the interactions with the curse, resolve and possible incapacitation trait.

Horizon Hunters

Kennethray wrote:
How would this work if there was a curse that made it one degree worst. There is an item in a published adventure that makes saves against any sleep type spells one degree worst. The pc that has this curse is a cleric with resolve. This is coming up soon that I will need to know the interactions with the curse, resolve and possible incapacitation trait.

Would you mind giving us the details of the item (with spoiler tags if necessary) so we could take a look at the specific wording of the item?


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I will try this spoiler thing.

Spoiler:

Cursed Dreamstone from book 3. Age of ashes.
A dreamstone can become cursed if left exposed to creatures that corrupt sleep, generate nightmares, or otherwise prey on sleeping or dreaming victims via supernatural methods. A cursed dreamstone seems to function as a normal dreamstone until the bearer falls asleep or is forced to attempt a saving throw against a sleep effect. At this point, the person carrying the cursed dreamstone must attempt a DC 26 Will save to resist the curse’s effects.

Critical Success: The character resists the curse entirely and experiences a vivid dream while sleeping that warms them of the nature of the cursed dreamstone.

Success: The character resists the curse.

Failure: As long as the cursed character possesses the stone, they are fatigued whenever they wake from sleep, whether natural or magically induced, and they take a –2 item penalty to all saving throws against sleep effects instead of gaining the normal bonus from a dreamstone.

Critical Failure: As failure, and whenever the bearer attempts a saving throw against a sleep effect, they get the outcome that is one degree worse than the result of their saving throw.

There was a roll of a 1, so a crit failure is in play.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Juggernaut would affect only the roll, but I think I agree with Rysky, the effect of Incapacitation is on the result, which you could apply after Juggernaut without a problem. I think it's a bit of a gray area, but I'm inclined to think that "treat the result of the roll" stacks with "treat the result of the check". Still, not 100% certain here.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Second Edition / Rules Discussion / How do the Incapacitation trait + Evasion / Juggernaut / Resolve interact? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.