Yellow musk creeper - failure worse than crit fail

[Lanathar]

Am I misreading the yellow musk creeper entry ?
The failure condition seems worse than the critical failure as the latter allows new saves

Is a duration missing from the failure? Any guesses what it could be?

Also what does the crit fail mean when it mentions “doesn’t end automatically”. When would the fascinate from standard fail “automatically” end ? When hostile actions are taken? That is kind of n/a in the case of the creeper?

[Rysky]

I'm guessing the duration is 1 round.

[thenobledrake]

The fascinated condition includes a clause of "This condition ends if a creature uses hostile actions against you or any of your allies."

Because of that clause the failure condition doesn't need a duration because either the condition is going to end because of hostile actions, or the rest of the party can take out the creeper while it doesn't do anything hostile just to keep your fascination going.

And that is also what the critical failure condition is referring to when it says "doesn't end automatically," which is how critical failure is actually worse than standard failure despite giving you repeated chances to pass a save and end the effect, because the creeper can take hostile actions against you and/or your party while you are fascinated.

[Aratorin]

The Fascinated from a regular Failure ends as soon as the Yellow Musk Creeper takes a Hostile Action. The Fascinated from Critical Failure doesn't.

I don't understand the problem.

[Lanathar]

Because the Creeper's "thing" is to Bore into the Brain which explicitly does not end the condition. So it could carry on doing that every turn unimpeded on someone who has failed. But if they critically fail they can break out of the effect themselves

(And yes I know it is unlikely it would be able to carry on uninterrupted by other members of the PCs party but the point still stands)

[Rysky]

I was about to say that I would consider Bore into Brain a Hostile Action, but I doublechecked and it specifically calls out that it doesn't break the Fascinate O.o

[thenobledrake]

It doesn't have to be the creeper making hostile actions to break the fascination though. Any thralls the creeper has, or even your own party-mate giving you a good whack, will do the trick.

[Squiggit]

While people in this thread are generally right about the way fascinate ends, there is a niche corner case where if there's no one to perform a hostile action (i.e. someone is separate from the rest of the party or the creeper somehow hits the group), a creature who crit fails against the pollen gets to make another save each round to escape its effects, while a creature who simply fails is just dead.

Definitely an edge case, but still kind of weird and I'm generally not a huge fan of Save or Die.

[thenobledrake]

Squiggit wrote:

Definitely an edge case, but still kind of weird and I'm generally not a huge fan of Save or Die.

It's only "save or die" if the encounter is 1 on 1 creeper vs. a single PC.

If you have an ally with you, they've got multiple chances to Strike you and snap you out of the fascination, since you have to fail the save against the Spray Pollen and then 3 to 5 saves against Bore into Brain before they are transformed into a thrall - which even then isn't "die" because there's a nebulously defined period of days in which they just need a magical effect that removes disease or a 1-hour DC 22 Medicine (expert) procedure that deals some damage and the are good to go.