I just read the Tempest Oracle's Tempest Form for the first time.
Your body becomes fluid to better suit your surroundings. When you Cast this Spell, choose whether to become air, water, or mist. The spell gains the air trait if you choose air or mist, and the water trait if you choose water or mist. You become amorphous, as does your armor. You lose any item bonus to AC and use your proficiency bonus for unarmored defense to determine your AC. You also gain resistance 10 to physical damage and become immune to precision damage. You can slip through tiny cracks and don't need to breathe. You can't cast spells, activate items, or use actions that have the attack or manipulate trait. You also gain the following effects based on your form.
Air You gain a fly Speed of 20 feet and become invisible while you are in the air. You can create the effects of a gust of wind from your space as a 2-action activity, which has the manipulate trait.
Mist You gain a fly Speed of 20 feet, and it becomes hard to see through you. Any creature on one side of your space who is targeted by a creature on the opposite side is concealed to the targeting creature.
Water You gain a swim Speed of 20 feet and become invisible while you are in the water. You can electrically charge yourself by taking a single action, which has the manipulate trait. If you do, you are no longer invisible in the water due to electricity indicating your location, but any creature that makes a melee attack against you takes 1d6 electricity damage; if it touches you, this is cumulative with the damage from your major curse.
If you can't use actions with the manipulate trait, you shouldn't be able to use those unique actions while in the form, right? I would assume they're exempt from the limitation, but I think I'm missing the part that points that out. Or something else entirely.
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RAW, yea it looks like you cant use them. RAI I think it means you can't use them in general, except for those two actions. They gave them the manipulate trait so that they would trigger reactions.
Yeah, because a Fighter needs to be able to Opportunity Attack a raging whirlwind to prevent it from blowing wind or creating electricity! Can't forbid that!
Yeah, because a Fighter needs to be able to Opportunity Attack a raging whirlwind to prevent it from blowing wind or creating electricity! Can't forbid that!RAW, yea it looks like you cant use them. RAI I think it means you can't use them in general, except for those two actions. They gave them the manipulate trait so that they would trigger reactions.
The idea of your fluid form needing to sprout "suitable appendage[s]" to be able to gesture either of the two effects, and only those two, into existence is pretty amusing too.
I guess they needed to give the actions at least one trait, right? Manipulate was an odd choice though; I would've gone with concentrate.
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It probably falls under a specific over general ruling.
Yes there are a number of these, Where a creature gets an ability that it technically can't ever use. The assumption should be that it is allowed to use it. In this can that it can specifically do these manipulate actions, even though it can't generally do manipulate actions.
Even though it is all in the same description. This is specific over general. In which case you could even consider it is technically correct and consistent.