Interact, Manipulate and eventually description


Rules Discussion


How do they relate?

I am trying to figure out how Vital Bacon works:

Quote:
Vitality radiates outward from you, allowing others to supplicate and receive healing. Once per round, either you or an ally can use an Interact action to supplicate and lay hands upon you to regain Hit Points. Each time the beacon heals someone, it decreases in strength. It restores 4d10 Hit Points to the first creature, 4d8 Hit Points to the second, 4d6 Hit Points to the third, and 4d4 Hit Points to the fourth, after which the spell ends. You can have only one vital beacon active at a time.

Interact

Quote:
You use your hand or hands to manipulate an object or the terrain. You can grab an unattended or stored object, open a door, or produce some similar effect. You might have to attempt a skill check to determine if your Interact action was successful.

Manipulate

Quote:
You must physically manipulate an item or make gestures to use an action with this trait. Creatures without a suitable appendage can’t perform actions with this trait. Manipulate actions often trigger reactions.

Leaving apart the silly part which says that not only the ally but also the caster itself has to supplicate laying hands on himself ( probably was some flavor stuff meant only to describe what an ally would have done ), how would this work during a combat encounter?

A) The Ally/Caster drops a weapon, expend an action to unstrap the shield, drop the shield, expend 1 action to supplicate by laying both hands on the vital beacon vessel.

B) The Ally/Caster expends an interact action to benefit from the Vital Bacon

C) The Ally/Caster requires at least 1 free hand to benefit from the interact action ( so Interact overrides Manipulate )

Or maybe I am overcomplicating everything ( For example, Lay on Hands doesn't require you to have any free hand, does it? ).

Quote:
Your hands become infused with positive energy, healing a living creature or damaging an undead creature with a touch. If you use lay on hands on a willing living target, you restore 6 Hit Points; if the target is one of your allies, they also gain a +2 status bonus to AC for 1 round. Against an undead target, you deal 1d6 damage and it must attempt a basic Fortitude save; if it fails, it also takes a –2 status penalty to AC for 1 round.


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You use your hand/limb to do an Interact action.

Some require the hand/limb to be empty, some do not.

This relates back to the battle medicine arguments of if BM needs a free hand or not.

The errata clearly added the "you need a free hand" to BM to end that argument, pointing out (imo) thta if an Action doesn't directly set such a requirement, then you can hold other stuff in hand and perform it.

We know that gestures, as an example, do not require free hands even if they use said hands.

Similarly, and maybe the most important comparison for the specific question, we know that Touch attacks, which are basically touching your target, do not require free hands, so i would rule that you can hold other stuff in your hand in this case as well.

p.s.
That said, i really like your typo of calling it Vital Bacon. Yuuuuum.


Oh Lord, that scene might have been epic ( Please, I beg you, gimme some bacon!).

Thanks for the explanation!


the Interact action explicitly says that you need your hand to do something. You cannot do that if the hand is holding something, unless going by the rules that "something" doesn't take up your hand.

The only thing I know that has the manipulate trait and explicitly tells you that you not need a free hand to execute is the somatic component when casting a spell, such as Lay on Hands. The somatic component also covers the spells that require a touch. This is different.

In my game I ruled that you need a free hand to touch the recipient of the spell and get the healing. If you have a weapon in hand, you either have to drop it or stow it. One hand is enough, you don't need to free both of your hands.

But of course the GM can rule otherwise.


Sc8rpi8n_mjd wrote:
the Interact action explicitly says that you need your hand to do something.

It's not quite that simple. Various ancestries have shown that there is a subset of Interact action called "simple interactions" with ones like "opening an unlocked door": they are Interact action that do not "require fingers or significant manual dexterity, including any action that would require a check to accomplish".

Since Vital Bacon [mmmmm..... Bacon.......] doesn't "require "significant manual dexterity" or "a check to accomplish", I don't see the need for a free hand.

Sczarni

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I, too, can interact with bacon without using my hands.

It's the main benefit of having a long beak.

Liberty's Edge

Wait a minute, are you telling me that there are people out there who are running games that would require me to have a completely free-hand in order to use MY OWN Bacon?

What has this world come to?

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