1. The cosmos mystery curse makes you enfeebled. If I use assurance with athletics, does the enfeebled penalty still go through because of the oracular curse rule? "You can't mitigate, reduce, or remove the effects of your oracular curse by any means other than Refocusing and resting for 8 hours."
2. Does the oracular curse rule allow me to get opposing bonuses to the penalties the cosmos curse imposes? In this case, getting bonuses toward the rolls that enfeebled penalizes and the "–2 penalty to saves and DCs against Grapple, Shove, and other forms of forced movement."
3. The moderate curse grants a "+2 status bonus against Trip attempts." Does Trip, which causes you to "fall and land prone," count as forced movement and thereby also subject to the curse's penalties? Forced movement says this: "When an effect forces you to move, or if you start falling..."
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1. Yes, as it says, Assurance ignores bonuses and penalties. You aren't ignoring them, you're just not applying them. The penalties still exist.
2. I'm not sure what you're asking. If you mean getting bonuses from other items and abilities, yes you can. The DC penalties are untyped so they will always apply though.
3. The crit fail for Trip is not forced movement. The falling part means when you fall and take fall damage, which is different from Trip.
My take:
1. No, as I consider "not applying" a penalty to be mitigating that penalty, so Oracular Curse would override in this case in the same way that the Flame mysteries concealment overrides effects that ignore concealment.
2. Having a bonus offset your oracular curse is not the same as mitigating the effects of that curse, since those effects still exist. Basically, the curse is still having it's effect in that you would otherwise have a bonus.
3. Trip is not forced movement to my knowledge, so would not trigger both the bonus and penalty from Cosmos. Forced movement implies that you no longer inhabit the same space as before. Trip doesn't "move" you so much as change your orientation within the same 5 foot square.
Standard grain of salt disclaimer, I've never played nor GM'd for an oracle, so am not super familiar with them.
For 1., just to clarify, the penalty will apply despite assurance saying it won't because of oracular curse overrides it, correct? It's very similar to the example given with concealed and True Strike, but I just wanted to make sure.
For 2., I was wondering if the bonuses would fall under "mitigating" the curse. But since it's doing so indirectly, I assume no.
-Using assurance with athletics to jump works because you aren't becoming immune to enfeebled, you are simply changing how you determine your athletics check. Tbh, the cosmos mysteries abilities are close to unusable without assurance or acrobatic leap; the mitigation thing is just to make sure you aren't making yourself immune to your drawback, like a smokeworker hobgoblin flame mystery oracle.
-yeah, you can still get bonuses, the penalty is still takinf its toll, after all
-trip isn't a forced movement effect; it is a condition inflicting effect that gives you the prone condition
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-Using assurance with athletics to jump works because you aren't becoming immune to enfeebled, you are simply changing how you determine your athletics check. Tbh, the cosmos mysteries abilities are close to unusable without assurance or acrobatic leap; the mitigation thing is just to make sure you aren't making yourself immune to your drawback, like a smokeworker hobgoblin flame mystery oracle.
I disagree here. You are using a feat to mitigate or otherwise remove the effect of the curse in this instance. Against normal enfeeblement, this works. But Oracular Curse goes out of it's way to make sure that you can't ignore the curse. Allowing assurance to work that way is pretty clearly mitigating, reducing and or removing the effect of the curse, so falls under Oracular Curse's instructions imo.
I agree with the rest though.
For 1., just to clarify, the penalty will apply despite assurance saying it won't because of oracular curse overrides it, correct? It's very similar to the example given with concealed and True Strike, but I just wanted to make sure.
That is my read of the situation in a nutshell. I don't see a conflict really. One ability says don't apply an effect. The other says that it's effect can't be ignored.
Both abilities are pretty specific. Generally though I would say that Oracular curse would be the more specific rule, as it modifies the way that Assurance normally works, making Assurance the more general rule in this case. So in the case of "Specific Overrides General" that is how I'd read the interaction.
This is where "specifc beats general" starts to fall apart, and the system asks you to fall back to the rule that the GM has to decide.
Two specific rules clash:
1) you can't mitigate a penalty
2) use a different formula that doesn't include normal things such as penalties.
The GM has to decide. Both approaches seem reasonable.
Honestly its not a big deal. The Assurance number is quite conservative anyway - there is effectively a significant penalty in it.
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I feel it's better to go with Assurance, as it's a completely different roll. You don't apply anything that the curse is giving you. It doesn't say you ignore them, it says you don't apply them. It would be like saying your curse affects Flat Checks, even though Flat Checks don't apply any bonuses or proficiencies from anywhere.
Not applying a penalty to a roll is not the same as ignoring the penalty for a roll.
Not applying a penalty to a roll is not the same as ignoring the penalty for a roll.
Except that it is. Assurance effectively does all 3 things an Oracular curse says that it can't. It mitigates, reduces and ignores the effects of said curse.
I suppose I could see the argument that Assurance actually isn't a roll holding some water, since you "forgo rolling a skill check for that skill..." though I would still apply the effects of the Oracular curse in this case.
In my eyes, the curse is a cost that you paid for your Oracle powers. That cost can't, and shouldn't, be ignored.
Next to the concealment vs True Strike example they provide, I can see how assurance is different from directly ignoring the effect. Assurance completely changes how the check is calculated; you use 10 + proficiency bonus instead of a regular roll. Everything else is irrelevant. When you roll initiative with stealth or deception instead of perception, would you say you are specifically ignoring your perception stats or are you just using a different type of roll?
Not a perfect parallel since the assurance roll remains the same skill the curse penalty would apply to. In a roundabout way, you are indeed "ignoring" it. Then again, bonuses offsetting penalties is also a roundabout way to "mitigate" said penalties, and everyone has said it shouldn't count in the context of the curse.
I did realize, after reading the rule over and over, that this stipulation applies to all the effects of a curse, positive and negative. Probably won't be relevant in most cases but at least you can't accidently negate your own curse benefits.
To each their own. I can definitely see both sides, I just ere on the side I posted previously. After all, even if using assurance is not a roll, it is still a check. If assurance did not tell you to not apply penalties and bonuses, then you naturally would. Oracular curse tells you to apply it regardless of any mitigating factors. I see Assurance as one of those mitigating factors.
But I can totally understand seeing it the other way. As Gortle said above, it likely won't matter altogether too much either way. Assurance does sort of bake in an on level penalty since you don't gain any of your bonuses.
Yeah, it could go either way for me. Assurance being a roll or not also sounds like a fun discussion but maybe for another time.
Thanks everyone!
I can def see why folks are kinda split.on assurance, but my main reason for my pro assurance stance is the fact that the oracle curse isn't a penalty to athletics, it's a status condition. Using assurance also doesn't bypass the curse either; 10 + proficiency will never let you perform anything over pretty average stuff, and you def won't be able to trip/shove/grapple anything.
By that rationale, acrobatic leap from acrobat dedication should be considered illegal because it lets you make a str based roll into a dex based roll
Actually Assurance does a decent job of tripping/shoving/grappling if targeting a creature with their weakest save being the appropriate one.
Ex. Giants are often susceptible to trip, even "at level". Not always, but often. Similar with zombies and other lumbering brutes.
It's harder to determine a low Fort save, but if the maneuver works once, it'll keep working. :)
That said, I'm torn on this issue.
Assurance isn't a roll, but it does seem to be bypassing a Curse which the rulebook goes out of its way to say can't be bypassed. So I guess I do lean toward the Curse applying, if only because I would take Assurance with the objective of bypassing the curse!
Actually Assurance does a decent job of tripping/shoving/grappling if targeting a creature with their weakest save being the appropriate one.
Ex. Giants are often susceptible to trip, even "at level". Not always, but often. Similar with zombies and other lumbering brutes.It's harder to determine a low Fort save, but if the maneuver works once, it'll keep working. :)
That said, I'm torn on this issue.
Assurance isn't a roll, but it does seem to be bypassing a Curse which the rulebook goes out of its way to say can't be bypassed. So I guess I do lean toward the Curse applying, if only because I would take Assurance with the objective of bypassing the curse!
Huh. I always thought monster saves were higher than that. Then again, skills scale faster than spells. I think you've conviced me a bit closer to the "being a bypass" side.
On the other hand, my own argument for the curse being a condition I think is also enough to justify still allowing acrobatic leap; especially when RAI is factored in