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Hmm... Yeah, would be good to have a 'requirements to use the stance action' and 'requirements to remain in stance' as separate entries in the rules.
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Perhaps the requirements should have been listed as a prerequisite, instead.
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Perhaps the requirements should have been listed as a prerequisite, instead.
Or maybe as a trigger? Mountain Stance used that language before they overhauled it in the errata.
Starlit Span also has no interaction with Arcane Cascade at all - Cascade baseline only applies to melee strikes, and Span doesn’t expand it to work on ranged strikes. It also has no other benefits for being in Cascade.
Starlit Span's Level 4 feat, Starlit Eyes, needs to be in Arcade Cascade in order to work, and it's fairly decent. Lowers the flat check DCs of Concealed and Hidden creatures baseline, and for your Focus spell, you get to ignore the Hidden condition on creatures (and the trail you leave lets others ignore the Hidden condition on that creature until the start of your next turn).
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Starlit Span also has no interaction with Arcane Cascade at all - Cascade baseline only applies to melee strikes, and Span doesn’t expand it to work on ranged strikes. It also has no other benefits for being in Cascade.Starlit Span's Level 4 feat, Starlit Eyes, needs to be in Arcade Cascade in order to work, and it's fairly decent. Lowers the flat check DCs of Concealed and Hidden creatures baseline, and for your Focus spell, you get to ignore the Hidden condition on creatures (and the trail you leave lets others ignore the Hidden condition on that creature until the start of your next turn).
Seems kind of strange that it only gets a benefit out of a core feature if you take a feat.
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I just got my book yesterday and was about to post this exact conundrum. It's looking like Arcane Cascade will need to be erratad in some way after release
Maybe something like "you used at least 1 action to Cast A Spell this turn" would be a better requirement for Arcane Cascade.
That way it doesn't shut itself off immediately, but also needs to be maintained in a specific way.
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Its one of those cases where the error is SO obvious that it doesn't really need to be fixed :-). Is there any GM anywhere that is going to enforce this? Almost all stances essentially stay on for a combat barring significant strangeness, just apply that basic understanding to this stance. I would NOT require the magus to cast a spell, that is too restrictive since sometimes the Magus just wants to move twice and hit something.
I think if the Magus only moved twice and hit something that Arcane Cascade should turn off, so allowing that seems oddly lenient to me.
My impression is that you cast and turn on the stance then it remains active as Andreas mentioned, as long the Magus keeps casting every round. In that case it needs to add the language that it only checks for this at the end of each round. Or maybe it only grants its bonus in rounds where the Magus has already cast (and perhaps does stay on through rounds where you don't). That latter would resemble PF1's Arcane Strike more, a very Magus-y ability to bring into PF2.
Having to activate & reactivate the Stance constantly would not be worthwhile with how many actions a Magus needs to juggle their Spellstrike. But there is an unusual amount of language in some Magus abilities about Arcane Cascade getting turned off or on... Hmm.
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Maybe something like "you used at least 1 action to Cast A Spell this turn" would be a better requirement for Arcane Cascade.
That way it doesn't shut itself off immediately, but also needs to be maintained in a specific way.
Honestly, I think that would be a bad call. It adds a push to the magus to do the same things every round, which is bad for both the class and the game. Applying it simply as a requirement to enter the stance, and not adding an unnecessary requirement to keep taking certain actions to remain in the stance, leaves the magus much more functional in their ability to switch between skirmishing as a martial class that's been bolstered by their magic, and actually casting or spellstriking some of the time, as appropriate.
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I'm with pauljathorne here. The error seems very obvious here and constantly forcing the Magus out of the stance is clearly not intended. That's just not how stances really work in PF2. Honestly it's a little surprising to see people even suggesting that the Magus should be forced to juggle their stance at all tbh.
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The "Combining your Abilities" sidebar makes referrals to "you can usually stay in Arcane Cascade for a long time, though if you find out and enemy has a weakness... You may want to refresh your stance with a fire spell to take advantage of the bonus damage.
Seems pretty clear Arcane Cascade is meant to stay active without further action, IMO.
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Yeah, I am also not seeing any other stances that have to be 'sustained' by performing some particular action each round. I do however see plenty of other stances that have no way for enemies to knock you out of (or for the character to leave the stance other than by ending battle or entering a different stance). Some examples are Wild Winds Stance, Fane's Fourberie (even disarming the cards won't end the stance), Dread and Inspiring Marshal stance (unless you know of a way to make a character no longer trained in a skill, though even that seems more like a requirement to take the feat rather than a requirement to stay in the stance).
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I agree that as written you would fall out of stance anytime you did an action that did not involve casting a spell.
I also agree that wasn’t the intent, as indicated by the “Combining your Abilities” sidebar that Captain Morgan referenced.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what the intended requirement to maintain the stance was. I hope they clear this up soon.
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I agree that as written you would fall out of stance anytime you did an action that did not involve casting a spell.
I also agree that wasn’t the intent, as indicated by the “Combining your Abilities” sidebar that Captain Morgan referenced.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what the intended requirement to maintain the stance was. I hope they clear this up soon.
Given the description of the the stance and how varied the action economy of the Magus is meant to be, I feel confident that there is no requirement intended. They almost certainly meant to use "Trigger" instead of "Requirement" there.
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Its one of those cases where the error is SO obvious that it doesn't really need to be fixed :-). Is there any GM anywhere that is going to enforce this? Almost all stances essentially stay on for a combat barring significant strangeness, just apply that basic understanding to this stance. I would NOT require the magus to cast a spell, that is too restrictive since sometimes the Magus just wants to move twice and hit something.
Yes most GMs will get around this. But I just don't agree with the sentiment that this doesn't need to be fixed. I have had many GMs enforce strange rules in RPGs.
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As I stated before, I also think it needs to be fixed. I do not think the intent was that the magus be able to stay in the stance regardless of what they did. It seems to me it should require that they do something with magic each round to maintain it — a spellstrike or spell.
There is also the argument that consistency matters. If every GM is ruling differently on the stance, it harkens back to the bad old days of 1st edition D&D where half the game felt like the GM house rules. One of the things that I reallly liked about 3.0 was it greatly reduced the amount of variance when you started playing under a different GM.
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I do not think the intent was that the magus be able to stay in the stance regardless of what they did.
Even with the book outright saying that they're intended to be able to stay in it for long periods of time?
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Does the "violate the requirements of the stance" clause ever come up in an ordinary rules context? For the overwhelming majority of monk stances, for example, the requirement is "you are not wearing armor" and "putting on armor in combat" is not a thing I think a monk would ever want to do.
Other than the issue of "does mountain stance turn off if you jump?" on which there is considerable disagreement, it seems like the "requirements are violated" clause is vestigial.
I do not think the intent was that the magus be able to stay in the stance regardless of what they did.Even with the book outright saying that they're intended to be able to stay in it for long periods of time?
The phrase from the combining your abilities sidebar is “You can usually stay in Arcane Cascade for a long time,”
That suggests there are things that would prevent you from staying in the stance. Not just make it advantageous to change stance but actually prevent you from staying in it. That is why I think the intent is that the magus must do something to stay in stance.
As for being forced out of other stances, Monastic Archer Stance requires you to wield a bow. If you get disarmed, the stance ends. If you change grip to quaff a potion, you come out of stance.
I haven’t looked at all the stances, but it is obvious that at least that one has things that would take you out of the stance.
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Every stance has things that would take you out of it: being knocked out, combat ending, or entering a new stance. Needing to avoid doing anything other than cast spells is not comparable to anything else in the game.
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Like, by comparison, monastic archery doesn't let you interact (maybe. The case for wield on a 1+ weapon is odd) and mountain stance doesn't let you jump around. Neither of those is comparable to literally any movement, a normal strike, or a Recall Knowledge. And both of those stances are much higher impact than adding an additional damage or two to a spell strike.
In fact, if that was the case nothing about that paragraph makes sense. If a normal strike takes you out of the stance it would say it just applies to spell strikes.
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As was pointed out multiple times above, the way it is currently written Arcane Cascade is not functional.
We know that they expected a Magus to be able to stay in the stance. The exact quote showing they should be able to do this also suggests to me that they intended there to be a reasonable requirement.
If they had only meant there to be something done before entering the stance, that should have been listed as a prerequisite. Requirement has a defined meaning in the rules.
My question remains what should the requirements be?
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They COULD change Requirements [things required to stay in stance] to Activation Requirements [things required to start the stance] for stances like this to make things easier for themselves.
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As was pointed out multiple times above, the way it is currently written Arcane Cascade is not functional.
We know that they expected a Magus to be able to stay in the stance. The exact quote showing they should be able to do this also suggests to me that they intended there to be a reasonable requirement.
If they had only meant there to be something done before entering the stance, that should have been listed as a prerequisite. Requirement has a defined meaning in the rules.
My question remains what should the requirements be?
My answer remains that I don't think there should be one. There is no need for one, and the stance is a big part of keeping the magus able to hang with other martials in encounters where spellstriking much isn't workable (high mobility making it hard to recharge spellstrike, Reactions to your spell components like AoO being heavily present in that encounter, etc). Needing to do something specific to stay in the stance solves a nonexistent problem.
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My answer remains that I don't think there should be one.
If there is none, I can live with that. The point is the current requirement makes the stance non-functional and right now reasonable people are ruling it in different ways.
I would prefer it if there were a clear ruling rather than have to ask each GM how they have it work.
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We know that they expected a Magus to be able to stay in the stance. The exact quote showing they should be able to do this also suggests to me that they intended there to be a reasonable requirement.
Hard disagree. Interpreting "usually" to mean only on turns you take very specific actions is not consistent with how the rest of the game works. Not just other stances. There are other abilities like Smite Evil which just say they are extended another round as long as certain conditions persist. If this isn't going to behave like a Stance, they wouldn't have made it a Stance.
It also fails Occam's Razor. We all agree they made a mistake on this and didn't write what they intended too. Your reading is that they omitted how you stay in the stance entirely, basically. Everyone else thinks they probably used one wrong word: Requirement instead of Trigger.
Which of those strikes you as more likely?
I'm glad no one else is listening to the Secrets of Magic liveplay, either, to see how Buhlman is running it for his player.
I'm glad no one else is listening to the Secrets of Magic liveplay, either, to see how Buhlman is running it for his player.Care to expound on that for those of us who aren't watching (and have no intention of watching)?
It is kinda hard to tell exactly how it is being run from just watching the combats - hard to tell exactly what numbers are being added together. But from what I have been able to gather, Jason is running it with the idea that the stance is entered after casting a spell, and then stays in effect with no additional requirements needed on subsequent rounds. Certainly there is no mention of doing any action on the next round continuing the Arcane Cascade stance.
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Though like I have said in other threads - just because a Dev is running it this way in a game on YouTube, that is not sufficient to be official clarification of rules.
And while I don't agree with BretI's ruling, I do see the need for an errata for Arcane Cascade. Or maybe even a full clarification on stances to distinguish between requirements to take a stance feat, requirements to enter a stance, and requirements to stay in a stance from round to round.
Everyone agrees there's a mistake, and one that should be errated. (There may be some quibbling on how high on the list of errata this should go, but only because some feel the intention is super obvious.)
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Everyone agrees there's a mistake, and one that should be errated. (There may be some quibbling on how high on the list of errata this should go, but only because some feel the intention is super obvious.)
In the absence of any errata I'm pretty sure most GMs are just going to ignore the issue completely. Which is about what I think the final answer more or less should be.
For what it's worth at the about 4 different PFS tables I've been at with a Magus the issue was never even mentioned by anybody.
Which is why I don't see this as very urgent.
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I agree there needs to be different rules for "entering a stance" and "maintaining a stance". Like a stance that requires you to have a specific weapon or a buckler or something, then if you drop the required item, then you lose the stance that makes sense. If the Magi enters a anti-magic zone while in Arcane Cascade it should probably drop.
But no one puts on armor several turns into combat, and having to track what your last action was for purposes of the stance is weird.
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Everyone agrees there's a mistake, and one that should be errated. (There may be some quibbling on how high on the list of errata this should go, but only because some feel the intention is super obvious.)In the absence of any errata I'm pretty sure most GMs are just going to ignore the issue completely. Which is about what I think the final answer more or less should be.
For what it's worth at the about 4 different PFS tables I've been at with a Magus the issue was never even mentioned by anybody.
Which is why I don't see this as very urgent.
I doubt most people are even aware of the issue TBH. That is how obvious the intention is.
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Isn't this the first stance the is not a chosen feat but a class feature? Maybe the base free class variant was meant to be limiting. But it does seem really hard to use..since you have to keep casting or spellstriking to maintain it. Which I guess makes sense only if it is meant to be a short lived bonus. Thematically it is sort of powering it up and if you don't the magic quickly fades.
I have been watching "Secrets of Magic" I am enjoying it even if the first episode was a little rough as the players learned how to play. They gave the most complex class to a new player, the Summoner. She struggled at first but seems to have settled in by later episodes. There really is no mention of it, Dond Oom enters "Arcane Cascade" and that is about it. So Jason seems to be playing as described above...
EDIT: After reading the "Combining your Abilities" side bar it seems Arcane Cascade was not meant to be short lived,"You can usually stay in Arcane Cascade for a long time, though if you find out an enemy has a weakness to a certain damage type, such as fire, you might want to refresh your stance with a fire spell to take advantage of the bonus damage." is right in the text.
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Again, Paizo using Requirement when they meant trigger is the simplest explanation.
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I originally was leaning more to the side of "you have to cast a spell or make a spellstrike to keep it going", also because you would need to fuel a cascade somehow. And I still think there is some merit to that explanation (and casting spells is really not the most limiting thing for spellcasters).
But then I stumbled over an interesting part in the flavor text of Arcane Cascade:
"You divert a portion of the spell's magical power and keep it cycling through your body and weapon"
So that seems to suggest the magus actually cascades the energy of a single spell.
To represent that, the requirement of Arcane Cascade could be reworded to "You used your most recent action before entering this stance to Cast a Spell or make a Spellstrike."
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Again, Paizo using Requirement when they meant trigger is the simplest explanation.
Isn't it the first time we have a stance with a trigger ?
Edit : it seems only Reactions and Free Actions have Trigger in PF2.
I think it should follow the format of Metamagic feats : the required action to take the stance being described at the beginning of the text description of the stance. Not as a requirement.
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Can you enter Arcane Cascade as your first action in a round, as long as the requirement is met: Your most recent action was to Cast a Spell.
I don't see any problem with it.
The problem isn't in entering the stance. The problem is that with a listed requirement of 'your most recent action was to Cast a Spell', then the stance immediately ends. Because once you use an action to enter the stance, its requirement is violated. Your most recent action now is to enter a stance, not cast a spell.
