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There are plenty of threads discussing Hostile Actions.
But none that I have found that are discussing the interactions with Needle of Vengeance and Subordinate Actions.
The question, obviously, is: would a character that would be affected by Needle of Vengeance takes an action with subordinate actions, do they only take one instance of damage? Or would they take damage for each of the subordinate actions? (taking damage for both the main action and all of its subordinate actions is clearly not correct)
So the baseline: Strike; Strike; Strike. The target clearly takes 3 instances of the Needle of Vengeance damage.
Power Attack costs two actions, but is itself only one action with no subordinate actions. So clearly would only take 1 instance of the Needle of Vengeance.
But how about Flurry of Blows? 1 instance, or 2?
Snagging Strike? It doesn't have a subordinate action, but it does do two hostile things (damage and applies a negative condition).
Triple Shot has up to 3 subordinate actions.
And of course - Spellstrike.
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To my thinking, it should be counting the hostile subordinate actions. It seems too underpowered to allow things like Spellstrike or Triple Shot to do their full damage, but only take the Vengeance damage once. Those types of abilities are meant for action economy improvements or accuracy improvements - not as a way of bypassing rules technicalities and doing more damage while somehow also being less hostile.
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I haven't waded into these debates before, so I'm probably missing discussion points that have been touched on elsewhere, but just clicking on the Archives links you provided, it seems like the answer is obvious to me:
~"There are four types of actions: single actions, activities, reactions, and free actions."
~"Activities usually take longer and require using multiple actions, which must be spent in succession. Stride is a single action, but Sudden Charge is an activity in which you use both the Stride and Strike actions to generate its effect."
So Needle of Vengeance would trigger twice on a Flurry of Blows activity, since it involves two Strike actions.
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Following that logic, I'd rule that Snagging Strike would trigger once, because it involves a Strike that imposes a Condition. I wouldn't trigger it twice, just like a Viper wouldn't trigger twice for injecting venom on a Strike.
Triple Shot would trigger once per Strike.
Power Attack would only trigger once, because it only "counts as two attacks when calculating your multiple attack penalty", not the number of actions it takes.
But in the end, there's going to be an ambiguous case occasionally, so you can always invoke the "The GM is the final arbitrator of what constitutes a hostile action" clause for weird corner cases.
Great. And all of that logic matches up with my gut instinct about how it should work from a narrative point of view too.
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One last problem that I came up with. Spellcasting.
Cast a Spell is an activity - not a single action. And it actually doesn't have any subordinate actions. Initially I thought that each of the spell component types was a subordinate action, but I read the rules again looking specifically for this interaction. Turns out that they are not. They are consistently referred to as 'components' rather than actions, and they only add their traits to the Cast a Spell activity. Even their detailed listing doesn't give any action cost for them.
So a too bad to be true ruling would be that since Cast a Spell is an activity and it doesn't have any subordinate actions, then spellcasting wouldn't trigger Needle of Vengeance at all.
Another possible ruling would be that the spell would trigger for the number of actions casting the spell costs. But I don't like this one as much as...
Treat it like Power Attack. Even if spellcasting costs multiple actions, it is only one Hostile Action.
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Well activities are a kind of action too, and they can be hostile. So a hostile spell would be one hostile action.
For activities with hostile subordinate actions, I think it's a bit of a judgement call. I'd count flurry of blows twice, not thrice; once you've counted the hostile Strikes the rest of the activity is a pretty hollow shell. But for an Improved Knockdown I'd be more torn. Obviously the Strike is a hostile action, but the "effect of a trip" is in a bit unclear area.
On reflection, it does seem like it would be much less ambiguous to just count activities only once, regardless of subordinate actions and things that aren't quite actions but close to them.
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For activities with hostile subordinate actions, I think it's a bit of a judgement call. I'd count flurry of blows twice, not thrice; once you've counted the hostile Strikes the rest of the activity is a pretty hollow shell. But for an Improved Knockdown I'd be more torn. Obviously the Strike is a hostile action, but the "effect of a trip" is in a bit unclear area.
Even more torn when you look at the Improved Knockdown creature ability instead of just the Improved Knockdown Fighter feat. The creature ability is a free action, so would almost certainly be its own separate Hostile Action.
On reflection, it does seem like it would be much less ambiguous to just count activities only once, regardless of subordinate actions and things that aren't quite actions but close to them.
It is less ambiguous, but it is also less powerful. And less powerful is not generally something that a Witch needs to be.
I don't think it is ambiguous to rule
If an activity, reaction, or free action has subordinate actions, count each subordinate action as a separate Hostile Action, but do not count the activity, reaction, or free action itself. Otherwise count the activity, reaction, or free action as a single Hostile Action.
I don't think that is ambiguous. But it does leave some strange cases like the Fighter's Improved Knockdown being one Hostile Action, but a monster's Improved Knockdown is two.
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As someone with a witch that uses the focus spell, I can get behind that reading of it. Out of curiosity, how many saving throws would you have the target make in that situation? I've had GMs make 1 save at the casting of the spell and apply it to all the times it triggers, or make 1 save each time it triggers. Obviously the first is more all or nothing, but is also a lot faster in play. Just curious if anyone has thoughts on how it is meant to work.
I also recognize this question from a previous thread. I run it that the save is made once.
I think on principle you should be doing a new save for each offense, but if that gets tedious I'd consider switching to single save too.
Interesting.
In the previous thread, no one took up that side of the discussion.
So now I am curious why this spell would allow a new save constantly. Most other spells don't. You just continue using the same save value rather than rolling it repeatedly.
Mostly that is to prevent people from fishing for the best save result. If Bane allowed a new save every time you enter the spell's area, people would spend a move action dancing back and forth across the edge trying to get the best outcome they could.
You are mentioning damage though. So would you rule the same on Personal Blizzard? New save each round when they would take damage?
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Personal Blizzard is interesting, because it’s both sustained and has persistent damage (which ends when the spell ends, so when you stop sustaining). It’s really unclear to me if they are supposed to also save and potentially take the base damage every round as well. Is this type of thing limited to hexes? Or are there other sustained spells that aren’t hexes that have this issues?
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Personal Blizzard is interesting, because it’s both sustained and has persistent damage (which ends when the spell ends, so when you stop sustaining). It’s really unclear to me if they are supposed to also save and potentially take the base damage every round as well. Is this type of thing limited to hexes? Or are there other sustained spells that aren’t hexes that have this issues?
I can't think of any spell slot spells off-hand that both deal instant damage with a save and have a duration of sustained other than Flaming Sphere, and it has specific rules on when the damage happens again.
There are some that have a duration and make spell attack rolls though. Spiritual Weapon and Biting Words. There are also some that have a duration and add to other attacks, such as Flame Wisp.
Personal Blizzard isn't the only Hex that does that. Clinging Ice does too.
I would like the damage to be repeated every time the spell is sustained. I don't think it does though. The argument that convinces me is that damage is an instantaneous effect rather than a continuing one. Otherwise the damage applied to the target would somehow have to end when the spell does - and that doesn't make any sense. And when a spell is sustained, only the continuing effects of the spell get their duration extended. Therefore the damage, which isn't a continuing effect, does not get repeated when sustained.
Which also matches what I would expect to happen with a spell that has both damage and a fixed duration effect. A spell with an effect like 'do X damage and {some condition} for 1 minute'. The damage doesn't repeat every round for that minute. Only the condition continues.
Which also matches what I would expect to happen with a spell that has both damage and a fixed duration effect. A spell with an effect like 'do X damage and {some condition} for 1 minute'. The damage doesn't repeat every round for that minute. Only the condition continues.
For example, the critical failure effect of Painful Vibrations.
Critical Failure The target takes double damage, is sickened 2, and is deafened for 1 minute.
The damage happens once. The sickened can be removed as normal for the sickened condition. And the deafened is the only thing that happens for an entire minute (unless removed by something else that can remove deafened).
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I think on principle you should be doing a new save for each offense, but if that gets tedious I'd consider switching to single save too.Interesting.
In the previous thread, no one took up that side of the discussion.
So now I am curious why this spell would allow a new save constantly. Most other spells don't. You just continue using the same save value rather than rolling it repeatedly.
Mostly that is to prevent people from fishing for the best save result. If Bane allowed a new save every time you enter the spell's area, people would spend a move action dancing back and forth across the edge trying to get the best outcome they could.
You are mentioning damage though. So would you rule the same on Personal Blizzard? New save each round when they would take damage?
My instinct towards new save is because it's a basic save, which is usually for an instant of damage. And if you trigger the needle again, that's a new instant bit of damage. Maybe one jab lands harder than the next.
I wouldn't do repeat saves for personal blizzard because that's clearly got a one-time effect that lingers, as opposed to a series of stabs.
Consider also that repeat saves against personal blizzard would make it weaker, since it only takes one success to end the whole thing. Whereas one save or repeat saves against the needle are more or less equivalent. Repeat saves smooth out the randomness a bit, but on the other hand also mean that you can't know before triggering it how much damage you'll face exactly. Which seems like a good thing to me.
Have to agree. There's nothing really that I can see that suggests it's supposed to work like Spiritual Weapon or Flaming Sphere. The saving throw triggers when the spell is cast.
My instinct towards new save is because it's a basic save, which is usually for an instant of damage. And if you trigger the needle again, that's a new instant bit of damage. Maybe one jab lands harder than the next.
Cool. I can at least understand where you are coming from on that.
I don't really agree, but I absolutely love hearing an alternative viewpoint on it. It helps me to refine how I think about the topic.
In thinking about it more, I have come up with this:
We are all familiar with the Named Conditions that are in the general rules. A lot of spells use those named conditions - as do a lot of other feats and abilities. There are also some spells (and probably some feats and abilities) that don't use named conditions. They create custom conditions defined by the rules text of the spell itself.
Deja Vu for example. It has a very specific effect that lasts for two rounds. Maze of Locked Doors is an even better example because it has a duration of sustained. Anyway, these spells don't use the standard named conditions - they define their own custom unnamed condition and apply that to the target for the duration of the spell.
So that is what Needle of Vengeance is doing too. It is defining a custom condition: Vengeance X (Hostile Action). Where X is the amount of damage taken for each hostile action that the target chooses to do. And X is determined by the spell level and the result of the Will save.
And since a spell doesn't allow for a separate save for whether a character is affected by a condition or not, the target only gets that first initial save that sets the value of the condition. Then for the duration of the spell, the condition stays constant.
And it is the condition that is dealing the damage to the character. Just like it is with a damage weakness or a persistent damage condition. It is the condition that deals the damage. The spell duration just keeps the condition applied to the character.