Lesser potion of healing vs clay golem healing curse

[Ravingdork]

How should we handle the counteract checks for this? It looks like the potion is level 3, but we don't know what modifiers to use for its check.

[Perpdepog]

Clay Golem, Cursed Wound wrote:

A creature hit by the clay golem’s fist must succeed at a DC 29 Fortitude save or be cursed until healed to its maximum HP. The cursed creature can’t regain HP except via magic, and anyone casting a spell to heal the creature must succeed at a DC 29 counteract check or the healing has no effect. The golem’s counteract level is equal to its creature level.

Bolded the relevant section. You don't need to make any counteract check at all because it's not a creature casting a spell, it's using an item, so counteract checks don't factor in.

[breithauptclan]

That is thoroughly unsatisfying as an answer. Though I am not sure that there is much better. Counteract rules are weird.

What is most unsatisfying to me is that it should be consistent. Either the potion is magic and should have to counteract the golem curse, or it is not magic and would have no effect. It seems like a loophole that potion of healing manages to squeeze through to provide a healing effect and not have to make a counteract check.

[Perpdepog]

IMO that may be intentional. The Clay Golem's curse is already a pretty tough DC for its level.

[Ravingdork]

Thanks!

Yeah. The DC is twice as high as is normal for creature effects. Either that's a mistake, or the developers wanted it to be near impossible to remove for on-level characters.

Now, does a bog standard wand of bestow curse have a chance of removing the curse?

[RexAliquid]

Ravingdork wrote:

Now, does a bog standard wand of bestow curse have a chance of removing the curse?

The curse’s counteract level is 5, so you need a success on the counteract check with a wand of level 4 bestow curse. If your spell attack were +18, you’d have a fifty-fifty shot at it.

[Ravingdork]

RexAliquid wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Now, does a bog standard wand of bestow curse have a chance of removing the curse?

The curse’s counteract level is 5, so you need a success on the counteract check with a wand of level 4 bestow curse. If your spell attack were +18, you’d have a fifty-fifty shot at it.

The curse says it's equal to the clay golem's level, not half as is usual though.

This leads me to believe that even a critical success won't be enough.

[Ubertron_X]

Without any further input by the designers the Clay Golem as it is worded now is either broken or bugged or both, as the curse's level can not be beat before reaching spell level 7 (13th character level) while you can meet the golem at character levels 6 or 7 already (while probably only having direct access to spell level 3 to 4).

All in all this means that unless you plan to abandon your current task and seek help by a powerful 3rd party the only way out is to weasel your way through the curse's wording and to break the curse by circumventing the counteract check altogether, i.e. by using healing that is both magical and not a spell. As pointed out Potions of Healing will do the trick, as will do any version of Healer's Gloves.

In our campaign we made good use of loads of hoarded low level healing potions that considering their action cost had quickly become too ineffective to use in actual combat and while doing so burned like over two dozen of them in order to bring everybody affected by the curse back to full health, thus breaking the curse.

[Perpdepog]

Yeah, I think that last sentence has to be an error, possibly left in from some playtest material? It's redundant to the monster's information in any case.

Counteracting wrote:

When attempting a counteract check, add the relevant skill modifier or other appropriate modifier to your check against the target’s DC. If you’re counteracting an affliction, the DC is in the affliction’s stat block. If it’s a spell, use the caster’s DC. The GM can also calculate a DC based on the target effect’s level. For spells, the counteract check modifier is your spellcasting ability modifier plus your spellcasting proficiency bonus, plus any bonuses and penalties that specifically apply to counteract checks. What you can counteract depends on the check result and the target’s level. If an effect is a spell, its level is the counteract level. Otherwise, halve its level and round up to determine its counteract level. If an effect’s level is unclear and it came from a creature, halve and round up the creature’s level.

Which should rightly make a Cursed Wound level 5.

[Ravingdork]

The problem in my case is my dwarf barbarian with 20 con, Toughness, and Mountain's Stoutness, rolled a nat 1 against the curse, has oodles and oodles of hit points, and was forced to flee the golems with less than 10 hit points.

This means she cannot be cured until the party finds a way to magically heal hundreds of points of damage without spells or mundane healing--all the while pushing forward through a time sensitive dungeon.

Sounds like I'm f--in a spot of trouble.

[shroudb]

Ravingdork wrote:

The problem in my case is my dwarf barbarian with 20 con, Toughness, and Mountain's Stoutness, rolled a nat 1 against the curse, has oodles and oodles of hit points, and was forced to flee the golems with less than 10 hit points.

This means she cannot be cured until the party finds a way to magically heal hundreds of points of damage without spells or mundane healing--all the while pushing forward through a time sensitive dungeon.

Sounds like I'm f--in a spot of trouble.

Not sure about how much time restricted you are, but that would be the time to spam focus power heals, or lament the absence of those from the party.

[breithauptclan]

shroudb wrote:

Not sure about how much time restricted you are, but that would be the time to spam focus power heals, or lament the absence of those from the party.

Focus spells are still spells.

[thenobledrake]

Ubertron_X wrote:

Without any further input by the designers the Clay Golem as it is worded now is either broken or bugged or both...

Nope, it's working as designed (so long as the GM realizes that only spells, not all magical healing, need to deal with the deliberately difficult counteract situation).

The issue is that this is a point where the design follows tradition rather than revising to fit the edition's overall design paradigm; cursed wounds from clay golems are "near impossible" to recover from now because they have been in every version of the game this game is based on prior to this game becoming a thing, and have basically always involved either A) having access to a healer that is way higher level than the golem, or B) utilizing a built-in second option such as this version's "just drink a lot of potions."

[Onkonk]

I think that given that the CRB received errata to remove several of these mistakes (rogue had an ability that scaled with full level instead of half-level) but the Bestiary 1 has not been looked at yet, I would bet on it being much more likely they'll change it rather than not.

[shroudb]

breithauptclan wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Not sure about how much time restricted you are, but that would be the time to spam focus power heals, or lament the absence of those from the party.

Focus spells are still spells.

Yes, but you can spam them every ten minutes to try for the counteract.

You can't do so with spellslots.

That's why I said it's dependent on how time constricted they are.

Spending like 2h for 12 checks should help.

[Kelseus]

While the DC is High (high DC for level 10 Creature), it's not unbeatable. Level 7 spellcaster is expert with a 18-19 casting stat or a +15. That means you need a 14 or better to heal (35% chance). By level 10, you have a +19, meaning you counteract on a 10 or better.

A remove curse scroll at minimum level is sufficient to lift the curse. Again at level 7 this requires a 14+ roll, but that scroll stays useful as you level up.

A Clay Golem has high+ to hit, moderate damage, AC, and hit points, but very good resistances/immunities. Adding that all to the curse, the DC probably should have been 26 (moderate level 10 DC), but 29 is not beyond the realm of possibility.

[Ravingdork]

Kelseus wrote:

While the DC is High (high DC for level 10 Creature), it's not unbeatable. Level 7 spellcaster is expert with a 18-19 casting stat or a +15. That means you need a 14 or better to heal (35% chance). By level 10, you have a +19, meaning you counteract on a 10 or better.

A remove curse scroll at minimum level is sufficient to lift the curse. Again at level 7 this requires a 14+ roll, but that scroll stays useful as you level up.

A Clay Golem has high+ to hit, moderate damage, AC, and hit points, but very good resistances/immunities. Adding that all to the curse, the DC probably should have been 26 (moderate level 10 DC), but 29 is not beyond the realm of possibility.

The DC is not the only problem though. It's the counteract level. Due to the level disparity, even a critical success from an appropriately leveled character wouldn't counteract anything.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

I want to say that it seems improbable that the counteract level is not a typo or editing mistake originally intended to offer a reminder how to find a monster's counteract level. Giving a 10th level monster the counteract level of a 20th level monster seems frankly absurd.

That healing potions technically count as non-spell magical healing and are thus the only way to break the curse is highly unsatisfying. If this was the intended interaction, it feels more likely it should have been called out in the text, rather than relying of GMs and players to puzzle out what seems to be the one way to break the curse (since CL 10 is high enough to be indistinguishable from impossible at this level).

A golem whose cursed strikes can only be healed by your cleric's top level slots (and potions as a failsade) seems much more likely than one who can only be healed by demigods and the pharaoh of Osirion. This goes even more so for Elite golems whose counteract level immediately goes off the top of the chart and continues to get worse the more you adjust it to create a unique high level specimen

[Ravingdork]

Yep. Bog standard level 10 clay golem requires 7th-level or higher spells (9th-level or higher if you can't land that critical success).

[Kelseus]

Ravingdork wrote:

Kelseus wrote:

While the DC is High (high DC for level 10 Creature), it's not unbeatable. Level 7 spellcaster is expert with a 18-19 casting stat or a +15. That means you need a 14 or better to heal (35% chance). By level 10, you have a +19, meaning you counteract on a 10 or better.

A remove curse scroll at minimum level is sufficient to lift the curse. Again at level 7 this requires a 14+ roll, but that scroll stays useful as you level up.

A Clay Golem has high+ to hit, moderate damage, AC, and hit points, but very good resistances/immunities. Adding that all to the curse, the DC probably should have been 26 (moderate level 10 DC), but 29 is not beyond the realm of possibility.

The DC is not the only problem though. It's the counteract level. Due to the level disparity, even a critical success from an appropriately leveled character wouldn't counteract anything.

You know, my brain didn't even let me read it that way. I 100% agree, it's counteract level should be 5 not 10. The intent could not be to make it so that a level 9 spell is required to remove the curse of a level 10 monster.

[Perpdepog]

Kelseus wrote:

You know, my brain didn't even let me read it that way. I 100% agree, it's counteract level should be 5 not 10. The intent could not be to make it so that a level 9 spell is required to remove the curse of a level 10 monster.

That's why I'm pretty sure it's a misprint; it feels really unintuitive for the clay golem to be specifically written up that way and break the curve of the game that hard. There is also already rules language that governs how a creature's effects should be handled.

My group didn't even think of the counteract level when we fought it, and treated it like it was level 5. It made fighting a golem really difficult, maybe a bit too difficult, but not outright impossible.

[Castilliano]

The intent could very well be to have the Clay Golem's wounds require a very high level caster to cure because that's been a Clay Golem ability for many decades. It used to be only a handful of non-Evil NPCs in DnD's core world would be available for such healing! And boy, did it suck when facing one early in a dungeon, something I've seen in 1st ed up to a PFS1 Special, with the designers knowing that damage would stick (though to be fair in the 1st ed module, facing it meant you'd made an error.) I even specifically armed one PF1 PC w/ an adamantine bludgeoning weapon for the inevitable clash w/ such a creature, though it never came to be.)

Whether that hefty obstacle is fair or not is a different question, as is whether it fits PF2's sensibilities. But it's quite believable given the history. If anything I feel Healing Potions might be an unintentional loophole. Do parties need to stock up on those just for this one monster?

[Magnus Arcanus]

AFAIK there is nothing mistaken about the as written counteract level of the healing curse bestowed by Clay Golems. The curse does not follow the 'normal' rules for calculating counteract levels. Clay Golems had a similar ability in PF1e and even back into D&D days.

[Ravingdork]

There's at least one published adventure that gives the heroes a wand of remove curse right before an encounter with clay golems, ostensibly to remove the golems' curse afterwards and proceed with the time sensitive gauntlet of encounters. As a 4th spell level...

[Gortle]

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

I want to say that it seems improbable that the counteract level is not a typo or editing mistake originally intended to offer a reminder how to find a monster's counteract level. Giving a 10th level monster the counteract level of a 20th level monster seems frankly absurd.

That healing potions technically count as non-spell magical healing and are thus the only way to break the curse is highly unsatisfying. If this was the intended interaction, it feels more likely it should have been called out in the text, rather than relying of GMs and players to puzzle out what seems to be the one way to break the curse (since CL 10 is high enough to be indistinguishable from impossible at this level).

A golem whose cursed strikes can only be healed by your cleric's top level slots (and potions as a failsade) seems much more likely than one who can only be healed by demigods and the pharaoh of Osirion. This goes even more so for Elite golems whose counteract level immediately goes off the top of the chart and continues to get worse the more you adjust it to create a unique high level specimen

Immunity to an effect is not that uncommon in the game. There are low level creatures that are just immune to fire or poison. Its not unreasonable to assume that immunity to healing exists.

Yes there are some pretty odd things in the game. Creatures that have immunity to spells but not all magic is just one of them. I guess we have to conclude that because it is not a direct spell somehow it bypasses the defenses. But given it is a creature designed by wizards I think you can make the case it is reasonable.

[Ascalaphus]

Yeah I'm pretty sure the golem's high counteract level is a mistake, or perhaps crossed wires between an individual monster writer and the PF2 core designers as a whole. Because it doesn't fit the normal design style of PF2 so if it was intended, it really needed to be called out explicitly.

On the other hand, in the next printing of the Bestiary, I also wouldn't be surprised if it was modified so that potions also need to pass the counteract check (against the more normal counteract level). There are other consumables with listed counteract bonuses, made to use against conditions that are more common to have to counteract. Having to counteract damage is just really unusual.

[Aw3som3-117]

I'm finding the appeals to 1st edition incredibly lacking. 2nd edition is very, very different from 1st edition. I think we can all agree that 2nd edition is far more... careful when it comes to printing things outside the standard power curve. Whether this is a good thing or not is debatable, but it's pretty clearly the case.

Moreover, we're not talking about counteract level 7 or something like that. We're talking about 10: the counteract level of the most powerful spells in the game. Or, for an elite, 11. That's right, a counteract level higher than that of the highest level spells in pathfinder 2e on a level 11 creature. Sorry, but I'm not buying it. It's also rather suspicious that the one thing that breaks the curve of counteract levels this much just so happens to be at a level that could easily be the result of a typo (creature level instead of half creature level).

Technically I guess we'll never know until there's an errata for it, but I for one am very convinced that it's not intentional.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

I want to make a correction. As of last printing, Prince Khemet III of Osirion was only a 15th level Cleric, so if you got the pharaoh himself to cure your wounds, he would need a critical success to unravel this standard golem's curse. Sure because of his level a critical success is rather likely against a low-level monster's DC, but this may give you an idea the extremity of this situation.

Also mind you that the 1e golem's curse required a 'DC 26 Caster Level' which could be accomplished as early as level 6 (nat20 + 6) and by level 10 would succeed roughly 1 in 4 times, not guaranteed fail by anything but the most powerful casters in the setting.

As for immunity to healing... I am mildly confused what this is about? Immunity to healing certainly exists and is a common trait among constructs but is tangentially related to the topic, which is whether a 10th level encounter should lock you out of regaining hit points by any spell or natural means until endgame (if you don't have potions).

[I’m still not Gortle]

wasn’t this discussed aeons ago?

as for the curse …
this one time at original D&D camp, you had to find a level 17 healer to remove the clay golem curse; it was that or never heal again

so is this an homage to the past, to the origins of Pathfinder?
a typo?
strong arguments can be made either way

play your table as you’d like
at ours? played as written, everyone hid while the mage cast fly, said “I’ll be back in a minute or so” then flew out of reach and Ray of Frosted the thing; took 14 rounds of attacks before it was done

[thenobledrake]

I’m still not Gortle wrote:

so is this an homage to the past, to the origins of Pathfinder?
a typo?
strong arguments can be made either way

Though the "it's a typo" argument started strong, it grows weaker as more and more time passes without it being issued an errata.

Ravingdork wrote:

There's at least one published adventure that gives the heroes a wand of remove curse right before an encounter with clay golems...

Authors are not infallible. Just like a number of forum users have read the text of the cursed wounds ability and come away with uncertainty (or certainty that doesn't actually match the text), an author of an adventure could have read the rule and come away with an incorrect understanding - and there's clearly no "make sure the rules work as designed" editor/oversight position because adventure products constantly present not-quite-accurate versions of rules or variants where there's no necessity for variation, even when they adventures are written by main staffers.

[Onkonk]

thenobledrake wrote:

Though the "it's a typo" argument started strong, it grows weaker as more and more time passes without it being issued an errata.

Lol, surely Paizo also intends for the Storm Giant (level 13) to have a +37 to hit (the extreme value for a level 18 creature) because they haven't issues errata yet.

Errata (unfortunately) is tied to print runs, which is why the APG errata is coming very soon as new editions of it is coming to the warehouse.

[Ubertron_X]

I’m still not Gortle wrote:

play your table as you’d like

at ours? played as written, everyone hid while the mage cast fly, said “I’ll be back in a minute or so” then flew out of reach and Ray of Frosted the thing; took 14 rounds of attacks before it was done

I'd rather say play your table as needed, simply because I think that for every group that handles the golem well there are at least a couple of groups that fail to recognize the monster, its abilities and any possible remedies and subsequently might get stuck after their melees have been clobbered into oblivion, which makes for the more or less unpleaseant choices of either a) recognizing the potion "loophole" and (ab)using it, b) reducing the curse's level to half of what is written or c) to abandon the current adventure / AP.

[Ravingdork]

Ubertron_X wrote:

I'd rather say play your table as needed...

Our GM took the "If the curse comes from a cursed item or other external source, a success indicates that the target creature can rid itself of the cursed item..." aspect of remove curse to mean that a success, any success, removes the curse from any external source (the golem).

I dont think he really believes that, but rather didn't want the game to come to a screeching halt.

[thenobledrake]

Onkonk wrote:

Lol, surely Paizo also intends for the Storm Giant (level 13) to have a +37 to hit (the extreme value for a level 18 creature) because they haven't issues errata yet.

That's a false equivalence. "A number is supposed to be here but the wrong number got pressed" is a very different thing from "If the text is supposed to say what people calling this an error believe is correct, an entire sentence would not be present at all."

And yes, actual issue of errata is tied to print runs... but "we've flagged that for future errata" isn't, and I've seen a few notes to that effect shared around about other parts of the game but not this one. Which while that is not a confirmation that the current text is accurate and on purpose is further evidence because of how unlikely it is that an issue I've seen brought up numerous times on every platform I talk about the game on has managed to go unseen by the folks that make those "we are aware of the situation and working out a fix" type of messages.

As for an answer to the likely to be asked question "if they have seen these threads, why haven't they confirmed the text is correct?" I offer up this explanation: telling people that want the book to mean or say something other than what it does that the book means what it says tends to result in responses of "that's dumb, guess I'll house-rule." and there are almost no other people that are even asking for a clarification because they are either running it as worded and fine with it so they don't have a desire for a clarification (and telling them it's correct is redundant and a waste of time because they already know that), have changed it to how they want it to work so the clarification will again not do anything, or genuinely don't care which way it's supposed to work so as-is and altered are equal - meaning the only thing to gain is changing "this rule seems borked" threads into "this rule is definitely borked" threads, and potentially changing people's opinions to a more negative "the team writes bad rules" from the current "mistakes happen".

[Ascalaphus]

I think if you go back and look for announcements like "we're going to fix this in the next printing" compared to how many things actually changed in the first and next print of the CRB, you'll find a LOT of things they didn't announce. So the lack of a mention on this thing isn't really evidence of anything.

[thenobledrake]

Ascalaphus wrote:

I think if you go back and look for announcements like "we're going to fix this in the next printing" compared to how many things actually changed in the first and next print of the CRB, you'll find a LOT of things they didn't announce. So the lack of a mention on this thing isn't really evidence of anything.

That's another false equivalence, as I didn't even remotely claim that they've announced all or even most of the changes made via errata, I was explicitly talking about the ones that have shown up in response to repeated threads wherein people discuss what they believe to be an error - such as me having just seen this again today with a thread someone started regarding gunslinger weapon proficiency scaling.

[Perpdepog]

thenobledrake wrote:

That's another false equivalence...

Except it's not? It's inductive reasoning. It's working toward the conclusion "this text may be in error, and may be corrected, regardless of whether a staffer has expressly mentioned it," from the observation "previous bits of text which were in error have been corrected, even though a staffer did not expressly mention it."

[Ascalaphus]

This text is probably in error. It may even be corrected. Even so, odds of a staffer mentioning it are really low. Therefore, the lack of a mention is not evidence of anything really.

[graystone]

Ascalaphus wrote:

This text is probably in error. It may even be corrected. Even so, odds of a staffer mentioning it are really low. Therefore, the lack of a mention is not evidence of anything really.

Heck, it might even be a mention AFTER it's done: several things got changed that didn't get mentioned in the FAQ errata sections. They just quietly made their stealth check and waited for players to trip over them. :P