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When my investigator was fighting oozes I just spammed Produce Flame for persistent fire damage crits. With their low AC it was easy.
Other cantrips could also work: ray of frost to slow them down and run circles around them, electric arc because immunity to critical hits doesn't give immunity to critically failing basic saves.
You're only useless if you really insist on always using the same attack form regardless of the situation. If you didn't bring any other options.
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When my investigator was fighting oozes I just spammed Produce Flame for persistent fire damage crits. With their low AC it was easy.
Other cantrips could also work: ray of frost to slow them down and run circles around them, electric arc because immunity to critical hits doesn't give immunity to critically failing basic saves.
You're only useless if you really insist on always using the same attack form regardless of the situation. If you didn't bring any other options.
Thats not helpful, nor a reasonable example. Versus 99% of opponents in the game those cantrips would be an absolute waste. Its only oozes that have very low ACs.
Its a simple fact that most martial classes are built around one attack. Its really only casters (+Alchemist & Inventor) that have that sort of variety reasonably available. Most of the martials have melee and athletics, but the precision ones often don't have a reasonable athletics option. That can have a few other skills but often they are just no that useful.Creatures that are extremely difficult for a class should exist in the game. But maybe at a 10% of less frequency, not at a 30% plus frequency. Creatures that are immune to precision or bleed, should be relatively infrequent in game. Just like things that are immune to physical damage or immune to magic are.
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When my investigator was fighting oozes I just spammed Produce Flame for persistent fire damage crits. With their low AC it was easy.
Other cantrips could also work: ray of frost to slow them down and run circles around them, electric arc because immunity to critical hits doesn't give immunity to critically failing basic saves.
You're only useless if you really insist on always using the same attack form regardless of the situation. If you didn't bring any other options.
Thats not helpful, nor a reasonable example. Versus 99% of opponents in the game those cantrips would be an absolute waste. Its only oozes that have very low ACs.
They named the two best cantrips in the game. I'd hardly call them a waste.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but it's entirely possible to end up with an investigator that simply doesn't have cantrips while still making solid choices for your feats.
So if you happen to have produce flame at that level, that's great, but if a class doesn't have it as part of its class package then it's not going to be a ton of use.
Like you can get electric arc on a Barbarian, but most people aren't going to.
They named the two best cantrips in the game. I'd hardly call them a waste.When my investigator was fighting oozes I just spammed Produce Flame for persistent fire damage crits. With their low AC it was easy.
Other cantrips could also work: ray of frost to slow them down and run circles around them, electric arc because immunity to critical hits doesn't give immunity to critically failing basic saves.
You're only useless if you really insist on always using the same attack form regardless of the situation. If you didn't bring any other options.
Thats not helpful, nor a reasonable example. Versus 99% of opponents in the game those cantrips would be an absolute waste. Its only oozes that have very low ACs.
They aren't for a caster. They are for a martial in a multiclass because you Spell DC is probably 3 or more lower that a caster who already complain about their spell attack rolls. Except in the instance of super low AC opponents.
It was good use of an existing ability, but allocating resources for dealing with super low AC opponents is an incredibly sub-optimal thing to do.
Having options is a good recommendation, but this specific one is a bad recommendation.
They named the two best cantrips in the game. I'd hardly call them a waste.When my investigator was fighting oozes I just spammed Produce Flame for persistent fire damage crits. With their low AC it was easy.
Other cantrips could also work: ray of frost to slow them down and run circles around them, electric arc because immunity to critical hits doesn't give immunity to critically failing basic saves.
You're only useless if you really insist on always using the same attack form regardless of the situation. If you didn't bring any other options.
Thats not helpful, nor a reasonable example. Versus 99% of opponents in the game those cantrips would be an absolute waste. Its only oozes that have very low ACs.
They aren't for a caster. They are for a martial in a multiclass because you Spell DC is probably 3 or more lower that a caster who already complain about their spell attack rolls. Except in the instance of super low AC opponents.
It was good use of an existing ability, but allocating resources for dealing with super low AC opponents is an incredibly sub-optimal thing to do.
Having options is a good recommendation, but this specific one is a bad recommendation.
Gonna disagree there. Ascalaphus was talking about an investigator, and that class NEEDS an alternative to strike when they roll badly on Devise a Strategem. And electric arc is great for when you DO roll well on a free action DaS, as your follow up strikes won't get your bonus damage.
I also like Ray of Frost on a champion. At 10 Dex and maxed charisma, you're going to be more accurate with it than a back up bow, and it is much better than juggling free hands for melee weapons.
I'll admit cantrips aren't great for the other dex based precision characters, though they work well as ranged options for a strength based precision rangers. The Conrasu in our Strength of Thousands has them to fall back on if melee is out of the question.
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Gonna disagree there. Ascalaphus was talking about an investigator, and that class NEEDS an alternative to strike when they roll badly on Devise a Strategem.
Ok, on this point for an Investigator I do concede, just not for other martials.
Apologies if what I said was over the top.
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I think every character should aim to have a plan B and C, but not every class is going to have the same backup plans.
Yesterday I saw a level 6 gunslinger take on a level 9 mummy. It wasn't going very well. He had alchemical shot but was having trouble actually hitting the mummy's AC. But then he learned that just doing splash damage with a fire bomb was triggering a big weakness, and to do splash damage all you need is to not critically fail.
For related reasons my other investigator just picked up an alchemist dedication. If I'm fighting oozes, I'll bank on the bombs' crit effects. If I'm fighting a high AC devil and devise stratagem shows I can't score a normal weapon hit, I might splash it with a holy water instead. If I see a nat 20 I might throw a bomb just to do double persistent goodness (thank you 3rd printing CRB errata).
Having a plan B or C isn't something that the character creation system automatically puts in your hands. I think this is where system mastery (or to put it less elitist: just experience) shows. After the first time your fighter has a bad time with an ooze that gets worse if you do slashing damage, you might decide to also pick up a bludgeoning weapon for those situations. In case you run into another one. Similar to how the system doesn't automatically give you a good third action alternative to high MAP strikes. But once you realize those aren't productive, you can pick up a new feat, piece of gear, or retrain something to bring in an option.
I maintain that the overall game design really wants everyone to be multi-trick ponies. Every single tactic is going to horribly fail some of the time.
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Or it can viewed as the system reinforces the idea of teamwork--there will be some things you cannot handle all by yourself and no one person should be the BDH every encounter.
It's not really an issue of teamwork though. The encounter in question doesn't fundamentally change how your character plays or how you have to approach the game (arguably it might make team play less important, since enabling your damage is no longer a concern) you just suck more in that fight in a uniquely punishing way that most classes don't have to deal with.
It's why blanket immunities to wide ranges of effects have largely been done away with in PF2, they just missed a few spots to the game's detriment.
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I'm just not a big fan of inferred abilities. PCs (and NPCs, for that matter) should have a clear statblock that explains everything. Tags already make that a little murky, but fine, you can look those up. But say you have two identical PC character sheets: they made the exact same character creation choices, same equipment, everything. The only thing is, they forgot to note their ancestry. One is a skeleton, one is any other ancestry. Combat-wise nothing would change. Your ancestry rarely matters anyway (other than certain enemies that have specific triggers, such as elves being immune to ghoul paralysis and such, or enemies preferring to target certain ancestries). Looking at those sheets, nothing would indicate a bleed immunity, until one of the players pipes up with, "oh yeah, I forgot to say I'm a skeleton, so I'm immune to that."
Or look at poppets, for instance. Let's say one player is a Pinocchio-style wooden poppet. No internal juices that keep them alive. And one other character is playing a big ol' teddy bear, with stuffing inside. Technically, the wooden poppet would be immune to bleeding, because there's no "lifeblood." Then again, while the the teddy bear can technically lose its stuffing, it isn't an animating force. Would Pinocchio be the only one immune to bleed? Both? Neither?
If skeletons as an ancestry as a whole shouldn't be able to bleed because of mechanics, would it then be fair to discriminate further on purely flavour reasons? Would a poppet based on a tin soldier immediately die when it comes into contact with a rust monster? If you open this can of worms, I feel like the discussion will never stop.
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That's why it's probably better left unsolved: some groups like the fact that their flavor choices matter, some don't.
It's basically the old question of "this adventure is going to be one where you're going to go underwater a lot". You could argue that this is signposting "play an aquatic ancestry" ( ̶G̶i̶l̶l̶m̶e̶n̶ Azarketi were recommended in the Ruins of Azlant PLayer's Guide), or you could argue that "by playing an Aquatic Elf instead of a regular Elf you're getting too large an advantage."
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...and that one is in some ways a matter of what adventure you're really playing. A heavily aquatic advanture where everyone has aquatic ancestries is, in some pretty real ways, not the same adventure as the same setup would be with a party that had no one that was aquatic-capable. It's got an entire layer of additional challenges that gets effectively removed. The question is whether that layer of challenge is one of the awesome bits or one of the suck bits. Does removing it make things better or worse?
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... And is it something that applies to the entire party in a reasonably fair manner? Or are one or two characters getting to trivialize challenges, while the others struggle because they didn't get the memo during character creation?
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Yeah, so in a game where "being underwater is supposed to be a major problem for the party to solve" a GM can say "even though Skeletons do not strictly speaking breathe, the fact that they retain deeply seated memories means that you still think you need to breathe and trying to mind over matter this is a really tricky memory to suppress, so you still need to make checks to hold your breath".
But in a game where "being underwater is just supposed to be a cool setting" a GM can look at the rest of the party being an Aquatic Elf, a Merfolk, a Locathah, and an Azarketi and say "yeah, you can just walk on the bottom of the ocean, you don't need to breathe."
Dealing with stuff like this on a case by case basis in terms of "what decision is going to have the most positive effect on the story/game" is better than straight up having a rule for it that applies in all circumstances.
The same GM making one call in one campaign, and making the opposite call in a completely different campaign later isn't really different than "in this campaign you can play a Strix with full flight capability at level 1" and later saying "in this campaign Strix PCs need the appropriate ancestry feats to fly." One of the nice things about PF2 is that Paizo has not stepped on the GM's ability to make whatever ruling the story needs by having a hard and fast rule.
I'm reminded of the first part of skulls and shackles that had a fully or mostly underwater dungeon and multiple underwater encounters all in book 1 where you had very little ressources.
But these were built in an adventure that warmed you: WE GONNA BE UNDERWATER A LOT IN THIS!!! so ultimately it just vindicated all of us who took things for underwater combat.
Yeah. I just feel like we should have an official baseline for it.
For example, the game with the Strix. Playing it with needing the feats in order to fly is the baseline. Playing it with full flight at level 1 is an exception.
Same with Ghost. The sidebar even mentions that the baseline rules can be tinkered with.
And I feel it should be the same with Bleed damage on PC characters. There should be a baseline expectation, with campaigns and tables allowing changes to that as needed. A campaign shouldn't start with a Poppet player trying to argue that their character is immune to Bleed damage since they don't have blood. But that would still be better than if they spring that bit of rules logic unexpectedly on the GM 3 weeks into the campaign when their character takes bleed damage for the first time.
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I feel like the official baseline for the Skeleton anestry at least is "you have the basic undead benefits, with a feat you might have the advanced undead benefits."
The rest of the stuff is not unlike arguing that "As a gnome I weigh 30 lbs without my gear, when we put 30 lbs of stuff on the pressure plate it didn't trigger, so I can walk across the pressure plate without triggering it." Which is mostly that the GM should "yes, and" this sort of thing.
A poppet might not bleed per se, but if you've ever seen a dog dismantle a plush toy with a squeaker in it, you know that once the seal on the interior fluff is compromised then fluff gets everywhere.
I feel like the official baseline for the Skeleton anestry at least is "you have the basic undead benefits, with a feat you might have the advanced undead benefits."
And does that mean that a Skeleton PC is susceptible to Bleed damage, or not?
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There is no stated baseline, but I believe the intended baseline is that they are affected by the same things a standard PC would be affected by. They get a bonus to things that Undead are immune to, and immunity to Death effects which is already a HUGE bonus, so flat out immunity to Bleed shouldn't be seen as baseline on Skeletons. Even Conrasus, which are abstract balls of spiritual essence, can bleed. So what's to stop skeleton PCs from bleeding their necromantic energies instead of actual blood? There's already precident that the energies animating PCs is significantly stronger than those that animate mindless undead, so it's not a stretch.
GMs shouldn't just be thinking "This doesn't make sense, I will remove it." but also "How could I make this make sense in the setting to maintain game balance?"
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Also, since I brought up Poppets, they also raise an interesting question. Their Constructed ability says that they count as a living creature. But with the teddy bear example, does it have an actual mouth, or a digestive tract? Assuming they need all the things a human needs to survive, how does it do so without any lungs, stomach, and so on.
This leads me to a very important question:
Without any stomach, poppets and skeletons shouldn't be able to benefit from potions and other potable items.
Also also, like someone mentioned earlier: Skeletons have text that say they aren't destroyed at 0 HP, but poppets don't have that line of text. On the other hand, poppets have the Construct tag. They have a spark of life, which allows them to heal from positive energy, but no text saying any of the other Constructed tag's effects are negated. This means they have a lot of stealth abilities no other ancestries get:
Constructs are often mindless; they are immune to bleed damage, death effects, disease, healing, necromancy, nonlethal attacks, poison, and the doomed, drained, fatigued, paralyzed, sickened, and unconscious conditions;
Okay, so the mindless is obviously not true. As said, the spark of life removes healing immunity, but none of the other immunities are negated in their stat writeup (even if the Constructed trait gives a boost to saves poppets should be immune to). If skeletons are immune to bleed, then all these things should be fair to be true as well.
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So what's to stop skeleton PCs from bleeding their necromantic energies instead of actual blood?
Depending on the GM, the line about creatures that don't have blood or aren't alive not taking bleed damage.
IMO that's the problematic part, nothing within the description of the Skeleton itself, but this sort of vague, implied conditional immunity suggested within the description of bleed damage itself. Something no other damage type has, and which can lead to some significant inconsistencies in how the damage type functions.
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IMO that's the problematic part, nothing within the description of the Skeleton itself, but this sort of vague, implied conditional immunity suggested within the description of bleed damage itself. Something no other damage type has, and which can lead to some significant inconsistencies in how the damage type functions.
Fully agree with that.
It would be better if the Bleed damage rules didn't have that, and instead there is a 'Bloodless' trait that Undead monsters, Construct monsters, and other such things get that provides immunity to Bleed damage. That seems to be a more PF2 way of handling things like this.
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Without any stomach, poppets and skeletons shouldn't be able to benefit from potions and other potable items.
The rules say for that Poppets breathe and sleep, and they must consume food and water each day so I think they can drink potions.
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Honestly PF2 generally makes more sense if you assume every PC is basically a sack of negative or positive energy rather than someone susceptible to conventional injury. Hit points and the Medicine skill are just too wonky to attribute to regular human biology. Like not taking penalties when you're at 1% of your total hit points.
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Just summarising again, this is changed from my earlier remarks. Sorry but I need to do it for my guides. I don't want to be giving out bogus or unbalanced information. So please shoot me down if I make a mistake.
Skeletons don't get benefits from the Undead Trait, because it is explicitly replaced by Basic Undead Benefits. So they will bleed something somehow, maybe negative energy or perhaps their stress cracks just grow.
Automatons don't get benefits from the Constructed Trait, because it is explicitly replaced by Automaton Core. So they bleed planar quintessence.
Androids don't even have the Constructed Trait.
Poppets have the Constructed Trait, and are missing the text Automatons get that overrides this. But there is a clear rules contradiction here, and this is a RAW problem that demands errata. Constructed would give a Poppet immunity to bleeding, instant death at zero hit points (too bad to be true). But it also gives them immune to bleed damage, death effects, disease, healing, necromancy, nonlethal attacks, poison, and the doomed, drained, fatigued, paralyzed, sickened, and unconscious condition which largely contradicts the other benefit Poppets get in their ancestry of a +1 circumstance bonus to saving throws against death effects, disease, and poison as well as to saving throws against effects that would give you the drained, paralyzed, or sickened conditions. It would just be silly to give Poppets a +1 save against something they were immune to, so clearly this is an error and you shouldn't be applying Construct immunities to Poppets.
By my extremely literal reading (which is also required if you want to argue for skeletons not breathing/bleeding), yes. Purely going by RAW and what is presented, poppets are immune to nearly all negative effects, at the tradeoff of immediately dying when they reach 0 HP. Clearly this doesn't make any sense at all, but if you're going to argue "it doesn't say so in the rules" for skeletons, then the same applies to poppets.
Also, since poppets do need to sleep but are immune to the unconscious condition, either they enter a "sleep state" but can act normally (since asleep = unconscious, which they're immune to) (up to the GM how much they're able to do, ranging from basically sleepwalking [low-level brain activity] to full control of themselves), or they can't sleep and are permanently exhausted (they need to sleep, but can't).
I mean, I can believe that a Poppet is animated by, for example, a child's sincere belief that their doll is alive. So the doll has to operate by however the child believes they would operate. Like if the child serves the doll tea when holding a tea party, out of sincere belief that the doll needs liquids to survive, then the doll needs to drink.
I think skeletons work somewhat similarly, with negative energy running through the same pathways and cycles that positive energy does to sustain life. So there are built in things like "keep the insides inside" that are part of the patterns which is hard for the necromantic energies to totally overwrite.
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Also while Skeletons don't need to eat, their "hunger" is for bones. So I'm sure at a restaurant they would just order some chicken wings, strip the meat off, and use the bones to repair their bodies later lol.
The only other ancestries that have something special about eating is Leshy, which can photosynthesize, and Automatons who do not need to eat ever. Conrasu should probably need to photosynthesize too, but it doesn't explicitly say it so they probably have to eat something.
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It's all a bit messy;
- some mechanics are directly granted by traits like being undead or construct
- some mechanics are not directly granted by traits but those creatures "usually" have them so it's something that happens to be explicitly coded into all creatures with that trait, but if it's not, then that particular specimen doesn't have them
- we don't know if the basic undead benefits replace the undead trait entirely, or only replace the specified bits
- there are roadmaps for monster creation which also say which abilities to usually give them
- there are some mechanics like bleed which don't strictly depend on creature traits but inject their rules from the outside based on physiology. Like, NPC vampires could bleed, skeletons can't, that doesn't come from being undead but from not having blood.
- there appears to be an implicit baseline that most creatures follow certain rules, but it's not really defined anywhere
I think the only truly correct answer is "the book just isn't clear". Everything else is talking about what you think would have been a good rule.
I think the only truly correct answer is "the book just isn't clear". Everything else is talking about what you think would have been a good rule.
I think you are being unnecessarily vague. It is clear enough. Its not locked down with tight definitions but we knew that before we started.
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It is clear enough.
I mean you say that, but we're in a thread where people have taken different valid interpretations of certain lines of text to reach exactly opposite conclusions on how the mechanics are intended to work.
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This reminds me of a scene in Coco where a skeleton sneezes and says he's allergic to dogs.
Coco asks how can he be allergic if he's dead?
The skeleton says, "I also doesn't have a nose, but here we are."
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But I think RAI and RAW that PC rules are different from 'monster' rules. All PCs breathe, bleed, eat, etc. UNLESS stated otherwise.
RAI, maybe. The general drift does seem to be extreme caution towards giving ancestries nonstandard features/immunities. Quite likely if you held the writers hostage and forced them to give you an answer, that's what they'd decide.
RAW, no. It's not RAW if you can't actually point to writing that says something. "As Written" is only the case if you can provide a direct citation.
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"The archetypes and skeleton ancestry that follow can give the basic undead benefits detailed here. These are somewhat different from the normal undead creature abilities to better fit player characters."
Seems pretty RAW to me.
Bleeding or not bleeding is not a generic undead ability. Vampires and humans bleed, skeletons and statues don't. It doesn't depend on creature type but on whether there's any juice in there that can leak out.
BotD doesn't write anything about whether skeletons can bleed. There's no rules as written about it because those rules are not written.
I think the sticky situation here is the bleed rules themselves. The clause about "creatures that don't have blood are immune to bleed damage" seems to be simultaneously acting as flavor text and rules text and is unclear since different people will have different ideas on the biologies of fantasy creatures (e.g. I think Vampires bleed).
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That one isn't really sticky for vampires. There are 2 requirements to bleed.
1. Be alive
2. Require blood to live
Only one of those is arguable based on different fantasies.
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Actually technically only vertebrates bleed, as per the definition.
And even then, depending on what you consider to be blood, you could potentially limit that to only humanoids.
Insects and other invertebrates don't have the same internal distribution system and wouldn't "bleed" per say.
So I think I'll stick with my "if it doesn't say immune to bleed, it ain't immune" interpretation and make undead be cracked instead of bleeding.
Which is fair. I actually lean in favor of Alsatar's interpretation, but I think it's a problem that you can have reasonable people read the rules and come up with either one of those extremes as a valid way to interpret the mechanics.
That one isn't really sticky for vampires. There are 2 requirements to bleed.
1. Be alive
2. Require blood to liveOnly one of those is arguable based on different fantasies.
But unlife is a kind of life, and vampires clearly require blood to live.
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Actually technically only vertebrates bleed, as per the definition.
And even then, depending on what you consider to be blood, you could potentially limit that to only humanoids.
Insects and other invertebrates don't have the same internal distribution system and wouldn't "bleed" per say.
So I think I'll stick with my "if it doesn't say immune to bleed, it ain't immune" interpretation and make undead be cracked instead of bleeding.
You're well within your rights to say that ghosts bleed at your table. I just wouldn't present it to people as how they should expect things to work at someone else's.
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Indeed. My take is that it's purposefully vague to force individual tables to make decisions on it.
Wish it'd had been more clearly defined but thems the breaks.
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Wish it'd had been more clearly defined but thems the breaks.
Or cracks, or dripping blood as the case may be.