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I’m new to PF2E and building a champion. From guides I’ve seen people mention that the redeemer’s exalt ability to protect against Area effects is really nice… but I don’t see an instance where it would occur? Why would any enemy choose to not just negate damage against the single target? In that way they’d avoid all your negative status effects and the exalt ability protecting your allies…
I’m new to PF2E and building a champion. From guides I’ve seen people mention that the redeemer’s exalt ability to protect against Area effects is really nice… but I don’t see an instance where it would occur? Why would any enemy choose to not just negate damage against the single target? In that way they’d avoid all your negative status effects and the exalt ability protecting your allies…
This is definitely corner-case, but I'd have to say that if you choose to not deal damage to the targeted ally, the others would still benefit from Glimpse's Exalt ability, and the enemy would still be Enfeebled 2.
I definitely agree that there should be more elaboration on this ability, but letting an enemy just not damage one person in their targeted AoE without suffering repercussions with or applying the benefits of the Exalt ability sounds Too Bad to Be True.
Well, if I cast a Fireball from 80 feet away at a Redeemer Champion and friends, Glimpse of Redemption won't work at all since I am too far away to be affected by it.
If I cast Burning Hands from 10 feet away, it will trigger.
But I have to pick the targets first. And then deal damage. Only then does Glimpse of Redemption trigger. Once the Champion picks one of his allies as the primary target, it is way too late for me to decide to just avoid hitting that one target. I can't change the area for Burning Hands at that point.
I could decide to abort the spell entirely and avoid taking the penalties. But that would prevent all of them from taking any damage.
Running the ability as being able to decide to avoid dealing damage to just the primary target ally may be literally what it says. But I really don't think that is how the ability is intended to be run.
It is a good thing to point out so that the developers can see. But, seriously...
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Running the ability as being able to decide to avoid dealing damage to just the primary target ally may be literally what it says. But I really don't think that is how the ability is intended to be run.
It is a good thing to point out so that the developers can see. But, seriously...
I play PFS exclusively so it’s important to follow RAW. Also, I missed the point that both the enemy and the ally hit must be within 15 ft. (I thought you only needed an ally). That limits the ability of this feature immensely… I think the guides rating it highly are pretty inaccurate but again I haven’t played at that level so wondered if anyone had practical experience.
But the only way I see the ability working is if the “negate all damage” applies to the entire damage effect.
By RAW, rigorous RAW is not king anymore; the CRB explicitly says so meaning this applies to PFS too. Which is to say to read as a normal person reading rules language naturally, not a lawyer parsing legal text; even within PFS with its (former) notoriety for this.
And while the Exalt ability works poorly vs. ranged enemies (which is true of all the Champion Reactions), there are more local effects like many breath weapons, trample, hydra-like attacks, exploding dead monsters, or just a caster in melee (i.e. many fiends want to both cast and Strike).
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And while the Exalt ability works poorly vs. ranged enemies (which is true of all the Champion Reactions), there are more local effects like many breath weapons, trample, hydra-like attacks, exploding dead monsters, or just a caster in melee (i.e. many fiends want to both cast and Strike).
That’s interesting about PFS and RAW. I guess what I meant is if there were any rulings on the matter because anything that allows table variation isn’t really viable in PFS so I stick with concrete rulings.
As for breath weapons, aoe trample, etc those are all circumstances where the exalt ability still appears useless as most intelligent enemies will just opt to deal full damage to everyone else and no damage to the target of your resumption (therefore defeating the purpose of your exalt).
And while the Exalt ability works poorly vs. ranged enemies (which is true of all the Champion Reactions), there are more local effects like many breath weapons, trample, hydra-like attacks, exploding dead monsters, or just a caster in melee (i.e. many fiends want to both cast and Strike).
That’s interesting about PFS and RAW. I guess what I meant is if there were any rulings on the matter because anything that allows table variation isn’t really viable in PFS so I stick with concrete rulings.
As for breath weapons, aoe trample, etc those are all circumstances where the exalt ability still appears useless as most intelligent enemies will just opt to deal full damage to everyone else and no damage to the target of your resumption (therefore defeating the purpose of your exalt).
"Therefore defeating the purpose of your exalt" indeed, hence that interpretation is grossly in error. It'd defeat getting the upgrade, and those are strong upgrades for the other alignments. So yeah, you might worry about GMs who make such poor rulings on it using the rigor of PFS as an excuse, but that ruling wouldn't fly in my local PFS circles.
And IMO the simplest interpretation would be to replace "ally" with "allies" for Glimpse of Redemption, since that's the effect extended to all allies by the Exalt (and yourself). From what I see with how Exalt's worded, there's no difference between the triggering ally vs. the others re: the enemy's choice; every single one is granted the exact same protection. Though I don't endorse it, an even fiercer RAW reading might even argue that everybody gets the resistance (because that's exactly what it says), meaning the enemy's choice doesn't matter anymore.
Anyway, it does tie back more to the GM's reasonableness more than any lawyering, but I wouldn't have qualms about using it with random veteran PFS GMs. (Newbies...well, I've seen some random reasoning.)
And while the Exalt ability works poorly vs. ranged enemies (which is true of all the Champion Reactions), there are more local effects like many breath weapons, trample, hydra-like attacks, exploding dead monsters, or just a caster in melee (i.e. many fiends want to both cast and Strike).
That’s interesting about PFS and RAW. I guess what I meant is if there were any rulings on the matter because anything that allows table variation isn’t really viable in PFS so I stick with concrete rulings.
As for breath weapons, aoe trample, etc those are all circumstances where the exalt ability still appears useless as most intelligent enemies will just opt to deal full damage to everyone else and no damage to the target of your resumption (therefore defeating the purpose of your exalt).
I think if it isn't published on the FAQ site or PFS rulings it isn't going to be concrete enough to matter for PFS. Designers sometimes answer rules questions in online videos but it isn't like you can pull those up in the middle of a game. Any given PFS GM running it one way for one of us doesn't mean your own GM will.
However, you should be able to also point out that the Exalt ability doesn't actually do anything if it only applies to one target, and any reasonable GM will decide that is too bad to be true. The CRB instructs them to find a reasonable solution if something doesn't seem to work as intended by rules as written.
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"Therefore defeating the purpose of your exalt" indeed, hence that interpretation is grossly in error. It'd defeat getting the upgrade, and those are strong upgrades for the other alignments. So yeah, you might worry about GMs who make such poor rulings on it using the rigor of PFS as an excuse, but that ruling wouldn't fly in my local PFS circles.
How is it in error? It's very explicit how Glimpse of Redemption works.
In PFS you cannot look at an explicit rule and say "Oh well I believe it's intended to work this way so at my table it works that way". Under that logic the game doesn't have any concrete rules at all.
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"Oh well I believe it's intended to work this way so at my table it works that way". Under that logic the game doesn't have any concrete rules at all.
That is a huge exaggeration of what people are saying.
Of course the game has concrete rules. But it is also written by humans.
There is a general rule known as the Ambiguous Rules rule. Summarized as follows: If a rule has multiple possible interpretations and one of them is too good to be reasonable or too bad to be usable, don't use that interpretation.
Running the Exalt version of Glimpse of Redemption in a manner that makes it useless at protecting multiple allies around the Champion - which is the very thing that it says that it does in the first sentence - clearly falls into this category.
There are several alternate ways of interpreting the rule that also make sense and do have value. Use one of them. That is RAW.
How is it in error? It's very explicit how Glimpse of Redemption works.
Because the rules say that if your interpretation of the rules results in them not working, your interpretation is wrong. Your version of Glimpse of Redemption is explicitly countered by RAW.
In PFS you cannot look at an explicit rule and say "Oh well I believe it's intended to work this way so at my table it works that way". Under that logic the game doesn't have any concrete rules at all.
The guide to organized play instructs GMs to make judgments to ensure a fair and fun experience. Your interpretation is neither fair nor fun and would be quickly overruled.
As a Pathfinder Society GM, you have the right and responsibility to make whatever judgments, within the rules, that you feel are necessary at your table to ensure everyone has a fair and fun experience.
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Because the rules say that if your interpretation of the rules results in them not working, your interpretation is wrong. Your version of Glimpse of Redemption is explicitly countered by RAW.
From Glimpse of Redemption:
The foe must choose one of the following options:- The ally is unharmed by the triggering damage.
- The ally gains resistance to all damage against the triggering damage equal to 2 + your level. After the damaging effect is applied, the enemy becomes enfeebled 2 until the end of its next turn.
From the exalt ability:
You can apply the resistance granted by Glimpse of Redemption to yourself and all allies within 15 feet of you, including the triggering ally, except the resistance is reduced by 2 for all.
Glimpse of redemption is either / or and only applies resistance if the enemy chooses to damage your ally. The exalt ability enhances when you apply resistance therefore only occurs when resistance is applied. How is anything contradicting this RAW? If people believe it should not function this way then there absolutely needs to be an errata clarifying this.
I’m not interpreting anything the rules are very clear how glimpse of redemption and exalt interact. Bear in mind the ability is not “broken” in that language prevents it from working, it’s just that the mechanics are so skewed in favor of one decision.
As a Pathfinder Society GM, you have the right and responsibility to make whatever judgments, within the rules, that you feel are necessary at your table to ensure everyone has a fair and fun experience.
Again you don’t get to just disregard RAW because you want an ability to function a way it does not. I’m in the same boat that I’d like it to function that way, but the rules don’t work like that. PFS DM’s can make judgements on rulings not explicitly in the rules, but this one is.
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Hmmm. On further consideration I'm not sure this reading is bad for the player. You can choose which ally is the "trigger" and that isn't chosen until damage would be dealt... So you can go for the one who critically failed their save, or who would be knocked out if they took this damage. An adult red dragon with 15d6 breath could easily deal 100 points of damage to a single character. If it chooses to leave that target unharmed in order for everyone else to take less 11 less damage a piece, that is a huge win for the party. Phenomenal, really. On 4he average party of 4 you traded 33 HP and a debuff for 100 HP. And the less people actually getting caught in the equation, the better it becomes.
By comparison, if it was all or nothing, the dragon would never opt to negate the damage. Avoiding one round of penalties is in no way worth wasting 15d6-11 damage to any one target, much less a whole group of them. You need to be dealing really tiny amounts of damage to take that option and a high level AoE will usually not be tiny.
Also worth considering how much leeway the GM has in this choice. As a rule of thumb, I only allow redeemable creatures to take the abstaining option, because that gives players insight into which villains they should try and redeem. That isn't spelled out by the rules, but it makes sense to me intuitively. A mindless undead won't understand the choice enough to override the drive to harm and will eat the penalties. A demon may understand the weight of its sins, but sinning is so ingrained into their existence odds are they will eat the penalties out of spite.
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Hmmm. On further consideration I'm not sure this reading is bad for the player. You can choose which ally is the "trigger" and that isn't chosen until damage would be dealt... So you can go for the one who critically failed their save, or who would be knocked out if they took this damage. An adult red dragon with 15d6 breath could easily deal 100 points of damage to a single character. If it chooses to leave that target unharmed in order for everyone else to take less 11 less damage a piece, that is a huge win for the party. Phenomenal, really. On 4he average party of 4 you traded 33 HP and a debuff for 100 HP. And the less people actually getting caught in the equation, the better it becomes.
By comparison, if it was all or nothing, the dragon would never opt to negate the damage. Avoiding one round of penalties is in no way worth wasting 15d6-11 damage to any one target, much less a whole group of them. You need to be dealing really tiny amounts of damage to take that option and a high level AoE will usually not be tiny.
Also worth considering how much leeway the GM has in this choice. As a rule of thumb, I only allow redeemable creatures to take the abstaining option, because that gives players insight into which villains they should try and redeem. That isn't spelled out by the rules, but it makes sense to me intuitively. A mindless undead won't understand the choice enough to override the drive to harm and will eat the penalties. A demon may understand the weight of its sins, but sinning is so ingrained into their existence odds are they will eat the penalties out of spite.
I agree that mindless things shouldn't get the option, but I think even Demons and Daemons should get the choice and evaluate how they want to proceed. Even chaotic evil doesn't need to be stupid and not understand that perhaps they'd prefer to avoid the penalties, or perhaps they want to deal full damage to the target. Or perhaps there is only one target affected by the attack.
Anyways, it sounds like the original question is "can the attacker decide to not target someone" or perhaps "Is letting the enemy decide to not damage one target out of several really bad".
My interpretation is that in the even of an AoE attack, the Redeemer Champion can use their ability, which includes extending the damage resistance to multiple people in range if the attacker chooses not to exclude the original target. The one I read this, the trigger is one individual, so it doesn't require the attacker to completely negate the attack against all targets, just the one.
If the AoE includes 3+ people the enemy may decide "I don't want this penalty and I'm still getting a lot of damage against the others" or they can decide "I'm not strength based, I don't care about enfeebled and negating 15 pts of the 90 I'm about to deal (per target) is still better than eliminating all damage to one target".
But ultimately is a choice, one the enemy gets to make.
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An adult red dragon with 15d6 breath could easily deal 100 points of damage to a single character. If it chooses to leave that target unharmed in order for everyone else to take less 11 less damage a piece, that is a huge win for the party.
In this situation the dragon dealing 100 damage to say a party of 4 pcs (one is a level 9 champion) has the following options:
1. not deal damage to target member and deal 100 to the other three
2. deal 89 damage to all members of the group and suffer negative effects.
I hadn’t considered using it on someone who critically failed their save. In that instance, the enemy would most likely choose option 2.
So I guess in cases where the enemy can put out an overwhelming amount of AoE, the ability has merit. It probably depends on how hot the enemy rolls AoE, and how well PCs succeed their saves, as to which choice they pick.
In this situation the dragon dealing 100 damage to say a party of 4 pcs (one is a level 9 champion) has the following options:
1. not deal damage to target member and deal 100 to the other three
2. deal 89 damage to all members of the group and suffer negative effects
3. Have the dm remember them exalt is a lvl 11 perk.
The above poster's damage calc is a little off, but the analysis is generally the same.
I will however add, while it's possible to deal 100 damage using a CR 11 creature against a CR 11 party, I wouldn't consider it likely.
It would require someone to critically fail their reflex save and take double damage. Even the 15d6 damage of an adult red dragon (CR 14) only works out to a max of 90 damage, unless someone critically fails.
But out of 4 players, there is not an insignificant chance of someone crit failing, but not guaranteed either.
I guess I really should have said the 100 damage (to one PC) is unlikely but not impossible.
To be clear, 15d6 averages 52.5. You'd need to critically fail a save to take 100 points usually. That's an extreme encounter (11 party vs 14th level dragon) but those damage numbers line right up with the GMG. This ability actually gets better the higher monster damage becomes.
An adult red dragon with 15d6 breath could easily deal 100 points of damage to a single character. If it chooses to leave that target unharmed in order for everyone else to take less 11 less damage a piece, that is a huge win for the party.In this situation the dragon dealing 100 damage to say a party of 4 pcs (one is a level 9 champion) has the following options:
1. not deal damage to target member and deal 100 to the other three
2. deal 89 damage to all members of the group and suffer negative effects.I hadn’t considered using it on someone who critically failed their save. In that instance, the enemy would most likely choose option 2.
So I guess in cases where the enemy can put out an overwhelming amount of AoE, the ability has merit. It probably depends on how hot the enemy rolls AoE, and how well PCs succeed their saves, as to which choice they pick.
So this example would be all 4 PCs critically failing their saves, but in reality you're more likely to see a spread of results. Let's say one in each success category. So the choice is:
1. Deal no damage to two PCs, 25 damage to one, and 50 to another.
2. Deal no damage to one PC, 87 damage to another PC, 12 to one, and 37 to the final one, plus take the enfeebled/stupified. (Because you took Weight of Guilt, right?)
So yeah, this is a lot more nuanced than initially assumed. There's no way to predict every variation but I think the majority of the time this will be meaningful decision for the GM.
To be clear, 15d6 averages 52.5. You'd need to critically fail a save to take 100 points usually. That's an extreme encounter (11 party vs 14th level dragon) but those damage numbers line right up with the GMG. This ability actually gets better the higher monster damage becomes.
An adult red dragon with 15d6 breath could easily deal 100 points of damage to a single character. If it chooses to leave that target unharmed in order for everyone else to take less 11 less damage a piece, that is a huge win for the party.In this situation the dragon dealing 100 damage to say a party of 4 pcs (one is a level 9 champion) has the following options:
1. not deal damage to target member and deal 100 to the other three
2. deal 89 damage to all members of the group and suffer negative effects.I hadn’t considered using it on someone who critically failed their save. In that instance, the enemy would most likely choose option 2.
So I guess in cases where the enemy can put out an overwhelming amount of AoE, the ability has merit. It probably depends on how hot the enemy rolls AoE, and how well PCs succeed their saves, as to which choice they pick.
So this example would be all 4 PCs critically failing their saves, but in reality you're more likely to see a spread of results. Let's say one in each success category. So the choice is:
1. Deal no damage to two PCs, 25 damage to one, and 50 to another.
2. Deal no damage to one PC, 87 damage to another PC, 12 to one, and 37 to the final one, plus take the enfeebled/stupified. (Because you took Weight of Guilt, right?)So yeah, this is a lot more nuanced than initially assumed. There's no way to predict every variation but I think the majority of the time this will be meaningful decision for the GM.
I honestly think for a lot of NPCs, enfeebled 2 is something can ignore or deal with. It's not great, but maybe worth it to still deal damage to everyone.
But stupefied is pretty scary, because of the will save penalty and penalty to any kind of spell abilities. As a GM, I'd be likely to take enfeebled, but scared to take stupefied.
I'm thinking about it from a dragon's capabilities specifically.
"Enfeebled 2? I'll just cast a spell next turn."
I honestly imagine a dragon starting combat with breath (because the party is most likely to be arranged in a way to maximize the amount of people hit). Assuming redeemer uses their ability, the dragon might choose to accept the penalty to "maximize" the damage dealt and then proceed to cast a spell the next turn where enfeebled doesn't matter. The other actions you get are likely spent positioning. Heck, the dragon could haste themselves so that on turn 3 they can move, draconic frenzy, move.
Not every enemy has the plethora of options that dragons do, but I honestly believe stupefied is scarier than enfeebled. Virtual +2 AC is good, but only against an enemy that that wants to make strength based attacks.
Of course....the dragon probably isn't in range of the redeemer when it uses its breath weapon anyways.
You can totally get caught in a 60 foot cone on the first round, especially if you roll low on initiative. Or the dragon could be too far for this to matter, but the whole premise of the thread is actually triggering the Exalt ability, so it ain't really worth arguing whether it triggers.
Whether enfeebled or stupified is better will depend what you're fighting and whether your party targets will saves. A dragon MAY be a credible spell caster, but it definitely is a dragon (cue anti magic field Order of the Stick comic) so I'd personally start with Enfeebled.
"Enfeebled 2? I'll just cast a spell next turn."
It's even better than enfebleed 2.
Assuming the lvl 14 dragon vs a lvl 11 party.
Here's their spell list
Is that bad the fighter refuses to use its AoO on it.Adult Red Dragon
Arcane Prepared Spells DC 35, attack +29; As young red dragon, plus 6th dispel magic, teleport, wall of force; 5th cloak of colors, command, tongues; Cantrips (6th) chill touch, daze, mage hand, message, sigil
Technically, dragons usually get that level of casting OR melee enhancing tools like draconic frenzy and momentum. So not every dragon is a credible caster. (You can totally give a dragon both, though, and I usually do to compensate for things like free archetype or double class feats.)
Edit: Though by this level you can apply both Enfeebled and Stupified with whatever that extended duration feat is called.