So with the 4th printing of the CRB and the corresponding errata - has this question been resolved?
Current errata as I see it:
Page 460, 462, and 469: The text on Gaining and Losing actions on page 462 and for the last step of starting your turn on page 469 indicated that if you had a condition that said “you can’t act,” you wouldn’t regain any actions on your turn, rather than merely being unable to use them. This conflicted with the sidebar on page 622, which was correct. Conditions and other effects that cause you to change the number of actions you regain (such as quickened, slowed, or stunned) say so.
Scenario: You get Stunned 1 from a reaction to your first action of your turn. You still have two actions for that turn left.
I'm still not seeing anything that allows you to use those two actions or do anything to remove the Stunned condition. Removing the Stunned condition happens at the start of your next turn. You lose one action from that turn's actions to reduce the Stunned condition to 0 and remove it.
I'm waiting to see the updated text in full, but the fact that being Dead removes all your actions makes me think the text of stunned will change.
Yeah, doesn't surprise me. This is also as crazy as when we figured out that being Unconscious imposes both Flat-footed (-2 Circumstance) and a unique (-4 Status) penalty to AC, which just made people falling unconscious far easier to be coup de graced.
Nothing on page 622 has changed wording-wise with the fourth printing, so I was definitively wrong. We are effectively in the same state as the third printing, just with fixed up wording on starting your turned while stunned.
All the errata actually changes is that you regain actions on your turn if you're unable to act. You still can't use them since there's no change otherwise to the rules about being unable to act (that I see).
Being able to regain actions when stunned is important or it is an infinite lock out.
I still find When you can’t act, you still regain
your actions unless a condition (like stunned) prevents it. ambiguous
But I think the positive example is as good as we are going to get.
Personally this seems to reinforce the idea that if you're stunned on your turn, your turn is basically over.
Seems fair
So, I brought this change up to one of my tables and they erupted in outrage with Stunned being ran that way, because it makes Stunned on your turn far more debilitating than if you were Slowed, even though the main intent behind Stunned is that you should be unable to act until you next regain actions, and it consequently removes actions the next time you gain them.
It just seems like PF1 levels of broken.
I played with someone that had Stunning Fist and in the two months he tried to stun something with a Readied action he successfully did so almost never.
Now I am curious why.
Did the readied action never happen? Did they never hit with either attack? Or did the enemy succeed at their save each time due to the incapacitation trait?
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the problem isn't stunned vs slowed, it's stunned vs itself.
If you hit me with stunned 1 on your turn, I lose 1 action. But if you hit me with stunned 1 on my turn, depending on which reading you go with I could lose up to 4. That's a really radical change in effectiveness based on what amounts to pretty arbitrary timing changes and some rules ambiguity.
Granted, it's not the only ability like that (demoralize is stronger the further away our turns are), but it's definitely the most significant.
And the errata completely skipped this part.
It's also not like it's something that's commonly going to come up. It's largely theoretical.
I mean, readied action stunning strike is a bit esoteric, but "fails a save against forbidden thought" is not exactly a wild scenario. It involves a character using a spell exactly as it's designed. No incapacitation either.
And if we go with breithauptclan's version of how Stunned works, it means that for a single focus point we can potentially take away an enemy's entire turn.
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And if we go with breithauptclan's version of how Stunned works,
Though that isn't how I would run Stunned 1 in my games. That is just what the condition's rules literally say. Personally I think it is a bit broken.
Granted, it's not the only ability like that (demoralize is stronger the further away our turns are), but it's definitely the most significant.
Another one that I have run into is Delay Consequence (from Time Mage dedication). Considering how spell effects with a duration measured in rounds works, and considering that it is cast as a reaction on an enemy's turn rather than on the spellcaster's turn - it can have a rather good effect if there are many characters between the triggering action and the spellcaster, or practically no effect if the spellcaster's turn is immediately after the trigger.
the problem isn't stunned vs slowed, it's stunned vs itself.
If you hit me with stunned 1 on your turn, I lose 1 action. But if you hit me with stunned 1 on my turn, depending on which reading you go with I could lose up to 4. That's a really radical change in effectiveness based on what amounts to pretty arbitrary timing changes and some rules ambiguity.
Granted, it's not the only ability like that (demoralize is stronger the further away our turns are), but it's definitely the most significant.
And the errata completely skipped this part.
That's pretty much how my table felt as well; our group plays with the Critical/Fumble decks (yes, I know it mathematically goes against the PCs more than the enemies, besides the point), and one of the draws for the Fumble was that the PC became Stunned 2 (which was done after their second action). When I retorted that it actually means he loses the rest of his turn, plus any reactions/free actions he might have wanted to do in between turns (he didn't have any yet, but they will have them eventually), plus 2 actions of next turn, and that it was clarified in errata to do this, the entire table about erupted in complaint and claims of boulderdash that it was way more penalizing than it needed to be, which was that, simply, he loses the next 2 actions of his next turn with the standard rules.
The GM compromised and ruled that the Stunned penalty simply takes place immediately, finishing his turn wasting the action and having him losing only 1 action the next turn (yes, I know the rules cover this by RAW, I'm pretty certain he just wanted the game to keep going and made an off-the-cuff ruling to not have the table boil down in debate), but given that, in the previous session, we realized that you suffer a hefty -6 penalty to AC while unconscious (we always assumed you were simply considered Flat-Footed while Unconscious, which is a mere -2), I didn't think something of this magnitude would be well outside the realm of absurdity for the group to drop this "bomb," per se, because as everyone else here seems readily pointing out, Stunned is far more debilitating than Slowed.
At the end of the day, I just think that, with our group having ran Stunned and Slowed as practically identical conditions that we can't really divorce that they actually have subtle (yet significant) differences to them, and it makes sense to me as well. It also doesn't help that the Sidebar references Stunned as part of the "actions gained and lost" section, while it also says in its description "You can't act."
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I feel like Stunned would be far more "even" if it just took away actions at the earliest opportunity, rather than waiting for the start of a turn.
So if you got Stunning Fisted in your turn you'd lose 1 (or 3 if you're really unlucky) actions. And you probably already spent an action to do whatever it is you did to deserve that reaction. So there's a middling chance you're out of actions now.
But you wouldn't have this weird extreme discrepancy between being stunned on your turn or outside of your turn. It'd have close to the same impact.
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I feel like Stunned would be far more "even" if it just took away actions at the earliest opportunity, rather than waiting for the start of a turn.
So if you got Stunning Fisted in your turn you'd lose 1 (or 3 if you're really unlucky) actions. And you probably already spent an action to do whatever it is you did to deserve that reaction. So there's a middling chance you're out of actions now.
But you wouldn't have this weird extreme discrepancy between being stunned on your turn or outside of your turn. It'd have close to the same impact.
That makes sense to me as well, and if you still have the condition at your turn's end, you'd still be unable to take reactions/free actions as normal, which seems to be in-line with being Stunned versus Slowed.
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Yeah, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how anyone could think that the Slowed condition is supposed to be more severe than Stunned.
In every context I've seen over my lifetime the term Stunned has almost universally meant that your Character gets bonked in some manner and has to just stand there looking stupid for a while, often with little floating rubber duckies and/or stars around their head. Slowed, however, just makes you move less fast or take more energy to do something.
I don't think I've ever encountered a single scenario in tabletop or video games where you get slapped with a Stun and you get to finish whatever you were doing when that happened... if anyone can give me an example of this other than situations where a Character has some kind of like... buff to negate or lessen the stun I'd be happy to hear them out but...
Yeah, I don't understand the concept that people seem to have that its "unfair" like... yeah, it's a STUN, that's the point, it's akin to temporary paralysis not "it's a bit harder to do things."
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Even with running Stunned 1 as being able to be paid off with remaining actions of the current turn, it is still a bit more impact than Slowed 1 - because it happens immediately.
"I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" type of idea.
The character likely had plans to use that action that they just lost. Which may have made their choices for the first action or two of their turn a bit of a less desirable choice.
For example, they may have been doing a Stride, then Strike first in order to decide whether to Raise Shield or Stride towards the next enemy based on if they dropped the enemy that they are currently facing. With them getting Stunned 1, they don't get to do either.
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and that it was clarified in errata to do this
Dunno why you'd say that, because a big part of the problem is that the errata didn't, it didn't touch this part of the ability at all.
The errata cleaned up the obviously broken "you can never regain actions while stunned so stunned lasts forever" that nobody took seriously, but it didn't really address the stuff people have actually been arguing over.
Yeah, I don't understand the concept
Then maybe read what people are saying again, because it was spelled out pretty clearly.
It's not that stunned is "fair" or "unfair", it's that the rules have contradictory statements on how stunned works, and that under one interpretation stunned doesn't work right and under the other it can be up to four times stronger than it's supposed to be under weirdly specific circumstances. Both are clearly janky.
Well, our table also felt that having the Delay Consequence spell be so variable of a duration was a bug and not a feature. We houseruled it that spells with a duration measured in rounds reduces on the initiative count that the spell was cast at rather than always on the spellcaster's turn. So then you always get the full one round duration consistently.
Yeah, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how anyone could think that the Slowed condition is supposed to be more severe than Stunned.
In every context I've seen over my lifetime the term Stunned has almost universally meant that your Character gets bonked in some manner and has to just stand there looking stupid for a while, often with little floating rubber duckies and/or stars around their head. Slowed, however, just makes you move less fast or take more energy to do something.
I don't think I've ever encountered a single scenario in tabletop or video games where you get slapped with a Stun and you get to finish whatever you were doing when that happened... if anyone can give me an example of this other than situations where a Character has some kind of like... buff to negate or lessen the stun I'd be happy to hear them out but...
Yeah, I don't understand the concept that people seem to have that its "unfair" like... yeah, it's a STUN, that's the point, it's akin to temporary paralysis not "it's a bit harder to do things."
I'm pretty sure it's a matter of the mindset of "The game decided to effectively treat Stunned and Slowed as functioning identically, but are treated as separate conditions because [reasons]," and less the basic concept of "Stunned > Slowed." I mean, it even goes so far as to say that "Actions lost while Stunned count towards actions lost while Slowed, and vice-versa," which essentially implies they are quite synonymous with one another.
Nobody is arguing that Stunned, as a basic terminology, should be equal to or congruent to Slowed, as a basic terminology. The issue is that it's been established (or assumedly established) by the game that they're equal in terms of mechanics, and when it's shown that it's not under a scrupulous lens, it creates a cognitive dissonance that such people can't seem to grasp, and, in the most unfavorable of circumstances, absolutely destroys action economy far more than it feels like it should, hence the uproar.
As for it being fair or not, consider that Stun was one of the conditions in PF1 that was treated as something extremely powerful, and applying it in any means (such as from the infamous Metamagic feat) essentially meant K.O. for the bad guys, and this edition has gone through a lot of lengths (i.e. nerfs) to eliminate such things from being so commonplace in the game so that other actions become more important. The factor that Stunning reactions exist, and are effectively as powerful as, say, an Immediate Slowed 4-6 (which doesn't even exist in the game, and is probably the closest thing I can come to describing it as), treads into the very concept they've tried so hard to get away from.
Heck, the only reliable means for Stunning comes from Stunning Fist, and essentially requires foes to roll a 1 to become Stunned 3, though even if they roll, say, a 5, a readied Stunning Fist becomes an absolute monster of a feat compared to most anything else the Monk or any other class has. 2nd level feat trumping the likes of a 20th level feat seems far beyond the scope of what that feat should be able to realistically accomplish. Yes, this is the edition of a Martial, but when I can take Stunning Fist and essentially stop a Fighter's Endless Reprisal feat dead in its tracks, it's broken design.
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Well, since Flurry doesn't qualify for Ready anyway due to being an activity instead of a single action, this "issue" should be even more rare
Single Actions"They’re the simplest, most common type of action. You can use three single actions on your turn in an encounter, in any order you see fit." Flurry IS a single action, as denoted by the single action symbol. The game isn't strict on using it's use, some times meaning 1 action and some time meaning 'not an activity'. I see no way to prove that Delay doesn't mean 1 action.
Nearly everything that gives Stunned also has Incapacitation, while Slowed does not. It's supposed to be more debilitating.
Dazing blow stuns 1 on a success. Even with the incapacitation trait, this is big if you can cancel a turn with it.
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if any rule is ambiguous the game says to use the most unfavorable result.
No it doesn't.
It says do want makes sense for your group| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
if any rule is ambiguous the game says to use the most unfavorable result.No it doesn't.
It says do want makes sense for your group
That is at least a lot closer of an interpretation of the Ambiguous Rules rule.
And I would bring up Act Together. It has very similar wording as Ready for what can be used by the secondary character of the Summoner/Eidolon pair.
Either you or your eidolon takes an action or activity using the same number of actions as Act Together, and the other takes a single action.
And the examples that it gives both use simple single actions of Strike and Stride.
However, preventing the Summoner from using Boost Eidolon as their single action seems to have some problematic repercussions. It would prevent a turn of
◆◆Act Together (S: ◆Boost Eidolon, E: ◆◆Beasts Charge)
E: ◆Strike
Which is pretty much bread and butter for a Summoner player.
Now in the context of "Summoner" yeah it looses a thing which is problematic in a way. But I am pretty every class would lose a thing no?
Well, in the sense that every character could use Ready if they found a need for it - yeah, I guess so.
But that is several orders of magnitude less that a fighter/barbarian/monk/wizard/witch/investigator/... is losing than the Summoner is. Act Together is a core ability of the class.
Edit: Hmm... Actually, Witch might be somewhat close. Only a couple of orders of magnitude less due to the one action Hex spells that they have. Casting those as a readied action could be useful.
Thus, Flurry of Blows is an activity since it "combines multiple single actions to produce an effect that’s different from merely the sum of those actions" and so does not qualify for Ready
Nothing precludes an activity from being a single action though, that's the quandary: something can have multiple actions in it [an activity] and only cost a single action [Single Actions are the simplest, most common type of action. You can use three single actions on your turn in an encounter]. That's why I said you can't prove that an flurry can't be used in a Ready action as it qualifies as both an activity AND a single action. No where does ready ever make an explicit requirement of a single action [not an activity] instead of a single action [an action that takes a single action to use].
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The game rules also defines a 'Basic Action'. So if they really wanted to restrict Ready and Act Together to using those, they should have used that term.
In short, the rules are unclear because of the overloading of terms. It needs clarification in order to be resolved fully.
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If you want to go the "an activity can also be a single action" route in your argument you have to overcome that hurdle of Flurry and other "two for 1" activities being multiple actions, not single
They are single actions with subordinate actions.
Flurry of Blows does not state whether it is an activity or a single action. Just that it has an action cost of 1.
Neither does Bon Mot.
So is Bon Mot also an activity for the same reason that Flurry of Blows is - because it isn't in the list of single actions?
On the other hand, spellcasting is specifically listed as being an activity. So 1-action spells are most definitely all activities.
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Sorry for triple posting, but they do all at least have different messages...
In thinking about the definition of Basic Action, I looked up the definition of Single Action too.
Apparently a Single Action is anything that uses that single action symbol - including Flurry of Blows, Twin Takedown, and Needle of Vengeance.
Though I would invoke specific overrides general on spells that they are still activities.
...Yeah, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how anyone could think that the Slowed condition is supposed to be more severe than Stunned.
In every context I've seen over my lifetime the term Stunned has almost universally meant that your Character gets bonked in some manner and has to just stand there looking stupid for a while, often with little floating rubber duckies and/or stars around their head. Slowed, however, just makes you move less fast or take more energy to do something.
I don't think I've ever encountered a single scenario in tabletop or video games where you get slapped with a Stun and you get to finish whatever you were doing when that happened... if anyone can give me an example of this other than situations where a Character has some kind of like... buff to negate or lessen the stun I'd be happy to hear them out but...
Yeah, I don't understand the concept that people seem to have that its "unfair" like... yeah, it's a STUN, that's the point, it's akin to temporary paralysis not "it's a bit harder to do things."
I'm pretty sure it's a matter of the mindset of "The game decided to effectively treat Stunned and Slowed as functioning identically, but are treated as separate conditions because [reasons]," and less the basic concept of "Stunned > Slowed." I mean, it even goes so far as to say that "Actions lost while Stunned count towards actions lost while Slowed, and vice-versa," which essentially implies they are quite synonymous with one another.
Nobody is arguing that Stunned, as a basic terminology, should be equal to or congruent to Slowed, as a basic terminology. The issue is that it's been established (or assumedly established) by the game that they're equal in terms of mechanics, and when it's shown that it's not under a scrupulous lens, it creates a cognitive dissonance that such people can't seem to grasp, and, in the most unfavorable of circumstances, absolutely destroys action economy
Again, assumedly.
The issue then stems that Stunned is more powerful than the likes of Paralyzed, which still lets you take mental actions at the very least. Still seems absurd to me, and the factor that the placement is that much more debilitating compared to any other condition is a feelsbad kind of thing.
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reply 1: I already addressed this above. Two != single
The other one I find strange is that in the entry on Activities, it never mentions 1-action actions.
There is this:
Usually, an activity uses two or more actions
But it is not clear if by 'uses' it means activities usually use two or more basic actions as subordinate actions , or if that means that an activity usually uses up (or costs) 2 or more actions .
And when it is discussing action costs, it lists out 2-action activities and gives that symbol, 3-action activities and gives that symbol, and mentions that some activities can be done as free actions and reactions. Then finishes up by stating that actions that take longer than one round to complete are always activities. ... never mentioning that a 1-action event is ever allowed to be an activity.