Evolutionist Evolution Drain Clarifications

[Janos1]

My questions are simple, and I hope that the developers read these rules questions and can answer.

The Evolutionist Drain Ability at level 5 States:

"You can leech genetic material and raw evolutionary potential from others. As a standard action, you can make a special melee attack against a significant enemy’s EAC. If you hit, the target must attempt a Fortitude save (DC = 10 + half your evolutionist level + your key ability score modifier). If the target succeeds, you gain 1 Mutation Point. If it fails, you gain 1d3 Mutation Points and the target is sickened for an equal number of rounds.

In addition, when you hit a creature with a melee adaptive strike or with a ranged adaptive strike within its first range increment, you can gain 1 MP as a reaction. After you’ve used your adaptive strike to gain a Mutation Point in this way, you can’t do so again until you rest for 10 minutes to regain Stamina Points."

Now, my questions are:
The second part specifically states Ranged or Melee Strike but the first part only states Melee Strike, so does this mean that one part of the listing or the other is a mistake/typo/forgotten? Aka, should the first part also have it useable as a Ranged Strike? Or should the second part only have it used as Melee Strike?

The reason I ask these are because it does not make much sense that you can drain 1 point with a ranged strike (inside 1st Range increment) but not being able to do the stronger version (even if you are in melee range, and Yeah, not the smartest thing, but still lol).

My other questions are:
The second part states that it can be used Once until a 10 minute rest (Aka on CD). Does this mean each type of Evolutionist drain Attack (main attack or reactionary) be used once each per rest? Or IF you use either of those it puts the whole thing (both types) on cooldown?

Anyways, hopefully an answer is forthcoming (and if it is a mistake in the printing, a Developer will pop in and clarify).

Thank you all for your time.

[Xenocrat]

It means what it says.

The special melee attack is melee only. It does no damage, has bad action economy, and also has a save even if you hit, so it's not great. Only really makes sense if you're trying to set up the sicken debuff for a spellcaster ally, willing to forgo trying to do more reliable damage to do it, and are a rare evolutionist who actually has a reason to want to build MP rather than keep them low or at zero. There's no cooldown, but I wish there was so people wouldn't waste their time trying to do this bad action multiple times in a fight.

The second also does what it says. Once per 10 minute rest they gave you a freebie MP you can get when you hit someone, regardless of whether your ranged strike is melee or adapative.

I can invent semi-plausible in-game "realism" justifications and balance reasons for why these might have been designed these different ways. It's enough for me to be sure they meant to do what they wrote.

[Janos1]

Xenocrat wrote:

It means what it says.

The special melee attack is melee only. It does no damage, has bad action economy, and also has a save even if you hit, so it's not great. Only really makes sense if you're trying to set up the sicken debuff for a spellcaster ally, willing to forgo trying to do more reliable damage to do it, and are a rare evolutionist who actually has a reason to want to build MP rather than keep them low or at zero. There's no cooldown, but I wish there was so people wouldn't waste their time trying to do this bad action multiple times in a fight.

The second also does what it says. Once per 10 minute rest they gave you a freebie MP you can get when you hit someone, regardless of whether your ranged strike is melee or adapative.

I can invent semi-plausible in-game "realism" justifications and balance reasons for why these might have been designed these different ways. It's enough for me to be sure they meant to do what they wrote.

Thank you. I was not really looking for any in game related reasoning. I was just trying to understand what the rules actually were in regard to this, as they were obviously not clear to myself (or my DM). If it were just myself that wasn't sure, I would say maybe it's because of being raised in a different country, but with him being Born and Raised in the U.S., I figured that maybe they're were others that were confused as well... thus the reason I asked.

So, having said that, I thank you for your insights. I hope you have a good day/evening/night (whichever it is for you ).