The rule Step 1: Start Your Turn states that I can take a free action with a trigger of "Your turn begins" before reducing the number of remaining rounds on one of my effects by one. So as long as the effect doesn't have so few rounds remaining that it would end on my turn, could I Delay to put off decrementing the duration just a big longer? If so, supposing I never use a free action to return to the initiative and waste the turn, does the decrement ever happen? If not, is "the rest of your turn" described in Delay referring to everything after Step 1?
So "negative effects" includes the decrementing of effect durations? Well, couldn't you still extend the duration of the effect? If there are 9 rounds left on my effect and I Delay, I would have 8 rounds left. Then 3 turns later, I use a free action to have the rest of my turn, with the number of remaining rounds still at 8. And the next time I decrement the number of rounds will not be until my turn next round, which is now 3 turns later than it would have been if I hadn't Delayed.
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So "negative effects" includes the decrementing of effect durations? Well, couldn't you still extend the duration of the effect? If there are 9 rounds left on my effect and I Delay, I would have 8 rounds left. Then 3 turns later, I use a free action to have the rest of my turn, with the number of remaining rounds still at 8. And the next time I decrement the number of rounds will not be until my turn next round, which is now 3 turns later than it would have been if I hadn't Delayed.
No. Read the activity text again, it tells you quite clearly what happens and the intent behind what is and isn't possible with the activity. I'll even bold it for you so it's easy to see.
When you Delay, any persistent damage or other negative effects that normally occur at the start or end of your turn occur immediately when you use the Delay action. Any beneficial effects that would end at any point during your turn also end. The GM might determine that other effects end when you Delay as well. Essentially, you can’t Delay to avoid negative consequences that would happen on your turn or to extend beneficial effects that would end on your turn.
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And if you do manage to finagle some technical loophole in the Delay rules () then any GM worth the title is going to cite the Ambiguous Rules rule and shut down the shenanigans anyway.
I guess this means if you Delay while sustaining a spell you would automatically lose it?
So the decrement happens immediately when I Delay, even for effects that wouldn't end on that turn? Does Delay just not delay anything that happens during Step 1?
The only thing you Delay is your ability to act. Nothing else
What about Step 3? Surely that falls under "the rest of your turn."
I'm asking about non-detrimental stuff. Obviously, I can't avoid the immediate detrimental stuff, but what about health regen at the start or end of my turn. Could I delay that by performing Delay first?
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If you are wanting to do something (even if that something is 'avoid doing something beneficial'), then the implication is that not being able to do what you want is detrimental.
Every scenario that I can think of where you have Fast Healing and don't want to use it means that having the duration tick down is the detriment.
So "duration ticking down" is a "negative effect" and therefore happens when I take the Delay action whether I want it to or not?
So would the duration decrement both when I Delay and when I return to initiative? Is it the same for persistent damage?
Remember that you cannot delay any longer than the end of the round that is currently being played.
Wait, the end of the round? No, Delay says "entire round". I would have to wait until the original initiative placement for the action loss to happen, right?
Remember that you cannot delay any longer than the end of the round that is currently being played.Wait, the end of the round? No, Delay says "entire round". I would have to wait until the original initiative placement for the action loss to happen, right?
That is correct. Both Delay and the measurement of Durations measured in rounds agree that you can delay from your current point in initiative, to the end of the current round of initiative count, and from the start of the next round to your original point in initiative on that next round.
I could see some malicious rules lawyer trying to use Life Boost and argue that as long as they delay their entire turn then they can avoid using any of the duration until after they actually take HP damage.
Granted, they won't be contributing to the fight any either...
I'm going to write down an example just to make sure I understand.
Initiative list:
Goblin
Me
Ally
Round 1:
Goblin takes his turn dealing 1d4 persistent bleed damage to me.
I cast a spell to gain 5 fire resistance for 3 rounds (no sustaining required). Spend last action to cast Shield. I end my turn, taking the bleed damage.
Ally takes turn.
Round 2:
Goblin takes turn.
I Delay. My fire resist spell has two rounds left. Shield ends. I take the bleed damage.
Adjusted Initiative list:
Goblin
(I used to be here)
Ally
Ally takes turn.
I use free action to return to initiative. I already reduced the fire resistance duration and took the bleed, so I don't do that again. I take 3 actions and end my turn.
Adjusted Initiative list:
Goblin
Ally
Me
Round 3:
Goblin takes turn.
Ally takes turn.
I take turn. My fire resistance spell has one Round left. I take bleed damage at the end of my turn.
Round 4:
Goblin takes turn.
Ally takes turn.
I take turn. My fire resistance spell runs out at the start of my turn, and I take bleed damage again at the end.
Looks right to me, I think.
You would get a flat check to remove the persistent bleed damage each round after you take the bleed damage, but for the sake of the example we can just assume that you had terrible luck and failed all of them.
Ok, now I'm going to alter the example to see if it's still correct.
Initiative list:
Goblin
Me
Ally
Round 1:
Goblin takes his turn dealing 1d4 persistent bleed damage to me.
I cast a spell to gain 5 fire resistance for 3 rounds (no sustaining required). Spend last action to cast Shield. I end my turn, taking the bleed damage and failing the check to remove it.
Ally takes turn.
Round 2:
Goblin takes turn.
I Delay. My fire resist spell has two rounds left. Shield ends. I take the bleed damage and fail to remove it.
Adjusted Initiative list:
Goblin
(I used to be here)
Ally
Ally takes turn.
I use free action to return to initiative. I already reduced the fire resistance duration and took the bleed, so I don't do that again. I take 3 actions and end my turn.
Adjusted Initiative list:
Goblin
Ally
Me
Round 3:
Goblin takes turn.
Ally takes turn.
I Delay again. My fire resistance spell has one Round left. I take bleed damage and fail to remove it.
Adjusted Initiative list:
Goblin
Ally
(Bye again)
Round 4:
Goblin takes turn.
I use a free action to return to the initiative. I take 3 actions and end my turn.
Adjusted Initiative list:
Goblin
Me
Ally
Ally takes turn.
Round 5:
Goblin takes turn.
I take turn. My fire resistance spell runs out at the start of my turn, and I take bleed damage again at the end, failing to remove it.
Ally takes turn.
The point of the example being that you can still slowly and incrementally extend the duration of your effects and stretch out the points in time where you take persistent damage, yes?
The system isn't perfect, but it is good enough.
I would also note that this trick also means that you are being rather ineffective in the actual combat part of combat. In 5 rounds you have only taken 4 rounds worth of actions.
I would also note that this trick also means that you are being rather ineffective in the actual combat part of combat. In 5 rounds you have only taken 4 rounds worth of actions.
Yep. Suppose I was repeatedly reduced to 0 hit points in this mock battle. That would bump my initiative further and potentially keep the spell going even longer, right?
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Yep. Suppose I was repeatedly reduced to 0 hit points in this mock battle. That would bump my initiative further and potentially keep the spell going even longer, right?
Your corpse may indeed still have fire resistance for an extra round or so, yes. Wounded condition stings a bit.
I would also note that this trick also means that you are being rather ineffective in the actual combat part of combat. In 5 rounds you have only taken 4 rounds worth of actions.Yep. Suppose I was repeatedly reduced to 0 hit points in this mock battle. That would bump my initiative further and potentially keep the spell going even longer, right?
If you cast the spell at Round 1 at the initiative you started with, and it only lasts for 3 rounds, the spell would end at that given initiative in Round 4, no matter how much you try to delay it (or how often your initiative is moved around from other factors).
Reducing your HP to 0 and consequently adjusting your initiative goes against the intention that the spell has a finite duration and isn't meant to last more (or less) than that. It doesn't matter if you took one round's worth of actions less for the duration, 3 rounds is 3 rounds is 3 rounds. It doesn't change to 4 rounds because you chose to delay, it doesn't change to 4 rounds because you got dropped by the enemy.
Is it more bookkeeping and goes against the idea of the game trying to keep things simple(r)? Sure. But it's also more fair and accurate to how it's supposed to be ran, and it also means that adjusting your initiative, voluntarily or involuntarily, has consequences. You might effectively "lose" rounds of certain benefits (such as Haste) if you choose to delay, or if you get knocked unconscious by the enemy, for example. And the rules are clear that an attempt to cheese the duration of a given effect isn't meant to be possible by Delay, and by proxy, anything that would otherwise adjust your Initiative.
If you cast the spell at Round 1 at the initiative you started with, and it only lasts for 3 rounds, the spell would end at that given initiative in Round 4, no matter how much you try to delay it (or how often your initiative is moved around from other factors).
That is probably what I would run things with if someone found something that was actually cheese and tried it.
But for the most part, I think it is fine to just run with what the rules actually say on the matter. An extra round or two on a ten minute long spell (which is what Resist Energy has) isn't going to make a difference. Well, other than reducing the character's overall combat effectiveness by repeatedly delaying their actions and ending up taking fewer turns during combat as a result - effectively giving all of their enemies an improved Haste effect for free.
Maybe if it was a shorter duration spell like Life Boost (lasts 4 rounds). But even then, the combat effectiveness reduction would probably make this tactic a non-starter even if it does mean that you could delay taking healing when you don't need it. I don't think anyone is going to try that in an actual combat and think that they are being more effective as a result.
It's not a matter of if the activity itself is more effective, it's a matter of making a certain thing more effective than what it is.
Not a whole lot of things are going to be more powerful than an entire round's worth of actions. Some things are, though (such as the Indestructibility spell lasting for effectively another round), but that's despite the point that something is being used for more than what it is, and the rule is meant to disallow that kind of thing, no matter if it's better or worse than an entire round's worth of actions. The rule wasn't written with that thought process in mind.
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As a complete side note, Indestructibility would end as soon as you Delay. There is no loophole there because of the short duration of the spell. It falls into the clause: "Any beneficial effects that would end at any point during your turn also end."
But my point is that the Delay rule is meant to be simple and easy to track while at the same time having clauses and rules that prevent abuse. It doesn't list out every last possibility, and that is fine. There is the general guidance that it isn't meant to be used as a way to extend the duration of things.
Unless there is some munchkin trying to abuse the system, the easy to track rules should be fine. No need to overcomplicate things and track effects at their own initiative count.
I should point out that the Delay action only makes it clear that the intent is to stop you from extending benefits that would end on your turn. It never states that it doesn't want you extending benefits at all.
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Welp, then I guess I better go with Darksol's ruling and have all of your effects independently tracked on their initiative count when they were cast then.
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Yeah you're making this way harder than it needs to be.
The point if Delay is that you want to do something after someone else has done something. For example, you're a rogue and you want to wait until the fighter has set up a flank for you.
It was never meant to be used to do dubious manipulations of durations, and it's pretty clear about that.
It was never meant to be used to do dubious manipulations of durations, and it's pretty clear about that.
It really isn't clear about that. The final sentence is used to clarify what shenanigans you cannot pull with Delay. And this sentence states - for the second time in this action's description - that you cannot extend benefits that would end on your turn. If they didn't want you to do some shenanigans with duration, they could have just cut those last six words out. And as breithauptclan pointed out, due to the total sacrifice of actions across multiple rounds, these shenanigans can hardly be called a viable tactic, let alone a broken one.
If they didn't want you to do some shenanigans with duration, they could have just cut those last six words out. And as breithauptclan pointed out, due to the total sacrifice of actions across multiple rounds, these shenanigans can hardly be called a viable tactic, let alone a broken one.
I'm not sure if you are arguing that your proposed ruling is too good to be true or too bad to be true. But in either case it runs afoul of the Ambiguous Rules rule.
I should point out that the Delay action only makes it clear that the intent is to stop you from extending benefits that would end on your turn. It never states that it doesn't want you extending benefits at all.
Sure, but that falls under "Too Good to Be True," because effects lasting for longer than what they say they do is not intended. The whole point of the clause is that you aren't meant to extend things beyond what they should be, and simply used the "end on your turn" phrase to clearly convey the intent of not extending things beyond what they should be. It's also not consistent with how other effects are usually tracked anyway.
When I cast a spell that lasts for 3 rounds at Initiative 27 in the 1st round of combat, by Initiative 27 of the 4th round of combat, that is when this effect ends, because that is when 3 rounds have passed from the time it was cast.
It doesn't matter if I Delay at any point during that time, the duration is still 3 rounds, meaning if I Delay at Initiative 27 of the 2nd round, and don't come in until Initiative 30 of the 3rd round (because I wanted to be in front of the enemy in the next turn, or I have been dropped by said enemy), and if I maintain that Initiative in the subsequent rounds, by Initiative 27 of the 4th round (AKA 3 rounds from when I cast, and is after the enemy's turn), the effect's duration has run its course, and it consequently ends.
Delaying at Round 2 or 3 doesn't mean the effect magically lasts for 4 rounds, or lasts indefinitely for as long as I Delay, meaning if I am perpetually in combat with something, as long as I have a spell effect active, and I Delay, I will forever have that spell effect, or have the spell effect for longer than the 3 rounds it's listed for.
Clearly not intended, meaning it falls under Too Good to Be True, which means it's wrong. No sane GM would permit this to happen.
Now, OP, bear with me for a little thought experiment.
Suppose, on some given night you were to cast a spell with a duration of 1 min at 2:59:30; it should expire at 3:00:30, should it not?
But wait, it‘s the last night of Daylight Saving: At 3:00:00 the clock is set back to 2:00:00. Congratulations, your spell is now going to last for more than another hour.
But it doesn't specify this turn...
The whole action has been describing its effect on this turn. Why would "your turn" suddenly mean "any of your turns" and cause minute-long spells to end? That seems extreme compared to just letting the spell decrements retain their place in the initiative order.
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But it doesn't specify this turn...The whole action has been describing its effect on this turn. Why would "your turn" suddenly mean "any of your turns" and cause minute-long spells to end? That seems extreme compared to just letting the spell decrements retain their place in the initiative order.
Live by the pedantry, die by the pedantry.
I noticed something interesting in the duration rules for both Chapter 7 and Chapter 9.
If a spell’s duration is given in rounds, the number of rounds remaining decreases by 1 at the start of each of the spellcaster’s turns, ending when the duration reaches 0.
...
If a spell’s caster dies or is incapacitated during the spell’s duration, the spell remains in effect till its duration ends. You might need to keep track of the caster’s initiative after they stopped being able to act to monitor spell durations.
For an effect that lasts a number of rounds, the remaining duration decreases by 1 at the start of each turn of the creature that created the effect.
The first interesting thing I noticed is that the tracking of durations based on the turns of the creature who created the effect is specifically for effects that list a number of rounds as the duration. If it says 1 minute, I guess it just lasts 1 minute, initiative bumping be damned.
The second interesting thing is that even when a spellcaster is killed outright, you may still need to keep the caster's initiative in the list just to track the duration of any spells they had cast when they were alive. Such as spellcaster has likely been bumped down the initiative list due to being reduced to 0 hit points, and yet it is still the caster's initiative that is explicitly used to track the spell duration, not the initiative they had when they cast the spell.
If you cast the spell at Round 1 at the initiative you started with, and it only lasts for 3 rounds, the spell would end at that given initiative in Round 4, no matter how much you try to delay it (or how often your initiative is moved around from other factors).
Source? Seems to me it would end at the start of the caster's (modified) turn.
If you cast the spell at Round 1 at the initiative you started with, and it only lasts for 3 rounds, the spell would end at that given initiative in Round 4, no matter how much you try to delay it (or how often your initiative is moved around from other factors).Source? Seems to me it would end at the start of the caster's (modified) turn.
The above quotation says it all, and the last sentence of the first reference is the key component here: If you simply use the spellcaster's turn to denote spell durations, then having that last sentence is pointless if the idea is that the spell will always tick down at the start of the spellcaster's turn. Why make an exception for something that shouldn't ever happen? Which means that using the caster's turn for determining spell duration is more of a short-hand rule and less of an accuracy rule. Of course, if accuracy didn't matter, then there's no reason for that additional clause.
Just as well, it's strange that it only refers to spell durations in rounds, and not spell durations in general. I mean, odds are, you won't need to keep track of anything that's 10 minutes or longer in combat, most combats don't last more than 1 minute, let alone 2. But even 1 minute spells are only 10 rounds of combat, so it would stand to reason that spells with that duration would take the common denominator in this case (rounds), because it otherwise creates this weird dichotomy where spells lasting 1 minute or longer are exempt from this rule, but spells that last less than 1 minute aren't, even though in both cases, you can boil it down to a value of rounds and then consequently track its duration that way. And it's not like it's a pointless thing to track because the odds of its duration being a factor in anything is significantly higher if you can actually quantify its duration in a reasonable number of rounds (such as 10), compared to if it was significantly higher, such as, say, 50 (for 5 minute duration spells).
I'm just thinking that tracking spell duration on separate initiatives from their casters goes against pf2e's new design paradigm of making everything easier to manage.