The catfolk ancestry has this ability:
Land on Your Feet
When you fall, you take only half the normal damage and don't land prone.
The Trip action says:
Critical Success The target falls and lands prone and takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage.
Success The target falls and lands prone.
Critical Failure You lose your balance and fall and land prone.
Based on a strict reading, when a catfolk falls they don't go prone and all trip conditions specifically use "fall" in what happens.
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No. They are not.
And trying to claim they are is less "strict reading" and more "deliberate bad faith reading". The difference between the falling mechanics being referred to, where ending prone happens on taking damage, and trying to pick apart the wording of trip is fairly obvious.
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Don't be so harsh Hammerjack, I don't think it is NEARLY as cut and dry as you seem to suggest... the RAW here seems pretty airtight. This isn't picking anything apart at all, it's just reading the exact same words that are used in nearly an identical manner. The same words, tripping describes what happens as a fall, it describes damage you take DUE to falling... and cats, cats always land on their feet when they fall and I imagine it's a remarkably difficult thing to trip an actual cat, not that I've personally tried but it's worth considering.
This is actually a fairly prime example of mixed usage of the same words that have a mechanical meaning where no differentiation is made.
Truthfully, the more I think about this the more it actually makes sense to me.... that's a VERY "cat thing" and it plays to the theming of them, especially since it is competing for the same mechanical "cost" that Kitsune gets an at-will Change Shape Spell or a universal superior Unarmed Attack at 1d6.
Generally to answer the thread title, no, even if you interpret the words in the way they are written because... it's the same exact wording... they aren't Immune to trips, they simply ignore the consequences of a Succesful Trip attempt on them entirely, take half the 1d6 B Damage as well as ignore the Prone condition.
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An attempt to trip is distinct from falling, IMO. I see a trip as more of "a judo throw" and less "you hold your foot out when they're going by".
An attempt to trip is distinct from falling, IMO. I see a trip as more of "a judo throw" and less "you hold your foot out when they're going by".
Agreed. Or, especially with a weapon, hooking someone's ankle. Catlike reflexes or not it's hard to stay upright when your base is being literally yanked around out from under you. And also why dwarves have their bonuses, likely from being low and stocky.
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Trip could have been explained without the use of the word fall pretty easily.
'You trip your opponent and they land prone.'
Fall is a deliberate and unnecessary extra work in the sentence. I would argue the Catfolk feat does make you immune to being tripped if you choose it.
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Trip could have been explained without the use of the word fall pretty easily.
'You trip your opponent and they land prone.'
Fall is a deliberate and unnecessary extra work in the sentence. I would argue the Catfolk feat does make you immune to being tripped if you choose it.
Simplest explanation is that the person who created the Catfolk feat did not think of checking the precise wording of Trip when they wrote the feat.
I will go with that.
I expect any build abusing this to encounter a wall of TGTBT refusals and, if Paizo cares enough, a rewording that will just kill the Immune to Trip interpretation.
Doubly so since Immune to Trip is a thing and could have been used if such was the intent.
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That's exactly the thing, we don't know if the intent is to or not to read it this way, it really could go either way and with the current wording, the only real compass direction we can follow is reading the wording.
I think this is a great candidate for clarification to let us know if it is intended or not and errata to the Catfolk's ability to make clear if it is intended for them to ignore the Prone Condition on a trip.
It all cycles back to the term "fall" which carries a lot of water here, perhaps due to synonyms for what is being described being a bit unnatural to use. I'm content to personally consider this as allowed, after all, while the "Trip Meta" is HUGE for PCs to build towards there really isn't nearly as much of a pattern of this being a thing that NPCs and Monsters do, and even then, with the Remaster the various creatures that DO play into the Trip schtick are all getting heavily nerfed now that Maneuvers that are attached to Attacks are no longer ever going to just be automatic so that lessens the "power" of this interpretation greatly.
PS: This question and conversation is actually one of the most intriguing and interesting ones asked about RAW/RAI in recent memory that has actually come up that hasn't already been noticed beforehand and I think that fostering a real civil back and forth about it is very much worthwhile.
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I love it and may apply it just for the fun of making my Catfolk player heroic for a second (being tripped is rather rare).
Even if I'm also pretty sure it's not RAI.
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Yeah, this sounds like another good litmus test level of RAW reading.
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I disagree with the naysayers. Even if the interaction is unintended, the wording is too on-the-nose to deny it in good faith when playing with RAW. It's not OP, is on-theme for the ancestry, and has survived multiple errata and clarifications with no mention afaik. Unless they change the wording of Trip in the remaster to something like "struck prone" (a phrase already used in the current CR to differentiate some effects from Trip) or clarify this situation away, I will be running it as is
TBH, AFAICT, it's the very first time I read a post about this. It might very well not have appeared on the errata/clarification needed radar before.
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I've seen it come up in discord questions before a few times. "Fall prone" and "fall and land prone" are common terminology, not something special to trip. Even becoming prone due to to Unconscious condition or deliberately using an action to Drop Prone use "fall".
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I've seen it come up in discord questions before a few times. "Fall prone" and "fall and land prone" are common terminology, not something special to trip. Even becoming prone due to to Unconscious condition or deliberately using an action to Drop Prone use "fall".
So unconscious catfolk would just awkwardly hover mid-air? :P
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To me it's clear that the ability is about falling damage, not about other cases where the word "fall" might have been used colloquially.
Trying to read too much into it on a "technically..." is good for a laugh. But if someone is trying to push it seriously, that's a warning sign we're likely to have more arguments.
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Presume that it is referring to falling and fall damage (which it is) and not that picking an ancestry makes you completely immune to an entire status condition without explicitly saying so.