Move actions provoke whether you leave your square or not. That's why Reactive Strike has two bits about move actions in its trigger. "A creature within your reach uses a manipulate action or a move action, makes a ranged attack, or leaves a square during a move action it's using." What that sidebar is meant to explain is that if you leave your square during a move action, you provoke for each square of movement you make while you're making it. If you're disrupted, you stop movement in the square you were leaving, not back in your first square or in your intended destination square. If you don't leave your square, the move action still provokes, except the trigger is at the end of the action instead of in its middle so Stand can't be disrupted to cause you to remain prone
I disagree with this.
Let's say that a Monk with Stand Still (or whatever it's called in the Remaster now) performs a Critical Hit on a creature using the Stand action, or even a Ranger with Disrupt Prey; the feat expressly says that it disrupts the triggering action if it is a Move trait action, meaning it would absolutely prevent the Stand action from taking place retroactively, since it otherwise would go against the intended spirit of the feat, which is to disrupt any Move action that it triggers from. (If it was only meant to stop Movement, it would have probably clarified it instead.)
In this case, we actually have a rules example that would allow for "retroactive" disruptions, whereas the Reactive Strike cannot disrupt any form of Move action (at least without relying on other things, like the Prone/Unconscious condition), meaning there is no opportunity for it to retroactively disrupt completed actions by the rules (again, without outside factors causing it).
Let's say that a Monk with Stand Still (or whatever it's called in the Remaster now) performs a Critical Hit on a creature using the Stand action, or even a Ranger with Disrupt Prey; the feat expressly says that it disrupts the triggering action if it is a Move trait action, meaning it would absolutely prevent the Stand action from taking place retroactively, since it otherwise would go against the intended spirit of the feat, which is to disrupt any Move action that it triggers from. (If it was only meant to stop Movement, it would have probably clarified it instead.)
In this case, we actually have a rules example that would allow for "retroactive" disruptions, whereas the Reactive Strike cannot disrupt any form of Move action (at least without relying on other things, like the Prone/Unconscious condition), meaning there is no opportunity for it to retroactively disrupt completed actions by the rules (again, without outside factors causing it).
I was wondering if that could pose complications since the target's AC would retroactively go back down against the Stand Still Strike, but the Strike would still crit, so it doesn't really matter.
Edit: Forgot to delete a quote tag so the post looked weird.
Let's say that a Monk with Stand Still (or whatever it's called in the Remaster now) performs a Critical Hit on a creature using the Stand action, or even a Ranger with Disrupt Prey; the feat expressly says that it disrupts the triggering action if it is a Move trait action, meaning it would absolutely prevent the Stand action from taking place retroactively, since it otherwise would go against the intended spirit of the feat, which is to disrupt any Move action that it triggers from. (If it was only meant to stop Movement, it would have probably clarified it instead.How do you reconcile this with 'If you use a move action but don’t move out of a square, the trigger instead happens at the end of that action or ability'?
Trigger explicitly happened after the action had been made.
On the one hand, there isn't a rule against disrupting an action after it has occurred. On the other hand...
When an action is disrupted, you still use the actions or reactions you committed and you still expend any costs, but the action’s effects don’t occur.
It's saying they don't occur in the first place, not that they are undone if they already occured.
Let's say that a Monk with Stand Still (or whatever it's called in the Remaster now) performs a Critical Hit on a creature using the Stand action, or even a Ranger with Disrupt Prey; the feat expressly says that it disrupts the triggering action if it is a Move trait action, meaning it would absolutely prevent the Stand action from taking place retroactively, since it otherwise would go against the intended spirit of the feat, which is to disrupt any Move action that it triggers from. (If it was only meant to stop Movement, it would have probably clarified it instead.How do you reconcile this with 'If you use a move action but don’t move out of a square, the trigger instead happens at the end of that action or ability'?
Trigger explicitly happened after the action had been made.
Specific Trumps General (or perhaps the lack thereof); Stand Still et. al. does not care if the action has already completed, it still disrupts the triggering action, and there is nothing that says if it only disrupts for Movement. Incidentally, if the intent is that completed actions should not be disrupted, then the rules not saying as such is a glaring eyesore.
Let's say that a Monk with Stand Still (or whatever it's called in the Remaster now) performs a Critical Hit on a creature using the Stand action, or even a Ranger with Disrupt Prey; the feat expressly says that it disrupts the triggering action if it is a Move trait action, meaning it would absolutely prevent the Stand action from taking place retroactively, since it otherwise would go against the intended spirit of the feat, which is to disrupt any Move action that it triggers from. (If it was only meant to stop Movement, it would have probably clarified it instead.How do you reconcile this with 'If you use a move action but don’t move out of a square, the trigger instead happens at the end of that action or ability'?
Trigger explicitly happened after the action had been made.On the one hand, there isn't a rule against disrupting an action after it has occurred. On the other hand...
When an action is disrupted, you still use the actions or reactions you committed and you still expend any costs, but the action’s effects don’t occur.It's saying they don't occur in the first place, not that they are undone if they already occured.
Then it seems to me either the Disrupting Actions clause needs to be changed to not allow completed actions to be disrupted, or feats like Stand Still need to be changed for the same reason(s).
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It's just it seemed to me that the 'at the end of the action' trigger rule was created specifically to prevent perma-prone situations.
It helps with that either way. By allowing the Stand to occur first, the Stand Still Strike can't benefit from the target being prone, which would have made for easier crits.
Something I find worth emphasizing: Actions, even single actions, take time in the game world and the concept of (re-)actions occurring in the middle of other actions exists - particularly in the context of triggered free actions and reactions.
Preface:
Often I find times - apart from the usual action economy and whether something takes 1, 2, 3 or more actions - not important regarding terms of rules mechanics. That's because in many cases there is simply no need for tracking time of actions while they happen or something like partial fulfilment. Instead, one can usually treat actions as some elementary events that are chosen, have their effect and are finished, without considering whether something was happening in midst of it. Effectively as if they were digital things and had some sort of binary effect (happened / not happened.)
However, this case of simultaneous actions and how to deal with a situation when a reaction could decisively change the triggering actions effect is probably the very exception. Probably the actual challenge. (Otherwise, I misunderstood what was currently being discussed.)
This is were I found the sidebar and quote handy, that was already mentioned at the start of this thread; excerpt copied for convenience:
Simultaneous Actions
[...]
Free actions with triggers and reactions work differently. You can use these whenever the trigger occurs, even if the trigger occurs in the middle of another action.
I take above case of a lever someone is about to pull as example. That means pulling the lever is trigger for reactions and we define that the order to deal with all effects would make an important difference for the overall outcome. Let's indeed say, the lever person is clearly about to be taken down by a (non-critical) reactive strike. Is lever pulled or not pulled when they go down?
My way of handling this: Unless an explicit way to handle the details is already given (like in case of Stand up from prone vs Stand Still reaction), I'd probably invent something on the fly.
For this, I'd tend to move away from conceiving actions as digital but rather make them analog events. This would better reflect the simultaneity and something being disturbed while it is happening. If somehow acceptable for plot, that the lever can be pulled halfway, I'd go with this. In my POV that gave the original effort and trigger some credit (particularly when there was no explicit Disrupt rule invoked), while still honoring the reactive striker hitting in-midst of the action. It also minimizes weird timing effects of retroactively having to declare the trigger be unpulled or the like.
This has caveats, though. IMHO, it works the better, the more there is actually some relevant "analog" effect. For instance:
- The lever stuck halfway would be a pretty visible effect. That's even more true, if - whatever the lever did - also could have some sort of partial effect. For instance, a secret door sliding open halfways.
- Or a latch of a lock partially being moved, but just sticking at the very edge of the frame. In consequence, it was now easier to open the thing but not quite as easy as having the action completed regularly. (Maybe instead of declaring something open having its DC for another attempt be significantly reduced. Or making the action cost to get the job finally done in s.o. else's attempt reduced by one step, minimally a free action.)
- Another good case would be being taken down while being in the midst of a stride. That could easily result in the strider making only part of the distance before taken down.
It works less, the more inherently digital something is. If the trigger was about some strange magical effect or some technical stuff like radioactive emission of an elementary particle - note: approaching Schroedinger's Cat territory here - and just can't be meaningfully conceived as happening in partial, my "analog" method will probably fail.
Final emergency solutions:
- GM fiat. Either by
_ - deciding arbitrarily or
_ - rolling a dice.
- To be taken with a grain of salt: Move the game situation into a new quantum state made of happened and not happened effects simultaneously. Until player interference makes everything collapse. ;-)
TL;DR
Trying to resolve by inventing partial effects of triggering actions. Going for GM fiat otherwise.
While we're on the subject of disrupting actions, the wording for this part has had me confused for a long time:
Various abilities and conditions, such as a Reactive Strike, can disrupt an action. When an action is disrupted, you still use the actions or reactions you committed and you still expend any costs, but the action’s effects don’t occur. In the case of an activity, you usually lose all actions spent for the activity up through the end of that turn. For instance, if you began to Cast a Spell requiring 3 actions and the first action was disrupted, you lose all 3 actions that you committed to that activity.
It starts by talking about actions (single actions, activities, etc.) being disrupted, then it talks about actions (the economy unit spent to perform single actions and activities) being disrupted. Those are two very different things, right?
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In the original rules, it used to be that each action in the Cast a Spell activity had its own traits (such as Concentrate for Verbal, Manipulate for Somatic/Material, etc.), and it basically clarified that if any of those actions are unable to be completed (such as by being disrupted or otherwise being unable to act mid-action), the entire activity is similarly wasted; if you follow the example they give, the intent is pretty clear.
It's relatively outdated now, and should be clarified, since I imagine not all things are like what Cast a Spell used to be.
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It seems this clarification is only confusing matters further.
Or perhaps it's just you guys confusing things.
Well, my opinion now is that the GM decides the order of the reaction and the triggering action if the order is unclear. However, in the case of actions meant to disrupt their triggering actions (and unless the triggering action is a stationary move action), I believe it is clear that the reaction goes first, though if this thread is any evidence, it's not clear at all to some players.
Well, my opinion now is that the GM decides the order of the reaction and the triggering action if the order is unclear. However, in the case of actions meant to disrupt their triggering actions (and unless the triggering action is a stationary move action), I believe it is clear that the reaction goes first, though if this thread is any evidence, it's not clear at all to some players.
A problem with this interpretation is that stationary Move Actions still occur before a trigger because the rules say they do, and yet feats like Stand Still can definitely disrupt those actions, since them not disrupting said actions goes against the feat's intent (until it's clarified it only disrupts Movement, anyway, which wouldn't break the feat's intent whatsoever, but then feats like Disrupt Prey still run into that problem).
To me, the reaction's trigger determines when the reaction takes place, which is basically the most common denominator between all reactions, since each one can definitely take place at certain points between turns/actions, depending on what their triggers are.
Given that reactions are intended to alter the flow of a given turn/action, a general rule would be that it occurs when the trigger is met/declared by a creature, but before the (entirety of the) action's effects take place, with actions like Stand being an exception to this general rule.
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My guess is that "The GM decides based on the narrative" is meant to cover these sorts of edge cases in a way that makes sense. If a reactive strike kills an enemy, whether that enemy is able to do the thing they were trying to do before being killed is going to depend on the narrative. "The enemy pulls the lever by slumping on it" is the kind of stretch I think that the new rule is trying to imply that you *wouldn't* do as GM because the players are obviously trying to prevent the NPC from pulling the lever and killing the guy is typically effective at doing that, with crits simply being a way to do the same without it needing to be a killing blow. Without some sort of storygame "success, with complications" system it can come across as a diablo ex machina; if for whatever reason I *really* wanted that lever pulled I'd at least state up front before dice are rolled that the NPC dying won't be enough to stop them, and ideally I'd be saying this as early as possible, even at the start of combat if it's apparent that this scenario might happen because the goal of the fight is to prevent the NPC from sounding an alarm or letting in reinforcements or what have you.
For a very rules-driven game where the more common scenario is "if I kill this guy when he goes to attack an ally does that prevent them from damaging my ally" I think I'd have preferred a more concrete ruling, *generally* the GM isn't tasked with making a call in this kind of situation and instead trusts the system always has a rule, but personally I would go with the order of operations being that reactions that would incapacitate a character prevent that character from taking the action that triggered the reaction, and then make exceptions as appropriate from there with a bias towards letting the players do the things they're intending to do. If more than one player is involved, I would let the players decide what order their own actions are resolving in, because that is how it generally works in Lancer and it seems to work really well. Leaves nothing to really argue about and it adds some tactical depth and encourages teamplay and the payoff feels like a cool earned moment.
As for quantum lever pulling, I think it's better to understand an action like pulling a lever being more like "the two PC's see the NPC go for the lever and take a swing, knowing the NPC has left themselves vulnerable"; if they kill them, then the NPC being "in the middle" of their action simply means they never actually reached the lever. Same as any other "digital" action being interrupted by a crit or death, they went to go do the thing, another character saw their intentions and sprang into action, and they failed to do the thing.
Weirdness like bodies pulling levers or levers being stuck halfway, to me, feel like mitigating the foresight and positioning players put into intercepting the NPC and denying them their reward, and while I think the rule does allow for that to happen if the GM determines it could make sense in the narrative I think we ought to apply that nebulous concept of common sense and reserve those sorts of contrivances for when it's genuinely the most logical outcome or when it's clearly making the game more fun. If I'm going to have situations where unconscious bodies are pulling levers, it's probably going to be in the PC's favor.
While I don't really want to engage in this back and forth debate, I wanted to say that I feel that the rules about Move actions that do no leave a square (I assume this is what everyone is referring to when they say "stationary move action") are pretty clear.
If you use a move action but don’t move out of a square, the trigger instead happens at the end of that action or ability.
My understanding is the developers designed it this way so that you couldn't disrupt an enemy to keep them on the ground if they were standing up from Prone, as described in the following video:
Ask a Paizo Designer #17: Do Reactions Triggered by Standing Prevent the Enemy from Standing?
inb4 "videos aren't official[/sneer]"
Yes, a lone designer (even the lead designer) doesn't necessarily have perfect knowledge of what the rules are or should be. That's why they have a whole team. The videos can still help, though.
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While I don't really want to engage in this back and forth debate, I wanted to say that I feel that the rules about Move actions that do no leave a square (I assume this is what everyone is referring to when they say "stationary move action") are pretty clear.
If you use a move action but don’t move out of a square, the trigger instead happens at the end of that action or ability.My understanding is the developers designed it this way so that you couldn't disrupt an enemy to keep them on the ground if they were standing up from Prone, as described in the following video:
Ask a Paizo Designer #17: Do Reactions Triggered by Standing Prevent the Enemy from Standing?
While I don't disagree with this, the problem is that the rules don't actually express this intent appropriately; Stand Still's wording doesn't preclude this potential disruption from happening by RAW, and it's not like Stand Still is specific enough to apply strictly to movement, and not just actions with the Move trait.
btw, this sentiment is addressed in one of those videos. It's never just the face guy answering those questions by themselves. They get the questions ahead of the video and discuss it as a teaminb4 "videos aren't official[/sneer]"Yes, a lone designer (even the lead designer) doesn't necessarily have perfect knowledge of what the rules are or should be. That's why they have a whole team. The videos can still help, though.
Strange. I remember hearing in a YouTube video by TheRulesLawyer that the lead designer told him in an actual play stream that the dev team was "of one mind" about clarifying the deadlier version of the dying rules. Then the errata came out and now we have the gentler dying rules and a claim that those were the intent. I'll see if I can find the stream itself later.
Incidentally, if the intent is that completed actions should not be disrupted, then the rules not saying as such is a glaring eyesore.
That there's nothing to disrupt after an action has already been completed seems fairly self evident though, outside the time travel shenanigans a couple people in this thread want.
To be honest, I think you have this one backwards. If reactions are intended to function irrespective of chronolinearity as self-resolving time paradoxes, not specifying that anywhere in the rules is a catastrophically significant failure of communication.
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After reading through this discussion, the general rule that I will use at my table is that Reactions will generally follow the triggering action, unless they crit, in which case the reaction was close enough to simultaneous that it prevents the triggering action from being completed.
But I like the fact that the rule explicitly gives the GM room to change this on a case-by-case basis, if that makes more sense.
After reading through this discussion, the general rule that I will use at my table is that Reactions will generally follow the triggering action, unless they crit, in which case the reaction was close enough to simultaneous that it prevents the triggering action from being completed.
But I like the fact that the rule explicitly gives the GM room to change this on a case-by-case basis, if that makes more sense.
Not all reactions disrupt only on a crit. Counterspell can disrupt even on a failure if your slot's rank is high enough.
Are you saying the triggering action can actually be retroactively disrupted?The Disrupting Actions rules examples wouldn't read like doing a retcon...
The GM decides what effects a disruption causes beyond simply negating the effects that would have occurred from the disrupted action. For instance, a Leap disrupted midway wouldn’t transport you back to the start of your jump, and a disrupted item hand off might cause the item to fall to the ground instead of staying in the hand of the creature who was trying to give it away.if it wasn't doing a retcon.
I've been thinking about this reply again, but it seems to me that this section isn't supporting retroactive disruption. In fact, the statement that the Leap disrupted midway wouldn't transport you to the start of the jump seems to suggest that retroactive disruption isn't supposed to happen. So if you crit with Stand Still after someone has already Stood back up, they probably wouldn't just lie back down.
Incidentally, if the intent is that completed actions should not be disrupted, then the rules not saying as such is a glaring eyesore.That there's nothing to disrupt after an action has already been completed seems fairly self evident though, outside the time travel shenanigans a couple people in this thread want.
To be honest, I think you have this one backwards. If reactions are intended to function irrespective of chronolinearity as self-resolving time paradoxes, not specifying that anywhere in the rules is a catastrophically significant failure of communication.
It should be, but if the idea is that Stand Still is only meant to disrupt movement, and not all Move actions, it should be clarified, and it's not like it's difficult for Paizo to errata it to do so, since it can change "Move action" to "Movement." Disrupting actions also isn't exactly a complete entry, since it doesn't include other edge-cases that would reasonably disrupt actions (such as conditions preventing the creature from acting or performing certain actions), and it should, since it's ultimately left to GM FIAT at-best and at-worst is completely undefined and is subject to extreme table variations that is probably not at all shared between each table.
The problem is that this is already solved via Specific Trumps General, in that Stand Still, by RAW, disrupts a completed triggering action, and we have no rules for this not otherwise being the case (no, Dev videos don't count). Even if the idea is "completed actions can't be disrupted" is a General rule, we have a feat Specifically designed to disrupt a specific form of completed actions (i.e. the only form of completed actions that exist), and as a result, it's a little hard to deny it from functioning because now we are saying Specific can't Trump General, even if we have a video trying to say it shouldn't be disrupted because Perma-Prone isn't an intended form of play.
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and as a result, it's a little hard to deny it from functioning because now we are saying Specific can't Trump General
No, we're saying that once an action has finished, it can't be disrupted, because there's nothing to disrupt. This is both logically sound and violates no actual principle within the rules.
There's only a contradiction if we assert that retroactivity is central to how reactions work... but since that's not actually in the rules, and since discarding the idea solves literally every issue being discussed here, there's no reason to do that.
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Regarding Stand Still: the obvious intention of the feat is to stop people from moving from space to space, since that's in the name and the mechanics can clearly do that. It's not called "stay down" and there's nothing explicit in there that would allow it to get around the rule for triggering reactions with move actions.
I think that was also the point: they didn't want 1E style prone-locking to come back into the game.
The RAW (CRB) rules cause Stand Still to disrupt a move action to Stand too late to be effective. That RAW matches their intent.
They confirmed that in the video. Yes, videos aren't RAW. But a video saying "yeah, the RAW is saying exactly what we meant it to say, we don't want prone-locking" is pretty solid to me.
However, that same rule about executing the reaction after the Stand completes, caused hammer and flail critical specialization effects on attacks of opportunity to be able to knock people back down. Which was not supposed to be so easy. But they hammered the point home by drastically weakening those critical specialization effects in the remaster.
The new rogue feat "Stay Down!" is weird. It technically wouldn't work - it would trigger after someone has already finished standing up, and then time travel to disrupt it after all. But I think that this is a case of specific overriding general. The feat is crystal clear in its intent. So even though it does something that's not normally possible, it's possible in this case because it specifically and explicitly lets you do that.
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Regarding the original question; let's look at the text as a whole.
The triggers listed in the stat blocks of reactions and some
free actions limit when you can use those actions. You
can use only one action in response to a given trigger.
For example, if you had a reaction and a free action that
both had a trigger of “your turn begins,” you could use
either of them at the start of your turn—but not both.
If two triggers are similar, but not identical, the GM
determines whether you can use one action in response
to each or whether they’re effectively the same thing.
Usually, this decision will be based on what’s happening
in the narrative.
This limitation of one action per trigger is per creature;
more than one creature can use a reaction or free action
in response to a given trigger. If multiple actions would
be occurring at the same time, and it’s unclear in what
order they happen, the GM determines the order based
on the narrative.
The text is not talking about multiple actions of any kind at all; it's talking about the timing of multiple actions that are all triggered by the same trigger, for example, if you needed to know who makes a Reactive Strike first. It doesn't talk about the timing of whether you should resolve the triggered action before or after the triggering action.
For that we need to look to the sidebar right next to it:
You can use only one single action, activity, or free action
that doesn’t have a trigger at a time. You must complete
one before beginning another. For example, the Sudden
Charge activity states you must Stride twice and then
Strike, so you couldn’t use an Interact action to open
a door in the middle of the movement, nor could you
perform part of the move, make your attack, and then
finish the move.
Free actions with triggers and reactions work
differently. You can use these whenever the trigger
occurs, even if the trigger occurs in the middle of
another action.
So the order of actions without triggers should never be unclear, since you can't start a new one until you've concluded the previous one.
For triggered actions it just says that you "use" them when the trigger occurs, and that this can happen in the middle of another action.
I don't see anything there about triggering an action, putting it in a queue, and getting back to it later and then applying its effects retroactively. It says use the triggering action, even in the middle of another action. It doesn't give any qualifiers to that.
So a Reactive Strike would be used immediately when someone provokes it, like by Interact/manipulating a lever. And there's nothing about only executing part of the Reactive Strike, say just far enough to know if you disrupted the original triggering action. It just doesn't say anything about that. I would argue that the sidebar overall wants you to not split up actions more than absolutely necessary, so don't split up Reactive Strike unless you need to. (It might be interrupted too, for example by a Shield Block.)
However, I do think there's another question: what happens to an action if you met the requirements for the action when you started it, but then some reactions happen and you no longer meet the requirements after that? Can you finish the action? Is it different between a single action and an activity with subordinate actions?
For example, if you try to throw a dagger and a Reactive Strike crits, it clearly disrupts the attack. But if it doesn't crit but does take you to 0 HP, do you still make the attack (with your dying breath)? You no longer meet the requirement of being at 1+ HP and being able to act.
Similarly, you walk up to someone and are about to Strike them, but then a readied action triggers with "if the PC tries to Strike me, I take a Step back". Can you finish your Strike? You met the requirements of them being in reach when you started it. If you can't finish your Strike, do you still incur MAP?
I don't like such chicanery and I think I'd rule that it mattered whether you met the requirements at the start of the action. If you wanted to use Ready Action not to be attacked, you could/should specify as a trigger instead "when an enemy comes close enough to attack me" or something like that - that would give the aggressor a far chance to spend another action to keep moving and keep up.
However, for activities with multiple subordinate actions, I'd judge that action by action. If you used Sudden Charge and got killed with a Reactive Strike during the first Stride, your corpse wouldn't do another Stride and a Strike against someone.
So coming back to the question of the lever: you met the requirements to pull the level when you started to Interact. A Reactive Strike crit that disrupts that clearly prevents you from completing it. A mere hit that takes you to 0HP would be another case of asking when the requirements are checked. Are they rechecked after the reaction?
I feel like you can run a pretty consistent game checking requirements only at the start of each action. Consistent in both GM and player direction. It does mean that crits and hits are not the same, but impartially.
Reactive Strike crits only disrupt manipulate actions, not ranged attacks like throwing a dagger.
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Reactive Strike crits only disrupt manipulate actions, not ranged attacks like throwing a dagger.
Fair enough. Let's say casting a spell with manipulate trait then.
A crit would disrupt the spell for sure. No doubt about it.
A non-crit that takes the caster to 0hp? Does the caster with their dying gasp still finish the spell? Is it different from pulling the lever?
Well, "can't act" means the caster can't use any actions, and it doesn't make an exception for actions the caster is already using, so the spell probably shouldn't finish.
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Well, "can't act" means the caster can't use any actions, and it doesn't make an exception for actions the caster is already using, so the spell probably shouldn't finish.
That's what I mean with the question: when do you check requirements for an action?
Do you check when someone starts the action, or all the way during the action, in case a reaction happens?
Regarding Stand Still: the obvious intention of the feat is to stop people from moving from space to space, since that's in the name and the mechanics can clearly do that. It's not called "stay down" and there's nothing explicit in there that would allow it to get around the rule for triggering reactions with move actions.
I think that was also the point: they didn't want 1E style prone-locking to come back into the game.
The RAW (CRB) rules cause Stand Still to disrupt a move action to Stand too late to be effective. That RAW matches their intent.
They confirmed that in the video. Yes, videos aren't RAW. But a video saying "yeah, the RAW is saying exactly what we meant it to say, we don't want prone-locking" is pretty solid to me.
However, that same rule about executing the reaction after the Stand completes, caused hammer and flail critical specialization effects on attacks of opportunity to be able to knock people back down. Which was not supposed to be so easy. But they hammered the point home by drastically weakening those critical specialization effects in the remaster.
The new rogue feat "Stay Down!" is weird. It technically wouldn't work - it would trigger after someone has already finished standing up, and then time travel to disrupt it after all. But I think that this is a case of specific overriding general. The feat is crystal clear in its intent. So even though it does something that's not normally possible, it's possible in this case because it specifically and explicitly lets you do that.
Well, reading Stay Down, the text for it is written awkwardly in that it's attempting to disrupt an action, but it simply doesn't need to function that way; if the intent is that it is meant to waste the action and knock them down immediately after the action is done, then there's no reason to mention that they "don't stand up and remain prone" on a normal success, and to instead treat it like a Trip attempt, since that is basically exactly what it is.
As for them not wanting PF1 prone-locking, them implementing potential mechanics that allow for this isn't exactly helping spread that message out very well, between feats that expressly work that way, combined with ambiguous rules language that would allow GMs to run things that way, the idea of "We don't want PF1 prone-locking" is kind of underminded as a result.
Well, "can't act" means the caster can't use any actions, and it doesn't make an exception for actions the caster is already using, so the spell probably shouldn't finish.That's what I mean with the question: when do you check requirements for an action?
Do you check when someone starts the action, or all the way during the action, in case a reaction happens?
I think all throughout the action. It's a tabletop game, not a piece of software. It's not like we need a separate "if" statement everywhere throughout the "block of code" for resolving an action.
Sneaking is an explicit exception, where you only check to make sure you have cover or are concealed at the end of the Stride.