Storm Giant Rock Throwing

[T'Challa]

Storm Giant has an obscenely high attack modifier for rock throwing. It's +10 over their melee attack and 10 higher than other creatures of their level. It's on par with level 20 creatures to hit modifier, even though they are level 13 creatures. I'm sure it's a typo, but in the mean time they will likely hit/crit above level foes on their 3rd attack, and almost always critically hit on the first or second attack when throwing rocks.

While mentioned several years ago in the Typos/Mistakes of 2nd edition thread, there was never an errata for the Bestiary 1 which would address this first printing mistake. I hope this has been addressed in the Monster Core book, but in the mean time can this be added to FAQ so Archives of Nethys can be updated?

[Themetricsystem]

Holy moly, yeah, that looks like a typo for sure, I'm not looking at hard math right now but with those numbers, you'd be looking at basically a guaranteed critical hit on most any PC with a roll of 9+ and essentially impossible to miss on anything but a 1.

[Finoan]

Makes me wonder if the ability was designed at some point to call for a Reflex save instead of an attack roll - because that would be the Save DC. An Extreme Save DC for a level 13 creature...

[Finoan]

I would also add Clay Golem's Cursed Wounds and, to a lesser extent Vargouille's Tenacious Wounds, that both overwrite the normal calculation for counteract level and replace it with the creature's full level.

[thenobledrake]

Cursed Wounds could be an intentional outlier as a case of legacy, since that creature has has ridiculously hard to heal wounds going all the way back to AD&D - and Paizo actually made this version the easiest to recover from because you can just drink up a bunch of potions and be done with it (where older versions had a caster level check for every healing applied, or nonsense like only being able to be healed by a 17th-level or higher character using a 6th-level spell).

Things being odd doesn't guarantee they're errors.

[Finoan]

True.

But it feels incredibly likely that it is an error since the idea of healing up to full by using healing potions relies on a loophole of rules wording and isn't very obvious to players who don't troll through advice forums.

And without that loophole tactic, it is literally impossible to heal at the levels that you are likely to be fighting a clay golem. You are going to have rank 5 or maybe 6 spells and even a crit success on the counteract check roll won't do the job.

[thenobledrake]

It's not a loophole it's the natural reading of the text present, and yeah "impossible to heal at the levels that you are likely to be fighting a clay golem" that is the legacy.

The loophole is what someone else said about it elsewhere today; it only says you have to succeed at a counter act check, not that you need to successfully counteract the curse, so passing the DC lets a heal go through even though it didn't get rid of the curse entirely.

[Finoan]

I'm still not sure that I would call it the 'natural reading'. It is a valid detail oriented reading of the rule.

But a more naive reading would be that mundane healing doesn't work at all and magical healing needs the counteract check. So nothing works without facing one or the other.

Potions work because they are magical but are not a spell. Those, and as far as I know, those alone - fall into the narrow gap that isn't covered by one or the other. It is something that could be easily overlooked by the players and GM. I'm not sure why that would be written as the rules that are given to the GM unless the creature writer was deliberately trying to trick the entire player base for some reason.

And tricking players into doing things that are sub-optimal in order to avoid having them trivialize the game challenges is something that is not meant to be carried into PF2.

So if it was intended that Healing Potions (and Healing Potions specifically) can bypass Cursed Wounds, it should call it out in the ability. I would accept that as alternative errata if the 'counteract level equal to its creature level' is not an error.

[thenobledrake]

When trying to say that it's not a natural reading to see a deliberate difference where the author says "magic" in one case and "spell" is bordering on deliberate disingenuity.

You basically have to be either arguing that spells are the only kind of magic and thus these two words are synonyms, or that the author didn't know something important (whether that specific detail is that healing potions don't cast spells, or something else is immaterial).

It basically comes off as being the kind of argument someone refutes not because they think it is actually lacking merits or accuracy, but because it being true means they made a mistake and they'd rather insist anyone that didn't make the same mistake was doing something "weird" than accept their own fallibility.

And it's not just potions; it's any magical item that produces a healing effect but doesn't cast a spell, like healer's gloves, and other non-spell magical sources like the healing card from the Hero Point card deck. And if there aren't already other options, there could be in the future because not all magical healing is spells and more sources could be made.

There's no trick here. Just plain language that people have managed to miss because they are distracted by the "holy crap that's high" number and then the confident believe that it is an error (even though it might not be, as illustrated by the legacy of the ability in question).

[Finoan]

When I am wrong, I will admit I am wrong. No need to be insulting.

thenobledrake wrote:

There's no trick here. Just plain language that people have managed to miss because they are distracted by the "holy crap that's high" number and then the confident believe that it is an error (even though it might not be, as illustrated by the legacy of the ability in question).

Which is why I mentioned that if this is not a mistake caused by an author of Bestiary 1 (back when the PF2 rules were still brand new) forgetting that counteract level is normally half creature level rounded up, then adding "magical healing that is not a spell is not affected by this curse" would be a greatly appreciated bit of errata.

And yes, with new options being constantly released, additional options have become available. With the release of Rage of Elements, a 1st level Kineticist can easily bypass what is supposed to be the super-difficult curse.

Impulses are not spells. But they most definitely are magical. And they do behave like spells in certain regards.

Quote:

Abilities that restrict you from casting spells (such as being polymorphed into a battle form) or protect against spells (such as a spell that protects against other spells or a creature's bonus to saves against spells) also apply to impulses.

But the curse neither prevents casting spells, nor does it protect the target from the spell.

So Fresh Produce will remove the Clay Golem curse in a few minutes with no resources spent.

-----

Also, in all of this talk about the Clay Golem, have we forgotten about the Vargouille? Is there some sort of legacy creature reason for its counteract level to be the same 2x normal?

[James Jacobs]

Can't speak to the storm giant directly (althoguh I'm 99.999999% sure its throw rocks Strike is an unfortunate typo and should be +27, NOT +37, since the 2 and the 3 are right next to each other on the keyboard, and since +27 is 1 point lower than its +1 greatsword which would without the item bonus be +27 as well), but as I was the one who developed the vargouille for Crown of the Kobold King I can confirm that its Tenacious Wounds counteract level is correct—this is intended to be a particularly frightening effect, and is part of why we tagged this as a rare creature instead of uncommon (as is the norm for new monsters introduced in an adventure).

That said, if you and your table think this is more of a frustrating than frightening effect, then the design philosophy of the vargouille fails for your group and changing it to a level 1 counteract effect (and potentially lowering the save and counteract DCs to 15).

Going forward, of course, no one will have to worry about encountering vargouilles in our adventures because they're a full-on D&D OGL creature and thus can't be part of a remastered product.

[James Jacobs]

As an aside, if you see a value that looks way off in a published book, such as the storm giant's throw rocks Strike modifier, one great way to determine if it's a typo or not is to check out the monster design guidelines in the GM Core or the Gamemastery Guide.

For a level 13 creature like a storm giant, the high Strike modifier is +27, and the extreme modifier is +29. A a giant you'd expect it to be real good at Striking, so its greatsword nestling right between these numbers makes sense, and its thrown rocks being +27 (slightly less great) also makes sense. +37 is more appropraite for something that's 19th or 20th level according to that table.

It's obviously not as "official" as seeing the thing changed in an errata, but we build our creatures according to the guidelines we published in GM Core/Gamemastery Guide, so if a value is 10 points off, you can pretty much be assured that the value is a typo.

[Finoan]

Good to know.

Vargouille is more of a curiosity than an actual gameplay problem since the difference between counteract level 2 and counteract level 1 is pretty small.

The difference between counteract level 5 and counteract level 10 is much more campaign breaking. And on a creature that is only Uncommon.

I also hear that the Golems are being reworked or removed entirely, so this may also not be a problem going forward. But I am also in a game playing Age of Ashes currently, so...

[thenobledrake]

Finoan wrote:

Which is why I mentioned that if this is not a mistake caused by an author of Bestiary 1 (back when the PF2 rules were still brand new) forgetting that counteract level is normally half creature level rounded up, then adding "magical healing that is not a spell is not affected by this curse" would be a greatly appreciated bit of errata.

Now you're arguing that, as a result of you having not read what was already said as meaning what it naturally means, the text should be made redundant to clarify that not all "magic" is "spells."

Finoan wrote:

...can easily bypass what is supposed to be the super-difficult curse.

It's not supposed to be a super-difficult curse. It can be overcome by drinking healing potions, that's not super difficult.

You're making yet another argument that only has weight if we presume your initial claim is true. The only difference is that instead of arguing that magic healing that isn't spells is a "loophole" you're arguing that the intention is the curse be difficult to overcome in a general sense rather than difficult to overcome via spells.

As to the now-settled topic of vargouilles; I hadn't touched on that because I don't know the legacy of said creature, and I don't talk about stuff I know I don't know jack about. Before a quick google search telling me that the creature goes back to AD&D's Monster Manual II, I'd have told you it got made up for the D&D v3.5 Monster Manual because that was the first time I remember seeing it. Whereas the clay golem was right there in the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual, the first monster book I ever owned so I'm actually familiar with it.

[Finoan]

thenobledrake wrote:

It's not supposed to be a super-difficult curse. It can be overcome by drinking healing potions, that's not super difficult.

I'm literally paraphrasing your initial statement.

thenobledrake wrote:

Cursed Wounds could be an intentional outlier as a case of legacy, since that creature has has ridiculously hard to heal wounds going all the way back to AD&D

Sorry, I guess I should have said 'ridiculously hard' instead of 'super-difficult'. Because somehow that has a different meaning.

Ridiculously hard to heal via spells and impossible to heal with natural rest or non-magical medical care. So unless you happen to realize that Healing Potions aren't affected...

Why not just call out Healing Potions as the primary way to remove the curse? Are you actually opposed to adding that statement to the creature's stat block for some reason?

[thenobledrake]

You're missing the "legacy" and past tense of the statement you are paraphrasing, thus you actually changed the meaning.

I'll reiterate for clarity; The high counteract level could be a nod to the legacy of the ability being really hard to recover from, but the modern version is easy to get past because potions don't interact with it.

As for why not call out potions; because then people would be confused and thinking only potions work when it is actually all magical healing that isn't spells.

And no, I'm not opposed to adding a statement to the creature's stat block - I'm opposed to wasting time adding redundant text that doesn't affect the meaning in any way for the reason that some people can't say "It's true, the text already says magical healing works and that only spells have to interact with the counteract DC, and since not all magical healing is spells that means not all healing interacts with the counteract DC." and instead want to argue that the words on the page are in some way unclear (or worse, are just arguing that the counteract level can not possibly be correct - not because that's actually true, but because they don't like it being high, and can't separate "I don't like it" from "is wrong")

Then, meanwhile, I just had a conversation with someone the other day in which they were misreading a rule because an author at Paizo tried to use a bit of redundant text for clarity as you're suggesting they should do here. They were taking the sentence at the opposite of its meaning because their reasoning was that if they didn't mean it to be read that way, they would have just left off the sentence entirely.

[Finoan]

thenobledrake wrote:

...not all magical healing is spells that means not all healing interacts with the counteract DC." and instead want to argue that the words on the page are in some way unclear (or worse, are just arguing that the counteract level can not possibly be correct - not because that's actually true, but because they don't like it being high, and can't separate "I don't like it" from "is wrong")

Yes, I don't like the current wording because it is unclear. To me personally. That is why I am the one asking for this clarification.

I tend to think of things categorically. I see healing as being one of two types - either non-magical healing such as Treat Wounds, Elixir of Life, or resting for a time - or magical healing such as the Heal spell, Healing Potions, Goodberry, Lay on Hands, and Fresh Produce.

So when I read the Cursed Wounds, I am seeing that as saying that non-magical healing doesn't work at all, and magical healing interacts with the counteract check.

So one of three things could be true:

1) The counteract level is misprinted because a writer thought for a moment that counteract level for a creature ability is equal to the creature level and put that in as reminder text.

2) The counteract level is correct, and this ability is supposed to be nearly impossible to remove, but the writers left a loophole that magic that isn't spells will be completely ignored. Which also legacy - Potions such as a Potion of Cure Light Wounds were very literally spells in liquid form and mechanically behaved as though the spell was cast on the drinker.

3) The counteract level is correct, and the exception granted to Healing Potions and other forms of magical non-spell healing is also correct and the ability is worded the way that it is just to confuse me specifically.

And actually not just me specifically. This question has been around for a long time. See here, here, here, here, and here.

In fact, it looks like back in 2019 you thought it was confusing enough to need errata too...

[thenobledrake]

You are creating your own confusion by deciding, without the book having given you any particular reason for doing so, to believe that is the split for magical healing.

You are then insisting that Paizo writing that doesn't present that split, since the game does not present "magic" and "spell" as interchangable things and rather presents it as a case of squares (spells) and rectangles (magic) because all spells are magic but not all magic is spells, should clarify for you when it doesn't apply.

That's just like all the other times this conversation has come up - the reader is doing something Paizo never said to do, then being confused, and rather than identifying their own hand in their confusion insisting it's actually the wording.

Someone having been confused does not actually mean that confusion was warranted. Especially not when someone (such as me) can point at how that confusion can be cleared up... even though that gets to the "you can lead a horse to water, but can't make it drink" scenario we are currently in where you, like many others, refuse the idea that the persistence of confusion is the result of refusing to acknowledge reading the ability incorrectly initially.

And yeah, look at that... a quick reaction in 2019 that with deeper thought and consideration I realized was - or at least was potentially - incorrect. Almost like that's exactly what I'm encouraging in others now, after having thought about it deeper that "that's weird, I don't like it, I bet it's an accident".

But even in that 2019 post I say what? That A) potions work to get past the curse, and B) It's possible the intention was to have to use magical healing other than spells be the go-to method because using spells is incredibly difficult.