Harpy - Captivating Song - Poorly Balanced - Poorly Written

[defaultuserguy]

PF2E - Here is an excerpt of the ability:

Captivating Song

Tags: Auditory, Concentrate, Enchantment, Incapacitation, Mental, Primal

Text:

The harpy cries out an eerie, compelling melody. Each non-harpy creature within a 300-foot aura must attempt a Will save to avoid becoming captivated by the harpy's song. The effect lasts for 1 round, but if the harpy uses this ability again on subsequent rounds, it extends the duration by 1 round for all affected creatures. Once a creature succeeds at any save against Captivating Song, that creature is temporarily immune to Captivating Songs for 24 hours.

Success: The creature is unaffected

Failure: The creature is 'Fascinated', and it must spend each of its actions to move closer to the harpy as expediently as possible, while avoiding obvious dangers. If a captivated creature is adjacent to the harpy, it stays still and doesn't act. If attacked by the harpy, the creature is freed from captivation at the end of the harpy's turn.

Critical Failure: As failure, but if attacked by the harpy, the creature can attempt a new save at the start of its next turn, rather than being freed at the end of the harpy's turn.

The rule is poorly written because interpretation sways its power considerably and is incoherent with Paizo's recommendations on monster ability design.

Rule Option 1 - the worst option:

Fascinated and Captivation are two separate effects. Even though another creature may break fascination with an action, the "Rider effect" of captivation persists, meaning the pc/npc is still crowd controlled by the harpy. As long as that harpy does not attack, and continues to sustain its song on each new turn, the effect will continue to persist indefinitely.

This is a problem, as it spells an immediate party wipe if all 4 pcs (assuming standard group size based on paizo's own recommendation) fail their will saves, and there are 2+ harpies present. Harpy 1 will sing indefinitely, harpy 2 will attack each player until they are dead, fascination may break on any creature action, but captivation does not. No saves, no counter play, you're facing a TPK.

Outside of balance, this also makes a mess of Paizo's own "ruling by inference" design. "Captivated" is not a status, a tag, or a effect. It's not defined. This is contrary to Paizo's recommendation that when designing monsters, their abilities should be tied to game mechanics to create fair, consistent rulings, throughout the campaign.

This ruling basically creates a status out of thin air, gives no details on what being "captivated" really means, defines no saves that can be made each turn, and no interactions with that status.

Additionally, the design of the ability makes being 'fascinated' purposeless. Fascinated may end, but the PC is still controlled, which is the intention of the spell.

Even in the event Harpy 1 attacks you, your character is still captivated until either the end of the harpy's turn, or in event of a critical failure, the pc can attempt to make a save at the beginning of their turn. This means the harpy can spend one action to sustain the song on multiple targets, an action to attack, and a third to sing again in an attempt to re-captivate the target they just hit.

Granted, you'd never attack with harpy 1 when you've got the party controlled, you'd just clean up with the adjacent harpies because the way the rule is written, nothing but the song's originating harpy can end the effect by attacking.

Even if this tactic is somewhat successful, it can still be used to devastating effect if it hits just 2 PCs in a group of 4. A Harpy that has captivated 2 out of 4 people can simple fly to the song's 300 foot distance (three hundred, you read that correctly), and avoid combat/concentration breaks by being out of range of any spells/abilities the party may try to use, and continually keep those party members crowd controlled while the remaining harpies mop up the 1-2 free PCs.

Absolutely busted.

Rule Option 2 - somewhat better:

Captivated relies on fascination. If fascination breaks, captivation ends.

This tactic is still powerful because it allows you to alter initiative and setup coordinated strikes on a party of PCs you captivate. As long as you don't use hostile actions, you can use multiple harpies to fish for a captivation (via attacking, breaking fascination, and attempting to reapply it with a new song), and if landed on all players, realign the initiative order to have 1 harpy at the top, all PCs in the middle, all other harpy's at the end. Using this strategy you reposition all pcs into a single area, delay all non-singing harpies to the end of the initiative ensuring PCs do not get to act, then descend upon one PC at a time with your harpies to kill them. Harpies are not brilliant, but they're smart enough to act like a pack of lions when hunting pray. In their description within the monster rulebook they enjoy attacking prey, or watching attacked prey who are captivated.

At the top of the initiative, attempt to re-captivate the players again and repeat the process.

This ruling is more consistent with Paizo's own recommendation of tying monster abilities to tags and ruling by inference, rather than creating status effects out of thing air with no rule support behind them. However, it still sucks because there is a large amount of abuse that can occur via tactics to spike this creature's power well over its intended monster design. Yet at least with this ruling, there is at a minimum some counter play that we can achieve to make this monster more balanced.

In my opinion, it's time to revisit fascination and make it do something useful if the power of this status is not strong enough to design monsters around. This is preferable to adding on "riders" that are not well defined, and are poorly balanced.

The harpy is the epitome example of relying on save or suck mechanics, or having to counter them with 'hero points'. This design is not enjoyable and very gimmicky.

[Ascalaphus]

I think the "correct" interpretation is #1, just going by how the text is written. However, I agree with your analysis of why that's a badly balanced ability.

It was just as bad in PF1 by the way.

It should be noted though that the ability has the auditory tag. If you can somehow deafen your fellow PCs, the harpy shouldn't be able to renew the effect next round. Something I've resorted to before when running up against this scenario in PF1 was to just clap my hands over my ally's ears so he wouldn't be able to hear the song. It's of course a bit up to the GM to decide how well that works.

As a GM I'd consider widening the "if attacked" clause to not be limited to the harpy. If serious aggression by anyone can break the captivation, then this becomes a more fair ability.

But that does require careful wording. Stock bestiary harpies pretty much only have attacks, but you might want something else like a fireball to also work to get the PC's attention. However, it'd be a bit cheesy if you could use a third action with high MAP to try to Shove your teammate. That would be a bit too easy. So something kinda balanced in the middle.

[defaultuserguy]

I think my largest beef with this overall ability is Paizo disregarding their own recommendations, and creating an ability that isn't really tied to any game mechanics they've created.

In core they specifically outline the need to tie monster abilities to game mechanics so that you can have rules, and then do a 180 on their recommendation and create an ability that causes rule confusion, and is poorly balanced.

If captivated is a status, what is it? If I'm following paizo's recommendations, am I supposed to then reference fascinated?

If I don't reference fascinated, really, what was the point of putting it in here as it serves no real purpose.

[Lia Wynn]

I think you are reading too much into the Failure line. There is no Captivated status, the word captivated there is flavor or being used as a synonym for Fascinated. The only thing that matters there is the actual game status condition of Fascinated.

[Ruzza]

Captivated is not a status, it's a word - one that happens to be a synonym for fascinated. You're getting caught up in semantics.

So, in essence, "Option 2" but you're also missing out that a PC that succeeds against Captivating Song is immune to all Captivating Songs for 24 hours. The odds of a group not having someone succeed (and thus able to assist their allies in breaking free) is pretty low, I would say.

Is it strong? Sure. Poorly balanced or written? I would disagree.

[defaultuserguy]

Ruzza wrote:

Captivated is not a status, it's a word - one that happens to be a synonym for fascinated. You're getting caught up in semantics.

So, in essence, "Option 2" but you're also missing out that a PC that succeeds against Captivating Song is immune to all Captivating Songs for 24 hours. The odds of a group not having someone succeed (and thus able to assist their allies in breaking free) is pretty low, I would say.

Is it strong? Sure. Poorly balanced or written? I would disagree.

One person may succeed, but depending on who succeeds, and if the harpies use additional tactics to fragment the party, this is more than just "strong".

You only become immune on a successful save, not on a break of the ability. So when someone breaks fascination based on an attack in option 2, you can still re-attempt to captivate.

I'm fine with option 2, as it allows some counter play, however, what's being interpreted is option 1 most of the time because of the writing, and the "captivated" part of the ability is being considered an independent rider that's not reliant on 'fascinated'.

Which gets back to my original point that the ability is imbalanced and poorly written, and the original topic of the post still is relevant and the heart of the issue.

[Ferious Thune]

It could be clearer for sure. I’d read it as the first interpretation, because it doesn’t say that breaking the fascinate removes the other effects. But I could see that as being intended.

I’m no fan of harpies, because they always seem unbalanced for the levels they show up. I will say that this is a big improvement from 1E. In 2E, Captivating Song has the Incapacitation trait. So at the point where you’re seeing more than 2 in an encounter, they are probably going to be your level or lower with maybe a higher level boss. That alone improves the chances to avoid being affected considerably.

Also, 1E had Coup de Grace, and someone who failed a save against Captivating Song was essentially helpless against that Harpy. Plus, being attacked by the harpy that had you captivated didn’t break the effect or give you a new save. And making the save only made you immune to that particular harpy’s song.

Now, 1E had Protection from Evil which could give a new save or potentially make you immune, but… there was a LOT of table variation about whether or not Protection from Evil worked against harpy song due to unclear wording in Protection from Evil.

So while I can agree this needs some clarity, it’s a much better situation than 1E even with the less favorable reading.

[defaultuserguy]

Looks like based on the amount of favorites, option 2 is actually the way it's supposed to be ruled. Sticking with the rule by inference methodology and recommendations of the book lead to the best ruling available.

[Richard Lowe]

'Captivated' is not a status or effect in PF2 as some people have pointed out, you would need to find it listed as one for a separate effect, they're only affected by fascinated. So it's option 2 but not because some other effect breaks, but because there is no such status as captivated.

[defaultuserguy]

Are you guys absolutely sure? I mean is this ACTUALLY how it's supposed to be played (option 2) and option 1 has no variation?

How then do you tell the difference between a "rider" and a status?

Or do riders even exist at all, and do they need to be ruled for other than what is directly written on the ability?

[Ruzza]

defaultuserguy wrote:

Are you guys absolutely sure? I mean is this ACTUALLY how it's supposed to be played (option 2) and option 1 has no variation?

Yes.

defaultuserguy wrote:

How then do you tell the difference between a "rider" and a status?

What you're defining as a "rider" does not exist and conditions do exist.

defaultuserguy wrote:

Or do riders even exist at all, and do they need to be ruled for other than what is directly written on the ability?

The ability does exactly what the ability says. Creating new rules is something of your own creation. Feel free to do so, but your group may object to playing fast and loose with the rules.

[Ascalaphus]

I disagree. I think captivated is not a generic condition, but that doesn't mean it isn't anything at all. It's a specific effect, caused by this ability.

Note that the failure effect doesn't mention breaking the Fascinated effect at all:

Quote:

Failure: The creature is 'Fascinated', and it must spend each of its actions to move closer to the harpy as expediently as possible, while avoiding obvious dangers. If a captivated creature is adjacent to the harpy, it stays still and doesn't act. If attacked by the harpy, the creature is freed from captivation at the end of the harpy's turn.

If the harpy attacks, going by this, when does the fascination break? There's nothing in there saying the fascinated condition works different than normal. So it would break immediately on attack. But the captivation effect explicitly lasts for the rest of the turn when the harpy attacks. So there's two possibilities here:

- Fascinated and captivated are chained together. You have to infer that the harpy attacking doesn't break fascinated immediately, so fascinated doesn't work the way it normally does.

- Fascinated and captivated are separate effects, fascinated breaks normally and immediately, but the captivated doesn't break until it says it does.

So if "captivated" is some kind of condition, what really "is" it? Well it definitely meets the definition for "effect":

PC1, p. 455 wrote:

effect An effect is the result of an ability, though an ability’s exact effect is sometimes contingent on the result of a check or other roll.

Is it a "condition"? It could be, by the definition:

PC1, p. 454 wrote:

condition An ongoing effect that changes how a character can act or alters some of their statistics.

Looking at the general rules for conditions (p. 426-427) the category of "effects" is totally open-ended. For conditions, there's a list of them. It doesn't quite say if that list is final, and no other conditions could exist. But it also isn't really important because there aren't really any abilities saying "remove any condition". They always give you a specific list of conditions they can remove. So just like a Sound Body spell isn't going to fix your Frightened or Fascinated condition, it's not going to fix Captivated either.

It doesn't really matter if Captivated is a "condition".

It's clearly an effect, because it's the result of an ability. It has a duration, traits, consequences for affected creatures, and defines other ways it could be ended. "Captivated" is just a shorthand name for "affected by the effect of the Captivating Song ability" which is a really big mouthful.

I think the Fascinated ability is mostly a side issue, which might matter a little bit because it causes a Perception penalty. So if another creature tried a Feint it'd be a little easier, because you're only paying attention to the harpy.

[Ferious Thune]

Ascalaphus wrote:

<trimmed>

- Fascinated and captivated are separate effects, fascinated breaks normally and immediately, but the captivated doesn't break until it says it does.

So if "captivated" is some kind of condition, what really "is" it? Well it definitely meets the definition for "effect":

PC1, p. 455 wrote:

effect An effect is the result of an ability, though an ability’s exact effect is sometimes contingent on the result of a check or other roll.

Yes. This is more or less how I see it working, whether I like the end result of that or not. Captivating Song has an effect. Part of that effect is that the creature is Fascinated, but part of it is everything that is being described as “captivated.” No, Captivated is not a condition, but that doesn’t matter. Plenty of abilities impose both a condition and other effects. If something makes you Frightened and imposes some other penalty, removing Frightened doesn’t remove the other penalty unless the ability says that it does. Captivating Song gives specific conditions which remove the effect. Those are separate from the conditions that remove Fascinated, and it does not say that removing Fascinated removes the other effects.

Again, I don’t necessarily like that version, but to me it’s the most direct reading. Attaching Fascinated to the other effects and removing them when Fascinated is removed is adding language that isn’t there in the ability. Is it a reasonable ruling to balance the ability? Sure. And possibly was even intended. It’s just not what the ability currently says to do. Language to clarify one way or the other would be welcome.

[Gortle]

It is really badly written.

I'll be going with option 3
It is all the one effect. But the harpy special rules overrides all the normal rules for breaking fascination.
This makes it incredibly lethal. However I would allow silence to block the effect. Basically I'd be generous with any counter measures the party tried.