So the fascinated condition seems to cause a lot of confusion and frustration for players, or at least, it has at tables I have run/played with. A lot of players seem to struggle with “when is this useful?”
My understanding of the condition and its value rests on making sure you have a list of the actions that have the concentrate tag, and then making sure that you, the person causing the fascinated condition, are positioned so that anyone else wanting to exploit that condition is not in a position where their actions and your actions can be detected or viewed together. However, the order of operations on some of the common use actions related to this are a little confusing.
Let’s say a caster approaches some guards at the gate to a wall and casts a subtle enthrall spell, talking to the guards about how important their duty standing guard right there is. If the rest of the party is sneaking over the wall a ways away from the gate, can the guards ever turn away from the caster?
The party would have to have feats or special abilities to be able to climb and stealth at the same time, and the sneak action requires making an active check, but even if the guards heard a sound like people climbing over the wall, they can’t use a seek action in anyone or any area that doesn’t include you, the caster in the area. Move doesn’t have the concentrate tag though, so can the guards just move away from you because they heard a noise? Even if they can’t do any kind of investigative actions about that noise?
I totally get that this boils down to a GM call, but it can be tricky as a GM to arbitrate this in the moment without creating an adversarial GM moment if you are not fairly permissive with the player’s intended purpose of fascinating the targets. So as a GM, I’d tend towards permissive, as long as the party is not being overtly hostile or standing where the fascinator is clearly within sight/sensory area. Have other GMs found good rules of thumb for arbitrating the fascinated condition?
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Have other GMs found good rules of thumb for arbitrating the fascinated condition?
Not really. Not any more than what you are already presenting.
The fascinated condition is primarily used outside of combat. As such, the rules for it are a bit loose and left up to GM adjudication.
In combat, even Battledancer Swashbuckler characters have difficulty getting any practical use out of the condition itself. So I would also lean towards a permissive interpretation of the condition when it is actually being used outside of combat.