Ongoing misery

[The Total Package]

I thought the resentment witches ability was to prolong a negative condition by an additional round in a single target until I read in a guide the following:

Paralyze (arcane, occult): Paralyzed for 1 round on a failed Will save. This is an incapacitation effect, but our familiar ability virtually turns this into a save or die. It may not be worth it at rank 3, but once it’s heightened to rank 7 and it can multi-target, definitely consider it.

I don't understand, I thought ongoing misery can only extend the duration of a negative condition vs a single target? It would work for heightened Slow and Heightened Paralyze would it?

[Baarogue]

Yeah I don't know what the guide's author is thinking, unless they're counting on crit failures against multiple targets. That wouldn't be unheard-of against many lower level monsters, but obviously impossible against anything high enough to trigger the Incapacitation trait

Familiar of Ongoing Misery wrote:

When you Cast or Sustain a hex, your familiar can curse a creature within 15 feet of it, prolonging the duration of any negative conditions affecting it by 1 round. This is a curse effect. This prolongs only conditions with a timed duration (such as “1 round” or “until the end of your next turn”) and doesn't prevent conditions from being removed by other means.

That doesn't mean the familiar prolongs the spell's duration, only the duration of negative conditions on one creature each time the witch casts or sustains a hex. The paralyzed condition from the paralyze spell has a base duration of 4 rounds on a crit failure, but only 1 round on a failure, so there won't be many opportunities to prolong it on anyone who just fails. If the witch lucks out and several targets crit fail they might be able to rotate prolonging the condition on several of them, but that wouldn't keep them from potentially reducing the duration with the Will save at the end of each of their turns, or ending it entirely on a crit success

So it's not a bad strategy, but not as broken as some might believe

It would work with heightened slow but again only against a single target each time the witch casts or sustains a hex. But then again, slow lasts a full minute on a failure or crit failure, which might as well be the entire fight most of the time. And it's not an incapacitation effect either. This is where I would put my money, if I played witches

[Dr. Frank Funkelstein]

As the familiar ability has the restriction of The benefit can occur only once per round and is single target i agree with you, there is no multi-target-extending.

[Captain Morgan]

Without reading the sentence in context, it is hard to tell, but....

Multi-target incapacitation is pretty good. Let's say you have 4 enemies, and that each one gets a different success condition.

The critical success is unaffected, so the rest of the party focus fires to kill that one before it can act.

The successful save loses an action, cutting into their DPR that round, especially if they have to Stride. They will be the next one targeted, and probably killed round 2.

Your failure gets 1 round that Ongoing Misery extends perpetually. They can be killed whenever.

Your critical failure enemy is out of the fight until they get enough successes or a crit success. (Oddly, Ongoing Misery wouldn't prevent a crit success from freeing the target.) They can be killed round 3.

And in general, the more creatures you target, the higher the odds at least one will fail and give you something to extend. When targeting a single foe, even a lower level one, there's always decent odds they will succeed on a save, and then you don't get Ongoing Mosery. When you target a bunch of foes, your odds of getting something to Ongoing Misery go way up, and your allies can more easily divide and conquer the other creatures not subject to ongoing misery.

I'm reminded a bit about people complaining about the Redeemer Exalt ability. When multiple creatures rolls saves against the same effect, odds are they won't all get the same degree of success, and you can capitalize on those differences. On Incapacitation you target those with higher degrees of success first. On damaging effects you target those with lower degrees of success because they will drop from focus fire quickest.