Can't Act is on Unconscious as well. It is the same language as Stunned. So the Can't Act is pretty clear and covers just about any type of action including free actions, though Unconscious is obviously much, much worse.
I still think Stun should at least off-guard the target given you can't act, so you shouldn't be able to be dodging around. With the flat-footed condition gone, off-guard is the least that should be applied to Stunned. Without Off Guard or some slight improvement, it is almost always better to go with Slow.
About the only other time Stunned is slightly better is it stops the use a free action Sustain ability like Effortless Concentration, since that ability only applies to players it doesn't actually stop any sustain actions you can spend regular actions on unless Stun removes the entire round of actions.
Out of curiosity, which part of the rules on the stunned condition make it "contradictory and unparseable"? The rules certainly aren't to everyone's liking, but unless there's something I'm missing, the stunned condition can be run perfectly fine as written without any need for a GM ruling, even when applied to a creature in the middle of their turn. A lot of us here are certainly hoping that there's this secret Paizo RAI that they've never shared re:stunned despite having had several chances to rewrite the rules, but again, contradiction between that entirely conjectural RAI and RAW does not equate to contradiction within the rules themselves.
I'm also having trouble reconciling this:
Stun and Slow appear essentially the same in game, with Slow actually appearing much more powerful than stun in actual play.
With the following:
So running Stunned RAW would make amped Forbidden Thought a lot more powerful and interesting. Maybe the designers do understand that stunning an enemy on their turn is far more powerful than stunning them between turns, thus why amped Forbidden Thought seems weak on paper, but when you consider the save is made when they attempt the action and the stunned 1 occurs then if they failed the amped Forbidden Thought, that would make it far more powerful as the stunned condition would ruin their round until they could regain actions on the following round.
I think the designers tend to know about things like this and build with it in mind myself. I can't be absolutely sure minus their input, but it feels that way.
It's like when I first read Divine Smite and thought, "This is so weak. Charisma good damage? That is pretty pathetic for Divine Smite." Then you see how these very weak looking good damage abilities interact with weaknesses, then you see how powerful they can be.
In the case of stun on other turn abilities, they look weak if you use them and they stun causing the target to still be able to act, no offguard, and basically act as slow. If you factor in how they wrote the rule for when you get actions back and the fact you can't act, it makes stun different and more powerful than slow justifying the incapacitate trait. That makes something like amped Forbidden Thought seem even better because it stuns on their turn and no incap trait. It's another one of those abilities that looks very weak, but when you see all the rule interactions it is actually surprisingly strong.
Looks to me like this is less a case of "these two conditions are functionally identical", and more a case of "these two conditions are functionally identical if I go out of my way to not run this one condition as written and deliberately ignore the meaningful differences that make it significantly more powerful". It seems, however, we've gone full circle with this:
Can't Act is on Unconscious as well. It is the same language as Stunned. So the Can't Act is pretty clear and covers just about any type of action including free actions, though Unconscious is obviously much, much worse.
So hopefully we're now on the same page that Stunned is different from Slowed, and has valid reason to be costed higher than the latter condition.
Out of curiosity, which part of the rules on the stunned condition make it "contradictory and unparseable"? The rules certainly aren't to everyone's liking, but unless there's something I'm missing, the stunned condition can be run perfectly fine as written without any need for a GM ruling, even when applied to a creature in the middle of their turn. A lot of us here are certainly hoping that there's this secret Paizo RAI that they've never shared re:stunned despite having had several chances to rewrite the rules, but again, contradiction between that entirely conjectural RAI and RAW does not equate to contradiction within the rules themselves.
I'm also having trouble reconciling this:
Stun and Slow appear essentially the same in game, with Slow actually appearing much more powerful than stun in actual play.With the following:
So running Stunned RAW would make amped Forbidden Thought a lot more powerful and interesting. Maybe the designers do understand that stunning an enemy on their turn is far more powerful than stunning them between turns, thus why amped Forbidden Thought seems weak on paper, but when you consider the save is made when they attempt the action and the stunned 1 occurs then if they failed the amped Forbidden Thought, that would make it far more powerful as the stunned condition would ruin their round until they could regain actions on the following round....I think the designers tend to know about things like this and build with it in mind myself. I can't be absolutely sure minus their input, but it feels that way.
It's like when I first read Divine Smite and thought, "This is so weak. Charisma good damage? That is pretty pathetic for Divine Smite." Then you see how these very weak looking good damage abilities interact with weaknesses, then you see how powerful they can be.
In the case of stun on other turn abilities, they look weak if you use them and they
It's pretty easy to see at the table, so not sure why it's hard to explain.
When you have slow 1 and stunned 1, it takes 1 action at the start of the target's next turn. Most players actively avoid reactions, so the loss of reaction is often not noticed. Landing a stun 1 or a slow 1 looks functionally the same except the Stun 1 ends a lot sooner.
The only time it is noticeably different is when the stun occurs on the opponents turn, which causes loss of actions that turn with the Can't Act clause coming into effect. That only occurs when you have a Stun effect which occurs on the opponents turn like an Amped Forbidden Thought, which is rare.
Which in my opinion doesn't sufficiently differentiate stun from slow to make stun effects with any type of cost worth using over slow effects.
A monk can have stunning fist and brawling group specialization.
They could hit and crit on a FoB the foe failing the save the save DCs.
That leaves them slowed 1 for 1 round and stunned 1.
How much more powerful is the action denial of the stun?
How is reaction denial budgeted when its the only affect an ability causes?
I ask because that is really the only difference here.
In this situation stunned is only stronger by that much.
We like stunning fist because it's a free rider for a level 2 feat on something used almost every round. Even Stunning Fist which is used more than any other stunning effect in the game if you have a monk with stunning fist in you group and it still isn't very noticeable, especially when casters are dropping slow spells and multi-target slow at higher level. It's a barely noticeable effect that doesn't stand out as very good.
Stun is one of the most underwhelming conditions in the game right now. It is only in theorycraft discussions using it as a ready action that it even becomes remotely interesting. Even in the theorycraft discussions the chances of it working are marginal.
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Out of curiosity, which part of the rules on the stunned condition make it "contradictory and unparseable"?
The stunned condition tells us very explicitly that when Stunned has a value it specifies the total number of actions you lose. Stunned 1 makes you lose 1 action, no more or less. Stunned 4 means you lose 4 actions, etc. This is unequivocal clearly stated RAW. Losing "all your actions" is a property of Stunned with a duration instead.
Stunned also states that when you are stunned you cannot act and that you pay for Stunned at the start of your turn. So if I receive Stunned 1 at the right/wrong time, I can lose three or even maybe four actions (because I can't act or reduce my Stunned value).
So it is absolutely unambiguous RAW that Stunned 1 will make me lose exactly one action, and also absolutely unambiguous RAW that Stunned 1 can make me lose an arbitrary number of actions depending on when I acquire the condition.
Being Stunned 1 but losing 3 actions clearly contradicts the RAW for how the condition works. But there's also no other way to interpret the second sentence of the condition when this specific interaction occurs.
Hence contradictory, because you cannot adhere strictly to both of those statements at the same time.
Stun is only underwhelming if you're running it wrong.
I love how you make a statement with no context or examples.
Why don't you provide all those amazing examples of stun being clearly better than slow? I really want to hear them.
Not white room, but in the game where it was a superior option than just relying on a 3rd level single target slow on a boss or a 6th level multitarget slow on a group.
I've read these threads for ages and played the game since nearly it went out and I don't see stun used much because the abilities that apply it aren't very effective.
We can all clearly see Stun on paper is very different than Slow, but in most play scenarios Stun and Slow look the same regardless of how many folks want to make pithy comments absent examples of how in play it looks different.
I've ran this game a long, long time and stun effects are very rarely used because Slow effects are so much more powerful and efficient making the resource use seem much more worthwhile than an incap stun effect.
How many non-incap stun effects are there?
amped Forbidden Thought is the most obvious off the top of my head.
Power Word Stun doesn't have incap, but it might as well have as it is single target up to an equal level target which are usually easy to kill anyway.
What other examples are there with no incap?
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When you have slow 1 and stunned 1, it takes 1 action at the start of the target's next turn. Most players actively avoid reactions, so the loss of reaction is often not noticed. Landing a stun 1 or a slow 1 looks functionally the same except the Stun 1 ends a lot sooner.
Has it never occurred to you or anyone else at your table that all this effort spent actively avoiding reactions could be spent doing other things when an enemy's stunned? Rather than spend lots of actions Stepping around an enemy with Reactive Strike, for instance, you could just Stride and use the remaining actions to do other things. This is something you can do just by stunning another enemy on your own turn, by the way, so no out-of-turn shenanigans needed either. It is this kind of action economy benefit that is highly valuable in Pathfinder, which is all the more reason why stunned is costed so highly.
I love how you make a statement with no context or examples.
Why don't you provide all those amazing examples of stun being clearly better than slow? I really want to hear them.
I'm not Guntermensch, so they can provide their own examples as well if they want, but the above should hopefully be one of myriad examples where stunned is clearly better than slowed. Really, any situation where you get to shut down a creature's reaction (or reactions, as some creatures have more than one) is good. To take an extreme example, if you stun a Hekatonkheires Titan, you'd be shutting down 99 reactions, which in the monster's case means no more Reactive Strikes at a 50-foot range against the whole party for a round.
The stunned condition tells us very explicitly that when Stunned has a value it specifies the total number of actions you lose. Stunned 1 makes you lose 1 action, no more or less. Stunned 4 means you lose 4 actions, etc. This is unequivocal clearly stated RAW. Losing "all your actions" is a property of Stunned with a duration instead.
Stunned also states that when you are stunned you cannot act and that you pay for Stunned at the start of your turn. So if I receive Stunned 1 at the right/wrong time, I can lose three or even maybe four actions (because I can't act or reduce my Stunned value).
So it is absolutely unambiguous RAW that Stunned 1 will make me lose exactly one action, and also absolutely unambiguous RAW that Stunned 1 can make me lose an arbitrary number of actions depending on when I acquire the condition.
Being Stunned 1 but losing 3 actions clearly contradicts the RAW for how the condition works. But there's also no other way to interpret the second sentence of the condition when this specific interaction occurs.
Hence contradictory, because you cannot adhere strictly to both of those statements at the same time.
Notice how this interpretation only works if you deliberately ignore the mechanism by which you lose actions through the stunned condition: as the condition clearly states, the actions lost from the numerical value are deducted when you gain actions; the actions you can't use when you can't act are themselves not lost. You can certainly ask for a different implementation that starts deducting actions automatically, but the contradiction between RAW and how you'd personally want stunned to work is, once again, not a contradiction in the rules.
That's the reason for the thread.
I personally agree that Cannot Act indeed works as advertised, but seeing as the whole point of the thread is IF and HOW that works, I'm not seeing how coming from the perspective of taking it as granted is helpful.
Why would "can't act" work any differently from how it already works on the unconscious condition? Really, what's starting to become apparent is that there's a lot of wishful thinking on this thread that, through repetition in this echo chamber, has eventually morphed into magical thinking for a select few. There is nothing to suggest that stunned doesn't prevent reactions as well as actions, and there is no evidence pointing to a different interpretation.
P.s.
The issue with your "outcome 2" is that while different, it's objectively much weaker than Slow while inherently much more expensive.
I don't particularly think so, given that getting disrupted mid-turn is something absolutely no-one wants, but if that is the case, that is all the more reason to believe that RAW is also RAI, and that being able to shut down an enemy by stunning them on their own turn is part of the stunned condition's power.
Has it never occurred to you or anyone else at your table that all this effort spent actively avoiding reactions could be spent doing other things when an enemy's stunned? Rather than spend lots of actions Stepping around an enemy with Reactive Strike, for instance, you could just Stride and use the remaining actions to do other things. This is something you can do just by stunning another enemy on your own turn, by the way, so no out-of-turn shenanigans needed either. It is this kind of action economy benefit that is highly valuable in Pathfinder, which is all the more reason why stunned is costed so highly.
Has it occurred to you that avoiding reactions isn't that difficult?
Certainly not resource intensive enough to use an unreliable, resource intensive effect with Stun. Why are you making it seem like Stun is easy to land? It isn't.
I'm not Guntermensch, so they can provide their own examples as well if they want, but the above should hopefully be one of myriad examples where stunned is clearly better than slowed. Really, any situation where you get to shut down a creature's reaction (or reactions, as some creatures have more than one) is good. To take an extreme example, if you stun a Hekatonkheires Titan, you'd be shutting down 99 reactions, which in the monster's case means no more Reactive Strikes at a 50-foot range against the whole party for a round.
I'm telling you those situations are extremely few and far between if you can even land a stun effect.
Which is why you are providing no examples of stun effects to use reliably. Whereas slow effects are very reliable.
The point you are missing that none of you seeking to build up Stun as this great and noticeable condition that we are all asking for is a simple one that none of you can provide an answers to:
How you do reliably land stun? What is the resource cost? How often does it shut down a reaction that is a threat? Even more so, how often do you land it reliably on a target's turn to further take more actions?
The incap trait greatly reduces the effectiveness of stun.
I run a group of optimizers who don't use Stun very often at all because of its unreliability.
So they measure a simple equation: How reliably can I land stun versus slow? How often will Stun be a superior option to a Slow given the resource cost and unreliability of the effect?
Stun doesn't come close to measuring up to Slow in this calculation. Which makes Stun suboptimal due to its resource cost and lack of reliability.
Sure, Stun is theoretically better, but practically similar at the table in the majority of situations and fights for a lower resource cost with a much higher reliability.
I will leave it there. If some new player reads this, I highly encourage them to use slow effects until stun is made more worthwhile to use by improving its reliability or effectiveness unless said Stun is incorporated as a rider with a low resource cost like Stunning Fist or no incap trait such as amped Forbidden Thought with an also relatively low resource cost.
Has it occurred to you that avoiding reactions isn't that difficult?
Certainly not resource intensive enough to use an unreliable, resource intensive effect with Stun. Why are you making it seem like Stun is easy to land? It isn't.
Forgive me, but your arguments here are self-evidently silly and clearly not made in good faith. Avoiding reactions is non-trivial, and if that weren't the case then reactions themselves would be trivial. The examples I've given, which you've conspicuously attempted to ignore, demonstrate that avoiding reactions, while not necessarily difficult in the sense that it requires rolling, can nonetheless be costly. Stunning a creature removes that associated cost, and therefore grants what can amount to tremendous benefits that can't be obtained with the slowed condition.
Furthermore, you seem to be designating Stun as this special case that is somehow harder to land than any other condition. Why is that? You yourself have listed effects that are either cheap (Stunning Fist) or repeatable enough to try more than once (Forbidden Thought), and have outright admitted that these actions can be impactful when run RAW, which you've also admitted to not doing. For sure, the stunned condition is rare and is costed highly, but that makes sense given how impactful it can be (i.e. denying reactions) and how difficult it is to cleanse.
I'm telling you those situations are extremely few and far between if you can even land a stun effect.
Which is why you are providing no examples of stun effects to use reliably. Whereas slow effects are very reliable.
I have just provided you with a common use case for the stunned condition, i.e. stopping a creature from using Reactive Strike, and shown how this impact is exacerbated on enemies with more or harsher reactions. Your claim that these situations are "extremely few and far between" is a lie, as is your deliberately ambiguous claim that there are "no examples of stun effects to use reliably": what does "use reliably" mean here in this context? Again, you yourself have listed examples of stuns that, at least from where I'm standing, are eminently accessible and reliable through that.
The point you are missing that none of you seeking to build up Stun as this great and noticeable condition that we are all asking for is a simple one that none of you can provide an answers to:
How you do reliably land stun? What is the resource cost? How often does it shut down a reaction that is a threat? Even more so, how often do you land it reliably on a target's turn to further take more actions?
Well, if we're just going by the examples you listed: Stunning Fist is a 2nd-level feat that, for one action, lets you stun a creature based on its Fort save if you hit it with at least one of your two FoB attacks, so in this particular case the resource cost is zero. Assuming you're playing intelligently and Delaying appropriately, stunning a creature will disable their reactions 100% of the time, and since most creatures tend to have one or more useful reactions, it means you get that much more of a benefit. What's more, you can Ready a FoB to apply this on a creature's turn.
With Forbidden Thought, the cost is 1 Focus Point, which as far as resource costs go is fairly cheap, and because it triggers on the enemy's action, stunning the target this way is almost certain to eat up more of their actions as well as their subsequent reactions. The check is a basic Will save, which as far as reliability goes is fairly standard, and the ability for the creature to avoid the stun by performing other actions is itself a major detriment, so either way you can get a lot of power out of this spell when not breaking it with ill-informed house rules.
And, finally, we also have Power Word Stun. It costs an 8th-rank spell slot, which is pretty expensive, but stuns extremely reliably, with no save, and can be Readied thanks to it being a single action. So, all in all, if you want to stun an enemy, there are quite a few ways of doing so, several of which are quite reliable, impactful, or both, and some of which are cheap and accessible at low levels.
The incap trait greatly reduces the effectiveness of stun.
You forget that not every stun has the incap trait. I don't think it's really a big issue for a 2nd-level feat that adds stunned as a rider to an already powerful action to make the stun an incap effect, given the tremendous benefits already being offered.
I run a group of optimizers who don't use Stun very often at all because of its unreliability.
I'm sure the fact that you have no real idea how the stunned condition works and accidentally houseruled the condition into oblivion had nothing to do with it.
I will leave it there. If some new player reads this, I highly encourage them to use slow effects until stun is made more worthwhile to use by improving its reliability or effectiveness unless said Stun is incorporated as a rider with a low resource cost like Stunning Fist or no incap trait such as amped Forbidden Thought with an also relatively low resource cost.
If a new player somehow had the patience to trawl through this entire tedious conversation, my advice is this: while a creature is stunned, they can't act, which means they're locked out of their reactions as well as their actions. On top of that, if a creature ever finds themselves stunned on their turn, they're locked out of their remaining actions without ticking down the number on the stunned condition. With clever use of the Delay and Ready actions, you can get a lot of mileage out of stunning a creature, and can get your allies out of tight spots too.
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I'm not totally against some of the interpretations that would rob a creature of their turn if they get stunned during it. I just wish the text said something like "you cannot act until you reduce your stunned value to 0" which would be compatible with the rest of the text.
There's also the bit in the conditions appendix that seems to contradict that interpretation too
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The can't act bit is incompatible with spending actions to reduce your stunned value.In a technical-language reading, perhaps, but this game is written to be read in casual-language and in that kind of reading there is no incompatibility because nuance is allowed.
This is basically an example of why the game is written to be read in casual language; because that is the standard of "clear enough that people will get the point" the writers are actually able to write to. Especially important because they have numerous different writers that use numerous different phrasing styles and inconsistent approaches in regards to redundancy (some authors seem incapable of writing a specific rule without including a reminder of the general rule already established elsewhere).
I don't think it's too far of a stretch to assume that can't act is in reference to those spent actionsIf there weren't a special call out in the general talking about conditions that affect actions paragraph that called out "can't act" as a specific thing, you would have a point. Because of that text's existence we can be sure it's not just a redundant reminder that a lost action can't be used to act.
And what of the bit that describes "can't act" as unlike slowed or stunned? At best it's messy wording and at worst it is in fact contradictory
I tend to read it as Thenobledrake for stunned and can't act. The order of operations is a nebulous idea at best. So the following round the stunned target can act to regain their actions and just reduce that number by the stunned number and let them go. Acting as though the order of operations for regaining actions is some hard-coded rule that can't be altered causing an infinite stun loop is being overly anal about natural language rules.
Acting as though the order of operations for regaining actions is some hard-coded rule that can't be altered causing an infinite stun loop is being overly anal about natural language rules.
Except that it actually is.
The last step of starting your turn is always the same: Regain your 3 actions and 1 reaction. If you haven't spent your reaction from your last turn, you lose it—you can't “save” actions or reactions from one turn to use during the next turn. Some abilities or conditions (such as quickened, slowed, and stunned) can change how many actions you regain and whether you regain your reaction.
It's quite clear that no matter what happens at any point during the start of your turn, the last part of starting your turn is regaining your actions and reactions, and this never changes except for conditions and abilities which specifically change those values.
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Ran into an enemy tonight that has an ability that triggers as a free action at the start of their turn and then makes them (the enemy using the ability) Stunned 1. Unfortunately, I don’t have the text of the ability or know if it’s from a base creature somewhere. It was a humanoid npc. Most likely it’s just a poorly written ability, but whoever wrote it doesn’t seem to have thought that it would immediately end the enemy’s turn.
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Acting as though the order of operations for regaining actions is some hard-coded rule that can't be altered causing an infinite stun loop is being overly anal about natural language rules.Except that it actually is.
The last step of starting your turn is always the same: Regain your 3 actions and 1 reaction. If you haven't spent your reaction from your last turn, you lose it—you can't “save” actions or reactions from one turn to use during the next turn. Some abilities or conditions (such as quickened, slowed, and stunned) can change how many actions you regain and whether you regain your reaction.It's quite clear that no matter what happens at any point during the start of your turn, the last part of starting your turn is regaining your actions and reactions, and this never changes except for conditions and abilities which specifically change those values.
In no way does that sentence indicate it is even an action to regain your actions. It's just a step. It doesn't require the player act to regain their actions as that part is not an action. It's not a free action. It's not an action. It's not a reaction. It's just an order of operations for a rule on starting your turn.
So the only thing Stunned would prevent if that last thing you do to start your turn is disrupt a free action that goes off at the start of your turn such as anything reading "Your turn starts" sustain a spell as a free action like effortless concentration.
But that's it. Regaining actions is a meta rule, not an action taken by the player of any kind. So you can't act doesn't apply.
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Ran into an enemy tonight that has an ability that triggers as a free action at the start of their turn and then makes them (the enemy using the ability) Stunned 1. Unfortunately, I don’t have the text of the ability or know if it’s from a base creature somewhere. It was a humanoid npc. Most likely it’s just a poorly written ability, but whoever wrote it doesn’t seem to have thought that it would immediately end the enemy’s turn.if it's something that triggers "at the start of your turn" that triggers just before the step "you regain your actions" (which is always the last thing you do "at the start of your turn").
so if you get stunned 1 by something like that, you immediately pay it off since the step you regain the actions is immediately AFTER you get stunned.
That makes more sense. I think the GM had it paid off the next turn, because it would have been too bad to be true that it was meant to cost them an entire round. But this would resolve the weirdness. But then I don’t know why it isn’t just one action, as that’s effectively what it would be in this case. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it’s a custom statblock, and it’s a PFS scenario, so I don’t think it is that relevant to how the rule is supposed to work.
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I've heard the argument here that stunned is necessarily meant to be better than slowed because the former explicitly overrides the later. I don't think this is true. I believe the purpose of that clause is to avoid situations where stunned and slowed combine to cause you to lose your turn forever. Priority was likely given to stunned just so it would go away sooner.
I do think stunned should at least prevent reactions, but I'm not sure it should be able to prevent more actions than it actually consumes. Perhaps the developers wanted it to stop reactions and triggered free actions, but didn't consider mid-turn stun and just said "can't act", considering it functionally equivalent.
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Notice how this interpretation only works if you[...]
Right now I'm not worried about interpreting anything, merely pointing out conflicting statements within the rules.
"You lose the actions but don't lose them" the actions is one way around the discrepancy, but you have to admit that's somewhat tortured reading at best.
Right now I'm not worried about interpreting anything, merely pointing out conflicting statements within the rules.
"You lose the actions but don't lose them" the actions is one way around the discrepancy, but you have to admit that's somewhat tortured reading at best.
Again, you are the one introducing contradiction where none exists. The number on the stunned condition indicates how many actions are deducted when you gain actions -- the actions you can't use when stunned on your turn aren't lost, you just can't use them, as shroudb points out. You may perhaps want this to work otherwise, but once again, the contradiction between how you want the rules to work and how they actually work is extrinsic to the rules themselves.
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It's still worth talking about the wording. The can't act bit is incompatible with spending actions to reduce your stunned value. I don't think it's too far of a stretch to assume that can't act is in reference to those spent actionsCould you at least read the text before you call it incompatible or contradicting?
"When you can’t act, you’re unable to take any actions at all."
"Each time you regain actions, reduce the number you regain by your stunned value, then reduce your stunned value by the number of actions you lost."
NOTHING here demands being able to act.
I have read it. You're being disingenuous. There's a lack of defining language that I would prefer being there.
I would prefer clearer language as well, but I do think Can't Act does have a clear enough meaning when compared to other conditions with that language that Stun if on a target's turn is clearly better than slow as it does in effect eat up their actions and then an additional action on their turn.
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I would prefer clearer language as well, but I do think Can't Act does have a clear enough meaning when compared to other conditions with that language that Stun if on a target's turn is clearly better than slow as it does in effect eat up their actions and then an additional action on their turn.
I'm on the fence but I see that being a likely intention. I'll probably just house rule that you loose actions and reduce your stunned value as soon as possible if ever the situation comes up. I don't like how lopsided stunned is if it applies on your turn vs on someone else's turn.
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Are you going to also let people finish using the actions they have on their turn even if something causes them to be petrified, paralyzed, or knocked unconscious, or heck even made dead, in the middle of their turn?
Because if not, I think you're being more inconsistent in the name of trying to prevent inconsistency by trying to stop stunned from being "lopsided". And even then you're still looking at a case of "lopsided" outcome when comparing getting stunned by an enemy whose turn is immediately before your own (so not being able to act stopping you from using reactions is less likely to factor into the situation) to getting stunned by an enemy whose turn is immediately after your own (so you have the maximum potential for the "can't act" clause to interfere with things you might otherwise have done).
Nah, they'd simply loose as many actions as their stunned value but applied immediately if it's still their turn. That doesn't break anything.
I would prefer clearer language as well, but I do think Can't Act does have a clear enough meaning when compared to other conditions with that language that Stun if on a target's turn is clearly better than slow as it does in effect eat up their actions and then an additional action on their turn.I'm on the fence but I see that being a likely intention. I'll probably just house rule that you loose actions and reduce your stunned value as soon as possible if ever the situation comes up. I don't like how lopsided stunned is if it applies on your turn vs on someone else's turn.
I would only worry about if they create a long duration stun. If it is a short duration like most stun effects and they manage to land it on a target's turn, let the player have their fun.
There are so many limiters on stun effects that it should be very rare with Stunning Fist probably being the most common concern.
Most stun effects have incap making it marginally useful against bosses.
Even amped Forbidden Thought is only usable once per target up to the limit of your focus points.
Unless you have a specific stun effect you think is a concern, it doesn't come up enough to be problematic.
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I would prefer clearer language as well, but I do think Can't Act does have a clear enough meaning when compared to other conditions with that language that Stun if on a target's turn is clearly better than slow as it does in effect eat up their actions and then an additional action on their turn.I'm on the fence but I see that being a likely intention. I'll probably just house rule that you loose actions and reduce your stunned value as soon as possible if ever the situation comes up. I don't like how lopsided stunned is if it applies on your turn vs on someone else's turn.I would only worry about if they create a long duration stun. If it is a short duration like most stun effects and they manage to land it on a target's turn, let the player have their fun.
There are so many limiters on stun effects that it should be very rare with Stunning Fist probably being the most common concern.
Most stun effects have incap making it marginally useful against bosses.
Even amped Forbidden Thought is only usable once per target up to the limit of your focus points.
Unless you have a specific stun effect you think is a concern, it doesn't come up enough to be problematic.
It's definitely rare but I suspect it would probably come up just as often against my players. I'd like it to be consistent.
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Nah, they'd simply loose as many actions as their stunned value but applied immediately if it's still their turn. That doesn't break anything.Are you going to also let people finish using the actions they have on their turn even if something causes them to be petrified, paralyzed, or knocked unconscious, or heck even made dead, in the middle of their turn?
Because if not, I think you're being more inconsistent in the name of trying to prevent inconsistency by trying to stop stunned from being "lopsided". And even then you're still looking at a case of "lopsided" outcome when comparing getting stunned by an enemy whose turn is immediately before your own (so not being able to act stopping you from using reactions is less likely to factor into the situation) to getting stunned by an enemy whose turn is immediately after your own (so you have the maximum potential for the "can't act" clause to interfere with things you might otherwise have done).
it makes it lopsided against stun on your turn then, because the whol epoint of them not being able to use reactions and free actions gets thrown out of the window.
now you have basically spend a lot more resources and actions to do a weaker slow.
Arguably, the loss of actions is a much bigger deal than the loss of reactions and this is a better balance than the alternative imo. But it's probably not going to come up so I'm not that worried about it
Another benefit of stunned is that creature cannot be part of a flank till it wears off.
So stunned 1 means no reactions, doesnt count towards flanking and loses an action on their next turn.
Slowed 1 for 1 round only means loses 1 action on their next turn.
Another benefit of stunned is that creature cannot be part of a flank till it wears off.
So stunned 1 means no reactions, doesnt count towards flanking and loses an action on their next turn.
Slowed 1 for 1 round only means loses 1 action on their next turn.
Do you have to act to flank? What are the rules for flanking?
Do you have to act to flank? What are the rules for flanking?Another benefit of stunned is that creature cannot be part of a flank till it wears off.
So stunned 1 means no reactions, doesnt count towards flanking and loses an action on their next turn.
Slowed 1 for 1 round only means loses 1 action on their next turn.
To flank a foe, you and your ally must be on opposite
sides of the creature. A line drawn between the center ofyour space and the center of your ally’s space must pass
through opposite sides or opposite corners of the foe’s
space. Additionally, both you and the ally have to be
able to act, you must be wielding melee weapons or be
able to make an unarmed attack, you can’t be under any
effects that prevent you from attacking, and you must
both have the enemy within reach. If you are wielding a
reach weapon, you use your reach with that weapon for
this purpose.
Do you have to act to flank? What are the rules for flanking?Another benefit of stunned is that creature cannot be part of a flank till it wears off.
So stunned 1 means no reactions, doesnt count towards flanking and loses an action on their next turn.
Slowed 1 for 1 round only means loses 1 action on their next turn.
To flank a foe, you and your ally must be on opposite
sides of the creature. A line drawn between the center of
your space and the center of your ally’s space must pass
through opposite sides or opposite corners of the foe’s
space. Additionally, both you and the ally have to be
able to act, you must be wielding melee weapons or be
able to make an unarmed attack, you can’t be under any
effects that prevent you from attacking, and you must
both have the enemy within reach. If you are wielding a
reach weapon, you use your reach with that weapon for
this purpose.
Cool. Good to know.
As far as your slow versus stun comparison, slow lasts for a minute or more, stun 1 is done the next turn and can't to my knowledge be a continuous long duration effect.
When I hit an enemy with Stunning fist and they're stunned 1, they lose their reactions, can't flank, and lose 1 action the next turn if they miss their save with the incap trait.
If I hit a target of any level with slow and they fail their save, they are slowed 1 for one minute. Meaning for one minute they lose access to all three action activities unless they have some way to counter it. If I trip them and they want to stand up, they are down to 1 action activities for 1 minute. If they critically fail the slow against the slow spell, they are slow 2 for one minute which is a death sentence to almost anything in the game. Slow 1 is usually an easy defeat, but Slow 2 is a joke defeat. I've landed a critical fail slow against a boss and the fight was over even thought the target wasn't dead.
So what seems more powerful? A stun 1 until their next turn comes around as they've already taken their last turn or a slow 1 for 1 minute? I know in actual play the Slow 1 looks a lot more powerful because it lasts longer and works against far more targets and in conjunction with other abilities like tripping or grappling to really finish something off.