The remaster turned the belt of giant strength into the bracers of strength. The old item allowed you to catch a rock as a reaction. The new one gives you the Bear Hug action, which has you Grapple and deal a minor amount of bludgeoning damage if you succeed.
More importantly, a critical success with this Grapple causes the target to suffocate until freed. Not "has to hold its breath or start suffocating." Just unconscious and making saving throws to stay alive (though the DC starts at a measly 20).
That's effectively a -6 to AC, and since the target can't act, they can't Escape. The only way the target can get out of this is if an ally of the target foils the Grapple or the user fails to renew the Grapple.
And some creatures CANNOT fail to renew the Grapple. Suppose Grendel himself got his hands on some bracers of strength. He has a fist attack with Grab. So if he uses his hand to Bear Hug someone, he can use Grab to extend the restrained condition forever. Against a single creature, it's game over.
I'm not saying it's broken or anything. At these levels, a critical success being an instant kill isn't out of the question. I just thought it was interesting.
Bear Hug is a specific action, and cannot be done with abilities or effects that work with Grappling or Grabbing. You must perform that specific action first, and must critically succeed in order to actually cause the suffocation. Given that monsters have a ridiculous amount of Fortitude Saves, and that even a specialist will have maybe a 25% chance to succeed against an appropriate foe, the odds of this being an encounter-ender is slim to none. Even if you did, the odds of maintaining it for more than a single round is practically impossible.
Applying Apex items to Unique monsters is the equivalent of Rovagug breaking free from Golarion and destroying the planet; the odds of it happening in play are so unlikely that it's basically homebrew territory, meaning the complaints of it happening in actual play from monsters is absurd and self-inflicted. Show me the tables where Grendel is popping out from bushes and performing Sleeper Holds to drag innocent victims away to their deaths with this item, because I haven't seen or heard any of that anywhere. I won't wait up for it, though.
As for you not saying it's broken, going into a spiel about how it causes -6 AC and denies them the ability to escape and monsters auto-succeed on grabs kind of undermines that statement. Granted, it still isn't broken, since it requires rolling a really high/Nat 20 Athletics check to do, has a 99.9% chance to not be used by a creature with Grab abilities, and is only noteworthy against enemies that can't really be beaten any other way, as well as the factor that monsters at those levels usually can't be easily killed by mundane means, but those are completely different and far more valid reasons why it isn't broken.
The renewal effect of Grab only cares that the target is already grabbed or restrained with an appendage that has Grab, so Bear Hug can still benefit from a renewing Grab on subsequent turns.
I only used Grendel as an example. Any monster with a free hand and the ability to Grab with that hand can employ the strategy described.
As for the low odds of success, I know. But if you can pull off the suffocation, that's a lot of nasty attacks coming the target's way, even if it only lasts one round.
And again, I know it's not broken. I wasn't complaining at all. The Basics section in Adjudicating Rules in GM Core states: "If you're making up an effect, creatures should be incapacitated or killed on only a critical success (or for a saving throw, on a critical failure)." So incapacitation or death is treated as a reasonable outcome of a crucial success or a critically failed save.
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I keep reading this title as though it is some cursed bracers item that is going to suffocate your strength.
I cannot read the ability/effect of that item in any way that leads to a different conclusion.
If the user crit succeeds that Bear Hug, then the target is instantly unconscious and suffocating.
After that, a single crit fail on the target's part is instant death.
While a suffocating creature does regain consciousness if the grab ends while they have HP, at minimum, that's still adding Prone, dropping all their held items, ending all sustain spells & stances, etc, to the effect of a crit grapple.
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And yes, this is an absurd ability that I hope is never run RaW and is instead homebrewed, likely into:
"...cannot breathe in, nor use any actions that involve drawing additional breath. Instead of having 5 + Con turns of air as when holding ones breath, a victim of the effect starts with only Con turns of air."
Landing the crit Bear Hug* on that dragon could still be a super cool moment to deny the breath weapon, but it would not snap immersion like a twig by instantly rendering the dragon unconscious and helpless. (Think about all those oddball effects / strategies that can only be done to helpless creatures (like feeding potions/items))
Given how quickly one can burn through air, I honestly left the effect far closer to suffocation than I normally would, but wanted to preserve the possibility of a suffocation kill happening in a real game. Very bizarre the devs decided that loosing air is not only determined by the subject's actions, loosing air via being crit is very nasty.
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I think this is one of those things where rules are unclear, because I personally don't think suffocating = unconscious.
"When you run out of air, you fall unconscious and start suffocating. You can't recover from being unconscious and must attempt a DC 20 Fortitude save at the end of each of your turns. On a failure, you take 1d10 damage, and on a critical failure, you die. On each check after the first, the DC increases by 5 and the damage by 1d10; these increases are cumulative. Once your access to air is restored, you stop suffocating and are no longer unconscious (unless you're at 0 Hit Points)."
So I fall unconscious and I start suffocating. Suffocating prevents me from recovering from being unconscious (which is fine) and has a bunch of other effects. Cool.
The bracers do not make me unconscious. They only make me start suffocating. I can't recover from being Unconscious, which doesn't matter because I'm not unconscious. I do need to make the fortitude saves, which is bad enough, and I'm also running out of air, and need to account for that. But while this is horrible, you can still try to Escape.
That's my reading, though it's probably colored by the fact I can think of plenty of reasons why someone would be suffocating and conscious, so marrying the two forever doesn't fit.
And if suffocating automatically made you unconscious they wouldn't need to spell it out in the rules, they could've just made Suffocation a condition that includes it (which they should do anyways IMO).
EDIT: I forgot to add this but in another defense of my interpretation, the special action granted by the Necklace of strangulation makes no sense if suffocating=unconscious. I realize its a legacy item but the rules for suffocation didnt change in the remaster.
That is a neat loophole reading of the breath/suffocation rules to prevent one serious effect of the Bear Hug, though it doesn't look like even that stops the "crit fail = death" potentiality.
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IMO, it's pretty clear that suffocation *is* the state/process of running out of air. Yes, it's written in natural language so the ordering is wonky, but "When you run out of air, you fall unconscious and start suffocating."
rather clearly defines the act of running out of air as the state of "suffocating."
This "0 breath remaining = suffocation" is further evidenced by things like Breath Control with text: "... You can hold your breath for 25 times as long as usual before suffocating."
Falling unconscious is the first explained consequence of suffocating/running out of air.
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My guess is that the dev of those braces brain-farted and forgot that effects like Bear Hug almost always specify some form of "cannot breathe" which starts the timer. I do not know of a single place in the system where it's possible to skip the breath timer and jump straight to suffocation (except Bear Hug).
Even other surprise causes, like Breathtaking Vapor or Ambush Bladderwort, all prevent breathing, they never cause suffocation.
Edit: found a good example where it can happen:
Traditions arcane, primal
Cast [two-actions]
Area 15-foot emanation
Defense Fortitude;
Duration sustained up to 1 minuteYou inhale all air in the surrounding area, stealing the breath of nearby creatures. During vacuum's duration, you take a –1 circumstance penalty against inhaled threats, such as inhaled poisons. If you cast vacuum in an environment where you can't breathe, the spell fails and you immediately begin to suffocate. Creatures in the area must attempt a Fortitude save. A creature that's holding its breath gets a result one degree of success better than it rolled, and creatures that don't need to breathe air are immune to the spell. A creature that later enters the area or ceases holding its breath must attempt a save against the effect. On subsequent rounds, the first time each round you Sustain the spell, you can force each creature in the area to save against the effect.
Success The creature begins holding its breath.
Failure The creature wheezes and gasps as its breath is stolen, becoming stunned 1. The creature then begins holding its breath but has only half its normal number of rounds of remaining air.
Critical Failure The creature has all the air sucked out from its lungs and immediately starts to suffocate.
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I'm really not a fan of intentionally tortured rules-lawyering the RaW when that RaW is problematic.
I'd much rather advocate for accepting the "problematic" RaW as is, then homebrew a solution.
Otherwise, the twisted result can be unpredictable and not fully resolve the issues.
This presented RaW-loophole reading and it's inclusion of the "crit fail = instant death" effect still being attached is a great example of why I recommend against it as a practice.
More problematically, such a reading could then affect the core rules of suffocation in the other places with similar effects to Bear Hug.
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Im not trying to loophole raw, I just think if they wanted Suffocation to always include Unconsciousness there are better ways to do it than this one, which by the mere act of separating them implies theyre not necessarily linked. In the same way going Unconscious doesnt mean you run out of air, despite running out of air making you unconscious.
I posted the necklace of strangulation above, but you also have the actual suffocate which in its Crit Fail specifies you go Uncon and start suffocating. If theyre completely inseparable all these distinctions are superfluous.
Vaccum id an interesting counterpoint, though even then my interpretation still works if you (rightfully) assume "air sucked out of lungs" = running out of air.
Again, quoted phrasing like "The creature has all the air sucked out from its lungs and immediately starts to suffocate." defines suffocation as the state of having no air remaining. It's not assigning 2 different effects, it's carefully specifying that the held-breath stage is being bypassed.
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A clear mark against your presented reading is that there is no way to run out of breath and avoid suffocation. None. Any and every time a creature "has no breath remaining" it begins to suffocate. They are not independent conditions.
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It's a super tortured reading to somehow split "breath hitting 0" as a separate condition from "suffocating."
The clearest RaW break that "disproves" that reading is if you split them, the following consequences of dmg and death chance become ambiguous; there's no wording to assign the fort save to either suffocation or "0 breath."
Because both are stated in the previous sentence, you cannot know which without textual reference.
Meaning, it never was two different effects/states.
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Holding one's breath and suffocation are two different, and fully independent/binary *stages* of the same activity/effect. It is not possible to suffocate while you have breath remaining for some sort of half-effect.
EDIT: I forgot to add this but in another defense of my interpretation, the special action granted by the Necklace of strangulation makes no sense if suffocating=unconscious. I realize its a legacy item but the rules for suffocation didnt change in the remaster.
That RaW for the necklace is broken in the exact same oversight way that these Bracers are.
It's even more clear for the Necklace that the dev meant to say "cant breathe" instead of suffocate due the option of the victim to attempt actions to remove the necklace.
RaW, there's no getting around the fact that suffocation begins with going unconscious, meaning that the victim can never use the provided action to remove the Necklace.
Again, suffocation is defined in both directions by running out of air, or regaining access to air. And in both directions, un/consciousness accompanies that state of suffocation.
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Fully RaW, that Necklace renders the victim unconscious like the Bear Hug can.
It's up to the GM to fix/homebrew those items slightly into "can't breathe." While not my recommendation, the GM can do whatever they want, including homebrewing the suffocation rules.
I too think that suffocation and unconscious are separate.
Yes, in the case of Drowning, it works like in the "drowning and suffocation" section says, but the description of "just" suffocation (which unfortunately is only in that passage) is distinct enough to run it without the separate Unconscious Condition.
Narratively wise, when you strangle someone, or when you're crushing his lungs, he's not instantly dropping unconscious but he's struggling and rapidly loses strength, something that fits with the damage+scaling DC of Suffocation.
I think your narrative example strongly supports my claim.
It is super easy to accidentally conflate "suffocation" with "cannot breathe".
In the example of being strangled at the neck, one cannot breathe, and is rapidly loosing strength. Mechanically, this is represented by the turns of air remaining.
This stage of the process is separated in the rules text from "suffocation" which is the stage that triggers/beings when remaining air = 0. Once the strangled victim is out of air, that is the defined point of unconsciousness. Defined RaW as "suffocation." Not yet dead, but the point at which they explicitly run out of air, become helpless, unconscious, and are one bad save from complete death.
"Suffocating" is essentially a contextual/parallel form of dying where one can bounce back to fighting strength if air is restored.
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Again, the text says "start suffocating" and "stop suffocating" around the un/conscious, 0 = air > 0 state. That is the only place "suffocating" is used in those rules. If you regain air, you are not suffocating, and when you have 0 air, you begin to suffocate. There is no other way to suffocate, nor to invoke suffocation without the effects of reaching air = 0.
Having air remaining explicitly means that you have not reached the "point of suffocation." It is not possible to suffocate with remaining air. If you still have air but are unable to breathe, you only start the timer, which is explicitly not suffocation.
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Most of the time, like in Vacuum, the devs remember that air = 0 suffocation, while "can't breathe" is the phrasing to start the timer.
Because that's not intuitive to natural langue, they seem to have accidentally used "suffocation" when meaning to say "can't breathe" in the Necklace and within Bear Hug.
Suffocate means "can't breathe" NOT "you are out of air".
Suffocation is literally, exactly, precisely defined as being out of air in the pf2 rules.
When you run out of air, you fall unconscious and start suffocating. You can't recover from being unconscious and must attempt a DC 20 Fortitude save at the end of each of your turns. On a failure, you take 1d10 damage, and on a critical failure, you die. On each check after the first, the DC increases by 5 and the damage by 1d10; these increases are cumulative. Once your access to air is restored, you stop suffocating and are no longer unconscious (unless you're at 0 Hit Points).
That is the only place the word suffocate is used in the air/breath rules.
It does not match the natural langue use of suffocate, but the word is 100% defined as the "out of remaining air" sub-state of holding one's breath, being strangled, submerged in water, etc.
Any time you "can't breathe" for any reason, that is when you start the air timer and can still act. If the air hits 0, that's suffocation. Once air > 0, then suffocation is over.
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I have absolutely no idea how one could read the text and come to a different conclusion.
and yes, the unconsciousness is tied directly with the state of suffocation.
Unconscious isn't a prerequisite to suffocate, it is a simultaneous result of running out of air. You also aren't required to run out of air to suffocate, only lose access to air.
Trip you are correct that suffocating is defined, but you're highlighting the wrong parts. The effects of suffocation are thus:
You can't recover from being unconscious and must attempt a DC 20 Fortitude save at the end of each of your turns. On a failure, you take 1d10 damage, and on a critical failure, you die. On each check after the first, the DC increases by 5 and the damage by 1d10; these increases are cumulative.So for these bracers, and the old necklace: you can't recover from being unconscious (irrelevant) and must make a DC 20 Fort save at the end of your turn. On a failure you take damage, on a critical failure you die.
That does not compute with the rules.
If you have air remaining, you cannot suffocate. Literally. Having remaining air is having "access to air".
If a PC uses Deep Breath and gets Bear Hugged, you either rule they "cannot breathe" and start a very long timer, or you rule that they lost the air that they were holding onto, hit air = 0, and they begin suffocation.
There is no way to rule that the Bear Hugged is at risk of dying from suffocation, while they still have Deep Breath in effect (or any amount of air > 0).
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I'm starting to suspect this is a case of old community-spread shenanigans, and really encourage you try to read these rules with fresh eyes.
You cannot start the quote there, that sentence is dependent upon the prior.
"You can't recover from being unconscious..." is a continuation on the prior statement of: "When you run out of air, you fall unconscious and start suffocating. You can't recover..."
That inability to regain consciousness is a modification of special unconsciousness that is tied to hitting air = 0, aka suffocation.
It is the state of suffocation / air = 0 that triggers *all* that text, you cannot be subject to suffocation's effect of "cannot recover from unconsciousness" without also being subject to the unconsciousness of suffocation.
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Yes, it could be spelled out more clearly, but the entanglement of air = 0, suffocation, and the unconsciousness are all explicit parts of the text.
You cannot chop it into pieces and claim that's still the RaW.
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Hence, it's 99.9% likely the Necklace author meant to say "can't breathe", and why those rare effects that cause a creature to start suffocating does, rules as written, involve that creature dropping unconscious with no breath in their lungs.
Unconscious isn't a prerequisite to suffocate, it is a simultaneous result of running out of air. You also aren't required to run out of air to suffocate, only lose access to air.
Trip you are correct that suffocating is defined, but you're highlighting the wrong parts. The effects of suffocation are thus:
You can't recover from being unconscious and must attempt a DC 20 Fortitude save at the end of each of your turns. On a failure, you take 1d10 damage, and on a critical failure, you die. On each check after the first, the DC increases by 5 and the damage by 1d10; these increases are cumulative.So for these bracers, and the old necklace: you can't recover from being unconscious (irrelevant) and must make a DC 20 Fort save at the end of your turn. On a failure you take damage, on a critical failure you die.That does not compute with the rules.
If you have air remaining, you cannot suffocate. Literally. Having remaining air is having "access to air".
If a PC uses Deep Breath and gets Bear Hugged, you either rule they "cannot breathe" and start a very long timer, or you rule that they lost the air that they were holding onto, hit air = 0, and they begin suffocation.
There is no way to rule that the Bear Hugged is at risk of dying from suffocation, while they still have Deep Breath in effect (or any amount of air > 0).
Breath Control wouldn't apply here though. It would delay the onset of suffocation by running out of breath, but applying suffocation directly bypasses it. It'd be like having an ability that says "You can't go Unconscious from hitting 0 Hit Points" and someone slaps you with Sleep . Just because you can avoid one way of suffering a condition doesn't make you immune to all of them.
It's the same with Unconscious. Just because running out of breath makes you go Unconscious does not mean that:
- If you go unconscious you're also out of breath
- If you don't need to breathe you can't fall Unconscious.
Running out of breath causes two things: Unconsciousness and Suffocation. This does not mean it is the only way to cause either of these things (which is obvious with Unconsciousness) nor does it mean if you're suffering one (or both) you're automatically out of air.
As for the last sentence in the paragraph "Once your access to air is restored, you stop suffocating and are no longer unconscious (unless you're at 0 Hit Points)." that would be a case of Specific vs General.
In a normal situation, you stop suffocating when you have access to air. For Bear Hug, you stop suffocating when you stop being restrained instead. This is important because the bracers do not prevent you from breathing or holding your breath, so suffocation would immediately break without this stipulation.
For the Necklace of Strangulation, you stop suffocating when the necklace is taken off of you. Which as far as I can tell would need a casting of remove curse
For the suffocate spell, it's when the spell stops being sustained, which is why the Critical Failure states "for the duration", otherwise the general rule would apply and with the creature having access to air they would stop suffocating immediately and wake up making the spell worthless. This is the same case for vaccum.
Guys, stop treating suffocation as a distinct condition from "having no air". Suffocation is not in the conditions list. Suffocation *is* the state of running out of air.
As said before, being a separate thing would create unsolvable ambiguity, as there's no textual reason to say it's "suffocation" that causes the death rolling instead of that being another effect of the "0 air" condition.
EX of the ambiguity problem if written as you claim:
When you run out of thrumps, you become sickened 1 and become fraxled. You can't recover from being sickened and must attempt a DC 20 Fortitude save at the end of each of your turns. On a failure, you take 1d10 damage, and on a critical failure, you kersplode. On each check after the first, the DC increases by 5 and the damage by 1d10; these increases are cumulative. Once your access to thrumps is restored, you are no longer fraxled and are no longer sickened.
All of the subsequent effects are a result of running out of thrumps, it's not textual have that save as an effect of getting fraxled.
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By saying that having air ends suffocation, and that running out of air begins suffocation, it is explicitly defining suffocation as the state of not having any air while also listing what effects and procedures that state triggers.
When air = 0, that triggers the start of the suffocation sub-state. If air > 0, that ends the suffocation sub-state.
It is not possible to suffocate while having air. You would begin to suffocate, see that air > 0, and instantly end the suffocation.
Your claim is like saying that you can be Dying while still having HP.
This is why the spells like Vacuum that do suffocation correctly make sure to mention that yes, they do indeed drain the victim's air to 0.
It's like a spell that sends someone dying taking a moment to specify that they do loose all HP in the process. Technically, the HP loss is required/implied, but it does not hurt to explain that extra step.
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There's only the section that describes what happens when you BOTH lose all air AND you suffocate, and specifically, when you start drowning.
No, and until you read this correctly, I don't think you are going to make progress.
Suffocation is a description of a specific sub-state of being unable to breathe. It involves some effects, like a special version of unconsciousness, and a special procedure for a cumulative, considerably lethal, save.
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Guys, stop treating suffocation as a distinct condition from "having no air". Suffocation is not in the conditions list. Suffocation *is* the state of running out of air.
As said before, being a separate thing would create unsolvable ambiguity, as there's no textual reason to say it's "suffocation" that causes the death rolling instead of that being another effect of the "0 air" condition.
There is though. Running out of air causes two things: unconciousness and suffocation. Since we know what unconsciousness does, the rest of the paragraph must describe what is suffocation. And it does.
By saying that having air ends suffocation, and that running out of air begins suffocation, it is explicitly defining suffocation as the state of not having any air while also listing what effects and procedures that state triggers.
When air = 0, that triggers the start of the suffocation sub-state. If air > 0, that ends the suffocation sub-state.
In the general context presented in the Drowning rules, this is correct. But this does not mean abilities, spells, feats, et al. cannot modify this. I don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp, there's a lot of rules that change how conditions can be cleared that differ from the usual way they do.
So long as the effect that changes the general application of suffocation specifies an end state we're golden. And all of the effects in the game that apply suffocation without the character running out of air, or apply it while the character has "access to air" do, in fact, include an end condition, so this is perfectly fine.
It's like a spell that sends someone dying taking a moment to specify that they do loose all HP in the process. Technically, the HP loss is required/implied, but it does not hurt to explain that extra step.
Putting aside the fact that to my knowledge there are no spells that give you the Dying condition in the same way something like sleep gives you the Unconscious condition, if such a spell existed it would not be against the rules so long as it specified you don't lose Dying if you're above 0 hit points. We, as players, can look to see what the Dying condition does and see how it would apply (Unconscious and Recovery checks). So long as the spell or ability was clear in how it changes the normal ways to deal with the condition, it'd be fine.
Which is what's happening here with the bracers. Instead of you suffocating because you ran out of air, you suffocate because the enemy critically succeeded at Bear Hug. And instead of stopping suffocation when you have access to air, you stop suffocating when you're no longer restrained by the creature.
And since suffocation and unconsciousness are different things, the creature can still try to Escape, but at the end of the turn if they are suffocating they must attempt the Fortitude save with the usual results. And if they go Unconscious, they can't recover from it while suffocating.
I'm seeing good points on both sides.
On the one hand, if the second paragraph isn't saying that suffocation causes unconscious, it's also not saying the saves vs death are happening either. That would mean suffocation doesn't actually do anything on its own, which is just silly.
On the other hand, being strangled causing you to faint the instant a hand or necklace clasps your neck is very silly, and the necklace was clearly designed with fighting to stay alive in mind.
But I think Trip.H is overestimating the lethality of the Fort saves. The bracers are a level 17 item, and the DC for the save starts at 20. And as Darksol brought up, Grapples at those high levels are nigh impossible to maintain long enough for the crit fail save to be feasible.
As for the necklace, it's possibly a case of specific beats general. Even if the suffocation inflicts can't act, the victim can try to avoid the damage as a single action anyway.
On the other hand, being strangled causing you to faint the instant a hand or necklace clasps your neck is very silly, and the necklace was clearly designed with fighting to stay alive in mind.
Yup, and this shows how easy it is to slip the wrong word. If the necklace said "strangle" instead of "suffocate", even though that word is undefined, I think just about everyone could agree it meant "can't breathe" and start the air timer.
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As for the necklace, it's possibly a case of specific beats general. Even if the suffocation inflicts can't act, the victim can try to avoid the damage as a single action anyway.
Um, not really. If an item offers an action, you still need to be able to take actions to use it. A specific override would need to be something like "even if you are unconscious due to suffocation, once per round, you can spend a single action..."
That need to spend actions on the defense is why I'm comfortable saying it's a 99% chance the dev meant to invoke the "can't breathe" rules.
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I'm pretty sure the defense action is only talking about the damage that the Necklace itself inflicts each turn, not the effects of suffocation/can't breathe.
That crazy Necklace is actively trying to murder you, it's not waiting around.
the necklace tightens around your neck, suffocating you and dealing 30 bludgeoning damage to you at the end of each of your turns. Once per round, you can spend a single action to attempt a DC 34 Athletics check or Fortitude save; success means you don’t take the damage on your current turn, but you continue suffocating.
Assumed typo of "suffocating" aside, it's still very not cool that the item doesn't list any kind of DC or check to actually pull it off, break it, etc. It's a no-brainer that the PCs will be attempting to do that, and the GM would need to flail around to invent DCs in a very dangerous moment. Brilliantly evil for the necklace to have delayed activation, likely right when combat starts.
Given the harsh rules around cursed item removal, this is by far the most deadly one I've seen, even with the "can't breathe" substitution.
Just about any combat is going to become a total mess when it activates. I honestly do not know how to save an allied PC in such a circumstance. Even the rare air-providing items/effects that don't specify needing one big breath to start, like Oxygen Ooze or Bottled Air would not provide any help in the situation.
TBH, I think I'd ask the GM if I could attempt an emergency tracheotomy to cut an air hole below the necklace. Still would need to end combat before death.
Maybe petrify them via "willing fails" for later reversal?
The necklace doesn't even say that the suffocation stops when the stressful situation ends. It only loosens after you've been dead for a month. Even a bag of devouring looks cuddly compared to this.
Perhaps the only nice thing about it is that once you invest it, it fuses to your neck suspiciously tightly. Anyone can figure out it's cursed long before taking it into a fight.
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I also believe that if you're suffocating, you're always unconscious. Because once you're no longer suffocating, the unconsciousness ends - so there has to have been unconsciousness.
I do think the bracers going directly to unconscious is an error in writing it - it should probably be that on a crit the target cannot breathe so goes through the "hold breath" process first.
This ability is not limited user per day or even hour, like many other apex items are. It provides a nice bit of rider damage on a grapple at no extra action cost compared to a regular grapple. It'd still be a good ability if it only forced you to "hold breath or suffocate" - that's still really cramping the style of any caster you get a hold of. Including any monster that would like to use innate spells.
I would absolutely run it as suffocating without unconsciousness. VERY likely the rules as intended.
Bear Hug wouldn't be much of a hindrance to casters unless it inflicted unconscious. If a Grapple critically succeeds, the target is restrained, preventing manipulate actions such as most spells. An inability to breath wouldn't change anything.
While I don't think it's a written mechanic anywhere, I'd hope that most GMs would enable a "can't breathe" Bear Hug to disable all monster breath abilities, even if they are not tagged with manipulate.
A quick check does seem to confirm that dragon breath weapons do not have manipulate.
I still don't think Bear Hug inflicting unconscious would be an auto-win or broken, but yeah, I'm starting to think it allows the hold breath timer, and "suffocate" is just being used as shorthand for "has to hold its breath or start suffocating."
There are also plenty of adventures that have monsters and hazards using "the target suffocates" while allowing the target to attempt to Escape.
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Directly unconscious on a crit seems too strong for me for an ability that:
- has no extra action economy cost (compared to grapple)
- makes good use of the skill & ability bonus of the item
- has no limit on how often it can be used
- also deals extra damage on that crit
- doesn't have an incapacitation trait
(2) has me wondering. Nothing in the rules for holding breath or suffocating stops you from speaking, it's just that there's a big consequence for that: you run out of air, fall unconscious, and start making Fort saves to stay alive. If you're suffocating without having run out of air, what's the consequence for speaking? Does speaking while already suffocating cause you to lose all air? It's normally speaking while holding your breath that makes you lose all air, and that is what makes you start suffocating. So yeah, I'm thoroughly confused.
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I really don't believe there is "suffocating without being unconscious". Unconscious is a side effect of suffocating in the same way that immobilized is a side effect of being grappled.
The question "what happens after you try to speak when you don't have any air left" makes no sense. You can't speak, because you have no air left. (And because you're unconscious.)
If suffocating doesn't inflict unconscious, then what does it actually do? Just as that paragraph doesn't state that suffocation inflicts unconscious, it also doesn't state that suffocation forces you to make Fort saves vs damage and death. If we're going to assume from text proximity that the Fort save stuff is part of the definition of suffocation, what basis is there to exclude unconscious?
Fair enough.
So for option (2), the target is not unconscious, but can't speak and is making Fort saves vs damage and death, and they have air but it does them no good?
Ok, here's my current understanding.
If the effect says the target "can't breathe" or "has to hold its breath or start suffocating", that's option 1. They spend rounds holding breath, and once air is depleted, it's time to make saves.
If the effect just says the target "suffocates" and leaves it at that, that's option 2. They still have air so they remain conscious, but they make the saves.
If the effect says the target "loses all air and starts suffocating", that's option 3. All air is gone, it's time to make saves.
That seems mighty complicated, which is why I started leaning towards "suffocates" being shorthand for "hold breath or suffocate." Being able to suffer 3 different types of suffocation, only one of which is made clear in the suffocation rules while the others stem from precise semantics, is brain-racking.
As I said earlier, the whole paragraph is written as such:
"Drop unconscious (a defined condition, so no need for further explanation) and start suffocating (a non defined effect). This and that happens."
In plain English, what follows the undefined effect is the description of said effect, no?
No. At the very best, you have unsolvable ambiguity as to which is being referenced.
Instead, the default subject of each additional effect/consequence remains the initial topic of the paragraph.
Like how we assume every disconnected sentence of the Stunned condition is listing off another effect of being Stunned.
Otherwise, "You've become senseless. You can't act." would mean that the birth of a new not-condition of "senseless" being defined as "you can't act" when we know that is still talking about Stunned.
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You keep cropping that starting text off, and as I've said before, selective deletion does alter the meaning.
"When you run out of air, you fall unconscious and start suffocating. You can't recover from..."
The unconsciousness, the process of "suffocating", and the fort save, are all effects of reaching "air = 0."
This is why the end of the suffocation process is ending that "air = 0" state, and is still entangled with the special unconsciousness.
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This is why I used the Deep Breath example. It simply breaks all notion of sense for someone to be able to "die via suffocation" while still under an effect that puts hours of air inside their lungs.
That absurdity should help one realize they've got the wrong reading, and that the correct RaW is that it's not possible to suffocate while one has remaining air.
Is there a chance the problem may be that you don't account for devs making a typo/mistake?
If the Necklace and Bear Hug did not exist, and you only had spells like Vaccuum with effects like:
"Critical Failure: The creature has all the air sucked out from its lungs and immediately starts to suffocate."
which do remember that they need to remove the air timer to trigger suffocation, would you still be insisting that it's somehow possible to suffocate while still having air?
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I still do not understand why your reading of Bear Hug does not instantly end the suffocation once you reach the part where exiting the "air = 0" state means the end of suffocation.
If anything, Bear Hug would need a specific override of that rule, something like "target suffocates, even if they have remaining air."
I just got pointed to another monster that skips the "hold breath" part.
Any creature hit by a choker's arm Strike is automatically grabbed, and the choker begins to strangle the target. The creature is suffocating and can't speak as long as it's strangled. This prevents it from casting spells with a verbal component or activating items with a command component.
This weirdly implies that suffocating doesn't actually stop speaking on its own.
"You will... never be... a god..."
- guy who didn't choose his words carefully
In any case, the choker inflicting unconscious on every hit would just be stupid overpowered.
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I just got pointed to another monster that skips the "hold breath" part.
Any creature hit by a choker's arm Strike is automatically grabbed, and the choker begins to strangle the target. The creature is suffocating and can't speak as long as it's strangled. This prevents it from casting spells with a verbal component or activating items with a command component.This weirdly implies that suffocating doesn't actually stop speaking on its own.
"You will... never be... a god..."
- guy who didn't choose his words carefullyIn any case, the choker inflicting unconscious on every hit would just be stupid overpowered.
It could also be that they just forgot to include a few words. I just searched for any words like "suffoc" in B1/B2/B3 and the Choker seems to be the only one that works like that;
B1
Doesn't have creatures with particular suffocation mechanics, apart from Engulf and Swallow Whole that use the normal "hold breath of begin suffocating" language.
B2:
Basidirond: someone merely thinks they're suffocating, which stuns-3 them.
Choker: goes to suffocating without mentioning "hold breath".
Devil, Sargladon: on a failure against Drown the target is holding their breath, on critical failure the target is unconscious and suffocating.
Devil, Gylou: has an ability that does NOT risk suffocation
Nereid: critical failure on Drowning Touch causes unconscious and suffocation
Totenmaske: can spend two minutes melting your mouth and nose shut and that causes suffocation. We're not talking combat timing here anymore.
Vrykolakas Ancient: can use Steal Breath only on an unconscious creature anyway
B3
Azarketi: begin suffocating after 48 hours; not relevant.
Demon, Omox: uses the "hold breath or begin suffocating" language.
Div, Aghash: uses the "hold breath of begin suffocating" language.
Globster: can survive for an hour outside water before suffocation; not relevant.
Kurobozu: has a breath-sucking ability that on critical failure causes unconscious and suffocating. Lesser degrees have some way of limited breath/speech.
Siktempora, Hatred: uses the "hold breath of begin suffocating" language.
To me that looks like the choker is an outlier/bug, not an example from which we should deduce the normal version of the rule.
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Let's try not to forget that this is the same Paizo that could not get their rules straight even when printing the remastered GM and PC1.
Contradictory bomb rules, Activate(Interact) vs Activate(manipulate), etc.
We genuinely do need to account for error, and this "can't breathe" vs "suffocate" is an incredibly subtle mistake.
We have enough datapoints to say that most of the time instant-unconscious seems to be an intended possibility, the language involves some form of stealing the air. Usually as a Crit Fail to a save.