Blindpepper Bomb and Debilitating Bomb: Are bursts that make saves attacks? Do they hit?


Rules Discussion


Blindpepper Bomb (PF #157, pg. 78) is an Alchemical Bomb that requires a Strike to activate. When thrown it explodes in a 15-foot-raduis burst. All creatures in the area must make a Reflex save with being impacted on a success, failure, or critical failure.

Debilitating Bomb (PC2, pg. 66) is an Alchemist Feat that lets you add an effect to an alchemical bomb. "If the attack with the bomb hits, in addition to the bomb's normal effects, the target must succeed at a Fort. save..."

If a Blindpepper Bomb is made with a Debilitating Bomb Additive then which creature, or creatures, makes the Debilitating Bomb Fort. saves?

My interpretation would be that all the creatures have to make the Fortitude save from Debilitating Bomb. Blindpepper Bomb requires a Strike which has the Attack trait. What is a little less clear is what "hits" is. If a creature gets a success on the Reflex Save they still suffer some effects, which means they are hit and thus have to roll the Debilitating Bomb save. A critical success would mean they aren't "hit" at all.

I don't find any definition for the term 'Hit' in the rules it's all based on degrees of success. With the only mention of hit being in terms of calling a critical success a critical (PC, pg. 401)

I then looked for it a saving throw (PC, pg. 404) would be an attack, which leans toward it is based on a description of a Will saving throws: "Will saving throws measure how well you can resist attacks to your mind and spirit."

So this is obviously an edge case and I'm wondering what the actual rules say if I missed something in my interpretation.


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A strike is made against a single target, and is the attack being made.

Blindpepper bomb is kind of a weird item and probably written incorrectly because the actual strike/hit doesn't appear to do anything at all (and the text implies but doesn't explicitly state that you shouldn't even be making a strike in the first place), but you're definitely not hitting multiple people with an attack here.


Squiggit wrote:

A strike is made against a single target, and is the attack being made.

Blindpepper bomb is kind of a weird item and probably written incorrectly because the actual strike/hit doesn't appear to do anything at all (and the text implies but doesn't explicitly state that you shouldn't even be making a strike in the first place), but you're definitely not hitting multiple people with an attack here.

That's where it's weird though. It's an alchemical bomb that is written as if it were a spell. When talking about Saving Throws DC's the wording in the PC implies that they are still attacks just not defined as the [Attack] trait.


Limond wrote:
Squiggit wrote:

A strike is made against a single target, and is the attack being made.

Blindpepper bomb is kind of a weird item and probably written incorrectly because the actual strike/hit doesn't appear to do anything at all (and the text implies but doesn't explicitly state that you shouldn't even be making a strike in the first place), but you're definitely not hitting multiple people with an attack here.

That's where it's weird though. It's an alchemical bomb that is written as if it were a spell. When talking about Saving Throws DC's the wording in the PC implies that they are still attacks just not defined as the [Attack] trait.

Squiggit is right you don't hit anyone with the attack, you don't even have a target, so debilitation doesn't work on anyone. Yes, the item is not perfectly written. But also, no, saving throws aren't attacks in the mechanics sense, those attacks must have Attack trait. The word 'attack' in the description of saves is maybe unfortunate but mostly synonymous with 'hostile action' there (which aggressive harmful save abilities are), not with 'attack' like Strike or having Attack trait. This sometimes happens in these rules as they aren't written very formally and rule-coding for terms isn't very strict.


Blindpepper Bomb is a special bomb written with a nonstandard effect. Probably because it was in an AP and not subjected to the scrutiny a book should go through (for whatever that's worth considering the easily avoidable errors in recent published books, but I digress!)

Blindpepper Bomb is activated with a Strike, the only significance being that it incurs MAP after being thrown, but it is not thrown at a target; it has a burst area effect similar as you say to a spell, with a saving throw for all in the area. I would rule that you could not give a Blindpepper Bomb the Debilitating Bomb additive UNLESS your GM (or you if you are the GM) wanted to do some sort of mashup effect like: Strike to hit ONE target which would be affected by DB, and also (regardless of the Strike's result) have the BPB's burst be centered on a corner (w/i range) the target touches. Everyone in BPB's normal area would then make its normal save. Similar in mechanics to how Expansive Spellstrike works: Strike to hit ONE target then saves for everyone in the spell's area as long as the Strike wasn't a crit miss; the only difference being not losing BPB's effect on a crit miss


I think there's enough room RaW to say that you can choose to attempt to hit a target directly with a Blindpepper, and that doing so would allow one to invoke Debilitating upon that singular hit target.
There's zero rules reason to have non-hit targets save vs Debilitating.

But you'd need to ask the GM ahead of time what happens on crit-miss, as that's a rules-hole when something like Blindpepper is involved.

We've generally ruled that crit miss bombs fail to such a degree, that no explosion happens at all, which adds risk when Blindpepper normally does not need to beat an AC at all, and "just works."

(regular miss is still covered by the existing rules, and while not hitting the foe, such bombs do detonate inside their square)


Limond wrote:
I don't find any definition for the term 'Hit' in the rules it's all based on degrees of success. With the only mention of hit being in terms of calling a critical success a critical (PC, pg. 401)

That is true. "Hit" isn't a fully defined game term.

The other place that I can find is that it is indirectly referenced is in the rules for AC.

From the usage of the word 'hit' in the rules, I would tentatively define it as: succeeding at an attack roll (including spell attack rolls).

I think that having 'hit' include saving throws is not how the term is generally used in the rules. I more often see the word 'affected' used for a spell or something else with a saving throw if the target doesn't critically succeed at the save and have a 'no effect' result.

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