I notice a strange effect of Unstoppable Juggernaut in its last paragraph:
You have become a brutal, unstoppable force of nature, able to shrug off mortal wounds with ease. You gain resistance equal to 3 + your Constitution modifier to all damage, and your resistance from raging increases to 8 + your Constitution modifier.
In addition, if you are reduced to 0 Hit Points while raging, you can end your rage as a reaction to stay at 1 Hit Point. If you do, you become wounded 2 (or increase your wounded condition by 2 if you are already wounded).
I put the last paragraph in bold to point that once you while in rage and still have a reaction technically a barbarian could end the rage recover to 1 hit point and become wounded 2 then wounded 4 then wounded 6 then wounded 8 and so on? Because if I'm understanding this right you do not enter into dying state (or you would be unable to use a reaction due unconsciousness) instead your reaction prevents you to enter into dying condition and put you in wounded +2 but once that wounded condition doesn't set a limit like dying does, teorically you can become can keep increasing the wounded value as long the effect that is killing you doesn't have death trait and you are in rage and have a free reaction?
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Yes, you could theoretically have Wounded 16 or something crazy like that. I don't think it is practical to get there in actual play though.
In any case, this wouldn't make the Barbarian immortal. Two things prevent this.
One, you only have one reaction each round. If you get hit while you don't have your reaction available, then you can't use Unstoppable Juggernaut.
Two, once your rage ends you would have to start it back up again. Which generally takes an action to do. So while you may be able to avoid death once per round, if you get hit a second time before your turn comes back around, you won't qualify to use Unstoppable Juggernaut because you aren't Raging. Wounded Rage wouldn't help here because it also requires using a reaction.
Yes, you could theoretically have Wounded 16 or something crazy like that. I don't think it is practical to get there in actual play though.
In any case, this wouldn't make the Barbarian immortal. Two things prevent this.
One, you only have one reaction each round. If you get hit while you don't have your reaction available, then you can't use Unstoppable Juggernaut.
Two, once your rage ends you would have to start it back up again. Which generally takes an action to do. So while you may be able to avoid death once per round, if you get hit a second time before your turn comes back around, you won't qualify to use Unstoppable Juggernaut because you aren't Raging. Wounded Rage wouldn't help here because it also requires using a reaction.
I had already understood this point, my real doubt was whether the wounded would actually increase infinitely. So much so that I wrote "immortal" in quotes precisely because I know there is ways to kill the barbarian (just hit him again before he goes into a rage once more), but I found this characteristic curious.
I had already understood this point, my real doubt was whether the wounded would actually increase infinitely.
Then, yeah. That would work.
As long as you can restart Rage before you get hit again and don't spend your reaction on anything else, you can keep going at 1 HP indefinitely and just keep racking up Wounded value.
Yeah, I could see a scenario where an inexperienced GM might be confused by the scenario and not understand what is necessary to actually kill the character, but then again a GM shouldn't be TRYING to kill a character.
It would more be a problem if players had to fight something with this kind of ability.
I think if a play fought something with this type of ability it'd die anyways because 3-5+ PCs can attack multiple times a round killing it once it uses this ability once or twice.
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a GM shouldn't be TRYING to kill a character.
But monsters should. That's actually their point.
I wonder who can get the highest wounded condition without dying. That would be interesting to see.
That you can't go back into Rage for a minute after you end your Rage and become Wounded makes the repeated application more of a "technically possible, if they never got their wounds treated" than an "actual game situation".
You can choose to Rage again.
The requirements to Rage are: Requirements You aren't fatigued or raging.The one minute limitation is only about gaining temporary hit points:When you stop raging, you lose any remaining temporary Hit Points from Rage, and can't gain temporary Hit Points from using the Rage action again for 1 minute.
This was a change in the remaster.
Yeah, I saw that I was looking at an older version and deleted that post about a minute after it went up.
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I notice a strange effect of Unstoppable Juggernaut in its last paragraph:
I put the last paragraph in bold to point that once you while in rage and still have a reaction technically a barbarian could end the rage recover to 1 hit point and become wounded 2 then wounded 4 then wounded 6 then wounded 8 and so on? Because if I'm understanding this right you do not enter into dying state (or you would be unable to use a reaction due unconsciousness) instead your reaction prevents you to enter into dying condition and put you in wounded +2 but once that wounded condition doesn't set a limit like dying does, teorically you can become can keep increasing the wounded value as long the effect that is killing you doesn't have death trait and you are in rage and have a free reaction?You have become a brutal, unstoppable force of nature, able to shrug off mortal wounds with ease. You gain resistance equal to 3 + your Constitution modifier to all damage, and your resistance from raging increases to 8 + your Constitution modifier.
In addition, if you are reduced to 0 Hit Points while raging, you can end your rage as a reaction to stay at 1 Hit Point. If you do, you become wounded 2 (or increase your wounded condition by 2 if you are already wounded).
I am not sure the GM has to really think about 'trying' or 'not trying' to make death a credible threat to a Bar trying this. If a monster takes their first action to attack, connects, damages the Bar, and the Bar is barely standing afterwards, then in most cases the 'natural' thing to do is have the monster attack with their second action. I wouldn't view this as malicious - a melee opponent taking two strikes in a round at the same target is just perfectly normal, average behavior.
That's how I'd play my monsters in general.
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I am not sure the GM has to really think about 'trying' or 'not trying' to make death a credible threat to a Bar trying this. If a monster takes their first action to attack, connects, damages the Bar, and the Bar is barely standing afterwards, then in most cases the 'natural' thing to do is have the monster attack with their second action. I wouldn't view this as malicious - a melee opponent taking two strikes in a round at the same target is just perfectly normal, average behavior.a GM shouldn't be TRYING to kill a character.But monsters should. That's actually their point.
In general I agree with this, but attacking an unconscious opponent is something I think a GM shouldn't typically do.
However the barbarian isn't unconscious in this scenario. In fact they invoked a power to keep them at 1 HP, in exchange for being wounded 2. Which may or may not be observable to NPCs. Even if it is visible, a "reasonable" person just saw the barbarian take a lot of damage and not go down, and they're still a threat. So while generally I advocate against actions that would kill a PC, in this scenario I think death is actually more likely than if you didn't have it. Because the NPC is going to continue attacking, which is likely to drop the PC to 0 hp, causing dying condition which would be increased by the wounded condition to dying 3. Depending on the exact scenario, it could easily reach dying 4 instead (dead).
Honestly thinking about it, I think this ability might be more of a liability than a boon. Unless the barbarian and his team have powerful burst healing that they can use as a reaction.
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Most of the "resist going down at 0hp" abilities are very risky.
That risk isn't easy to see on paper. If the chance of getting hit more then once is high, then these abilities might actually be detrimental to use, especially if your group is good at getting people back up.
But if your turn is up next and something downs you on it's second or third action, it would be perfect then. So like many things, it's situational.
If the PC has gotten up from healing, then is knocked down again I will have an enemy attack a downed PC because they are tired of them getting up from healing. No intelligent enemy likes fighting the same thing over and over again after they brought it down, so it is an intelligent tactic to permanently put down an enemy getting up from healing.
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If the PC has gotten up from healing, then is knocked down again I will have an enemy attack a downed PC because they are tired of them getting up from healing. No intelligent enemy likes fighting the same thing over and over again after they brought it down, so it is an intelligent tactic to permanently put down an enemy getting up from healing.
I agree that is what a reasonably intelligent enemy would do....
But that kind of means the existence of in combat healing means an enemy should spend an extra action to kill someone they've just downed, to make it harder for them to get back up.
And if your group likes that, great. In my experience, I don't find it fun (as a player) and neither do my friends.
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If the PC has gotten up from healing, then is knocked down again I will have an enemy attack a downed PC because they are tired of them getting up from healing. No intelligent enemy likes fighting the same thing over and over again after they brought it down, so it is an intelligent tactic to permanently put down an enemy getting up from healing.I agree that is what a reasonably intelligent enemy would do....
But that kind of means the existence of in combat healing means an enemy should spend an extra action to kill someone they've just downed, to make it harder for them to get back up.
And if your group likes that, great. In my experience, I don't find it fun (as a player) and neither do my friends.
Some of my group doesn't find it fun either, but the group have adapted to it by healing before they drop. They prefer a game that feels somewhat dangerous.
We really hated 5E pop-up healing with no consequences where getting someone to 1 hp where they could stand back up and swing again endlessly was the tactic making the bonus action heal king in that game.
At least in PF2 they can kill you when you're down, so it feels dangerous to drop around enemies and it is best to heal someone heavily rather than leave them close to death where they can drop again and be killed. We're all old grognards who like a deadlier game as that is what we grew playing where one saving throw meant you were dead or a severe blow meant death and it wasn't easy to resurrect a character.
PF2 has moved us back a little bit to that old time whereas PF1/3E death was a one day problem with a spell fix. Now death is a little bit scarier and harder to fix.
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If the PC has gotten up from healing, then is knocked down again I will have an enemy attack a downed PC because they are tired of them getting up from healing. No intelligent enemy likes fighting the same thing over and over again after they brought it down, so it is an intelligent tactic to permanently put down an enemy getting up from healing.I agree that is what a reasonably intelligent enemy would do....
But that kind of means the existence of in combat healing means an enemy should spend an extra action to kill someone they've just downed, to make it harder for them to get back up.
And if your group likes that, great. In my experience, I don't find it fun (as a player) and neither do my friends.
There's a subtle difference between two cases:
* Someone goes down, and the enemy doesn't know/suspect they could get back up again
* Someone goes down, they get healed back up, and go down again
For example, if you're fighting a T-Rex, it doesn't know about your cleric. But if you're fighting a major demon and your cleric has been throwing around a lot of holy smiting magic, it's gonna be more aware.
I also don't like a playstyle where enemies go after downed PCs, and pretty often there isn't a "need" for the GM to do it. But I'm not gonna promise they will never do it.
Healing at the right time is definitely a game skill. Too early and maybe it would've been better to just be doing damage yourself as a healer. Too late and PCs go down to 0 and even if enemies aren't going for the "make sure" killing blow, you're still losing a lot of action economy getting people to stand up, grab weapons again, potentially while dealing with reactive strikes etc. (And of course sometimes you get unlucky and enemies crit more times per round than you were counting on etc.)
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Enemies can also go for the healer...
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For sure.
This is something where you need to balance multiple things:
* The game needs to be somewhat challenging to be fun
* The game needs to not be too spiteful to be fun
* Enemies need to act believably enough not to hinder immersion
* Enemies should not act so rigidly realistic that it breaks fun gameplay or stories.
For example, there's a lot of things you could insist enemies should "realistically" do like finishing off PCs or focusing on the healer. But that's only half realistic; realistic enemies should probably realize that in most encounters they're drastically outmatched and should be trying to get away from the PCs. Basically any encounter that by design is more than 50% likely to be won by the PCs, so any Severe or lower encounter. Even Extreme encounters get won more often than not, but it's dicier and more of a slog.
So we already require enemies to be a bit more suicidal than is really realistic. It's not reasonable to insist that they must act realistic in one unfun way but don't have to act realistic in another unfun way.
I think what we really want is a fun and exciting game that's just believable enough to be immersive. So enemies should certainly respond a bit to player behavior, but not with maximum attempts from the GM to inflict expensive long term damage.
I like it when the players get a bit involved in giving me good excuses not to do that. If someone goes down and nobody tries to help, ok that's grim. But if there's another PC who actually makes sure they're also in striking range of that enemy, and who taunts them a bit, well that can buy a bit of time.
There's a subtle difference between two cases:* Someone goes down, and the enemy doesn't know/suspect they could get back up again
* Someone goes down, they get healed back up, and go down again
For example, if you're fighting a T-Rex, it doesn't know about your cleric. But if you're fighting a major demon and your cleric has been throwing around a lot of holy smiting magic, it's gonna be more aware.
I also don't like a playstyle where enemies go after downed PCs, and pretty often there isn't a "need" for the GM to do it. But I'm not gonna promise they will never do it.
Most of the time, I agree. But there's some enemies where it simply doesn't make sense for them not to. Smart enemies that are aware of the healer should either try to shut down the healer or try to prevent people from getting back up, because anything else just makes them look incompetent. Likewise with say cultists of Norgorber whose entire goal is to kill you to please their God: them deciding to specifically NOT kill you defies the entire stated reason that they're there.
At this point the party tactics need to include screening the healer so they're hard to attack and drawing attention away from the downed PC so the enemies need to focus on those that are still up. If a PC tries something to protect a downed PC (even just hurling insults or such), I'll factor that in because saving your friend with a well-timed insult creates a pretty awesome table moment.
Enemies that are trying to take prisoners, or simply create a situation where they can escape (because they want to live) are totally different and taking out threats is usually going to make more sense then killing someone who is down. I also have a group of PCs who have a reputation for NOT killing enemies and those that know about it may conclude that in a fight with this group, killing someone who is down may make them respond in kind whereas if the fight goes south and no one is dead, surrender and self-preservation are on the table. Especially if they're being attacked by the PCs: the NPC goal in this situation might just be to escape or survive and dropping people is just as effective at that as killing is, without creating a desire for vengeance.
But if the BBEG isn't willing to kill you so you stop thwarting their plans, it's kind of hard to believe they're actually a threat.
It's very much a "know your players" situation to determine just how often NPCs should be willing to go for the kill, but it's pretty rare for me to take it off the table entirely.
For example, there's a lot of things you could insist enemies should "realistically" do like finishing off PCs or focusing on the healer.
Unless they're humanoid, I consider enemies can't tell if the PCs have a healer and who's the healer. But once the healer heals someone for a good chunk of hps... I make enemies react to PCs actions. A Demoralized enemy will tend to avoid attacking the PC who demoralized them, a Bon Mot attracts a lot of attention, healing, too, etc...
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Most of the time, I agree. But there's some enemies where it simply doesn't make sense for them not to. Smart enemies that are aware of the healer should either try to shut down the healer or try to prevent people from getting back up, because anything else just makes them look incompetent. Likewise with say cultists of Norgorber whose entire goal is to kill you to please their God: them deciding to specifically NOT kill you defies the entire stated reason that they're there.
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But if the BBEG isn't willing to kill you so you stop thwarting their plans, it's kind of hard to believe they're actually a threat.
It's not "unwilling to kill," it's "not going to waste time murdering someone while there are people actively attacking you."
Even with the more murderous enemies you describe, it generally makes more sense for them to focus on active threats and then to go back to do the murder once that's done. They're not deciding not to kill you, they're holding off for 30 seconds because another issue is more pressing (not getting killed themselves).
And that's for enemies where killing is the objective. There's plenty who are "willing to kill" but aren't going out of their way for it--like the PCs themselves, in most cases.
Most of the time, I agree. But there's some enemies where it simply doesn't make sense for them not to. Smart enemies that are aware of the healer should either try to shut down the healer or try to prevent people from getting back up, because anything else just makes them look incompetent. Likewise with say cultists of Norgorber whose entire goal is to kill you to please their God: them deciding to specifically NOT kill you defies the entire stated reason that they're there.
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But if the BBEG isn't willing to kill you so you stop thwarting their plans, it's kind of hard to believe they're actually a threat.
It's not "unwilling to kill," it's "not going to waste time murdering someone while there are people actively attacking you."
Even with the more murderous enemies you describe, it generally makes more sense for them to focus on active threats and then to go back to do the murder once that's done. They're not deciding not to kill you, they're holding off for 30 seconds because another issue is more pressing (not getting killed themselves).
And that's for enemies where killing is the objective. There's plenty who are "willing to kill" but aren't going out of their way for it--like the PCs themselves, in most cases.
Not when they know the party has a healer and any downed PC will get back up. You're not neutralizing threats if you move on to someone else and let the downed person get up to start attacking you again. Moving on at that point is a great way to find yourself surrounded shortly thereafter.
At that point if the NPC's goal is to kill them, they need to actually go for the kill to keep the downed PC down.