| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
"If a fortune effect and a misfortune effect would apply to the same roll, the two cancel each other out, and you roll normally." Does this mean that the roll would no longer be able to be affected by a different fortune effect after the two cancel out.
That rule sentence alone doesn't specify either way. But this rule does:
You can never have more than one fortune effect alter a single roll.
Just because the 'double dice' effect of the Fortune effect has been cancelled by a Misfortune effect, that doesn't mean that the Fortune effect doesn't have any effect or alter the roll - it's applied effect now is to cancel the Misfortune effect that is also still being applied to the roll.
I think Finoan's judgement here makes sense.
Those spells are still in effect, it's just that they're cancelling each other out. They're not dispelled or negated.
To that end if you had a misfortune effect on you with a long duration and a fortune effect with a short duration, you're at risk of the fortune effect ending and needing to deal with the misfortune still.
Seems like the most sensible way to run it.
That's actually very interesting. It appears that when some debuff has Misfortune trait, it weakens it very much as any Fortune effect (and there are lot of cheap ones) can temporarily cancel it.
Then of course it also prevents benign fortune effects from working making them not stack, but cancel each other...
Well, at least for any checks which are affected by both.That is very much true, Even in reverse. Creatures with fortune effects available to them essentially become immune to Ill Omen. And creatures who readily give misfortune effects make once per day things like Halfling luck, Cat's luck and Read the Stars very unappealing to use.
There are also some wonky behaviors such as how you resolve heropointing an effect that makes you roll twice and keep lowest. Like.. you cannot reroll a roll twice keep lowest because the reroll is supposed to be canceled out, You essentially would need to use heropoints to cancel out before rolling.
Assuming you're asking "How would using a hero point to reroll the save on Ill Omen work?" my answer is it work normally. You aren't under the effects of Ill Omen (yet) when you attempt to use a Hero Point to avoid it.
Or do you mean "You're under the effect of Ill Omen, and make an attack roll or skill check and would like to reroll it by using a Hero Point, what happens?"
After thinking on this more, I'm pretty sure the second one is your question. And my ruling would be you:
1) Roll the attack/skill check and per Ill Omen you roll twice take lowest
2) Seeing the result, you decide to use a Hero Point
3) Hero Point and Ill Omen cancel each other out, the effect of Ill Omen is suppressed....now here's where it gets weird because to your point the Hero Point (fortune effect) is what's granting another roll which is theoretically cancelled by the existence of a Misfortune efect....
4) So my ruling is you still need to roll and you use that second roll.
5) Am I sure that's the intention? No, but as a GM you just have to make some stuff up. Because Hero Point are used in reaction (not the action type) to failing a check there's no innately correct way.
6) The other potential ruling I could see is that the GM rules you need to preemptively use the Hero Point to cancel the misfortune effect and get a normal roll. I wouldn't do this because Hero Points are a limited resource and I feel like they should get to break the rules a little bit. This is the players chance to break bad dice rolls and fight back against RNG. Ultimately to me this ruling just feels bad and I wouldn't do it, but I can't say it's wrong.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Because Hero Point are used in reaction (not the action type) to failing a check* there's no innately correct way."* To having a low roll you don't like. Before you know the result."
That's what I wanted to write, and then I checked the rules, and not sure anymore: "Spend 1 Hero Point to reroll a check. You must use the second result. This is a fortune effect (which means you can't use more than 1 Hero Point on a check)."
So... Before you know the result (degree of success) or possibly also after it? What does 'reroll' mean in this case?
I feel like you're trying to add additional meaning that isn't there.
Reroll means to roll again.
When I read the rule on hero points, there's no condition related to knowing or not knowing the outcome/result. From a practical standpoint, while you may not know the result, you know the die roll and can infer pretty well what the result is in a lot of cases.
Anyways, as far as I can tell there's no restriction on deciding when to use a hero point for a reroll other than not having finished resolving that particular roll/check. Like if the game has moved on, as a GM I'm not going back. But otherwise as far as I can tell from the rules, there's not a restriction on its use.
Assuming you're asking "How would using a hero point to reroll the save on Ill Omen work?" my answer is it work normally. You aren't under the effects of Ill Omen (yet) when you attempt to use a Hero Point to avoid it.
Or do you mean "You're under the effect of Ill Omen, and make an attack roll or skill check and would like to reroll it by using a Hero Point, what happens?"
It is indeed the latter i mean, If you roll a check while under a misfortune effect you by RAW cannot reroll it as the misfortune effect would cancel out the reroll, But the misfortune effect would also need to be canceled out. Which is the source of the wonky behavior.
My view on what is more 'correct', by an entirely subjective standard is that you either can't reroll an already rolled misfortune effect, or you would be using the starting dice after the cancelation...essentially retconning the misfortune into what the check would've been on a normal roll.
So if you rolled twice and keep the lowest, then you keep the first dice after a hero point, And if you were forced to reroll a successful check and then failed you could use the heropoint to keep the first roll.
I'm not sure if PFS allows to reroll checks that were under the effects of misfortune.. but thats the foundry implementation.
It's wonky only because Hero Points are essentially used as a reaction. Other fortune effects (particularly from spells) would already be in place and cancel the effects Ill Omen resulting in a normal roll.
Because of this, I lean toward Hero Points for rerolls work in this case because they're a very limited resource, and saying you couldn't use them at all feels Too Bad To Be True. Then the question is how do you want to implement their use? It's not unreasonable to say in this special case, you need to decide before you roll to use it effectively cancel the Misfortune of Ill Omen, resulting in a single roll. The way I'd probably implement it in my games, would basically be you get a single additional roll that you must use. Which basically means that Hero Points work kind of as normal. I guess a 3rd possible ruling would be that you get to see both rolls (from Ill Omen) and can then decide to use a Hero Point and "cancel" the effect of Misforune forcing you to use the first roll.
Hmmm...as I think about this more maybe the best way is to rule that players need to decide to use a Hero Point to cancel misfortune effects that cause you to roll twice and take worse before rolling at all.
I don't love it, but the other two options are kind of awkward.
Yeah, thats the position I have to, Every reasonable option is either akward or conflicting with the rules.
I also don't think we should base the discussion around Hero Points rather than fortune effects in general, especially as we do have fortune effects which arent as limited but are still reactions to rolled dice or failed checks, The halfling luck featline becomes once per hour at level 13, Bards have Counter Performance at level 1. Grit and Tenacity from Gunslinger. Theres quite a lot of fortune effects that let you reroll if we start looking at feats.
That's fair, the fact that there are a fair number of fortune effects that occur as reactions makes it important to establish a ruling, but also makes it more complicated to establish what should happen.
For example, Halfling Luck is a reaction that triggers on a failed save. Should a halfling be unable to use this ability if cursed with a Misfortune effect that affects saves? The halfling can't choose to use it preemptively. And it's clearly making the ability worse if you rule they have to use it preemptively in this case.
Alright, I'm back to deciding what is most in favor of the players which is Fortune effect reactions can be used in their typical fashion (as a reaction) and will cancel out the misfortune effect. I wouldn't rule that it goes back to the very first roll, because a player would already know the outcome and have a pretty good idea of knowing whether or not it would be worth using it in the first place. If for instance the first roll is a 2 and second roll is a 10, they wouldn't bother if using the Fortune effect just locked them into the first roll. I think you have to give a new roll, even though that doesn't really cancel the Misfortune effect and basically just allows the Fortune effect to resolve normally....but lacking any other official guidance this would be my preference.
Especially if we consider that this goes both ways so by letting Misfortune be unable to properly cancel fortune we just make misfortune effects worse.
Indeed, though that's what I'm going for because I think that's generally in the players favor unless you have a player who is focusing on Misfortune effects.
And I understand your logic, it just doesn't fit neatly with Fortune effects as a reaction either.
All the routes have things that make not like any of the solutions.
There's a rather huge hole in this. People don't roll 'first' and 'second' rolls in such cases. They take two dice and roll both at the same time, irrelevant whether they plan to play a fortune or misfortune effect. Which of them is first and which second?
This could work if everyone declared first which dice is which in all cases or when there's a chance of (mis)fortune effects. But this takes a change in gameflow and concentration. And people will still sometimes forget to do this I suspect.
Maybe that's how you're supposed to do, though I don't think that's spelled out clearly anywhere, but I can tell you I doubt ALL tables are doing it that way. At my table, people mostly have 1 d20 out ready to roll (not that they don't have others, but we only have one out). And so even if we have a second d20, it's typically faster to just roll it twice sequentially, rather than go grab the second die to roll 2 at the same time.
Nor do my groups actually use more than one d20 per person.
Strange... Around me most people have at least 2 sets, and this number only grows in time :) I have four (or five?...), and I concider myself temperate :D (Well, actually 6[7?], but another two are for my players when I GM) This also helps a lot at high levels when you need a ton of dice for damage.
So, yes, (mis)fortune, flat checks, several attacks in a row or special attacks with several strikes - everywhere people throw several d20 at once (though obviously in many cases they do indicate which is which already, in case of flat checks and MAP attacks for example).
It's interesting, because of all those things you just mentioned my group explicitly prefers not rolling multiple dice at once so we can be clear about exactly which thing you're doing and which die is connected to it. As a GM, I will stop people from rolling multiple dice at once because I want to be clear about which action is linked to which die.
I suppose there is also another thing since it goes both ways... Should we really let that behavior be the same if we swap it around and have a reactionary misfortune effect?
Well, this has a simple solution, if you're the GM, don't do that.
As long as the GM is on board, we can make rules that would be disadvantageous to players under certain circumstances, by not using them as a GM.
It's really not too hard if you know a player is under a fortune effect, to simply not use the NPC misfortune reaction ability. Even if the ability is usable every round, there are probably other actions/PCs you can target and just not create this issue in the first place.
But yes, in the event every PC is under a fortune effect I would as a GM have it work the same way, but I'd typically try not to create the situation.
I suppose there is also another thing since it goes both ways... Should we really let that behavior be the same if we swap it around and have a reactionary misfortune effect?
If a lizardfolk used Read the Stars and rolled two nat 20s, But a creature reacted with a misfortune effect, If we reroll and get anything less than a crit the lizardfolk have just wasted a powerful once per day effect while still facing the misfortune(Maybe slightly mitigated if it was a reroll and keep the worse result as you just accept the new result instead).
But yeah. just as a finishing note.
Option 1: Cant apply mis/for after the roll is made. (easy to adjudicate but makes misfortune and creature fortune unavoidable after the fact even with forced rerolls)
Option 2: Can apply mis/for but would need to do so before roll (Not quite RAW but avoids any 'retconning' otherwise needed)
Option 3: Apply mis/for after as normal, Still reroll and use new roll (Avoids retconning but mis/for don't cancel eachother proper here, can cause issues and frustration)
Option 4: as 3, but use the first dice result made when resolving the check (Probably most RAW accurate as the result of the check becomes what it would've been before the initial effect, but players know the result they will get when canceling the initial effect)They all really do have pros and cons so it depends on the table as a whole, I prefer 4, I have seen variations of it in which they flip a coin to determine which result is the "first" but that just introduces the cons of option 3 but at no benefits to the player. 50% chance I still keep lowest? no thank you.
I mostly agree with your summary, and I'd personally run it as option 3 (which is generally in the players favor) with a helping of not using NPC misfortune reactions against PCs under a fortune effect.
I will say, I don't think option 1 is a legitimate option, that's just ruling that Fortune/Misfortune abilities don't work against someone under the influence of the opposite kind of effect, which is definitely not intended. Otherwise by your wording, it just becomes option 2 where you have to decide to use the cancelling effect before the roll is made.
This is more about setting a standard that works both ways rather than presenting GM & Player as adversaries with different rules, which helps noone and brings confusion.
If we rule that the secondary effect being the reaction reroll, isnt fully canceled... then that should be the standard regardless if the reroll is fortune or misfortune when being applied to cancel an opposite effect.
And that standard should also be independent on it being;
Applied by PC or NPC,
Self targeting to cancel a negative effect or if they are being targeted to cancel a positive or negative effect,
And wether or not the secondary effect is being applied by an ally or hostile.
Nah, I don't agree at all. Trying to have rules parity on both sides creates this idea of being fair, but isn't actually necessary to have a good game and is honestly more harmful than helpful in my opinion.
Sorry but I completely reject the above (bolded) ideas.
The GM isn't an adversary, but they are the story teller but also play the antagonists of the story. Ultimately the GM's role is to facilitate a fun story that everyone enjoys. Having "completely equal and fair rules" aren't necessary to achieve that goal. We already see that in the rules for how to build NPCs. We're not supposed to build humanoid NPCs using PC building rules because it introduces more problems than it solves. Non-Humanoid NPC building rules also result in pure numbers that PCs can't achieve at the same level, because PCs and NPCs have different roles in the story. PCs are numerically inferior to NPCs, but have many more options to adjust the situation in their favor. NPCs typically have very limited options, PCs just have to find a way to engage the NPC outside of where the excel and suddenly their numerical superiority stops being relevant.
I think in corner cases like this, trying to make "completely fair, equal, balanced rules" just leads to unsatisfying outcome for players.
If your players like "hard mode" then sure, go ahead and use Misfortune reaction effects to ruin their day.
PC use of fortune/misfortune effects is likely to be much more common than with NPCs anyways. If a PC has them at all, they're going to come up often as opposed to mostly constantly rotating cast of enemies with varying abilities. So even if you rule option 3, it's going to typically favor PCs because NPC wont typically have access to Misfortune/Fortune effects. In the rare cases that does come up, you can apply it "fairly" or your can "pull punches".
I mean to that end, Option 3 absolutely works and can run equally from both sides it just kind of means whatever the last thing to be applied kind of causes you to ignore the previous things existence.
Option 1/2 has the problem of denying players their ability or deny it's use as a reaction. For me as a player that would be very upsetting since getting to see the result you got, and then choosing to reroll it is a big part of the appeal. Especially on limited use abilities. Like even under a Misfortune effect that has you roll twice and take the worst, you might roll a 15 and 18 and decide you're good with that, and not want to use a limited use ability. So forcing someone to use that ability preemptively to cancel the Misfortune would be very grating to me as a player.
Option 3 effectively doesn't cancel the other ability, and just negates it affect and gets you another role. Very good for whoever is using the reaction ability.
Option 4 locks you into whatever the first die might have been, meaning you have a fair idea of whether it makes sense to even try to use your limited use ability to counter the effect. Like if you roll a 19 and a 4 you probably want to use it. But if you roll a 4 and then a 19, you wouldn't bother. It also comes up against the table preference issue of rolling multiple dice simultaneously vs rolling a single die sequentially.
They're all bad for various reason.
To me, option 3 has the best potentially to favor players as there aren't that many NPCs that have Fortune/Misfortune effects for it to be impactful.
I don't treat Hero Points as being part of the "Fortune and Misfortune cancel each other" interaction. Hero Points don't actually have the Fortune trait. (At least, looking in Archives of Nethys, the word "Fortune" doesn't appear anywhere in the explanation of how Hero Points work.)
So if a player has a misfortune effect that requires rolling two dice and taking the lowest, and after seeing the result, wants to spend a Hero Point, I believe they can. (Not so sure whether they still have to roll two dice take the lowest if they're still under that misfortune effect, however.)
Yep, all of the options have a reason they suck.
You just have to choose whichever option your group thinks sucks the least, or rather which very of sucking is the most acceptable.
I choose option 3 because it more likely that players will use reactionary powers and option 3 gives the most benefit to the person using a reaction. And I can decide as a GM whether or not if an enemy has a misfortune effect to use it in the same way (to cancel and get a reroll) or not.