I am having a hard time finding a source for a ruling. I am playing a character that heavily focuses on grappling (took the wrestler archetype and everything). My character's ideal strategy is to tumble through the front-line and use their high speed to make it into the back-line and grapple a caster or other high-value target. We go through an encounter and I find myself in a position to do that very thing. I get a nat 20 and critically succeed. While using the grapple maneuver, that means the target is restrained for a round. Another player reminds the GM that boss mobs (and this was the boss of this part of the Adventure Path) treat all status conditions as if they are one step lower (critical success becomes a success, success becomes failure, etc.) So instead of being restrained, they only become grabbed. They proceed to cast sleep on me and I fail the roll and am out of the combat for 5 rounds until someone wakes me up and everything is basically over.
This is the first time I have heard anything about "boss" mobs being able to shrug off status conditions. I am familiar with the **incapacitate** trait on abilities and how that interacts with higher level characters. The basic grapple action does not have this trait.
What I am trying to figure out is if this is a rule that is printed somewhere I cannot find or if it is a house rule designed to make boss encounters more threatening. The GM and other players at the table made it sound like it is an official rule, but I cannot find it anywhere. Any rules lawyers here able to provide a source?
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Baarogue is right. There simply is no such rule, unless it's a houserule.
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No such rule exists. There is something like that in 5E, but not in PF2.
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It is true that solo bosses can kinda feel like they have that ability as they tend to succeed on 6's and crit on 15's or take 15s on the dice to even be hit. But that is just due to their high numbers,
Any such rule would make a severe or extreme solo boss fight an almost guaranteed TPK. Well, unless EVERYBODY had Force Barrage :-)
I'm assuming the player that was "helping" was incorrectly remember how the Incapacitate trait works.
Incapacitation says:
An ability with this trait can take a character completely out of the fight or even kill them, and it’s harder to use on a more powerful character. If a spell has the incapacitation trait, any creature of more than twice the spell’s rank treats the result of their check to prevent being incapacitated by the spell as one degree of success better, or the result of any check the spellcaster made to incapacitate them as one degree of success worse. If any other effect has the incapacitation trait, a creature of higher level than the item, creature, or hazard generating the effect gains the same benefits.
Which effectively means that a character higher level than the party (a "boss") gets one degree of success better on saves against spells. This means they never critical fail on an incapacitation spell, and if they succeed they critical succeed. Other effects have the effectiveness reduced by one tier (that is to say when players roll instead of the NPC the players degree of success is reduced by 1 tier, and when the NPC rolls their degree of success is increased by 1 tier).
This can kind of lead someone who doesn't actually understand the rules, to think that boss monsters always get a 1 tier better of success.
But grapple doesn't have the incapacitation trait.
So the other player is just flat wrong. It seems like they believe incapacitation applies to anything that might affect a NPC of a higher level than the party, and that's simply not true.
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Was the sleep spell rank 4? If so, why didn't your party try to wake you up? It should have been trivial.
If it was lower rank, you should have gotten a DC 5 Perception check at the start of each turn to wake up.
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Agreed on the Incapacitation trait rules not applying to things without the Incapacitation trait.
On a side note:
My character's ideal strategy is to tumble through the front-line and use their high speed to make it into the back-line and grapple a caster or other high-value target.
I'm not convinced that this is an ideal strategy. At least not in all cases and scenarios.
Grapple is great, don't get me wrong. The problem is separating yourself from the rest of your team and putting yourself in a position where you will be flanked and focus-fired into oblivion in short order when all of those enemy frontliners do an about-face and hammer you for being offsides.
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Grab/grapple is a nice supplemental ability, but it honestly shouldn't be your main thing. Or at least it shouldn't preclude also making strikes or recklessly charging through the front line to get the "squishy" caster behind. NPCs, whether they're casters or not, are generally not squishy in PF2.
The grabbed condition is nice, but it doesn't shutdown anyone (restrained which only happens on a critical success does mostly shut some down).
Sure, by grabbing the caster they need to make a flat DC 5 check, which they will succeed on 80% of the time. It's not nothing. But it's not worth flying past the enemy melee to try to do, leaving yourself wide open. And you're not going to reliably critically succeed against enemies. Not even casters, because NPCs aren't built using PC rules.
This is not to say grapple isn't good. It is good, but it doesn't work like it did in PF1 where if you successfully grapple anyone it pretty much shut them down completely. The target will still be able to do things, and so will their friends.
So like, the other player was wrong and the GM shouldn't have taken their interpretation.
But also, it probably wouldn't have went well for your character to do what you were planning to do.
But also, the Sleep spell doesn't specifically address what happens if someone harms you but I'd imagine that even with the 4th level version, it's not intended to prevent you from waking up if you're taking damage.
So yeah, your party could have punched you out of a coma.
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So like, the other player was wrong and the GM shouldn't have taken their interpretation.
But also, it probably wouldn't have went well for your character to do what you were planning to do.
But also, the Sleep spell doesn't specifically address what happens if someone harms you but I'd imagine that even with the 4th level version, it's not intended to prevent you from waking up if you're taking damage.
So yeah, your party could have punched you out of a coma.
The 4th level version is decidedly more severe than the 1st level, hence the much shorter duration.
But then you're only out of combat for more than 1 rd on a crit fail.
I could totally see the target not waking up even if damaged while sleeping.
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An update for all. My party members knew they could come shake me awake and decided not to. I took no damage or healing during the time I was asleep. No one brought up the perception checks and I didn't know about it but I will certainly keep that in mind if it comes up again.
For those saying that my strategy isn't great, I am aware. If everyone turns an about face to focus on me, that's precisely what I as a player want. Does it mean I have a high chance of going down, sure. But we are a 5 person party, meaning that if the enemies are blowing their actions on me, we have 12 actions that are almost unopposed to deal with them. Is it reckless, absolutely. Will it end poorly for my character at some point, undoubtedly. But I'm playing a reckless barbarian with a wish to die gloriously on the battlefield so if that happens, mission accomplished.
I've spoken to the player that piped up to remind the GM. They have said that the "boss" rule is some optional, variant rule and that now that he's seen it in action, thinks it is a dumb rule. He apologized for even bringing it up and said I have every right to be salty about the situation. I have also decided that if this comes up again and has just as awful results, I'm leaving the campaign. I find the ruling very unfun and TTRPGs are something I do for fun. If the game isn't fun, I can find something else to do with that time slot in my week.
Sleep is a commonly misunderstood spell. The unconscious condition states that special effects often cause such a deep sleep that no Perception checks are allowed.
However, not only does the sleep spell not state it is one such effect, but it actually clarifies that it does not void the Perception checks, and that this makes the spell near useless in combat.
I think it does have combat uses, though. If the enemy fails a Will save, they get a -4 status penalty and -2 circumstance penalty to AC against one Strike.
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Also fall prone and drop whatever they're holding. And, depending on turn sequence and how the GM handles things, MAY lose a turn
I think it does have combat uses, though. If the enemy fails a Will save, they get a -4 status penalty and -2 circumstance penalty to AC against one Strike.
Actually, the prone and item dropping also only happen at 4th rank or higher, according to the unheightened description.
Yeah, sleep spell is weird in that despite being unconscious the 3rd rank and lower versions don't cause you to fall prone.
The 3rd and lower rank versions are like a "lesser" form of being unconscious.