Okay can we get clear on Anoint Ally though before this circles around forever – this ability does not require an encounter action to use, as you can repeat it endlessly during exploration since there's no limit and thus you can always start encounters with it already active if you so choose.
It has a duration of 1 minute; using it outside of encounters runs the risk of having it run out early unless you're prebuffing right outside the encounter, which is not a likely occurrence. Is that what you're suggesting?
For the record, The Slithering is a fan's favorite and actually includes "lots of oozes".
Two big PF2e campaigns, Blood Lords and I believe Season of Ghost, include lots of undead.
Wardens of Wildwood is advertised as lots of animals, druids and wood beasts (cannot vouch for it, didn't play it yet).
Triumph of the tusk is basically all orcs.
And converting things like Wrath of the Righteous will make you expect lots of demons.
So knowing this beforehand is actually a big help - in an ooze scenario, an occult caster will lose some steam; in an undead scenario, a holy divine caster will shine while a wit swashbuckler might fall short both mechanically and flavor-wise (if only you could insult undeads monkey-island style !).
Okay can we get clear on Anoint Ally though before this circles around forever – this ability does not require an encounter action to use, as you can repeat it endlessly during exploration since there's no limit and thus you can always start encounters with it already active if you so choose. You can't do the same with vessel spells, or channeler's stance, or generally any of the 'setup' actions that have been proposed for the Animist.
Of course it's fair to acknowledge that this will take your exploration action at some tables, but that doesn't matter for a comparison that strictly looks at blasting capability. It's not some sort of bias towards the sorcerer, the setup just actually works differently (i.e., much more conveniently).
It's pretty easy to pre-buff with. The arcane Explosion of Power is force damage which isn't very resisted. Anoint Ally is a 1 action at will ability that lasts a minute with no cost other than the 1 action.
The big plus of it with an Imperial Sorc is it activates off Ancestral Memories which shifts spell success in your favor. So you launch a big damage spell while explosion of power goes off with Sorcerous Potency and a reduced save by the enemy or enemies. It is an absolutely brutal combination.
If you don't want to use Ancestry Memories, you could use two spells that are bloodline spells with Quicken and launch two blast spells that activate explosion of power so in a single round get a blast spell plus level damage and a blast-2 levels plus Level-2 damage plus two explosion s of power. This can all get pretty insane.
At high level not a whole lot of hit points left of just about anything you hit after that combination, especially if they crit fail a save. They could of course get lucky on the save and you suck. But I haven't seen that happen too often. Usually that combination is an absolute destroyer of enemies.
For the record, The Slithering is a fan's favorite and actually includes "lots of oozes".
I have genuinely never even heard of the Slithering until now, so this is good to know -- except looking at these APs still, it's still a lot more than singular monster families. I did mention that sometimes you can prep players with things like "don't over-rely on void damage", which makes sense for Blood Lords, but the game of resistances and immunities isn't meant to be solved at character creation. In fact, nothing in PF2e is meant to be solved at character creation, that's an intentional departure from 1e.
No, I'm suggesting doing it either roughly every 30 seconds if the GM will let that fly without spending your exploration action on it (guarantees at least 5 rounds uptime in an encounter), or every 6 seconds otherwise.
So you are telling me, in genuine seriousness, that your exploration strategy as a Sorcerer is to continually poke one of your allies every 6 seconds and expect your GM to let this fly without enemies reacting at all to some mage loudly and repeatedly anointing their ally across their dungeon? Because I don't see any GM letting this fly, and if a player tried doing this at my table I would give them warnings to stop, not because it'd make the Sorcerer too good at blasting, but because it'd be repetitious, irritating to constantly track, and a clear attempt to twist the original mechanic out of shape. Given that the anointment requires a drop of blood, I would also say it's not terribly sensible for a Sorcerer to bleed themselves dry just for this purpose.
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In our games, we don't allow "permanent" anoint ally, but we do allow it before opening a door in a dungeon or entering a shady place.
"I'm doing Anoint Ally every 6 seconds" won't work, but "Ok, so we hear raucous laughter behind this door, there might be a few bugbears there, I use Anoint Ally on our champion before he bursts the door open" makes perfect sense.
In our games, we don't allow "permanent" anoint ally, but we do allow it before opening a door in a dungeon or entering a shady place.
"I'm doing Anoint Ally every 6 seconds" won't work, but "Ok, so we hear raucous laughter behind this door, there might be a few bugbears there, I use Anoint Ally on our champion before he bursts the door open" makes perfect sense.
This is how we do it as well.
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As others are starting to admit, even proponents of prebuffing with Anoint Ally would only deem it reasonable in the case where an encounter is imminent and telegraphed, only a small subset of total encounters. Flavor is a part of mechanics, and if you deem it reasonable for the Sorcerer to bleed themselves and anoint an ally every 6 seconds to pre-buff in an extremely metagamey way, it stands to reason you’d probably want to realize how much blood your character is losing for this extremely metagamey tactic.
You could if you wanted to get an AC such as a bird and put Anoint Ally on them with the sole purpose of sending them stand next to things to blow up. Players in general like to put it on a PC ally because not many sorcs get AC. If you had free archetype or wanted to use Anoint Ally better, an AC works just as well.
If you use Anoint Ally on a mature AC, you can anoint it and have it move then blow up all in one round.
There are ways to set it up that are very efficient.
I don't understand the charge of metagaming here. What is the player knowledge that is being used in a problematic way here which the character wouldn't have access to? Is it just that there is an expectation of upcoming combat encounters? Because then using Defend also is metagaming. Otherwise, please elaborate.
If the DM allows it, you can do it. I don't see why not. Anoint Ally has the manipulate trait, so there is no real sound. DM could technically say you run out of blood. That would be funny.
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To me, it's more about suspension of disbelief.
It's easy to envision a champion doing the defend action, we've seen it many times in movies and books. It's just a guy moving cautiously with his shield raised.
It's a bit harder to envision a sorcerer sticking next to his buddy, cutting his own finger every six seconds to draw a rune on his back. Sounds ridiculous, looks ridiculous, and would probably be impossible to do for more than a couple minutes without losing focus somehow.
So yeah, mechanically a DM could allow it, and more power you if he does. But a lot of tables (including mine and it seems Deriven's and Yellowpete's as well) might not let it fly.
Being able to use it on short notice when you know a fight is coming is pretty powerful anyway - especially in dungeon crawling, where you usually scout ahead and have the jump on mobs.
What I believe no GM will allow, though, is having it on you in more social situations. If you're talking with the bandit chieftain and are expecting trouble, the simple fact of drawing a bloody rune on your friend might cut the conversation short.
I don't understand the charge of metagaming here. What is the player knowledge that is being used in a problematic way here which the character wouldn't have access to? Is it just that there is an expectation of upcoming combat encounters? Because then using Defend also is metagaming. Otherwise, please elaborate.
Your strategy relies on knowing that combat is turn-based and that turns last around 6 seconds. It’s pretty self-evident that characters in-game would not be aware of this knowledge, and most people would be unwilling to hemorrhage for hours on end just to get an exact 54 seconds of uptime on a combat ability, which would be particularly awkward during social interactions to boot.
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I think the key point is that Defend is an exploration activity, Annoint Ally is not. Defend gives the benefit of having your shield raised but is not the same as Raise Shield. Same relationship between Search and Seek. Annoint Ally does not have an exploration activity that keeps it up at all times.
However, there is this sub-section of exploration activities:
"Improvising New Activities
If a player wants to do something not covered by other rules, here are some guidelines. If the activity is similar to an action someone could use in an encounter, such as Avoid Notice, it usually consists of a single action repeated roughly 10 times per minute (such as using the Sneak action 10 times) or an alternation of actions that works out similarly (such as Search, which alternates Stride and Seek). An activity using a quicker pace, corresponding to roughly 20 actions per minute, might have limited use or cause fatigue, as would one requiring intense concentration.
You might find that a player wants to do something equivalent to spending 3 actions every 6 seconds, just like they would in combat. Characters can exert themselves to this extent in combat only because combat lasts such a short time—such exertion isn’t sustainable over the longer time frame of exploration."
So I think using Annoint Ally as an exploration activity can be ran as RAW but its still early and my coffee hasn't woken my brain up completely yet.
I don't see how periodically using Anoint Ally during exploration relies on knowledge about turn-based combat resolution.
If you didn’t know about turns and their durations, why would you be anointing your ally every 6 seconds? Why not every second or every 47 seconds?
But also, if I'm misunderstanding and it does actually rely on that somehow, does Defend then also rely on that knowledge, since it represents Raising your Shield every 6 seconds? I don't understand how this would create any asymmetry between the two activities.
Are you saying that bleeding yourself out for hours is equivalent to keeping your shield raised?
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Forgive me for using Google AI answers:
Trying to define "a drop":
A single drop of water typically has a volume of approximately 0.05 milliliters (mL).
The new cells are formed in the bone marrow and transported through fine bones to the bloodstream. On a normal basis the rate of loss and reproduction is about 50 millilitres per 24 hours.
That translates to roughly 0.035 mL of blood produced a minute.
Yeah, a drop of blood a minute would actually actively slowly exhaust a typical human of their blood overtime.... I think after an extended period, a realistic penalty is warranted.
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Oh, but further:
Generally, a person can lose up to 10% of their blood volume (approximately 500 milliliters) without feeling any significant effects.
And:
The average adult human body contains about 5 liters of blood, though this volume varies by factors like weight, age, and sex.
So 10% of 5000 mL is 500 mL which is far more than the 50 mL produced in a 24 hr period....
So maybe, the character actually wouldn't suffer any adverse effects from a very slow continuous bleed (1 drop/minute).
I don't think the Anoint Ally feat benefits from having a duration of only one minute and if the purpose of adding that limitation was to prevent people from allowing it to be spammed outside of combat then either it should have been a stance or even a 1 minute cool down between uses. It feels like a mistake to have the one minute limitation exist in a way that requires so much interpretation to play around.
Either just let it be limited to one ally at a time if it is something that can be spammed indefinitely (which is probably how I would house rule it if I had a player trying to do this) or make it "encounter mode only" if it isn't.
Keeping a continually open wound such that you lose even as little as a drop of blood per second will have you lose over 2 liters in half a day, which is usually the amount considered to be fatal. It’s the same principle as when you’re told to fix leaks in your pipes and faucets even if it seems like a slow drip: it adds up, and quicker than you think.
I don't think the Anoint Ally feat benefits from having a duration of only one minute and if the purpose of adding that limitation was to prevent people from allowing it to be spammed outside of combat then either it should have been a stance or even a 1 minute cool down between uses. It feels like a mistake to have the one minute limitation exist in a way that requires so much interpretation to play around.
Either just let it be limited to one ally at a time if it is something that can be spammed indefinitely (which is probably how I would house rule it if I had a player trying to do this) or make it "encounter mode only" if it isn't.
- 10mn duration with no cost would make it so you can actually have it on all the time, except perhaps a few social situations.
- "Encounter-mode only" would prevent you from using it even when you absolutely know there's someone behind that door.
1 minute duration is actually a nice middle ground.
If you didn’t know about turns and their durations, why would you be anointing your ally every 6 seconds? Why not every second or every 47 seconds?The character would find out that they're too slow to do it every second
The action takes around two seconds to perform. This is quite obviously a flimsy excuse to justify metagaming knowledge of turn duration.
Well, let's not mix issues.
I don’t think you understand that this is the issue. Keeping a shield raised while exploring is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Continually opening a wound or keeping a wound continually bleeding is not. You are drawing a false comparison to justify your metagaming, and all to avoid spending a single action in combat.
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Keeping a continually open wound such that you lose even as little as a drop of blood per second will have you lose over 2 liters in half a day, which is usually the amount considered to be fatal. It’s the same principle as when you’re told to fix leaks in your pipes and faucets even if it seems like a slow drip: it adds up, and quicker than you think.
So I think your point here is that, unless the sorcerer has some means of magically extracting a drop of blood without breaking skin, the sorcerer is going to either need to create an open wound significant enough that it won't heal without intervention to regularly supply blood OR they will end up riddled with hundreds of pin pricks over the course of a day which in themselves will likely lead to infection or maybe exhaust the body through forcing it to actively heal multiple small injuries (not sure if that's really a thing). Yeah, I can see that.
The character, in the process of using Anoint Ally as an exploration activity, makes no use of knowledge about purely gamist concepts.
Using the action every 6 seconds exactly does, though, as pointed out already. As seems to be agreed upon as well, this would be quite literally draining for the character too, such that it would not be a particularly appealing strategy in-universe, to once again say nothing of how grossed out most creatures would be of your character continually rubbing your blood all over someone else in social situations. Your strategy is weird both in and out of character.
There is nothing in the feat that says the blood has to be fresh. Everything about the limits of the ability beyond its one minute duration is imaginative speculation. That is fine for players to do when they have to, but there is no reason players should have to do such mental gymnastics for a game ability that they are going to want to use all the time.
There is nothing in the ability that says it’s once a minute duration prevents its constant repeat usage so GMs either have to say “no, because that doesn’t feel right” or “sure” and then make an arbitrary ruling about whether it is happening often enough to work like the defend action or if they want to do something like say that it only lasts for 5 rounds in an encounter as that is an average of what it could be if the sorcerer was doing it every minute. Making up rules for the long term effect it would have on the sorcerer feels like you might as well just say “no, it doesn’t feel right.”
That doesn’t seem necessary for something like this. The vast majority of other things that work like this in the game are stances or spells that have cool downs. But mechanically, it doesn’t really feel like this is an ability that needs any restrictions at all, and I am not sure very many players would even take it if the feat was explicitly “this is an activity you have to do in encounter mode.”
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The very fact that the action has an action cost and a short duration suggests to me that it is intended to mainly be used during an actual combat encounter, not spammed beforehand to bypass those costs and limitations. Using the action before a telegraphed combat I think can be justified, the perma-bleeding not so much.
Also the ability very clearly does not call for fresh blood. The sorcerer could easily have blood in a vial on their belt they are using and just dipping their finger in it. There is no reason to create one specific story of how the ability might work and then project that as rules assumptions.
The 1 action per 6 seconds was mentioned to illustrate why this is certainly justified as an improvised exploration activity, not to imply that the character in-world is somehow executing millisecond-precise actions like a metronome.
Except you tried providing justification for that metronomic precision, so what is the truth? It's clear you're bending over backwards to avoid paying the cost of a single action in combat in a manner that's patently ridiculous.
Sorry but you're heaping nonsense onto nonsense now. I'm not playing a sorcerer in any game, and whatever I do or do not write in this thread would have zero implications on what I could or could not do with one if I did, as that would be a matter of the table/GM and not of the paizo forums. Forget that this accusation is baseless and uncalled for, it's not even coherent.
Okay, let's break this down a little then, starting with the following:
The character would find out that they're too slow to do it every second, and also that this leaves them with no time to do anything else. Likewise, they would know that if the interval is too large, they might be surprised in a moment when the rune is about to fade. So, they do it regularly enough to not be caught without it active, but not so much that it debilitates their ability to move, all based on in-world information they have access to.
This is you trying to provide a narrative justification for a Sorcerer constantly rubbing blood on an ally every few seconds throughout the whole adventuring day, every adventuring day. So no, I'm not "heaping nonsense", I'm pointing out that your own purported strategy is nonsense, not to mention gross and weird. Whether or not you play a Sorcerer, the fact is you're still aggressively pushing this blood-rubbing Sorcerer strat in this argument, despite the fact that even people normally fine with making concessions would not go as far as you are. Even I mentioned that Anoint Ally is a perfectly okay thing to do as a prebuff before entering an encounter you know will happen in the next few seconds, but you are still insisting on pushing this to the extreme, to a degree that breaks immersion and would almost certainly be irritating to deal with at the table.
The 'constantly rubbing blood' part is your own characterization and not mine (nor part of the feat text, which leaves much up to the imagination)
The feat is called "anoint ally" and is described as such:
You forge a mystical connection with an ally using a drop of your blood, allowing them to benefit from your magic. You place a blood rune on an adjacent ally that lasts for 1 minute.
Now to be clear, you're perfectly allowed to be gross and weird at your table if everyone else is cool with it, that's not the main criticism of your strategy. The criticism is that you're relying on this convoluted strategy and a whole lot of rules lawyering all to avoid spending an action in combat, in a manner that does not gel terribly well with the fiction. Contrary to your insistence, constantly bleeding yourself is not equivalent to constantly holding a shield up while exploring -- you may try to argue that they're the same if you completely ignore what these actions entail, but as this thread shows, you typical GM is going to react very differently to one compared to the other. It is not going to be the end of your world if your Sorcerer has to spend an action in combat anointing an ally when they didn't pre-anoint right before a telegraphed combat, and if it really is for you, then consider what it is you're trying to get out of all this.
To me, it's more about suspension of disbelief.
It's easy to envision a champion doing the defend action, we've seen it many times in movies and books. It's just a guy moving cautiously with his shield raised.
It's a bit harder to envision a sorcerer sticking next to his buddy, cutting his own finger every six seconds to draw a rune on his back. Sounds ridiculous, looks ridiculous, and would probably be impossible to do for more than a couple minutes without losing focus somehow.
So yeah, mechanically a DM could allow it, and more power you if he does. But a lot of tables (including mine and it seems Deriven's and Yellowpete's as well) might not let it fly.
Being able to use it on short notice when you know a fight is coming is pretty powerful anyway - especially in dungeon crawling, where you usually scout ahead and have the jump on mobs.
What I believe no GM will allow, though, is having it on you in more social situations. If you're talking with the bandit chieftain and are expecting trouble, the simple fact of drawing a bloody rune on your friend might cut the conversation short.
Blue Frog, have you seen anyone use the AC to position Explosion of Power yet? I think I'm going to try it. It would be nice to hear if anyone has done it as it gives the sorc more power over positioning. Sometimes my players are a pain about positioning.
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If I ran with a player using Annoint Ally as an exploration activity, I'd probably give them drained 1. Otherwise, I don't see any issue with spending an action to slap it on an ally before they open every door with a potential threat on the other side.
This can get more and more hilarious. Days have passed, the sorc is pale, drained 3, feels terrible, his pals all have blood runes all over them.
Sorc is begging for rests and is eating as much food as he can.As they reach the entrance to the dungeon, the fighter is carrying the pale, unconscious sorcerer who has drained all his blood to keep the ally anointed.
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Yeah. I'm not allowing that. The rules may allow it, but it looks crazy in play. Too strange.
Blue Frog, have you seen anyone use the AC to position Explosion of Power yet? I think I'm going to try it. It would be nice to hear if anyone has done it as it gives the sorc more power over positioning. Sometimes my players are a pain about positioning.We haven't done an AC yet, but in the party I was in the plant Eidolon was the usual target, but outside of the other pc's we also had an imp familiar which was a useful target in certain rare usecases.
That's right. Familiars can be used as well. Make them more useful than they are.
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If I ran with a player using Annoint Ally as an exploration activity, I'd probably give them drained 1. Otherwise, I don't see any issue with spending an action to slap it on an ally before they open every door with a potential threat on the other side.This can get more and more hilarious. Days have passed, the sorc is pale, drained 3, feels terrible, his pals all have blood runes all over them.
Sorc is begging for rests and is eating as much food as he can.As they reach the entrance to the dungeon, the fighter is carrying the pale, unconscious sorcerer who has drained all his blood to keep the ally anointed.
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Yeah. I'm not allowing that. The rules may allow it, but it looks crazy in play. Too strange.
XD
All hail Bloodstump, the all powerful bunny wabbit familiar.
All hail Bloodstump, the all powerful bunny wabbit familiar.
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Skeleton Sorcerers smearing people in bone marrow and androids producing nanite runes does sound pretty cool in and of itself, though; I'd hate to neuter the flavor of creating a rune out of your own magic-infused vital essence just because a player wants to do this nonstop in lieu of any actual exploration activity, and wouldn't want to grapple with what that could actually entail.
I'd also be wary of reflavoring this in a manner that doesn't capture the essence of the flavor text as well, because that can have implications elsewhere too. Suppose you're having a tense conversation with one or more creatures that could devolve into a fight at the first sign of hostility: if someone's keeping their shield constantly raised, that's going to be a surefire sign of getting ready for combat and so could trigger a fight... but so would drawing a blood rune on an ally, especially if you're doing it every few seconds. You could reflavor this as maintaining the rune while in close proximity, but if you completely do away with the bit that entails visibly placing a magical blood rune on an adjacent ally, which I'm sure that user would attempt to argue, then we start reaching a point where the action effectively has no roleplaying consequences whatsoever and doesn't trigger any suspicion, when the baseline action very much should.