Overwhelming Presence

[The Total Package]

The spell states:

You surround yourself with supernatural splendor, appearing to be a god or similarly majestic being, with an appearance, regalia, and iconography of your choice. Targets must attempt a Will save. Regardless of the outcome, the target is then temporarily immune for 1 minute.

Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target must pay tribute to you two times. Paying tribute requires that the target spend a single action, which has either the move trait (as they bow) or manipulate trait (as they offer up a token in their hands). They must pay tribute at least once on each of their turns, if possible. While affected, the target is fascinated by you and can't use hostile actions against you.
Failure As success, but the target must pay tribute a total of six times.
Critical Failure As failure, but the target must spend all its actions paying tribute, and they cannot take other actions until the tribute is fully paid.

My question is, does the fascinated condition automatically drop-off once you or one of your allies takes a hostile action against the enemy?

[NorrKnekten]

Don't think there is any explicit answer to that, There are however two lines of thought depending on how you read "While affected, The target is fascinated"

Either it functions like Stunned with a duration, or an effect like evil-eye. Both of which shut down the normal means of reducing or removing the condition while the effect is active. "While affected" is different from "When affected" and "While Affected" is a continuous statement

Or, The fascination ends because the above is litterary just a matter of how one reads the text and there is nothing explicit in wether or not the condition remains, Either way they still cannot take hostile actions until tribute is paid.

[TheFinish]

The Total Package wrote:

The spell states:

You surround yourself with supernatural splendor, appearing to be a god or similarly majestic being, with an appearance, regalia, and iconography of your choice. Targets must attempt a Will save. Regardless of the outcome, the target is then temporarily immune for 1 minute.

Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target must pay tribute to you two times. Paying tribute requires that the target spend a single action, which has either the move trait (as they bow) or manipulate trait (as they offer up a token in their hands). They must pay tribute at least once on each of their turns, if possible. While affected, the target is fascinated by you and can't use hostile actions against you.
Failure As success, but the target must pay tribute a total of six times.
Critical Failure As failure, but the target must spend all its actions paying tribute, and they cannot take other actions until the tribute is fully paid.

My question is, does the fascinated condition automatically drop-off once you or one of your allies takes a hostile action against the enemy?

Yes, it does. Fascinated immediately ends if you do a hostile action against the Fascinated enemy or that enemy's allies. This spell doesn't change that. If you don't use hostile actions, Fascinated lasts as long as the spell lasts (aka, until tribute is paid in full).

The secondary effect of the target being unable to use hostile actions against you does persist for the whole duration of the spell though.

It's common for this to happen with spells. Fascinated, as a condition, has no end state beyond hostile activity. It can go on forever. The spell adds an end state (Fascinated ends when the spell ends) and keeps the original break condition (hostile actions). It's very similar to the Confusion spell: just because the spell says you're Confused for 1 minute on Failure and Critical Failure doesn't mean you can't slap someone out early by damaging them, per the Confused rules. It just means if you don't manage to do it, the confused condition goes away in 1 minute.

[Falco271]

It reads as if this spell overrules the standard fascinated effect. Normally it is removed when a hostile action is taken. In case of this spell, while tribute hasn't been paid in full, the target stays fascinated.

A second factor is the level of this spell. If it would be a normal fascinated effect, this spell would not be 9th level. It would likely end immediately.

This condition ends if a creature uses hostile actions against you or any of your allies.

[NorrKnekten]

There's obviously going to be different readings and we have no idea of knowing what the intention is. So table variation is expected.

But what Falco is touching upon is the gist of it.
The distinction between "You are fascinated" vs "You gain the fascinated condition". Or as is touched very lightly upon in the book. The difference between gaining a condition and one being imposed upon you.

This falls in under an earlier clarification on how conditions work by placing them into two categories.

*Conditions that have a way to end them by default last for their normal duration or keep the conditions to end them, Unless otherwise stated.
*Conditions that always need to include a duration because they don’t have a normal way to recover from them, These end when the effect that gave them do, or another duration specified.

In Overwhelming Presence, the condition is baked into the spell effect — and if someone attacks you, the spell still says you are fascinated until the effect ends. If removed, You are still affected by the spell. And since the spell states that while affected, you are fascinated. That very much reads as an "Unless otherwise stated" clause, but there is ambiguity as to if it is intended to be. Expect table variation.

[TheFinish]

NorrKnekten wrote:

There's obviously going to be different readings and we have no idea of knowing what the intention is. So table variation is expected.

But what Falco is touching upon is the gist of it.
The distinction between "You are fascinated" vs "You gain the fascinated condition". Or as is touched very lightly upon in the book. The difference between gaining a condition and one being imposed upon you.

This falls in under an earlier clarification on how conditions work by placing them into two categories.

*Conditions that have a way to end them by default last for their normal duration or keep the conditions to end them, Unless otherwise stated.
*Conditions that always need to include a duration because they don’t have a normal way to recover from them, These end when the effect that gave them do, or another duration specified.

In Overwhelming Presence, the condition is baked into the spell effect — and if someone attacks you, the spell still says you are fascinated until the effect ends. If removed, You are still affected by the spell. And since the spell states that while affected, you are fascinated. That very much reads as an "Unless otherwise stated" clause, but there is ambiguity as to if it is intended to be. Expect table variation.

I really don't think there is a difference between "You're fascinated" vs "You gain the fascinated condition". It's basically the same thing.

Compare Overwhelming Presence with a spell like Burning Blossoms or a feat like Fearful Symmetry. Both of them use the same language as Overwhelming Presence (the target is fascinated) but both of them also call out exceptions to how the fascinated condition normally works.

Or, again, Confusion. Confusion states in Failure and Critical Failure "The target is confused for 1 minute", and 1 minute is the duration of the spell. Does that mean you can't end it early by damaging the target and having them succeed a DC 11 flat check?

[NorrKnekten]

But for Overwhelming Presence it isn't just "You are fascinated" or "The target is Fascinated". It's "While affected, You are fascinated" and thats probably the most important distinction for this. And also why i'm not arguing for any change in how the condition works within the Confusion spell.

Linguistically, and logically. There absolutely is a difference between "On failure: target is fascinated for a minute" and "While affected, the target is fascinated". This has implications which causes different meanings.

The former is a single event, and thus carries the same meaning as "you gain the condition" or "You become Fascinated" But the latter is an ongoing conditional statement and thus is closer to "You have the condition until 'this' no longer is true".

So it really isn't a fair comparison.

A proper comparison where the language is the same however would be Vibrant pattern or Confusing Colors which does use both sets language. Dazzled while inside the area, and fascinated/blinded as a result of the save. If we move away from Fascinated and instead look at effects that cause conditions with values. Frighten, sickened and so on. Then we see both phrases but in different forms within the exact same sentences.

"The target becomes frightened 1, while the spell is active the conditions value cannot be reduced below 1".
"The creature is sickened 1 and slowed 1 'while in'/'until they leave' the cloud."
"The creature takes 1 persistent poison damage and is sickened 1 as long as it takes this persistent damage."

Without clarifying text, Such as Condition cannot be removed/reduced, Then we have the same ambiguity as with Overwhelming Presence. These conditions last until their duration runs out or conditions invalidate them, Such as Condition Value reduced to zero or otherwise ending. but with the big asterix of "Unless otherwise stated"

And all three examples given can absolutely be read as an "unless otherwise stated" clause because the meaning of each scentence absolutely carries such implication. It is also one of those interactions that has never recieved a clarification, errata or otherwise been touched upon. So we just don't know the intention.

[Perses13]

When I've seen this in play, both by the party and against the party, our table went with the ruling that the fascinated condition could end normally.

Since the other effects of the spell (the tribute and no hostile actions) weren't a consequence of the fascinated condition, the spell was still very useful for our ally who cast it, and really annoying when some sort of Darklands ooze god cast it on us.