According to Hide and Sneak, doing anything other than Hide, Sneak, or Step makes you observed (except at GM discretion with a possible Stealth check). If you Strike, you become observed after the Strike. Anything else, you become observed before the action (except at GM discretion).
So if you Create a Diversion then Double Slice an enemy, the GM would have to decide whether or not the Double Slice itself would make the user observed before the Double Slice action? And if not, would the user then become observed after the first Strike?
Why would you create a diversion when you're already presumably hidden from the enemy?
Either way, as a GM I would say you would become observed when creating a diversion (otherwise creating a diversion would automatically fail because they need to see or hear your diversion), but then the diversion create a similar effect to be hidden.
Either way, the second attack of Double Slice I would say definitely doesn't benefit.
As written, You are correct that the attacker becomes observed before performing Double Slice, This is due to how using an activity is not the same as using its subordinate actions, You arent Striking, you are Double slicing.
Agreed on the strict RAW.
And I also agree that it is a troll ruling in this case and would allow the first subordinate Strike to benefit from being hidden.
Similar with Spellstrike - I don't think it qualifies by strict raw (the Strike subordinate action isn't even the first subordinate action, Cast a Spell is), but I think you should be able to Spellstrike from hiding and have the benefits from the hidden condition.
I wouldn't generally allow it if there is something else that happens during the activity before the Strike. Such as Sudden Charge (Stride, Stride, Strike). You can definitely Sudden Charge out of a hiding spot, but you won't benefit from still being hidden when you Strike at the end.
@Errenor: Regarding Spellstrike and Cast a Spell, yes. I mentioned that as well. I'm fine with disagreeing over that. I'll even admit that your way is RAW and mine is a houserule. I do see builds of Magus that are stealthy though. And Spellstrike is a rather tightly bound activity where casting the spell can be considered to be happening simultaneously with the Strike. I think it is a justifiable houserule.
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I would also point out that OP never mentioned anything about Create a Diversion while already hidden. That was a misinterpretation added by Claxon.
In the OP scenario, Create a Diversion is what is being used to cause the Hidden condition for Double Slice.
Why would you create a diversion when you're already presumably hidden from the enemy?
Either way, as a GM I would say you would become observed when creating a diversion (otherwise creating a diversion would automatically fail because they need to see or hear your diversion), but then the diversion create a similar effect to be hidden.
Either way, the second attack of Double Slice I would say definitely doesn't benefit.
Oh, my bad. I meant to include Create a Diversion since it includes the same language. The example I meant to convey was someone Creating a Diversion or Hiding then using something with a subordinate Strike.
I see how this is an issue and I hate it. Thanks for pointing this out. Into the houserule doc it goes, I guess.
Can't imagine they thought that a gunslinger that uses sneak and then does risky reload shouldn't get the off-guard bonus because they reloaded before shooting, but that sure does look like the case by RAW. Also can't imagine they thought a sniper that uses covered reload shouldn't be able to follow it up with Ghost Shot and get off-guard, either. Chalk it up to a case where everybody read what was intended and no one read what was actually written, I guess.
GM fiat stuff still goes into my houserule doc, like clarifications on what is and isn't allowed to aid at my table.
And I think I speak for everyone when I say that questions like "does ghost shot benefit from off-guard proc'd from covered reload?" should probably not be up to GM discretion.
I make frequent use of GM discretion in the rule, "If you do anything else, you become observed just before you act unless the GM determines otherwise." For example, I told my players that Recall Knowledge actions do not make the character observed because they are purely internal with no external effect that could give a character's presence away.
The external effect of Double Slice consists solely of making two Strikes. All the rest of the feat is requirements, penalties, and combining damage after the Strikes. Thus, the character becomes observed during the first Strike and also catches the target off-guard because that is how becoming observed during a Strike works. The Double-Slicing character is fully observed for the second Strike and that Strike does not catch the target off-guard.
Since this relies on GM discretion, other GMs might treat this differently.
As for the Spellstrike case, I have a houserule that I developed back when a rogue with sorcerer dedication took the pre-Remaster Magical Trickster feat, which allows sneak attack with a spell attack. My houserule says that spell attacks get the same off-guard privilege as Strikes if begun while hidden.
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I see how this is an issue and I hate it. Thanks for pointing this out. Into the houserule doc it goes, I guess.
Can't imagine they thought that a gunslinger that uses sneak and then does risky reload shouldn't get the off-guard bonus because they reloaded before shooting, but that sure does look like the case by RAW. Also can't imagine they thought a sniper that uses covered reload shouldn't be able to follow it up with Ghost Shot and get off-guard, either. Chalk it up to a case where everybody read what was intended and no one read what was actually written, I guess.
You day "by RAW", there, but the line about GM discretion on other actions is an INCREDIBLY important part of the RAW, and really no one should ever be phrasing things as though it isn't. It makes it seem like there isn't an expectation of GMs using that discretion sensibly, when there absolutely is.
2E just isn't a system that has any interest in treating GM discretion as secondary, and not like something that should be load-bearing. That's why you also have things like "is there cover from my shot?" being primarily GM discretion, with drawing lines on a map as a secondary, backup method. Or "what is the DC to Recall Knowledge on this creature with Skill X? Is skill X even valid?" having huge amounts of "GM decides, here are some starting points and guidance" instead of a number assigned for each skill for each creature.
I think it's pretty easy to say "or the first strike of any activity containing a strike" in that rules text and then add a trait you can add to attack activities when they need to be excluded, yes.
The text doesn't need to cover literally everything, and that was never my position. My position is that rules questions of importance to basic combat routines should probably not be GM fiat. We've already had one person disagree that create a diversion>spellstrike should grant off-guard, which is evidence there's room for table variance here on fairly consequential questions.
Also, this "GM discretion is the RAW" thing I keep seeing pop up is driving me nuts. "Rules as written" means "as written." If it gives the GM carte blanche, no rules are actually written about how to handle it, and there is no RAW. It's a semantic thing, yes. But why RAW even matters, and why anyone cares about it, is that playing RAW significantly reduces table variance. It is literally about playing the game "as written," in a way that means people trying the same things get the same results by following what's indicated by the rules text. "GM discretion is RAW" is useless for reducing table variance in this way. It's the kind of response that follows the letter of the question while ignoring the spirit of it.
(And yes, people can dispute and argue about RAW. RAW is always something of an idealized construct, and discussing rules text to get at the RAW is as much an attempt at forming group consensus as an act of exegesis.)
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I have a similar issue with reactions before your first turn. There's no default. GM always determines it based on the circumstances, but there is no GM guidance at all about what those circumstances are. And it definitely matters because the new Guardian class has a level 1 feature directly based on this rule that is pure GM fiat.
I have a similar issue with reactions before your first turn. There's no default. GM always determines it based on the circumstances, but there is no GM guidance at all about what those circumstances are. And it definitely matters because the new Guardian class has a level 1 feature directly based on this rule that is pure GM fiat.
Yeah, I also strongly dislike that; it really affects the difficulty of some combats. I've seen some DMs default to yes, and some default to no. I tend to run it as "if this combat would have a surprise round in 1E, you only get a reaction at combat start if you would've acted in the surprise round; if it wouldn't have a surprise round, you always start with your reaction." (And I fully admit that, itself, is extremely idiosyncratic and can see people having problems with it.)
This particular activity couldn't work with your ruling, since you need to create a diversion, which is not inherently stealthy (but can be depending on what the player does) before the strike.
The ruling producing a weird result sometimes doesn't make it inherently bad. And this logic applies to spellstrike as well (casting a spell is loud!) but I allow spellstrike to get off-guard from hidden. It doesn't bother me. "GM fiat lets it be more simulationist or make more narrative sense" isn't really an angle I care about in this game at all, to be honest. I'd prefer consistency in table rulings.
This example is also poor, because stumbling feint gives a better result for a monk than create a diversion>flurry would anyways. (Stumbling Feint is also weird for this insofar as it lets you feint as a free action before the flurry, not as part of the same activity as the flurry. But yeah.)
Everyone is happy... except for people who care less about the exact rule and more about it being consistent.
I apparently don't speak for everyone, since I don't speak for you and presumably plenty of others. I'll concede that. But saying it'd be wrong to have hardcoded the rule because some tables dislike having it hardcoded is, in itself, ignoring a different preference axis (that of table-to-table consistency). If you claim hardcoding it is wrong because tables disagree on possible rulings and they should have freedom, I'm not sure why I can't claim with equal force that leaving it fiat is wrong because tables will produce different rulings and players should be able to expect consistency. We clearly have different and incompatible values on this front.
For what it's worth, I care more about immersion than consistency in some games—but not in this game, both because it already goes to lengths to define most interactions and also because the game is already poor at being a narrativist game for me. A good table can push past it and have great RP, but the system actively works against it in my experience. So I'd rather have the game invest in what it's already good at (defining interactions, providing a more consistent experience table-to-table, consistent combat balance) than have it invest in immersion to the expense of those things.
While I agree some things are best left to individual tables to decide, I don't think something like:
Does the first subordinate strike of something like Double Slice benefit from Hide or Create a diversion, even though the first action to be taken isn't an actual strike but the Double Slice container action?
I would also prefer a simple hard ruling be made about that.
And also about questions like if you did a container action like Double Strike, and you're next action requires your previous action to be a strike (I can't actual think of the situation where this came up but there was a thread discussing it) does your last action count as the container or the final strike that was apart of that container?
These are examples of things I don't think should be left up to table variation, but there are other things (that I can't think of off the top of my head) that are okay to leave as part of table variation.
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How about this paragraph after the relevant paragraph in Hide?
"Some actions use Strike as a subordinate action (see page 414) to generate their effects. The creature remains off-guard until after a subordinate Strike only if that Strike is the first of the subordinate actions. For instance, a hidden fighter using Double Slice would become observed after the first Strike but before the second Strike."
How about this paragraph after the relevant paragraph in Hide?
"Some actions use Strike as a subordinate action (see page 414) to generate their effects. The creature remains off-guard until after a subordinate Strike only if that Strike is the first of the subordinate actions. For instance, a hidden fighter using Double Slice would become observed after the first Strike but before the second Strike."
Yeah, exactly like that
Edit: Unfortunately when you look up hide on AoN it doesn't give you that rules text.
[...]
And also about questions like if you did a container action like Double Strike, and you're next action requires your previous action to be a strike (I can't actual think of the situation where this came up but there was a thread discussing it) does your last action count as the container or the final strike that was apart of that container?
[...]
I can at least chime in here to share what I've learned after digging into this thanks to Drink of my Foes being a "previous action was Strike" ability.
Activities are actions in their own right. The textual reason as to *why* you cannot use Haste to Strike via activity is because the activity-action goes before the subordinate action Strike. "your next action" effects can never match the sub-action, because the activity-action is the first in the flat sequence of actions. Note this is *not* mirrored, there is no ghost / extra activity action at the end.
In the same sidebar, it clarifies that subordinate actions still have their their normal traits and effects. Except exactly as how they are edited by the activity text, doing sub-actions is the same as doing the "base" version of that action.
This is why abilities that trigger off of "a Strike" still activate when you make sub-Strikes. When you hit someone during a Skirmish Strike, you still get to proc Sneak Attack, etc. That only works if sub-Strikes are a match for the "Strike" action.
This means that doing a Skirmish Strike is a flat chain of [Skirmish Strike] --> [Step] --> [Strike]. And that yes, by RaW this means that "your last action" does default to including subordinate actions chained by an activity.
I have seen zero text that instructs activities to "containerize" and isolate their sub-actions in any way. If that happened, then we would no longer be able to trigger Sneak Attack off of sub-Strikes, etc.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2335
For the sake of things like Hide and "breaking stealth" I think there is a significant RaI case for the GM to allow basically any activity that appears to happen all at one moment in time to complete before foes gain awareness. A lot of activities are written carefully as a sequence for the sake of mechanical instruction, but imply it's happening in one big oomph. Hide does not accommodate them.
The textual RaW of Hide is harsh, which is why house-rules and edits need to focus on fixing/changing that specific text, and not messing with things that'll have domino effects on the rest of the system.
I have seen zero text that instructs activities to "containerize" and isolate their sub-actions in any way. If that happened, then we would no longer be able to trigger Sneak Attack off of sub-Strikes, etc.
FWIW, I disagree with this assessment. I think you can sandbox things that happen inside activities, apply the usual rules to them as they occur inside the activity, and also have the game act like only the container activity and none of its subordinate actions occurred once the container is completely resolved. It's like a box the game opens only during the activity and shuts afterwards. The main game thread doesn't have permission to view what happened inside the activity.
I also don't see how this prevents sneak attack from happening on skirmish strike, because "strike" would occur in the sandboxed container, and the rules are ran the same in the container as outside of it.
Assuming that activities are names for sequences of actions executed in a sandboxed sort of container also produces all of the results that most of us in this thread think are silly, but seem correct by RAW. Any further divergence depends on whether you think the container itself counts as an action that is executed, or if it's just a name and isn't executed outside of adding steps as needed for the trait tags. I think there's an argument both ways; the difference is trivial outside of cases that care about your next action.
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I think the main thing that's annoying is that if you don't intuit this weird containerization (that I'm not entirely sure is coherent, though I think it is), you're left with a different, very weird reading of the rules:
Every "basic" action has a "basic*" equivalent, which is the exact same as the basic version except it's the one used inside activities and has a different name. Because of this, actions inside activities aren't technically identical to actions done outside of them. Things that ask for Strike by name, like haste, don't ask for Strike*, so Strike* (the version inside activities) doesn't proc it.
Now, the game -reads- like this should be true. But the game never ever uses the term Strike*, or Step*, or Stride*, and so on. Sometimes the game says strike when it means Strike only (Haste), and sometimes says it Strike when it means both Strike and Strike* (Sneak Attack)—but the only way to guess at which is intended is which makes sense in context. And that's MISERABLE. But it does produce a coherent reading of the game. You just have to determine whether the rules mean "strike only" or "strike and strike* both" whenever they mention strike by name.
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...I feel like I should stare at this post another hour to make it more coherent or clearer, but I'm just going to move on and hope this makes sense.
I have a similar issue with reactions before your first turn. There's no default. GM always determines it based on the circumstances, but there is no GM guidance at all about what those circumstances are. And it definitely matters because the new Guardian class has a level 1 feature directly based on this rule that is pure GM fiat.
If you are talking about "Ever Ready" then you have that backwards.
You always gain a reaction whenever you roll initiative for combat, but you can use it only for reactions from guardian feats or class features. The GM might still rule that you can use other reactions before your first turn based on the situation, as normal.
This removes the GM Fiat if the GM doesn't rule in your favor.
If the GM decides that you do get your Reaction at the start of combat before your first turn, then the second sentence of the rule applies and you can use your Reaction for any Reaction ability that you have.
If the GM decides that you don't get your Reaction at the start of combat for your first turn, then the Ever Ready ability steps in and says, "No, GM. You don't have Fiat discretion in this case. This character still gets their Reaction at the start of combat. You can only limit what they can use it on to their class's Reactions, not ones they got from an ancestry feat, an archetype, or some other non-class ability."
Please cite text that would indicate this containerization. You really, really, really cannot poof-invent things like that when dealing with game systems like this.
Mechanical effects like "The main game thread doesn't have permission to view what happened inside the activity."
would *never* be left to implication and be unwritten. If that was a real mechanic, the text would very carefully outline a set of instructions and impacts.
I will repeat for emphasis that the text even directly says *why* the "next action" abilities don't work with sub-actions. It is NOT because of any sort of limited scope or containerization as you imagine. It is because the first action in the action chain is the activity-action. A "non-action" container is incompatible with this text!
Like with literally everything else in pf2, until the text instructs the players to use the rather abstract concept of containerization or temporary scope, we must definitively say that no such mechanic exists.
Furthermore, that kind of temporary scope would create serious edge cases, such as when Reactions interrupt an Activity. And likely many more that are not immediately obvious to me at the moment.
Assuming that activities are names for sequences of actions executed in a sandboxed sort of container also produces all of the results that most of us in this thread think are silly, but seem correct by RAW.
Hard no, this is not true. This one is totally on Paizo for not explaining more clearly, but Activities are a special type of Action, and are literally "actions" in every way the system checks. Sometimes the activity-action does some stuff before it calls their sub-actions, but most of the time the activity-action doesn't do anything itself, and it just sets up a modified sub-action. Spellcasting being extra weird actually helps here; spellcasting is an activity that chains no sub-actions. Cast a Spell is *only* the activity-action, making this "even without their sub-actions, activities are also actions" fact unavoidable.
(if activities were not actions, you would get compatibility problems, and things mentioning "actions" would need to separately permit "activities" as well)This equivalence is why 1A ???s do not need a special label clarifying if it's an action or activity.
Activities are not containers nor function calls. There's soft references to this "activities are actions" fact all over, but the only outright "hard" mention of this anywhere I'm aware of is in the subordinate actions text, ironically enough.
[...] An action might allow you to use a simpler action—usually one of the Basic Actions—in a different circumstance or with different effects. This subordinate action still has its normal traits and effects, but it's modified in any ways listed in the larger action. For example, an activity that tells you [...]
The "larger action" is the activity-action. The text even then uses "an activity" as an example for this "action talk" which further removes doubt that activities are a special type of action.
It seems confusing at first to consider the "empty" activity to itself be an action that is the first action in a chain, but it is actually waaay simpler once you look at the action rules from that angle, as that's what the rest of the system was built around. This is why so much of Activity text is spent on locking in that only the activity-action pays the "action cost" while all sub-actions are never paid for, etc, etc.
The "Activities are a flat chain of actions" ruling that actually exists in the text results in the expected behavior. No need to invent mechanical scope voodoo.
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The "Activities are a flat chain of actions" ruling that actually exists in the text results in the expected behavior. No need to invent mechanical scope voodoo.
That's not clear, because the flat chain of actions reading makes several wordings a nightmare to parse.
-anything that says "your target is off-guard against your next Strike" probably works with activities including a subordinate strike, though I won't guarantee it
-anything that says "if your next action is a strike" does not work with a subordinate strike
-anything that says "if you attempt to Strike a target before the end of your next turn"... might work with a subordinate strike? Unclear if this is asking for the strike basic action or not!
-anything that says "the target is off-guard to your next melee attack" (e.g., feint) definitely works with subordinate strikes
I also really hate this because it makes activities parse differently than basic actions. On your reading, Strike just causes you to perform strike; there is no "starting to strike" and then performing Strike. It's extremely unintuitive to have basic actions work normally, but then have activities like spellstrike produce some phantom action called "spellstrike" with no effect before executing cast a spell and a melee attack.
It also is a real nightmare when abilities like debilitating strike (that refer backwards) interact with subordinate strikes, on your reading. It's not at all clear if the precondition is asking for the Strike action specifically or if subordinate strikes qualify. It's especially bad if there's a way to have that kind of ability proc in the middle of something like double slice; it's not clear that's even allowed, because the rules for spellstrike imply you "typically" can't interrupt the flow of subordinate actions in a "combined activity." (But maybe that's because most, though not all, spellshapes are 1A, even though there are a few that are a free action that a magus might be able to use.) And "combined activity" seems to be mentioned... in spellstrike and nowhere else. Good luck divining the intent here!
Furthermore, I also have no clue why they're called "subordinate actions" if they're not a part of the activity. What you're saying is that flurry of blows is three things, not two things: it is flurry of blows, then two strikes, and the strikes themselves are not in fact flurry of blows, just something you do after flurry as a free action. Or perhaps it is four; flurry, strike, strike, flurry ends? This is just a ridiculous reading to me on every level. It makes much more sense to say Flurry of Blows is just the name for doing two strikes in one action, and that Flurry of Blows is not named Strike, so things that ask for Strike don't work with flurry of blows. And it's completely asymmetrical with any activity that doesn't invoke a subordinate action! It's awful.
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...Okay, I typed all that, and the more I read how the system is literally written, the more I'm inclined to agree it's actually written the way I hate. What a miserably awful way to design your semantics. Every activity with subordinate actions has a phantom action with the action cost of the activity up front to block forward referents that care about your next action, but only the activities with subordinate actions? ...But it doesn't block backwards reference? ...And Flurry of Blows actually isn't the strikes, which are their own action, just the phantom action before said strikes? Really? Really? REALLY? This is so awful. It feels absurd to read it. And it looks correct as a description of the system as written, especially considering the lengths they go to in order to avoid phrases like "your next strike" from occurring in the rules. Why would anyone ever design something this ugly? I'm gonna scream into a jar and bottle it for my players to open on Halloween.
I will agree that Paizo doesn't tend to think things through, and that causes issues.
This sometimes empty "activity action" is *almost* actually a pretty good design approach so you don't have to teach people about things like scope or containerization. The "sometimes empty activity action" genuinely works with how pf2 plays. Sub actions getting the same treatment as their base versions is a big speed boost for writing/reading. Only the exact contextual difference created by the activity text alters the base action you are already familiar with, and everything you know triggers/interacts with the base action still applies. Very intuitive and speedy.
Buuuut they fumbled the actual writing/ teaching of this, and they did forget their own design at least once. I already forgot what the name is, but there is *one single feat* I've seen that is written in a way that doesn't technically work RaW, where there's a prereq where your "previous action" was some named *activity.* Which is ofc the one impossible thing in this design paradigm, as the sub-actions will be the "previous action."
Thankfully, the RaI is 100% clear, to the extent that most people don't notice.
The actual "computer code translation" of how Paizo designed this action system is actually pretty good IMO, it's just that their conveyance of how they actually inform the reader wtf is inside the dev's head was and often still is in seriously in need of improvement.
(cough, weakness/res rules still incomplete to this day, cough cough)
I'm guessing it might be due to my time debugging other developers' code, but I'm kinda used to diving the arcane meanings behind only the vaguest of context clues and poorly named terminology.
I have a similar issue with reactions before your first turn. There's no default. GM always determines it based on the circumstances, but there is no GM guidance at all about what those circumstances are. And it definitely matters because the new Guardian class has a level 1 feature directly based on this rule that is pure GM fiat.If you are talking about "Ever Ready" then you have that backwards.
You always gain a reaction whenever you roll initiative for combat, but you can use it only for reactions from guardian feats or class features. The GM might still rule that you can use other reactions before your first turn based on the situation, as normal.This removes the GM Fiat if the GM doesn't rule in your favor.
If the GM decides that you do get your Reaction at the start of combat before your first turn, then the second sentence of the rule applies and you can use your Reaction for any Reaction ability that you have.
If the GM decides that you don't get your Reaction at the start of combat for your first turn, then the Ever Ready ability steps in and says, "No, GM. You don't have Fiat discretion in this case. This character still gets their Reaction at the start of combat. You can only limit what they can use it on to their class's Reactions, not ones they got from an ancestry feat, an archetype, or some other non-class ability."
Im saying the base rule, not the class feature, is pure GM fiat.
The power of this feature depends on how often your GM allows reactions before your first turn. The less often they do (and GMs from PF1e often do not out of habit), the more powerful the feature is. The more often they do, the less the feature matters. Before this feature was published, I figured it was safe to always allow reactions except when all enemies successfully Avoid Notice. Now I'm not so sure.
I have a similar issue with reactions before your first turn. There's no default. GM always determines it based on the circumstances, but there is no GM guidance at all about what those circumstances are. And it definitely matters because the new Guardian class has a level 1 feature directly based on this rule that is pure GM fiat.If you are talking about "Ever Ready" then you have that backwards.
You always gain a reaction whenever you roll initiative for combat, but you can use it only for reactions from guardian feats or class features. The GM might still rule that you can use other reactions before your first turn based on the situation, as normal.This removes the GM Fiat if the GM doesn't rule in your favor.
If the GM decides that you do get your Reaction at the start of combat before your first turn, then the second sentence of the rule applies and you can use your Reaction for any Reaction ability that you have.
If the GM decides that you don't get your Reaction at the start of combat for your first turn, then the Ever Ready ability steps in and says, "No, GM. You don't have Fiat discretion in this case. This character still gets their Reaction at the start of combat. You can only limit what they can use it on to their class's Reactions, not ones they got from an ancestry feat, an archetype, or some other non-class ability."
Im saying the base rule, not the class feature, is pure GM fiat.
The power of this feature depends on how often your GM allows reactions before your first turn. The less often they do (and GMs from PF1e often do not out of habit), the more powerful the feature is. The more often they do, the less the feature matters. Before this feature was published, I figured it was safe to always allow reactions except when all enemies successfully Avoid Notice. Now I'm not so sure.
Yep, and I personally took the opposite stance that you generally don't get a reaction before your first turn (but some abilities might cause to me to say yes you can use that before your turn). But the baseline I always set was "No, but sometimes yes". And honestly the Guardian class feature makes me feel like that is more justified.
Skirmish Strike is not a flat chain of anything. Next action or previous action abilities will never find a Strike or Step, only Skirmish Strike.
You are accidentally adding text that does not exist, and this is causing you to contradict yourself, then loophole around the contradiction as best you can.
If the system will "only find Skirmish Strike" and never the Step or Strike, then that is what happens. You don't get to invent text from nothing to then modify that behavior. That's the end of it, sub-actions never trigger matches for their names.
Yet you invent some special loophole why this effect does not block Sneak Attack from finding/ matching sub-Strike, while simultaneously blocking next/prev.
If a sub-Strike registers for for Sneak attack, then it also registers and is saved in the "prevAction" global variable, so to speak. You cannot cheat this to have it both ways without inventing a mechanical rule that does not exist.
Either sub-actions match for their action name, they never match, or there is text that dictates when this & is not true. That hypothetical text would need to be some instruction as to the containerization / temp scope behavior.
Again, the text outright says that "next action" abilities do not work, because the next action is not the sub-action, and is instead the activity.
This method of design does *not* create a symmetrical blocker at the end, it only happens at the front, where you pay the action cost via the activity-action.
_____
You are falling into the same pot hole where you need to invent some kind of special temp scope consideration to create a loophole reason for Sneak attack, etc, to still work. Inventing such a mechanic where no text exists is proof positive that the loophole was never needed in the first place, and that something else is going on.
The system really is written so that every activity starter is itself an action, even without any of the sub-actions.
This is most obvious thanks to spellcasting being an activity that calls no sub-actions. The entire in-world impact of Cast a Spell happens via the activity-action itself.
For Cast a Spell to have compatibility with anything that references actions, that activity, and all of these activity "openers," need to in-logic be equivalent to actions in and of themselves, sans any of their possible sub-actions.
That's another way of saying that we already run the system with "activity openers = actions" under the hood.
(But logic is not symmetrical! This does NOT mean that actions = activities. Think squares & rectangles)
"If the next action you use is a Strike,” an activity that includes a Strike wouldn't count, because the next thing you are doing is starting an activity, not using the Strike basic action.
The next thing you do is the Skirmish Strike activity-action, which is why the "next action" can never be that sub-Strike.
If activities were NOT actions, but instead some kind of function call or container, then THIS TEXT WOULD NOT WORK. That would mean the "next action" would indeed be "Strike." That text is not checking for containers/ function calls, it's ONLY checking for what "action" is next. This is why activity starters *have* to be actions.
The author wrote the text with this specific example to block that "temp scope function call" interpretation, but didn't realize how unintuitive the text's language was.
So, a subordinate Strike, as an example, will get affected by everything that affects Strikes but it is NOT a Strike as far as "what action I am doing".
I can only see this as a contradiction.
It's not possible for a sub-Strike to both match as a "Strike" yet you are not performing a "Strike."
If you don't perform "Strike," then abilities that specify "when you successfully Strike" cannot trigger.
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The rules clearly separate the effects of a subordinate action from the subordinate action actually counting as said actions.
This presented logic does not seem to do what you think it does.
If you get the effects of a Strike without actually performing "Strike," then you would roll & deal damage without triggering anything that matches "Strike." That's what it means to get the effects of the action, without "counting as" said action.
Activities like Exacting Strike that say: "... Make a Strike. ..." could theoretically be changed to only provide the effects of that Strike without name-matching Strike, but you have to follow through with what that means. It would mean no "you Strike" match to trigger Sneak Attack.
Either "Make a Strike" as a sub-action invocation name-matches "Strike", or it does not. Or you need extra rules text to instruct when and when not. You cannot do both without text to explain how.
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Without activity text telling you that "the Strike doesn't count as a Strike" you don't have textual reason to make that change to the sub-action.
If I am missing some text that resolves what I see as a contradiction, please explain that.
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Oh, and you would also need to explain how "your next action" hits a match upon the activity-opener-action, without that behavior interfering with your interpretation.
Again, the text directly explains this trigger/match is what happens, and that this behavior is why Skirmish Strike isn't compatible w/ "next action Strike" abilities. It's not that there is no match, but that the "next action" match instead hits the activity-opener-action. Because "next action" always reads & matches the [Skirmish Strike] activity action before any possible sub-actions.
That "next action" check can never skip the activity-opener-action to instead match the [Strike].
Because activities are a sequence of actions: [Skirmish Strike] -> [Strike] -> [Step]
if you used an action that specified, “If the next action you use is a Strike,” an activity that includes a Strike wouldn't count, because the next thing you are doing is starting an activity, not using the Strike basic action
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The rules clearly separate the effects of a subordinate action from the subordinate action actually counting as said actions.
This is, unfortunately, a misunderstanding—one I shared. The exact wording is "using an activity is not the same as using any of its subordinate actions." All it ultimately means is that using Skirmish Strike, for example, is different from doing Step and then Strike without using it. It is natural to further read into this that "using Skirmish Strike means you don't actually do a step or a strike," but that would contradict the plain rules text of Skirmish Strike that says you step and strike.
Using an activity can modify its subordinate actions, as per the rules text. The correct way to see this is that you use Skirmish Strike for 1A, and it instructs you to step and then strike or strike and then step, modifying their costs so you're doing both as a free action, and not allowing you to do anything else until you've used a step and a strike. This is implicit rules text in basically every activity; you pay the cost of the activity, perform the "activity," and then do any further subordinate actions it instructs you to do as a free action without doing anything else until you've finished. (The "without doing anything else until you've finished" part is supported by the statement on combined activities in spellstrike, and also just by common sense—you would look at someone funny if they tried to feint inbetween stepping and striking during skirmish strike.)
On this reading, the reason the free action strike doesn't count as a strike for haste is fairly simple: the Skirmish Strike modified the cost of your strike to be a free action already.
If you don't use this reading, you're stuck with the weird thing I proposed earlier, where there is Strike and Strike*; Strike is the standalone action; Strike* is the one used in activities; and you have to guess if the rules text wants things to apply to Strike and Strike* or only Strike every time it says "Strike." Or your other alternative is a kind of containerization that prevents the game from looking forwards into the contents of activities, but may or may not allow it to look backwards into them depending on your view of the RAW, while executing the game normally inside the container. Both can be made to work with enough ad hoc adjustments, but they just don't play nice with other rules text and require more band-aid fixes.
-The reading where there's Strike and Strike* requires an unacceptable amount of houseruling and makes it impossible to tell what's meant when the rules say Strike. (Sneak Attack is an easy problem case for this reading, as are abilities like Debilitating Strike. Summoner's Act Together would also be a nightmare for this, because it would make it so Stride used with Act Together is not the same as Stride used outside of it.) It also contradicts the plain text of every combined activity: you are literally striking.
-The reading where you containerize doesn't square with the plain text in the subordinate actions bar that says "...the next thing you are doing is starting an activity, not using the Strike basic action." This makes it clear that the activity itself is invoked (that you're "starting an activity"). It is also worth noting what it doesn't say: it doesn't say that an ability that says "your next Strike gains X benefit," like the Nagaji poison ancestry feat, won't work with the strike inside of Skirmish Strike; and it is not stated that backwards referents (like debilitating strike) don't work, though you'd be forgiven for thinking they wouldn't based on context. (One should note, though, that they assiduously avoided the "your next strike" wording in favor of almost exclusively saying "your next attack," probably to ensure no one would ask if "your next strike gains X" and "if your next action is to strike" worked differently. The Nagaji poison feat is the only time I saw "your next Strike" used.)
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Please cite text that would indicate this containerization. You really, really, really cannot poof-invent things like that when dealing with game systems like this.
Certainly.
Using an activity is not the same as using any of its subordinate actions.
That is the rule. That is the containerization. An activity contains its subordinate actions and using the activity is not the same as using any of its subordinate actions: not its first one; and not its last one.
That is the entire rule. The rest of that paragraph is an example. Examples are not a replacement of the rule. An example is not an exhaustive exemplification of the rule for all cases.
Nothing in that rule designates any distinction between forward-looking and backward-looking abilities. A 'if your next action is...' ability encounters this rule when looking at activities in the exact same manner than a 'if your previous action was...' ability does.
You are the one making the logic mistake. You are elevating an example to be the rule.
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That is the rule. That is the containerization. An activity contains its subordinate actions and using the activity is not the same as using any of its subordinate actions: not its first one; and not its last one.
That alone doesn't imply any containerization. It just says that activities are not identical to the actions they ask you to perform, that using Flurry of Blows is not identical to striking two times in a row. Containerization is an entirely separate assertion from the identity assertion made here.
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So here's the thing. To understand your position at all, I need you to answer one question. Do you believe you actually perform a Strike when the game tells you to in an activity like Skirmish Strike? Or do you think the game just tells you to perform a strike "as a shorthand" and you never perform any action that is named "Strike"?
I am taking the game at face value. The abilities tell you to perform a Strike; I say you perform a Strike. Do you think you are not performing a Strike when activities include a Strike? Do you think that a Summoner using a Strike as part of Act Together is not actually performing a Strike? Do you think Rogue gets sneak attack on Skirmish Strike if they have flanking?
The way Trip parses this, for better or worse, gives an extremely clean answer to these questions: yes, you do perform a strike, and it is a strike just like every other strike. This just doesn't. It requires you to invent the existence of Strike* and divine when the rules mean to include strikes-in-activities when they say Strike, and when they don't.
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You do not have to invent anything though?
That's the whole reasons that paizo gave us the building blocks called base actions. To make more complex maneuver without hving to have a page describing each one of them.
In short:
My position is that when I use "Act together" is use the action called "Act together". That action may tell me to attack...
So, on what you are saying, Skirmish Strike says to Step and Strike. ("Your feet and weapon move in tandem. Either Step and then Strike, or Strike and then Step.") But what you should read is not what is written, but something like this: "Your feet and weapon move in tandem. Either [perform the rules text of Step] and then [perform the rules text of Strike], or [perform the rules text of Strike] then [perform the rules text of Step]."
This is literally what I mean when I say that you have to be saying the game uses Strike "as a shorthand."
At the end of the Sudden Charge, did you finish a Strike, or did you finish a Sudden charge? Because you need to finish the Sudden Charge to do your next action.
Performing Sudden Charge is paying the 2A to invoke sudden charge and then performing the subordinate actions of stepping twice and then attacking. Once you've attacked, you've done everything sudden charge told you to do, so you've completed it. There's no need to add a "sudden charge finished" step. Doing the last thing the activity tells you to is finishing the activity in my book.
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Less than a shorthand, and more like building blocks, yes.
That's why activities often change how the base actions behave (adding dices, speed, removing stuff, adding and removing traits from them, and etc).
The game has a handful of said base actions, and uses them to build the more complex actions (activities). All the rules are easily referenced this way without having to repeat them all the time, and stuff that are suppossed to influece the base parts of the game (like weapon specialization adding damage to your attacks as an example) can be easily accounted for in current and future content with extreme ease.
The thing is, either the game is telling you to use a strike when it says to strike, or it isn't. You are saying that the game is not telling you to use a Strike when it says to use a strike inside of an activity; it is saying this in lieu of copypasting the rules for Strike into every relevant activity.
So you would say Rogue does not get Sneak Attack on any attack but a Basic Action Strike. This is a necessary consequence of your position. Do you agree with that statement?