Hi all.
I have a character who is using a Nightmare Rune on his weapon, and I realised I couldn't see a duration on one of the critical hit effects.
Item 9
Legacy Content
Uncommon Enchantment Magical
Source Pathfinder #200: Seven Dooms for Sandpoint pg. 185
Price 250 gp
Usage etched onto a weapon
Bulk —A nightmare rune creates minor phantasmal alterations to a weapon's appearance so that those who look upon it see subtle reminders of their deepest fears. An arachnophobe might interpret the cross guard of a nightmare longsword to look like curving, twitching spider legs, for example, while someone who's afraid of sickness might see a nightmare club as a diseased length of bone crawling with flies. These images are all in the mind of the observer, but they also infuse the weapon with additional power. When you hit with a nightmare weapon, add 1d6 mental damage to the damage dealt. In addition, on a critical hit, the target becomes stupefied 1 by overwhelming visions in their mind of personal horrors that linger. If you critically hit a creature that's already stupefied, it becomes frightened 2 as well. These critical hit effects have the emotion, fear, and mental traits.
Activate 10 minutes (envision, Interact); Frequency once per day; Effect The nightmare weapon casts nightmare to your specifications.
In the section on conditions it says:
Conditions are persistent. Whenever you're affected by a condition, its effects last until the condition's stated duration ends, the condition is removed, or terms dictated in the condition itself cause it to end.
It's from an Adventure path so it probably just didn't get vetted as thoroughly as it should have been, but obviously a permanent Stupified coming from a 250gp weapon rune seems a bit overpowered. Does anyone have any thoughts on how long this should last?
I'm actually not Too worried about the Stupified condition itself but I've built my character around making use of the Frightened condition and this seemed like a good way to potentially keep a tough enemy Frightened if I can land a second crit . Stupified is of course a good condition to add as well, but for me I'm wondering how long the "if you crit they're Frightened 2" condition lasts.
If there isn't a rule, what would you think is reasonable? Number of rounds equal to the number of damage dice? Or weapon potency rune? 1 minute? Until combat ends? Forever until you find a healer? I dunno, just thought I'd see what people think .
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Well, Crushing lasts a round, and it causes both Enfeebled and Clumsy. It's a lower level item, though.
You're going to have to house rule something because "forever" clearly isn't right. Just imagine the fun if someone uses that against a PC. It'll basically be lasting until someone can get a spell/ability to remove it, which if you don't have a Medic or Prepared Caster could be quite a while.
I'm with the others on the Stupefied. Permanent is probably wrong. 1 minute seems reasonable.
I'm wondering how long the "if you crit they're Frightened 2" condition lasts.
Frightened will reduce on its own normally. So an effect that causes Frightened 2 will last until the condition reduces to 0.
The Dread Rune or other things like it can prevent Frightened from reducing in the natural manner. There are also effects that can cause Frightened condition to reduce in addition to the normal manner: Aura of Courage and No Cause for Alarm come to mind.
I'm not sure how those would interact. I think that the Dread Rune is only preventing the natural Frightened reduction at the end of the creature's turn. Since the feat effects are happening at a different time, the Dread Rune wouldn't prevent that.
It should specify a length of time. You can either set it to a minute, like others say, or give the user an action they can do to rid themselves of the condition. Basically a 'shake it off' action that they spend with a concentrate trait which involves forcing yourself to realize what is real and what is dream.
In retrospect, I'd almost guess that the stupefied condition would last from the point it was imparted until the 10 minutes of the rune's activation expires. So if hit with a critical right after the rune was activated, it would last nearly 10 minutes. If hit with the weapon 9 and a half minutes after activating the rune, the stupefaction would only last around 5 rounds, to when the rune deactivates.
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Stupefied is a pretty powerful condition, because it can interfere with casting (and other concentrate actions). However, the "if already stupefied" clause does hint at an intent to try to get in multiple crits, maybe over multiple turns.
A whole minute feels kind of extreme, but 1 round maybe too short. Another commonly used duration is "until the end of your next turn", which might be the right in-between amount.
Or it maybe could be the other way around, the intent could be for the item to NOT 'stack' with itself and rely on combos with your teammates instead (and stupefied is not hard to apply, there are spells and probably abilities). And I don't have the impression that crit effects are generally very long in the the system. So until the end of your next turn looks more likely.
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I think it would be very odd if this were not intended to stack with itself. Enemy takes "Status X", or if they already have "Status X" then add "Status Y". That really feels intentional. It would also be very unusual for a crit effect to rely on something that cones from another player. It's also worth noting that Stupified and Frightened are both Status penalties, so stacking these 2 effects does not give the enemy a -3 to will saves.
Having said that, I don't know how it relates to durations. "Until the end of your next turn" and "1 minute" are both fairly common with crit effects. I thought it might scale with your weapon potency rune or striking rune, but I'm not really sure there's precedent for that.
I'm appreciating the discussion everyone, thanks. My game is on Tuesday night and we're taking on the quest-boss so I'll try to think of how it should go by then.
Stupefied is a pretty powerful condition, because it can interfere with casting (and other concentrate actions).
I used to have this same misconception - stupefy only gives a fail chance to spellcasting, not to any other concentrate actions.