Luring Wail clarification


Rules Discussion


Luring Wail
[two-actions]
Spell 4
Auditory Concentrate Incapacitation Manipulate Mental
Source Howl of the Wild pg. 86 2.1
Traditions occult, primal
Area 60-foot emanation
Defense Will; Duration sustained up to 1 minute
You emit a plaintive cry to lure your enemies closer. Each creature in the emanation that can hear you must attempt a Will save. If you speak a creature's name as part of the casting of the spell, that creature takes a –2 circumstance penalty to its saving throw. Each creature that enters the area on its turn must attempt a save. If you attack or take a hostile action, the fascinated condition ends only for the creature that's attacked.

Critical Success The creature is unaffected.
Success The creature is slowed 1 for 1 round.
Failure The creature becomes fascinated and compelled to move toward the sound of your cry on its turn. As long as it is in the emanation and can hear, it must spend at least one of its actions on each of its turns to move closer to you.
Critical Failure As failure, but the creature must spend all its actions moving toward the sound. Additionally, the creature is off-guard.

A few questions here:

1) If the enemy fails, and I have a hazard 10ft infront of it, would it walk through the hazard or would it intelligently go around a 15ft wide hazard?

2) If the enemy fails its saving throw, after it spends its first action moving towards me, can it move away (even say 5ft) in order to target my allies? (I understand it cannot target me at all unless I harm it).

3) That leads me to my last question, once the enemy fails its saving throw once and I keep sustaining the spell, eventually it will be adjacent to me, and lets say it still has two action left, can it essentially do nothing except maybe draw a bow to target one of my allies who is not in melee range of it?

Dark Archive

1) It would avoid the hazard, this is the default unless otherwise stated
2) It uses one action to move closer, it can use all other actions to do whatever, including moving away
3) fascinated does not limit the target except as stated in the condition. It could strike you, for example.


In regards to point #2, the spell on a failed save says "The creature becomes fascinated and compelled to move toward the sound of your cry on its turn." Sounds like they must approach me, then on their next action they can move away and even out of range if they wanted? It almost feels like a reverse Repulsion spell.

In regards to point #3, the spell says "If you attack or take a hostile action, the fascinated condition ends only for the creature that's attacked." This is saying the fascinated creature cannot attack me (the one casting the spell), only if I attack it then it is no longer fascinated with me and can attack me.


Fascinated does not prevent creatures from attacking you, all it does is this:

"You take a –2 status penalty to Perception and skill checks, and you can't use concentrate actions unless they (or their intended consequences) are related to the subject of your fascination, as determined by the GM"

So they could actually strike you at any point while you're Sustaining the spell, assuming they have the actions to do so.

And yes, on a Failure they just need to use one action to move towards you. They could then move away if desired.


Thats correct in regards to the fascinated condition. The spell explicitly says though "If you attack or take a hostile action, the fascinated condition ends only for the creature that's attacked."


The Total Package wrote:
Thats correct in regards to the fascinated condition. The spell explicitly says though "If you attack or take a hostile action, the fascinated condition ends only for the creature that's attacked."

Yes, because normally Fascinated states:

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

So lets say you cast Luring Wall and five enemies fail their save. They would all now be Fascinated.

Next round you attack one of them. Without the clause you quoted, Fascinated would end for everyone who failed. It would end for the one you attacked because you used a hostile action against it, and it would end for all their friends because you used a hostile action against one of their allies.

With the clause, Fascinated ends only for the one you attacked, and everyone else is still fascinated.

They can all still attack you while fascinated though, nothing there changes.

Dark Archive

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while fascinated is generally seen as a very useless condition, the added stipulations let it work here.
Incapacitation and especially the spell not discerning between enemies and allies (despite stating that in the sentence before) makes it useless - unless you replace "each creature" with "each enemy".

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