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Stunned crit spec is balanced like slow crit spec, so having it take away the same number of actions (just at different times) in all circumstances makes sense.
I'd argue this is a prefect example as to why that approach is flawed.
If Stunned was supposed to be another Slow, then it would just be Slow.
Stunned was always intended to be a different condition with a different effect.
The different crit specs are not at all equal, and are a component of how the different weapon classes are balanced against each other.
A crummy little bleed |vs| save or loose an action |vs| immobilized, etc.
I think what bothers me most is that I feel like none of the implications here are good.IDK man. At its most basic this only just reaffirms that stun 1 does what it says it does and doesn't arbitrarily turn into stunned 4 under hyper specific conditions.
That's unequivocally a good thing, it's just making the effect more consistent within weird edge cases that were always rules contradictory
"You can't act" is clear if you accept it's rules text. "Each time you regain actions, reduce the number you regain by your stunned value, then reduce your stunned value by the number of actions you lost" is clear.
The errata adds a additional clause that makes it behave in neither of these clear ways. That is not "more consistent." That is "bespoke exceptions."
There's a general rule in the system that you only gain or lose actions at the start of your turn. This errata is the only exception to that I know of in the game, aside from starting combat with a reaction when the GM says you can and class features that say you gain reactions at the start of combat even if you wouldn't otherwise.
It's only less intuitive in the sense that "stunned 1 but I lose more than one action" sounds superficially odd. But stunned is already kind of unintuitive anyways, because one of its primary uses in actions and spells is denying reactions—and that is wholly unrelated to the whole "lose actions at the start of your next turn" thing and entirely related to the consequences of the "you can't act" thing. If you look over how spells like Confusion use Stunned, and how abilities like Stunning Finisher use stunned, it becomes more obvious that the "you can't act" clause is a pretty load-bearing part of stun.
Don't you think it's equally unintuitive that, say, a readied Stunning Finisher could deny reactions from the opponent if they succeed their save but not if they fail it? That's certainly odd, but it's a consequence of the errata.
Stunned crit spec is balanced like slow crit spec, so having it take away the same number of actions (just at different times) in all circumstances makes sense.
I'd argue they're not balanced alike on purpose. Stunned spec is on firearms and slings, while slow is on brawling. The play pattern for those weapons is vastly different, and firearms on slinger are still weaker than, say, fists on a monk. So it's not odd firearms would have a stronger critical specialization if they're generally a weaker weapon. It fits with their highroll, crit-focused theme.
Oh ffs. That Pet nerf means that my familiar suddenly can no longer use Interact to toss items into ally hands, that invokes a pseudo attack roll. WTF Paizo.Why would this be the case? Interact doesn't have the Attack trait, and I don't see anything in familiar abilities calling for that either. Is it a class feat or something?Yeah, that example / sub-action for the item pass of Interact says you do so via a ranged attack, which is gonna hit that ban.
You can also attempt to throw an item to someone. You typically need to succeed at a DC 15 ranged attack with a 10-foot range increment to do so.
Thanks, I'd missed that. Probably not hard to just allow that too.
Spiny Lodestone doesn't make damage nonlethal. And I'm surprised you would want it on a Summoner, since needle darts MAPs with Eidolon attack. Save spells are much better for Summoners.What has resistance to nonlethal and not immunity?Spiny Loadstone spellheart. Doesn't even take an investment slot. I accidentally re-discovered how stupid the Imm,Weak,Res rules were because I wanted Needle Darts on my Ruby Phoenix Summoner.
And surprise, there's magic that makes all damage from both teams nonlethal.I told the GM I was waving that resistance and pretending it wasn't there.
Spiney lodestone doesn't by itself, but forced mercy is a very easy way to do it, though since it's physical damage it wouldn't be too hard to rule with the new resistance/weakness rules.
Trip. H is speaking in the context of Ruby Phoenix and talking about magic that makes all damage nonlethal, but this seems like something his GM has made up. Nowhere in the AP is this ever stated, and in fact the opposite (that people can die during fights) is the norm.
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I am complaining, yeah, because the cases in which this could be a problem almost universally cost you 2A+1R and required an enemy save. The two exceptions I know of are Power Word Stun (which is still 2A+1R, but always works and has longer range, so it's broken and should've been hit on its own) and crit reaction attacks from firearm users with critical specialization (which require the attack to crit and a save against class DC, require you to not use fake out if you're a gunslinger, and probably are more likely to occur on builds for the bad gunslinger subclasses than the good ones anyways).
It's among the most edge case interactions in the rules outside of readied power word stun. Outside of PWS, it mostly nerfs things that don't need additional nerfs.
It's not like stun is some plentifully available status effect. The ways to stun enemies on their own turns are already limited, high risk, and expensive (readied stunning fist), or heavily gated by rng and feats (crit spec firearm crit on target of opportunity). The only exception was readied power word stun, which is only online at high levels to begin with.
I think what bothers me most is that I feel like none of the implications here are good. To me, it says the devs must think one of the following:
-that readied stunning fist or firearm strikes going off as a reaction and critting with crit spec are too strong, which is just false
-that PWS is too strong and that they should just nerf stunned to account for it instead of nerfing power word stun itself, which is a bad balance approach, and that it's further a good idea to create a bespoke exception to gaining and losing actions just for stunned in the course of doing so, which I also consider a bad design approach
-that they didn't realize that stunned already kept you from taking actions if you were stunned on your turn and thought how the interaction worked was unclear, which means they didn't understand the rules as they currently existNo matter what, I don't like it.
Except that enemies can do this too. Turn this back around on players and go "oh your turn ends before you get to do anything because I just made you stunned 1 as a reaction" is unfun nonsense.
This was always pretty clearly an edge case interaction that wasn't intended and never should have been run RAW because the outcome was absurd. It absolutely needed to be fixed, and they fixed it the correct way by changing the interaction so that it works more consistently with the power level Stunned is supposed to be.
The fact that some ridiculous edge case interactions don't work now is just how it goes, but GMs never should have let them work in the first place.
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Unfortunately no Oracle repertoire fix as PC2 doesn't seem to have been touched at all. Pretty frustrating on this one since it's been causing significant real world confusion for a long time.If it helps, Maya Coleman noted in another thread that they're still working on the PC2 errata and plan to release it as part of the Spring batch.
This is the spring batch, I think? It's labelled "spring 2026". Would be great if they can get it out soon though.
I doubt the GM went off-script and edited items for that. There's a phoenix item that toggles nonlethal on/off, and the arena fights / challenges on the island during the first book had nonlethal magic, iirc.
In book 2, the real tournament itself in the city made a point of mentioning that the nonlethal magic was gone.
And yeah, playing around with Forced Mercy could make for fun shenanigans.
Except that enemies can do this too. Turn this back around on players and go "oh your turn ends before you get to do anything because I just made you stunned 1 as a reaction" is unfun nonsense.
This was always pretty clearly an edge case interaction that wasn't intended and never should have been run RAW because the outcome was absurd. It absolutely needed to be fixed, and they fixed it the correct way by changing the interaction so that it works more consistently with the power level Stunned is supposed to be.
The fact that some ridiculous edge case interactions don't work now is just how it goes, but GMs never should have let them work in the first place.
Need to run out soon, so I'll check this later, but I'm curious how many enemies can do this without the GM intentionally blowing a large amount of actions to ready abilities—something that would be player-favored in a lot of combats.
For example, I am significantly less scared of a kurobozu that does something like move up and ready stunning flurry than a kurobozu that just attacks a lot. It's obnoxious, yes, but the kurobozu just wants to move and attack a ton. The tactic also makes it harder for the kurobozu to use steal breath.
I do think that if this was a concern, a more direct fix that would've kept functionality would've been to just replace "you can't act" with "you can't take reactions" and leave the old mechanism for losing actions at start of turn intact. That solves almost every problem we've brought up so far, though it might cause some new ones I haven't thought of yet. (E.G., It would allow stunned enemies to talk, which they currently can't.)
This is the spring batch, I think? It's labelled "spring 2026". Would be great if they can get it out soon though.
Yeah, I meant that from what it sounded like, they decided to release everything else first but still have more coming soon(tm) and not, like, in Fall.
...in fact, it sounds like this isn't exactly the general Spring batch, and is instead effectively reprint erratas? I didn't know they were still doing those.
1. These are errata to go with book reprints.
2. There will be some Player Core 2 errata coming up as the spring errata.
(Edit: ah, ditto with Norr Knekten ^ ^; )
I guess there's no more ending turns if a boss drops out of maze/quandry into a conveniently placed stunning snare. That's fair.
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I'm glad Gunslingers can now actually use Quick Alchemy to make and use Alchemical Ammunition. Also glad that Firework Technician kept its recharging vials. Now if all the other alchemy dedications got that we could lessen the amount they get and let Alchemist have the most Versatile Vials at a time. :)
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Except that enemies can do this too. Turn this back around on players and go "oh your turn ends before you get to do anything because I just made you stunned 1 as a reaction" is unfun nonsense.
This was always pretty clearly an edge case interaction that wasn't intended and never should have been run RAW because the outcome was absurd. It absolutely needed to be fixed, and they fixed it the correct way by changing the interaction so that it works more consistently with the power level Stunned is supposed to be.
The fact that some ridiculous edge case interactions don't work now is just how it goes, but GMs never should have let them work in the first place.
Need to run out soon, so I'll check this later, but I'm curious how many enemies can do this without the GM intentionally blowing a large amount of actions to ready abilities—something that would be player-favored in a lot of combats.
For example, I am significantly less scared of a kurobozu that does something like move up and ready stunning flurry than a kurobozu that just attacks a lot. It's obnoxious, yes, but the kurobozu just wants to move and attack a ton. The tactic also makes it harder for the kurobozu to use steal breath.
I do think that if this was a concern, a more direct fix that would've kept functionality would've been to just replace "you can't act" with "you can't take reactions" and leave the old mechanism for losing actions at start of turn intact. That solves almost every problem we've brought up so far, though it might cause some new ones I haven't thought of yet. (E.G., It would allow stunned enemies to talk, which they currently can't.)
Reactive Strike or any other reaction with a Stunned rider is the easiest way. That doesn't require any action economy: it just messes with players turns.
But it can also be done in the same way players can do it, which would only make sense when fighting groups of enemies rather than a single large one. But if the GM has more creatures in play than the players do, they have the action economy to try it.
It's also just a bad interaction. Stunned 1 removes 1 action. It should not remove potentially 4 actions just because of timing. That never made sense.
This is the spring batch, I think? It's labelled "spring 2026". Would be great if they can get it out soon though.Sure sounds like player core 2 errata is coming in this batch but wasnt ready right nowIt's that time again, everyone! The team has asked you to now make a FALL 2026 errata thread! They let me know the following as well for those who have questions about the recently updated PDFs!
1. These are errata to go with book reprints.
2. There will be some Player Core 2 errata coming up as the spring errata.So thank you all for helping us out again and contributing! I'm locking this thread, but please keep things coming in the Fall one you make!
huh. Well its possible that last "spring" is a typo there, but it would make sense if they mean that it'll be coming in the spring (since its still winter after all).
That would be good news! :)
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We've advocated for the Wizard and Psychic, and they both ate nerfs. Nothing we say or do will get them to fix casters.
While this is true, it's been years that we've been asking for clarification on instances of damage and a fix to stuns out of turn, so while it does take inordinate amounts of time, a bit of complaining certainly could get us somewhere still!
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It's also just a bad interaction. Stunned 1 removes 1 action. It should not remove potentially 4 actions just because of timing. That never made sense.Man the hivemind is just completely out of touch on this one.
Petrified, KOed, Fleeing, Confused, and even kinda Paralyzed, ect, all essentially mean your turn is over.
Stunned was not some crazy outlier, it was one of the "seriously dangerous" Conditions, and was appropriately rare.Are folks going to start whining about loosing the rest of their turn actions if they get KOed to a reactive strike? Get Petrified?
This is a false equivalency. Stunned 1 is not meant to end your turn. Stunned 1 being turned into essentially stunned 4 because of timing alone is clearly unintentional. The conditions you mentioned are working as intended when they end your turn.
This is the spring batch, I think? It's labelled "spring 2026". Would be great if they can get it out soon though.Sure sounds like player core 2 errata is coming in this batch but wasnt ready right nowIt's that time again, everyone! The team has asked you to now make a FALL 2026 errata thread! They let me know the following as well for those who have questions about the recently updated PDFs!
1. These are errata to go with book reprints.
2. There will be some Player Core 2 errata coming up as the spring errata.So thank you all for helping us out again and contributing! I'm locking this thread, but please keep things coming in the Fall one you make!
huh. Well its possible that last "spring" is a typo there, but it would make sense if they mean that it'll be coming in the spring (since its still winter after all).
That would be good news! :)
Spring for retail company is usually a six month period beginning January or February. February is common for those with lots of post-Christmas sales and clearance they want to capture in January but budget/track with Christmas. Fall is the other six months.
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This is a false equivalency. Stunned 1 is not meant to end your turn. Stunned 1 being turned into essentially stunned 4 because of timing alone is clearly unintentional. The conditions you mentioned are working as intended when they end your turn.
Stunned was blatantly among those, literally using the same rules wording of "can't act" as Petrified and Unconscious.
It also having a counter that decremented was irrelevant to it being a very hard cc like Paralyzed.
The errata even unambiguously says this "can't act ends turn" was always the case, but they are electing to change that.
Previously, it could be much stronger to stun a creature on its turn than on your own.
Meaning, that is indeed what it used to do before they chose to nerf the Condition.
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Man the hivemind is just completely out of touch on this one.
Hurling insults around is always the mark of someone who is on sound reasoning.
Petrified, KOed, Fleeing, Confused, and even kinda Paralyzed, ect, all essentially mean your turn is over.
Stunned was not some crazy outlier, it was one of the "seriously dangerous" Conditions, and was appropriately rare.
Those things all actually do that, all the time. That's literally what they do.
Stunned 1 in the overwhelming majority of cases will remove 1 action. It will not take away an entire turn, outside of a timing based edge case.
I can't tell if you actually don't understand this or if you're just being deliberately obtuse.
Are folks going to start whining about loosing the rest of their turn actions if they get KOed to a reactive strike? Get Petrified?
Not nearly as much as folks are whining about an obviously wonky edge case being corrected, to borrow your phrasing. I do love it when people make up a case of whining to hurl as an accusation while they are actively guilty of whining.
Reinforced chassis got a buff, medium armor for the purposes of abilities and runes but the proficiency still seems to be unarmored, as it doesn’t say that you use medium armor proficiency or that the chassis *is* medium armor.
So you can shove fortification and some other armor runes on there now.
I think the stunned issue mainly came in two parts.
1) The "you can't act" part of stunned is load-bearing and also has some obtuse consequences.
2) Almost every way of inflicting stunned (playerside, at least) was designed to avoid inflicting it during someone else's turn, but the ability to ready actions kind of got forgotten in the mix, so any 1A thing that inflicts stun can potentially inflict stun on someone else's turn at a heavy action cost.
Almost every time I've seen confusion or frustration around how stun works, it's been because of the sentence, "you can't act." It initially confused me; I assumed it was flavor until reviewing multiple other parts of the rules that used it in a very clear mechanical fashion. It's also kind of absent from the condition shorthand; Stunned 1 just sounds like it should only "you lose an action next turn," and the "you can't act" part is left out of that number. And "you can't act" is only really relevant for denying reactions and free actions, because "stunned for x rounds/minutes/etc." is itself explained in the stunned rules and says you lose all your actions when they're given for the duration.
Reactive Strike or any other reaction with a Stunned rider is the easiest way. That doesn't require any action economy: it just messes with players turns.
Yeah, but do you know of any off the top? I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out how to even form a query to search for this, now that I'm trying. Simply searching for monsters that inflict stunned, I can see that a Banshee can do this at level 17 with Vengeful Spite if you crit fail—but that doesn't feel terribly out of line to me in the grand scheme. I'll keep looking, I guess.
I can say Galvanic Chew is an alch item that provides a Reaction to save or get stunned on contact.
100% designed to Stun foes on their turn, and you can only invoke the Reaction once per day before you become immune to the chew.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1918
And yeah, yall have never heard about it because that's still not that good. (It's a Fort save) The Stun-turn-end topic was waaay overblown.
I guess I'm also really confused that people think this is a good ruling if they disliked the old RAW. I feel like the primary point of annoyance would usually be losing actions on your current turn with no warning, and the secondary concern would be how many you ultimately lose to the condition. It seems like given the choice between the errata ruling, the previous RAW, and a third ruling that just keeps stunned from affecting you until the next turn except for -maybe- denying reactions, the third would be by far the least annoying to deal with.
Psychics have some self-stunning options.
I only see Violent Unleash, but it is -really- funny in the context of this conversation.
Violent Unleash
Trigger You Unleash your Psyche.
The force of your mind unleashing itself wracks your enemies with a violent shockwave. You deal 2d6 force damage to all creatures in a 20-foot emanation, with a basic Reflex save. This explosion is taxing, making you stunned 1.
At 5th level and every 2 levels thereafter, the damage increases by 1d6.
On the previous RAW, this eats your whole turn when you use it and is nonfunctional. On the errata ruling, it's also weird, because it's basically now the same as if it costs an action on the current turn. It feels like it's written with the assumption the Stunned 1 has no consequences until your next turn.
Thank you for pointing this out. This is a great addition.
can say Galvanic Chew is an alch item that provides a Reaction to save or get stunned on contact.
Also a good addition; thank you. I had actually seen this once before, but it was while I thought "you can't act" was flavor text.
Yeah, but do you know of any off the top? I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out how to even form a query to search for this, now that I'm trying. Simply searching for monsters that inflict stunned, I can see that a Banshee can do this at level 17 with Vengeful Spite if you crit fail—but that doesn't feel terribly out of line to me in the grand scheme. I'll keep looking, I guess.
It's pretty rare if you're not making up custom creatures. So this not something that will happen frequently. But in a game where PCs are doing it, it's absolutely fair game for the GM to do the same thing.
That's how I tend to resolve a lot of edge case "players are arguing this should work" type of things. I say "if that works, it works for the NPCs too". Players often decide that it's not actually so great when that happens.
But in general all this errata really does is resets back to "Stunned 1 means losing 1 action", which is what it does anyway. There's now no longer a timing edge case where Stunned 1 can be transformed into "Stunned 1 round", which is far stronger (and rarer) condition. Which is fine, really, since if it happens organically you're still taking an action away from a creature that likely planned its turn based on having it.
It's just not worth playing edge case timing trickery to try to set up.
This also happens to be the way a lot of people were running it anyway based on previous dev feedback about the edge case, so it's a relatively easy errata to make.
Alright, seems like there's an enemy in Seven Dooms for Sandpoint that could apply stunned on a crit reactive strike, so there's at least /one/ out there.
Might keep looking to see if there's any from the Bestiaries and not just an AP, but it still proves that a monster exists that can do it. (And it will affect a real table, since it's in an AP.)
That's how I tend to resolve a lot of edge case "players are arguing this should work" type of things. I say "if that works, it works for the NPCs too". Players often decide that it's not actually so great when that happens.
That's a classic, particularly in 1E (do you really want the BBEG to use the exploding runes trick you're talking about? do you? no? that's what i thought).
But in general all this errata really does is resets back to "Stunned 1 means losing 1 action", which is what it does anyway. There's now no longer a timing edge case where Stunned 1 can be transformed into "Stunned 1 round", which is far stronger (and rarer) condition. Which is fine, really, since if it happens organically you're still taking an action away from a creature that likely planned its turn based on having it.
It's not exactly the same as if it were inflicted outside your turn, though. Stunned isn't supposed to stack with slowed when subtracting actions at start of turn... but it sounds like the new ruling implies you could lose 1A to being slowed and then get stunned midturn and lose another action. It's an edge case, but it doesn't sit right with me. It's all edge cases for this ruling, sure, but...
If the table is expecting me to change how stunned works now anyways, I'm probably just going to houserule stunned to remove "you can't act" and replace it with "you can't take reactions" at this point. The edge cases are less annoying to me and it feels cleaner.
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This is a false equivalency. Stunned 1 is not meant to end your turn. Stunned 1 being turned into essentially stunned 4 because of timing alone is clearly unintentional. The conditions you mentioned are working as intended when they end your turn.Stunned was blatantly among those, literally using the same rules wording of "can't act" as Petrified and Unconscious.
It also having a counter that decremented was irrelevant to it being a very hard cc like Paralyzed.
The errata even unambiguously says this "can't act ends turn" was always the case, but they are electing to change that.
Previously, it could be much stronger to stun a creature on its turn than on your own.Meaning, that is indeed what it used to do before they chose to nerf the Condition.
What do I even say? What other condition in the game becomes four times as strong because you did some trickery to time it right? The fact that stun ends your turn sounded like a an oversight where the interaction of gaining short-term loss of acting on your turn was not considered.
It makes sense that something that takes up your entire turn ends your turn. It does not make sense that something that takes up one third of your turn ends it.
I don't know why you're deferring to what it used to do, because that was, at least from my perspective, very clearly erroneous.
I also don't see how Galvanic Chew has anything to do with this. With the errata in mind it just lets you try to waste an enemies action. It's certainly not written based on the assumption it ends the turn there and then. You don't even think it's good if it did!
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total air walk W, lmao
Wait, doesn’t the battle form only kill your fly spell of the fly spell was before the battle form? Not if cast after? I’m not crazy, that’s definitely a valid interpretation here right?
I do believe this is how it's supposed to work, the transformation "eat" your normal speed, but you can then modify it afterward without issue.
Honestly, I think there's an argument to be made that the fly spell (and the tailwind spell) don't modify your "base stat", but give you a "buff totem" instead, that last for the duration of the spell or until dispelled, and since battle form don't dispell it, it should still give you the buff. And thus that while battle form make you lose "your speeds", since you keept the "buff totem", you keep the speed bonus of tailwind or special speeds you got through other spells.
I mean, the purpose of this sentence is pretty obviously to clarify that no, a human that turn into a shark don't get to still sprint on land, and neither a strix that turn into one can keep it's wings to fly.
I expect an errata for speeds (aka movement modes) granted by spells or items, as I agree with your last sentence.
Tailwind still works because it adds a status bonus to your Speed (the stat), which Polymorph specifically allows.
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total air walk W, lmao
Wait, doesn’t the battle form only kill your fly spell of the fly spell was before the battle form? Not if cast after? I’m not crazy, that’s definitely a valid interpretation here right?
Yes, but a Druid cannot self-buff with Fly before casting a battle form Polymorph spell anymore.
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Oh ffs. That Pet nerf means that my familiar suddenly can no longer use Interact to toss items into ally hands, that invokes a pseudo attack roll. WTF Paizo.Why would this be the case? Interact doesn't have the Attack trait, and I don't see anything in familiar abilities calling for that either. Is it a class feat or something?Yeah, that example / sub-action for the item pass of Interact says you do so via a ranged attack, which is gonna hit that ban.
You can also attempt to throw an item to someone. You typically need to succeed at a DC 15 ranged attack with a 10-foot range increment to do so.
Unexpected interaction I think.
Most GMs will likely allow it but there will be outsiders.
Until they errata it to attacks that are hostile actions.
So does the new "instance of damage" help clarify whether or not barbarian rage can be applied during a polymorph effect such as untamed form?
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It's not exactly the same as if it were inflicted outside your turn, though. Stunned isn't supposed to stack with slowed when subtracting actions at start of turn... but it sounds like the new ruling implies you could lose 1A to being slowed and then get stunned midturn and lose another action. It's an edge case, but it doesn't sit right with me. It's all edge cases for this ruling, sure, but...
To be clear, the way you want it to work is that the target loses the rest of their turn, can't use reactions for a round, and loses one more action next turn, but losing one action this turn is too much?
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So does the new "instance of damage" help clarify whether or not barbarian rage can be applied during a polymorph effect such as untamed form?Their new instance of damage doesn't even quite clarify whether a rune is an instance of damage since they had it resisted rather than proc weakness.
In the example they give, I believe they state xx damage for each instance of damage.
So:
1 instance for Holy
1 instance for Flaming
1 instance for Spirit
1 instance for Cold Iron Slashing weapon, which is the only one where 2 weaknesses can happen, and they do in the example.
1 instance for Cold spell 1
1 instance for Cold spell 2
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In the example they give, I believe they state xx damage for each instance of damage.
So:
1 instance for Holy
1 instance for Flaming
1 instance for Spirit
1 instance for Cold Iron Slashing weapon, which is the only one where 2 weaknesses can happen, and they do in the example.
1 instance for Cold spell 1
1 instance for Cold spell 2
The Holy part is where they contradict themself. Holy isn't a damage chunk, it's a trait that's being applied to the whole attack. Every sub-chunk of damage has got that [holy] trait. Including the additional spirit damage of the rune.
... Strikes made withit[the holy weapon] gain the holy trait and deal an extra 1d4 spirit damage, or an extra 2d4 against an unholy target. ...
The "instance" for holy implies the entire impact/swing is one instance.
But their errata unambiguously indicates all the little chunks of damage are now "instances." Leaving their own holy instruction as a contradiction. That "only 1 holy pop" cannot be related to instances at all, and Paizo need to errata their text again to add another greater basket/bucket to contain all the instances if they want holy to only possibly pop once.
In the actual text, there is only one bucket, the "instances of damage," and there is no concept of grouping up instances, the whole point is that each instance is isolated and separate from the others.
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The interesting thing is that this goes back to how Mark explained how the damage instance worked during Playtest years ago.
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42bxf?Two-Small-Flaws-in-the-Weakness-System#2 4.
At the time I cited this post, many people didn't accept this interpretation; several people claimed that since it was a post from the playtest period, it was no longer valid, even though I argued that we didn't have any other official information besides this.
This also brings up an interesting point: Weapon Specialization is also additional damage. Therefore, it's a separate instance of damage from the weapon's base damage. So, if a creature has physical resistance whose value is greater than the weapon's damage + strength, the Weapon Specialization damage applies regardless of the resistance (since it doesn't have any type of resistance or weakness, or even immunity applies to it), as it comes from a different source.
This might seem strange at first glance, but it makes sense when we remember that things like critical immunity only apply to doubled damage, but there are no other critical effects, including deadly and fatal, because they are separate things, with the traits being triggered by the critical hit, but not part of the critical damage itself.
In the case of the holy trait, they explain that "The holy trait adds 15 damage from weakness to holy; the trait applies to the whole Strike, and happens only once." That is, if an effect that affects weaknesses, resistances, and immunities applies to the attack/Strike as a whole, it only applies once, since it doesn't apply to a specific instance of damage.
Perhaps because the effect, coming from a trait that alters Strike, applies to the Strike as a whole and not to the instances of damage triggered by it. I didn't quite understand, but as it's written in the FAQ, if the effect is applied to the action itself, it would only be applied once.
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My thirdhand foundry dev team sources tell me weapon spec doesn’t count because it doesn’t say it has a damage type or something. Supposedly it’s only a separate instance if it specifics that it does “x type of damage”
To be clear, the way you want it to work is that the target loses the rest of their turn, can't use reactions for a round, and loses one more action next turn, but losing one action this turn is too much?
"The way I want it to work" really depends a lot on the triggering effect. I don't think the reward was always out of line with the action cost and risk before this ruling, though there were abuse cases where it clearly was. I don't think readied power word stun is comparable to a monk readying stunning fist, which also isn't comparable to a gunslinger crit spec proccing on target of opportunity (which requires investment to take on a class that already has a good reaction).
My complaints wrt to slowed/stunned interacting are more just "hey, this ruling creates even more bespoke exceptions and undefined interactions, and that's not what errata should do."
Personally, I've decided to ignore this errata and instead houserule that stunned says "you can't take reactions" instead of "you can't act." It solves the same issues the errata solves, and also ensures actions from stunned are always lost at start of turn while preserving the reaction denial that many uses of stunned are written to imply. This does mean there are cases where the errata is more punishing than my houserule; that's fine. I just care that the condition works as expected without a ton of special edge case rules and exceptions.
Why houserule now? My players will expect a change to this interaction that nerfs it, and I dislike the dev solution, so I'm implementing a solution I prefer. This has never even come up in any game I've run anyways.
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So what does Spirit Song imply?
Success The creature takes half damage and can't use reactions until the beginning of its turn.
Failure The creature takes full damage, can't use reactions until the beginning of its turn, and is stunned 1.I think it implies that even by Player Core 2 they didn't know what Stun is supposed to do.
Most often redundant, yes, yet even if immune to Stun or cured of it, the target still can't use Reactions.