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IMO, that's enough context for me to change my view on what the RaW is, and that the scope of that immunity & resistance is narrower than I had thought; imo it is specifically talking about damage, not effects.
That is quite literally impossible, because the rules recognize only one type of immunity that specifically refers to damage:
[1]: When you have immunity to a specific type of damage, you ignore all damage of that type.
So when an ability says "immunity to fire" or "immunity to piercing", then yes, it could only refer to damage, because both "fire" and "piercing" are damage types.
But when an ability says "immunity to water" or "immunity to swords", then it cannot be referencing the immunity to damage category, because neither water nor swords are a damage type. It has to refer to another immunity category. The same holds true for "immunity to spells".
tl;dr:
The meaning of "immunity" can only be narrowed to "immunity to damage", when that immunity references a damage type.
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Spells have an easier time wounding you. You gain weakness 2 to any damage dealt by a spell. Any immunity or resistance you have to spells is suppressed.IMO, that's enough context for me to change my view on what the RaW is, and that the scope of that immunity & resistance is narrower than I had thought; imo it is specifically talking about damage, not effects.
The real bugbear is that while it is entirely possible for some like Finoan or myself to think the context of the "damage" part applies to the immunity line, it's also totally valid for others to think it's a disconnected rule.
_____________TBH, I don't think that curse is even intended to prevent the "spam prevention immunity" of incoming harmful spells like Blindness.
That would make that mystery's T1 cursebound effect waaaaay worse than all the others.
Oracle curses vary so wildly in how bad they are that "this one is really bad so it's probably wrong" doesn't mean anything. This is the same class that thinks Enfeebled and Clumsy are equivalent on a spellcaster, after all. It's also the one that gives Life Link to the one that also has Resistance to healing in amounts far beyond any of the weaknesses that other curses give. Like, one of them is Weakness 2 at Cursebound 1 and the other at equivalent Cursebound is Resist Healing that goes all the way to 20.
The relative impact of a curse means absolutely nothing on Oracle because the curses are so all over the map on it already that there is absolutely no baseline to judge from.
It's also just unintuitive and hard for the GM to work with. Questions like: Are foes supposed to know that this one PC is not immune to repeat castings in the middle of combat? etc.
There's a bunch of things in the game that already work like that, including on this class. A GM has to know that anyone with Nudge the Scales might actually have void healing today, or that a Tempest Oracle wearing a Jolt Coil has Resist Electricity 2 while Cursebound 0 but loses that (and gains Weakness 2 instead) at Cursebound 1, which is not how it would work for any other class that has both a resistence and a weakness.
That's just the reality of GMing a complex game like this. Players should also know that they're not immune, though, and if they're using the "not immune to sure strike cooldown" part it shouldn't be that hard to remember they're also not immune to any other spell effects that they would normally be.
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It's not possible for this interaction to be TGTBT since pre-errata true strike was perfectly balanced to begin with.
The system often invents odd sub-"types" of damage out of thin air, and we even get an example of "weakness to axes" somewhere iirc.
It very much does match precedent that a custom oracle curse could be referencing a "new" idea of spell damage immunity, and not be trying to invoke the existing mechanic of "spell immunity."
We don't make a big fuss over a creature with "weakness to axes" for the same reason; we don't need it to be a canonized "damage type" to be able to work with it.
It really does seem that Battle's curse is there to specifically overrule any other resistance or immunity that would normally apply to incoming spell damage. If you are a cursed oracle with Vapor Form and take precision damage, you need to make a new check.
If that incoming damage was from an ability like Sneak Attack, your immunity is fine. If you got hit with a spell, that immunity is suppressed, and you take the precision damage.
Oh, come on. The single most common C1 effect is weakness 2 to a specific subset of incoming damage, and any resistance or immunity to that type is suppressed.
It is absolutely legit to point to that pattern, and realize that Finoan's idea actually matches.
Meanwhile, the idea of having that standard weakness 2, plus also adding all of the general "spell immunity" mechanic would greatly deviate from the pattern.
The system often invents odd sub-"types" of damage out of thin air, and we even get an example of "weakness to axes" somewhere iirc.
Nope. That isn't weird at all and covered by the Weakness rules. These rules list two subcategories of weaknesses:
[1:] If you have a weakness to a certain type of damage, that type of damage is extra effective against you. Whenever you would take that type of damage, increase the amount of damage by the value of the weakness. For instance, if you are dealt 2d6 fire damage…
[2:] Some weaknesses can apply when a creature wouldn't normally take damage, as determined by the GM. In such cases, you take damage equal to the weakness value when touched or affected by something with that characteristic. For example, a creature with weakness to water would take extra damage if it were targeted by a spell with the water trait or splashed with water…
1: Weakness to a damage type, and the rules give fire as an example.
2: Weakness to characteristics, and the rules give water as an example (both as a trait and as an object).As you will certainly recognize, these are exactly the same examples I used above when talking about Immunity rules: Fire is a damage type, water is not. So a weakness to axes (like many Arboreals have) is not at all odd, since the rules already give an explicit example of a weakness against objects.
On the contrary, the rules are incredibly consistent across the entire Immunity-Weakness set, and there is no need at all to imagine some new hypothetical rules.
It's quite simple: Neither water nor spell is a damage type, so any "immunity to spells" or "weakness to water" is not referring to the rules on damage type immunities/weaknesses.
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It's not possible for this interaction to be TGTBT since pre-errata true strike was perfectly balanced to begin with.Then why did they put the immunity ?
Paizo has a long history of nerfing existing options in order to better sell newer, non-nerfed content.
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Oh, come on. The single most common C1 effect is weakness 2 to a specific subset of incoming damage, and any resistance or immunity to that type is suppressed.
It is absolutely legit to point to that pattern, and realize that Finoan's idea actually matches.
Meanwhile, the idea of having that standard weakness 2, plus also adding all of the general "spell immunity" mechanic would greatly deviate from the pattern.
Except that for this "pattern" you're pointing out to exist, you have to ignore a bunch of other cases that don't fit it. Oracle is full of those.
There is no actual pattern here. There's a pattern if you cherry-pick a couple of options and declare "that's the pattern and thus X is outside of it so it must be wrong." When Y, Z, and A also don't fit the pattern, X is not an outlier anymore and the whole argument falls apart.
People are trying to glean intent here in order to push a non-RAW argument but with how completely unbalanced the curses are, there's no way to do that. You can't claim the intent isn't to make a too bad/too good curse when those already exist on the class, survived multiple errata cycles, and arguably were made worse by the remaster itself.
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Wondering if they put the immunity in Sure Strike so that they can introduce items that boost spell attacks.They didn't. They put the immunity in because sure strike is a Rank 1 spell it was very easily spammable at higher levels while providing a huge advantage, particularly when used by characters that already have good (aka, non-caster) accuracy (which, again, can easily get it because it's Rank 1).
Companies that sell stuff often embellish their motivations.
The Investigator which has an ability which is very similar in effect to sure strike, and has not been nerfed.
The bonus a character recieves from Sure Strike can be better with mediocre accuracy than high accuracy. Though criticals complicate the maths.
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Wondering if they put the immunity in Sure Strike so that they can introduce items that boost spell attacks.They didn't. They put the immunity in because sure strike is a Rank 1 spell it was very easily spammable at higher levels while providing a huge advantage, particularly when used by characters that already have good (aka, non-caster) accuracy (which, again, can easily get it because it's Rank 1).Companies that sell stuff often embellish their motivations.
The Investigator which has an ability which is very similar in effect to sure strike, and has not been nerfed.
The bonus a character recieves from Sure Strike can be better with mediocre accuracy than high accuracy. Though criticals complicate the maths.
The Investigator's DAS is very far from being Sure Strike.
Closest would be using a Hero point to reroll. And that is not something you use casually.
And, yes, Sure Strike is used by relevant builds to go critfishing.