Blood Vendetta unstoppable?

[Ravingdork]

Blood vendetta has the Curse trait. Does that mean there is no way to remove the ongoing bleed damage effect short of using curse-removing magic?

[Castilliano]

No.
Bleed damage has its own ending conditions; the flat check, 1 minute passing (typically), and being healed to full. There's nothing in the spell that overrides those, and the spell's duration being variable rather than permanent reinforces this interpretation.

What the Curse trait does tell us is the effect cannot be Dispelled nor can one apply other methods that directly end the spell earlier, other than curse-removing magic that is.

Permanent duration w/o ending conditions would be "too good (or bad) to be true" even at a much higher Rank. Duh.

[The Raven Black]

The effect has the Curse trait, so if something negates Curses, it would negate Blood Vendetta's effect.

Now, said effect gives you the Persistent bleed damage condition.

Which ends as described by Castilliano.

I would adjudicate that due to this being a Curse, the 1 minute max duration, which is GM dependent, does not apply.

So, if you kept on rolling badly on recovery checks and if you were not healed to full, you would be bleeding forever at my table.

[Tridus]

It's persistent damage and nothing says it behaves differently. So it follows persistent damage rules. That means it ends on a flat check (including with aid), being healed to full HP, or after a minute (unless the GM decides otherwise).

The Curse trait does not change how persistent damage works.

If it actually was permanent until the curse was removed, you're talking about a guaranteed kill spell at a level where there is no RAW way to remove curses. That's obviously not the intention.

[The Contrarian]

"Flat check removes it."

That contradicts the rule in the curse trait though. It clearly states "Effects with this trait can be removed ONLY by effects that specifically target curses." It also says "A curse is an effect that places some long-term affliction on a creature." That seems to indicate that it is not intended to be a short duration effect.

/devil's advocate

[Finoan]

If the effect ends from a feature of the effect itself, then it's not being removed - it is ending on its own terms.

'Removed' implies something external to the effect.

---

And I have no problem with the devil's advocacy work here. Even if we all have the intuitive expectation that a curse effect should end as normal, there is a difference between having a gut feeling of what is right, and being able to prove it.

[Tridus]

The Contrarian wrote:

"Flat check removes it."

That contradicts the rule in the curse trait though. It clearly states "Effects with this trait can be removed ONLY by effects that specifically target curses." It also says "A curse is an effect that places some long-term affliction on a creature." That seems to indicate that it is not intended to be a short duration effect.

/devil's advocate

RAW that makes this a guaranteed kill because there is no way to remove curses at level 3 so the target will literally bleed forever until it dies.

aka: This is a troll ruling.

The Curse trait says nothing about stopping effects that have an ending criteria from working normally. And as was pointed out, an effect "ending" is not the same as something "removing it".

Bleed ends under specific criteria and nothing in the spell or the Curse trait talks about those at all, so they work normally.

[Ravingdork]

Finoan wrote:

'Removed' implies something external to the effect.

That makes sense to me.

[Baarogue]

The Contrarian wrote:

"Flat check removes it."

That contradicts the rule in the curse trait though. It clearly states "Effects with this trait can be removed ONLY by effects that specifically target curses." It also says "A curse is an effect that places some long-term affliction on a creature." That seems to indicate that it is not intended to be a short duration effect.

/devil's advocate

Archives of Nethys search: "flat check removes it"

Showing 0 of 0 results

You put that in quotes, RD, as if you were quoting something. Why can I not find that phrase in Archives of Nethys? If you are quoting something, and not just rephrasing the rules to fit your narrative, please share your source

Meanwhile, here are the rules for persistent and bleed damage that I can find

Damage Types, Bleed Damage, emphasis mine wrote:

Another special type of physical damage is bleed damage. This is typically persistent damage, and represents loss of blood. Typically nonliving creatures and living ones that don't need blood to live are immune to bleed. Weaknesses and resistances to physical damage apply. Bleed damage ends automatically if you're healed to your full Hit Points.

Conditions, Persistent Damage, emphasis mine wrote:

After you take persistent damage, roll a DC 15 flat check to see if you recover from the persistent damage. If you succeed, the condition ends.

...
Persistent damage runs its course and automatically ends after a certain amount of time as fire burns out, blood clots, and the like. The GM determines when this occurs, but it usually takes 1 minute.

And because it's bound to come up...

Medicine, Administer First Aid wrote:

Stop Bleeding: Attempt a Medicine check on a creature that is taking persistent bleed damage. The DC is usually the DC of the effect that caused the bleed.

Success: If you're trying to stabilize, the target loses the dying condition (but remains unconscious). If you're trying to stop bleeding, the target benefits from an assisted recovery with the lowered DC for particularly appropriate help.

Assisted Recovery, emphasis mine wrote:

*The action to help might require a skill check or another roll to determine its effectiveness.

*Reduce the DC of the flat check to 10 for a particularly appropriate type of help, such as dousing you in water to put out flames.
*Automatically end the condition due to the type of help, such as healing that restores you to your maximum HP to end persistent bleed damage, or submerging yourself in a lake to end persistent fire damage.
*Alter the number of actions required to help you if the means the helper uses are especially efficient or remarkably inefficient.

Note the absence of the word "remove" from these rules. Persistent damage has its own rules for when it ENDS, and all the rules affecting it merely facilitate THAT end

Not only that, but blood vendetta itself has this phrasing in its effects:

blood vendetta, emphasis mine wrote:

Failure: The target takes the full persistent bleed damage. Until the bleeding stops, the target has weakness 1 to piercing and slashing damage.

Critical Failure: As failure, but the target takes double the persistent bleed damage.

Note the word "stops", not "is removed." This implies the bleeding WILL stop, which is in line with the rules for persistent damage

I agree that if there is some magical means of counteracting the persistent damage condition that does not specifically target curses, it would not be effective here. But I can find no support for an "endless blood vendetta" bleed-out scenario in the rules

Unless, of course, you can share your source for that "quote"

[Grumpus]

I think they were just "quoting" Tridus who posted before them as a summary of Tridus' position.

[The Contrarian]

I was paraphrasing the trend of posters in this thread that were indicating that the persistent damage's flat check is what removed the persistent damage. It was intended as a kind of shorthand, rather than making a wall of quotes, or calling out one particular poster.

I was not quoting rules at all in that instance.

[Squiggit]

I agree that having blood vendetta be permanent is clearly bad and not how the spell should be run but "it ends the effect rather than removes it" is kind of some really reaching logic too.

[Tridus]

Squiggit wrote:

I agree that having blood vendetta be permanent is clearly bad and not how the spell should be run but "it ends the effect rather than removes it" is kind of some really reaching logic too.

There's a difference between a process that runs to its natural conclusion and finishes, vs a process that gets aborted halfway through.

The idea that there's a diffeernce between something ending and something removing it externally is a much smaller reach than "Curses don't end until someone casts Remove Affliction means that all the rules on Persistent Damage don't apply no matter how nonsensical the outcome is and that nothing in the spell mentions that at all."

But lets go ahead and run with that. Possessing Strike also has the Curse trait:

Possessing Strike wrote:

Your gray bladeling attempts to inject a malevolent soul fragment into a victim to seize control of their actions. The gray bladeling makes a blade Strike against a living creature. If it hits and deals damage, the target must attempt a Will saving throw against your class DC or spell DC, whichever is higher. Regardless of the result, the target is temporarily immune to Possessing Strike for 24 hours.

Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target fights off the possessing soul fragment but is stunned 1.
Failure The target is confused for 1 round and can’t use offensive actions against you or your gray bladeling.
Critical Failure As failure, but if the target takes damage from an attack or spell, the DC of the flat check to recover from the confusion is 15.

If we're using this interpretation, we have a few problems here:

1. Stunned 1 now doesn't get removed because Curse trait says it doesn't end.
2. "Confused for 1 round" makes no sense if the effect can't end because of the Curse trait.
3. The flat check to end the Confused condition is explicitly mentioned since this changes the DC, but since the condition can't end while Cursed, that does nothing.

None of that makes any sense and "permanent Stunned 1 on a success" makes this one of the strongest abilities in the entire system.

OTOH, if you treat the conditions normally (because the Curse trait doesn't actually change how conditions work), this all works just fine.

[Finoan]

Tridus wrote:

OTOH, if you treat the conditions normally (because the Curse trait doesn't actually change how conditions work), this all works just fine.

It all works just fine - and the Curse trait still has its effect. That second part is important for game balance consideration too.

The effect that the Curse trait has in the case of Possessing Strike is that other effects like Snap Out Of It couldn't remove the Stunned or Confused conditions earlier than the conditions would end on their own. While Snap Out Of It could target the Possessing Strike effect because it has the Mental trait, Snap Out Of It wouldn't be able to remove the effect because it does not specifically target Curses.