Warrior of Legend and Bloodrager mechanics accidentally incentivise self-harm

[Christopher#2411504]

I think you wanted to avoid Archetypes doing that, for obvious reasons?

But these two class Archetypes accidentally incentivise self-harm as gameplay mechanic.

Warrior of Legend.

While normally a bad Condition, being Doomed 2 can be beneficial for this class Archetype. It gives them higher bonus damage and gives them the ability to use Piercing Doom at least once per combat (even if no enemy deals your Doomed Weakeness). However it also goes down to Doomed 1 easily - both form resting and from using Piercing Doom. So they may want to restore it back to Doomed 2.

Unfortunately the most expedient way of restoring it out of combat, is to stab yourself with a Dagger (for Slashing or Piercing) or punch yourself with your Fist (for Bludgeoning), then just remove the damage with Treat Wounds. You do that every morning (you probably run out the Treat Wounds lockout even without Continual Recovery). And after every combat you used Piercing Doom in (if you have a decent healer or some passive healing).

Suggested Solutions:
- give us a "Focus on your Doom" Exploration Activity. Same time as Refocus - and also a way to Refocus, if you somehow also got Focus Points.
- limit gaining Doom from damage to "non-trivial combat encounter, as well as in other high-stress situations of the GM's choice" (I just copied the wording from Wellspring Mage for this)

Bloodrager
This one seems very much unintentional. The Harvest Blood requirement is:

Quote:

Your last action was a successful piercing or slashing melee Strike against a creature that is not immune to bleed.

Well, the Bloodrager is a creature that can wield a dagger and usually can Strike themselves. And they probably can bleed. So they can stab themselves to drink their own blood (the action), to refill their own blood (get rid of drained).

But even if you excluded the Bloodrager itself, it would also work on allies. Or even a cage full of pet hens (Bird, 1sp per Travel Guide), that they drag along on adventures just to top themselves up after battle.

Finally, you can also use it to remove any Drained conditions that are totally unreleated to you being "a Bloodrager that cast spells while raging".

Suggested Solutions:
- it would need some serious new wording to fix all the loopholes and side effects
- alternatively, maybe don't use Drained directly? Have a custom condition like "Bloodrager Drain" that copies the Status penalties of Drained, but maybe skips the HP loss. And that goes away on it's own after combat, so no need to cheese it?

[Tactical Drongo]

This sounds both like people trying to RAW the mechanics and munchkin-ing it out istead of going for RAI
while you are technically right, as a long term GM I would simply say no to both of those

as you said, the first one is easy to reign in as a combat only thing
where people really don't want to waste actions on self-harm

for the second, my suggestion would be to also make it combat only with the addition of 'not your own blood' which fits the general magical logic of the class (you cant draw you own power, it is already yours)
and if you really want to waste actions in combat, hurting you allies, be my guest
they should make an attack check though
if the ally in question holds still for getting hit, they become off guard
but they still keep up their combat movement

[PossibleCabbage]

Yeah, I feel like "don't go stabbing yourself or your friends" is a reasonable call for a GM to make.

[TheFinish]

I saw the "bag of rats" problem both of these had on release and I simply changed the wording slightly in my games:

For the Harvest Blood requirement I just changed "a creature" to "an enemy", so that it reads:

Your last action was a successful piercing or slashing melee Strike against an enemy that is not immune to bleed.

For Warrior of Legend I changed the 5th paragraph of "Warrior of Legend Adjustments" to:

"You gain Diehard (Player Core 254) as a bonus feat, but you become doomed 2 whenever an enemy or hazard triggers your cursed weakness (unless your doomed value is already higher)."

I did this mostly because the mechanics bothered me personally, none of my players are actually interested enough in the Archetypes to take them.

[WWHsmackdown]

Tactical Drongo wrote:

This sounds both like people trying to RAW the mechanics and munchkin-ing it out istead of going for RAI

while you are technically right, as a long term GM I would simply say no to both of those

as you said, the first one is easy to reign in as a combat only thing
where people really don't want to waste actions on self-harm

for the second, my suggestion would be to also make it combat only with the addition of 'not your own blood' which fits the general magical logic of the class (you cant draw you own power, it is already yours)
and if you really want to waste actions in combat, hurting you allies, be my guest
they should make an attack check though
if the ally in question holds still for getting hit, they become off guard
but they still keep up their combat movement

Yep, that player would receive a firm "no" from me and that would be as far as those shenanigans got

[BotBrain]

This strikes me as one of those largely academic problems that will never come up in play because in a game where this would present a problem, the GM will just say "Obviously not."

Sure you could tweak the wording but I doubt it will actually change anything in real games. There's plenty of abilities that would trigger the old bag of rats cheese.

Warrior of legend is fine. You need to earn doomed 2 in combat to get the bonuses. Working as intended. I don't think they should get to use all their kit every combat because that's not what it's been made to facilitate.

What I think is the actual problem with bloodrager is the lack of a way to reset drained outside of combat, because it feels out of line with the rest of the game which normally assumes a full reset unless it's a spell slot. Their drained should clear on a treat wounds or just after 10 minutes. I think this is more of an issue for utility spells than for in combat, as being drained for no real benefit out of combat sucks. But even then it isn't that bad. Drained is rough in combat but out of combat it doesn't matter too much.

Even so, in combat, it's whatever. You start a combat drained from your last fight, you gotta deal slashing damage. That's fine to me. The problem is the bit between those two fights.

[Mathmuse]

I read this while distracting myself as I used my weekly Trulicity autopen to control my type 2 diabetes. Sometimes a person has a reason to stab themselves, though the stab of an injection needle bleeds only about 1 time out of 20. Even when I avoid bleeding or bruising, it still hurts enough that my instincts always ask me to not self-harm again. I also squeeze out a tiny droplet of blood every morning to test my blood glucose levels.

And I have read about fictional sorcerers who draw their spell runes in their own blood.

With names such as "Blood Calls Blood" and "Rising Blood Magic" I can imagine themes that justify using the bloodrager's own blood. But mechanically, removing drained condition from stabbing oneself seems too easy. The self-stab should take some time to nerve up to it, like I have to do, long enough for the temporary hit points and +1 circumstance bonus to expire.

[moosher12]

This feels like it can go to the errata. As it seems true enough. I suppose this is why SF1E, PF1E's gunslinger and swashbuckler (Can't remember if it was one of these or both), and some other systems include "significant enemy" mechanics, where certain conditions that are dependent on damaging opponents are prevented from bag of rats exploits by instead requiring the enemy to be a valid threat to you, which would exclude willing targets and unwilling, but trivially weak enemies from counting toward the bonus.

[gesalt]

For warrior of legend, you already do this at combat start with collar of the shifting spider dealing 1 piercing damage to you to activate your obligatory energy mutagen.

I suppose that sorta encourages taking stimulants, or something, but this is a fantasy game where we drink suspicious liquids found in tombs and such. No sense dwelling on it.

[PossibleCabbage]

gesalt wrote:

For warrior of legend, you already do this at combat start with collar of the shifting spider dealing 1 piercing damage to you to activate your obligatory energy mutagen.

This is a much more legitimate way to game the ability compared to "I hear enemies coming, quick someone stab me." Particularly since a weakness to piercing damage is pretty rough considering how many things have teeth.

[Jon A]

If self-harm is an issue, you will want to avoid the kholo. They have a pair of level 5 ancestry feats (left hand blood, right hand blood) that require self-harm to work.

[AceofMoxen]

I am confused: Is this a "Content Warning/Triggering Content" issue or a "Munchkins giving themselves papercuts" issue?

[PossibleCabbage]

I do think that "Trading pain for power" is not an unusual, or even a terrible thing to have in a RPG game. I've definitely played an Abyssal Exalted character that was much more concerning in this way than anything that these archetypes allow (this hobby used to lean much more into edgy stuff, just look at PF1).

If there's a group where this is going to be a specific problem for the people in the game, then it's something you avoid. But a lot of us are adults who can handle what we can handle, you just avoid playing an Anadi character who spends a lot of time as a spider when someone else in the game is genuinely uncomfortable with spiders.

[The Raven Black]

Bag of kittens abilities were already on the No-No list for RPG Superstar a very long time ago.

Definitely rules loopholes to close shut.

Food for the Errata thread I guess.

[Madhippy3]

I would ban a blood Rager using their own blood since that doesn’t make sense, but an ally with blood is a creature with blood and with the player/PC permission I have done this. In a Seasons of Ghosts campaign where blood is not guaranteed, a donation from allies to recover my drained condition has, narratively even hasn’t been asking a lot.