Can a Slowed Creature Shift?

[Infiniti2000]

At any rate... it's a perfectly reasonable house rule, doesn't really hurt much of anything, has an odd interaction with certain powers wrt reactions, but whatever, if it works for you, carry on. The difference between it and RAW is pretty minimal, frankly.

Don't you mean if it works for you? Our position is not as a houserule.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Now, dazed won't go back in time to make actions impossible...nor will it undo actions already done. But, if you've acted before dazed is applied, you're done because you've already taken the only action you are allowed that turn.

Let's discuss these statements because these are at the crux of the issue. These sentences contradict each other somewhat fiercely, from a logical standpoint. Now, I realize we're trying to decipher RAW and not RAI, so I might seem unfair here.

Let's take another example. My turn comes and I'm not dazed, so I decide to delay so I can react to the bad guy. Unfortunately, he lays down an effect that makes me dazed. Do I act immediately? Am I then unallowed to act at all? I think from your view of RAW, I would be unallowed to act at all until next round. From my perspective (unsure of Markn), you would be forced to act immediately (next).

The important thing to notice here is the phrase 'on your turn.' That indicates that the dazed condition is modifying how your turn works. Not your next turn... all your turns, including the turn that dazed is applied.

Surprisingly, we agree. The important thing for you to notice, however, is that it is NOT modifying how your turn worked. It's works...going forward from the time you are dazed, not backward to some other time. If you think you have to work backwards, then I see no other choice for your view than to undo actions that violate the dazed condition.

 

[Markn]

At any rate... it's a perfectly reasonable house rule,

That's the thing, I don't believe its a house rule. I believe its RAW. Either is a valid reading of the rules and the rules just are not clear enough to decipher one way or the other in my opinion.

 

[Markn]

But dazed doesn't say 'Starting now, you can take only one action on your turn.' It acts as an exception to the rule stating how many actions you can take on your turn, and therefore replaces it. Because it contradicts the 'Actions on your Turn' part of the rules, it supercedes it, and therefore you don't get the benefits of Actions on your Turn, unless Dazed allows it.

DS, this is incredibly well phrased and is a good argument.

Fact is though, you can't claim that the Dazed description (you can take either a standard action, a move action, or a minor action on your turn) suddenlty comes into play and prevents any more actions while at the same time not trumping previous actions if more than one was done. Thats talking out of both sides of your mouth. It doesn't fly. If it prevents future actions from that point, then it obviously cares what happened before it and if thats the case then if more than one action happened before it, any extra actions have to be cancelled as well (I get that the game doesn't work this way which is way my view seems much more logical). Either it follows the rules (one action being the limit) or it doesn't. As I2K has said, this creates a paradox that breaks the rules. Our view seems to have much less rule breaking...

 

[Markn]

Surprisingly, we agree. The important thing for you to notice, however, is that it is NOT modifying how your turn worked. It's works...going forward from the time you are dazed, not backward to some other time. If you think you have to work backwards, then I see no other choice for your view than to undo actions that violate the dazed condition.

I absolutely agree 100% on this.

I2K - I agree with your delaying example as well - I had to think it logically through before posting about it.

 

[Markn]

Reactions check for every square of movement, or even every attack when you make multiple melee attacks. Hence, you can indeed immediate reaction shield bearer's vendetta into the middle of a Passing Attack.

Why I used that as an example.

At any rate... it's a perfectly reasonable house rule, doesn't really hurt much of anything, has an odd interaction with certain powers wrt reactions, but whatever, if it works for you, carry on. The difference between it and RAW is pretty minimal, frankly.

So I looked into Passing Attack a bit more and I see what you mean. In this case, it is an IR but is essentially acting as an II since the entire attack is not finished yet. So in this case, I would say that the Orc IS dazed and since he still needs to finish his Passing Attack, he would use up his action (since the action was only partially completed when he got dazed). This still isn't the situation I am referring to though.

More like this:

Deadly Screech (standard, recharge ) Thunder

Close burst 4; +10 vs Fortitude; 1d6+3 thunder damage, and the target is dazed (save ends).

Desperate Screech (free; when first bloodied, encounter) Thunder

The Hooked Claw harpy’s deadly screech recharges, and the harpy uses it immediately..


So PC hits the harpy, harpy becomes bloodied, harpy uses Desperate Screech (which is a use of Deadly Screech) and the PC now becomes Dazed. In your view, the PC goes WFT? I just got dazed and now have no more actions. In my view the PC just got dazed and now only has 1 actions remaining (or less).

This type of situation has come up a few times over the course of the campaign. While it hasn't been a lot, it was an interesting situation nonetheless.

 

[DracoSuave]

DS, this is incredibly well phrased and is a good argument.

Fact is though, you can't claim that the Dazed description (you can take either a standard action, a move action, or a minor action on your turn) suddenlty comes into play and prevents any more actions while at the same time not trumping previous actions if more than one was done.

Sure you can. It looks back in time to see what happened, and if it disallows future actions then it disallows future actions. It cannot undo past actions because they've already happened, unless it's part of an interrupt.

So if you took two actions and become dazed, further actions are illegal, but it has no ability to undo past actions.

If this does not make sense, I'm sure I can explain it better. It is not contradictory.

Thats talking out of both sides of your mouth. It doesn't fly. If it prevents future actions from that point, then it obviously cares what happened before it and if thats the case then if more than one action happened before it, any extra actions have to be cancelled as well (I get that the game doesn't work this way which is way my view seems much more logical).

No, because present actions have NO ability to cancel previous actions without an explicit exception in place. What happened has happened unless you have an ability to make it happen. Dazed is not an exception to that rule, therefore you apply the rule. However, it WILL prevent future actions, because that IS what it does.

How is that not clear?

Either it follows the rules (one action being the limit) or it doesn't. As I2K has said, this creates a paradox that breaks the rules. Our view seems to have much less rule breaking...

Untrue. No such thing.

If you have the case where you have a creature who has taken two actions before dazed, and becomes dazed, he loses his future actions. Why is that?

General Rule: Taking actions. you get one minor, move, and one standard

^
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Specific: Dazed. You can only take one action on your turn.

^
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More specific: The creature has already taken two actions. This contradicts dazed, and therefore overlays it. However, there does not exist an exception stating the creature may continue to take actions, therefore dazed works perfectly well after that point, denying that creature his actions.


Hey. Look at that. When a specific situation contradicts the rules, the specific situation supercedes the rule, but that which does not contradict the rule does not supercede.

There is no paradox.

Let's take another example. My turn comes and I'm not dazed, so I decide to delay so I can react to the bad guy.

At this point, your turn ends, and negative end-of-turn effects take their course. Positive end-of-turn effects do not. Your initiative does not yet change.

Unfortunately, he lays down an effect that makes me dazed. Do I act immediately?

No. Anything having to do with delaying is no longer legal for you to do. Delaying cannot be done while dazed. If a rule kicks in saying you no longer get to choose something, you no longer get to choose it. There's nothing special about Delaying that says 'if delaying becomes illegal, take your turn immediately.'

In fact:

If you don’t take your delayed turn before your initiative comes up, you lose the delayed turn and your initiative remains where it was.

And it's not even unfair, abilities can be countered and actions lost due to tactical negligence. (yes, delaying to counter a dazing monster is tactical negligence)

Am I then unallowed to act at all?

Until you lose dazed, or your initiative comes up again.

I think from your view of RAW, I would be unallowed to act at all until next round. From my perspective (unsure of Markn), you would be forced to act immediately (next).

The problem is taking such an action would be using the delay procedure, which is illegal when dazed. And losing the ability to delay in no way means 'you get to take your action now'. That's not even hinted at in the rules.

The same happens if you had a readied action for the opponent that dazed you... once dazed you cannot take immediate actions and so your reaction never takes place.

Dazed is a good counter to 'delay' and 'ready'. It also makes sense, being dazed means you're not able to act as effectively... delaying and readying are completely fair game to be blitzed by it.

 

[pemerton]

It's interesting that you'd rule differently if the orc was doing a Passing Attack, wherein he attacked the fighter, got dazed, then shifted and made a second attack (ie, in the middle of his action) instead of a reaction to an action that was finished.

Keterys, a question about daze and passing attack on your interpretation of dazed (which is also the one that my group has been using).

Character X moves, then commences a passing attack. In reaction to the first attack X is dazed by an enemy (let's say that the enemy had readied an attack in response, and that attack hits and inflicts the dazed condition). Can X complete the already-underway action, or does X lose the second attack? My intution is that X loses the second attack, because (being dazed) X is limited to one non-free action per turn, and has already taken such an action (moving) and is part way through a second.

 

[DracoSuave]

For the matter of dazing during an action... the action is already spent when you start the action. Dazing does not affect a current action because it can't go 'Alright, you have to unspend this current action.'

Imagine if I give you ten dollars, charged it to my debit card, and it successfully went through.

Now, you have ten dollars, and you hand me a delicious meal. Awesome. Now, let's say, I am eating my meal, and in the middle of it, my bank goes 'Bam, your limit is now five dollars.' I don't regurgitate my meal, give it back to you, and say 'guess I couldn't have spent that five dollars.' But if I were to try to buy dessert? No can do. Not allowed.

You -can- complete an action you've already spent. Dazed doesn't reverse time to the point where you spend the action. You need an interrupt to do that.

In the case of the harpy, the screech hits, and you just continue on with the current action. You don't get another action after that however. That kinda sucks to be you.

You DID roll your monster knowledge check to know harpies do that when bloodied, right?

 

[eamon]

Just an aside not critical to the whole slow or dazed issue:
As a matter of clarity,

Immediate reactions wait for the action that
triggered it to be completed and resolved.

Keterys uses Passing Attack as an example...

So I looked into Passing Attack a bit more and I see what you mean. In this case, it is an IR but is essentially acting as an II since the entire attack is not finished yet.

Closing a door is an action. A standard action is an action. However, they're in a different class of action - let's call the first an event rather than an action to clarify that they don't necessarily require any participant to spend any kind of "consumable" action (the wind could close the door).

Triggered actions are triggered by events, not by "allocated" actions - e.g. you ready a standard action when some event comes to pass, not when the monster happens to spend a minor action. Consumable actions consist of many "events". The immediate reaction that triggers off a particular portion of Passing Attack is reacting to some event (jumping in after the event comes to pass). If you think of Passing Attack as some singular action then it's a confusing cross between reaction and interrupt - but the best way to fix that is to not think of it that way.

Similarly, thinking of interrupts as "undoing" a completed event is confusing. Interrupts happen before the triggering events - they jump in just before an event is about to happen. As such, they can't undo an event, but rather change the circumstances such that an event never succeeds in the first place. When you impose an attack penalty as an interrupt on an attack, the attack isn't "undone" - you don't reroll the attack or whatever - you just change the circumstances and thus possibly the outcome.

None of the above is to say that other interpretations are wrong - it should all come down to the same thing - it's just easier to reason about this way - at least, I hope so .