Ethereal Filcher & Ethereal Jaunt

[tmaaas]

Per the Ethereal Jaunt ability for the Ethereal Filcher:

Ethereal Jaunt (Su): An ethereal filcher can shift from the Ethereal Plane to the Material Plane as part of any move action, and shift back again as a free action. It can remain on the Ethereal Plane for 1 round before returning to the Material Plane. The ability is otherwise identical with the ethereal jaunt spell (caster level 15th).

The phrase "can shift from the Ethereal Plane to the Material Plane as part of any move action, and shift back again as a free action" implies that the Ethereal Filcher normally resides on the Ethereal Plane, and uses the Ethereal Jaunt ability to shift to the Material Plane.

But the phrase "It can remain on the Ethereal Plane for 1 round before returning to the Material Plane." seems to imply the opposite.

If the Filcher resides on the Material plane normally, I would have expected the first phrase to read "can shift from the Material to the Ethereal Plane . . .". But if it resides on the Ethereal plane normally, it doesn't make sense that it can only stay there for round before being forced back to the Material plane.

Is there an official (or at least commonly accepted) ruling on this anywhere?

 

[reapersaurus]

You're correct in your discovery that it is completely against the common sense of what role the creature should inhabit.

And I confirmed with someone (Monte?) that it's the way the creature is ruled.
There is no errata, and the designers AFAIK don't see what the problem with having something that can move back and forth be eunuched because of that silly 1 round restriction pushing them back to the Material Plane for some unexplained reason.

 

[tmaaas]

So, the Filcher normally resides on the Material plane. It can shift to the Ethereal as a free action. It also can shift from the Ethereal to the Material as part of a move action, but if it doesn't, it gets kicked back to the Material at the end of one round anyway.

Nope, doesn't make sense.