Dysfunctional Rules IX: 1d3 Dysfunctions from the 8th Level List

[MrMonsterGuy18]

In Pathfinder immunity to fire doesn't protect you against boiling water. Boiling water does scalding damage (pg.444 of Core Rulebook), not fire.

[Celestia]

In Pathfinder immunity to fire doesn't protect you against boiling water. Boiling water does scalding damage (pg.444 of Core Rulebook), not fire.

Clearly, Pathfinder just operates on Pokémon logic: immunity to fire doesn't mean immunity to Scald since it's a water move. *nod*

(Though, fire types still can't be burned by Scald, so maybe Pokémon actually makes slightly more sense?)

[Boggartbae]

If you are Nauseated in Pathfinder, you can take only a single move action each turn, so you can bend over to pick up your sword (a move action) but you cannot drop it again (a free action)

[weckar]

The sea witch's Call Maelstrom abilities are vague on whether the improvements replace the previous abilities or not, and whether you have one use of each or one use total /day.

More significantly; by text the ability Briny deep summoning works at will until lv 8 when it becomes twice per day.

[ShurikVch]

Astral Dragons are living on Astral Plane;
Astral Plane is timeless;
Astral Dragons are have no innate way to go to another Plane;
Thus - they all should be Wyrmlings.


Awaken Undead spell - Spell Compendium variant - restores "any extraordinary racial abilities they had in life", no clause about the flesh which is necessary to make this ability work; thus, by the RAW, awakened Skeleton may regain the Swallow Whole!

[HouseRules]

Astral Dragons are living on Astral Plane;
Astral Plane is timeless;
Astral Dragons are have no innate way to go to another Plane;
Thus - they all should be Wyrmlings.

Dragon and Egg problem.
Which Young Adult or Older Astral Dragon gave birth to the first Astral Dragon Eggs?
And how do these Astral Dragon Eggs hatch if the Astral Plane is timeless?

[The Random NPC]

Dragon and Egg problem.
Which Young Adult or Older Astral Dragon gave birth to the first Astral Dragon Eggs?
And how do these Astral Dragon Eggs hatch if the Astral Plane is timeless?

Maybe every Astral Dragon that ever will be just popped into existence at the same time as the Astral Plane?

[Silly Name]

I think I've found a potential issue with Arcane Trickster. The Ranged Legerdemain description reads

[...] An arcane trickster can use ranged legerdemain once per day initially, twice per day upon attaining 5th level, and three times per day at 9th level or higher. He can make only one ranged legerdemain skill check each day, and only if he has at least 1 rank in the skill being used.

The bolded part could be read as invalidating the previous sentence regarding additional uses. Normally, when a class feature can be used once per day at first, and then gains additional uses after, it usually reads along the lines of "[Class] can use [feature] once per day [...]. [Class] gains additional uses of [feature] at levels X, Y, Z, as indicated on table A-B."

The way Ranged Legerdemain is worded, however, would seem to imply that Arcane Tricksters are still limited to one ranged legerdemain skill check each day, no matter how many uses of it they have.

Is this a valid reading? The RAI is pretty clear, and the dysfunction comes from a repetition of what was already said in the previous sentence, but it's pretty funny.

[Zaq]

I posted that one a while ago. It seems like a black-and-white dysfunction to me.

My take on RAI is that the extra “once per day” clause is an error and it does in fact scale with level.

[Silly Name]

Yeah, it's pretty obvious that the Arcane Trickster is supposed to be able to use his Ranged Legerdemain multiple times a day.

If the sentence order was reversed, there would be no dysfunction, but the way it's printed stops the AT from actually making anything useful of the extra uses.

Was your posting of this dysfunction disputed, or simply not added to the handbook? I couldn't find it there.

[Zaq]

Is anyone still updating the handbook? I wouldn’t be surprised if it simply didn’t get added. There’s an awful lot to organize and categorize there. Certainly more work than I’m personally comfortable taking on right now.

[ShurikVch]

The little problem with the Create Spawn SA: if you're somehow manage to destroy the body after the death, but before it's risen as Undead - nothing in the RAW says Undead wouldn't appear if the corpse will be staked, decapitated, cremated, or even dissolved in acid
It shouldn't be a problem for various Incorporeal spawns, but even solid creatures - such as Vampire Spawn, Wight, or even Zombie - are completely OK too!

Various weaponbreaking abilities - such as discussed in the thread...
I just noticed: by the RAW, they are should work even on whips!
While it may be reasonable for supernatural abilities (and acid-related ones are OK too), but,say, Tough as Nails feat isn't supernatural...

[deuxhero]

Another adventure dysfunction: Jade Regent has rules for relationship values with NPCs. Once an NPC is past a certain number of points romance with them becomes possible.

The problem? The Campaign trait Younger Sibling adds points to the relationship (4 of the needed 35-40) and, as far as I can tell, there's nothing actually stops this from making incest easier than normal romance except common sense. "Stopped by common sense" has never been a disqualifier here.

[dgnslyr]

Another adventure dysfunction: Jade Regent has rules for relationship values with NPCs. Once an NPC is past a certain number of points romance with them becomes possible.

The problem? The Campaign trait Younger Sibling adds points to the relationship (4 of the needed 35-40) and, as far as I can tell, there's nothing actually stops this from making incest easier than normal romance except common sense. "Stopped by common sense" has never been a disqualifier here.

Considering it's the obligatory stereotypical Oriental adventure, I wouldn't be surprised if someone on the writing team was a fan of a certain kind of anime...
Fake edit: The Oreimo kind of anime, not the 18+ kind. Sheesh.

[Florian]

Ah, well, the specific sub-system in Jade Regent covers both, "romance" and "friendly rivalry" with the same mechanic and scoring system. It actually makes sense when the younger brother of Kameiko will want to outshine his famous older sister.

[ShurikVch]

I know, the "All example characters" is a general category in the Handbook, but this one may take the cake: Iliss Githom-Vaas (Exemplars of Evil) - Female githyanki lich fighter 6/death's chosen^LM 3/blackguard 5
She haven't neither the necessary CL for Lich transformation, nor Craft Wondrous Items for phylactery, nor the phylactery itself, nor even an explanation of how the heck it's possible

[Bucky]

Pathfinder Kineticists - Many of their spell-like abilities deal them nonlethal damage as part of using the ability. This damage forces them to make a concentration check or the ability fails.


(File this one under the "burn" class feature - it's not the SLAs' fault)

[deuxhero]

Races of the Wild: Raptorans don't have Auran as a language option, even though their entire existence is defined by "a pact with the lords of the Elemental Plane of Air, gaining the ability to fly in exchange for pledging the finest warriors of their race to the service of the air elementals in various extra-planar battles.".

edit:
You know that thing where skeletons hide in piles of bone (mostly not-undead) and emerge to attack intruders? D&D (and PF) Skeletons are pretty bad at it, no skills and all that.

[Zaq]

It's not a true dysfunction so much as a severely unintended consequence, but technically, the granted power of the Envy domain (SpC pp. 273-4) increases the user's caster level for the majority of Sanctified and Corrupt spells, since they happen to damage or drain ability scores. They happen to damage or drain your ability scores rather than those of the target, but that's not what the Envy domain says it boosts, now is it?

[Blue Jay]

Purple Worm

I'm not sure if this is entirely a dysfunction, but it looks like a little bit of an inconsistency or a clarity issue. The purple worm has the Swallow Whole ability. Here's the text of the ability from the SRD purple worm entry:

A purple worm can try to swallow a grabbed opponent of a smaller size than itself by making a successful grapple check. Once inside, the opponent takes 2d8+12 points of crushing damage plus 8 points of acid damage per round from the worm’s gizzard. A swallowed creature can cut its way out by using a light slashing or piercing weapon to deal 25 points of damage to the gizzard (AC 17). Once the creature exits, muscular action closes the hole; another swallowed opponent must cut its own way out. A Gargantuan worm’s interior can hold 2 Large, 8 Medium, 32 Small, 128 Tiny, or 512 Diminutive or smaller opponents.

The general rule for Swallow Whole is "Unless otherwise noted, the opponent can be up to one size category smaller than the swallowing creature." From the text above, it looks like the purple worm is allowed to use its Swallow Whole attack on creatures up to Huge size, but its gullet can only hold creatures up to Large size.

[Zaq]

I will confess that I'm probably getting a little bit nitpicky here, but the targeting on a dread necromancer's Charnel Touch is weird. Relevant text:

At will, but no more than once per round, she can make a melee touch attack against a living foe that deals 1d8 points of damage, +1 per four class levels. This touch heals undead creatures, restoring 1 hit point per touch, +1 per four class levels.

It says that you can make the touch attack against living foes. It says that the touch would heal undead things, but it doesn't say that you're actually allowed to target undead creatures with it. Just living foes. Which also makes self-healing with Tomb-Tainted Soul awkward; even if we assume that the specific line about healing undead things means that you can target undead things, a TTS dread necro isn't a living foe or an undead creature. A TTS DN who ends up getting targeted with Charnel Touch would indeed heal from it, but I'm not certain that it's legal for them to actually be targeted with it in the first place.

I mean, yeah, I'm splitting hairs, but the wording is still pretty weird.

Spoiler: Stuff that I THINK we've discussed already

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Also, I'm 90% certain that this has been mentioned somewhere in these nine threads, but just to throw it out there in case everyone else marked it off as too obvious: the dread necro's Negative Energy Burst has no clause about not harming the dread necro herself, assuming for a minute that there are any DNs who don't end up with either TTS or the undead type by the time Negative Energy Burst comes online.

And there's nothing in the rules preventing a DN from spamming Fear Aura an arbitrarily large number of times through an arbitrarily large number of free actions, causing everything within its radius not immune to fear to become shaken with no duration. Almost certain that we've gone over that one before, though. EDIT: Fear Aura does indeed have an "immune for 24 hours on successful save" clause, so it can't be spammed against the same thing to force it to fail by rolling until it gets a nat 1. However, the fact that the resulting shaken effect has no duration is still dysfunctional, though that has probably been mentioned before.

[ShurikVch]

a TTS dread necro isn't a living foe or an undead creature.

Note: according to the Glossary, DN is a living creature - as long as she's have a Con score

[InvisibleBison]

Note: according to the Glossary, DN is a living creature - as long as she's have a Con score

She's a living creature, but not a living foe.

[Zaq]

Note: according to the Glossary, DN is a living creature - as long as she's have a Con score

She's a living creature, but not a living foe.

InvisibleBison got it. You aren't a foe. In fact, in 3.5, you're explicitly defined to be your own ally. We also run into problems with trying to use Charnel Touch to heal allies with TTS, because they aren't living foes. It's just kind of a weird restriction that almost certainly isn't intentional, which is why it's worth discussing as a dysfunction.

[Troacctid]

There's no point spamming fear aura on the same enemies. If they save, they're immune for 24 hours. If they fail, multiple instances of fear from the same source don't stack.

[Zaq]

There's no point spamming fear aura on the same enemies. If they save, they're immune for 24 hours. If they fail, multiple instances of fear from the same source don't stack.

You're correct about the 24 hour immunity. I had confused it with something else. I hadn't mentioned stacking it with itself, but I'll remove the comment about just trying until you succeed.

The lack of duration is still a dysfunction, though. Again, probably mentioned in an earlier thread, but so it goes.

[The Viscount]

Heroes of horror is an incredibly strange book, and the DN class in general reads like whoever wrote it just wasn't familiar with standard terminology.
HoH is the only book where instead of the normal entry for undead traits, they have their own writeup with the sentence "It cannot be raised, and resurrection works only if it is willing." It's either redundant, reminding you of how resurrection works (but incorrectly saying the undead has to be willing instead of the soul of the deceased) or implying incorrectly you can use resurrection on undead.

[Debatra]

Actually, the Undead type says that Resurrection works (though Raise Dead still doesn't).

[The Viscount]

True, but most books specify that resurrection returns an undead to the creature it was when it was alive, and the spell itself specifies you must destroy the undead first. HoH does not do this.

[dhasenan]

Falling off a mount is a source of a few dysfunctions.

(The rules are mentioned both in the Ride skill and the Combat section, but the two are mostly compatible.)

First, if your mount dies, you always fall off it. It doesn't matter if the mount is a colossal centipede that hadn't moved in a thousand years; you fall off. This is just a bit weird.

If you fall off, you can take a DC15 check to make a soft landing. This negates fall damage. If you are a good rider, you can get to the bottom of a cliff safely by asking a friend to shove you off a horse. You can take 10 on this, so it's something that a lot of low-level paladins can take advantage of.

This becomes more hilarious with flying mounts and the Downdraft spell (Spell Compendium 72). You're flying 500 squares up, catch a Downdraft, and now either teleport to the ground or take 1d6 damage.