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Ashdate
2009-06-14, 10:43 PM
Hi, I'm wondering if a creature has it's Strength reduced to say, 4 (via Ray of Enfeeblement) and then becomes Exhausted via say, Ray of Exhaustion (-6 to Str and Dex), would said creature be considered helpless? Or does the wording on Ray of Enfeeblement (which prevents a subject's Strength score from dropping below 1) prevent this from happening?

- Ashdate

Deepblue706
2009-06-14, 10:50 PM
While Ray of Enfeeblement cannot drop someone's score below 1, Exhaustion is an effect that can. Cast upon someone after an Enfeeblement should make them helpless, if they lose all of their STR.

Keld Denar
2009-06-15, 01:36 AM
Thats debatable. A creature can usually apply effects in the order that is most advantageous to it according to a Sage ruling concerning a creature that has both resistance and vulnerability to an element. So, the creature could opt for the exhaustion to affect it, and then have the enfeeblement apply and hit the minimum of 1. Regardless, any creature with a Str of 1 is pretty well boned unless its naked or psionic.

I know what the given oppinion of the Sage is, but its the only thing out there that gives any kind of a similar situation.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-06-15, 01:43 AM
Thats debatable. A creature can usually apply effects in the order that is most advantageous to it according to a Sage ruling concerning a creature that has both resistance and vulnerability to an element. So, the creature could opt for the exhaustion to affect it, and then have the enfeeblement apply and hit the minimum of 1. Regardless, any creature with a Str of 1 is pretty well boned unless its naked or psionic.

I know what the given oppinion of the Sage is, but its the only thing out there that gives any kind of a similar situation.Damage and Penalty are not the same, however.

Draz74
2009-06-15, 01:47 AM
This is only sort of related, but I found it interesting (and my DM was quite upset) when I discovered that, by RAW, Ray of Exhaustion is pretty much an insta-win against any type of Ooze. Don't need Ray of Enfeeblement (or Clumsiness) shenanigans when the monster only starts with 6 or less DEX anyway ... :smallwink: And if they only start with 2 or less DEX, you don't need to worry about them making a Fortitude save (or repeating the spell) either.

Quietus
2009-06-15, 01:48 AM
Damage and Penalty are not the same, however.

They're not; What Keld is saying, however, isn't that they're the same. Instead, he's saying that any effect in place on your character, for good or ill, you can apply in whatever order you like. So for this example, let's say you take the Enfeeblement first, then get hit with a Ray of Exhaustion. The total penalty to strength is enough to take you to 0, *if* Exhaustion is applied second.

Being that I, as the monster, can apply the two in whatever order I choose, I choose to apply the Exhaustion first, followed by Enfeeblement. Due to Enfeeblement's clause, my strength is now 1, regardless of what the total penalty would be.

Deepblue706
2009-06-15, 01:53 AM
Weird. I never actually heard of that argument prior to this.

Harperfan7
2009-06-15, 01:56 AM
If their strength from the exhaustion is down to 4 and then you cast enfeeblement, their strength goes down to 1.

If you do enfeeblement first, then exhaustion, it can go down to 0.

Zeful
2009-06-15, 02:26 AM
They're not; What Keld is saying, however, isn't that they're the same. Instead, he's saying that any effect in place on your character, for good or ill, you can apply in whatever order you like. So for this example, let's say you take the Enfeeblement first, then get hit with a Ray of Exhaustion. The total penalty to strength is enough to take you to 0, *if* Exhaustion is applied second.

Being that I, as the monster, can apply the two in whatever order I choose, I choose to apply the Exhaustion first, followed by Enfeeblement. Due to Enfeeblement's clause, my strength is now 1, regardless of what the total penalty would be.

It doesn't work like that. Effect stacking is only for simultaneous action or differing racial abilities (which work simultaneously). The only way what you said would work is if you managed to have ray of enfeeblement also exhaust (or cast both rays with the same action). Casting a Quickened Ray of Enfeeblement and then a Ray of Exhaustion, is very different from casting a Quickened Ray of Exhaustion and then a Ray of Enfeeblement. Both are two separate actions (Free/swift and standard). The first can reduce your strength to zero, while the second can't

Further, your strength is still zero in your scenario because this effect stacking is always to the determent of the creature in question. A white dragon that gets the ability to resist 20 points of fire gets attacked by 14 points of fire damage. The dragon can't choose to have the resist apply first, nullifying the attack before his vulnerability kicks in because that's to the creatures advantage. His vulnerability raises the damage to 28 which is then reduced by 20 because of his fire resistance. The applies with healing to. A creature that is healed by lightning gains electricity resist 20 can't be healed by electrical attacks that deal less than 20 damage for as long as he retains the ability.

Quietus
2009-06-15, 03:34 AM
It doesn't work like that. Effect stacking is only for simultaneous action or differing racial abilities (which work simultaneously). The only way what you said would work is if you managed to have ray of enfeeblement also exhaust (or cast both rays with the same action). Casting a Quickened Ray of Enfeeblement and then a Ray of Exhaustion, is very different from casting a Quickened Ray of Exhaustion and then a Ray of Enfeeblement. Both are two separate actions (Free/swift and standard). The first can reduce your strength to zero, while the second can't

Further, your strength is still zero in your scenario because this effect stacking is always to the determent of the creature in question. A white dragon that gets the ability to resist 20 points of fire gets attacked by 14 points of fire damage. The dragon can't choose to have the resist apply first, nullifying the attack before his vulnerability kicks in because that's to the creatures advantage. His vulnerability raises the damage to 28 which is then reduced by 20 because of his fire resistance. The applies with healing to. A creature that is healed by lightning gains electricity resist 20 can't be healed by electrical attacks that deal less than 20 damage for as long as he retains the ability.


To be fair, I was going off of what I'd seen others say. I don't have a source for it, and yes, I can see the resistance thing being a weird malfunction of that rule, if it exists.

That being said, my stance as a DM is that if something says "This spell cannot reduce your score to zero", and then you get shot with something afterward that CAN.. then your score will only reach zero if it would do so without the penalty. For example :

10 strength commoner. Struck by Ray of Enfeeblement, then Ray of Exhaustion. Let's say they take a -6 penalty from Ray of Enfeeblement (Which has the specific clause "The subject’s Strength score cannot drop below 1. "), then take a further -6 from Exhaustion. Taking the unlimited penalties into account (exhaustion), the commoner has 4 strength, which is penalized by the Enfeeblement. Because Enfeeblement cannot reduce strength below 1, the commoner's strength remains at 1.

The main reason for this? It's far too easy to two-shot any non-melee targets otherwise. Fifth level wizard can potentially insta-win any caster duel if they can land those two spells, and rolls well enough on their Enfeeblement. Now, if they somehow got another strength penalty/damage, like a dose of Monstrous Spider venom.. then sure, they can drop a foe to 0. But only if they could do it without any effects giving a minimum score clause.

Brock Samson
2009-06-15, 04:08 AM
I would argue the wording in Ray of Enfeeblement "The subject’s Strength score cannot drop below 1." means the subject of THIS spell. Thus, subjecting it to a spell following it that does not contain that clause would allow it to drop below 1. It may not be RAW, but I believe it RAI.

Saph
2009-06-15, 05:23 AM
Eh, it's a DM call. I don't think there's any RAW answer on it.

Personally, I'd say that it can't drop a creature's Strength below 1, for the simple reason that at mid-high levels, trying to remember all the buffs/debuffs affecting a creature in the middle of a combat is quite hard enough already. If someone tells me that I'm also expected to keep track of what order they were cast in, I'm going to hit him over the head with my Monster Manual.

- Saph

MickJay
2009-06-15, 06:01 AM
I would argue the wording in Ray of Enfeeblement "The subject’s Strength score cannot drop below 1." means the subject of THIS spell. Thus, subjecting it to a spell following it that does not contain that clause would allow it to drop below 1. It may not be RAW, but I believe it RAI.

Yeah, it looks like the spell sets the strength to 1 (minimum), but also protects against lowering it below that.

Jack Zander
2009-06-15, 06:55 AM
So if you cast a ray of exhaustion, then a ray of enfeeblement, and then a ray of exhaustion again, what's their strength score?

Muad'dib
2009-06-15, 07:43 AM
So if you cast a ray of exhaustion, then a ray of enfeeblement, and then a ray of exhaustion again, what's their strength score?

Multiple castings of ray of exhaustion don't do anything, other than renew the duration, as the ray makes the character exhausted and exhausted's penalty is -6 str and dex, among other things.

Jack Zander
2009-06-15, 08:11 AM
Multiple castings of ray of exhaustion don't do anything, other than renew the duration, as the ray makes the character exhausted and exhausted's penalty is -6 str and dex, among other things.

My question wasn't the two exhaustions stacking, it was the order of the spells determining the strength. And if the two don't stack, is there any way to "fix" it if you "messed up?"

Epinephrine
2009-06-15, 10:10 AM
Another related question would be: 5 strength creature, hit with Ray of Enfeeblement, roll is an 8 point penalty, can't drop creature below 1. Creature is at 1 strength. On creatures turn, creature rages - bumping Strength by 4. Is the creature at 5 strength, or at 1 strenght (personally, I go with 1 strength. IMO, the RoE effect can never be the factor that pushes a creature below 1 strength, but it can still apply its full penalty at any time during its duration.)

MickJay
2009-06-15, 10:22 AM
Penalty is still -8 for the spell's duration, so the bonus is nullified by it.

Limos
2009-06-15, 10:42 AM
They're not; What Keld is saying, however, isn't that they're the same. Instead, he's saying that any effect in place on your character, for good or ill, you can apply in whatever order you like. So for this example, let's say you take the Enfeeblement first, then get hit with a Ray of Exhaustion. The total penalty to strength is enough to take you to 0, *if* Exhaustion is applied second.

Being that I, as the monster, can apply the two in whatever order I choose, I choose to apply the Exhaustion first, followed by Enfeeblement. Due to Enfeeblement's clause, my strength is now 1, regardless of what the total penalty would be.

I would assume that the effects would apply in the order you received them. So if they hit with you with a ray of enfeeblement one turn it would damage your strength with the minimum number in mind and once it's resolved that's it.

You would think that once the effect resolves the minimum 1 clause doesn't apply anymore. The damage has been done.

Then you hit them with the ray of exhaustion second and it takes them below 1. It doesn't make sense that they can just decide to apply the exhaustion first and then enfeeblement simply because the enfeeblement happened already.

MickJay
2009-06-15, 11:06 AM
Ray of Enfeeblement has 1 min/level duration so as long as enfeeblement is in effect, so are all of its effects, including "The subject’s Strength score cannot drop below 1". If the strength was damaged with another spell, then enfeeblement would affect what was left of strength (regardless of the order in which spells were cast).

edit: with strict reading, it would indeed mean that the spell protects its victim from having strength reduced below 1, even if another spell, on its own, would have otherwise reduced str below 1.

ericgrau
2009-06-15, 11:16 AM
Simple way to resolve this. Ray of enfeeblement has the min of 1 to prevent auto-killing a high level boss with no save even with a low level character. DM's have in fact had this problem with similar (broken) spells like shivering touch and some int damaging spells without that restriction. So tacking on the ray of exhaustion to circumvent the restriction should not be allowed, even if you determine that this loophole does exist. Otherwise your game breaks.

And flavorwise the intent is to make someone enfeebled and exhausted, not to find an alternate way to paralyze someone without the normal difficulty of the save and your enemy not having the right immunity or spell prepared to remove it. Once every smart wizard pulls cheesy tricks that don't match the flavor of their spells, you take the concept of a dramatic challenging immersive story and slap it across the face.

AmberVael
2009-06-15, 11:18 AM
edit: with strict reading, it would indeed mean that the spell protects its victim from having strength reduced below 1, even if another spell, on its own, would have otherwise reduced str below 1.

That's... kind of messed up. There might need to be some clause added to Ray of Enfeeblement to prevent that. Or maybe not. It could be amusing to see a wizard cast it on himself to prevent someone from reducing his strength to 0. :smalltongue:

MickJay
2009-06-15, 11:33 AM
That's... kind of messed up. There might need to be some clause added to Ray of Enfeeblement to prevent that. Or maybe not. It could be amusing to see a wizard cast it on himself to prevent someone from reducing his strength to 0. :smalltongue:

Just goes to show what you can get out of RAW. Again. :smallwink:

SSGoW
2009-06-15, 11:43 AM
so if you have a custom magic item preventing you from becoming exhausted and you casted that on yourself you would have the spell on you but you would not be exhausted (if you take the item off you would be though) then not only would you have no penalties but you would be safe from str = 0

hmmm

Quietus
2009-06-15, 12:15 PM
My question wasn't the two exhaustions stacking, it was the order of the spells determining the strength. And if the two don't stack, is there any way to "fix" it if you "messed up?"

Going by how I would have ruled things (which I don't think is unfair, personally), the order doesn't matter; The Ray of Enfeeblement spell clearly states that the subject's strength cannot drop below one. Of course, I would assume the clause of "As a result of this spell", instead of the RAW-silly "Immune to strength reduction", but that still means that unless you can drop their strength below one WITHOUT the use of Ray of Enfeeblement or other spells with the "Minimum 1" clause (like Bestow Curse), it will never drop to that point.

Keld Denar
2009-06-15, 07:04 PM
Further, your strength is still zero in your scenario because this effect stacking is always to the determent of the creature in question. A white dragon that gets the ability to resist 20 points of fire gets attacked by 14 points of fire damage. The dragon can't choose to have the resist apply first, nullifying the attack before his vulnerability kicks in because that's to the creatures advantage. His vulnerability raises the damage to 28 which is then reduced by 20 because of his fire resistance. The applies with healing to. A creature that is healed by lightning gains electricity resist 20 can't be healed by electrical attacks that deal less than 20 damage for as long as he retains the ability.

Actually, thats exactly opposite what the sage ruled in the FAQ. Gimme a second, and I'll go look the question up, but it was a situation where a vulnerable creature was affected by a resistance spell.

EDIT:


If a monster has resistance and vulnerability to the
same kind of damage (such as fire), which effect is applied
first? And when does the saving throw come in?
Always roll a saving throw before applying any effects that
would increase or reduce the damage dealt. For example, if a
frost giant is struck by a fireball that would deal 35 points of
damage, it would roll its Reflex save, then apply its
vulnerability to fire after determining how much damage the
fireball would normally deal. If the save failed, the frost giant
would take 52 points of damage: 35 + one-half of 35 (17.5,
rounded down to 17). A successful save would mean the frost
giant suffered only 25 points of damage: one-half of 35
rounded down (17), plus one-half of 17 rounded down (8).
If the creature has both resistance and vulnerability to the
same kind of damage, apply the resistance (which reduces the
damage dealt by the effect) before applying the vulnerability
(which increases the damage taken by the creature). For
example, imagine our frost giant wore a ring of minor fire
resistance (granting resistance to fire 10). If the save failed, the
frost giant would take 37 points of fire damage: 35 (fireball) –
10 (resistance to fire 10) = 25, plus one-half of 25 (12.5,
rounded down to 12). If the save succeeded, the frost giant
would take only 10 points of damage: 17 (half damage from the
fireball, rounded down) – 10 (resistance to fire 10) = 7, plus
one-half of 7 (3.5, rounded down to 3).
As a general guideline, whenever the rules don’t stipulate
an order of operations for special effects (such as spells or
special abilities), you should apply them in the order that’s
most beneficial to the creature. In the case of damage, this
typically means applying any damage-reducing effects first,
before applying any effects that would increase damage.


Last paragraph, bolded for emphasis.

AstralFire
2009-06-15, 07:09 PM
Simple way to resolve this. Ray of enfeeblement has the min of 1 to prevent auto-killing a high level boss with no save even with a low level character. DM's have in fact had this problem with similar (broken) spells like shivering touch and some int damaging spells without that restriction. So tacking on the ray of exhaustion to circumvent the restriction should not be allowed, even if you determine that this loophole does exist. Otherwise your game breaks.

And flavorwise the intent is to make someone enfeebled and exhausted, not to find an alternate way to paralyze someone without the normal difficulty of the save and your enemy not having the right immunity or spell prepared to remove it. Once every smart wizard pulls cheesy tricks that don't match the flavor of their spells, you take the concept of a dramatic challenging immersive story and slap it across the face.

Ericgrau has it on the nose. If you rule any other way, you're overpowering an already really powerful spell for its level.

SadisticFishing
2009-06-15, 07:38 PM
By the rules, we're not sure. I'd argue that Ray of Enfeeblement puts a condition on you that applies last, because of the way it's worded. RAI, clearly it wasn't meant to drop you. Says it right in the spell.

Trodon
2009-06-15, 08:46 PM
what is Ray of Exhaustion from?

Keld Denar
2009-06-15, 09:55 PM
Hold on, let me google that for you... (http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Ray+of+Exhaustion)

Seatbelt
2009-06-15, 10:57 PM
This is only sort of related, but I found it interesting (and my DM was quite upset) when I discovered that, by RAW, Ray of Exhaustion is pretty much an insta-win against any type of Ooze. Don't need Ray of Enfeeblement (or Clumsiness) shenanigans when the monster only starts with 6 or less DEX anyway ... :smallwink: And if they only start with 2 or less DEX, you don't need to worry about them making a Fortitude save (or repeating the spell) either.


Yeah except it's an ooze. So its paralyzed. It's still a big bowl of evil jello waiting for you to get stuck in it. :P

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-06-15, 11:46 PM
Yeah except it's an ooze. So its paralyzed. It's still a big bowl of evil jello waiting for you to get stuck in it. :PBut most of my adventurers have various waterskins, jugs, and Extra-dimensional pockets. Lets see how the DM likes his BBEG getting a Gelatinous Cube thrown in his face. :smallbiggrin: