Question about being Petrified

[Deca4531]

So one of my players wants to have a Petrifern (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/plants/petrifern)as a Cohort. this is a kind of plant creature, who he plans to have Awakened, that has the ability to petrify itself as a standard action.

Petrify (Ex)

A petrifern can petrify (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/conditions#TOC-Petrified)itself as a standard action in order to defend itself from predators. When it does so, the petrifern's natural armor bonus to AC increases by 5, it gains resistance 10 to cold and fire, and it can take 20 on Stealth checks to appear as a sprout or fallen tree branch.

While petrified, the petrifern can't move or take any actions. A petrifern can remain petrified indefinitely, and can cease its petrification as a standard action.

I'm a little confused about this ability because a petrified creature is considered Unconscious and there for helpless, giving it a Dex of 0, a -5 Dex mod, negating the bonus armor it gains from this ability. But the ability doesn't say its helpless or unconscious, and it cant be unconscious since it can un-petrify as a standard action. so will it loose all its Dex? If so, since its now made of stone, wouldn't it gain a hardness (stone is hardness 8)? This is also going to be a kind of back up character in case the Monk who has this cohort dies, and ill need to know these things. a few other things i have wondered about, could you use it as a weapon while petrified? we joked about it wrapping around his fist then turning itself to stone, making it a stone boxing glove.

Thank you in advance for any answers you can provide, and if you can think of any other creative things you could do with this please let me know. I'm sure they're are a world of possibilities.

[Beheld]

So pretty clearly what you have is, "Oops, we accidentally let the monkey type on the keyboard, oh well, just leave it in, no will notice."

I mean, right away, the sentence the says that it can't take actions is adjacent to the sentence that says it has to take an action to unpetrify.

So what you should do is literally ignore the entire petrified condition, and the entire petrify ability description, and ask your player what he wants it to do, and then just have it do that.

[Deca4531]

So pretty clearly what you have is, "Oops, we accidentally let the monkey type on the keyboard, oh well, just leave it in, no will notice."

I mean, right away, the sentence the says that it can't take actions is adjacent to the sentence that says it has to take an action to unpetrify.

So what you should do is literally ignore the entire petrified condition, and the entire petrify ability description, and ask your player what he wants it to do, and then just have it do that.

LMAO, i never looked at it like that. i thought you were talking about me for a second.

[Eldaran]

Yeah, definitely poorly written. I would say it just gains the bonuses listed there without any drawbacks other than being unable to take actions besides un-petrifying. Normally being petrified is such a severe drawback there'd be no reason for it to ever use the ability.

[Necromancy]

If petrification persists for more than four hours, consult a cleric

[Psyren]

While I won't excuse the bad editing in this entry, what you have to remember also is that the d20PFSRD is not an official site, and has a bad habit of hyperlinking words that the designers didn't intend. Nowhere in the Petrifern's entry does it say it turns specifically into stone or becomes helpless, but because the PFSRD has hyperlinked the Petrified condition from spells like Flesh to Stone, you've understandably yet incorrectly gone immediately to that definition. In reality however, the Petrifern's ability does exactly what it says and no more. The fact that it looks exactly like a "sprout or fallen tree branch" should also tell you that it isn't actually turning into stone.