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5.13 Using Abilities

5.13.1 Magical and Mundane Abilities

Every ability is either magical ✨ or mundane. Magical abilities use Willpower to determine their power, while mundane abilities use Strength. If an ability has a ✨ next to its name, it is magical. Otherwise, it is mundane.

Some magical abilities can have effects that are mundane. If so, they will be described as mundane explicitly, and you use your mundane power instead of your magical power with the ability to determine its effects (see Ability Power). For example, the twisting claw spell causes you to make a mundane strike. That strike would use your mundane power, and it would be unable to affect intangible creatures. A monk with the ki energy ability would be able to convert that strike to be magical ✨ instead of mundane, just like they can convert any other mundane strike.

5.13.2 Ability Range

Many abilities only work within a particular distance from you. This maximum distance is called the ability’s range. There are five common ranges: Short (30 ft.) range, Medium (60 ft.) range, Long (90 ft.) range, Distant (120 ft.) range, and Extreme (180 ft.) range. Any ability with a range requires both line of sight and line of effect unless otherwise noted.

5.13.3 Ability Power

Many abilities reference your “power” without further explanation. That always means “your power with this ability”, which depends on whether the ability is magical ✨ or mundane. If you are using a magical ✨ ability, you use your magical power. Otherwise, you use your mundane power. For context about how your power is calculated, see Power.

5.13.4 Ability Usage Components

Some abilities require verbal components, somatic components, or both. To provide the verbal component for an ability, you must speak in a strong voice with a volume at least as loud as ordinary conversation. To provide the somatic component for an ability, you must make a precise series of movements with at least one free hand. These movements involve moving your arm in addition to your fingers, making them hard to conceal.

You cannot start using an ability without all required components. If you lose those components before the ability resolves, it fails with no effect.

5.13.5 Functioning Like Other Abilities

Many abilities say they “function like” some other ability, often with some noted changes. Except as otherwise noted, they retain all of the original effects and targets of the original ability. However, they do not have the same rank upgrades as the original ability, if any.

If you have any bonuses that specifically affect the original ability, those also affect abilities that function like it. For example, a Tactician fighter using the dogpile battle tactic gains a +2 accuracy bonus with the grapple ability. That accuracy bonus would also apply to the strangle maneuver, since that maneuver says it functions like grapple.

5.13.6 Touch Range

Some abilities affect creatures or objects that you touch. You can generally touch an adjacent creature as long as you have a free hand, even if it is an enemy, though this has no mechanical effect unless an ability says it does. Some creatures cannot be touched, such as incorporeal and intangible creatures.

5.13.7 Noticing Abilities

Using an ability normally requires some obvious effort or action on your character’s part. You can decide how your character uses abilities to fit their style and the tone of the game you are in. For example, one character might dramatically shout the names of their attacks, while another character might make trace runes in the air to cast their spells. A single character could also have multiple styles for their different abilities. The only general requirement is that it must be obvious to a casual observer that you are doing something, unless the ability is specifically Subtle.

Similarly, abilities normally have visual and/or auditory effects when used. You can also decide the style of these effects, with the requirement that they must obviously be the result of your character using an ability.

Spells and rituals have additional requirements that make them easier to notice and harder to use (see Spell and Ritual Mechanics).

5.13.8 Ability Targeting

Primary and Secondary Targets

Some abilities that affect multiple targets distinguish between their primary and secondary targets. For example, the chain lightning spell affects secondary targets within a small radius around a primary target. If an ability does not mention secondary targets, all of its targets are primary targets.

Unless otherwise specified, abilities have the same effect on their primary and secondary targets. However, line of effect for secondary targets is always measured from the primary target, rather than from the ability’s source. Line of sight is still measured from the ability’s source. This can allow you to hit secondary targets behind walls if you can still see them or otherwise target them, and if there is no obstacle separating from the primary target.

Adding Extra Targets

Many abilities are written as if they only affect one creature, so they use “the target” and similar wording in their descriptions. Through the use of Sweeping weapons, chaining spells, and other effects, it’s possible to make those abilities affect multiple targets. Unless the ability specifically differentiates between its primary and secondary targets, each target is affected in the same way as a single target would be. You can’t add a creature as an additional target if they were already targeted by the ability.

Invalid Targets

You can always attempt to use a targeted ability on an invalid target. For example, you can try to cast a healing spell on a rock if you want, even if the healing spell only affects living creatures. If the target is still invalid when the ability resolves, the ability has no effect on that target. However, it still affects any other targets of the ability normally.

Targets In Unknown Locations

You can try to use a targeted ability even if you don’t know exactly where your intended target is. To do so, describe your intended target, such as “the creature hiding somewhere in those bushes”, and choose a 5-foot square. If your chosen square contains your intended target, your ability has a 50% miss chance. At the GM’s discretion, choosing the wrong square or missing due to the miss chance may have unintended consequences, such as affecting a different valid target.

Targeting Proxies

Some effects allow you to use a creature, object, or location as a targeting proxy when using abilities. When you use an ability through a targeting proxy, you determine the ability’s targets as if you were in the targeting proxy’s place. This affects line of effect for the ability, but not line of sight, since you still see from your normal location. As a result, the ability’s maximum range is measured from the targeting proxy rather than you. Cones and similar areas that would normally originate from you instead originate from the targeting proxy.

Abilities that require touch can be used through a physical targeting proxy. However, you can’t cause the proxy to move, so this only works the target is already touching the proxy.

Using a targeting proxy only changes the ability’s targets and area, not its effects. If an ability’s effects refer to “you” or “your location”, that still refers to you, not the targeting proxy.

5.13.9 Area Shapes

Cone: A cone extends from the point of origin in a quarter-hemisphere, up to the given length. A square is affected by a cone if it is within the cone’s 90 degree arc and all of the square’s points of intersection are no more than the cone’s length away from the cone’s point of origin.

Cylinder: A cylinder extends out from the point of origin in a circle, up to the given radius. Cylinders also have a specific height. Unless otherwise specified, a cylinder’s height is the same as its radius.

Line: A line extends from the point of origin in a straight line, up to the given length. Lines also have a specific width and height. Unless otherwise specified, a line-shaped ability affects an area 5 feet wide and 5 feet high. The affected squares are chosen such that they stay close to the chosen line as possible. All squares affected by a line must be contiguous, so every square is adjacent to another affected square, disregarding diagonals.

If a line-shaped effect has its area increased, only the length of the line increases unless otherwise noted.

Sphere: A sphere extends from the point of origin in all directions. Any ability which only specifies a radius for its area is sphere-shaped.

Wall: A wall is like a line, except that its width is not defined in squares. Narratively, all walls have a nonzero width. Mechanically, walls are considered to have no width and simply occupy the boundary between squares. Like lines, some walls are shapeable.

All walls share the following common properties unless their description says otherwise. A wall’s height is equal to half its length for straight walls, or half its radius for circular walls, to a minimum of 5 feet high. The entire wall is considered to be a single object, and is attacked and destroyed as a single unit. All of a wall’s defenses are 0, but like other objects, they are immune to critical hits. Most abilities that create walls indicate how many hit points the wall has. If an ability does not specify a wall’s hit points, it does not have hit points and cannot be destroyed with damage.

If you create a wall within a space too small to hold it, it fills as much of the space as possible, starting from the middle of the chosen space. This can allow you to completely block off small tunnels.

Walls can normally be created within or adjacent to occupied squares, but not within solid objects. If a wall has hit points, it cannot be created inside the space of a single creature, but it can be created between two adjacent creatures.

Area Types

There are three common area types. If an area’s type is not mentioned, it is a burst.

If a burst or emanation is centered on a creature, it normally includes that creature. However, if it is centered on the creature using the ability, that creature can choose whether they are included when they use the ability.

5.13.10 Impossible Abilities

When you try to use an ability in an impossible way, it simply fails with no effect. This can happen if all targets are invalid, such as if you attempt to use an ability that only affects creatures on an object. An ability that has a mixture of valid and invalid targets will generally affect the valid targets normally while ignoring the invalid targets. However, if the ability changes its effects based on the number of targets or otherwise would rely on the invalid targets for its choices, such as a spell that swaps the positions of multiple creatures, the entire ability fails.

5.13.11 Ability Durations

An ability’s duration determines how long its effect lasts. Abilities can have one of several different kinds of durations.

If an ability targets creatures or objects directly, the effects travel with the subjects for the ability’s duration, even if the subjects go outside the ability’s initial range. If an ability creates or summons objects or creatures, they last for the duration of the ability, and are capable of moving outside the ability’s initial range. Such effects can sometimes be destroyed prior to when their duration ends.

Attuned Abilities

Many abilities last as long as a creature attunes to them. Abilities that require attunement to function have the Attune tag. Attuning to an ability typically require investing a single attunement point. You can release your attunement to an effect as a free action, which typically ends the effect completely. This allows you to use that attunement point to attune to a different effect. You can never attune to the same ability more than once. Two abilities are considered the same if they have the same name.

Normally, the creature using the attuned ability must attune to it. In the special case of rituals, any number of ritual participants can attune to the ability, and the ability lasts as long as any participant is still attuned to it. There are two special subtypes of attunement abilities: deep attunements and targeted attunements.

Deep Attunement: This ability require investing two attunement points instead of only one. In addition, releasing a deep attunement does not immediately return the invested attunement points. Instead, they only return after you finish a short rest. Deep attunements are identified as Attune (deep).

Targeted Attunement: This ability requires attunement from the target instead of the creature using the ability. If it targets multiple creatures, each target must attune to its own version of the effect. When a target releases its attunement, the effect only ends for it, not for any other targets. Targeted attunements are identified as Attune (target).

If you target a creature with an Attune (target) ability that does not have attunement points, such as an allied animal, you can attune on the target’s behalf. The target intuitively knows how to dismiss the effect if it wants to remove it.

Conditions

Many abilities impose conditions on their targets. A condition lasts until it is removed. You can remove conditions by taking a short rest or using the recover ability (see Recover). There are several other abilities that can also remove conditions.

Sustained Abilities

Sustained abilities have the Sustain tag. They last as long as you take an action to sustain them each round. The type of action required is always specified in the ability’s tag, such as “Sustain (standard)” for a standard action, or in the ability’s description. Sustaining an ability is a Swift effect.

At the start of each action phase, the ability is dismissed unless you take the appropriate action to sustain the ability. This happens before your normal turn, so you and your allies can’t gain the benefits of a sustained ability without you sustaining it.

Taking an action to sustain an ability only allows you to sustain a single use of that ability. While you have a sustained ability active, you can’t sustain that same ability again, so using the ability twice does not allow you to sustain two instances of it. However, you can sustain multiple separate abilities at once if you have available actions.

Some sustained abilities include “attuneable” in the tag before the action type. When you use or sustain that ability, you can choose to attune to it. If you do, it gains the Attune tag and loses the Sustain tag, so it stays active as long as you stay attuned to it. While you are attuned to that ability, you are still able to sustain a different instance of the ability, so this allows you to have two instances of the ability active at once.

You can normally only sustain an ability for up to 5 minutes. Sustaining an ability beyond that point is strenuous, and requires an Endurance check (see Endurance).

Permanent Abilities

Some abilities last permanently. Such abilities never expire on their own, but can be dismissed or removed by other abilities appropriately.

5.13.12 Combining Effects

Abilities do not generally affect the way another abilities function. However, sometimes multiple effects can be in conflict on a creature. If one effect makes another effect irrelevant or impossible, the latter effect is ignored. If two effects both conflict with each other, the most recent effect takes precedence, and the other is ignored. Unless otherwise noted, two different uses of the same ability are always considered to be conflicting with each other.

All abilities will still have as much of their effect as possible. It is possible for an ability to be partially effective in this way.

5.13.13 Suppressing Abilities

Abilities can be suppressed by effects such as the suppress magic spell. While an ability is suppressed, it has no effect. However, if it stops being suppressed, its effects continue as if they had not been interrupted.

5.13.14 Ability Tags

Many abilities have tags that describe the nature of the ability. Many of these tags have no game effect by themselves, but they govern how the ability interacts with spells, other abilities, unusual creatures, and so on. For a list of ability tags, see Ability Tags.

5.13.15 Dismissal

When an ability is dismissed, all of its lingering effects immediately end. Unless otherwise noted, all magical ✨ abilities with a duration can be dismissed, but mundane abilities cannot be dismissed. You can dismiss abilities as a free action that requires only mental effort.

5.13.16 Rank Upgrades

Many abilities automatically become more effective as your rank with a relevant archetype increases. Some abilities from feats have similar wording, but increase their power based on your level rather than your rank. Rank upgrades and level upgrades are always optional, so you can choose to use the ability as if your rank or level was lower.

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