Bug: 3.5E Targeted Effects Do Not Stack Correctly If The Value is the Same...

[HoloGnome]

1. Create an effect entry in a character sheet that is targeted - such as: poison (initial); CON: -x
2. Add the character to the combat tracker and target an opponent
3. Hypothetically, player enters the result of a 1d6 roll as x (assuming opponent fails save)
4. Apply effect

--> Shows up normally underneath the opponent in the combat tracker

5. Apply the effect again without changing the number (as though the player rolled the same result again...say, for secondary poison damage)

--> The effect is not added to the opponent in the combat tracker

6. Change the value of x to something else and apply it.

--> The effect is now applied to the opponent in the combat tracker

Besides this bug, is there a future plan to improve how ability damaging effects will be implemented?

[HoloGnome]

Additional Testing: If the effect labels are different in any way, they will stack - it's not just the number. Otherwise, they won't. In the case of poison, for example, it becomes a problem with a poisoned weapon that succeeds on multiple strikes if the poison damage roll ends up being the same.

Strike 1: (player hits the target)
poison (initial); CON: -2 (initial poison damage roll is a 2 - shows up in CT)
poison (secondary); CON: -5 (secondary damage roll is a 5 - shows up in CT)

Strike 2: (player hits the target again)
poison (initial); CON: -4 (shows up in CT)
poison (secondary); CON: -5 (does NOT show up in CT)

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Also, the combat tracker should be able to alias the actor ability score so that it knows when the actor is dead when CON = 0. Further, it would be great if the ability damage field on the character sheet were also updated.

[Moon Wizard]

That's expected behavior at this point. The idea is to prevent two identical effects from stacking on a character, either through error of applying twice or stacking rules. Basically, the GM needs to adjust numbers in the effect for now.

Each effect would need a new field indicating that the effect could stack, and the effects system would need to be updated to review that field. Also, it would never be automatically set based on spell descriptions, since the information on whether an effect stacks is very effect specific.

Ability damage really needs to be its own kind of roll with its own handling, but it's not currently on the list to be worked on.

There was an extension used to provide some sort of ability damage support in PFRPG/3.5E (among other things). However, it modified several core scripts within CoreRPG that I needed to change for the latest release, and the extension was not migrated to the latest version.

Regards,
JPG

[HoloGnome]

OK - thanks. It sounds like the effects system will eventually benefit from some improvements when the time is right. One suggestion I can make is to implement a keyword such as "stack" (or maybe an attribute/flag) to indicate effects that are intended to stack, even if the text is identical.

It looks like I can't use an effect to track poison. But anyway, I suppose the whole exercise is pointless, because even if I were to type the CON damage effects directly into the combat tracker, they wouldn't actually propagate to the character sheet. So...it's looking like full manual mode where I may use the combat tracker for documentation of any hits/failed saves, initial/secondary events and character sheet or npc entry to manually sum and set the damage in a way that it will be seen by the current implementation. I will remove my attempts at poison effects from the actions tab on the character sheet and just do manual checking for CON = 0 death.

I saw the extension you mentioned during my research in trying to solve this problem - maybe it will be updated at some point.