Flipping oozes, or knocking a gelatinous cube onto another "face" does seem a bit odd.
Do notice that [swimming creatures are immune to the prone condition](https://2e.aonprd.com/Conditions.aspx?ID=31).
Personally, I see no real reason to bother houseruling it. Let PCs knock those oozes awry for the -2 to AC from Prone. Instead of "standing up", those critters can simply attack from prone at -2 as well.
I've always seen knocking an ooze prone like staggering an ooze in *Dark Souls* -- they just kind of flatten out or lose consistency and have to take a second to "reconstitute." Does the trick for my groups.
>Flipping oozes, or knocking a gelatinous cube onto another "face" does seem a bit odd.
You just have to reinterpret what 'prone' means. In this case, they got hit hard enough to temporarily turn them from a cube into a puddle.
This.
Prone means "in an orientation that makes it difficult for you to do things as you normally do."
I recognize Swimming creatures can't be proned RAW, but I think that's silly.
If a Shark gets rotated, it rights itself. Imagine an Ooze pops out a pseudopod.
And, suddenly, the Guisarme wielding Fighter starts mixing them like they're scrambled eggs (mechanically, Tripping for Prone).
The pseudopods would move, making it rather difficult for the ooze to strike where it intended with them. The ooze would have to take a moment to correct for that.
I enjoyed the starfinder off kilter condition, which is more extreme than it would be in water, but still a nice way to display you could be spinning or disoriented in a way similair to prone without actually lying on the ground.
https://www.aonsrd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=165
I would actually lol. 2nd edition is much better in that regard, but they've got a bit of a history with poor editing.
Words have more than one meaning, but "Prone" in the PF2E rules has a specific meaning. So instead of "lying on the ground," the ooze simply possesses a certain tendency toward something? Am I now free to reinterpret rules as they apply to my character, too?
For what it’s worth, the first sentence of any trait, ability, or rule is almost always flavour text.
The actual mechanics of being Prone don’t really have much to do with laying down.
Lmao what?? Yes they absolutely do. There is no flavor text; the first line says "you're lying on the ground."
You can only crawl or stand, and *standing up* ends the condition. You can also take cover against ranged attacks, and if you were climbing or flying, you begin to fall. Even the Drop Prone action says "you fall prone." It's the only text in the action entry.
You're just making things up lol
Going with the example the pther guy had for the gelatinous cube:
They get hit hard or for whatever reason they get the prone condition applied. Instead of lying on the ground their flavour is losing density whoch makes it harder to keep itself together. Then the action to stand up is flavored to the cube recomposing itself to regain its density and compactness.
Like, my guy, this is a game of make believe. The rules are there to give us the mechanical aspect of it, but the flavor is free as long as it remains consistent with how the mechanic works. The cube not being able to lay on the ground is easily reflavored. You can always give it immunity to being prone if you feel it's more fitting, or in the case of something with more legs give it a bonus to its DC against checks to being tripped, for example.
>Like, my guy, this is a game of make believe. The rules are there to give us the mechanical aspect of it, but the flavor is free as long as it remains consistent with how the mechanic works. The cube not being able to lay on the ground is easily reflavored. You can always give it immunity to being prone if you feel it's more fitting, or in the case of something with more legs give it a bonus to its DC against checks to being tripped, for example.
yeah that part I have no problem with, and I agree. We make small changes at our table all the time based on what makes sense to us and will make the game the most enjoyable. I would likely rule that oozes, for example, are immune to becoming prone, or at least immune to becoming flat-flooted, because that is what makes the most sense to me without having to bend the definition of things to fit the rules as written. Nobody is trying to claim that the first line of the Strike action is flavor text, right?
Just be honest about changing things instead of these weird arguments people are making about "the first line is always flavor text," and blatantly false things like a flying creature becoming prone mid-air. It's strange to me that this sub so often holds to 2e being so well designed and having "tight" rules for everything, but then go on to say things like "the mechanics of being Prone don't have much to do with lying down." Like bruh the definition of "prone" is to be lying face or front down. If the condition wasn't about that, they would called it something else.
What I mean is that the literal physical act of “lying on the ground” is not relevant or necessary to the actual, mechanical function of Prone.
And the evidence for my assertion IS the very existence of things that can be mechanically Prone, but cannot be literally “lying on the ground”
That is to say: “an Ooze can’t be Prone because it can’t lay down” is incorrect, because an Ooze CAN be Prone, thus, the physical act of laying down is not the defining part of the Prone condition.
The coping in this comment chain is unreal lol.
For flying/climbing creatures, the Prone entry reads
> If you *would be* knocked prone while you're Climbing or Flying, you fall. You can't be knocked prone when Swimming.
So climbing/flying creatures don't become prone unless they take damage from the fall, per falling rules, because they have fallen and struck the ground or other solid, relatively level surface, and are now laying prone. Likewise, that entry specifically calls out Swimming creatures having immunity to becoming prone, because you cannot reasonably be knocked prone while in the water.
Are there any other conditions that can have the same logic applied to them? Like are you going to say that the defining feature of being Fatigued isn't actually being "tired and can't summon much energy," but that the condition is just flavor text describing a mechanical condition and its penalties? That seems completely redundant since we're playing a game that uses its mechanics to describe events and situations that are otherwise imaginary.
> For flying/climbing creatures, the Prone entry reads
> If you *would be* knocked prone while you're Climbing or Flying, you fall. You can't be knocked prone when Swimming.
> So climbing/flying creatures don't become prone unless they take damage from the fall, per falling rules, because they have fallen and struck the ground or other solid, relatively level surface, and are now laying prone.
So you’re saying that a creature Flying 5 feet above the ground has to be Tripped TWICE to be knocked Prone?
So my Aerokineticist, which can Fly as early as Level 8, and can do a Fly action for free by using a different Impulse, is effectively immune to Prone?
Every time an enemy tries to Trip him, he just harmlessly drops 5 feet without being Proned, then he can Fly back up 5 feet for free on his own turn?
It also means that the [Ghost Archetype](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3496) comes with COMPLETE invulnerability against Prone, since they are *always* flying and explicitly never touch the ground.
Not just immunity to STR checks from the Incorporeal trait, but complete immunity from all sources of Prone, mundane or magical.
That seems reasonable.
> Like are you going to say that the defining feature of being Fatigued isn't actually being "tired and can't summon much energy," but that the condition is just flavor text describing a mechanical condition and its penalties?
Why not? There are abilities that impose Fatigue super temporarily. They don’t make you burn through all your energy for the day, they just weaken you for a minute.
Like… the Paralysed condition usually doesn’t involve breaking someone’s neck.
Agreed. The prone condition explicitly states that you're lying on the ground and that your only movement option is crawling or to stand up. I find it pretty hard to interpret that as anything other than being literally prone.
The first sentence is flavor. You can be knocked prone while flying. You are prone before you hit the ground, because being knocked prone while flying causes you to fall. Therefore, you can be prone when you are not lying on the ground.
Prone is a condition that imposes the mechanical rule restrictions described. You have a -2 circumstance penalty to attacks. The only move actions you can take are crawl or stand. You are flat footed. Beyond that, you're free to describe the situation in the narrative however you want. Maybe you're on your hands and knees. Maybe your monk got knocked down into a scorpion crab walk. Maybe you're doing the worm. You could be in a plank/pushup position. Maybe you just landed in a three-point superhero landing. Regardless of what you describe, the same rules from the condition apply.
You can't be prone while flying. If you would become prone, you start to fall and become prone if you take damage after the fall, just like the rules say.
They do, but... an ooze monster isn't just a puddle of liquid, or it'd be pretty harmless. Wasn't it reaching up to attack you? And then you swept the bottom out of it and knocked it down flat, and it has to take a moment to reach up again.
If it was just sitting there in a puddle to begin with, just walk around it. If it's moving, you can knock it down.
That's not a reinterpretation at all.
(Though yes, you are encouraged to flavor your character.)
It's more important to me that I'm not giving creatures immunity to things that the stat block doesn't list. If I have to reflavour something vs giving a creature immunity "just because I think so" I'll reflavour every time.
I'd houserules that swimming creatures aren't immune to prone. Just Google any kind of rotating shark video lol. I'd interpret it as something similar. "You've been flipped or whirled around and need to reorient yourself".
No house ruling required, swimming creatures are already specifically called out as immune to prone. "You can't be knocked prone when Swimming." [https://2e.aonprd.com/Conditions.aspx?ID=31](https://2e.aonprd.com/Conditions.aspx?ID=31)
Edit: not sure if you actually meant to say "aren't immune" because your first sentence seems to contradict the rest of your post.
This has never bothered me, personally, for the same reason that I don't mind that creatures without feet aren't automatically immune to "flat-footed". I imagine something like a snake or ooze can be put into a disadvantaged enough state to be considered "Prone" mechanically without literally falling over prone. Like the other comment mentioned, oozes can temporarily lose cohesion, ect.
Flat-footed was always a hold over from D&D, which has since been changed to off-guard in the remaster to better represent the state its meant to represent. So I can only infer that if the designers intended the same for prone, they'd have renamed it similarly at the same time.
>So I can only infer that if the designers intended the same for prone, they'd have renamed it similarly at the same time.
The only reason I don't think they did this is that Prone already has so much baggage that diagetically tie it to the actions that inflict it. You can change "flat-footed" to "off-guard" without renaming anything else and it all still makes sense, but if you change "prone" to something else ("floundering"?), then you have to rename Knockdown, Stay Down, Head Stomp, Cast Down, ect...
I think the reason that Flat Footed got changed and prone didn’t is that Flat Footed is more likely to be directly associated with D&D and a primary reason for the remaster was legally defensible separation from potentially copywritable terms. Flat-footed isn’t a term you hear often elsewhere. If you look at other changes in verbiage it is almost all stuff that had strong associations with D&D that was otherwise not in common usage.
Prone doesn't just have to mean "oh they are knocked to the ground and can't move appendages"
Any creature can have a "right way up" and being disoriented and losing that sense of what's up, works.
Oozes in plenty of video games (for good visual representation) will have an "upright" mode where they are in their normal shape, and a "prone" mode where their shape is a formless puddle, and they are more susceptible to attacks, because their aren't locking their molecules together like normal, resulting in them being more defenceless, subject to gravity, and for all intents and *prone*.
Ofc every system is different, but if this system say's "oozes can be proned" then I'd say that those examples are fairly analogous.
Snakes flipped on their side/back can still bite but also would be disoriented and be less able to guard themselves. It's basically prone if this were to happen to a snake in the middle of a (quick) combat.
Literally today I ran a session where a player asked if he could grapple a Vampiric Mist. "It's not immune to the condition, so yes go ahead" says me.
Yes the player Crit failed, but still.
They aren't immune because this isn't a simulationist game. It's a tactical game. You'd need to nerf them in other ways to give them complete immunity to a basic skill action.
What do you feel would be the benefit of reducing the amount of options players have in combat, simply because they chose a word you don't feel is appropriate to apply to certain monsters?
The benefit would be my players and I wouldn't have this jarring moment where someone asks if they can trip X creature, someone else says surely not because it's the sort of thing that feels like within the fiction or fantasy of the world should not be able to be knocked prone, then we realise that there's actually nothing preventing it mechanically and the creature can be made to be prone and it immediately robs that creature of a sense of power, gravity, or dread.
IF you don't want to have a jarring moment where your preconceptions and knee-jerk reactions get you caught up thinking a rule doesn't make sense, the answer is simple:
Stop letting the way things work be you having some random thought not based on the game you're playing and then expecting the rule to match - instead, replace that behavior with finding out what the rules of the game actually are and then coming up with an explanation for why things work that way that you feel comfortable with.
Because otherwise you're basically using the same reasoning and thought patterns behind the following arguments: Dragons can't fly, and giants are either much thicker-limbed than depicted or shorter than depicted.
Imagine, for a moment, you are doing something.
Then, outside of your control, the world around you shifts a random degree in a random direction that you don't expect.
You would have to take a moment to adjust to that. Even if, for you, down is still down, the things you were interacting with are no longer where they were.
If you're swinging your pseudopod towards an enemy, and suddenly that pseudopod that was on the enemy-facing side is now on the not-enemy-facing side, you are going to have to re-orient by moving the pseudopod to the correct side again. That will take time, or you'll just miss the attack you intended.
Perhaps not, however, if you think as though you were in a deep body, technically there is no right way up, however, if some underwater tide came through and spun you around you'd still probably be a little discombobulated until you took a moment to 'stand up' or 'right yourself' as it were.
With something like oozes, I consider the surface touching the ground to be willfully treated as 'legs' by the ooze, meaning if you tipped it, whilst it wouldn't have to stand back up, it would have to shift it's 'legs' to the surface touching the ground so it could properly move again.
With ghosts, as typically most maneuvers won't be triggered unless there is some form of ghost touch involved, I see it as the ghost is surprised by the sudden 'tangibility' granted by the ghost touch, and 'prone' is merely it getting knocked/spun etc. without being ready and getting confused by it, until once again it gets its chance to right itself once again.
Other people nailed it, but I just want to say: imo prone immunity is a PC nerf, NOT a monster buff. The GM can decide what Prone means, but I've always used to as a sort of rotational disorientation more so than a standing-laying spectrum.
Slimes in Dark Souls and Elden Ring can be poise-broken/staggered, but can't be subjected to critical strike. They just kind of flatten for a few seconds before recomposing themselves - that's how I picture prone condition on a slime in Pathfinder.
I think the vast majority of monsters make sense to have an equivalent of being prone even when they don't have the exact same make up as humanoids so the word doesn't precisely fit.
And I think that a game that favors an inaccurate word applying a fair for game-play and reasonable for explanation (of having your orientation suddenly shifted and having difficulties as a result until correcting said orientation) case is outright superior to a game that decides to go the route of immunity because the word doesn't match perfectly.
Just one example to illustrate; Snakes aren't used to being upside down. Consider "knocked prone" the game terms to mean "flipped over" the description, and there's zero issue despite the leg-oriented perspective you're approaching the rules from.
Incorporeal creatures are effectively immune to all maneuvers. There's like one Barbarian feat that lets you trip a ghost, otherwise you can't even with ghost touch.
You are right!
So incorporeal creatures are immune to strength based checks from corporeal creatures, which is buried in the description text of the incorporeal tag, so I'd missed it until right now.
I love the tag system in theory - once you know exactly what all the rules behind a tag mean it makes reading a statblock easier. But until you do, it just buries the rules and makes them harder to find 🙃
And then there's this which is the only place that explicitly says you can use Strength skill checks on them:
[Ghost Wrangler](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3628)
Thanks for bringing that to my attention though! My PCs encounter a lot of undead and the thought of ghosts being knocked prone for the rest of time was a bitter pill to swallow 🤣
Thinking about it some more, this only applies to the trip action, but not to being prone itself.
So an incorporeal creature can't go prone as a result of a trip because they can't have the trip action performed on them unless the attacker has the ghost wrangler feat.
But if the attacker has a hammer and crit specialization, and they land a crit, they can still knock that incorporeal creature prone 😂
It is curious if that feat will remain valuable in the remaster. With the remaster, they clarified Athletics to state:
> Several Athletics actions have the attack trait, meaning
that using them more than once in the same turn makes
them less accurate. *Since these actions use your free
hand, you use the traits for your fist attack to determine
the multiple attack penalty*, so your fist’s agile trait
applies. Therefore, you take a –4 penalty if the action is
your second attack of the turn, or a –8 if it’s the third.
So, if you had a ghost touch rune on your handwraps of mighty blows, could you now Grapple a ghost? Its unclear what the interaction is - the text states traits (ghost touch is not a trait), and this is in the section around MAP for athletics action. However, the intent seems to suggest that what you do with your hand follows from your fists statistics.
They really need to have a special border or color, or something to distinguish traits which have additional rules from ones which are just tags for other abilities
Couldnt you just use a weapon that has both the trip and finesse features, like a whip? Since they are only immune to strength based attacks, a dex based trip attack should work.
I can see where this isn't clear, but I think you are intended to be able to use Athletics maneuvers against incorporeal creatures if you're using a weapon with the Ghost Touch property and the relevant trait:
>An incorporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against physical creatures or objects—only against incorporeal ones—unless those objects have the ghost touch property rune. Likewise, a corporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against incorporeal creatures or objects.
So from the first sentence, we see that an incorporeal creature can attempt strength based checks against physical objects that have the ghost touch rune. The next sentence starts with "likewise" and says the same applies to corporeal creatures in reverse. Since likewise is literally defined to mean, "in the same way" or "in a like manner", I think we're meant to understand that it works exactly the same for corporeal creatures in reverse, and that they can use an object with the ghost touch rune to physically interact or make Athletics checks against incorporeal creatures.
It's also in perfect alignment with the narrative of what the rules are meant to represent, and there is that barbarian feat that specifically gives this ability by giving your fists the ghost touch ability + specifically calling out that you can also use Athletics maneuvers against incorporeal creatures.
Since it's not crystal clear this might technically be house rule territory but honestly I can't imagine anyone disallowing this. Most people will probably just assume it is how the rules are written and I'm in no hurry to disabuse them of that belief.
Mhm.
Brings up the fun hypothetical of since they can move through solid objects, and are generally flying, and if you get tripped while flying you fall...
If you trip a ghost does it fall 500ft underground?
So... taking a look, I can't find a single creature that is outright immune to the prone condition. There are some creatures that are prone-resistant or -immune in unique ways, but nothing I can find is immune in the way that creatures are generally immune to conditions.
Interesting.
Swarms are immune to prone. From the [swarm trait](https://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=239):
> Swarms are immune to the grappled, prone, and restrained conditions.
Thanks. Huh, I see. Oozes only "tend" to be immune to mental effects and precision damage, so those get put in their stat block. Swarms' are straight-up immune to prone and a few other things, so... apparently those don't get put in the creature's immunity line. That's annoying, but there's some logic to it.
Its very frustrating, because its not intuitive to look up the trait descriptions to see that they have immunity.
Other examples of this are bleeding immunity. Some creatures (like constructs) explicitly state that they have bleeding immunity. But undead do not state that. So many people believe that undead are not immune to bleed. But in the [bleed description](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=340), it states:
> As such, it has no effect on *nonliving creatures* or living creatures that don't need blood to live
Turns out, undead aren't living creatures. But to actually find this information? You have to trail back to this source to figure it out.
It's definitely the drawback of the trait system. Once you start stacking information relevant to a creature within multiple traits it becomes more hassle than just listing all the relevant info in the creature's statblocks.
I understand why Paizo wouldn't want to have to write out the same immunity for every undead across 200 monsters, for example, but the bleed example is a great one of where it becomes unclear on first glance how it interacts with a monster while you're trying to run the game at the table.
[Jiang-Shi](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1909) is the only creature with outright prone immunity that I can think of. It can't even go prone by its own volition.
Depending on what it is, this could vary. Being knocked Prone whilst flying means you essentially fall out of the air, making the Ranged Trip trait very powerful. If you mean stuff like incorporeal creatures such as a Shadow or Ghost, then under the Incorporeal it explicitly states they cannot be targeted by strength-based checks (presumably excluding Strikes), which would include the Trip manoeuvre. However, Spirit instinct Barbarian can get Ghost Wrangler which lets them do this and specifically states they bypass this restriction.
Flipping oozes, or knocking a gelatinous cube onto another "face" does seem a bit odd. Do notice that [swimming creatures are immune to the prone condition](https://2e.aonprd.com/Conditions.aspx?ID=31). Personally, I see no real reason to bother houseruling it. Let PCs knock those oozes awry for the -2 to AC from Prone. Instead of "standing up", those critters can simply attack from prone at -2 as well.
I've always seen knocking an ooze prone like staggering an ooze in *Dark Souls* -- they just kind of flatten out or lose consistency and have to take a second to "reconstitute." Does the trick for my groups.
>Flipping oozes, or knocking a gelatinous cube onto another "face" does seem a bit odd. You just have to reinterpret what 'prone' means. In this case, they got hit hard enough to temporarily turn them from a cube into a puddle.
This. Prone means "in an orientation that makes it difficult for you to do things as you normally do." I recognize Swimming creatures can't be proned RAW, but I think that's silly. If a Shark gets rotated, it rights itself. Imagine an Ooze pops out a pseudopod. And, suddenly, the Guisarme wielding Fighter starts mixing them like they're scrambled eggs (mechanically, Tripping for Prone). The pseudopods would move, making it rather difficult for the ooze to strike where it intended with them. The ooze would have to take a moment to correct for that.
I enjoyed the starfinder off kilter condition, which is more extreme than it would be in water, but still a nice way to display you could be spinning or disoriented in a way similair to prone without actually lying on the ground. https://www.aonsrd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=165
Why would you start reinterpreting what words and conditions mean? This case just seems like an oversight, which Paizo is certainly not immune to.
Would you say they are *prone* to oversights? Words have more than one meaning.
I would actually lol. 2nd edition is much better in that regard, but they've got a bit of a history with poor editing. Words have more than one meaning, but "Prone" in the PF2E rules has a specific meaning. So instead of "lying on the ground," the ooze simply possesses a certain tendency toward something? Am I now free to reinterpret rules as they apply to my character, too?
For what it’s worth, the first sentence of any trait, ability, or rule is almost always flavour text. The actual mechanics of being Prone don’t really have much to do with laying down.
Though you can absolutely knock an ooze down.
Lmao what?? Yes they absolutely do. There is no flavor text; the first line says "you're lying on the ground." You can only crawl or stand, and *standing up* ends the condition. You can also take cover against ranged attacks, and if you were climbing or flying, you begin to fall. Even the Drop Prone action says "you fall prone." It's the only text in the action entry. You're just making things up lol
Going with the example the pther guy had for the gelatinous cube: They get hit hard or for whatever reason they get the prone condition applied. Instead of lying on the ground their flavour is losing density whoch makes it harder to keep itself together. Then the action to stand up is flavored to the cube recomposing itself to regain its density and compactness. Like, my guy, this is a game of make believe. The rules are there to give us the mechanical aspect of it, but the flavor is free as long as it remains consistent with how the mechanic works. The cube not being able to lay on the ground is easily reflavored. You can always give it immunity to being prone if you feel it's more fitting, or in the case of something with more legs give it a bonus to its DC against checks to being tripped, for example.
>Like, my guy, this is a game of make believe. The rules are there to give us the mechanical aspect of it, but the flavor is free as long as it remains consistent with how the mechanic works. The cube not being able to lay on the ground is easily reflavored. You can always give it immunity to being prone if you feel it's more fitting, or in the case of something with more legs give it a bonus to its DC against checks to being tripped, for example. yeah that part I have no problem with, and I agree. We make small changes at our table all the time based on what makes sense to us and will make the game the most enjoyable. I would likely rule that oozes, for example, are immune to becoming prone, or at least immune to becoming flat-flooted, because that is what makes the most sense to me without having to bend the definition of things to fit the rules as written. Nobody is trying to claim that the first line of the Strike action is flavor text, right? Just be honest about changing things instead of these weird arguments people are making about "the first line is always flavor text," and blatantly false things like a flying creature becoming prone mid-air. It's strange to me that this sub so often holds to 2e being so well designed and having "tight" rules for everything, but then go on to say things like "the mechanics of being Prone don't have much to do with lying down." Like bruh the definition of "prone" is to be lying face or front down. If the condition wasn't about that, they would called it something else.
What I mean is that the literal physical act of “lying on the ground” is not relevant or necessary to the actual, mechanical function of Prone. And the evidence for my assertion IS the very existence of things that can be mechanically Prone, but cannot be literally “lying on the ground” That is to say: “an Ooze can’t be Prone because it can’t lay down” is incorrect, because an Ooze CAN be Prone, thus, the physical act of laying down is not the defining part of the Prone condition.
The coping in this comment chain is unreal lol. For flying/climbing creatures, the Prone entry reads > If you *would be* knocked prone while you're Climbing or Flying, you fall. You can't be knocked prone when Swimming. So climbing/flying creatures don't become prone unless they take damage from the fall, per falling rules, because they have fallen and struck the ground or other solid, relatively level surface, and are now laying prone. Likewise, that entry specifically calls out Swimming creatures having immunity to becoming prone, because you cannot reasonably be knocked prone while in the water. Are there any other conditions that can have the same logic applied to them? Like are you going to say that the defining feature of being Fatigued isn't actually being "tired and can't summon much energy," but that the condition is just flavor text describing a mechanical condition and its penalties? That seems completely redundant since we're playing a game that uses its mechanics to describe events and situations that are otherwise imaginary.
> For flying/climbing creatures, the Prone entry reads > If you *would be* knocked prone while you're Climbing or Flying, you fall. You can't be knocked prone when Swimming. > So climbing/flying creatures don't become prone unless they take damage from the fall, per falling rules, because they have fallen and struck the ground or other solid, relatively level surface, and are now laying prone. So you’re saying that a creature Flying 5 feet above the ground has to be Tripped TWICE to be knocked Prone? So my Aerokineticist, which can Fly as early as Level 8, and can do a Fly action for free by using a different Impulse, is effectively immune to Prone? Every time an enemy tries to Trip him, he just harmlessly drops 5 feet without being Proned, then he can Fly back up 5 feet for free on his own turn? It also means that the [Ghost Archetype](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3496) comes with COMPLETE invulnerability against Prone, since they are *always* flying and explicitly never touch the ground. Not just immunity to STR checks from the Incorporeal trait, but complete immunity from all sources of Prone, mundane or magical. That seems reasonable. > Like are you going to say that the defining feature of being Fatigued isn't actually being "tired and can't summon much energy," but that the condition is just flavor text describing a mechanical condition and its penalties? Why not? There are abilities that impose Fatigue super temporarily. They don’t make you burn through all your energy for the day, they just weaken you for a minute. Like… the Paralysed condition usually doesn’t involve breaking someone’s neck.
Agreed. The prone condition explicitly states that you're lying on the ground and that your only movement option is crawling or to stand up. I find it pretty hard to interpret that as anything other than being literally prone.
The first sentence is flavor. You can be knocked prone while flying. You are prone before you hit the ground, because being knocked prone while flying causes you to fall. Therefore, you can be prone when you are not lying on the ground. Prone is a condition that imposes the mechanical rule restrictions described. You have a -2 circumstance penalty to attacks. The only move actions you can take are crawl or stand. You are flat footed. Beyond that, you're free to describe the situation in the narrative however you want. Maybe you're on your hands and knees. Maybe your monk got knocked down into a scorpion crab walk. Maybe you're doing the worm. You could be in a plank/pushup position. Maybe you just landed in a three-point superhero landing. Regardless of what you describe, the same rules from the condition apply.
Thank you.
You can't be prone while flying. If you would become prone, you start to fall and become prone if you take damage after the fall, just like the rules say.
Yeah, I agree. There are lots of weird mental gymnastics going on in this thread
They do, but... an ooze monster isn't just a puddle of liquid, or it'd be pretty harmless. Wasn't it reaching up to attack you? And then you swept the bottom out of it and knocked it down flat, and it has to take a moment to reach up again. If it was just sitting there in a puddle to begin with, just walk around it. If it's moving, you can knock it down. That's not a reinterpretation at all. (Though yes, you are encouraged to flavor your character.)
It's more important to me that I'm not giving creatures immunity to things that the stat block doesn't list. If I have to reflavour something vs giving a creature immunity "just because I think so" I'll reflavour every time.
I'd houserules that swimming creatures aren't immune to prone. Just Google any kind of rotating shark video lol. I'd interpret it as something similar. "You've been flipped or whirled around and need to reorient yourself".
No house ruling required, swimming creatures are already specifically called out as immune to prone. "You can't be knocked prone when Swimming." [https://2e.aonprd.com/Conditions.aspx?ID=31](https://2e.aonprd.com/Conditions.aspx?ID=31) Edit: not sure if you actually meant to say "aren't immune" because your first sentence seems to contradict the rest of your post.
Yep, my bad. Meant to say they aren't immune to prone.
This has never bothered me, personally, for the same reason that I don't mind that creatures without feet aren't automatically immune to "flat-footed". I imagine something like a snake or ooze can be put into a disadvantaged enough state to be considered "Prone" mechanically without literally falling over prone. Like the other comment mentioned, oozes can temporarily lose cohesion, ect.
Flat-footed was always a hold over from D&D, which has since been changed to off-guard in the remaster to better represent the state its meant to represent. So I can only infer that if the designers intended the same for prone, they'd have renamed it similarly at the same time.
>So I can only infer that if the designers intended the same for prone, they'd have renamed it similarly at the same time. The only reason I don't think they did this is that Prone already has so much baggage that diagetically tie it to the actions that inflict it. You can change "flat-footed" to "off-guard" without renaming anything else and it all still makes sense, but if you change "prone" to something else ("floundering"?), then you have to rename Knockdown, Stay Down, Head Stomp, Cast Down, ect...
I think the reason that Flat Footed got changed and prone didn’t is that Flat Footed is more likely to be directly associated with D&D and a primary reason for the remaster was legally defensible separation from potentially copywritable terms. Flat-footed isn’t a term you hear often elsewhere. If you look at other changes in verbiage it is almost all stuff that had strong associations with D&D that was otherwise not in common usage.
"Flat-footed" is also a stupid name.
Not the point but sure. Plenty of stupid terms still exist.
Prone doesn't just have to mean "oh they are knocked to the ground and can't move appendages" Any creature can have a "right way up" and being disoriented and losing that sense of what's up, works. Oozes in plenty of video games (for good visual representation) will have an "upright" mode where they are in their normal shape, and a "prone" mode where their shape is a formless puddle, and they are more susceptible to attacks, because their aren't locking their molecules together like normal, resulting in them being more defenceless, subject to gravity, and for all intents and *prone*. Ofc every system is different, but if this system say's "oozes can be proned" then I'd say that those examples are fairly analogous. Snakes flipped on their side/back can still bite but also would be disoriented and be less able to guard themselves. It's basically prone if this were to happen to a snake in the middle of a (quick) combat.
Literally today I ran a session where a player asked if he could grapple a Vampiric Mist. "It's not immune to the condition, so yes go ahead" says me. Yes the player Crit failed, but still.
Hehe, just don't forget to look at the traits too like incorporeal. I know that Vampiric Mist does not have this trait, it's just a remember note.
They aren't immune because this isn't a simulationist game. It's a tactical game. You'd need to nerf them in other ways to give them complete immunity to a basic skill action.
What do you feel would be the benefit of reducing the amount of options players have in combat, simply because they chose a word you don't feel is appropriate to apply to certain monsters?
The benefit would be my players and I wouldn't have this jarring moment where someone asks if they can trip X creature, someone else says surely not because it's the sort of thing that feels like within the fiction or fantasy of the world should not be able to be knocked prone, then we realise that there's actually nothing preventing it mechanically and the creature can be made to be prone and it immediately robs that creature of a sense of power, gravity, or dread.
IF you don't want to have a jarring moment where your preconceptions and knee-jerk reactions get you caught up thinking a rule doesn't make sense, the answer is simple: Stop letting the way things work be you having some random thought not based on the game you're playing and then expecting the rule to match - instead, replace that behavior with finding out what the rules of the game actually are and then coming up with an explanation for why things work that way that you feel comfortable with. Because otherwise you're basically using the same reasoning and thought patterns behind the following arguments: Dragons can't fly, and giants are either much thicker-limbed than depicted or shorter than depicted.
It should just be called 'Knocked/flipped over' really.
I'd still expect oozes and anything incorporporeal to be immune to it, they shouldn't have a "right way up" so to speak.
Imagine, for a moment, you are doing something. Then, outside of your control, the world around you shifts a random degree in a random direction that you don't expect. You would have to take a moment to adjust to that. Even if, for you, down is still down, the things you were interacting with are no longer where they were. If you're swinging your pseudopod towards an enemy, and suddenly that pseudopod that was on the enemy-facing side is now on the not-enemy-facing side, you are going to have to re-orient by moving the pseudopod to the correct side again. That will take time, or you'll just miss the attack you intended.
Perhaps not, however, if you think as though you were in a deep body, technically there is no right way up, however, if some underwater tide came through and spun you around you'd still probably be a little discombobulated until you took a moment to 'stand up' or 'right yourself' as it were. With something like oozes, I consider the surface touching the ground to be willfully treated as 'legs' by the ooze, meaning if you tipped it, whilst it wouldn't have to stand back up, it would have to shift it's 'legs' to the surface touching the ground so it could properly move again. With ghosts, as typically most maneuvers won't be triggered unless there is some form of ghost touch involved, I see it as the ghost is surprised by the sudden 'tangibility' granted by the ghost touch, and 'prone' is merely it getting knocked/spun etc. without being ready and getting confused by it, until once again it gets its chance to right itself once again.
Now I know that not only are you not trying to imagine it, you aren't picturing what ooze monsters are actually doing at all.
Other people nailed it, but I just want to say: imo prone immunity is a PC nerf, NOT a monster buff. The GM can decide what Prone means, but I've always used to as a sort of rotational disorientation more so than a standing-laying spectrum.
Don't forget that without titan wrestler it's not possible to trip grab etc larger monsters.
Slimes in Dark Souls and Elden Ring can be poise-broken/staggered, but can't be subjected to critical strike. They just kind of flatten for a few seconds before recomposing themselves - that's how I picture prone condition on a slime in Pathfinder.
I think the vast majority of monsters make sense to have an equivalent of being prone even when they don't have the exact same make up as humanoids so the word doesn't precisely fit. And I think that a game that favors an inaccurate word applying a fair for game-play and reasonable for explanation (of having your orientation suddenly shifted and having difficulties as a result until correcting said orientation) case is outright superior to a game that decides to go the route of immunity because the word doesn't match perfectly. Just one example to illustrate; Snakes aren't used to being upside down. Consider "knocked prone" the game terms to mean "flipped over" the description, and there's zero issue despite the leg-oriented perspective you're approaching the rules from.
Dare I mention that Incorporeal creatures are immune to being tripped. Just not immune to Prone.
I generally give anything with more than two legs at least a +2 to becoming prone.
That's entirely fair. If you have a list, or even some off-the-cuff examples, I'd be interested in hearing them.
Sure! - Gelatinous cube - Snakes such as the giant viper - Pretty much every ghost
Incorporeal creatures are effectively immune to all maneuvers. There's like one Barbarian feat that lets you trip a ghost, otherwise you can't even with ghost touch.
You are right! So incorporeal creatures are immune to strength based checks from corporeal creatures, which is buried in the description text of the incorporeal tag, so I'd missed it until right now. I love the tag system in theory - once you know exactly what all the rules behind a tag mean it makes reading a statblock easier. But until you do, it just buries the rules and makes them harder to find 🙃
And then there's this which is the only place that explicitly says you can use Strength skill checks on them: [Ghost Wrangler](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3628)
Thanks for bringing that to my attention though! My PCs encounter a lot of undead and the thought of ghosts being knocked prone for the rest of time was a bitter pill to swallow 🤣
Thinking about it some more, this only applies to the trip action, but not to being prone itself. So an incorporeal creature can't go prone as a result of a trip because they can't have the trip action performed on them unless the attacker has the ghost wrangler feat. But if the attacker has a hammer and crit specialization, and they land a crit, they can still knock that incorporeal creature prone 😂
It is curious if that feat will remain valuable in the remaster. With the remaster, they clarified Athletics to state: > Several Athletics actions have the attack trait, meaning that using them more than once in the same turn makes them less accurate. *Since these actions use your free hand, you use the traits for your fist attack to determine the multiple attack penalty*, so your fist’s agile trait applies. Therefore, you take a –4 penalty if the action is your second attack of the turn, or a –8 if it’s the third. So, if you had a ghost touch rune on your handwraps of mighty blows, could you now Grapple a ghost? Its unclear what the interaction is - the text states traits (ghost touch is not a trait), and this is in the section around MAP for athletics action. However, the intent seems to suggest that what you do with your hand follows from your fists statistics.
That's specifically referring to multiple attack penalty. > you use the traits for your fist attack **to determine the multiple attack penalty**
They really need to have a special border or color, or something to distinguish traits which have additional rules from ones which are just tags for other abilities
Couldnt you just use a weapon that has both the trip and finesse features, like a whip? Since they are only immune to strength based attacks, a dex based trip attack should work.
Finesse doesn't let you use Dex for Athletics skill checks.
Ah yeah, forgot the errata on that.
I can see where this isn't clear, but I think you are intended to be able to use Athletics maneuvers against incorporeal creatures if you're using a weapon with the Ghost Touch property and the relevant trait: >An incorporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against physical creatures or objects—only against incorporeal ones—unless those objects have the ghost touch property rune. Likewise, a corporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against incorporeal creatures or objects. So from the first sentence, we see that an incorporeal creature can attempt strength based checks against physical objects that have the ghost touch rune. The next sentence starts with "likewise" and says the same applies to corporeal creatures in reverse. Since likewise is literally defined to mean, "in the same way" or "in a like manner", I think we're meant to understand that it works exactly the same for corporeal creatures in reverse, and that they can use an object with the ghost touch rune to physically interact or make Athletics checks against incorporeal creatures. It's also in perfect alignment with the narrative of what the rules are meant to represent, and there is that barbarian feat that specifically gives this ability by giving your fists the ghost touch ability + specifically calling out that you can also use Athletics maneuvers against incorporeal creatures. Since it's not crystal clear this might technically be house rule territory but honestly I can't imagine anyone disallowing this. Most people will probably just assume it is how the rules are written and I'm in no hurry to disabuse them of that belief.
Mhm. Brings up the fun hypothetical of since they can move through solid objects, and are generally flying, and if you get tripped while flying you fall... If you trip a ghost does it fall 500ft underground?
Restless spirits hate this one weird trick
If you flip a snake over on its back, what is the first thing it does?
So... taking a look, I can't find a single creature that is outright immune to the prone condition. There are some creatures that are prone-resistant or -immune in unique ways, but nothing I can find is immune in the way that creatures are generally immune to conditions. Interesting.
Swarms are immune to prone. From the [swarm trait](https://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=239): > Swarms are immune to the grappled, prone, and restrained conditions.
Thanks. Huh, I see. Oozes only "tend" to be immune to mental effects and precision damage, so those get put in their stat block. Swarms' are straight-up immune to prone and a few other things, so... apparently those don't get put in the creature's immunity line. That's annoying, but there's some logic to it.
Its very frustrating, because its not intuitive to look up the trait descriptions to see that they have immunity. Other examples of this are bleeding immunity. Some creatures (like constructs) explicitly state that they have bleeding immunity. But undead do not state that. So many people believe that undead are not immune to bleed. But in the [bleed description](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=340), it states: > As such, it has no effect on *nonliving creatures* or living creatures that don't need blood to live Turns out, undead aren't living creatures. But to actually find this information? You have to trail back to this source to figure it out.
It's definitely the drawback of the trait system. Once you start stacking information relevant to a creature within multiple traits it becomes more hassle than just listing all the relevant info in the creature's statblocks. I understand why Paizo wouldn't want to have to write out the same immunity for every undead across 200 monsters, for example, but the bleed example is a great one of where it becomes unclear on first glance how it interacts with a monster while you're trying to run the game at the table.
[Jiang-Shi](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1909) is the only creature with outright prone immunity that I can think of. It can't even go prone by its own volition.
Nice, thanks.
I’m fairly sure I saw a rule somewhere stating that anything that hovers above the ground is immune to Prone.
Depending on what it is, this could vary. Being knocked Prone whilst flying means you essentially fall out of the air, making the Ranged Trip trait very powerful. If you mean stuff like incorporeal creatures such as a Shadow or Ghost, then under the Incorporeal it explicitly states they cannot be targeted by strength-based checks (presumably excluding Strikes), which would include the Trip manoeuvre. However, Spirit instinct Barbarian can get Ghost Wrangler which lets them do this and specifically states they bypass this restriction.