Does Demoralized Bane give Disadvantage to Bane Resist Roll?

One of my players mentioned that since the demoralized bane gives disadvantage to all “action rolls”, it also gives disadvantage to the bane resist roll - thus making it harder to shrug off the demoralized bane. The description also intentionally mentions that resisting the bane is a minor action. What’s the intention here? Is demoralized supposed to give disadvantage to the bane resist roll to get rid of demoralized? If so, then demoralized seems a bit overpowered to me.

Resist rolls aren’t action rolls, thus they are often not affected by the disadvantages from banes or advantages from boons.

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To be even more specific, Resist rolls are not Attribute Action Rolls either.

This further expands out to mean that even though it is a d20 roll, it is allowed to have more than 1 advantage/disadvantage applied to it, whereas all other rolls with a d20 are Attribute based, and can only have 1 instance of advantage/disadvantage max (if only rolling a d20).

However, there is rarely a case where a resist roll will get more than 1 advantage/disadvantage except via GM fiat.


Demoralized and Provoked both have minor action to resist, with the logic being they are “simple” mind effects that would be easier to shrug off than normal banes. Especially in the case of Provoked, which can be applied to a target that wasn’t the target of the original attack.


Derailment done, have I confused you more?

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i’m a bit confused here. so, the bane specifically states

“Resisting this bane is a minor action.”

the effect of the bane is “The affected target has disadvantage on all action rolls.”

so, why is using a minor action to roll to resist the bane not an action roll?

is there some other rules issue here i am missing? why, if they take up a move or a minor action, are bane resists not action rolls?

functionally, this seems tricky as if there is no disadvantage on the resist roll, then demoralized seems really nerfed as it is costless to try to shrug off, you will do so over half the time, and it will never have any effect on you at all. on the other hand, having disadv 2 on the roll seems very powerful as on a d20 roll, that really buries you and your chance to roll a 10 drops to something like 15%.

so either this bane is really powerful or incredibly weak.

So I answered most of this just before you posted, BUT, just b/c something happens during a Move action, or Major action, or even Minor action does not make it an Action roll.

It comes down to how Action rolls are defined. A Resist roll is something that you do during a Move Action (typically, but there are exceptions as we see). It is outside and not defined as an Action roll for the very purpose that if banes could affect the resist roll, then the resist roll would be far weaker.

There are other things that give disadvantage too, and that would make it pretty crazy to resist.

Think about it from both ends, do you want to be on the receiving end of having Disadvantage 4 on ALL resist rolls you have to do?

Feats like Potent Bane and Resilient are there for such things.

from the rules:

This move action cost is a simplified way of representing any number of different ways you might go about shaking off the wide range of banes you might be afflicted by.

Key word there, is, it is a “cost”, it isn’t really an action roll. It is a cost to wanting to get rid of a bane. This way banes have more of an impact if you do shrug them off. The reason I mentioned Provoked and Demoralized being minor was up above.


Now, the GM is always free to change things up if they feel like it, or to make a game feel gritter/harder.

If a bane has a huge exceptional success (15+ over defense for example) maybe they will auto apply disadvantage to resist it.

If you really want an alternative, you can check this out:


off to the dentist now though, so will have to wait to reply to anything else for a bit :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Bane resist rolls are never action rolls, regardless of what kind of action you use to take one. This seems like a bit of confusion with two different uses of the word action: “action rolls” means a roll you take to perform an action, whereas the “actions” you take during your turn are more like chances to do something. They usually line up, but not always, as in this case.

This bane is intentionally quite weak, it has a low (initial) power level and can be afflicted by many attributes and often using Success with a Twist (Bane of PL < 3). If such a common bane was that powerful, it would significantly slow down combat. You’re right that over half the time the bane does very little, but 45% of the time you get at least one turn’s use of it as well as denying the target the opportunity to use a Focus Action, not to mention the impact on Interrupt actions before their next turn.

Don’t get too hung up on power level, many boons and banes are much stronger/weaker than others entirely by design. Feel free to not use it if you feel it’s too weak, the bane is there for people who do want to use it and not to be forced on everyone.

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I literally had the exact same thing happen (player identified, in the moment I couldn’t disagree, came to the group for an answer, found out all the answers). :slight_smile:

So clearly it was/is never as clear as written.

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