Immediate/Swift Actions

[Bozwevial]

So I was reading the Tome of Battle again the other day, and upon reading the Shadow Sun ninja entry, I noticed something.

The text for the ninja's Flame of the Shadow Sun ability states:

[spoiler]

As an immediate action, you can shroud yourself in shimmering, dark energy that provides resistance to cold 10 until the start of your next turn. If this resistance reduces the damage you take from any attack or effect, you can take a swift action on your next turn to hurl a bolt of fiery energy with a range of 60 feet.

[/spoiler]

However, the rules for immediate actions state that using an immediate action is equivalent to using your swift action for your upcoming turn, which would make it impossible to use the bolt of energy if you had used the shield on someone else's turn.

Does this need errata? Has there been an update to immediate/swift actions? Or is the bolt only meant to be usable if you put up the shield on your own turn?

[Kaelik]

Two ways to look at it:

1) Badly worded but obvious what the RAI is. RAW, you can't throw stuff ever.

2) The text following the specific overrides general ruling grants you an extra swift action/the ability to take a swift action (of only that type) after an immediate action (of only that type).

[ZeroSum]

You only use next turn's swift action if you use an immediate action when it's not your turn.

By RAW it functions though I believe you're right, Boz and that the RAI doesn't match the RAW here.

[Bozwevial]

Yeah, there are really only two ways to look at it, in my opinion:

1) RAW, you can only use the bolt if you put the shield up on your own turn. This is somewhat understandable, but then why is it an immediate action to do so?

2) The ability is written poorly. You should be able to fire the bolt if you use the shield on someone else's turn.

[veekie]

So, a working RAI interpretation would just drop the swift into a free action, considering you already paid the swift as an immediate the previous round.

[ZeroSum]

veekie: iff you used the ability as an immediate action -- using it as a swift action needs to make it use next round's swift action to blast as well.

[veekie]

Hmm, point, maybe it was intended that if you activated the ability without knowing cold damage was incoming(aka, triggering it as a swift), you get a missile if it did soak cold?

[ZeroSum]

I think you just need to add this text to clarify it: "You may take this swift action even if you activated this ability at any time you could not take a swift action."

[Runestar]

Rewording it to be a free action usable 1/round seems the most reasonable.

[ZeroSum]

Except that still lets you take other swift actions if you activate it as a swift action which was not the original intention (as far as seems reasonable.)

[veekie]

Well, I don't really see a problem there, how strong is this bolt anyway? And how often can they do it?

[Runestar]

Doesn't seem that bad. The point seems exactly that you can use it in response to being hit with a cold attack (thus assuring that the secondary ability can come into play reliably), rather than activate it on your turn and hope that you get whacked by a cold attack (which is kinda unwieldy, because you are potentially wasting a swift action).