No worries. Sounds like just enough time to go rescue one of my heroes of Kerbin-kind from being stranded in orbit. 
Still on for tonight but…
Been having spotty connection all day. Just a heads up.
Prep for 4th level.
RE: Flurry of Blows and the incapacitation trait.
Incapacitation is:
So it will do something to a high level creature but only on crit fail. The question is what level of “spell” is Stunning First considered to be?
Unless someone can show me otherwise, I would assume that we could treat Stunning Fist as being of a spell level equivalent to the highest level spell a caster class of the monk’s level could cast.
This right here:
It’s confusing because the trait label that normally appears on a spell isn’t present here, even though it’s called an “incapacitation effect” in the feat.
Right, but that still doesn’t tell us what level of “spell” Stunning Fist acts as for the purposes of incapacitate.
Is it:
- An Xth level monk uses the Stunning Fist feat so it generates an Xth level incapacitate effect? No, that’s bloody OP.
or
- The monk is using the 2nd level monk feat Stunning Fist to generate a 2nd level incapacitate effect, so everything 4th level or higher (regardless of being a “boss” or not) can safely ignore it? No, that’s bloody useless.
Both are dumb.
I still like my solution.
In other words, spell level is irrelevant in this case because your comparing the level of the monk to the level of the mob they are attacking.
It’s almost the same as your approach but not exactly. I think your approach would work about as well.
With the benefit of sleep and a helpful dollop of critical thinking I have come to discover:
- Stunning Fist is awesome
- Incapacitate spells are absolute trash
In our case, our 3rd level monk can safely use Stunning Fist on up to 5th level targets without any degradation in efficacy. Spoiler: you haven’t fought anything 6th level or higher.
You’re still thinking about it in terms of spell level but that has nothing to do with it. Read my quoted text above one more time.
A 3rd level monk’s stunning fist suffers degraded efficiency against any opponent 4th level or higher. Spell level isn’t part of the calculation.
You would need a 6th level monk to affect a 6th level mob with full potency stunning fist.
~light bulb finally turns on~
Oh wow, Stunning Fist goes back into the suck pile!
To elaborate further, spell level only factors into incapacitation when spells are concerned. In all other cases, its the level of the item, creature, or hazard generating the effect.
For example, say we have a 6th level mob that we’re attacking.
-
A 5th level monk’s stunning fist would suffer the incapacitate effect
-
A 6th level monk’s stunning fist would not
-
A 5th level wizard casting a 1st level sleep spell would suffer the incapacitate effect
-
A 5th level wizard casting 3rd level (heightened) sleep spell would not
So the efficacy is determined by whether the effect is generated by a spell or something else.
Anyway, this is just another example of the verbiage for PF2e rules not being all that clear.
Here is my speculation on what the devs were trying to accomplish… relative to monks and other non-spell generating effects this distinction gives a slight advantage to a caster when casting their maximum level spell but really hurts them for lower level spells.
I believe the devs were trying to keep casters from shutting down everything by just spamming low level enchantment spells. Because otherwise, they would’ve just used the character/monster/item/hazard level for everything instead of complicating our lives with the spell level calculation.
Right.
So like 50% of the time a caster using an incapacitate spell in a highest available spell slot can effect a target one level higher than themselves, and the other 50% of the time can effect an equal level target. The monk is always less than or equal to.
^ my attempt at trying to decipher words and/or simple arithmetic again… and probably failing.
I mean, it’s still pretty dog-gone powerful. Its just not God-mode powerful.
Compare it to the cantrip Daze.
Daze basically gives you the same effect on a critical but costs you 2 actions instead of one and you get two rolls attacks for that one action.
Right.
Stunning Fist is essentially a “free” rider on Flurry of Blows which the monk is going to do anyway. Free stuns is nice.
It’s just, removing actions from an equal (or lower) level mob than the party is nice but not particularly important. Removing actions from higher level opponents is extremely important.
Doing a bit of reading today and it turns out Zani’s wand of manifold missiles is significantly more powerful than I realized 
————-
Turns out it was just a Wand of Magic Missile and I only imagined it was a Wand of Manifold Missles 
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On an unrelated note I stumbled on the YouTube channel of Taiwanese musician named Nini and I now I think I understand the appeal of Bards a bit better than before.
So we must all remember. this is PF2. All things go to the suck pile… 
ok so seriously. Here’s what I’m seeing/hearing/reading…
My 4th level monk can Stunning Fist anything 4th level or lower with out any modifications to success/effects. As soon as I try to hit something +1 level (5th at the moment) I have to Crit for it to have any effect, and that would only be the normal (so Stunned 1 instead of Stunned 3). Do I have that correct?
If so, that will open up a whole mess of meta because Rando will have to share what level the mob is, or we’ll need to set up that fortitude check to be a blind roll. (SPF)
Also, 
I won’t be able to make Sunday’s game this week. (Double SPF)
Exactly.
So I just went from 150 Mbps/10 Mbps (Down/Up) to 500 Mbps both ways. Let’s see how that affects the game tomorrow! Yay.
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So (obviously? I just thought of it right now…) I’ve got a new IP address. I’ll have to update you with the new connect “string”.
We’ve also moved to version 10.273 of the main software from 9.284. It has to do a data migration (which is taking forever and is worrisome.) The ruleset has done minor updates. Almost all of the addons I’ve got installed have been updated to 10.XXX compatibility but 4 (critically) failed to do so and I don’t know if they’ll work at all or make the server explode.
It’s taken 5 minutes or so now and it’s still doing the data migration. I betcha I broke the world and everyone’s characters. Yay.