Can you spend more than one round of rage in one round?

Question

If I start my turn already raging from my previous turn, exit rage, and then re-enter rage and stay raging by the end of my turn, how many rounds of rage should I deduct from my 'rounds per day' counter? Only one, since it was contained in one round, or two, because it was two separate instances of rage?

Similarly, if I start my turn not raging, rage, exit rage, and re-enter rage all on my turn (provided that the GM allows it under the "reasonable amount of free actions" clause), would that expend one or two rounds of rage?

Should be noted that the post-rage fatigue is not an issue here, due to use of a Flawed Scarlet and Green Ioun Stone and the Internal Fortitude rage power.

Answer 1

There is a subtle, but crucial, distinction here that makes things clear: between letting rage expire and choosing to end your rage. The former is not an action, and happens automatically just before your turn starts unless you spend a round of rage to prevent it. The latter is a free action, which must be taken on your turn. So if you prevent rage from expiring, you have to spend a round of rage. If you then end it as a free action, you have still spent the round of rage.

If you end your rage early as a free action, you forfeit any remaining time in the rage—because that is what it means for rage to end. You aren’t suppressing it and resuming it, you’re ending it. So if you start the rage again, even if it’s in the same round, you have to spend another round of rage, because you forfeited the last one and it no longer matters that you already used a round of rage—that round is gone.

All of this is the technical details behind how the result everyone kind of expects is implemented: if you don’t use your rage for anything, then it shouldn’t consume a round of rage. That technically means you’re supposed to let it expire, rather than sustain it and then end it as a free action. But so long as the rage hasn’t seen any use—the free action is the first thing you do in the turn—that’s a semantic difference that can, should, and usually is ignored.

The reason I want to highlight this subtle distinction is because it provides a clear answer to your other scenario: wherein you have actually done stuff with your rage. Unlike ending the rage immediately at the start of your turn, which is effectively identical to letting it expire, doing stuff means you must have sustained your rage into this turn. Thus, you must have consumed a round of rage. If you want to forfeit the rest of the round to turn off rage, you can, and if you want to start a new rage, consuming a second round of rage for the same round, you can do that too (assuming some solution to the fatigue problem), but you have to pay for it.

Answer 2

You either spend one round or you don't

Common Terms includes the definition of a Round

Round: Combat is measured in rounds. During an individual round, all creatures have a chance to take a turn to act, in order of initiative. A round represents 6 seconds in the game world.

And the duration of effects is further noted in The Combat Round

When the rules refer to a "full round", they usually mean a span of time from a particular initiative count in one round to the same initiative count in the next round. Effects that last a certain number of rounds end just before the same initiative count that they began on.

Since Rage (and similar abilities) is measured as such

a barbarian can rage for a number of rounds per day

it follows the rules with the exception added that you can end your Rage as a Free Action. Ending the Rage does not 'reset' the counter, you are either Raging for a round or not.

To address your examples, you would spend one round raging if you stop/start Raging during the round described in your first paragraph (and have spent one round before) and the start/stop/start from your second example would also be one round, because you Raged at some point during that round, and there is no smaller denomination for counting "rounds of Rage" than Rounds.

To put it another way, if you Rage during a round, you "spend" one round of Rage because the effect cares about the duration, not the number of "activations". The ruling would be different in D&D 5e, where you can Rage x/day, but Pathfinder uses a duration to count it.

Answer 3

If exiting rage is the first action you take on your turn, you shouldn't have used a round of rage that turn. This is the point at which an effect with a 1 round duration finishes (based on it being the time it takes for a "1 round action" to complete), and thus before that you would have been using the previous round's use of rage. So both start turn raging->stop raging->regular actions->start raging and start turn raging->stop raging->start raging->regular actions should only use one round of rage.

However, I would rule that both using non-free actions while raging and being in rage at the end of your turn (so that others affect you on their turn as if you are in rage) use up a round of rage, and since I'm trying to keep different instances of rage separate (i.e. not increase or decrease the usage based on what a previous rage was doing), this would mean that e.g. Start turn raging->move action->stop raging->standard action->start raging would count as using two rounds. I don't have a solid rules backing for this in particular, so this could vary with other GMs.