Large creature and splash weapons


Rules Questions


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Does a large or huge creature who is hit with a splash weapon also takes its splash damage ?

Shadow Lodge

Don't think so. They don't take extra damage from area spells when they take up multiple spaces in the area.


i asked the same question not to long ago. and everyone says no the large creature does not get splashed.


A search turns up this question being asked over and over.

Simple answer:

Logic says "Yes, it has more area and all those areas are affected so it should take damage on each area." It's logical.

But the rules don't say that. Over and over the rules say "Each creature in the area/splash takes damage". It never ever says "Each part of a creature in the area/splash takes damage".

Less simple answer:

If the logical-seeming rule happened, then splash weapons and Area-effect spells would be way too powerful against large creatures. "Hey, watch me cast fireball on this orc - it does 10d6 damage" becomes "Hey, watch me cast fireball on this colossal monster - it does 400d6 damage!" (yes, 400 dice is entirely possible for a 20' radius burst).

That means that a single fireball would do, on average, 1,400 HP and kill nearly any colossal monster that isn't immune to fire, even if they save for half.

Fireball becomes a weapon of massive destruction, and so does EVERYTHING that would damage larger creatures more than once.

The fix for that would be making those big creatures have more HP. I can hear the devs now: "Hey, you know, one 10th level wizard could kill 3 or 4 kaiju in a single encounter, maybe we should give them like 5,000 HP so they can survive a few fireballs."

And once that is done, how can anybody ever kill them WITHOUT area weapons? Monsters that should have 500 HP now have 5,000 HP and your typical fighters and barbarians and such should just go home - or at least throw oil flasks if they want to do any real damage.

The whole system would break down.

Which is why it doesn't work that way.


In-universe: "Huh?... magic. Go figure."

Out-of-universe: "Ummm... err... It's just a game?"

Optional in-universe: If a splash weapon can target Touch AC, and creature size correlates positively with Touch AC, then splash weapons would hit more often and that extra damage (on average) could be seen as large creatures being within their own splash radius.

I'll go with "magic".

Scarab Sages

Short answer. No.

Slightly longer answer - it's already taken the damage. It's not going to take the damage twice for the same thing. Splash damage is for the extra material that just might happen to hit some other things.

The main target has already taken the brunt of the blast. Splash damage is just for any leftover that happens to spray or drip off the edge. The poor unfortunate victim is not going to take any damage for something falling off itself onto it's self because the stuff is already on it & has already struck it (and taken effect).

Liberty's Edge

Quark Blast wrote:

In-universe: "Huh?... magic. Go figure."

Out-of-universe: "Ummm... err... It's just a game?"

Optional in-universe: If a splash weapon can target Touch AC, and creature size correlates positively with Touch AC, then splash weapons would hit more often and that extra damage (on average) could be seen as large creatures being within their own splash radius.

I'll go with "magic".

RL: (don't do this really, it is a thought experiment). Take a newspaper and set it on fire, Drop an ant on it. Destroyed. Get naked and walk on the same newspaper on fire. You get some burn.

Our skin surface increase with the square of our size increase, our mass with the cube. Increasing a creature size make it better protected against a fixed size of area damage, not less.


It feels really cheap to argue "large creatures get in contact with more fire, so they take more damage" when the smaller gets engulfed in it.

After some testing, I can also confirm Diego's statment.

EDITED: removed a false statment, remembered that a missed splash weapon can only deal splash damage, not the full damage.


"Rub" some aloe on that...


How about this question then. Is the splash area the area around the monster or is it always just one square and those surrounding it?

It probably states it somewhere but I can't find it.


just the one square and those surrounding it.

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