Alignment Regeneration Problem

I was in an AP and we encountered an enemy that had immunity to unconsciousnes, immunity to death effects and regeneration Vs chaos. At that point we had no way of knocking them out or killing them beside disintegration which we didn't have. The GM had to have a passing cleric of a chaotic god show up to deliver the coup de gras.

That was incredibly annoying as encounter design goes. The lesson we took from this was keep a bunch of alignment ampules around with us at all times.

But in my opinion don't make enemies that can only be defeated by a set means that not all parties are likely to have.

What was the creature and what level were you?

What was the creature and what level were you?

It's much easier to analyze knowing what kind of creature it is. Sometimes it may simply have been something you missed.

It would also be interesting to inform the composition of the party.

15th level creatures and 15 level party. The enemy was two Marut.

If we had known in advance we could of easily handled it.

The party was a fighter, psychic, wizard, thaumaturge

You had a thaumaturge. All that character had to do was Exploit Vulnerabilities and there was no issue at all. That's the key aspect of the class, Identifying and Exploiting Weaknesses, or just giving them to an enemy if they have none.

Hey wait!

The thaumaturge could have exploited his weakness. Why didn't you do this?

You had a thaumaturge. All that character had to do was Exploit Vulnerabilities and there was no issue at all. That's the key aspect of the class, Identifying and Exploiting Weaknesses, or just giving them to an enemy if they have none.

There is a faq that mortal weakness doesn't trigger regeneration.

I didn't know that. Is there already a FAQ/errata of Dark Archive saying that mortal weakness doesn't deactivate regeneration? Do you have the source of this?

https://paizo.com/pathfinder/faq

https://paizo.com/pathfinder/faq

There's nothing related to Mortal Weakness in official errata. That's why I asked it's source.

My bad, I though you were just asking for the DA errata!

I am not sure where I saw it now but mortal weakness triggers the specific weakness without making the strike become that type of damage type (so your slashing damage doesn't become chaotic damage or fire damage etc) and it's only when taking chaotic damage that the regeneration is stopped.

I think as a GM I would have been more likely to include a weapon with an anarchic rune on it, than have a wandering cleric drop by, but that's just me. Have the party find the weapon in an encounter leading up to the Murat.

Regardless of the party composition, this is hard scenario for people to potentially deal with because the creature can't be killed except by something that's not necessarily common. Even if you have a chaotic player characters in your party, there's no guarantee that they have access to something that inflicts chaos damage.

If the adventure didn't telegraph that you were going to encounter such a creature and or provide equipment with a way to handle it, I consider it a failure of adventure design.

Drown 'em.
Yes, that's nearly impossible if you can't make them unconscious...and they have Dimension Door at will to escape anything unless y'all brought Dimensional Anchor (which has a tight time frame). And OMG if that isn't bad enough to have a regenerating enemy who can constantly DimDoor away to rejuvenate.

Makes me wonder if it's an oversight or an expectation at such high levels, which I'd dislike, since a party that leans one direction wouldn't necessarily want to carry/endorse the spread of their rival alignment's essence so would require Disintegrate (perhaps in bulk).

All I could think of would be to fool them into thinking you did have a Chaotic weapon handy to finish them off so they flee once near death, maybe even Plane Shift away. Or Diplomacy before the brawl?

Heavy alignment mechanics aren’t great

Regeneration is a difficult ability to deal with. It is something that needs careful attention when designing encounters with.

A Troll is difficult to deal with - even with Fire damage being rather typical to have available by the party. Acid too to a lesser extent.

But alignment damage - especially alignment other than Good - is not really something that every party composition is going to keep on hand at all times.

I think as a GM I would have been more likely to include a weapon with an anarchic rune on it, than have a wandering cleric drop by, but that's just me. Have the party find the weapon in an encounter leading up to the Murat.

Regardless of the party composition, this is hard scenario for people to potentially deal with because the creature can't be killed except by something that's not necessarily common. Even if you have a chaotic player characters in your party, there's no guarantee that they have access to something that inflicts chaos damage.

If the adventure didn't telegraph that you were going to encounter such a creature and or provide equipment with a way to handle it, I consider it a failure of adventure design.

I had a similar situation in AoA, where my players had to face a Stone Golem and realized that the Stone golem had physical resistance except Adamant. But in the previous chapter, a NPC had given them an Adamant Axe as a prize, and the players noticed just that. That the adventure designer had previously provided an adamantine weapon as a prize precisely because in the next chapter they would end up being quite useful (as they really were).

OK here it doesn't get to the point where a creature has regeneration. But in fact it was a way for the adventure to give a "key" to solve a problem for the players to solve a future problem.

Another important thing to note is that not every fight needs to be won. I don't know under what circumstances this meeting with Marut took place. But isn't retreating and preparing (or even avoiding this encounter altogether) an option?

I had a similar situation in AoA, where my players had to face a Stone Golem and realized that the Stone golem had physical resistance except Adamant. But in the previous chapter, a NPC had given them an Adamant Axe as a prize, and the players noticed just that. That the adventure designer had previously provided an adamantine weapon as a prize precisely because in the next chapter they would end up being quite useful (as they really were).

My only problem with this type of idea is that now treasure that the player's find only looks like it is meant for increasing their wealth by level and can be traded in for equipment that the actually want.

Because there is always the chance that some random piece of loot that they find will happen to be the key to solving some puzzle-type encounter in the future - up to a chapter or two later. So selling anything comes with a huge risk.

Like YuriP: Not all fights are meant to be won.
You also have some Incapacitation effects, like Mind Warp, that can deal with such creatures (by not killing them, but incapacitating them).

I don't think there's an issue with an enemy you can't kill unless it's also an enemy you can't escape (either because you can't retreat or because you have to kill it no matter what).

YuriP wrote:

I had a similar situation in AoA, where my players had to face a Stone Golem and realized that the Stone golem had physical resistance except Adamant. But in the previous chapter, a NPC had given them an Adamant Axe as a prize, and the players noticed just that. That the adventure designer had previously provided an adamantine weapon as a prize precisely because in the next chapter they would end up being quite useful (as they really were).

My only problem with this type of idea is that now treasure that the player's find only looks like it is meant for increasing their wealth by level and can be traded in for equipment that the actually want.

Because there is always the chance that some random piece of loot that they find will happen to be the key to solving some puzzle-type encounter in the future - up to a chapter or two later. So selling anything comes with a huge risk.

Yes but in this case of AoA this solution is more a "shortcut" than a Key.

For a situation where is too difficult to kill a creature probably the key item need to me more obvious. With players receiving some tip they they really will need it in the future. Something like a NPC saying "A very strong Aeon protect that area. But I heard that some chaotic itens and spells are their weakness. Maybe better you will go prepared".

This is something pretty common in adventure and fantasy stories. Where some character, situation or story telling about some opponent weakness or receiving some key item and these characters remembering and using it.

Yeah, AP are pretty straightforward ( and there's almost always no issue in terms of time ).

For example, if you were to flee from the before mentioned "Stone Golem", you might easily go back to the city, do half a year of retraining, crafting, etc... and go back finding the room exactly as you left it.

It may be different if there were some time limit to achieve a specific goal, but I think it's never the case with premade works.

Regeneration is a difficult ability to deal with. It is something that needs careful attention when designing encounters with.

A Troll is difficult to deal with - even with Fire damage being rather typical to have available by the party. Acid too to a lesser extent.

But alignment damage - especially alignment other than Good - is not really something that every party composition is going to keep on hand at all times.

Yeah, that in my opinion is the main problem.

Fire can be safely assumed (IMO) to be available to any party). At the very least someone has a way to light a fire. Even if it means getting out a torch our whatever your characters use for cooking to inflict the fire damage.

Acid is another one that I would nearly assume after a certain level. Somebody is going to have some acid flasks, just in case. Or at least they should.

But aligned damage...well I don't think they make that in an alchemical item.

Edit: I am wrong. Alignment ampoules exist, as does Aligned Oil for weapons. I suppose it should become common for characters to buy Alignment Ampoules (supposing your GM doesn't restrict it to Pathfinder Society characters) in plentiful supply after a few levels, just to deal with situations like this. The base version deals only 1 damage, and has no attack bonuses but supposing you've already knocked the character down to dying and are keeping it down with repeated attacks each turn it will be unconscious and suffer all sorts of penalties to AC for that. And at that point you really only need the point of damage to deactivate the regeneration and let you finish it off. At 4 gp it's not something I would expect low level characters to have without having a specific purpose in mind, but at higher levels I think it's reasonable to expect characters to have a few. Good thing is it covers every alignment with 1 item.

One thing to consider is it will technically only deal damage if the enemy has weakness to the alignment. I'm not sure if any creature that has regeneration that is deactivated by aligned damage doesn't have weakness to that same alignment, but I hope not. It seems technically possible, but I really hope it's not the case.

But yeah...at higher levels see if you can purchase like a dozen of those bad boys, just in case.

However, this item is dependent on your GM allowing you access as it's normally restricted to Society members and the other option is higher level Aligned Oil and it's more expensive.

And despite all of that I still say that with this enemy the adventure path or story should somewhere along the line make it clear that you're going to need some chaos aligned damage dealing ability and hand you some to help make that happen. If it doesn't it's bad writing. If this is a homebrew, than it's bad story telling on the part of the GM, although that's basically the same thing as bad writing.

After identifying a creature's weakness, you use a thematically resonant bit of esoterica to attune your attacks to your discovery. Your unarmed and weapon Strikes activate the highest weakness you discovered with Exploit Vulnerability, even though the damage type your weapon deals doesn't change.

Relevant text as to why thaumaturge doesn't actually break regen. In this case, as no chaotic damage is being done, regen never turns off.

Yeah, AP are pretty straightforward ( and there's almost always no issue in terms of time ).

For example, if you were to flee from the before mentioned "Stone Golem", you might easily go back to the city, do half a year of retraining, crafting, etc... and go back finding the room exactly as you left it.

It may be different if there were some time limit to achieve a specific goal, but I think it's never the case with premade works.

Ehhh, there are plenty of campaigns where while not explicitly written that shit will happen, it only makes sense for shit to happen if you spend months not moving forward the story.

Like going back to town for a few days (2 days there, 1 day shopping, 2 days back) and I (as a GM) am probably not going to impose any issues if not already written into the AP. But spend 6 months and while no one else may have looted that tomb you were interested in, something else will probably have happened to make that no longer relevant and you may be 2 or 3 steps behind the enemy. You might not even be able to recover the storyline because of how far you let the enemy get ahead. Not everything can be won just because you suddenly showed up with the ability to kill all the NPCs. Sometimes the enemy just needed like 2 months to summon the elder god bent of merging their reality with the material plane, and while it doesn't necessarily kill everyone the results of this process sure make it a lot harder to stay alive.

HumbleGamer wrote:

Yeah, AP are pretty straightforward ( and there's almost always no issue in terms of time ).

For example, if you were to flee from the before mentioned "Stone Golem", you might easily go back to the city, do half a year of retraining, crafting, etc... and go back finding the room exactly as you left it.

It may be different if there were some time limit to achieve a specific goal, but I think it's never the case with premade works.

Ehhh, there are plenty of campaigns where while not explicitly written that shit will happen, it only makes sense for shit to happen if you spend months not moving forward the story.

Like going back to town for a few days (2 days there, 1 day shopping, 2 days back) and I (as a GM) am probably not going to impose any issues if not already written into the AP. But spend 6 months and while no one else may have looted that tomb you were interested in, something else will probably have happened to make that no longer relevant and you may be 2 or 3 steps behind the enemy. You might not even be able to recover the storyline because of how far you let the enemy get ahead. Not everything can be won just because you suddenly showed up with the ability to kill all the NPCs. Sometimes the enemy just needed like 2 months to summon the elder god bent of merging their reality with the material plane, and while it doesn't necessarily kill everyone the results of this process sure make it a lot harder to stay alive.

Campaigns or AP?

I couldn't find anything in the 4 I played within this 2e.

Even getting AoA as example, it says "if the adventurers take too long, like years, the hazard might reset".

And AoA plot is kinda strict regardless the chapter.

ps: Ofc a DM might force players to go forward, but I still have to find it as mandatory. If not explicitly written ( like "the adventurers have 7 days to find the princess" ) , it is just not a mechanic.

Campaigns or AP?

I couldn't find anything in the 4 I played within this 2e.

Even getting AoA as example, it says "if the adventurers take too long, like years, the hazard might reset".

And AoA plot is kinda strict regardless the chapter.

ps: Ofc a DM might force players to go forward, but I still have to find it as mandatory. If not explicitly written ( like "the adventurers have 7 days to find the princess" ) , it is just not a mechanic.

What distinction are you making between APs (adventure paths) and campaigns? That's basically the same thing. Unless you're asking which ones. I can't say any 2E adventure paths, but only because I haven't played 2E adventure paths.

But basically every 1E adventure path I played I recall there being a least a lose element of time restriction. Typically not so much that it was going to cause problems, but never so little you could walk away for months and expect to pick up where you left off without your enemies having potentially already completed whatever they were going to do.

I don't think you'll see explicitly written very often in adventure paths or scenarios that you don't have months to side track before you complete a thing, because they're just not written to take it into account because the writers expected that you would want to you know...deal with the story.

I don't have specific details I can give you because it's been a while (years) since I've completed most of the APs that I have played, but almost all of them I am left with that impression of not having months of "downtime" being possible in the context of the story. The one I can think of is Skull and Shackles campaign, where the story is mostly about being a pirate and you doing stuff or stuff happening to you. Your characters aren't generally that worried about protecting anyone or trying to stop someone. Even the final boss is kind of optional in that if you wanted you could just ignore the whole thing, deciding it's simply not important to your characters and accept that things are going to happen, it's just that you don't care.

What distinction are you making between APs (adventure paths) and campaigns? That's basically the same thing. Unless you're asking which ones. I can't say any 2E adventure paths, but only because I haven't played 2E adventure paths.

Whops, I meant to say paizo/non paizo premade campaigns or homebrew ones ( I referred to them as campaigns, forgetting the homebrew part.

I don't think you'll see explicitly written very often in adventure paths or scenarios that you don't have months to side track before you complete a thing, because they're just not written to take it into account because the writers expected that you would want to you know...deal with the story.

But that's exactly my point.

Not saying it's not fine or it's bad, but that's just kinda different to have a whole adventure built with a time limit in mind ( mechanics ), and another one that let you intend that you might not have that much time ( flavor ).

But that's exactly my point.

A time limits weights on resources and choices, while not having a given time limit but just "You should hurry or else..." is, mechanically speaking, worth nothing.

It is not worth nothing - it is worth whatever value the GM puts on it.

The idea is that it is left to the GM.

If the GM wants to run the AP like it is a video game where the main characters can spend weeks fishing or perfecting their toboggan skills - they can do that.

If the GM wants to progress the goals of the villains and eventually TPK the campaign world as a result of the players taking too much time before addressing the campaign plot - they can do that too.

HumbleGamer wrote:

But that's exactly my point.

A time limits weights on resources and choices, while not having a given time limit but just "You should hurry or else..." is, mechanically speaking, worth nothing.

It is not worth nothing - it is worth whatever value the GM puts on it.

The idea is that it is left to the GM.

If the GM wants to run the AP like it is a video game where the main characters can spend weeks fishing or perfecting their toboggan skills - they can do that.

If the GM wants to progress the goals of the villains and eventually TPK the campaign world as a result of the players taking too much time before addressing the campaign plot - they can do that too.

I am not sure you got what I meant.

Just in case: It's not an adventure created with time limit as mechanics.

The fact that a DM might try to hurry players it doesn't make a difference.

If you are looking for a standard example of what I am referring to, think about an escape room.

They are meant to be completed within a specific amount of time, and their difficulty is set based on the given time ( and the escape room difficulty, as there are easy, moderate and hard ones ).

Obviously you can play it without having the time in mind ( ending it in 2 hours rather than 1, or asking for more hints than intended ), but the escape room difficulty/logic was built following the logic previously explained.

***

An AP not meant to work with time limits mechanics wouldn't involve, for example:

- Specific rules/mechanics for short rests between encounters.
- Events that might happen or not depends the time you reach a specific zone, or if you get to save that npc before they die.
- different rewards

But if your point was "A DM can make adjustments even to time if they require so"... sure, why not.

I am not sure you got what I meant.

Apparently not, I am not understanding what you are saying.

Yeah, AP are pretty straightforward ( and there's almost always no issue in terms of time ).

For example, if you were to flee from the before mentioned "Stone Golem", you might easily go back to the city, do half a year of retraining, crafting, etc... and go back finding the room exactly as you left it.

It may be different if there were some time limit to achieve a specific goal, but I think it's never the case with premade works.

Basically what I read from this is that if the AP writers don't specify out exactly how many weeks the players have available to complete the plot objectives, then the players should feel free to take literal years between battles and the GM should just allow that. That adding such things would be a houserule added to the AP that the players have grounds to contest against.

I'm a bit torn, because while I kind of love that a powerful Inevitable like a marut can just keep rebuilding itself and getting back up, almost no matter what you throw at it, alignment damage and especially chaotic and lawful simply feel too niche of damage types even for this purpose. For most functional purposes, in order to defeat a marut you need to worship a chaotic god and have access to divine magic and have prepared one of the several alignment damage spells which, unless your god is also good, only really work against a the law-abiding small subset of all your enemies. Sure, you might have an anarchic rune on your weapon if you're fighting enough of those law-abiding enemies to justify keeping one around, and sure as mentioned alignment ampoules technically democratise alignment damage (even if they are Uncommon), but those don't feel like terribly satisfying ways to solve the 'puzzle' of "What will it take to finish this thing off?".

Mind you, the normal answer for solving similar puzzles in the game is simply to have the correct damage type on tap, so whether you can physically win a fight can be determined before you even start, but it gets to be a bit of a problem when you can't end the fight you started. If you fight a troll and nobody happens to have fire damage, you can get creative and start a fire while somebody hold their sword in the troll's throat. If you fight a ghost and there's not enough magic damage (or the incorporeal resistance is a bit too much) you can very often retreat from the haunted area.

Admittedly, these kinds of regeneration only show up at very high levels when you're more likely to have a variety of options for finishing off a creature that doesn't want to die, but it's still unsatisfying to find that the reason you can't end the fight is because you didn't bring a niche tool you'd probably only ever have on your person in order to defeat this one enemy. It makes sense to me that the only thing that can stop the immortal arbiters of unwavering Law from their inexorable march is to blast them with pure chaos, but having the power of chaos under your belt is such a niche thing that you will basically either have it because of a lucky stroke or the GM will have to give it to you through no cleverness of your own.

If the adventure didn't telegraph that you were going to encounter such a creature and or provide equipment with a way to handle it, I consider it a failure of adventure design.

It's from Blood Lords. I recognize the encounter.

That being said "Immune to death effects" should not prevent you from eliminating Marut through good old-fashioned swordplay unless your GM takes the literalist line that regen means the NPC is immortal. Per p.459, core rulebook I have never played non-named NPC's as having Dying counters so this was a non-issue for me.

Well, I'm not sure how else you could possibly interpret this:

A creature with regeneration has additional benefits. Its dying condition can't increase to a value that would kill it (this stops most creatures from going beyond dying 3) as long as its regeneration is active.

You could houserule how it works, I guess...

But it has Regeneration and Immunity to Unconscious. So it just keeps fighting no matter how hard or how many times you hit it.

Edit: And as for the Dying rules on page 459, it literally says that creatures with healing abilities such as Regeneration should be using the full Dying rules.

Because otherwise, what exactly does Regeneration do? How is it different than Fast Healing?

To be fair though, isn't this problem more about any rare damage type?

Like... Its completely possible that nobody in party has negative damage so if enemy happened to have regeneration stopped by negative energy, it'd be same dealio here. That doesn't mean enemies should never have regeneration stopped by unusual damage types, its more of that players either should have chance to learn about it in advance or scene should be written around possibility of it being impossible to kill and have alternate solutions.

It's super niche, but knowing regeneration exists means knowing you need access to every kind of damage in some capacity just in case. It's an easy blind spot to have, especially for something like chaos damage, but it is also the kind of thing that burns a group/player once and never again.

Edit: And as for the Dying rules on page 459, it literally says that creatures with healing abilities such as Regeneration should be using the full Dying rules.

If you're going to try and tell people "you're playing the game wrong" you might want to read it before tallying an "Internet Arguments Won" point on your wall.

At the GM’s discretion villains, powerful monsters, special NPCs, and enemies with special abilities that are likely to bring them back to the fight (like ferocity, regeneration, or healing magic) can use these rules as well.

So just be mad that I used my discretion to make a fun encounter rather than one a player felt compelled to go on the internet and complain about I guess.

I seem to recall running into some undead that could only be killed by cold damage in Age of Ashes

We probably should have stockpiled some Frost Vials or the like to cover this gap...

When faced with an "unwinnable" fight, win it anyways some other way.

I'm playing through Abomination Vaults right now, we're fairly low level still.

We've "won" a few fights by simply using Diplomacy. Stumble into a couple of ghouls and we look too well matched - tell them that if they just 'walk over there and ignore us' there's a pile of dead bandits back there that will be a lot easier to consume. ;)

Both sides know the issue will need to come to blows eventually, but not right now.

If you've got an anti-undead creature of 'law' - and you're undead (I assume, since this is Blood Lords and while I don't have that module it seems to imply such)... negotiate out a technicality.

Or Move the NPC to somewhere else if you have something that would work for that. Or otherwise end hostilities with a 'non-final solution'.

"You can't defeat us, we can't defeat you. It's a stand off. Lets go our separate ways and resolve this... next time..."

I'm going to guess this wasn't a "random monster out strolling the cafe's downtown" as I'd think those kinds of events should be a little less common at 15th level, but something planned. So next time, plan for it.

But if it was something totally random then negotiate out of the standoff and each of you plans to come back stronger next time.

I was in an AP and we encountered an enemy that had immunity to unconsciousnes, immunity to death effects and regeneration Vs chaos. At that point we had no way of knocking them out or killing them beside disintegration which we didn't have. The GM had to have a passing cleric of a chaotic god show up to deliver the coup de gras.

That was incredibly annoying as encounter design goes. The lesson we took from this was keep a bunch of alignment ampules around with us at all times.

But in my opinion don't make enemies that can only be defeated by a set means that not all parties are likely to have.

Yes it is poor module design. A Marut is a strongly aligned creature (inevitable, monitor) with a lot of immunites much like a golem. It shouldn't really have any interest in PCs normally.

It probably needs some GM notes as to what it actually means. Some parties will just need to run away or distract it.

By default creatures are destroyed when they hit 0 hitpoints. The dying rules are for PCs and GM specials. So typically immunity to unconcious is a mostly useless ability as unconcious just doesn't apply to most monsters. I assure you the GM won't let me take advantage of it with animate dead. But assuming the GM wants to allow it.

Immunity unconscious is a strong ability which means the monster is supposed to be very hard to stop.

But what does immunity to Unconscious mean? AFAICT it just means that you are still active while you are dying.

So Immunity to Unconscious means you can still act while you are on zero hitpoints.
A Marut is immune to death effects - it is not immune to dying. With a normal creature you just need to keep hitting it to get it to dying 4. For something like a Zombie Snake that is it Unfortunately you have to stop the Marut's regeneration to take it below dying 3.

So really your option is to incapacitate it. Fully restrain it by tying it up and stuff its mouth full to stop verbal components. Yes the GM will have to make some rulings but it should be possible with multiple appropriate athletics checks in the one round.

Hold it in an area of continuous damage like a wall of fire that also activates at the start of its turn. Or as someone else suggested just drown it. Unfortunately it remains conscious.

Anyway the secret is to be able to do alignment damage. 80% of parties probably can't. That regeneration is largely unstoppable. Quite a few summon spells can do it though. But then again there is no requirement for regeneration to have a deactivation key. If the GM wants an unstoppable monster he can have one.

A quick note. Players can get this ability.

Summon Axion will get you a Marut with a level 10 summoning spell.
or Kolyarut with a level 9 summoning spell.

But if you can put regeneration level 7 spell on a lower level creature like a River/Flame Drake or a Violet Fungus you can get these much earlier.

The Summoned trait explicitly says that the summoned creatures are banished if they reach 0 HP.

So even if we are running all NPCs with the full Death and Dying rules, Summoned creatures won't be able to take full advantage of Regeneration.

Yes just remembered and came back to delete the comment. I'll leave it there in case it triggers some thinking.

Technically a Poppet is still a Construct and therefore has immunity to unconscious. The problem being that this trait is not explicitly overridden the way that Automaton ancestry or the Construct Eidolon is. Note that is something that I oppose and would never go with that rule interpretation but it is arguable.

So if your GM lets you get away with Poppets not bleeding. Then a Regenerate Spell cranks this up to nine. Technically you are unstopable outside of dispel magic, and disintegrate type effects.

mortal weakness wrote:

After identifying a creature's weakness, you use a thematically resonant bit of esoterica to attune your attacks to your discovery. Your unarmed and weapon Strikes activate the highest weakness you discovered with Exploit Vulnerability, even though the damage type your weapon deals doesn't change.

Relevant text as to why thaumaturge doesn't actually break regen. In this case, as no chaotic damage is being done, regen never turns off.

I don't think that interpretation is correct. Activating a weakness is functionally the same as dealing that damage type, so if the weakness and regeneration-disabling damage type are the same, the regeneration is turned off. I would be very surprised if that was intended any other way, despite the inaccurate language.

The bit about your weapon's damage type not changing merely states that you don't suddenly only deal chaotic damage. You deal whatever damage type(s) your weapon deals plus the weakness.

There are classes (Alchemist first and foremost) that have abilities to handle this specific situation. These abilities are completely niche, but if you streamline everything for your players you may just end up in a situation where Fighter is the answer to everything as every time Fighter is not the answer the GM adds Fighter to the possible answers.

I think it's fine for the party to realize they don't cover everything. It feels much more rewarding when they actually do cover a niche situation. Retreating or finding a way around the Maruts shouldn't kill the campaign or generate infinite frustration, so it is an acceptable outcome.

I must admit I'm a bit pissed when adventures put you against a challenge and at the same time give you all you need to deal with it... so you actually never have to deal with it.

PFS GM: The adventure is underwater...
Wizard player is super happy because they have Water Breathing in their spellbook.
PFS GM: ... so we give you a bunch of potions of Water Breathing.
Wizard player is disgusted and rerolls a Fighter.

There are classes (Alchemist first and foremost) that have abilities to handle this specific situation. These abilities are completely niche, but if you streamline everything for your players you may just end up in a situation where Fighter is the answer to everything as every time Fighter is not the answer the GM adds Fighter to the possible answers.

I think it's fine for the party to realize they don't cover everything. It feels much more rewarding when they actually do cover a niche situation. Retreating or finding a way around the Maruts shouldn't kill the campaign or generate infinite frustration, so it is an acceptable outcome.

I must admit I'm a bit pissed when adventures put you against a challenge and at the same time give you all you need to deal with it... so you actually never have to deal with it.

PFS GM: The adventure is underwater...
Wizard player is super happy because they have Water Breathing in their spellbook.
PFS GM: ... so we give you a bunch of potions of Water Breathing.
Wizard player is disgusted and rerolls a Fighter.

It's just a guess, but could it be that because the wizard didn't mentioned the intent to use water breathing?

Being a DM I would have assumed ( again, if the wizard/spellcaster didn't make it clear they wanted to use water breathing, for example)

DM: "The poor spellcasters do not have enough spells at that level, so I am not expecting them to waste one to give r water breathing to the whole party... I plan to give them a potion to deal with it"

Wizard: "why DM! Why did you give us free potions! I wanted to do cool stuff! "

If the wizard make it clear that they intend to use one of their spells, I think no DM would have to object ( or force them to renounce doing so by providing potions. Unless it was something like "since you are helping I can provide you potions" Aka, so you can save a spell slot ).

It's just a guess, but could it be that because the wizard didn't mentioned the intent to use water breathing?

Being a DM I would have assumed ( again, if the wizard/spellcaster didn't make it clear they wanted to use water breathing, for example)

DM: "The poor spellcasters do not have enough spells at that level, so I am not expecting them to waste one to give r water breathing to the whole party... I plan to give them a potion to deal with it"

Wizard: "why DM! Why did you give us free potions! I wanted to do cool stuff! "

If the wizard make it clear that they intend to use one of their spells, I think no DM would have to object ( or force them to renounce doing so by providing potions. Unless it was something like "since you are helping I can provide you potions" Aka, so you can save a spell slot ).

I've voluntarily put the "PFS" before the GM. It's something extremely common (well, actually I wonder if it's not always the case) in PFS. But it's also what some posters suggest: Never put a niche challenge without providing the solution beforehand. But it means that there are no more niche challenges then.

gesalt wrote:

mortal weakness wrote:

After identifying a creature's weakness, you use a thematically resonant bit of esoterica to attune your attacks to your discovery. Your unarmed and weapon Strikes activate the highest weakness you discovered with Exploit Vulnerability, even though the damage type your weapon deals doesn't change.

Relevant text as to why thaumaturge doesn't actually break regen. In this case, as no chaotic damage is being done, regen never turns off.

I don't think that interpretation is correct. Activating a weakness is functionally the same as dealing that damage type, so if the weakness and regeneration-disabling damage type are the same, the regeneration is turned off. I would be very surprised if that was intended any other way, despite the inaccurate language.

The bit about your weapon's damage type not changing merely states that you don't suddenly only deal chaotic damage. You deal whatever damage type(s) your weapon deals plus the weakness.

The text, which is quoted right there, is very specific in saying the exact opposite.

It's a magical ability to trigger the weakness that isn't even useful if you actually deal that damage type.

Never put a niche challenge without providing the solution beforehand. But it means that there are no more niche challenges then.

And when players used to such type of GMing end up at my tables they complain they don't have a way to deal Chaos damage. But I'm no nice GM, I challenge my players in all the ways the game provides.

Yeah but the so called "solution" should be a way to switch the combat difficulty from let's say hard to moderate, or from severe to hard ( I mean, no "I win" button but also not "You can't win unless you do..." approach ).

Plus, since I assume PFS parties changes over and over, expecting compositions that might deal with all kind of weaknesses/resistances/immunities, etc... wouldn't end being too much?

Quoting your last part

And when players used to such type of GMing end up at my tables they complain they don't have a way to deal Chaos damage. But I'm no nice GM, I challenge my players in all the ways the game provides.

If the party compositions is 3 melee, that can't deal chaotic damage, and a druid, that also can't deal chaotic damage ( or even 4 combatants ), it wouldn't be their fault not being able to access to some specific damage ( talking about pfs ).

Quote:

And when players used to such type of GMing end up at my tables they complain they don't have a way to deal Chaos damage. But I'm no nice GM, I challenge my players in all the ways the game provides.

If the party compositions is 3 melee, that can't deal chaotic damage, and a druid, that also can't deal chaotic damage ( or even 4 combatants ), it wouldn't be their fault not being able to access to some specific damage ( talking about pfs ).

Instead of removing the advantage of having a player who can deal Chaotic damage, the adventure could assume a backdoor for such parties.

Yeah but the so called "solution" should be a way to switch the combat difficulty from let's say hard to moderate, or from severe to hard ( I mean, no "I win" button but also not "You can't win unless you do..." approach ).

In general, the solution will be equivalent to the solution a character could provide. The Wizard can cast Water Breathing, the GM can give Scrolls or Potions of Water Breathing with the exact same effect the Wizard provides. In between solutions are hard to find. In the case of the Marut, if you give a Chaotic weapon to the party, then the Regeneration will be shut down and as it can't be double shut down the Alchemist will not provide anything regarding the Regeneration (at least it will exploit the weakness but it no more brings a solution to the issue as the GM brought one, too).

I can understand why some parties may like the GM to provide solutions when their characters don't have one, not everyone wants to play the game with a high level of tactics/difficulty. But the average party should be expected a certain level of tactics, as Regeneration is part of the game and something a group of experienced PF2 players should be able to handle without a GM babysitting them.