Easl's page

In the case of our most active campaign, the change in immunity to crit hits may have more impact than the Resist All change. We have no Champions, but getting those non-doubling crit effects could be big. Time will tell.

I'd much rather spend my time working on game design making content I and our customers are excited about.

And as a consumer, I'd much rather those underpaid nerds spend their time creating new content rather than writing or videotaping commentary on old content. Video especially; it burns me up that they often take 1 hour to provide information that could be communicated in a 30-second half-page text read. Commercialization has made it worse; now creators are incentivized to blather on.

Giorgo wrote:

.3) How to determine different "Security Levels" for banks, magic shops, and rare materials/commodities on a scale from "A Locked Door and a Guard Dog" all the way up to "Stored in a Pocket Dimension and protected by an Immortal Guardian". I had to learn how that kind of thing worked in 1E, now I have to relearn it again for 2ER.

This will be based on either DC by level or simple DC, and is determined by the settlement level and also how important the thing in question is.

Agreed. The simplest way is just to make it one or a series of level-based DC checks. Regular for run of the mill shops and first-layer defenses, Hard for 'uncommonly' wealthy shops or banks, very hard for 'rare' banks and last-layer defenses. Whether the security is mundane or magical or what type of magical is the description but isn't needed to set the mechanics; though it is useful because you'll want to hand out circumstance bonuses or penalties if PCs have the "right" skills and abilities for the job, or if they think of some cool good strategy for getting around a defense.

Though as a GM I would worry less about the "how to" and lean in more to the storytelling aspects. Okay, PCs want to rob a bank. I'm not thinking "how do the rules prevent this from happening" so much as I'm thinking "okay, when this happens, what interesting story things result from it?" You just stole the mob boss' money. GM cackles madly.

I want developer blogs like this: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/commander-brackets-beta-upd ate-february-9-2026

Paizo revenue 2024: $12 million (though it doubled in 2025!). Paizo workforce: 125 people.

Of course D&D has the ability to offer blogs, streams, etc. that smaller companies cannot. Doing that costs them a much smaller fraction of their labor and operating budget. You're basically complaining about how the corner store doesn't have WalMart's services.

Why does Paizo even write level 11+ if, according to you, nobody ever plays them, and balance issues that show up at those levels don't matter? The fact is, the ruling created the possibility for the most broken builds in PF2's...

High-level balance issues do matter, of course. There are many loyal players who play those levels. None of that negates the point, however, that the majority of play isn't going to involve flaming shock cold silver weapon vs. immune to A resist B C weak D E, so a rules change that mostly impacts such complicated situations isn't going to impact the majority of play. And the situation becomes even less dire when you step out of the white room and remember that GMs have the ability to tweak encounters if they don't like the way the revised resistance works.

Ah, Skeletons are another problem. Skeletons get "Resistances cold 5, electricity 5, fire 5, piercing 5, slashing 5" (or better).

Meaning if you hit a ghost with resist 5 all with a sword that also deals 3 fire damage, 4 cold damage, and 2 electricity damage it'll reduce the damage by 5 slashing damage.

But if you hit a skeleton it'll ignore not only the 5 slashing damage, but also the fire/cold/electricity damage.

So you're L16, you've just got your weapon potency +3 rune and chosen which third property rune to add to your sword...and you chose Shock. It used to stink against both ghosts and skeletons, but uh oh now the errata has come out, it only stinks against skeletons. Time to sound the alarm?

Well, no. APs are usually typically somewhat transparent in the types of threats you'll be facing. If you chose Shock instead of Ghost Touch or Vitalizing in a campaign featuring skeletons and ghosts, that's not a system or GM problem, it's a player choice. OTOH if you're in a home campaign, the GM is designing encounters knowing what you took. So if you encounter a ghost or skeleton, it's because the GM wanted you to encounter them. Again, not a system problem. And in the case of a GM running an old AP, who just saw their next encounter get much easier because it featured a Resist All ghost, well they have a choice to make: run it RAW-with-errata and allow it to be easier, or run it pre-errata to preserve the 'original intent' of the encounter. Either way they do it, it's not a terribly difficult choice to implement.*

It is a change. Paizo in fact recognized that, and explicitly noted that the change to Resist All is going to change the difficulty of some past written encounters. But I'm not seeing it as a major problem given that GM-player-AP interactions around an actual table are rarely so unflexible as white-room scenarios we can construct in our heads.

*I guess if you're playing on Foundry and you want to implement the rules change right away, it's a problem. You'll have to wait for the Foundry devs to implement it, or hand-jam damage to get the right result. But Foundry isn't Paizo; they aren't responsible for that problem.

...the need to actually get to the enemy (and not death spiral afterwards, costing your party actions in subsequent turns) make sending a pick user, say, less appealing

This. Ranged has generally smaller damage dice sizes because it has generally significant defensive advantages. Bumping up dice size and making reload easier...yeah that would be absolutely horrible to give to NPC opponents. Who wants to play a fantasy game where the enemy constantly shoots-and-moves well out of range of melee attacks and 30' spells.

I'd be less harsh if the devs gave us anything in terms of insight into these changes. It's not hard to write a quick blog post talking about the changes,

They literally did this. https://paizo.com/blog/spring-errata-2026

Allowing one character to deal hundreds of damage per strike by triggering weaknesses that the party itself is able to create fundamentally breaks damage math

I'm somewhat skeptical of that. While it is easy to come up with white-room examples that allow PCs to beat some opponent more easily than we would like, the majority of play being L1-10 and pick-up-game society play means the problem of 5-fire-instances-on-fire-weakness-in-round-one just doesn't actually happen that often. These boards are a very skewed sample of overall players; dedicated many-games-at-once fans + folks who find rules discussions interesting. The fact that this group can invent mental scenarios where the rules don't work well, does not mean the game is 'fundamentally broken'.

I don't like how hard Paizo seems to be leaning on patch culture, especially considering how badly they apparently want us to buy physical books.

Culturally I think we're stuck with it. So many tabletop players second-game as videogame rpgers and MMO players that push-updates are the expected norm now. Look across the boards here, you'll see regular comments to the effect of "well now that Paizo has made this change, they should go back and change every past publication to address it. For free. Should be easy!" That's coming from video game expectations, IMO. No pen and paper publisher can do that. Yet, it's the expectation of many players.

On the plus side, Paizo having an active change/update culture says to me that they plan on supporting PF2E for years to come, that this is the game they want people to play. To me, that's good.

Regardless of who's in charge, though, changes to fundamental mechanics should probably wait for the next edition, imho.

I suspect this is tied back into the big 'instance of damage' discussion. Resist All was developed under a system where pretty much every single thing was its own instance of damage. So you could trigger weaknesses a LOT. Now, the weakness rules have been changed so you sort of pool stuff and apply it once. That means the monsters get harder to kill than originally intended. Changing Resist All may kinda compensate for that??? Maybe?? Or maybe that doesn't make sense at all since the monsters in the 'now harder to kill' group may be different from the monsters in the 'haz Resist All' group. But I still have this suspicion it's related in some way.

ScooterScoots wrote:

I support nerfing champion’s reaction to resist any but it should have just been champion’s reaction. And then you can have resist any as a category for new abilities.

I think introducing 'resist any' as yet another separate type of resistance (on top of damage type res, trait res, res to all; any of which with possible exceptions) would just further complicate things. I like how this change made things more unified than before.

I agree. We don't need it, and it only at best saves maybe 20 characters of typeface. "Has Resist All 5" can be accomplished within the new errata by writing "Has Resist 5 to each damage type."

How so? The rules about stacking would still apply so you shouldn't actually have multiple resist all's in effect. you have the biggest one.

Well the issue is now with the errata, it's more "Resist-A-Pick." So if you have two separate Resist All effects on you, you can pick one damage type for one and a different damage type for the other.

From the errata; There is a rule about applying multiple resistances to the same type, but a multi-type resistance can be applied to the most beneficial damage type if it could apply more than one.

So you still can't take two Resist Alls and stack them against a single giant fire hit, but if you have slashing/fire you can apply one of them to slashing and one of them to fire, because that would be "the most beneficial...if it could apply more than one."

Norr, there's also this part of the errata: "a multi-type resistance can be applied to the most beneficial damage type if it could apply more than one."

It really sounds like if you've got multiple different types/traits, and multiple different ways to apply resistances/immunities to them, then the new general rule is "victim picks".

So you've got types 1, 2, 3 and multi-resistances A, B, C, you can match up A to 1, B to 2 etc. any way you want. Though you still can't break the rule you're citing, i.e. you can't apply both A and B to 1.

Say you have 5 resist slashing from Stoneskin and then get 10 resist all for something.

You take 12 slashing damage and 5 fire damage. If you resist the slashing, you take 2 slashing and 5 fire for 7 damage. If you resist the fire, you take 7 slashing damage and 0 fire damage for 7 damage. Identical.

But if it's 12 slashing and 6 fire, then resisting the slashing is 2 slashing and 6 fire for 8 damage while resisting fire is 7 slashing and 0 fire, so you want to resist the slashing.

The errata says "a multi-type resistance can be applied to the most beneficial damage type if it could apply more than one."

So if resistances can apply in more than one, the PC victim gets to pick the way to apply it. On the con side, this also means that GMs should be picking the optimal resistance choices for monsters.

if we're going to rework how resist all works, even with their admission that its a massive balance change, I feel like effects relying on it should have also been reworked.

That is an enormous ask for the publishing company to go back over every AP and released product and alter the stats of things that were built with Resist All.

They're not going to do that.

What is much more likely is that they put out some statement to the community telling GMs to pay attention/change old published monsters with that trait to keep the challenge about the same. Now sure, GMs can already do that, but some people like to have that sort of express note before they fiddle with an AP, and it's probably useful for PF Society to have a permission like that "on paper."

I would rule the subject/victim PC gets to choose how to apply the two champion effects, so both could be used as long as they are used on different damage types.

Why rule that way? Well I think it's the most reasonably consistent way to apply the first and last bits of this part:

A single effect can activate more than one resistance at a time, but subtracts each of the subject’s resistances only once. If the subject has more than one resistance to the same damage type, they apply only one, usually the highest. For a resistance to a category including multiple damage types, like resistance to physical damage, to spells, or to all damage, if the subject is taking damage of multiple types included in the category, the subject can choose which damage type to use the resistance against.

I'm glad immunity got the toxic cloud example. Seems pretty clear now that an npc that is 'immune to [damage type]' while 'weakness to [trait]' takes [trait] damage from a strike that does [type] while having [trait]. Holy slashing sword does holy damage to enemy immune to slashing.

We have hundreds of pages of rules for this game. I think it's fair to ask that these rules be written unambiguously,

Oh it's definitely fair to ask. But as with any human endeavor, what you will get is going to constrained by cost, schedule, and ability. None of this is coming free or easy.

Bust-R-Up wrote:

What an instance of damage is, and exactly how hardness, weakness, and resistance work in a system featuring such, should have been hammered out during early combat testing. This isn't some edge case; it's fundamental to how dealing damage works.

I think it was, at least internally, and everyone knew what it was so noone wrote it down. Then people either forgot, or were brought in and didn't "know" so worked off their own definition.

I expect playtesting dealt with common situations, like flaming rune vs. fire resistance. Not "fully loaded" cases like silver+holy+flaming+fire spell enchantment on sword + precision damage + fire kineticist stance vs. resist all+hardness+slashing immune+holy weakness+fire resistance+elemental betrayal hex + etc.

There is certainly value in a rules set that is 'set complete' in terms of addressing every possible hypothetical scenario in a way that remains fun and fair. But is it necessary that every edge case be dealt with effectivelly? Maybe not. To use this thread as an example, 99% of actual table play will not suffer at all from the 'new issue' of Dragonscale Amulet now being much more powerful than Resist All, because Dragonscale Amulet is a rare, campaign-specific L15 item. It can only come up in a game if you're playing that AP or if the GM actively, consciously decides to have it in their game.

This change suggests that Paizo had no idea how damage worked in their own game and is now just winging it after their first attempt at errata was so poorly received.

They had an idea how they wanted it to work. But after the last errata they are clearly trying to find a new way, and maybe this change is setting us up for that new way. [shrug] But...I don't think your example supports "no idea", because it's such a rare edge case it's not something any game designer would create a general rule to cover.

That's a rare item, it's a campaign-specific item, and it's L15 in a campaign that goes 1-20. The only time it's ever going to be available to PCs is if they're playing that campaign or if the GM explicitly wants them to have it.

I'm totally okay with errata making it even more MacGuffiny than it already is, because it's already pretty MacGuffiny.

Half damage feels pretty pitiful compared to the martials striking 2 or 3 times a turn and doing reliable damage + Strength. But also most of my spells weren't damage dealing, so on a success they just do some minor effect like making the enemy groggy for 1 round.

If you pick non-damage spells, that would explain why you don't feel good in combat. There are little to no "stunlock" types of spells that allow a control effect to be as strong as a big hard strike. Slow, Haste, maybe something like blind.

Spontaneous casters have one MASSIVE problem compared to prepared casters in that their spell repertoire are TINY. As a prepared caster I can theoretically have every spell in the game AND prep them at any level.

The Sorc's signature spell ability actually means they have a much larger range of spells they can cast at any given time, at least at higher levels. For example, at L11 they have an effective repertoire of 8 rank 6 spells; the 3 "real" repertoire plus upcasts of R1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 signature spells. Compared to the wizard's 3 prepared rank 6 spells.

In any event, yes both spontaneous and prepared casters have their pros and cons, but you were complaining about a con that's specific to prepared casters, so I thought spontaneous might be a better fit. If, all pros and cons considered, you prefer the wizard, play it!

Now, if you want 'all the spells,' with prepared, well Druid does that for primal and Cleric does that with divine. And again, you can take that class and then role play it as an academic wizardy type PC.

And even if I did know what an enemy may or may not be weak to, I can't rewind time and re-prep my spell slots mid-combat to take advantage of that.

And worse, if I WAS a spontaneous caster, I would be TRAPPED inside of my spell repertoire.

Well yes on the first, but that's why you take a variety of spells and don't try and shoehorn the same rotation into every encounter. I have Daze on my current caster. I only bring it out for will-weak enemies, but it's one of my cantrip choices precisely for those situations.

And spontaneous casters aren't as locked-in as you think. Every time you level, you get to change out two spells. Heck, summoners get to change all of them every level after L5.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to sell you on them. I like prepared casters too. But I don't think the situation is as dire as you think. In my own personal opinion, the problem with the sorc is the opposite of your complaint: they have too many available spells at higher levels. Even at L11, having 8 castable max-rank spells totally washes out the advantage a prepared caster is supposed to have via a large spellbook.

That's definitely a bit of hyperbole, but me and my group are more interested in playing fun characters who are cool and interesting than playing Rainbow Six: Absalom or whatever, if that makes sense? And I feel like PF2 hates us for that...Edit: I think I struggle to understand what the game 'wants' of me, what it's designed to do.

Well a lot of game resources are dedicated to combat for two reasons: (1) lots of players like combat scenes, and (2) it's important to give a lot of detailed control to players in scenes that could be deadly to their PCs, because that gives them agency when their PC is at risk.

But having said that, it's not really the game that dictates the types of scenes you play or the combat difficulty of them: your play group and your GM does that. If your group wants more problem solving, mystery, investigation, social encounters, etc. then tell the GM that! The game isn't telling you what to be; your playgroup and Gm is doing that.

Likewise if you don't want to max-out combat attributes etc, then don't. It's simple enough for the GM to either reduce encounter difficulty or, if they want to stick to a written AP, play you a "level up".

I don't know of any publishing company that provides free re-edited products. It's great that the computer gaming industry can push updates in real time, but I think it's an highly unrealistic expectation to think a pen and paper publisher can do that. As far as I know, Paizo follows the 'industry standard' practice of doing edits and updates primarily when one print run runs out, and they want to do another one.

On a positive note, Paizo offers 'humble bundles' several times a year. These regularly include a full adventure path, typically one of the older ones, plus tons of other materials, for more like $30 (but note, that's all PDFs). So if the thought of spending a lot of money for a pre-mastered & un-updated AP doesn't thrill you, look for those.

I was trying to play a nonlethal pacifist utility wizard. I took Daze as my main combat spell. Did low damage and had an abysmally low chance of inflicting Stun ONE. I genuinely don't think it ever stunned anything. Since most of my spells were save-based, they rarely worked. As my GM described it 'spells feel bad in PF2 because most of the time they do a lesser version of what they did in PF1, and only do their main thing on a crit fail'. or something like that.

Yeah, stun is a bad one unless you know an enemy has a very low will. A pacifist-themed wizard is probably better off taking the Nonlethal spellshape feat at L2 and then just using it with Electric Arc, Frostbite, etc.

I'm surprised you say the save spells rarely worked; one of the benefits of using them is that they almost always do at least half damage, unless you're fighting L+2 or similar enemies. And if you can catch multiple enemies in an AoE, well....3 half-damages is one-and-a-half damage. :)

And that's added to the fact that most casters have to micromanage exactly how many casts of every spell they need, so you need to be a divination mage just to know how many times you'll need to cast Fireball vs Charm Person, vs, whatever.

Sounds like you may be more comfortable with a spontaneous caster. Nothing prevents you from picking sorcerer or oracle etc. as your class but donning a pointy hat and theming your PC as a pacifist utility magic nerd. Hmmm, now, how to combo spontaneous caster with Nonlethal feat...well, you could archetype to get it?

Warpriest for the 'medic', champion for the 'battle'. Though as many folks have pointed out, once you make the decision that you're willing to give up that juicy +4 slots divine font, there are many many combos beyond champion that can do [heals via regular slots] + [medic] + [fighty]

Man this system feels so oppressive.

So, what's the point of taking something like Witch's Armaments or the Witness to Ancient Battles if they're just going to give you a subpar mediocre option that ultimately ends up being a waste of feats?

Strike options on casters can be useful alternatives when you face threats that are immune or resistant to your standard spells. I doubt it comes up much in home adventures where the GM takes party composition into account when designing encounters, but in APs, this can happen. I.e. you get some encounter which completely nullifies one or more casting PC's "main schtick." When that happens, 'switch-hitter' feats can be useful. Personally I like animal companion feats for that more than body weapon feats, but I've never played an animist so I don't know in that case if you might be better off with body weapons.

It also greatly depends on the level of your campaign, IMO. In a L1-5 adventure, a full caster going dex for defense can hit with a dex weapon or dex body attack just about as much as a martial. But at higher levels, they really start to fall behind.

***

But to the original question: body attack feats have the weapon traits they say they have, no more, no less. AFAIK They get no 'implied' traits. Kholo bite is not agile nor finesse because it doesn't say it has them.

The Raven Black wrote:

Found a related thread from 4 years ago here

That specific override on Moonlit Ray indicates that the weakness would *not* pop without that spell's special mechanic.

Which supports option #1,

No I don't think so. For several reasons.

2. Let's say it's intended. The fact that they added in a specific override implies that the general rule does not work the same way. If it did, they wouldn't need an override for this case. So if the override is "immune in this specific spell case", tell me Trip, what does that mean the general rule is?

3. I respect many of the commenters on that old thread. But they are not Paizo. Argumentum popularum doesn't really work for a rules system put out by a games company.

I'm a stickler for working out the "objective RaW" precisely because I want more people to escape the "RaW purist" phase and reach the "that's dumb/less fun, let's do ____ instead" phase of ttrpg play.

I reach the "that's dumb" phase of ttrpg play when I consider that in your #1 system, for silver ingot vs. bludgeoning-immune werewolf, gently touching the werewolf with the ingot does damage to them while improvised striking them with it does not. This should never be the case. But it is, under your system, since immunity to a damage type will immunize the werewolf from the silver nature of a strike that touches them, while they still would take damage from being merely touched (no strike) by it.

So your system eliminates damage from a strike that is still taken in a "when touched" scenario. And that's just plain dumb. IMO, YMMV, etc.

I think y'all may be focusing too much on the spirit tree and not seeing the general rules forest.

The general scenario is: there is a strike that hits, with a damage [type] and a [trait]. The victim is immune to the [type] but weakness 5 to the [trait]. Does this mean:

1. It takes no damage at all, using the logic: because the immunity prevents the strike from doing anything at all, the weakness does not trigger. This is Trip's the weakness is part of the effect definition; if the effect never takes hold, the weakness is simply never adjudicated.

2. It takes the weakness damage, using the logic: while the [type] damage does nothing due to immunity, the weakness adjudication is. This is the weakness is independent of the effect definition; the weakness triggers so long as you merely hit.

I favor the latter, Trip favors the former. Folks can review our posts to see why. Thoughts on 1 vs. 2?

we are more just bouncing our personal ideas around off each other than trying to convince any one with any decision making power to do any thing.

Well yes, but that's 90% of forum content on any given day lol.

I think it would be even cooler if every spell strike you did with a cantrip stacked a new instance of Arcane cascade onto your existing one, but only if the damage type was different, incentivizing using different cantrips instead of just the one highest damage one.

So sort of like a prismatic build. That's cool. I do think AC is more in need of a tweak than spellstrike; AC needs: not useful -> useful; spellstrike changes would be: useful -> more useful.

Magus is better at hitting weaknesses, but not enough to close the DPR gap.

At high levels, this may be true. At low levels, as I pointed out, it more than closes the gap; the magus ends up doing more damage. "Fighter can also easily trigger type weaknesses" is ALSO linked to high level play and not true for low level play. So again, if you think there's a problem with magus dpr being lower than fighter dpr at high levels, I really don't see that as a good justification for making spellstriking every round a class mechanic they get at L1.

But for the record, because there are multiple conversations going on, I am not advocating for removal of focus spell spellstrike.

The werewolf example points the opposite direction you claim. The werewolf was not immune to the improvised attack, so the weakness could trigger.

I set it up to be immune to bludgeoning. So yup, immune to the attack. You'd make a bludgeoning-immune werewolf immune to a silver bludgeoning attack then?

Not only does this go against my intuition, but it sets up a ridiculous rules juxtaposition where hitting them with a big chunk of silver does nothing while merely touching them with that exact same chunk of silver in a light, peaceful way causes them damage. That should never be the case. If touching them with a not-normally-damaging bit of silver hurts them, then touching them harder (in a way that triggers a damage immunity) with the same bit of silver should too. It makes total sense to say that, in the latter case, their immunity to the strike means they are immune to the extra damage the strike would normally cause, but since in both cases they are touched by silver, they should take the same weakness damage from both touches. Likewise with immune to spirit weak to holy; if some object does [spirit] damage and has the [holy] trait, then striking them with it should not do less than merely touching them with it in a non-striking way. That would make utterly no sense.

Think of a breathless creature that is immune to [inhaled] and similar effects, that is then exposed to an inhaled toxin that "burns the lungs" and deals fire damage.

That's a hard one. The toxin has a 'causes damage' route, but it's not skin contact. So does skin contact fall under paragraph 2? Or does the inhalation damage mean we should only use paragraph 1?

I would probably tend to say touch triggers the weakness. Because I want to avoid the silliness of "oh it's going to damage me if I'm just touched by it, but I won't be damaged if it's part of an inhalation attack? Well then I open my mouth wide and intentionally inhale it so I can become immune to it!"

But I think we are starting with different premises; you with 'its part of the effect' and me with 'it's independent.'

That's why those texts keep listing "contact" and "affected by" as two different things.

They may be different but the weakness rules say both 'touch' and 'affected by' can trigger a weakness. So either causes damage.

Other weaknesses, like water contact, are a lot easier to trigger. Most water spells also throw actual water at the foe, which can trigger the contact weakness. But just because something has the trait, doesn't mean it's exposed on contact.

I disagree. If an Ifrit merely walks through normal water - no throwing, no spell cast or other action of the PCs - they still touched it, and the weakness rules clearly say touch triggers it. An Ifrit walking through water takes damage. Something that has a weakness is indeed exposed on touch to something that has that trait.

I'm mostly reaching my conclusion by the immunity text, not weakness text.

It's clear that the holy trait can't force it to take mental damage. If it's immune to the mental trait and you try and apply a mental effect to it, its immune to that mental effect too. No argument there.

But that immunity just makes the spell like a bucket of water or a holy symbol; it is now a spell that has no combat effect on the opponent except for the weakness.

Maybe trying out a third example here, but let's say you thwak a bludgeoning immune werewolf with a round chunk of silver. The GM rules your thwak does 1 bludgeoning damage. Should the werewolf not burn from contact with the silver? Seems like it still should; that the effect of being in contact with the silver is independent of how effective your chunk was as a bludgeoning weapon. So our holy-weak, mental-immune example gets thwacked with a mental spell. Seems to me like it should still burn from the holy.

The only time you get to bypass immunity's "full nullification" is if a complex effect deals damage that a GM would see as outside the immunity. Such as a spell dealing mental + bldg damage VS a construct. The construct would still take the bldg.

Weakness 5 to holy is like 'does 5 holy damage to things weak to it". So long as you hit with the spell, I'm not sure why the spell has to do a different type of damage or a different type of effect first in order to apply that. If you hit, the weakness will be triggered. So in your 'effect of the spell or independent of the spell' I'm kinda seeing it as independent. Though as unicore points out, we are arguing about a rule that is currently up in the air and could change at any moment.

My point is that the things the fighter has to do to make themselves work are easier and less prone to disruption.

Yes but that's kinda the point of the class: low complexity, no rotations needed, just a box o' tricks. If that's what you want for playstyle, I would not try and shoehorn a Magus into it, I would just play a fighter.

PF2E is not - as far as I can tell - about rewarding complex builds and class mechanics with bigger damage. The reward you get for playing a gish is that you get to play a gish, not that some easter egg gish build will let you be as good as the specialist at their specialty.

Now there's no wrong way to play here; if someone wants to be the fighter (role) with their Magus (class), have at it! But to me, the observation that the spellstriking Magus doesn't do fighter as well as fighter, doesn't convince me spellstrike needs an upgrade.

Yeah it's weird; in the early levels you're getting 1 or 2 slots when you level, then going from level 9 to 10 you get a whopping 4 all at once, then it goes back to the 1 or 2 pattern.

My only thought is that a lot of APs are L1-10 or L11-20, so maybe they wanted to upscale the class right about at that break point? But that's just a guess. I don't really know why.

Keep in mind the DPR I showed for magus is under the quote unrealistic (for melee magus) assumption that you spellstrike every round

Well technically you only calculated the first round for each, which doesn't say anything about spellstrike reload. But this is a quibble as trying to model across multiple rounds just pulls in tons of assumptions about movement, enemy placement, etc. which makes a calculated "average" not mean much. Particularly in PF2E since party tactics play a big part in figuring damage, not merely individual build.

Those tactics are an important part of the situation. The fighter should be maximizing their strengths through tactical choices. So should the magus, but their strengths are different so at least some of the time, they should be making different tactical choices. Here's a quick example: with your fighter above's ability to do damage on a miss, it makes sense for them to swing three times. But the magus may be better off stepping or striding to get flanking, because of the all-or-nothing manner of spellstrike means you really don't want to do "average" dpr by getting equal numbers of hits and misses. You'd probably much rather lose a MAP -10 strike to gain +10% chance your big whammy lands (and crits).

Whereas the fighter I showed loses one certain strike if he has to move, and has no recharge mechanic to worry about - he hits that damage any round he starts next to an enemy and not that far below most rounds where he doesn’t.

I would take the lesson from this to be: "don't play a magus like you would a fighter, or you will be disappointed it's not equal-fightery as the fighter". I would not take the lesson to be "the magus needs to be upgraded so it equal-fighterys the fighter...and then gets to cast other spells too.'

Yeah if it could reliably spellstrike every round that might be too OP at lower levels. I’d have to compare it to i.e. a double slice fighter, and I’d guess magus wouldn’t do much more damage, but its possible it would.

Well a very simple back-of-the-envelope is to compare 2d6 gouging claw against a 1d8+4 second strike. That's about the same. Fighter's going to average more across all the possible outcomes because of their higher chance to hit and because they do damage on hit/hit, hit/miss, and miss/hit, while spellstrike is just one hit or one miss. But in a round when both 1st level PCs hit on all their 2a attacks, you expect about the same damage.

The numbers I’ve provided should pretty conclusively show magus is not some all levels damage fiend though.

Compared to fighter, a strong martial. As others have said, Magus being a gish gives it the utility of spells. So for example, if that 1st level fighter meets a fire-weak enemy, her double slice damage remains the same. If the magus meets it, she switches from gouging claw to ignition and now adds 2d6+5, easily overtopping 'both strikes hit' fighter damage. That is a conditional benefit, but weaknesses to something are quite common and the magus has the arcane list to draw from. This sort of utility or flexibility has to be factored into class balance; Paizo should not be (...IMO...) "fixing" the gish classes by ensuring their baseline single target damage is as good as a fighter's, and then adding in all the gish goodies on top of that. Think of someone suggesting that for Summoner; if "fighter-good strike" is the baseline, then sohuld we rebalance summoner so the act together (eidolon strike+cantrip cast) hits as hard as a fighter, and then layer all the other summoner casting and act together fun on top? No! That would be ridiculous. But it's just as ridiculous to look solely at the magus' spellstrike single target dpr compared to fighter and judge the class' balance on that one point.

The magus is a gish. It's not intended to be "does damage like a fighter, but magic!" It's supposed to have its own flavor and if (like many other classes) it doesn't single-target-dpr exactly as well as a fighter against all possible opponents, well that's okay. So long as the other class benefits and abilities make the class overall strong and fun to play. Pesonally, I think Magus checks the box on "overall strong". The main complaint seems to be that the inflexible round cycle is not fun, and AC is not fun because turning it on is rarely worth doing. So we should be figuring out ways to make that spellstrike and AC more fun, but in a way that isn't focused on increasing dpr, since that's not (IMO) needed.

For the sake of consistency, try to imagine a different immunity mix with Holy weakness. Like a bleed or mind spell. If a mindless construct were to be targeted with a holy mind control spell, it is perhaps more intuitive as to why you do not trigger that Holy weakness.

I'm imagining. I'm not so sure, because Weakness has two parts to it.

Let start with Holy Mind Control Spell #1: this one just controls the actions of the target. The first part of the Weakness description obviously doesn't apply here: it says "Whenever you would take that type of damage, increase the damage..." But this spell doesn't do damage and Holy isn't a type, so there's nothing to increase. Heck even a construct that was not immune to mental should not be affected by a "paragraph 1 weakness" Holy effect. However the second part of the Weakness description might still apply: "If you have a weakness to something that doesn't normally deal damage, such as water, you take damage equal to the weakness value when touched or affected by it." Well this spell doesn't normally do damage, but have you been "touched or affected" by it if you've been successfully targeted but then successfully resisted it, via immunity or a crit success on your save? If so, then arguably you should take Holy damage from it as this is not much different from splashing a fire elemental with a bucket of water. Or maybe another comparison: The spell is now acting like brandishing a cross at a hollywood vampire: usually does nothing, but to this critter, it's painful.

Holy Mind Control Spell #2 would be one that controls the victim's actions and does some mental damage to them too. Now both paragraphs could apply. Maybe we leave that for later. :)

If we were including invisibility the fighter could do that too, the items are cheap enough at this level.

"At this level" is a potential issue though, IMO. Magus is a strongly front-loaded class. Changing the entire spellstrike mechanic to be easier because Magus damage falls off compared to Fighter at level 12+ just makes it that much more of a beast at L1-5, maybe even L1-10. If a class starts out relatively strong and gets relatively weaker at higher levels, and you see this as an issue, doesn't it make sense to argue for a mid-level feat or mid-level mechanical upgrade? Rather than making a change that increases dpr for Ls 1-20?

I'm not missing 1 damage, the only 1 damage at Acid Flask is Splash damage.

Yes but since splash affects the target, that's where all the immediate damage adds go. So the opponent is struck by the bomb and takes 1 splash + 1d8 precision + 2 x (0 weapon dice) = 1d8+1 acid damage as a result of the strike. The opponent also gains a persistent damage condition; at the end of their turn, because of that condition, they will take 2d6 damage and then make a save roll against it.

Either way wouldn't it be better if the dev's actually addressed it and gave us multiple examples?

I agree that was a tricky example, and I too would welcome it if the devs published more example combats resolutions that illustrated how to combine things (especially if their new errata is going to change how things work), but I think in the above case KlampK got it right.

double slice flaming rune

Are you asking what happens with two flaming swords and thus two 1d10 persistent fire from two separate swords if you double critical strike? That seems to me pretty clearly two applications of the same type of persistent condition, so you only apply the highest. Since they are both 1d10, it would be 1d10. The add etc. I read as directions for the strike damage. So you *would* combine the two +1d6 fires and then only apply fire weakness/resistance once. But you don't need to do any such calculation for the persistent damage, because by "only using the highest" you've essentially eliminated the need to ask about multiple resistances or weaknesses: there's only ever one source of persistent fire damage applied, so of course you only apply weakness or resistance to it once.

dagger gouging claw critical spellstrike,

On this one it seems to me the common vernacular is pretty clear; a critical strike does 4 bleed instead of 2. But that's because - at least the way I read it - "double the bleed damage" is very clearly telling the player and GM that the 2 bleed is doubled, they're not getting a second persistent effect. "Specific overrides general" applies here.

bleeding finisher with wounding rune.

This one seems easy; you have two abilities (the finisher and the rune) giving a persistent effect of the same type, so use the biggest.

Kind of a side comment, but I don't see any of these as true in-game problems. If none of your players has yet built to layer on multiple adds of the same persistent effect, let them know it wouldn't work and they won't do it. If this is in the middle of some advanced game where some player has already built to this, then as a GM you make the choice of (a) continue to play with the rules you've been using for consistency, (b) changing the rules, and giving a free respec for fairness, or (c) changing the rules, not giving any respec. I would strongly advise against (c) but I'm pretty ambivalent over (a) vs. (b); pick the one that feels best for your table. The simplest is probably (a) - i.e. keep current campaign using the same rules you've been using, and the next time you start a new campaign, inform the players of the new rules and how layering same-type conditions won't work any more. Then they simply won't do it.

Whether or not Paizo provides one, every GM *has* to give "an instance of damage" a consistent definition.

Yes, but that was already the case. What I'm saying is that your "a smack is an instance" idea doesn't really move us from the situation we were already in.

And under the "each impact is the instance,"

Well, that's better. You're now actually defining something mechanical. But...

In contrast, a spell like Flame Dancer, with text "... Strikes deal an additional 2d6 fire damage. ..." would not create a new instance,

As I've said to KlamK, a specific language use where "adds to" or "+" mean same instance while "does X" means new instance would be good going forward. However I don't think we can assume or read that into currently published material, for two reasons. First because Paizo has told us over and over again that they don't write these descriptions like it's code, they use regular vernacular language. So likely different authors just used different turns of phrase to mean something similar, because of style preferences. Secondly, the now-removed errata makes it pretty clear that Paizo's "going-in" concept of 'instance' is not the one you're promoting. So assuming the dev team worked together to give some guidance to various authors about what that 'something similar' meaning should be, it was something close to everything is a different instance.

This doesn't mean that going forward PF2E can't evolve. But it's pretty clear that the position you're trying to argue for is new, not simply 'the way the rules were supposed to work'.

Blood in the Water is among the best damaging focus spells in the game if you can get it to trigger reliably with an ally using a Wounding rune or throwing an alchemical bomb that does slashing splash damage even on a miss.

Slashing Gust will let a primal or arcane witch consistently activate it without teamwork. And the special sustain bonus lets you cast slashing gust and sustain the hex AND have 1a left to move. You do sacrifice the ability to hold items (wands, staves, etc.), so that's an issue. It's not top-tier damage (2d6+4d4 < 6d6), but still a nice "all-day" combo (IMO).

As to your first numbered question. How does this work if instead of Ignition you used Moonbeam. Is that a fire instance and a silver-fire instance?

Good question. The description seems to indicate that the 2d6 counts as both fire and silver, so it would trigger both weaknesses...but as a spellstrike, if the weapon is silver and flaming, each weakness is only triggered once.

At least that's how I think "a strike is an instance; combine all from identical types before you apply weaknesses" would work?

Set "an instance of damage" to be the impact, boom, smack, etc.

How does that remove the table subjectivity? How does that mechanically answer the question "what constitutes an instance?"

Even worse, if GM Alice says "same smack, look at the mechanics" and GM Bob says "different smacks, go by the description", and they say "hey Paizo, settle this for us, what constitutes one instance of damage" and Paizo just says "it's one smack!", then Paizo hasn't solved anything at all. We're just right back to the pre-errata lack of a definition. IOW, I don't see how your proposed rule does anything to resolve current issues with how to adjudicate an instance. "One smack is one instance" is just kinda saying "one instance is one instance."

Whatever they decide on, my suggestion is that they work very carefully on. In fact, my suggestion would be to present a 'draft' of an errata for players to playtest and provide feedback.

That would be cool...but what do we want? Whats the draft? And why wait passively for Paizo to do all the work?

1. If you layer effects onto a weapon that all trigger with the strike, the strike is one instance. I think? So flaming sword spellstrike with ignition = one fire instance?

2. Likewise with spells or items that 'enchant' a person or weapon, adding damage or damage dice to their strikes instead of requiring a separate roll get lumped in as the same instance. So flame wisp + flaming sword strike = one fire instance?

3. In contrast, different actions or timing = different instances. This keeps condition damage (happens at end of victim's turn) separate from strike damage. It would also keep beginning-of-turn stance damage, sustained spell effect damage, and when-you-move-through-hazardous terrain damage separate from each other and from strike or attack damage. Question: do we lump all "end of turn" damage into one instance, and likewise do we lump all "beginning of turn" damage into one instance? If you're in the thermal nimbus of two different kineticists, is that one beginning-of-turn instance of fire damage or two?

4. Except for the above beginning- and end- of turn lumping of rule 3, different actors doing deeds that all happen at the same time generally means different instances. Different rolls, different instances...I think? So if you're standing next to two fighters and you stride, and they both reactive strike you, that's two instances not one.

What doesn't this cover? I.e. what other rules do we need? What cases does the above get wrong or fail to cover correctly? What are the exploits/downsides of the above set of rules? Is the above what the community is generally looking for or am I completely off base?

It all comes down to "plus" vs "and". One of those is saying separate this into two instances and the other says this is one instance, and they never told us which is which.

I don't think we can assume that Paizo authors drew that distinction when they were writing. Some or all of them may have used the terms interchangeably. Going forward, it's a nice idea that "+" vs. "and" refer to adding damage into an existing instance vs. creating a new instance, but it's not clear to me that we can or should interpret existing material that way.

The now-withdrawn errata leads me to believe that Paizo originally considered almost everything to be different instances. The +'s, and the 'and's, and any other verbiage an author chose to use. As they keep telling us, this isn't coding.

If i am resist all the fire does that mean [Magma Scorpion] dosen't get grab, or did i get it backwards and "and" is a separate instance and "plus" means to combine?

I think the sequence/order of GM actions helps sort this out. There is a strike; if it hits, the GM adjudicates its immediate damage. Then the GM moves on to rolling Athletics for the grab. If that is successful, the victim now has the Grabbed condition. Then you wait until the end of the victim's turn, and adjudicate the persistent damage. If Resist all lowers the immediate strike damage to 0, you still go through the steps; you still adjudicate the grab attempt and you still do the persistent damage step at the end of the victim's turn. Narratively, a high Resist All that lowers both the strike damage and the persistent damage to 0 would be described as "while you are unhurt, the scorpion has you in it's claws."

Magus is quite a strong class. IMO It doesn't need more power or feats or class abilities that improve it's damage dealing capabilities. Yes, recharging spellstrike is creaky. Yes, right now spending an action to enter AC is rarely worth the benefit it gives you over just a 1a strike. But I hesitate to agree with solutions to those problem that result in 'moah powah', because frankly that isn't needed.

Someone upthread mentioned gunslinger and I think that's a good model. Feats or focus spells that allow the magus to do something utility AND recharge spellstrike, or something utility AND turn on AC. Recharging spellstrike should still cost an action so spellstriking every round remains the ideal/difficult to achieve case, but make the recharge action player fun and tactically useful.

To clarify, Paizo's redacted errata would mean separate instances stay separate, and nothing would combine. That would include bleed type, it would stay separate, and then invoke the "only the highest persistent per type" rule.

Yes. I think this was original RAI. With the community pushback, it sounds like they're going to change it somewhat. We don't know how. But this is the missing link between "conditions don't stack" and "use highest damage type condition." Those two rules become one, two cases of the same rule, when each damage type condition is considered a different instance.

*IF* one decides that the Imm/Weak/Res rules merge separate instances by damage type, that doesn't just mean merging two sources of bonus fire damage. It also means merging bleed type damage, BEFORE it would get applied to the foe.

No not necessarily. Conditions and immediate damage could have different revised/errata'd rules. As I pointed out, they already do: for immediate damage Step 1 is Roll, then you do lots of other things. For persistent damage you do a lot of other things first, then you roll. But neither of us know what Paizo will publish in terms of revised errata, or whether regular damage and damage from conditions will have the same rules for instances or different ones.

I would think they both work. As Claxon says, they have different effects; the Astral isn't going to double against an unholy target and the Holy won't affect possessing spirits the way Astral does.

I think it's still reasonably clear that you don't combine. Just run the same scenario in your head for a non-damaging condition and think through what you would do: a longsword has a rune that causes Fear 1 on a strike, and then Bob the wizard puts an enchantment on it that causes Fear 1 on a strike. Does the sword give Fear (biggest of 1 or 1) or Fear (1+1=2)? Intuitively, I want to say the former, because you don't stack conditions. (And think about crits: if they are both one combined instance of Fearness, does this mean Fear 4 on a critical hit? That really doesn't seem right.) Well if we substitute 'persistent fire 2' or 'persistent bleed d4' in for 'fear 1', why should that change?

But yeah we don't really need to litigate it here, I just thought the request for the upcoming clarification to touch on it was valid.

Fair ask, then, I guess. Since persistent and immediate damage have slightly different rules, please Paizo define and give examples of "how to decide what is one instance of damage" for both cases.

I'm starting to mull over, that the now-retracted errata is really the most consistent way to read this stuff. It's all separate instances. And being all separate instances is how we quickly and easily arrive at the "use highest damage per type" rule because if we think of each spell and rune as a separate instance, then 'use highest per damage type' is just applying the general "no stacking conditions" rule to conditions that do damage.

Without any specific rules that states you do NOT merge bleed, etc, that's the only honest way to rule that, IMO.

The procedure for persistent vs. immediate has a big glaring difference, IMO. For immediate damage, Step 1 is to roll the dice and combine. For persistent however, Paizo says the GM makes the 'higher overrides lower' decision before any dice are rolled. This is very clear from the example, since Paizo says to make the 'higher overrides lower' call between 2 fire vs. 1d4 fire. If persistent damage had the "roll dice and combine" step first, that example would make no sense and Paizo would have said something more like 'roll the d4 and compare the result to the 2 fire damage, then use the highest.'

When an attack does both reg and persistent damage, you run the Imm/Wk/Res procedure twice, once for reg damage, and once for the persistent.

Agreed.

The check for "Multiple Persistent Damage Conditions" only happens well after that type-based instance merge.

Roll and Combine is step 1 for regular damage, while 'determine higher overrides lower' comes before any damage dice roll for persistent.

If you combine by type, persistent gets combined.

But you clearly don't combine same-types. The whole point of Paizo's written example is to make it clear to GMs that 2 persistent fire and 1d4 persistent fire DO NOT COMBINE into 1d4+2 persistent fire. Instead, the GM compares 2 to 1d4 and selects the highest or in a close call, the one they deem most story appropriate.

Right but Barbed Spear breaks that rule by saying that it increases the clumsy value by 1.

In terms of ideal play pattern, I would say that you should track the duration of Barbed Spear and other clumsy sources separately. It's a little against the RAW, but if you are hit by Barbed Spear without clumsy and become clumsy 1, and then are made clumsy 1 for one round separately by a successful Dirty Trick, then I would play it as clumsy 2.

I understand there's probably some distaste at the idea that the order of operations could affect the outcome, but technically barbed spear only says it increases an existing clumsy - it doesn't say other clumsy conditions increase Barbed Spear. Other sources of clumsy would still be governed by the standard rules for conditions.

So I think technically, other clumsy first, BS second = clumsy 2, but BS first, other clumsy second = clumsy 1??

I'd also probably not let it stack with itself. Although you could argue that the second cast can increase the first because Barbed Spear's specific rule about increasing overrides the general rule on not stacking, this seems to fall squarely into the 'duplicate effects' category and there is nothing written into Barbed Spear that says you get to avoid that general rule. Put another way, the two-Barbed combo requires an override of two general rules, but the description only overrides one.

Having said all that, I think it would be reasonable for a GM to deal with this as simply as possible and just let this one specific spell stack with other clumsys, no matter what the source or order. Less bookkeeping, just keep it simple and move on.

I would currently combine them as the clarification speaks of combining ALL damage before processing IWR for an effect (not conditional upon whether that damage is actually affected by IWR at this moment). But who knows if that's intended.

Your suggestion directly contradicts the text of the "Multiple Persistent Damage Conditions" section on p445 of PC1.

I think we have to view this as a case of 'specific overrides general.' In general, damage is combined before you do other things to it. But persistent damage of the same type is not - and we know it is not because Paizo directly says "If you would gain more than one persistent damage condition with the same damage type, the higher amount of damage overrides the lower amount." Paizo then gives an example of how persistent fire damage 2 is not combined with persistent fire damage 1d4. It's very clear (at least, IMO).

I don't think it's a big deal for gameplay either way – you can already stack persistent damage vertically by using different types, and while that can be fun, it's not a particularly oppressive strategy.

PF2E combat is chunky, and an NPC with 1 HP left does just as much damage with their 3 actions as that NPC with full HP. I have definitely seen, in my current game, a small amount of persistent damage take out a NPC a round earlier than the PCs could take them out with an extra strike. That's effectively a 4-action swing: the adversaries lose 3, and the PCs can use a strike on a different NPC instead. And it really isn't that rare for these opportunities to come up; I'd say that easily half of our 4 vs. many combats end up with some PC or NPC operating with 1-2 HP left at some point (often me lol). Going from 2d6 to 3d6+1 bleed could easily cause the affected character to drop a round earlier than otherwise expected.

there is a high plausibility of some intelligent design behind the whole thing.

And his name is James Jacobs. :)

I would guess the devs did their math on the assumption players were using normal builds and not these outlandish builds people were coming up with to create and exploit weaknesses. When played normally, the original rule worked fine, but everyone panicked so they had to revise it because of a niche build supposedly everyone will abuse.

Yes I agree. As I said upthread, the instance-stacking people are worried about can only really happen in a home campaign game where players strategize together about builds over many levels. You're not going to see it at a con that has fixed PCs, or with any pick-up organized play game where you don't know what people are bringing to the table, or any short and/or low-level AP where you have little ability to tune a lot of resources to a specific elemental damage type in combination with a character that has the ability to create a weakness to that same type. But having said that, a lot of regular posters here do have many years of experience, do play in high-level home games, do play with the same people day in day out allowing such 'strategery', so for them yeah the original errata would have significantly changed the game.