Marcloure's page

Hello, RodZn's GM here. The interaction between swipe and sweep is definitely not clear to me. Swipe makes a single attack and axe critical specialization requires an initial target, which it leaves for us to figure out what that means. My interpretation is that the effects of axes' critical specialization would apply to targets outside of those targeted by the swipe. Reasons being:

1. It's a single attack. It doesn't really matter if it targets 2 or 3 or 5 creatures, it's a single attack. And I think we all agree with that, otherwise things like Sure Strike wouldn't work with Swipe, as well as any benefit that "applies to your next strike" or "applies on the next target you hit". If it is a single attack, then:

2. Either a target is the initial target of the attack or they aren't. For Swipe, it seems to me that all the targets are equally the initial targets. If PF2e used a more "gamey" language, I see that Swipe would read like: "Two-actions strike; Targets: 2 adjacent creatures; Hit: weapon damage". Both targets are the primary targets of the attack.

3. We can try to look at the incentives of design. If we compare the pick group with the axe group, the crit specialization of axes is intended for players that want to deal more damage total, but spread over more targets, while the specialization of picks is intended for players that want to deal more damage concentrated on their targets. If the crit specialization of axes worked on the targets of the swipe, this would violate that incentive. Axes would deal more concentrated damage than picks in this case.

4. Lastly, the book gives us this guideline for Ambiguous Rules: "Sometimes a rule could be interpreted multiple ways. If one version is too good to be true, it probably is." The axe critical specialization double dipping is pretty deep in the "too good to be true" field to me, since it would be increasing the damage of crits by 30–50% depending on the flat modifiers.

further prrof towards that interpation can be gleamed by the last sentence of Swipe:

"If you’re using a weapon with the sweep trait, its modifier applies to all your Swipe attacks."

And looking at Sweep:

"When you attack with this weapon, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to your attack roll if you already attempted to attack a different target this turn using this weapon."

Sweep considers each target a "different target" hence it applies its bonus to both.

I think the need to be explicit that sweep applies to both targets is exactly because otherwise it would apply to none (or only at the "second target" in a generous read, whatever that means). This is a weak argument in either direction, so unfortunately I don't see the sweep rules clarifying too much here.

This is my view on the matter.