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Assuming there are no plans to create premium modules for the earlier seasons of Pathfinder Society (Second Edition), which I would completely understand, one product that I personally would love to see is a premium module that contains all of the repeatable scenarios from the first 4 seasons of Pathfinder Society (Second Edition). In my experience these scenarios still get run a lot and would be something I would definitely use as someone who is just starting out running PFS scenarios online.


I am taking the Munitions Crafter feat on a gunslinger I have created and now I need to choose my free formulas. It is a little unclear to me which formulas I need to make my own ammunition. Is it sufficient to just take the formula for Black Powder? Or do I some sort of formula specifically for firearm ammunition and, if so, how specific does it need to be (e.g. Arquebus rounds)?


This should be a pretty simple rule and maybe it is but for whatever reason I keep changing my interpretation. The basic question is do property runes that deal damage double if you roll a critical success on a Strike? Looking at the Strike action and the rules for doubling (and halving) damage my gut instinct was "Yes".

Strike action wrote:

You attack with a weapon you’re wielding or with an unarmed attack, targeting one creature within your reach (for a melee attack) or within range (for a ranged attack). Roll the attack roll for the weapon or unarmed attack you are using, and compare the result to the target creature’s AC to determine the effect. See Attack Rolls on page 446 and Damage on page 450 for details on calculating your attack and damage rolls.

Critical Success As success, but you deal double damage.
Success You deal damage according to the weapon or unarmed attack, including any modifiers, bonuses, and penalties you have to damage.

Doubling and Halving Damage wrote:
Sometimes you’ll need to halve or double an amount of damage, such as when the outcome of your Strike is a critical hit, or when you succeed at a basic Reflex save against a spell. When this happens, you roll the damage normally, adding all the normal modifiers, bonuses, and penalties. Then you double or halve the amount as appropriate (rounding down if you halved it). The GM might allow you to roll the dice twice and double the modifiers, bonuses, and penalties instead of doubling the entire result, but this usually works best for single-target attacks or spells at low levels when you have a small number of damage dice to roll. Benefits you gain specifically from a critical hit, like the flaming weapon rune’s persistent fire damage or the extra damage die from the fatal weapon trait, aren’t doubled.

I felt this interpretation was validated when I saw Jason Bulmahn rule it this way with the Disrupting rune in one of the episodes of "Knights of Everflame" but then I noticed subtle differences in the wording that made me start questioning again.

Disrupting rune wrote:
A disrupting weapon pulses with positive energy, dealing an extra 1d6 positive damage to undead. On a critical hit, the undead is also enfeebled 1 until the end of your next turn.

The bold emphasis is mine. The Flaming rune does not use the same wording.

Flaming rune wrote:
This weapon is empowered by flickering flame. The weapon deals an additional 1d6 fire damage on a successful Strike, plus 1d10 persistent fire damage on a critical hit.

There are similar variations with the other runes too. Frost uses the "also" language while Shock does not. Are these language differences important? Or am I overthinking things? Are the critical success effects additions to the critical success effect of the Strike? A replacement? Or does it really vary by rune?

To keep it simple, let's just talk about the Flaming rune as that is the one used in the examples in the "Doubling and Halving Damage" section. If you roll a critical success on Strike with a Flaming weapon, does it double the 1d6 fire damage to 2d6 as well as add 1d10 persistent fire damage? Or does the damage stay at 1d6 fire damage and the 1d10 persistent fire damage is the only effect applied by this rune on a critical success?


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.
Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Equipment FAQ wrote:
A klar counts as a light shield for the purpose of using it as a shield (for instance, it grants a +1 shield bonus to AC, has a –1 armor check penalty, and has a 5% arcane spell failure chance). For the purpose of using it as a weapon, it is a one-handed weapon that deals 1d6 slashing damage, but it is otherwise similar to using a spiked shield (for instance, the damage doesn’t stack with the bashing ability, you lose the shield bonus to AC when attacking with the klar unless you have Improved Shield Bash, and so on). As a side note, anywhere that lists klars as counting as shields with “armor spikes” is a typo that will be handled in the next errata.

I think I now understand how a klar works in all ways except for making one from special materials. There are a few different ways you could interpret it and I am not sure which one is correct.

If I treat a klar as a weapon made of mithral then it would cost 3000 gp because it weighs 6 lbs but since that is the entire weight, it would make sense that the shield part is then also mithral and therefore masterwork. This option seems pretty simple but not very flexible. Also very few materials affect both weapons and shields.

The FAQ says that in most ways to treat a klar as a spiked shield which makes sense for a lot of materials but fails for anything priced by weight because a light steel spiked shield is 6 lbs + 5 lbs for shield spikes while the whole klar is 6 lbs so it is unclear how much of the klar is spike and how much is shield.

You could instead treat the klar a double weapon and use the appropriate rules for special materials that have them (silver, cold iron). So for example, if I wanted to make a klar with a cold iron spike and a living steel shield with both parts being masterwork then the cost would be 12gp (base cost) + 6gp (+50% for cold iron) + 300gp (masterwork weapon) + 100gp (living steel shield) + 150gp (masterwork shield) = 568gp. This makes the most sense to me but is also more complicated.

On a somewhat related note, if I made one end of the double weapon out of mithral which you pay for by the pound, would I only use half the weapons weight to calculate the cost? And since mithral halves the weight, I assume it would only halve the half that is mithral making the whole weapon weigh 25% less?