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The weakness/resistance rules are a bit ambiguous, and in running this AP it's far more relevant than it's ever been before as almost every demon is affected. I've hunted for answers, failed to come up with good results, and a lot of it seems to depend on a several year old forum comment from Mark Seifter which seems not great as a definitive rules source. Part of the reason this is an issue after all is because of how the remaster changed the rules on a few things, and that long predates the remaster.

First, quoting the relevant paragraph of the rules. Copied from AoN.

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. If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing.

The leading consensus is that if an effect deals multiple damage types, these should each be treated as a separate instance of damage and weaknesses/resistances should be applied separately. This post is mostly made because this seems to present issues to me, particularly in the case of demons and holy weaknesses which is extremely relevant to this AP.

There is also the rule about non-damaging weaknesses, which can be used to make the argument that if you are damaged by an effect with the water trait, holy trait, or something else not associated with a specific damage type you apply that weakness on top of any that would apply from the damage itself as it counts as being touched or affected by something with that trait.

I'm not sure of the best way to word this, so I'm just going to present a few simple scenarios and ask how people think they're meant to work. For each scenario, I'm just asking which weaknesses if any proc, and how many times if you think they should apply multiple times.

Take a hypothetical demon, with equal weaknesses to cold iron, holy, and also cold.

1) A fighter hits the demon with a cold iron longsword with the frost rune.

2) A fighter hits the demon with a cold iron longsword with the holy rune.

3) A fighter hits the demon with a longsword with the holy rune.

4) A fighter hits the demon with a longsword with the holy and frost runes.

5) A fighter hits the demon with a longsword with the holy and flaming runes.

6) A holy sanctified champion hits the demon with a cold iron longsword.

7) A holy sanctified champion hits the demon with a longsword with the frost rune.

8) A holy sanctified champion hits the demon with a longsword with the flaming rune.

Assuming the one damage type = one instance rule is correct, this seems to be the answers to the above.

Also this one is mostly because it came up in discussions about this elsewhere, but is less relevant to Spore War so I am mostly including it for completeness.

9) A water kineticist uses their elemental blast to deal cold damage to a creature weak to both cold and water. Do you apply one weakness or both?

My personal reading, just off the rules in the book, was that one strike/impulse/etc. is one instance of damage, and holy modifies the damage similar to cold iron, so every single scenario above the answer is only the highest applicable weakness is applied. Even in scenario 9, my interpretation was that the non-damaging weakness rule is probably not meant to apply to double up on weaknesses if damaging effects have the relevant trait. I'm not sure this is correct though, and it's been an on and off topic due to Spore War for us for months now.

So I've been looking over everything, and I've noticed that the Witchbole's Sanctum map is meant to be performed entirely in encounter mode.

How does that work after the PCs defeat a group of enemies, are exploration activities just meant to be banned by GM fiat? Should you spawn random encounters after a little bit if the players start trying to refocus and spend minutes in a room? Since just fast forwarding several minutes is exploration mode so not what you're meant to do, but refocusing then would take 100 rounds and there's no way you're meant to play those out normally.

I'm just really curious how this is intended to play out, or how other GMs interpret it, the idea of an area where you can't perform exploration activities is interesting to me but it's unclear as to how that's actually meant to be executed.

Thanks for the info, greatly appreciated. And yeah, I was just curious because it felt more likely to be a typo than intentionally giving up to 12 points from book 1, I don't expect most parties to get most of the points but I'll have to see with my players.

I remember running Iron Gods book 2 and having to start inventing new content because my players were so dedicated to trying to find every single side quest before doing anything resembling the actual task at hand, always interesting how different groups go.

At the end of book 1 it says that the PCs should gain 1 triumph point for every delegate they convinced to sign both the mutual aid alliance and the self-defense agreement as those nations send aid. However at the start of book 2 it says that the PCs should gain 1 triumph point for every delegate they convinced to sign the self-defense agreement (with no mention of the mutual aid alliance), as those are the countries sending aid.

This seemed a bit odd to me, so I figured I'd ask here for opinions or maybe something I missed. Is it that the plan for how to earn triumph points changed between book 1 and 2 hence the slightly different rules making it slightly easier to have earned triumph points? Or the PCs actually meant to have a maximum of 12 triumph points, 1 for each delegate who signed article three and 2 for each delegate who signed articles two and three? At two points per delegate it just seems like it'd be very easy to have to make essentially no choices in book two and just spend points every chance.

By my quick count, book 2 has 11 mandatory events which cost 1 triumph point each to get the best result, and up to 8 more triumph points if the PCs do badly and go out of their way to spend more, plus some repeatable ways to spend triumph points for boosts in combat or items. I also counted a maximum of 18 points earned during book two, but with looking at realistically like 11-13 triumph points spent for book two, and chances to earn 18, starting with 8-10 points from book 1 seems like a lot unless book three is really point hungry?

If it's a reaction it's intended then that it doesn't work with the background which gives you a reaction which has a trigger of a sin vulnerability?

That seemed like a cool synergy, even if the action cost seemed a little clunky.