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OK. As I understand it, when using a regular firearm, you do "B and P" with a subnote of 2, meaning that it counts as BOTH B and P damage (and takes the path of least resistance). That is all well and good and explained with regular firearms.
My question is in the description of Mortars and 6 inch guns (and grenades and some bombs). In the description of these they say they do 6d6 or 8d6 of B, P, AND S damage to 30(ish) feet aoe. So my question becomes, since it is specifically described as doing 8d6 B, and 8d6 P, and 8d6 S (if you delineate it that way per proper English rules) - do these weapons actually do realistic damage (24d6 - which is a huge explosion - 1st level people are DEAD almost guaranteed at 24 damage). Or are they more "wimpy" at 8d6 (like a little "pop" which could potentially not even kill a 1st level person with any HD (seriously, 8 damage, what a dud).
I prefer to think the specific rule (and lack of a subnote 2 on these) means they do the more damage. However, I can see the argument for the "non-lethal" interpretation as well (but then why describe the damage in the description at all?). Thoughts? Clarification from the game designers would be nice. Not that I expect to run into a Numerian siege horde any time soon, but it could happen, I guess.
(ps. the reason I'm even looking at these is because of a Lucky Halfling, Wild Child Brawler, Holy Gun(2), Farstrike Monk(2), Technologist Gunslinger, Sniper Slayer who was considering strapping a mortar or gun to his platemail wearing turtle ... all to use explosives in melee and use the Lucky Halfling to give the turtle the save it needs to use the resonating wayfinder's evasion to both avoid all damage (base save for the combo of classes at level 7 is near 20)- yeh, silly, just having fun and came across a relatively serious question - oh yeh, did I mention the turtle was going to take Ally Shield so the Brawler could use a move action to use his 28 AC once in a while?).
Game balance wise I'd say its probably intended more as the 6d6/8d6 that happens to do all types of weapon dmg (pointy, sharpie and bashie) 'at once' in terms of defeating DR of those types. Meaning something like a Skeleton with DR/Blunt/bash still takes 'normal/full' dmg from getting hit with a mortar shell.
As opposed to 3 separate damage rolls of 6d6/8d6.
Bearing in mind also that tech in pathfinder setting tends not to be at the same level as we might expect 'reality' to be. Yes their explosives do less damage in a sense than we imagine modern reality, and we've seen their pew pew science weapons also do ridiculously poor damage too. laser pistols with 1d6 dmg for example.
It's an extremely complicated topic to discuss, but people survive getting blown up all the time including with mortars and other artillery.
One of the big secrets is that shrapnel tends to go up and out from an explosion on the ground. This is why you what to get down so that the shrapnel goes over you. I've personally been unharmed by a mortar at about 15 feet, and have meet some people unharmed by a hand grenade at 5 feet.
The other big secret applies to guns as well. A gunshot by itself does do that much actual damage. The bleeding is almost always what kills a person and that takes time. Shrapnel usually does quite a bit more damage than a gunshot, but again it's bleeding that is likely to kill you. Obviously, Pathfinder doesn't track bleeding from normal wounds because bleeding isn't fun, but lower damage on guns and explosions is realistic for a game.
OK. As I understand it, when using a regular firearm, you do "B and P" with a subnote of 2, meaning that it counts as BOTH B and P damage (and takes the path of least resistance). That is all well and good and explained with regular firearms.
My question is in the description of Mortars and 6 inch guns (and grenades and some bombs). In the description of these they say they do 6d6 or 8d6 of B, P, AND S damage to 30(ish) feet aoe. So my question becomes, since it is specifically described as doing 8d6 B, and 8d6 P, and 8d6 S (if you delineate it that way per proper English rules) - do these weapons actually do realistic damage (24d6 - which is a huge explosion - 1st level people are DEAD almost guaranteed at 24 damage). Or are they more "wimpy" at 8d6 (like a little "pop" which could potentially not even kill a 1st level person with any HD (seriously, 8 damage, what a dud).
I prefer to think the specific rule (and lack of a subnote 2 on these) means they do the more damage. However, I can see the argument for the "non-lethal" interpretation as well (but then why describe the damage in the description at all?). Thoughts? Clarification from the game designers would be nice. Not that I expect to run into a Numerian siege horde any time soon, but it could happen, I guess.
Damage type only is there for things like DR. When a weapon says that the damage counts as all three types, it means that when you look at things like damage resistance, etc., that it counts as all of them. If someone has, say, DR 10/bludgeoning this would bypass it because it's bludgeoning. If they have DR 5/slashing then this would bypass it because it's slashing.
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8d6 is perfectly fine. It averages 28, and is about as much as a level 8 wizard's fireball. (or a level 5 fireball specialist's). Also, 8 damage basically kills most level 1 npcs. A level 1 warrior has about 6 hp.
Your chances of rolling only 8 damage on 8d6 is in fact 0.00005%, or about 1 in 2 million.
24 d6 will average 84 damage, which is absurd from anything short of high level heroes. It would kill a level 10 fighter with 14 con with one shot if he failed his save. No way is that intended to show up at level 7.
FYI, the chances of getting only 24 damage on 24d6 is about 1 in 5*10^18, worse odds than the lottery. If you rolled 24d6 once every second, never stopping to eat, drink or sleep, it would take you about 158 billion years to roll exactly 24.