So when it comes to weapons with mixed damage types such as an accelerated star knife that does Fire and Piercing, what happens when the weapon hits a target with DR or energy resistance, but not both?
The damage is divided in half between the two types (here piercing and fire), and apply the appropriate resistances to the appropriate half.
This unfortunately means you're looking at applying resistances twice - unless you have some way to bypass said resistances (And there's a few ways) it means that plasma is almost always worse for damage than loading up a weapon with a single damage type.
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Assuming that the target has both types of resistance. Against a foe without both, its a way to get at least some damage past their defense.
Not really, unless we are talking about immunity. Only for a small subset of weapons.
A lvl 14 plasma Cannon does 4d10+14 plasma damage, or 2d10+7 fire or electricity.
On average that's 18 damage of a single type. Unless you shoot against fire resistance 20+, it is of no help. It only makes a difference in some levels or against a few enemies. VS most, it is at best equal or worse.
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The biggest advantage is when you add a fusion that changes half the weapons damage type to one that already does two kinds of damage. Because you can replace either half with the fusions damage type you can have 3 different combinations, which should allow for bypassing ER/DR reasonably often. Example plasma gun with "cold" fusion. I can do either fire and cold, fire and electric, or electric and cold. Usually one of the three options should work reasonably well.
The weird thing about changing out fire from a plasma weapon is that it still does burn as a critical effect.
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"You take 2d10 points of freezer burn damage, and are now unpalatable."
ICEBURN!
Starfinder Design Lead
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Assuming that the target has both types of resistance. Against a foe without both, its a way to get at least some damage past their defense.Not really, unless we are talking about immunity. Only for a small subset of weapons.
A lvl 14 plasma Cannon does 4d10+14 plasma damage, or 2d10+7 fire or electricity.
On average that's 18 damage of a single type. Unless you shoot against fire resistance 20+, it is of no help. It only makes a difference in some levels or against a few enemies. VS most, it is at best equal or worse.
If the weapon foes 18 fire and 18 electricity, it is better against the following creatures than a weapon that does 36 only fire:
Any creature immune to fire. This includes all creatures with the fire subtype.Any creature with 20 or more fire reduction.
Any creature with vulnerability to electricity
It is the same against:
No fire resistance
Any creature with 1 to 18 fire resistance
It is worse against:
Creatures with both fire and electricity resistance.
Creatures with electricity resistance
Creatures with electricity immunity.
Often over the course of a campaign the question of having line, explode, or boost is more important that fire and electricity than just fire.
Wow this really blew up.
It is worse against:
Creatures with both fire and electricity resistance.
The problem is many creatures in PF seem to have more than one resistance, specially at higher levels. We don't have enough SF creatures yet, so we don't know, but if that remains true, it becomes a problem.
In Iron Gods I houseruled that plasma was treated as the worst for you (full electricity or full fire) because it was supposed to be the superior option, and it wasn't, mainly because of robots, who had hardness. I did not change it on SF because Plasma is not better, just another source, and hardness is not a issue, plus there are other weapons that do 2 kinds of damage beyond plasma (like fusions). But it is something I am still looking at. Once we have more SF outsiders, this might be more important, and worth to check again imo.
Would like to point also that conditions expressed by Owen are connected, with those in the last paragraph may or may not be holding more weight.
Example:
A weapon that does 18 fire and electricity is better against a creature with FR20, only if said creature is not included in the last block. It is better to shoot 36 fire VS FR20, than VS Fire Resisr 15 and Lightning resist 15.
And doing 18F and 18E VS a creature Fire Inmune and with 20 Electricity resists CE is functionally the same than doing 36 fire.
No, against monsters with multiple resistances it does less damage than a weapon that IS resisted.
Against a Demon with fire resist and electricity resist, you do better with a laser (or arc weapon) than you do with plasma.
It is less a problem than it was in Iron Gods, (where all robots had hardness,) but it is still q problem at higher levels, when resistances become more common
If you have the armor slots and/or spells it's not too difficult to get energy resistance by 7th-8th level:
- Acid resistance with Filtered Rebreather
- Cold and fire resistance with Thermal Capacitor
- Electricity resistance with Electrostatic Field
- Sonic resistance with Sonic Dampener
- Lesser resistant armor as a 3rd-level spell on both the mystic and technomancer lists
Getting damage reduction is also pretty easy: the Enhanced Resistance feat can be selected by a solarian or a soldier at 5th level or by the other classes at 7th level (+4 BAB prerequisite). It even scales.