| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Weakness came up a lot in Part 5, and two aspects of it felt very lame, and are a great room for making it feel better.
1) Make weaknesses stack. If you manage to hit something that's weak to Fire, Good, Bludgeoning, and Cold Iron with a Flaming Holy Cold Iron Warhammer, that should feel like a jackpot super-hit. Not just as effective as a Shocking Corrosive Steel Warhammer. Even when knowing Demons are often weak to cold iron, my players decided not to bother with any cold iron weapons 'because the paladin has an aura making us all do good.' Triggering multiple weaknesses is almost universally going to be a good feeling moment for the players, and stops the weird situation of not wanting to exploit a weakness beause you hit another one.
2) Make weakness multiply on crits. We were playing it this way for a while, until we read the crit rules and realized that only certain things are multiplied on a crit. Untyped bonuses are not multiplied, and weaknesses seem to be an untyped increase in damage. Since crits are already often flavoured as hitting a weak point, hitting it with a weakness should be another of those great feeling 'jackpot' scenarios, not a dissapointing, 'Oh, that doesn't work' feeling.
|
1) Hmm, curious situation.
If the creature has more than one type of weakness that would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a monster is weak to both a type of physical damage and the material a weapon is made of.
If I'm reading that right and you hit with a Holy Flaming Cold Iron Warhammer and the target had weaknesses for all of that they would get the increased damage from Fire, Holy, and then either Cold Iron or Bashing, whichever was higher.
2) I can't seem to find the Critical Hit rules that say that, so without being able to read them atm I'd still say that damage is multiplied because it's not untyped, it's an increase of a specific type.
2) EDIT:
When you double the damage on a critical success with a Strike, or with any other action or activity that multiplies damage, use the following rules to determine which values you multiply.
• Roll double the usual number of damage dice for your weapon or unarmed attack.
• Add double your ability modifier to damage, if one applies.
• Add double any circumstance and conditional bonuses and penalties to damage.
• Don’t double extra damage that occurs only on a critical hit, such as the damage from the deadly weapon trait.
I'd say they multiply.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
For point 1), the second bit is interesting. I've always treated '1d6 slashing and 1d6 fire from a weapon enchantment' as one 'instance of damage' meaning if a bard gave me '+1 bonus to damage rolls', I would deal 1 more, not 2 more, damage. Instance of damage should be cleared up there, I think. If it only breaks in the 'material and type of physical' situation, it's not as bad (but I still think they should stack).
For point 2, Circumstance and Conditional are very specific types of bonus.
When a creature has a weakness to a certain type of damage or damage from a certain source, increase that damage by the amount of the creature’s weakness. For instance, if a creature takes 2d6 fire damage and has weakness 5 to fire, it takes 2d6+5 fire damage instead.
If the creature has more than one type of weakness that would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a monster is weak to both a type of physical damage and the material a weapon is made of.
This is not a Circumstance or Conditional bonus. It is not multiplied. For contrast, a Barbarian's rage says 'Gain a +2 conditional bonus to damage rolls with melee weapons and unarmed Strikes.', which is Conditional and therefore multiplied.
Re the crits, I see the bonus damage from weakness as simply increasing the base damage dealt of that type. So if you do 1 good damage to something with Weakness Good 10, you're actually dealing 11 Good damage and it is the 11 that gets multiplied on a crit rather than 1.
But since it's easy to read the other way, they should definitely clear up the wording.
There is 'do 1 Good damage', though. It's +1 Good Damage Circumstance Bonus, or Conditional Bonus, or Weapon Dice (if it's 1d6 Good). An ability that gives you just '+1 Good damage' on attacks isn't multiplied on a crit, currently, because only the four specific categories Rysky quoted are increased, and an untyped bonus isn't one of those.
Personally I think untyped not multiplying on a crit is also wierd and wrong.
So when your +1 conditional Good Damage hits the Weakness 10 enemy, are you dealing +1 conditional Good Damage +10 untyped, or +11 conditional Good Damage? Currently it's unclear. +1 untyped Good damage hitting it is definitely +11 untyped Good damage though, and definitely can't multiply.
It's a fair ruling, and what I'm using in my non-Doomsday games. But RAW, anything that doesn't use the word 'Conditional', 'Item', or 'Circumstance', is Untyped.
|
|
It's a fair ruling, and what I'm using in my non-Doomsday games. But RAW, anything that doesn't use the word 'Conditional', 'Item', or 'Circumstance', is Untyped.Where is this stated, I wasn't able to find it earlier?On bonuses.
If something doesn't state what kind of bonus it is, then it is untyped, when it does, it's the stated one.
Conditional bonuses are inferred by conditions/spells (Rage gives +conditional damage, Heroism gives +conditional attack/saves)
Circumstantial are the more "mundane" bonuses inferred by the circumstances, like Flanking /flat footed and etc
Look at it from a PF1 perspective:
A +2 bonus to damage vs a +2 Insight(as an example) bonus to damage.
Unstated bonus= untyped bonus.
*nods*
But how do we infer from that that bonus damage from Weakness is not a Conditional/Circumstantial bonus?
It's a fair ruling, and what I'm using in my non-Doomsday games. But RAW, anything that doesn't use the word 'Conditional', 'Item', or 'Circumstance', is Untyped.Where is this stated, I wasn't able to find it earlier?On bonuses.
If something doesn't state what kind of bonus it is, then it is untyped, when it does, it's the stated one.
Conditional bonuses are inferred by conditions/spells (Rage gives +conditional damage, Heroism gives +conditional attack/saves)
Circumstantial are the more "mundane" bonuses inferred by the circumstances, like Flanking /flat footed and etc
Look at it from a PF1 perspective:
A +2 bonus to damage vs a +2 Insight(as an example) bonus to damage.
Unstated bonus= untyped bonus.
*nods*
But how do we infer from that that bonus damage from Weakness is not a Conditional/Circumstantial bonus?
If it doesn't say Conditional or Circumstancial anywhere in the crit rules, then it's neither. 2E is not an edition about inferring or judgment calls, really.
|
|
Actually on checking it's not, since Untyped Bonuses are a not a thing.On bonuses.
If something doesn't state what kind of bonus it is, then it is untyped, when it does, it's the stated one.
However, there’s also a special, fourth kind of penalty that doesn’t have a type, called an untyped penalty.
So we have Untyped Penalties, but no Untyped Bonuses (word searching and found absolutely no mention of Untyped bonuses).
Which goes back to bonus damage from Weakness, because it doesn't call it Bonus (either with little or big B) anywhere, it's just extra damage.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
1) Hmm, curious situation.If the creature has more than one type of weakness that would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a monster is weak to both a type of physical damage and the material a weapon is made of.If I'm reading that right and you hit with a Holy Flaming Cold Iron Warhammer and the target had weaknesses for all of that they would get the increased damage from Fire, Holy, and then either Cold Iron or Bashing, whichever was higher.
Yep!
2) I can't seem to find the Critical Hit rules that say that, so without being able to read them atm I'd still say that damage is multiplied because it's not untyped, it's an increase of a specific type.2) EDIT:
I'd say they multiply.When you double the damage on a critical success with a Strike, or with any other action or activity that multiplies damage, use the following rules to determine which values you multiply.
• Roll double the usual number of damage dice for your weapon or unarmed attack.
• Add double your ability modifier to damage, if one applies.
• Add double any circumstance and conditional bonuses and penalties to damage.
• Don’t double extra damage that occurs only on a critical hit, such as the damage from the deadly weapon trait.
They don't multiply on a crit, but they also aren't halved on a successful save. They're applied for their direct value one way or the other. Otherwise, it would be better to do 1 fire damage with an alchemist fire splash to a creature with weakness 30 to fire than to do 3d6 fire damage save for half with around 50/50 odds of a save. (also doubling weakness/resistance on a crit would be really bad for someone critting against something with a high resistance, since then unlike PF1, you wouldn't punch through the resistance)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
1) Hmm, curious situation.Yep!If the creature has more than one type of weakness that would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a monster is weak to both a type of physical damage and the material a weapon is made of.If I'm reading that right and you hit with a Holy Flaming Cold Iron Warhammer and the target had weaknesses for all of that they would get the increased damage from Fire, Holy, and then either Cold Iron or Bashing, whichever was higher.
Good to know. I think that should be a bit more explained in the rules. Maybe with this example. :)
I would have thought an instance of damage is an attack, not the weapon, fire and holy as 3 instances.|
|
1) Hmm, curious situation.If the creature has more than one type of weakness that would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a monster is weak to both a type of physical damage and the material a weapon is made of.If I'm reading that right and you hit with a Holy Flaming Cold Iron Warhammer and the target had weaknesses for all of that they would get the increased damage from Fire, Holy, and then either Cold Iron or Bashing, whichever was higher.Yep!
They don't multiply on a crit, but they also aren't halved on a successful save. They're applied for their direct value one way or the other. Otherwise, it would be better to do 1 fire damage with an alchemist fire splash to a creature with weakness 30 to fire than to do 3d6 fire damage save for half with around 50/50 odds of a save. (also doubling weakness/resistance on a crit would be really bad for someone critting against something with a high resistance, since then unlike PF1, you wouldn't punch through the resistance)
2) I can't seem to find the Critical Hit rules that say that, so without being able to read them atm I'd still say that damage is multiplied because it's not untyped, it's an increase of a specific type.2) EDIT:
I'd say they multiply.When you double the damage on a critical success with a Strike, or with any other action or activity that multiplies damage, use the following rules to determine which values you multiply.
• Roll double the usual number of damage dice for your weapon or unarmed attack.
• Add double your ability modifier to damage, if one applies.
• Add double any circumstance and conditional bonuses and penalties to damage.
• Don’t double extra damage that occurs only on a critical hit, such as the damage from the deadly weapon trait.
Yay! Okies, Thankies for chiming I’m ^w^
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Nice to see it clarified, I assumed that you could only trigger on during my playtest thus far.
Ideally, this should be spelled out in the final version.
EDIT: So I can assume that each energy type is a separate instance of damage?
Yeah, someone had an example of trying to trigger as many good weaknesses on a paladin as possible in a round. They thought they could trigger I think 4, but 2 of those were both on hit. They still legally triggered the weakness 3 times (once from the hit of the Ret Strike, once from the good damage of litany of wrath, once at the end of its turn from the persistent good of holy smite.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
1) Hmm, curious situation.If the creature has more than one type of weakness that would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a monster is weak to both a type of physical damage and the material a weapon is made of.If I'm reading that right and you hit with a Holy Flaming Cold Iron Warhammer and the target had weaknesses for all of that they would get the increased damage from Fire, Holy, and then either Cold Iron or Bashing, whichever was higher.Yep!
Thank you for the clarification! This still feels wrong to me in two seperate ways: If a Flaming Warhammer is considered two instances of damage, I expect a +1 Circumstance Bonus to damage to apply twice, but I'm pretty certain it doesn't. I also think that a Cold Iron Warhammer ought to apply both weaknesses if they apply, for that 'jackpot factor'.
They don't multiply on a crit, but they also aren't halved on a successful save. They're applied for their direct value one way or the other. Otherwise, it would be better to do 1 fire damage with an alchemist fire splash to a creature with weakness 30 to fire than to do 3d6 fire damage save for half with around 50/50 odds of a save. (also doubling weakness/resistance on a crit would be really bad for someone critting against something with a high resistance, since then unlike PF1, you wouldn't punch through the resistance)
2) I can't seem to find the Critical Hit rules that say that, so without being able to read them atm I'd still say that damage is multiplied because it's not untyped, it's an increase of a specific type.2) EDIT:
I'd say they multiply.When you double the damage on a critical success with a Strike, or with any other action or activity that multiplies damage, use the following rules to determine which values you multiply.
• Roll double the usual number of damage dice for your weapon or unarmed attack.
• Add double your ability modifier to damage, if one applies.
• Add double any circumstance and conditional bonuses and penalties to damage.
• Don’t double extra damage that occurs only on a critical hit, such as the damage from the deadly weapon trait.
The reasoning here makes sense. I will continue to houserule that weaknesses are doubled on a critical hit or critically failed saving throw, but weaknesses and resistance work RAW in other situations. It's not as mathmatically consistent, but it feels a lot better when the situations arise, and makes more awesome moments I play TTRPGs for.
Thank you!
|
|
Yeah, someone had an example of trying to trigger as many good weaknesses on a paladin as possible in a round. They thought they could trigger I think 4, but 2 of those were both on hit. They still legally triggered the weakness 3 times (once from the hit of the Ret Strike, once from the good damage of litany of wrath, once at the end of its turn from the persistent good of holy smite.Nice to see it clarified, I assumed that you could only trigger on during my playtest thus far.
Ideally, this should be spelled out in the final version.
EDIT: So I can assume that each energy type is a separate instance of damage?
Mark could you maybe give us a couple of examples, after this revelation my group is now arguing how this stuff applies to resistances.
For example, attacking a ghost with a magic flaming weapon :
The ghost has "Resistances all damage 10 (except force, ghost touch,
or positive)"
With my current understanding of what constitutes an instance of damage, I would reduce the physical damage from the weapon by 10 as well as the fire damage.
If our attacker was a Paladin using his blade of justice feat, since is bonus good damage, the damage bonus would not apply either since that could be at max 6 more points and thus do not overcome the resistance 10.
However, since our Paladin was not too happy about that, he puts a ghost touch rune on his weapon, now the question, does the ghost touch effect only applies to the physical weapon damage or all instanced of damage on that attack?
Between this and what I've seen from prerelease blogs and other posts, what I feel like what we have here is:
* Some creatures being vulnerable to positive but not to good was probably an error, or alternately the Paladin's bonus damage was also meant to count as positive.
* Weakness and Resistance go off at the very end of damage determination, after saves and crits and whatnot have been resolved.
* For some reason, only physical damage type (bludgeoning etc) OR material (cold iron etc) can trigger Weakness, not both. But,
* Physical damage type AND material are considered together to see whether the base weapon damage can get through Resistance.
* Weakness goes off once for each relevant type, with the proviso now revealed above about the weapon.
* All damage subject to being Resisted (because it's not the right type to bypass the Resistance) is summed up into one lump sum, to see what amount of that total (if any) gets through resistance.
* Non-resisted damage is added to whatever gets through the resisted damage to determine the final damage.
* While unstated, if a creature is eventually published with both Weaknesses and wide blanket Resistances, the Weakness is implicitly something that gets through the Resistance.
Does that sound about right?
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
Mark Seifter, please explain it to me like I am 5 years old. How do resistance and weakness work against a weapon which deals multiple types of damage (like a weapon with cold iron, fire, good, and another good damage point from the paladin)?
Let's say you attacked for 20 slashing damage on the dice plus your Strength (with a cold iron weapon, but the damage type is slashing), with a conditional bonus from your bard giving you 1 more damage, 21 slashing damage. You also have 3 fire damage from flaming, and 4 good damage from holy with an extra good damage from the paladin, so 5 good damage.
You are fighting a demon with weakness 10 cold iron, fire, and good.
You deal 31 slashing damage (21 + 10 weakness), 13 fire damage (3 + 10 weakness), and 15 good damage (5 + 10 weakness).
The reverse would be true if the creature had resistance to all damage. Incidentally, this makes the cleric domain power that creates an aura with a small amount of resist all for you and all your allies extremely good against attacks with multiple damage types. You can see Erik Keith's goblin paladin use it to great advantage in the youtube video where I ran a group through The Mirrored Moon, and several enemies dealt multiple types of damage.
So the resistance IS actually applied independently against every individual resisted damage type.
Looks like I ran part 5 incorrectly then. Only used the highest, (but then again the part basically only had good, so it might not have changed things too much.)
Align armaments is OP as written with no duration.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Mark Seifter, please explain it to me like I am 5 years old. How do resistance and weakness work against a weapon which deals multiple types of damage (like a weapon with cold iron, fire, good, and another good damage point from the paladin)?Let's say you attacked for 20 slashing damage on the dice plus your Strength (with a cold iron weapon, but the damage type is slashing), with a conditional bonus from your bard giving you 1 more damage, 21 slashing damage. You also have 3 fire damage from flaming, and 4 good damage from holy with an extra good damage from the paladin, so 5 good damage.
You are fighting a demon with weakness 10 cold iron, fire, and good.
You deal 31 slashing damage (21 + 10 weakness), 13 fire damage (3 + 10 weakness), and 15 good damage (5 + 10 weakness).
The reverse would be true if the creature had resistance to all damage. Incidentally, this makes the cleric domain power that creates an aura with a small amount of resist all for you and all your allies extremely good against attacks with multiple damage types. You can see Erik Keith's goblin paladin use it to great advantage in the youtube video where I ran a group through The Mirrored Moon, and several enemies dealt multiple types of damage.
That's ridiculous. This may be how it works, but this is not at all what I read in the Weakness section quoted earlier in the thread. Maybe I don't understand English after all.
If there is one frustrating thing about PF2 right now, its that the game doesn't always play the way you think it does. And that both frustrates and discourages people and not mention gives faulty survey data when the game is being played wrong.
I like PF2 and I get that this is a playtest, but man, in an era where anything and everything competes with RPGs, the play experience needs to be a lot clearer. Games in general that obfuscate rules or intent of rules are bound to be less successful because no one wants to feel stupid for trying to play a game. For the love of all the holy gods in Galorion, please make it that I don't have to have an English degree to understand the final rules upon release of PF2.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Mark Seifter, please explain it to me like I am 5 years old. How do resistance and weakness work against a weapon which deals multiple types of damage (like a weapon with cold iron, fire, good, and another good damage point from the paladin)?Let's say you attacked for 20 slashing damage on the dice plus your Strength (with a cold iron weapon, but the damage type is slashing), with a conditional bonus from your bard giving you 1 more damage, 21 slashing damage. You also have 3 fire damage from flaming, and 4 good damage from holy with an extra good damage from the paladin, so 5 good damage.
You are fighting a demon with weakness 10 cold iron, fire, and good.
You deal 31 slashing damage (21 + 10 weakness), 13 fire damage (3 + 10 weakness), and 15 good damage (5 + 10 weakness).
The reverse would be true if the creature had resistance to all damage. Incidentally, this makes the cleric domain power that creates an aura with a small amount of resist all for you and all your allies extremely good against attacks with multiple damage types. You can see Erik Keith's goblin paladin use it to great advantage in the youtube video where I ran a group through The Mirrored Moon, and several enemies dealt multiple types of damage.
That explains the super-high-ish HP totals for high level foes. The next update should clear up language so the players understand better how the damage system works.
Okay nice. So resistance/weakness triggers once for each damage type. Exception is weapon damage with special material - here the higher value of damage type or material counts, since it is considered one damage instance.