Explosive Ammo

[Scottybobotti]

Explosive ammo from the Armory (p.55) says that it deals half fire damage if you load it in your weapon. However, it also has the fiery special property which says it doesn't do half fire damage (p. 28) Which one is right?

[Xenocrat]

Seems like a change in development that wasn't reconciled. I've FAQ'd it, might get an answer in 2-3 years.

[Dracomicron]

It both has the firey property and does half fire damage. They're separate effects, right? Other things might have the firey property but not do half fire damage.

[Nimor Starseeker]

Scottybobotti wrote:

Explosive ammo from the Armory (p.55) says that it deals half fire damage if you load it in your weapon. However, it also has the fiery special property which says it doesn't do half fire damage (p. 28) Which one is right?

This one has me stumped - it does not add up the way it is written in the CRB. It’s like the explosive and fiery qualities were meant to be two different things but were not separated and now conflict each other. Have I got this wrong?

[Nyerkh]

I don't really see the issue ?

- The Fiery property on its own does not change the damage type (crits aside).
- Explosive ammo does, making half the damage fire (among other things).

Those two don't prevent each other.
We might, and are likely to, see other Fiery stuff down the line. They're only linked so far because explosive ammo also happens to grant the Fiery property to the weapon using it, but that hardly means the property itself can't exist outside of it.
That Fiery has a special rule for weapons alredy dealing half fire, even though that's all of them right now, tends to prove that. Future proofing, at its finest.

Admittedly, the description text doesn't actually state that the ammunition also grants the property explicitly, but the intent seems clear.
If that's the issue, I can agree to it : more clarity is always helpful - and in this case, a short sentence would be enough... but that's never that simple, editing wise. Maybe in a FAQ or errata, should one happen?

Likewise, I expect we'll more specialty ammo eventually.

[Nimor Starseeker]

Thanks for pointing that out - it actually makes sense now. The ammunition types on table 1-8 are explosive ammunition's with the fiery description in addition.

We could expect ammunition types in the future that are exclusively explosive or exclusively fiery.

To answer the original posters question about what the damage type is correct: A weapon that is loaded with the explosive ammunition from table 1-8 in the armory deals half fire damage. The ammunition has the Fiery quality in it as well, so on a critical hit, all of the damage becomes fire damage.

refferences:

Armory page 28
Fiery ammunition bursts into glowing embers when fired. While this is not enough to change its normal damage to fire damage, any extra damage from a critical hit is considered fire damage and the weapon deals half damage to targets that take half damage from energy attacks but no damage from kinetic attacks (such as incorporeal creatures) and counts as a weapon with the explode special property against creatures with swarm defenses. If fiery ammunition is used in a weapon that already deals half fire damage (such as a weapon with the flaming weapon fusion), on a critical hit, all the damage dealt is fire damage. At the GM’s discretion, fiery ammunition can set extremely flammable materials on fire, such as oil-soaked rags or dry tinder.

Armory page 55
Explosive ammo is used with projectile weapons and is available for most projectile weapons and other weapons that fire arrows and darts, as noted on Table 1–8. A weapon firing explosive ammo deals its normal amount of damage, but half of this damage is fire damage and grants the weapon the knockdown critical hit effect. If the weapon already has a critical hit effect, the knockdown critical hit effect is added and considered part of the weapon’s normal critical hit effect. If the weapon normally already has the knockdown critical hit effect, it instead gains the push (5 feet) critical hit effect in addition to knockdown, and this considered part of the weapon’s normal critical hit effect.