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Marks contribution aside I believe this is covered in the book RAW. Bolded parts are what I would consider key to the discussion.
Thief Racket pg.180
When you attack with a finesse melee weapon, you can add your Dexterity modifier to damage rolls instead of your Strength modifier.Thrown Weapon Property pg.283
Thrown: You can throw this weapon as a ranged attack. A thrown weapon adds your Strength modifier to damage just like a melee weapon does. When this trait appears on a melee weapon, it also includes the range increment.Calling out "just like a" is stating that it isn't a melee weapon when thrown. (Obtuse but not ambiguous imo)
I share this in case someone would like some rules (if poorly worded) to direct players to before the official and hopefully better worded errata comes out.
(There is further evidence for RaI in the damage roll and range section which call out thrown weapons as weapon subtypes)
I would argue that the rule then implies that because Rogues would normally replace STR on the attack and it says just like a melee weapon that the Dex to Damage still applies because the conditions for the rogues Dex to damage still indicate such.
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To have the world be affected by where a weapon is printed on the weapon table is more like if we printed "A goblin can indeed intimidate hill giants.
You say this as if it's totally obvious, but a lot of stuff actually depends on where something is printed in the table:
- If a weapon is printed in the simple weapons section it is governed by simple weapon proficiency
- If a weapon is printed in the uncommon weapons section is is not accessible by default
- If a weapon is printed in the ranged weapons section you can only use it at range
So it's not really such a strange thing to conclude "if a weapon is printed in the melee weapons table, it's a melee weapon".
When you attack with a finesse melee weapon, you can add your Dexterity modifier to damage rolls instead of your Strength modifier.
The thief racket doesn't ask if you're making a melee attack, it's asking if you're using a melee weapon. There's nothing that I can easily spot that stops a dagger from being a melee weapon just because you happen to be throwing it instead of using it for a melee attack.
If a thrown dagger doesn't count as a melee weapon while throwing it for the purpose of the Thief racket, then does a Disrupting, Ghost Touch or Keen rune also not work if you're throwing the dagger, since it must be etched onto a melee weapon?
If the intent was that Thief Racket only apply to melee attacks, maybe it should have been phrased:
instead of the current text:
Yeah admittedly that's what threw me off too. Melee/Ranged attack and Melee/Ranged weapon are distinct concepts in PF2, so I assumed the categories were intended to be discrete and unchanging and that any weirdness was simply by design (like with unarmed).
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Also note, ruling the other way would have some weird effects for fighter feats that use "ranged weapons", I don't think double shot is intended to work with daggers, yet if you're saying daggers are ranged weapons when they're thrown, they also clearly don't have a reload time...
EDIT: Or maybe not, I guess it's no more confusing than a Javelin, which would also qualify.
Reload time "0" is different than reload time "-". Double shot requires the former. Not sure if that makes things more or less confusing overall.
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Reload time "0" is different than reload time "-". Double shot requires the former. Not sure if that makes things more or less confusing overall.Also note, ruling the other way would have some weird effects for fighter feats that use "ranged weapons", I don't think double shot is intended to work with daggers, yet if you're saying daggers are ranged weapons when they're thrown, they also clearly don't have a reload time...
EDIT: Or maybe not, I guess it's no more confusing than a Javelin, which would also qualify.
I agree but it raises the question of whether the feat should work if you already had two daggers drawn. (Also I'm not sure if the feat should work with shuriken, who legitimately have reload 0 but the rest of the feat talks about wielding a single Reload 0 weapon.)
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Dex to damage on throwing weapons seems like much less of an issue than what PF1 had. Only one of the three rogue rackets even has dex to damage and the amount of finesse thrown weapons is tiny and of that group their damage is low. The one rogue racket that allows dex to damage is specifically so they can dump str. I really can't see how allowing that to work on a tiny subset of weapons can unbalance anything.
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The Bestiary lists thrown daggers as ranged attacks. Paizo clearly considers thrown weapons as ranged attacks. Maybe they are ranged melee attacks?
Just to clarify, they're definitely ranged attacks. That part was never in question, but attack type and weapon type are different things.
So the issue was whether or not a thrown dagger is a ranged attack with a melee weapon or if the dagger instead counts as a ranged weapon when being thrown.
The former interpretation works with the thief racket, but means that thrown daggers don't qualify for feats that require attacking with a ranged weapon.
The latter interpretation allows a thrown dagger to work just like a thrown javelin* but breaks thief's racket and potentially certain weapon runes will start or stop working based on the kind of attack you make.
*There's also the question of how long a thrown dagger counts as a ranged weapon. A Fighter's incredible aim is a two action attack where you make a strike with a ranged weapon, but a Fighter's point blank shot requires you to be 'wielding' a ranged weapon in order for the stance to function.
Incredible Aim works fine with the latter interpretation, but PBS might not depending on whether or not the intent is to make daggers always count as both ranged and melee weapons (and apply traits based on attack type) or only count as ranged weapons when used for ranged attacks.
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1d4+4 (a 1st level rogue with a dagger) is better than 1d8 (a first level ranger with a long bow). It's 6.5 expected damage vs. 4.5. The rogue can do this at 10 feet vs. 100 feet for the ranger. So it depends on the expected range to decide the superior weapon. Indoors the dagger wielding rogue is the clear winner, however.
At higher levels the math gets a bit more interesting. The rogue with 24 Dex is 3d4+7 (14.5 expected) while the ranger is 3d8+2 (15.5 expected) with her composite long bow and 18 Str. The ranger is 1 point higher, at this point, but the rogue is hopefully getting sneak attack on a consistent basis. This is countered by the ranger's Hunter's Edge. In the end it ought to be comparable.
My non-counting vote is to let rogues keep the Dex as it makes things more interesting. More interesting is better.
There's actually even more variables at play than just those. For example, the longbow has the volley property, so Thief daggers are largely a wash within the first 20 feet of engagement compared to the longbow (stronger in the first 10 feet, 1 point variance in the second 10-foot span). Shortbow is probably a better point of comparison given how often combat takes place on a flip-mat and that those dimensions mean it's highly unlikely that a fight will start being tracked when the PCs and their opponents are more than 100 feet apart. Very much a "YMMV", but the longbow's enforced engagement range of 30-feet+ is a significant factor, and when you lower those d8s to d6s (or modify for a variable percentage of the longbow attacks having a lower to-hit and crit range than the daggers) the narrow lead on the bow end actually drops and the daggers are the superior ranged weapon in a broad swath of circumstances, and not even by a particularly narrow lead (for example, the daggers dealing 1 less damage than the longbow at 14.5 suddenly becomes the daggers leading by 2 points when you shift to a shortbow and the bow average damage becomes 12.5).
The comparison to melee attacks is also relevant because the difference is almost always going to be in the instances when you couldn't make a melee attack; the difference between a thrown weapon attack and no attack at all is the entirety of an attack. So if a swashy rogue is using a rapier and main-gauche, a "thrower" rogue is using thrown daggers, and the enemy is trying to use kiting tactics, the difference might be as much as "the thrower rogue moves and attacks" compared to the non-throwing rogue's "the rogue moves adjacent and tries to block the enemy's egress with their body", which means the difference between their damage was an entire attack's worth, and that lead only builds by a factor determined by how often the thrower rogue manages to attack an enemy the non-thrower rogue wouldn't have been able to reach.
Like a lot of interactions in PF2, the real test is something you can speculate about on a whiteboard but the actual performance at the table when you start bringing in the variables is where you find the answers to questions like "Is this balanced?" That's also a difficult one to find a solid answer to without some kind of established baseline of challenges and dungeon types. If there are multiple shut doors, or doors that can be opened and closed, in an encounter area and there's a running fight of some kind a la Inigo Montoya and the six-fingered man, then the thrower has an edge over both longbow combatant and reach-weapon combatant (unless the reach weapon is a flickmace) since they have a hand free to open and close doors while the other two are constantly burning an action regrasping their weapon.