Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
|
The issue in PFS1 was that the rules stated that you "can use a melee weapon that deals lethal damage to deal nonlethal damage instead, but you take a –4 penalty on your attack roll." which, since it defines MELEE, meant that ranged weapons could not deal nonlethal damage.
In PFS2, this is no longer the case:
"You take a –2 circumstance penalty to the attack roll when you make a nonlethal attack using a weapon that doesn’t have the nonlethal trait."
Granted, blunt arrows would be nice so that you could make nonlethal ranged attacks -without- taking -2 penalty to the attack roll, but the issue is smaller than in PFS1 where you couldn't make nonlethal attacks at all with a ranged weapon - now you can, it's just at -2, like with every other (non-nonlethal) weapon!
EDIT: as to the question, should they be?
I'm not *opposed* to them, but I don't think they are necessary.
I'd much rather see a nonlethal ranged weapon (that deals real damage, unlike the blowgun with the 1p it deals) - melee guys have to accept -2 penalty Or switch to a nonlethal weapon, and I'd like to see the ranged weapons behave in the same way. They already have a slightly better action economy when you don't need to move to melee range.
|
There were actually two versions of Blunt Arrows in Pathfinder 1. The first Module, Crypt of the Everflame, introduced Blunt Arrows as *only* doing Nonlethal Damage.
Later came actual Blunt Arrows, which specify that they can be used for Nonlethal Damage, with the usual –4 penalty to-hit.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
They are much better for shooting at skeletons and the like as well.
Ironically, regular PF1 blunt arrows just do bludgeoning damage (and enable you to make that nonlethal with the Bludgeoner feat), while the ones you get in Everflame do nonlethal, which doesn't work on the many skeletons.