Magic Bows and Ammunition

[orphias]

So ... Say you have a +1 Bow. Are the arrows it fires considered 'magic weapons' for the purpose of damage resistance or do you need actual magic arrows ?

[Nefreet]

Ammunition wrote:

The damage die is determined by the weapon, not the ammunition.

[Ascalaphus]

I think the next sentence in the Ammunition entry is actually more to the point:

Quote:

Because that and other relevant statistics vary by weapon, ammunition entries list only the name, quantity, Price, and Bulk. Using ammunition destroys it.

I'd say that the "magical" trait is one of those relevant statistics.

[orphias]

So ... a magical bow means that any normal arrow fired from the bow is considered magical for the purposes of damage reduction ?

[Nefreet]

The bow is magical for all purposes.

[thenobledrake]

orphias wrote:

So ... a magical bow means that any normal arrow fired from the bow is considered magical for the purposes of damage reduction ?

If you put a flaming rune on a bow, doesn't that mean every arrow fired from it inflicts some fire damage?

Or to phrase that differently: can you provide a reason why you think the traits of the bow, whatever they may be, shouldn't be imparted to the arrows fire from it?

[Aratorin]

Man, all this time I've been beating enemies over the head with my Longbow to get the benefits of my Striking Runes...

[Gisher]

Aratorin wrote:

Man, all this time I've been beating enemies over the head with my Longbow to get the benefits of my Striking Runes...

That probably works better than my approach of hitting them with my sling.

[Taja the Barbarian]

thenobledrake wrote:

orphias wrote:

So ... a magical bow means that any normal arrow fired from the bow is considered magical for the purposes of damage reduction ?

If you put a flaming rune on a bow, doesn't that mean every arrow fired from it inflicts some fire damage?

Or to phrase that differently: can you provide a reason why you think the traits of the bow, whatever they may be, shouldn't be imparted to the arrows fire from it?

To be fair, D&D3.0 had mundane arrows fired from a magic bow treated as non-magical weapons for DR purposes even though you applied the magical bonuses to your attack and damage rolls, so this sort of thing hasn't always been consistent from edition to edition.

Most editions make a point of spelling this sort of interaction out since combining a magic bow with magic arrows is bound to come up, but I'm guessing when PF2 dropped magic ammunition entirely they decided they didn't need to mention this anymore...

[thenobledrake]

To be fair, no part of the PF2 core rulebook says "Sure hope you played prior editions and also the game with a different name that this one is based on, because we're going to assume you're using rules that our book never mentions"

If you read this game like it's got all the words you need inside it, and identify when the idea you're thinking of is from another game entirely, there are a lot less things to be confused over.

Especially when it is something like this which is entirely intuitive: "Did I attack with a magic weapon? Yes, my bow is magical and that is what I attacked with." - but some other game decided to throw intuitive out the window and go with punative instead (yeah, your bow is magic... but your arrow isn't, so gotcha!) and people nonsensically assume that "we made a new set of rules!" doesn't mean "so don't assume all the old ones are still true"

[mrspaghetti]

Taja the Barbarian wrote:

I'm guessing when PF2 dropped magic ammunition entirely they decided they didn't need to mention this anymore...

They haven't dropped magic ammunition. See CRB pp 559-561

[Taja the Barbarian]

mrspaghetti wrote:

Taja the Barbarian wrote:

I'm guessing when PF2 dropped magic ammunition entirely they decided they didn't need to mention this anymore...

They haven't dropped magic ammunition. See CRB pp 559-561

Yeah, but you aren't going to find a batch of +1 Arrows any more.