Playing a melee based fighter using polearms. I have a chance to pick up damage reduction via an archetype feat. Just wondering which type would be most beneficial? I was leaning towards slashing or piercing as bludgeoning seem to be used less often. There appear to be more melee slashing type weapons, but of course piecing covers ranged weapons.
Thoughts?
|
While there is likely a number of duplicates for the same abilities the following is a breakdown of a word search for the two existing Bestiaries:
Spacing Line for sanity...
Another sanity line...
The Bestiary 1 has:
265 instances of the word Slashing
343 instances of the word Bludgeoning
437 instances of the word Piercing
The Bestiary 2 has:
253 instances of the word Slashing
269 instances of the word Bludgeoning
343 instances of the word Piercing
Totals:
518 instances - Slashing
612 instances - Bludgeoning
780 instances - Piercing
So it looks like your best bet here is almost certainly to choose Piercing.
Except a lot of those entries represent the monster's Resistance, not simply what damage they do.
That said, I strongly agree w/ Piercing since that's what bites do. Bites are generally the primary attack of monsters and seem most often the attack tied to a secondary effect, like venom, disease, swallow whole, etc. Of course, if your Resistance comes from your armor, a smart enemy like an adult dragon might know to slash you and bite others, yet that should be rare.
Even in a campaign fighting enemies who bear weapons I'd lean toward Piercing to avoid accumulating dings from arrows which can focus fire so well. Most medium enemies with slashing or bludgeoning will at least need to get past your AoOs.
Also, if this is tied to armor, it'd be hard to balance this vs. Bulwark which you'll really need if you've kept Dex low.
Also, if this is tied to armor, it'd be hard to balance this vs. Bulwark which you'll really need if you've kept Dex low.
It's the 4th level Mortification feat from the Hellknight Arminger Archetype in the Lost Omens World Guide. Not armor dependent.
I think I am going to take piercing, as I get armor specialization at 11th level, so the slash resist wouldn't stack.
Piercing covers pretty much all non-throwing ranged weapons, bites, talons, poison stings, popular simple weapons such as spears, etc. It is by far the safest bet.
I would imagine that it could come up from at least one enemy in most fights.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think Piercing is a good choice, especially if you will separately get Armor Spec... Where my preference is on Chain for Crit Resistance to all physical, which wouldn't stack with Pierce Resist but it's a higher amount VS every Crit including Piercing (with Crits IMHO biggest threat esp. VS "bosses"). Piercing is commonest primary attack for "monsters" as well as Ranged/Archery, and melee weapons are diverse themselves. Slashing weapons do seem to be most broadly damaging there (as well as more prevalent for Finesse weapons), so might seem reasonable if you plan to fight alot of weapon wielders using swords, slashing polearms etc... But a good amount of those are Versatile Slash/Pierce anyways. So in general I would go with Piercing, although things are really balanced enough that it shouldn't prevent you from other choice that fits the character for flavor/thematic reasons, I don't think the mechanics "punish" such a choice too hard.
|
I dunno if monster attacks are really decisive one way or the other - a monster might make bigger piercing attacks but the agile claws tend to be slashing.
Unless your resistance is high enough to block the attacks completely, it doesn't matter which attacks do more damage. You're blocking the same number either way, so blocking that number more often is better.
I dunno if monster attacks are really decisive one way or the other - a monster might make bigger piercing attacks but the agile claws tend to be slashing.Unless your resistance is high enough to block the attacks completely, it doesn't matter which attacks do more damage. You're blocking the same number either way, so blocking that number more often is better.
Forcing them to switch to the lighter, agile hit on their first, most crit worthy attack helps at least a bit.
It probably only earns you...maybe 1 damage per damage dice, but that still helps.
|
|
They probably don't know you're resistant to one and not the other until after they've done an attack routine against you (and hit with both).
The influence on enemy behavior is a tactical consideration other than just which one blocks more damage, though. That likely depends on the type of enemy (and the GM).
|
|
Probably depends on the type of campaign you are in. Rural campaigns will have a lot of wild animals and monsters thus a higher representation of bite and claws, so piercing followed by slashing will far out-pace bludgeoning.
However, if you are involved in an urban campaign, you will likely see a higher occurence of humanoid enemies in which case it depends on what weapons are predominant in the area. Wandering around a dwarven city? Expect mostly bludgeoning (hammers) and slashing (axes). Generally, in an urban environment I would expect to see a somewhat equal distribution of damage types.
Maybe look at it more from the perspective of mitigating the worst damage. Expecting a lot of ranged enemies? Bows do a lot of damage on a crit. Would be nice to reduce that. In fact the majority of deadly/fatal weapons are piercing. So, combining that with the propensity for "monsters" to employ bite attacks as their primary, piercing might be the winner.
And if you can get armor specialization with plate, you will be effective against most versatile weapons which tend to be S/P and both the primary and secondary attack from most monsters.