We don't currently have a trait that specifies 'both' instead of 'either or'.
It is something that should be considered, but at the same time firearms are going to have quite a few traits already.
We don't currently have a trait that specifies 'both' instead of 'either or'.
While this is true, they seem to have little issue with creating new traits [we seem to get new ones each playtest]. I don't see what problems there would be with a dual damage trait could make.
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I must admit I don't understand the concept of bludgeoning firearms (outside blunderbuss). Are you shooting canonballs?
I must admit I don't understand the concept of bludgeoning firearms (outside blunderbuss). Are you shooting canonballs?
I think it is meant to be the sheer kick. A bullet transfers a ton of kinetic force into the target in a way that an arrow doesn't. That's why people can get knocked back when a bullet hits them. Particularly when the bullet is stopped by something like a bullet proof vest or gets lodged in the body.
Probably why having it deal both types of damage made sense. But at the end of the day it is all just physical trauma.
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I must admit I don't understand the concept of bludgeoning firearms (outside blunderbuss). Are you shooting canonballs?I think it is meant to be the sheer kick. A bullet transfers a ton of kinetic force into the target in a way that an arrow doesn't. That's why people can get knocked back when a bullet hits them. Particularly when the bullet is stopped by something like a bullet proof vest or gets lodged in the body.
Probably why having it deal both types of damage made sense. But at the end of the day it is all just physical trauma.
I agree about the kinetic force of bullets, but it's not dealing damage. If you have a bullet proof vest, you will mostly get bruises unless the bullet goes through it (and you).
Maybe the bludgeoning type is supposed to represent that, but it ends up being quite illogical in my opinion. I don't see how a gun will do better than an arrow against a skeleton.
I must admit I don't understand the concept of bludgeoning firearms (outside blunderbuss). Are you shooting canonballs?I think it is meant to be the sheer kick. A bullet transfers a ton of kinetic force into the target in a way that an arrow doesn't. That's why people can get knocked back when a bullet hits them. Particularly when the bullet is stopped by something like a bullet proof vest or gets lodged in the body.
Probably why having it deal both types of damage made sense. But at the end of the day it is all just physical trauma.
I agree about the kinetic force of bullets, but it's not dealing damage. If you have a bullet proof vest, you will mostly get bruises unless the bullet goes through it (and you).
Maybe the bludgeoning type is supposed to represent that, but it ends up being quite illogical in my opinion. I don't see how a gun will do better than an arrow against a skeleton.
See, if you shoot a skull with a bullet it is a lot more likely to shatter into fragments than an arrow.
See, if you shoot a skull with a bullet it is a lot more likely to shatter into fragments than an arrow.
Is it? Is it going to do the same damage as, say, a mace or hammer to that skull? Or is it more likely to just shoot through the skull leaving 2 holes? Why is a bullet better at damaging a skull over a pick?
I just have a hard time seeing a bullet dealing the same die damage to a skeleton as it does to a living creature compared to a non-firearm because the majority of the damage from the bullet is from hitting the 'soft' parts. I don't see anything that'd convince me a bullet is better vs a skeleton than 'normal' piercing weapons. Now if we where talking a large enough gauge shogun at close range, a compact spread of pellets would do more damage but we don't have anything like a shotgun shell.
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Agreed. Bludgeoning doesn't make sense. It should just be dropped.
A bullet destroying a skull is more a matter of a critical than bullets being especially good at bludgeoning.
Imagine every single weapon in the game being wielded forcefully and skillfully against a skull and you'll see it quite a few should be given versatile bludgeoning by the same logic.
Greatswords, picks, bastard swords, crossbows, spears... the list goes on.
I don't think we should be doling out versatile weapon damage based on such flimsy logic.
If the problem is guns aren't great against skeletons... that sounds realistic and fine?
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Except... not really. People get knocked back by bullets because they're reacting to getting shot.
While I was in the military, I was taught about weapon's "force d'arrêt", that I would translate as stopping power. It's the amount of kinetic energy a bullet transmit to its victim when hitting it.
I've been told that assault rifles have bad stopping power as their bullets were extremely small and made to pierce. As such, a victim often had the time to unload their magazine before the pain becomes too crippling. On the other hand, 9mm bullets have way higher stopping power, often stopping their flight inside the victims body and as such transmitting their whole kinetic energy. The victim could always retaliate but their aiming was strongly hindered.As a side note, having shot an anti-tank grenade and nearly fell because of it, I can pretty confidently say that the stopping power of an arrow is very high.
A bullet having enough kick to knock someone back would mean that firing the gun itself would knock the shooter back.
Luckily, weapons have recoil management. To fire an anti-tank grenade you use standard assault rifle rounds. But the recoil is not at all comparable and yes, you fall prone after shooting such an ammunition if you don't position yourself properly.
I must admit I don't understand the concept of bludgeoning firearms (outside blunderbuss). Are you shooting canonballs?
They are probably thinking the different between round shot and something like minie balls which were shaped rounds. Or stuff from a blunderbuss if you are using shot or just random jagged stuff as the projectiles.
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We are talking about primitve firearms, we don't shoot missles
we literally shoot tiny cannon balls
The interaction of the speed and the limited area of impact works for the piercing damage, but at the end of the day you shoot blunt stuff at the enemy
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I don't get why they're blundgeoning. Yes they have a lot of force behind them.... But that's what allows them to piece the enemy. Based on this, all piercing weapons would be bludgeoning weapons.
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We are talking about primitve firearms, we don't shoot missles
we literally shoot tiny cannon ballsThe interaction of the speed and the limited area of impact works for the piercing damage, but at the end of the day you shoot blunt stuff at the enemy
But then we can consider that greatswords are bludgeoning weapons, too. As you can easily break bones by smashing a metal clad lad with a 2-handed sword.
The thing is: If you don't penetrate an armor with a bullet, you'll deal negligeable damage. If you don't penetrate an armor with a greatclub it's just working as intended. That's the difference I make between bludgeoning and piercing.
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Michael Sayre mentioned in another thread that they put bludgeoning so that you can shoot a skeleton in the skull and have it go down. And IIRC that they used Versatile because it was the less worse and simpler option available for what they wanted to check in the playtest.
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We are talking about primitve firearms, we don't shoot missles
we literally shoot tiny cannon ballsThe interaction of the speed and the limited area of impact works for the piercing damage, but at the end of the day you shoot blunt stuff at the enemy
But then we can consider that greatswords are bludgeoning weapons, too. As you can easily break bones by smashing a metal clad lad with a 2-handed sword.
The thing is: If you don't penetrate an armor with a bullet, you'll deal negligeable damage. If you don't penetrate an armor with a greatclub it's just working as intended. That's the difference I make between bludgeoning and piercing.
It would be great if a lot of the sword and polearms actually got versatile P/S with a handful getting B as well. But that would never happen because game balance.
Also you are thinking of a greatclub which is a glorified bat. But hammers and maces are usually small dense masses on a stick. Not much different from a bullet in regards to what actually hits.
Also given the period firearms they are using they are effectively pretty similar to sling projectiles. Small round ball projectiles. The versatile option models the fact that in old style fire arms you could often shove other random stuff down the barrel and fire them. Historically this kind of thing was done to cause different sorts of injuries. Anti boarding stuff with blunderbuss often saw them pack the guns with nails/random jagged debris/glass whatever just to cause a lot of debilitating injuries to disorder their opponents.
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The versatile option models the fact that in old style fire arms you could often shove other random stuff down the barrel and fire them.
It isn't versatile they use for this but modular B, P, or S: Hand Cannon is the only one you can shove random objects into and fire: "a hand cannon can be used to fire almost anything that can be packed into its barrel." Versatile is there because the bullet is SO awesome it somehow acts like a large blunt object. Makes me wonder is a sand storm deals blunt damage too, you know from all those blunt projectiles. :P
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The versatile option models the fact that in old style fire arms you could often shove other random stuff down the barrel and fire them.It isn't versatile they use for this but modular B, P, or S: Hand Cannon is the only one you can shove random objects into and fire: "a hand cannon can be used to fire almost anything that can be packed into its barrel." Versatile is there because the bullet is SO awesome it somehow acts like a large blunt object. Makes me wonder is a sand storm deals blunt damage too, you know from all those blunt projectiles. :PWhat doesn't make any sense at all about the Hand Cannon though is Modular means you need to spend an action to change the damage type, and an action to load it. Which... eh.
I think it may need a new trait for that effect that's basically "Variable Ammo" - choose a damage type as part of loading the weapon.
It just takes a small rework of modular: Add "If a weapon with this trait is a ranged weapon, the interact action to switch damage types also counts as an action to reload.
It just takes a small rework of modular: Add "If a weapon with this trait is a ranged weapon, the interact action to switch damage types also counts as an action to reload.The versatile option models the fact that in old style fire arms you could often shove other random stuff down the barrel and fire them.It isn't versatile they use for this but modular B, P, or S: Hand Cannon is the only one you can shove random objects into and fire: "a hand cannon can be used to fire almost anything that can be packed into its barrel." Versatile is there because the bullet is SO awesome it somehow acts like a large blunt object. Makes me wonder is a sand storm deals blunt damage too, you know from all those blunt projectiles. :PWhat doesn't make any sense at all about the Hand Cannon though is Modular means you need to spend an action to change the damage type, and an action to load it. Which... eh.
I think it may need a new trait for that effect that's basically "Variable Ammo" - choose a damage type as part of loading the weapon.
This makes sense for the Hand Cannon and the Blunderbuss, but I still don't think it makes sense for most of the guns here to be dealing bludgeoning at all.
+1 for guns not needing to deal bludgeoning damage as a default.
Forcing every gun to have the same trait representing a minor advantage like dealing bludgeoning and piercing would limit the design space for other advantages. I think some guns like cannons could default to just bludgeoning and most held guns dealing piercing.
It also makes things like the hand cannon more special, though I think the damage type there should be selected when it is reloaded (based on what you put in the cannon).
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I still don't think it makes sense for most of the guns here to be dealing bludgeoning at all.
I agree and even more so that it's JUST an option. It suggests that you can somehow aim differently so that the bullet stops being piecing and instead transforms into a bludgeoning since it can never deal both.
I respectfully disagree. The Versatile trait on firearms is one of the few things I'd hate to see change in the final version.
I'm also waiting for blunt arrows to come back.
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I respectfully disagree. The Versatile trait on firearms is one of the few things I'd hate to see change in the final version.
I'm also waiting for blunt arrows to come back.
See, blunt arrows make sense as you're loading a different ammo. How exactly are you dealing just B damage one attack and then managing to deal just P damage with the next when you're using the EXACT same ammo? Care to explain what the shooter does to make that happen? I just don't see how B makes sense: it's like saying you don't need those blunt arrows and can just shoot the bow in a way that you can make them deal B damage for some unknown reason... :P
Now if they make beanbag ammo, then I'll agree B makes sense.
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I respectfully disagree. The Versatile trait on firearms is one of the few things I'd hate to see change in the final version.
I'm also waiting for blunt arrows to come back.
See, blunt arrows make sense as you're loading a different ammo. How exactly are you dealing just B damage one attack and then managing to deal just P damage with the next when you're using the EXACT same ammo? Care to explain what the shooter does to make that happen? I just don't see how B makes sense: it's like saying you don't need those blunt arrows and can just shoot the bow in a way that you can make them deal B damage for some unknown reason... :P
Now if they make beanbag ammo, then I'll agree B makes sense.
It's worse than that.
You load the ammo. Then, when you point and squeeze, you decide if that ammo is piercing on bludgeoning. Until then, it is in a quantum state of "undefined", and only the power of your own will can change it.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I respectfully disagree. The Versatile trait on firearms is one of the few things I'd hate to see change in the final version.
I'm also waiting for blunt arrows to come back.
See, blunt arrows make sense as you're loading a different ammo. How exactly are you dealing just B damage one attack and then managing to deal just P damage with the next when you're using the EXACT same ammo? Care to explain what the shooter does to make that happen? I just don't see how B makes sense: it's like saying you don't need those blunt arrows and can just shoot the bow in a way that you can make them deal B damage for some unknown reason... :P
Now if they make beanbag ammo, then I'll agree B makes sense.
It's worse than that.
You load the ammo. Then, when you point and squeeze, you decide if that ammo is piercing on bludgeoning. Until then, it is in a quantum state of "undefined", and only the power of your own will can change it.
And, as a result, this means your gunshot, which is Versatile B so it can blow up a skeleton skull, can fail to blow up the skeleton skull because you decided your bullet was a piercing bullet instead of a bludgeoning one.
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The difference can easily be explained by where you're aiming at on the target and how you're firing, just like any other Versatile weapon, especially since damage type generally only matters for creatures with specific biological or magical differences from standard targets. I don't think that Firearms should keep B going forward, though I understand the legacy reason it is there for playtest, but how Vesatile works isn't part of the issue.
Fortunately this issue is specifically raised in the playtest survey, so Paizo are aware of it.
The difference can easily be explained by where you're aiming at on the target and how you're firing, just like any other Versatile weapon, especially since damage type generally only matters for creatures with specific biological or magical differences from standard targets.
I'd like to hear this one as I can't think of any good reason the same bullet will change damage types depending where you aim and/or fire. I want to hear more about this one: tell me exactly what you do differently to an Amoeba Swarm to deal B damage... Foe a weapon it quite easy to explain, you hit it with the blunt part of the weapon. So for a bullet, which part if the blunt side and which is the pointy? :P
A flat roll to know what type of damage the bullet inflicts?
Well if you roll flat, clearly it's the blunt side. You need to roll pointy to get piecing. ;)
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Is the issue solved if guns dealt piercing AND bludgeoning like they did in 1E? I don’t remember huge disagreements over that in the past. I also don’t know why that isn’t an option in 2E, other than someone deciding that shouldn’t be a thing. Just clarify that resistances and weaknesses only trigger once in that situation and let them do both. Impact damage and penetrating damage. Now all of the issues around how you’re deciding each shot are gone.
Is the issue solved if guns dealt piercing AND bludgeoning like they did in 1E?
For me it would: IMO B doesn't make much sense but I'm willing to overlook it. Being able to selectively deal one or the other is a much harder pill to swallow.
I don’t remember huge disagreements over that in the past. I also don’t know why that isn’t an option in 2E, other than someone deciding that shouldn’t be a thing.
It gets more complicated: which takes precedent, immunity to B or vulnerability P? In what order does resist P and vulnerability B work? All that has to be hashed out and added to the rules so I can see WHY they wanted to cut corners with versatile.
I also find Versatile a weird design choice to try to represent that way bullets (especially the rounded bullets of early firearms) have all this kinetic energy, but can also pierce armour and flesh like the best piercing arrows. Damage types remain an abstraction, but I cannot imagine any ancient firearm being only Piercing OR Bludgeoning.
When I was designing my gun houserules for a campaign that launched only a few days before the playtest, I tried to bring this dual type idea into play with custom weapon traits adding bonus Piercing damages to the Bludgeoning base damage of guns :
Point Blank = The weapon gains a +1 circumstance bonus to damages under the noted range* (usually half the weapon's base range). This damage increases to 2 with Greater Striking Runes. This damage is always Piercing.
I also went for a Piercing splash damage for Scatter weapons.
I am wondering if that kind of bonus damages through traits could be a solution for the apparent problem with a weapon doing two damage types at a time. This way, it's no different from having some Fire damages added on the Slashing damages of your magic sword.
I'm all for simplicity, and overall I don't have much of an issue, but a couple things I found kinda weird:
1) most haw attacks are piercing only, even though bites have just as much tearing (slashing) as actual teeth piercing in, so guns being piercing pnpy1 isn't THAT big a deal
2) a lot of those "enemy sprays out harmful blood" require a piercing or slashing hit, which, when I ran a frost worm, the gun users sidestepped by just doing blugeoning. A clever move on their end, a bit of a flavor fail though that they can't spurt ice blood out of a bullet hole, but can through a dagger or arrow hole
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Holy typos batman, my phone hated me 2 hours ago!
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Holy typos batman, my phone hated me 2 hours ago!
LOL I know what you mean. Sometimes I type something on my tablet and I come back latter and it looks like a dyslexic pirate typed out the post. ;)
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The difference can easily be explained by where you're aiming at on the target and how you're firing, just like any other Versatile weapon, especially since damage type generally only matters for creatures with specific biological or magical differences from standard targets.I'd like to hear this one as I can't think of any good reason the same bullet will change damage types depending where you aim and/or fire. I want to hear more about this one: tell me exactly what you do differently to an Amoeba Swarm to deal B damage... Foe a weapon it quite easy to explain, you hit it with the blunt part of the weapon. So for a bullet, which part if the blunt side and which is the pointy? :P
There is no pointy side to a bullet. Even modern armor-piercing rounds still have rounded or concave tips, not sharp points (though some concave tipped bullets actually do deal piercing damage because they're designed to shatter into sharp fragments that tear up the target's insides), and we're working from a fantasy baseline with musket balls and other types of ammunition that predate the level of technology required to make such refined ammunition (and which are definitively round).
Bullets just deliver bludgeoning damage with such force and precision that the effect on soft tissue is to punch right through. Shoot someone in the knee, though, and their kneecap shattering like it's just been smashed with a pneumatic sledgehammer will be far more serious than the accompanying puncture wound(s). Similarly with most joints or "hard" areas of the body; the impact damage caused is going to be significantly worse than the piercing damage unless a vital organ or artery is struck. Anecdotally, I got to experience a lot of this second-hand last year after my brother was shot in a home invasion; the blood and tissue damage from the entry wound were shocking and upsetting, but the x-rays of what the bullet did when it bounced around inside his pelvis shattering one hip before damaging and lodging in the other were much more serious and horrifying.
The truest story of a bullet is that it deals bludgeoning damage to hard targets and piercing damage to soft targets, but there's no pre-existing framework for conveying that kind of story and differentiating between hard and soft targets in a quick and easy way. Making the bullet try to deal both types of damage simultaneously is a notable increase in complexity that can also spill over into creating meta-knowledge in a way that some tables won't find enjoyable.
If the trait is simplified to something like "This weapon deals either bludgeoning or piercing damage depending on which is more favorable, as determined by the GM", then we're offloading player cognitive load onto the GM.
If we go the other route and write something more complex like "Percussive: Whenever a bludgeoning weapon with this trait deals damage to a creature that has immunity to bludgeoning damage, resistance to bludgeoning damage greater than its resistance to piercing damage, or weakness to piercing damage, it deals piercing damage instead", then we're increasing the cognitive load for a simple Strike and also creating a metaknowledge situation that can devalue Recall Knowledge checks and other abilities that characters put resources into to suss out that kind of information.
If we make two different types of basic bullets, bludgeoning and piercing, then we're both ignoring the story of how a bullet actually works and making the simple act of using a firearm more complex than just using versatile. With versatile, the story can be that you're shooting a "hard" or "soft" part of the target's body, or that you're doing something to the ammunition that affects how it interacts with the target. If we have two different types of ammunition, then you're making the same choice as with versatile, but you also have to manage two additional resource pools (bludgeoning ammo and piercing ammo) and that resource management becomes more complex over time; do I buy piercing explosive ammunition or bludgeoning? I'm going to have the party wizard load some spells into my spellstrike ammo; how many piercing spellstrike rounds should I have and how many bludgeoning? How upsetting is it going to be if I chose wrong and had the wizard store the right spell on the wrong bullet?
Ultimately, all of those questions are why we went with the versatile trait for the playtest. Mechanically, it's almost identical to the in-game effect of having two different types of ammunition, but without the increasingly complex inventory management, and since it's an established mechanic it's not as burdensome to the cognitive load as a more complex trait that more realistically tells the story of the bullet.
Of course, we don't actually know which of those, if any, is the "right" answer, so that's what the playtest and survey are for!
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Like the thing about lead is that it's soft, so when it hits a hard surface it flattens. So you have a more aerodynamic projectile (it's roughly a sphere) that gains a larger surface area when it makes contact with something.
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Michael Sayre: I understand why you'd want to go that route and I can even understand why you might a bullet to deal both B and P damage. It's just that Versatile just seems odd and lead to weird situations.
Let me give you one that came up in a game I played in: a gun underwater. Take a gun once and shoot it underwater. You shoot it one way [deal P] and your range is 1/2. Somehow fire it to deal B and no matter what you try you always miss. 2 completely different outcomes when shooting the exact same bullet.
IMO, it'd be simpler to just use an abstraction and just let bullets deal P just like we just iron over the inconsistencies of bulk and where all those items we can wear go so we can reduce "cognitive load". As is, it runs into the same situation as modular where you're left scratching your head on how it works: what am I changing with the GUN that changes the damage as the trait affects the gun, not the ammo. IMO, I think it's worth a bit more "cognitive load" or the creation of a new trait.
As to 2 different ammos, IMO it's unneeded. I don't think that's needed: a bullet interacts closely enough with the world that the difference between it and other piercing ammo is minimal: an arrow that goes through a body isn't very different from a bullet doing so like a bullet shot at an iron door isn't much different from a bolt shot at it. With the other abstractions in the game, I don't think an in-depth analysis of ancient bullet mechanics is needed.
On the trait, if you wanted to make Percussive, I don't think it's have to be that complicated. "Weapons with this trait deal both bludgeoning and piercing damage. If the target has abilities that affect both types of damage, the player picks the order of operation. If the target is immune to only one of those types of damage, instead halve the damage."
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On the trait, if you wanted to make Percussive, I don't think it's have to be that complicated. "Weapons with this trait deal both bludgeoning and piercing damage. If the target has abilities that affect both types of damage, the player picks the order of operation. If the target is immune to only one of those types of damage, instead halve the damage."
That actually combines the flaws of almost every possible option I mentioned above.
No type of gun with that trait ever works underwater, letting the player determine the order of operation (without even getting into the fact that that's not defined game terminology and is insufficient for a game mechanic; the words "order of operation" never appear together in the CRB) means that they can force the GM to give them metaknowledge just by making an attack, it still increases the cognitive load of a basic Strike, and it makes guns extra useless against creatures with asymmetrical resistances like centipede swarms since resistances always use the highest applicable resistance value.
The few instances where a player choosing the order that abilities or events related to dealing a specific type of damage would be valuable are significantly outnumbered by the number of instances in which inheriting all the weaknesses of both damage types simultaneously is a huge nerf to the weapon.
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I still say let it deal piercing. Overthinking how to simulate real world bullets is in the same boat as arguing about bullets vs armor: its not worth the trouble given the number of abstractions present.
Realistically, any polearm would deal both its primary type and bludgeoning, if the goal is the simulate effectiveness versus bones.
You want to model tissue damage? Look at the soft tissue around an axe wound left by a 22 strength dwarf, with haste on them. The word chunky salsa comes to mind. Let alone the state of the bones underneath.
Want to talk about the unspent kinetic energy of a bullet causing it to bounce around inside a body? Well, first let's establish whether a magic bullet is more likely to punch right through or not. Then we can talk about whether the kinetic energy of a welsh longbow arrow being enough to split two inch thick planks of oak (a bullet would just ounch through) should allow them to count as slashing or bludgeoning.
It's getting lost in the weeds. A bullet is best approximated by piercing damage, simply from an ease of imagination standpoint.
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A bullet is best approximated by piercing damage, simply from an ease of imagination standpoint.
Make sure to say so in the survey! One person's common sense is the thing that another finds completely unreasonable, which is one of the reasons we've made sure to make this topic one of the questions we specifically ask about.