I doubt the rules will ever officially cover such corner cases, as PF2 plays a little looser since Paizo's learned that the efforts are not worth the gains (and/or that empowering GMs' adjudication makes for better gameplay & community development). Rules parsing becomes a rabbit hole.
That said, I'd rule that mechanically the highest fire damage is determined before looking at whether it bypasses resistance or not.
That fits the straightforward nature of PF2's design paradigm.
If it made a notable difference, like determining if a boss about to kill a PC would fall or not, then I might bother to determine otherwise, since the meta seems to suggest both effects occur, they just don't stack.
So yes to either way. :)
Persistent Damage is a condition and you can only ever "have" Persistent Damage (whatever type) XdX once.
For my part, when determining when an instance of Persistent Damage will deal "more" damage, I would count any resistance bypass handed out by the effect that caused the bypass, and default to that one. This gets messy in cases where you have a lower die size that may bypass resistance. In that corner case I'd go with whatever you know will deal more damage as a GM. If the opponent has Fire Resistance 5, pick the 1d6 with resist bypass over the 1d10 without, as it has the potential to deal 6 vs. the d10 only being able to deal a maximum of 5. If no fire resist is present, then apply the d10.
So in the example the OP posted, I would have let the Greater Rune override the Incendiary Aura, meaning the monster should have taken 9 damage (since that was the first die rolled) and the second should not have been rolled imo.
At least that is my 2cp.
There is no guidance to my knowledge, but in an interest of helping players I would likely do what you did. Roll each instance (assuming only 2 or 3) of each damage type and apply resistance as appropriate. Whichever instance does the most damage of that type, is the one that gets applied.
This could mean having many ticks of the same damage type is valuable, as the chance that you roll a higher damage increases because of more rolls.
Is this supported by the rules? Probably not, but players will probably like it.
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I could be wrong but doesn't this rule cover the described scenario?
If you would gain more than one persistent damage condition with the same damage type, the higher amount of damage overrides the lower amount.
The fighter's strike's fire damage triggers incendiary aura so you would roll the fighter's persistent fire first from the crit. The monster is now 'Persistent Fire - Fighter's Roll.' Then roll the incendiary aura persistent fire and if the value is higher it would override the fighter's persistent fire value.
Technically the fire resistance does not apply until the monster actually takes damage on their turn. Persistent X dmg functions more as a condition since it doesn't deal any damage on application. This is relevant because if you were to somehow circumvent or strip the resistance they would take the full value of the persistent damage if they failed the recovery roll at the end of their turn.
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Actually rolling twice and choosing the higher damage will be popular with players because it affords a pretty big advantage.
For instance, let's say you were allowed to choose 1d6 damage or 1d4 damage. If you rolled both, then chose, you'd end up choosing 1d4 damage sometimes, and that does not seem in line with RAI.
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Forcing a decision by mathematical calculation is also problematic.
For instance, between 1d6 and 4, mathematically 4 is higher on average, but if something had resistance 5, you'd choose 1d6.
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It seems most useful to just let the players decide - before the roll. Players can decide using whatever criteria they want.
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By virtue of knowing the monster's resistances, you could also always just choose which is better according to circumstances. 4 damage is better on average than d6, but to a monster with resist 5, 4 is equivalent to 0 where d6 is at least a chance of 1 so for that monster it IS the higher damage
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Why would you not roll all the dice and then take the highest actual value? This would seem to be in line with the rules that you take the highest damage (not the highest die, not the highest potential damage)
For me, you wouldn't roll all the dice because the character can't ever have more than one instance of the same type of persistent damage at the same time.
You can't be on fire twice in other words. You (the GM) have to decide what kind of on fire the character is. That's why I lean towards the GM using their best judgment on which amount to use instead of rolling extra dice.
Yeah, the GM should use their best judgement on what will be most effective.
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Would you do that if a character had two instances of 1d6 persistent fire damage? No.
You should not be rolling twice and taking the highest, that increases the damage you are taking by a significant amount.
Would you do that if a character had two instances of 1d6 persistent fire damage? No.
You should not be rolling twice and taking the highest, that increases the damage you are taking by a significant amount.
If I am the GM that's exactly what I'd do (as this doesn't have a clear correct answer) and I don't think it's a "significant" amount.
In your comparison of rolling 1d6 twice your still bounded to a maximum of 6. Is it better for the players? Sure. Is the average damage increasing slightly going to be a significant power increase? No.
The complexity of the issue, and why it will require some GM discretion is because there isn't consistency about what persistent damage looks like. Some abilities give flat numbers, some give dice, some give multiple dice and some dice with flat bonuses. IF all persistent damage was always in the form of a damage die (d2, d4, d6, etc) then you would just use the one source of persistent damage with the highest die. But there is not a clear rules-based arbitration about how to value potential vs static value, so the GM is going to have to decide if 3 flat persistent fire damage is the greater value than a D6 persistent fire damage (even though you could try to go by averages, that can get a little more tricky to determine than is necessary at higher levels with more numbers) and then situations with resistance really do completely shift that, and there are not set rules about how to value it.
I think the best rule is choose what will be fun for the people at your table and be consistent about what choice you make after you make it, or at least, only make changes after the decision based upon collective decision making. For example if you decide to roll both and use the highest when a player throws a bomb at lower levels, and then everyone realizes at level 10 that having enemies get to roll both and pick the higher results in players taking significantly more persistent damage than the game intends, then discuss it with your party so that the rules change makes sense to everyone and when it doesn't favor the players in the future, they won't feel bad about why, remembering that it nearly killed their character.
Would you do that if a character had two instances of 1d6 persistent fire damage? No.
You should not be rolling twice and taking the highest, that increases the damage you are taking by a significant amount.
If I am the GM that's exactly what I'd do (as this doesn't have a clear correct answer) and I don't think it's a "significant" amount.
In your comparison of rolling 1d6 twice your still bounded to a maximum of 6. Is it better for the players? Sure. Is the average damage increasing slightly going to be a significant power increase? No.
But there is a clear cut answer in that particular case, ie 2 instances of 1d6 of the same type of Persistent Damage.
Multiple Persistent Damage Conditions
You can be simultaneously affected by multiple persistent damage conditions so long as they have different damage types. If you would gain more than one persistent damage condition with the same damage type, the higher amount of damage overrides the lower amount. The damage you take from persistent damage occurs all at once, so if something triggers when you take damage, it triggers only once; for example, if you're dying with several types of persistent damage, the persistent damage increases your dying condition only once.
If there is confusion as to what "overrides" means, we can look at the general rules for conditions for guidance.
You can have a given condition only once at a time. If an effect would impose a condition you already have, you now have that condition for the longer of the two durations. The shorter-duration condition effectively ends, though other conditions caused by the original, shorter-duration effect might continue.
For example, let’s say you have been hit by a monster that drains your vitality; your wound causes you to be enfeebled 2 and flat-footed until the end of the monster’s next turn. Before the end of that creature’s next turn, a trap poisons you, making you enfeebled 2 for 1 minute. In this case, the enfeebled 2 that lasts for 1 minute replaces the enfeebled 2 from the monster, so you would be enfeebled 2 for the longer duration. You would remain flat-footed, since nothing replaced that condition, and it still lasts only until the end of the monster’s next turn.
Any ability that removes a condition removes it entirely, no matter what its condition value is or how many times you’ve been affected by it. In the example above, a spell that removes the enfeebled condition from you would remove it entirely—the spell wouldn’t need to remove it twice.
Conditions with different values are considered different conditions. If you’re affected by a condition with a value multiple times, you apply only the highest value, although you might have to track both durations if one has a lower value but lasts longer. For example, if you had a slowed 2 condition that lasts 1 round and a slowed 1 condition that lasts for 6 rounds, you’d be slowed 2 for the first round, and then you’d change to slowed 1 for the remaining 5 rounds of the second effect’s duration. If something reduces the condition value, it reduces it for all conditions of that name affecting you. For instance, in this example above, if something reduced your slowed value by 1, it would reduce the first condition from the example to slowed 1 and reduce the second to slowed 0, removing it.
So no, you don't roll both dice then apply the highest. This line of thinking leads to a ridiculous situation where a creature or character has been lit on fire 4 or 5 times, and you roll 4 or 5 dX's and apply the highest.
Instead just roll the highest "die" or apply the highest flat number.
The only quibble is with things like the Greater Flaming Rune that ignores resistance or certain abilities that cause bleed that may mess with the recovery DC. In those corner cases, you should make the call as the GM which version of the condition would be "worse" and apply that.
Would you do that if a character had two instances of 1d6 persistent fire damage? No.
You should not be rolling twice and taking the highest, that increases the damage you are taking by a significant amount.
If I am the GM that's exactly what I'd do (as this doesn't have a clear correct answer) and I don't think it's a "significant" amount.
In your comparison of rolling 1d6 twice your still bounded to a maximum of 6. Is it better for the players? Sure. Is the average damage increasing slightly going to be a significant power increase? No.
Talking about single die rolls, the damage increase you get by rolling two instances and taking the highest one is 25% with a d4, and goes up to a bit more than 30% as you increase the die size. I think the hard cap is 1/3 with an infinite-sized die, but I'm rusty on mathematical series.
I'm not going to check what happens with multiple dice, but 25-30% is a significant increase.Anyway, I guess the reason because rules say not to do like that is because it can become cumbersome. But if your table likes this way of handling such situations, why not? It does makes sense, somehow.
Talking about single die rolls, the damage increase you get by rolling two instances and taking the highest one is 25% with a d4, and goes up to a bit more than 30% as you increase the die size. I think the hard cap is 1/3 with an infinite-sized die, but I'm rusty on mathematical series.
I'm not going to check what happens with multiple dice, but 25-30% is a significant increase.Anyway, I guess the reason because rules say not to do like that is because it can become cumbersome. But if your table likes this way of handling such situations, why not? It does makes sense, somehow.
I fail to see the issue when the total damage still cannot exceed the die. Based on the written rule that the highest damage is what gets thru, then it seems applying multiple sources of persistent damage to insure the highest value of damage is done is appropriate and consistent to rules. This is doubly an appropriate application of the rules if the bad guys can do it too.
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Would you do that if a character had two instances of 1d6 persistent fire damage? No.
You should not be rolling twice and taking the highest, that increases the damage you are taking by a significant amount.
If I am the GM that's exactly what I'd do (as this doesn't have a clear correct answer) and I don't think it's a "significant" amount.
In your comparison of rolling 1d6 twice your still bounded to a maximum of 6. Is it better for the players? Sure. Is the average damage increasing slightly going to be a significant power increase? No.
Talking about single die rolls, the damage increase you get by rolling two instances and taking the highest one is 25% with a d4, and goes up to a bit more than 30% as you increase the die size. I think the hard cap is 1/3 with an infinite-sized die, but I'm rusty on mathematical series.
I'm not going to check what happens with multiple dice, but 25-30% is a significant increase.Anyway, I guess the reason because rules say not to do like that is because it can become cumbersome. But if your table likes this way of handling such situations, why not? It does makes sense, somehow.
The rules don't say to not roll both. The rules say:
"If you would gain more than one persistent damage condition with the same damage type, the higher amount of damage overrides the lower amount."
You can't know the amount of damage unless you roll the dice. The die size is not what determines whether persistent damage is higher or not, the result of the die roll is.
I don't disagree, it can be read both ways. And there are valid arguments to support both interpretations.
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I don't think it can logically be read both ways. Override is override. You can only have one instance of persistent damage of a given type. You can't have Persistent Damage (fire) 1d6 and Persistent Damage (fire) 1d10. You can only have the higher of the two.
Otherwise you end up having to roll more and more die until the chances of you rolling maximum damage each and every round becomes greater and greater, since you use the highest amount rolled. Consider that there are feats like Sticky Bomb, that don't trigger on a critical hit, but deal persistent damage on a regular hit. Suddenly you are having to keep track of all of those individual persistent damage instances (which deal damage equal to the damage of the bomb, so multiple dice in many cases) but you also combine them with whatever persistent damage the bomb may do.
Or is it just simpler to "keep" whatever the largest amount of damage happens to be, and discard the rest?
I agree that it isn't that clear, which is why it is so much more important to make sure everyone playing at your table knows how it is being run, as it can change the teams dynamics, and even more importantly, how prepared you need to be to remove persistent damage, as one way makes persistent damage about 20+% more dangerous, and if we have learned anything from plaguestone, it is that persistent damage is far more dangerous to PCs than it is an exploitable mechanic for them.
I don't think it can logically be read both ways. Override is override. You can only have one instance of persistent damage of a given type. You can't have Persistent Damage (fire) 1d6 and Persistent Damage (fire) 1d10. You can only have the higher of the two.
Otherwise you end up having to roll more and more die until the chances of you rolling maximum damage each and every round becomes greater and greater, since you use the highest amount rolled. Consider that there are feats like Sticky Bomb, that don't trigger on a critical hit, but deal persistent damage on a regular hit. Suddenly you are having to keep track of all of those individual persistent damage instances (which deal damage equal to the damage of the bomb, so multiple dice in many cases) but you also combine them with whatever persistent damage the bomb may do.
Or is it just simpler to "keep" whatever the largest amount of damage happens to be, and discard the rest?
We are not disagreeing about "override." The disagreement is in what is damage. Is damage, the dice type the actual damage or is the result of the dice the actual damage? You would be hard pressed to say that you do "1d10" damage to a monster and then when the GM asks what you got as damage so they can apply it to the hit points say "the damage is 1d10, the result of the roll is not the damage."
Also, we are not saying to reroll any dice, rather we are saying if you have multiple sources of persistent, you roll and take the highest
Hey Jim, how much damage does a longsword do? Oh, a d8? Gotcha.
Cool, so we have established that the damage done by an effect is first expressed as either a dice expression or a flat number.
And this whole conversation is only predicated on your inability to read the first sentence of "Multiple Persistent Damage Conditions."
You can be simultaneously affected by multiple persistent damage conditions so long as they have different damage types.
So if you can only be affected by 1 of each type of persistent damage condition at a time, why are you rolling for more than 1?
I don't think it can logically be read both ways. Override is override. You can only have one instance of persistent damage of a given type. You can't have Persistent Damage (fire) 1d6 and Persistent Damage (fire) 1d10. You can only have the higher of the two.
Otherwise you end up having to roll more and more die until the chances of you rolling maximum damage each and every round becomes greater and greater, since you use the highest amount rolled. Consider that there are feats like Sticky Bomb, that don't trigger on a critical hit, but deal persistent damage on a regular hit. Suddenly you are having to keep track of all of those individual persistent damage instances (which deal damage equal to the damage of the bomb, so multiple dice in many cases) but you also combine them with whatever persistent damage the bomb may do.
Or is it just simpler to "keep" whatever the largest amount of damage happens to be, and discard the rest?
We are not disagreeing about "override." The disagreement is in what is damage. Is damage, the dice type the actual damage or is the result of the dice the actual damage? You would be hard pressed to say that you do "1d10" damage to a monster and then when the GM asks what you got as damage so they can apply it to the hit points say "the damage is 1d10, the result of the roll is not the damage."
Also, we are not saying to reroll any dice, rather we are saying if you have multiple sources of persistent, you roll and take the highest
That may seem sound enough when the sources of persistent damage have variable die sized. What about when applying the same die of the same source? If a creature has two effects that apply d6 bleed, how do you determine the larger damage?
Incorrect info so removed
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I don't think you understand how 1d6 persistent fire damage works. It's not dealing 1d6 per round you roll 1d6 on application and get a result 'X' at that point the condition Persistent Damage 'X' is applied to the monster, it then applies X persistent damage every round thereafter. There's no need to roll dice every round; X never changes after being applied.
Therefore when the fighter crits the monster you roll for the value of their persistent fire damage, X, and apply that value to the monster. The monster is now persistent fire damage X. Following that you roll for the Oracle and get persistent fire damage Y. If Y is higher than X it is applied to the monster, if not X remains in place. You are now done rolling for this entire scenario.
Though I don't know about stacking the rules seem to indicate rolling any persistent damage anew each round.
Persistent damage comes from effects like acid, being on fire, or many other situations. It appears as “X persistent [type] damage,” where “X” is the amount of damage dealt and “[type]” is the damage type. Instead of taking persistent damage immediately, you take it at the end of each of your turns as long as you have the condition, rolling any damage dice anew each time. After you take persistent damage, roll a DC 15 flat check to see if you recover from the persistent damage. If you succeed, the condition ends.
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I don't think you understand how 1d6 persistent fire damage works. It's not dealing 1d6 per round you roll 1d6 on application and get a result 'X' at that point the condition Persistent Damage 'X' is applied to the monster, it then applies X persistent damage every round thereafter. There's no need to roll dice every round; X never changes after being applied.
I think that perhaps you might want to pull back on the throttle a little bit because you're wrong about this.
Persistent Damage is explicitly rerolled every turn.
"Persistent damage comes from effects like acid, being on fire, or many other situations. It appears as “X persistent [type] damage,” where “X” is the amount of damage dealt and “[type]” is the damage type. Instead of taking persistent damage immediately, you take it at the end of each of your turns as long as you have the condition, rolling any damage dice anew each time."
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I don't think you understand how 1d6 persistent fire damage works. It's not dealing 1d6 per round you roll 1d6 on application and get a result 'X' at that point the condition Persistent Damage 'X' is applied to the monster, it then applies X persistent damage every round thereafter. There's no need to roll dice every round; X never changes after being applied.
Therefore when the fighter crits the monster you roll for the value of their persistent fire damage, X, and apply that value to the monster. The monster is now persistent fire damage X. Following that you roll for the Oracle and get persistent fire damage Y. If Y is higher than X it is applied to the monster, if not X remains in place. You are now done rolling for this entire scenario.
Though I don't know about stacking the rules seem to indicate rolling any persistent damage anew each round.
Persistent damage comes from effects like acid, being on fire, or many other situations. It appears as “X persistent [type] damage,” where “X” is the amount of damage dealt and “[type]” is the damage type. [b]Instead of taking persistent damage immediately, you take it at the end of each of your turns as long as you have the condition, rolling any damage dice anew each time.[b] After you take persistent damage, roll a DC 15 flat check to see if you recover from the persistent damage. If you succeed, the condition ends.
I stand corrected
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I don't think you understand how 1d6 persistent fire damage works. It's not dealing 1d6 per round you roll 1d6 on application and get a result 'X' at that point the condition Persistent Damage 'X' is applied to the monster, it then applies X persistent damage every round thereafter. There's no need to roll dice every round; X never changes after being applied.I think that perhaps you might want to pull back on the throttle a little bit because you're wrong about this.
Persistent Damage is explicitly rerolled every turn.
"Persistent damage comes from effects like acid, being on fire, or many other situations. It appears as “X persistent [type] damage,” where “X” is the amount of damage dealt and “[type]” is the damage type. Instead of taking persistent damage immediately, you take it at the end of each of your turns as long as you have the condition, rolling any damage dice anew each time."
When I'm wrong I'm wrong. Thanks for pointing that out.
A longsword deals a d8 of damage, but that specific longsword attack did 6 damage.
The first usage is colloquial in my opinion, even if common. Damage has to be some finite number, not a die size.
Saying I do d8 damage with an attack is not a damage number but a damage variable. The actual damage is the result of the roll (as well as any relevant modifiers of course). One cannot say “I do 4 damage with a longsword” unless that is the final result of the roll. A die value cannot be the damage itself else there could be no hit point totals. HP would have to be written as 10d8 for a d8 to directly remove value.
When someone states that they do d8 damage with an attack, it is implicit that the final damage can be anywhere from 1-8. The die isn’t damage, the result of the die is.
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This is the root of why there is confusion and disagreement about how to handle multiple instances of persistent damage when “the most” present damage is an ever changing metric. Personally I thin it is fair to say 1d6 is probably more than 1d4 persistent damage, but is 1d6 more than 4 persistent damage? What about if the creature resists 2 of that Damage type? There are mathematical answers to address those probabilities, but just deciding as a table how you want to handle it for the sake of fun is probably better than fighting over the math of of a casual sentence that is not precise enough to build a proof around.
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"If you would gain more than one persistent damage condition with the same damage type, the higher amount of damage overrides the lower amount."When the rules on p621 CRB state "... higher amount of damage ..." that is explicit in having to roll the dice. The ONLY way to know the damage is to roll the die.
If you want to be textualists about it, you should parse the entire sentence, not the back half only.
The sentence is conditional, not imperative. It doesn't say, "you have more than one persistent damage conditions," it says "if you would gain more than one persistent damage condition".
You can't have two persistent damage conditions with the same damage type.If you would ... the higher one applies, not both.
The question is about how you determine which one is "higher" in the conditional sense (without rolling). You can't roll and take the one that turns out to be higher - then you're applying both persistent damages and choosing one ex post facto.
"If you would gain more than one persistent damage condition with the same damage type, the higher amount of damage overrides the lower amount."When the rules on p621 CRB state "... higher amount of damage ..." that is explicit in having to roll the dice. The ONLY way to know the damage is to roll the die.If you want to be textualists about it, you should parse the entire sentence, not the back half only.
The sentence is conditional, not imperative. It doesn't say, "you have more than one persistent damage conditions," it says "if you would gain more than one persistent damage condition".
You can't have two persistent damage conditions with the same damage type.If you would ... the higher one applies, not both.
The question is about how you determine which one is "higher" in the conditional sense (without rolling). You can't roll and take the one that turns out to be higher - then you're applying both persistent damages and choosing one ex post facto.
What’s more damage? 4 persistent from acid splash or d6 from acid arrow?
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This is how I have run persistent damage at my table - you let me know whether you agree/disagree and why.
1d6 Persistent Fire Damage
1d6 Persistent Fire Damage
-> Roll 1d6 once
1d6 Persistent Fire Damage
1d10 Persistent Fire Damage
-> Roll 1d10
2d6 + 5 Persistent Fire Damage
1d12 + 5 Persistent Fire Damage
-> Roll 2d6 + 5
1d6 Persistent Fire Damage
1d6 Persistent Acid Damage
-> Roll 1d6 twice, applying their results separately
Seems pretty easy and intuitive to me.
This is pretty interesting. Haven't actually hit this situation in play. Loads of cases of "target with persistent fire now gains persistent bleed or electricity or whatever." But I don't think we've had a case of X persistent being added to X persistent when it wasn't clear which took precedence.
I think I would simply handle it as higher average. I would not take resistance into account at all as I see no rules support for that decision.
I can't tell from Filthy Lucre's example whether those decisions are being made at the point when the new source of persistent damage is coming into play, or at the end of the turn. But I believe the rules mean that if a target that already has fire persistent damage on it gains another source, you decide then and there which one carries forward, then you roll for damage at the end of the target's turn.
If I have both a 1d6 and 1d4 I would roll both dice and take the single die that had the highest damage. In other words. You are taking the highest of all the possible instead of combining. Thus, if the d4 gave a result of 4 and the d6 gave a result of 2 you would take the 4 result
To roll both 1d6 and 1d4 would necessitate that the target be under 1d6 persistent X damage and 1d4 persistent X damage. RAW, that is not possible. It is either one or the other.
"If you would gain more than one persistent damage condition with the same damage type, the higher amount of damage overrides the lower amount."When the rules on p621 CRB state "... higher amount of damage ..." that is explicit in having to roll the dice. The ONLY way to know the damage is to roll the die.If you want to be textualists about it, you should parse the entire sentence, not the back half only.
The sentence is conditional, not imperative. It doesn't say, "you have more than one persistent damage conditions," it says "if you would gain more than one persistent damage condition".
You can't have two persistent damage conditions with the same damage type.If you would ... the higher one applies, not both.
The question is about how you determine which one is "higher" in the conditional sense (without rolling). You can't roll and take the one that turns out to be higher - then you're applying both persistent damages and choosing one ex post facto.
If you want to definitively know the right answer, Watery Soup's post clearly demonstrates it:
If you have to go to this length to break down the logic of the rules applied to the scenario, Paizo obviously didn't write it well enough to cover the scenario.
The best solution for this deadlock of fixed and rolled damage is use the average damage of the dice rolled. It's requires some math, but is not hard to calc.
If you have 2 persistence dmg of same kind (bleed for exemple), one with 4 dmg and other with 1d6 dmg, just take the avg of dice and compare:
Avg dmg formula: (Max DMG - Min DMG)/2 + Min DMG.
So d6 avg formula = (6 - 1) / 2 + 1 = 5 / 2 + 1 = 2,5 + 1 = 3,5
3,5 is lower than 4, so use 4 as persistence damage.
I think I would simply handle it as higher average. I would not take resistance into account at all as I see no rules support for that decision.
Agree, as Watery Soup pointed, the persistence damage rules say that big damage is choosed when the conditions is applied - "if you would gain more than one persistent damage condition" - so this is before any resistance ou weakness or even the damage roll, you have to chose the bigest in the moment you receive the new condition.
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The problem with averages comes when resistance is involved.
Using 1d6 vs 4, obviously 4 is higher than the average of 1d6 (3.5)
When you add 5 resistance though, 1d6 is higher because it can do damage. That isn’t a complex resistance calculation but when you start getting to 1d12 vs 2d6 against resistance then it’s taking a while.
I’d say in a case where it’s unclear, the creature who applied the damages chooses which one to keep.
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I really don’t think there is much value in trying to prove one way or another, but I do think that easy of use in play and number tracking are legitimate things to keep in mind. Does tracking that a character is under 2 or 3 effects that all do the same damage type feel worth while to your table? Especially when it might apply to 2 or 3 characters in the encounter? For me, the answer is no. Remembering numbers multiple numbers that won’t apply, and then adding rolls to track which ones are still in effect is just extra work.
Any way you do it will also have a mechanical impact on how powerful persistent damage is, which usually is going to hurt players more than help them unless you party has gone all in on persistent damage.
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I'm no statistician, I only dabble on the weekends. So I'll let some fine posters over on Stack Exchange explain a bit better why rolling more dice and taking only the highest skew the odds. The post, paying close attention to the top poster.
Now it's been years since I took statistics or any higher math, but it boils down to the following: The average on 2d6 take the highest becomes 4.47, or a smidge under 1 over the actual average on 1d6, which is 3.5.
Again, I'm no expert, but it doesn't take an expert to understand that rolling multiple dice expressions and only taking the highest creates a trend of a higher overall outcome over time.
It doesn't matter that you may be rolling different dice, the fact remains that the more different instances you roll, the higher the overall outcome will be on average.
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The textual side of things reads as ambiguous to me, but I lean closer towards rolling twice. In more practical terms I think I'd only ever use average damage to decide.
The problem there, at least from a prescriptive perspective, is that I don't think tables should be expected to know how to calculate dice averages, even if it's relatively easy. I don't think there's anything in the CRB that explains how to do this (although I'm pretty sure the GMG does when explaining how to build custom enemies). There's also some ambiguity in terms of comparing expressions like 1d4+3 and 1d10, or 3d4 and 1d12+1; this type of thing won't come up very often, but edge cases are how this thread came to be to begin with. I think in such cases I'd favor the most recent condition applied, or allow the player inflicting the most recent condition to choose.
edit: Beowulf, I think your mistake here is assuming that others are arguing from a point of balance. The "roll twice take highest" proponents seem to be basing it more on the text, which is fine in forums such as these, but separate from arguments about fairness or practicality, which are also fine (but still separate).
Fair dues. But beyond balance, there is the text itself to guide us on matters like this.
Sometimes a rule could be interpreted multiple ways. If one version is too good to be true, it probably is. If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed.
I would say that skewing the odds on a damage roll like Persistent damage by close to or greater than 30% should be considered, "too good to be true".
Assuming that there are equally valid points backing up either method we can clearly see that one method takes extra time and skews the odds while the other speeds up the game and maintains the odds as set by the rules.
The choice should be pretty clear.