Are there any rules or guides given to a GM in any of the Pathfinder 2e books as to what the GM should inform players of in regards to damage. For example, a player rolls damage and the GM records it. What do the players know about what just happened? Could they tell if the creature was resistant or has a weakness based on dealing the damage. Can the player tell if the creature is uninjured or near death? Or are these just nebulous ideas left the the GM to determine?
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I haven't seen any guidelines in the nook yet, but I _have_ developed the habit of telling players the actual amount of damage from watching developers play and run. ie "That's seven damage? And you're slashing with your sword? Okay, you deal twelve slashing damage to the zombie, actually." Or in the case of a skeleton "the attack only deals two damage"
Usually while narrating why cutting into zombie flesh works better and into bone works less. No particular reason to do it this way, but hearing the large numbers sometimes gets people hype
I haven't seen any guidelines in the nook yet, but I _have_ developed the habit of telling players the actual amount of damage from watching developers play and run. ie "That's seven damage? And you're slashing with your sword? Okay, you deal twelve slashing damage to the zombie, actually." Or in the case of a skeleton "the attack only deals two damage"
Usually while narrating why cutting into zombie flesh works better and into bone works less. No particular reason to do it this way, but hearing the large numbers sometimes gets people hype
Yep. Also, while the characters won't know how many hit points an opponent has, they should be able to see when a creature is physically damaged, or a cut doesn't go as deep as expected, or when it looks like it is almost dead. In virtual play, I usually display an HP bar over enemy tokens that don't show numbers but do deplete.
Part of why his works is because PF2 is better balanced and I don't have to decide a creature should have twice as many hit points on the fly anymore.
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No rules given and very few guidelines. PF1 specifically said that you should tell the players when an attack deals less damage (DR) than you might expect, PF2 doesn't have that encouragement.
However, I think you still should do it. The monster creation guidelines in the GMG do advise you to avoid "internal" abilities that just move numbers around in ways the players have no sight on or real interaction with. Monster abilities should be close to the surface and when a monster uses an ability, even a passive one like a resistance, that should be caught on camera.
You don't have to give exact numbers but it's good to give impressions. "Slashing seems to work really well on the zombie" for example, or "you're stabbing the skeleton with your rapier but piercing it doesn't seem to work well."
It isn't really necessary to make this difficult to notice. The player has already paid for it - by doing stuff, spending actions.
If something is working better than normal, or worse than normal, just say that. Don't be worried that you're stealing the thunder of the Recall Knowledge options. If stabbing skeletons doesn't work, that's actually a great prompt for the PCs to start attempting RK checks to discover a better attack. RK as not the first thing people do, but the second thing after it turns out the first thing doesn't work well? That's totally fine.
As a GM always ask yourself "does it really serve a purpose to keep X secret from the players"? We have a bit of an instinct to keep even more stuff secret than is really needed, and also more than makes sense.
Imagine that the players run into some zombies and never figure out that slashing is better, because you were really cagey with information. Versus an encounter where the players did figure it out and the martials went chainsaw-happy through the battlefield with any slashing weapons they could find. Isn't the second scene going to be much more fun?
Don't be too stingy with information.
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I always tell characters if something did more or less damage than expected, but have recently decided not to give the exact amount. So players know a zombie has weakness slashing but not 3 or 5 or 10.
Admittedly, this is a solution to a problem I kind of brought on myself: I usually track enemy damage in the open (this one is -26 hp and that one is -34 hp) so the exact numbers make it too easy to metagame down to the hit point.
GMs that don't openly track damage may not find it as big a problem.
The reason I brought it up that one of the VTT contributors is doing a rewrite on damage display and I suggested some indicator to show reduced or increase damage for resistance and weakness, but without specifying actual values. But he said it's not in the PF2 books so it won't be done that way (as default).
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As others have said, no official rules, but there is plenty of examples in YouTube, Twitch, etc. how other GMs work their magic and you can always participate in org play for exposure to a lot of different GMing styles.
Personally, it can be tricky to share this type of information without stepping on the toes of the Recall Knowledge activities. Experienced combatants should have a fairly good idea when they are inflicting more/less damage than they are used to, but I stop short of being too technical. Merely saying something like "that attack seemed to be particularly effective" or "hmmm, you are disappointed how little effect that had against the creature's tough carapace" is generally enough to give them something to work with, and it often encourages my players to commit and action to recalling knowledge to get clarity on the innuendo and to gain even more info. Depending on circumstances, I may ask the character to make a perception check to see if they notice how effective their attack was. That often depends on how unusual the creature is or if they have never encountered anything even similar before.
I'd keep it diagetic, like others have suggested. Describe what the PC sees, feels, hears, etc. regarding whether an attack was effective, how hurt an enemy appears, if a subtle spell worked as intended, etc.
The big ones I use are when an enemy is under 50% HP, I'll describe them as "bloodied" or something similar.
I had a player roll a crit fail to ID skeletons and I inverted the answer so blunt did less, but other weapons did better. The veteran players knew the truth and laughed and stuck to using their typical weapons.
The first hit was slashing, but a crit that demolished the skeleton. One weasel wanted that to be evidence that slashing worked poorly.
I made an exception here that no, it hadn't been obvious the slashing weapon did less damage. Slashing seemed downright OP!
I'd make other exceptions depending on the creature or context, but for the most part we're talking well-trained combatants fighting creatures made of or covered by mundane materials. And for the majority of their adventuring career, like when uncommon materials/physiology become common, PCs will have superior even superhuman senses (et al), as well as hundreds of dead in their wake to have learned from.
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Since in PF2 broad damage resistance isn't quite as common in PF1, it's entirely possible that your weapons will just work on a monster. And Recall Knowledge costs an action, so it's not something you will do automatically at the start of combat, because you might need that action for something else, especially in the first round.
But actually those two things work quite well together: "hey, my weapon doesn't seem to be working as well as I'd hoped, time to do some Recall Knowledge to find a better method". By doing RK on maybe the second round of combat, you have an idea which information is the most important to gain.