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So I am playing an Animal instinct Barbarian (Specifically using the antler weapon) and was looking at the assassin archetype. My GM is reading Mark for death as "Has to be both agile and finesse. Can be either a weapon or unarmed." while I am reading it as "An Agile and Finessse weapon, or Unarmed" I was wondering if there was either any official ruling on something like that or just what others insights to wording would be. Cheers!
Exact text from AoN is “ Your agile and finesse weapons and unarmed attacks gain the backstabber and deadly d6 weapon traits when you're attacking your mark.”
I can see several ways of reading that but I would read it as you do.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Huh.
That is written differently from both Sneak Attack and Precise Strike, both of which specify agile and finesse weapons and agile and finesse unarmed attacks. So it looks like you're right RAW.
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Different wording elsewhere in the rules doesn't mean that two abilities work differently.Let's keep in mind that the entirety of all of the PF2 books weren't written by one person, nor does every Paizo employee reference everywhere in the rules with a similar effect to determine how it's been written in the past and follow that wording to a T.
With that in mind I'd like to throw out this evidence from completely separate abilities and look simply at Mark for Death. Doing that the answer is, unfortunately, ambiguous. There are two perfectly valid readings in the English language, both of which work in the context of the sentence depending on how you group the words together:
1. Your [agile and finesse] [weapons and unarmed attacks] gain...
2. Your [agile and finesse weapons] and [unarmed attacks] gain...
Technically I think if #2 was correct then there's supposed to be a comma after "weapons", but I'm not 100% sure about that, and even if that was the case I wouldn't want to make a ruling based on the idea that the writers couldn't have possibly missed a comma. Regardless, #1 (how the GM ruled it) is a valid reading. As to whether that's what was intended or not I have no idea, but purely from the perspective of trying to determine if one of you is right or wrong by RAW I don't think you have a leg to stand on, and it's just going to have to be worked out and ruled on via conversation.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why would the ability limit itself with regard to weapons, pretty much capping them at 1d8, while adding to all unarmed attacks, which can go up to 1d12?
That goes against basic design principles, both the imbalance and adding damage to the top-tier damage weapons.
Also, the finagling over the language's precision makes little sense when PF2's written in a casual style and the simplest reading applies the descriptors to both weapons and unarmed attacks. As noted above, Paizo would've had to add a comma if they'd intended to make unarmed attacks a distinct exception.
Considering that Backstabber and Deadly D6 is more for lower-damaging attacks, which Agile and/or Finesse weapons cap out at D6 (D8 for two-hand), I'm inclined to agree that all weapons and unarmed attacks should have both traits for it to apply.
It would be no different than, for example, affecting an enemy with resistances.