How does deadly simplicity interact with weapons that have a 2-hand damage die?

[Themetricsystem]

Everyone arguing over "trait and damage die budgets" are missing the point by a mile.
This has nothing to do with trying to scry the intent of the designers and balance here, this is a very simple rules question and relates to the mechanical and real-world casual definition of what "increasing" something means, generally speaking, it means when a value is changed to be greater that original number.

I'll just ask again: Do you believe that 8 is a higher number than 6?

If yes, then the Two-Hand trait applies an increase in the written damage dice and it is an effect that cannot ever stack with any other increases.

If no, Please take 7 minutes to learn from this link.

[Cordell Kintner]

Themetricsystem wrote:

Everyone arguing over "trait and damage die budgets" are missing the point by a mile.

This has nothing to do with trying to scry the intent of the designers and balance here, this is a very simple rules question and relates to the mechanical and real-world casual definition of what "increasing" something means, generally speaking, it means when a value is changed to be greater that original number.

I'll just ask again: Do you believe that 8 is a higher number than 6?

If yes, then the Two-Hand trait applies an increase in the written damage dice and it is an effect that cannot ever stack with any other increases.

If no, Please take 7 minutes to learn from this link.

This has also been the point I'm trying to make. I really don't care if it works or not, I want to clarify the rule so there's no issues in the future. There may be other feats or classes that increase damage die, and that will have to interact with the two-hand trait in the same way.

Theoretically, if there's a new Dedication that allows you to increase the damage die of any specific weapon you want, what would happen to a Katana? Is it fair for a Katana to be a d12 weapon, essentially making the Bastard Sword obsolete?

We want future proofing, not a discussion on whether or not the Staff is balanced.

[graystone]

Themetricsystem wrote:

this is a very simple rules question

It's ONLY a simple question if PF2 stuck to either casual OR technical speech in it's rulings, but it randomly switches between them so you never know if this is like attack rolls NOT being rolls you make with attack actions or not. I mean, there have been plenty of things that SEEMED like "a very simple rules question" but ended up being clarified differently. For example, I had people vehemently argue that independent and valet worked together, even though one said commanded and the other said not commanded: their argument was that command didn't mean Command [capital C] so following casual speech they work together...

The moral is, the speech is only read as casual until it's not depending on how the dev's want a ruling: as such, there is no hard and fast rule on when to read the text in the books. We don't really know if increase and changing are the same or different: after all a bonus is a modifier, but a modifier doesn't have to be a bonus much like a die change doesn't have to be an increase.

[Sagiam]

Cordell Kintner wrote:

I really don't care if it works or not, I want to clarify the rule so there's no issues in the future. There may be other feats or classes that increase damage die, and that will have to interact with the two-hand trait in the same way.

Theoretically, if there's a new Dedication that allows you to increase the damage die of any specific weapon you want, what would happen to a Katana? Is it fair for a Katana to be a d12 weapon, essentially making the Bastard Sword obsolete?

We want future proofing, not a discussion on whether or not the Staff is balanced.

Edit: Emphasis mine.

Well, seeing as how the only effect in the game currently capable of that is a 17th level capstone feature of 1 specific subclass of 1 specific Playtest class (The Weapon Inventor)... I would hope so?

BTW, if you increase the die damage on a halberd, you make the greatsword obsolete too.

[Sagiam]

thenobledrake wrote:

It's not a "very specific build" so much as it is "the build that exists at all to create this situation" but okay, sure.

Champion has Deific Weapon. Would you build a Champion with a staff instead of a greatclub?

I don't think anyone's ever claimed that every trait will be equally good for every character.

[Cordell Kintner]

Sagiam wrote:

BTW, if you increase the die damage on a halberd, you make the greatsword obsolete too.

Those are in two different weapon groups, so there's still something different between them. They also don't have the trait we are discussing.

Sagiam wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

It's not a "very specific build" so much as it is "the build that exists at all to create this situation" but okay, sure.

Champion has Deific Weapon. Would you build a Champion with a staff instead of a greatclub?

I don't think anyone's ever claimed that every trait will be equally good for every character.

There's only 3 deities with Greatclub as their favored weapon, and 13 with a Staff.

Also, the Greatclub is Martial, thus not triggering Deific Weapon, so what's your point?

[PossibleCabbage]

My read on the "two-hand" trait is that it essentially means there are two different versions of the weapon one that is wielded in one hand with one damage die and one that is wielded in two hands with a different damage die.

Deadly simplicity just refers to the name of the weapon (and its simple status) so I feel like it should work on "staff(one-hand)" and "staff(two-hand)" personally.

[Sagiam]

Cordell Kintner wrote:

Sagiam wrote:

BTW, if you increase the die damage on a halberd, you make the greatsword obsolete too.

Those are in two different weapon groups, so there's still something different between them. They also don't have the trait we are discussing.

1. I wasn't very clear. You asked if a theoretical ability that allowed you to increase a katanas die-size to d12 (thus rendering the Bastardsword obsolete) was "fair".

My answer is Yes... if it's a level 17(+) ability, like our only current example of that effect is.

[Sagiam]

Cordell Kintner wrote:

Sagiam wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

It's not a "very specific build" so much as it is "the build that exists at all to create this situation" but okay, sure.

Champion has Deific Weapon. Would you build a Champion with a staff instead of a greatclub?

I don't think anyone's ever claimed that every trait will be equally good for every character.

There's only 3 deities with Greatclub as their favored weapon, and 13 with a Staff.

Also, the Greatclub is Martial, thus not triggering Deific Weapon, so what's your point?

2. I'm not sure you've kept up with Thenobledrake's posts. While trying to refute the "Deadly Simplicity makes simple weapons on par with martial" line, they claimed that allowing increases with two-hand, made the Staff a straight up better weapon than the Greatclub, because casters would prefer the two-hand trait to Backswing and Shove.

When someone replied that, that was just favorable to one specific build, they claimed it was the only build allowing for the situation to exist.
I pointed out, it's not.
Both the Champion and Weapon Inventor have identical abilities and, given the choice, I still don't think either would take a d6/d10 weapon over a d10 Backswing and Shove.

Edit: Also, yes, Deadly Simplicity and Deific Weapon don't work on a Greatclub. I wasn't saying they could.

[thenobledrake]

Sagiam wrote:

When someone replied that, that was just favorable to one specific build, they claimed it was the only build allowing for the situation to exist.

I pointed out, it's not.

The "one specific build" you refer to is a character with Deadly Simplicity and staff as a favored weapon, which is the entire category of builds in which the question of "does this increase the two-hand damage or not?" applies.

That is the discrepancy I was pointing out. You're trying to downplay the potency and value of the traits of this combination by making it even more specific with your 'what about characters that already had better weapon options too?' build that doesn't even disprove what I said to start with. You may as well have said "but what if I prefer other weapons? shouldn't a combo of features make the ones I don't like more powerful so I feel motivated to take them?"

[thenobledrake]

Sagiam wrote:

Champion has Deific Weapon. Would you build a Champion with a staff instead of a greatclub?

Yes, because I tend to have whatever champion I'm playing embrace whatever deity they are a champion of and use the favored weapon.

Oh, and on turns where I need to do something with my hands other than hold my two-handed weapon (like if I am a battle medicine build, or drinking potions as two should-be-obvious examples) I'd still be able to make attacks of opportunity (once I take the feat) with the benefit of weapon runes.

Sagiam wrote:

I don't think anyone's ever claimed that every trait will be equally good for every character.

I know I certainly didn't, but it does kind of seem like that is where people were going with their suggestion that Deadly Simplicity needs to apply to the two-hand trait damage or it won't be useful to every character.

[The Raven Black]

Cordell Kintner wrote:

The only "errata" I know of is this one

CRB Errata wrote:

Page 156: In the monk's Powerful Fist class feature, in the second sentence replace “changes” with “increases” to make it clear the normal rules on increases to die sizes apply.

Now this could mean two things:

1. "Changing" a die is explicitly different than "Increasing" a die
or
2. They used the word "changes" which caused people to have this same discussion, leading them to realize the word "changes" isn't clear enough and they had to make it more explicit.

I only hope this is clarified in some way, either in explicitly stating that "changing" a damage die is not the same as "increasing", preferably in the Increasing Dice rules, or by removing all instances of "changing" dice and replacing them with "increasing" or "decreasing".

Very interesting. I believe this means that "Changes" and "Increases" have different implications for the devs, namely that they use "Changes" for effects they want to be able to stack with one level of "Increases".

So, I reverse my previous stance and would accept them as stacking.

[Cordell Kintner]

The explanation of "to make it clear the normal rules on increases to die sizes apply." makes me believe the latter. They didn't think people would argue over the difference between "change" and "increase" until it happened, and had to change it to make it clear.

[The Raven Black]

Cordell Kintner wrote:

The explanation of "to make it clear the normal rules on increases to die sizes apply." makes me believe the latter. They didn't think people would argue over the difference between "change" and "increase" until it happened, and had to change it to make it clear.

But then they would have changed it in all the places it appeared.

[thenobledrake]

The Raven Black wrote:

But then they would have changed it in all the places it appeared.

Not necessarily true.

They might not have thought to run a search for the word "change" in the document and check each for being the same as the one case that they'd seen people misunderstanding, and at the time may not have had any threads like this one showing them another case where people were misunderstanding the meaning of the word in the same context.

The simplest explanation is that they didn't go looking for problems with text they already believed to be clear, not that they changed the wording because someone claimed it to be unclear in one case and left it in this other case because they meant it to be different when they were worded in similar style originally.