Hi, I'm asking because I'm running a small naval battle and the ships have levels and HP / AC values dependant on it, and they scale in line with npcs/hazards, which means the damage they receive and deal should also scale with level in a similar way.
Before Guns and Gears I made custom giant crossbows to put on ships, however now that we have official ballistas I would like to use those, but their damage output doesn't seem to match the math that we are used to with normal wepaons/npcs, so I don't know how to scale them. Can I just slap striking runes on them, or does that skew it all off in your opinion?
Thanks.
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I'm pretty certain that you cannot.
And anyway, since Striking Runes don't increase the number of damage dice, but SET it to a certain number, adding them to a Ballista would lower the damage.
I'm pretty certain that you cannot.
And anyway, since Striking Runes don't increase the number of damage dice, but SET it to a certain number, adding them to a Ballista would lower the damage.
That's right, I did not realize that. So the rune would be useless indeed.
But then, how do I scale siege weapons to adapt them to different levels?
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You don't. Just like with traps, curses or similar things in the game, not everything is meant to be scaled up. Just use a higher level siege weapon instead - or homebrew a high-level ballista based on the numbers of the higher level siege weapons.
You don't. Just like with traps, curses or similar things in the game, not everything is meant to be scaled up. Just use a higher level siege weapon instead - or homebrew a high-level ballista based on the numbers of the higher level siege weapons.
Okay, thanks
Has anyone compared siege weapon damage to Strike damage from the monster creation rules? I'd bet they map in some way, so you could use those tables as benchmarks.
Hmm... Not monsters. It actually looks like they scale approximately like simple trap damage - except that all of the damage is rolled. The simple trap table has about half of the damage being static values.
Ballista (level 5): 4d12 vs 4d8+14 from trap table
Ballista (level 8): 6d12 vs 4d10+22 from trap table
But I have only spot checked a couple of the siege weapons, so the pattern may not hold out. And that is a really difficult pattern to follow anyway.
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I'm pretty certain that you cannot.
And anyway, since Striking Runes don't increase the number of damage dice, but SET it to a certain number, adding them to a Ballista would lower the damage.
That's really funny! I have this image of spies sabotaging enemy siege weapons by casting Magic Weapon on them. :)
You don't. Just like with traps, curses or similar things in the game, not everything is meant to be scaled up. Just use a higher level siege weapon instead - or homebrew a high-level ballista based on the numbers of the higher level siege weapons.
This, in the same vein that you aren't meant to scale arbitrarily scaled DCs for skill checks (a climb that would be a trained DC should always be a trained DC, even if this means eventually characters auto succeed).
Nothing wrong with homebrewing special siege weapons, but PF2e assumes a scaling power fantasy for characters and that they will outgrow standard concerns.
One way I would keep siege weapons interesting is making use of their ability to damage and deform terrain. So even if it isn't killing higher level PCs at a decent speed it is ripping through battlements, turning the soil and blasting through walls.