If you get a success while using Exploit Vulnerability, do you know the value of the Weakness?
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“Highest weakness” is vague but it would be cruel and dumb to not tell them the value so they know whether to use mortal weakness or personal antithesis.
Paizo is sometimes sloppy and often overly conservative, but never cruel and dumb. GMs shouldn’t hide the ball on this.
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This won't usually be a problem anyway-- mortal weakness will almost always be better fighting level appropriate monsters when you look at their average weakness values. There's a few examples where you could outscale it with Personal Antithesis, but then you're probably fighting multiple opponents and saving an action between targets will be better than an extra 1 point of damage.
But yes, GMs shouldn't withold the info in the narrow few cases where it hurts the player.
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Also, if you have two+ creatures of the same type like fire elementals with cold vulnerability, and choose to exploit that vulnerability, are you able to exploit that vulnerability of its fellow(s)? Or do you think you'd have to roll for each elemental?
If you choose Mortal Weakness, you can apply the weakness to the exact same creature type without reapplying EV. If it's a different creature type with the same kind of weakness, you need to reapply (unless you pick up Sympathetic Vulnerabilities at level 6).
If you choose Personal Antithesis, then you need to reapply it every time (unless you pick up Sympathetic Vulnerabilities at level 6, then you can apply it to the exact same creature type).
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This won't usually be a problem anyway-- mortal weakness will almost always be better fighting level appropriate monsters when you look at their average weakness values. There's a few examples where you could outscale it with Personal Antithesis, but then you're probably fighting multiple opponents and saving an action between targets will be better than an extra 1 point of damage.
But yes, GMs shouldn't withold the info in the narrow few cases where it hurts the player.
Yeah this is a good point to keep in mind. Personal Antithesis scales at a rate of 2+(1/2 level). Monster weaknesses have a tendency to start around and scale up at a rate very roughly like 1 per 1 level. So they'll almost always be higher.
In other words, if the monster has a weakness, mortal weakness will 90% of the time be better than personal antithesis.
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Though an important point is that you might be able to apply it yourself anyways, having a brilliant cold iron weapon lets you proc weaknesses a lot.
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In addition to not being labeled as secret, there's no reason it would be secret. You have to immediately know the results, since they determine what actions you can take, and whether you've gained a condition.
Also, keep in mind, Personal Antithesis is really the only option available when you use Exploit Vulnerability on a creature that either doesn't have a weakness, or it's weakness is something that doesn't normally add damage.