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The Sarkorian Wolf “developed defenses against the Abyss.” The only difference I’m spotting between the state blocks of the Sarkorian Wolf and a plain Wolf is that the Sarkorian variety has “Resistances evil 5[/.]” The vanilla wolf has a neutral alignment, though, which means it’s immune to evil damage, but then so are Sarkorian wolves. I imagine there could be circumstances in which it’s helpful for a Neutral creature to have resistance to alignment damage, but i can’t think of any. Does anyone know of any existing rules interactions where the Sarkorian Wolf’s resistance 5 to evil damage matters?
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There seems to be a general misunderstanding among writers on how things with the Evil trait interact with Resistance to Evil. I think they intended the wolves have a resistance to attacks with the Evil trait, which all Demons have, even the lowly Quasit. However, the Resistance listed is Resistance to Evil damage, which like you said they would be immune to due to their alignment.
The same thing issue occurs with the Spiritual Alignment spell, which only gives your attacks an alignment trait, not actual bonus alignment damage.
Yeah....this is a big change between editions that keeps tripping a lot of people up.
In PF2, only things with good alignment take evil damage. And only things with evil alignment take good damage.
So people keep forgetting that part, and think neutral creatures take the damage (but they don't). And so they keep giving resistance to things that can't take that kind of damage in the first place.
Yea, alignment damage should just happen...at least that's how I handle it with a player's divine lance. Makes so many features work so much better and be less of a trap. Otherwise, there's never a reason to play evil champions or clerics outside of the rare, niche evil campaign.
Divine Wrath & Divine Decree deal alignment damage that can harm neutral targets, though "Those that neither match nor oppose it treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better." And in the latter case also only take damage, not the other effects.
Which means the wolf's ability helps them vs. some pretty common AoEs among demons too powerful for them to defeat anyway.
That's pretty niche, though there's also the questionable interpretation that the spells are written that way for those fringe creatures that have a Weakness to alignment damage yet not the alignment to regularly take that damage. Ex. A neutral creature with Weakness Good 5 still takes Good damage so could be hurt by the spell, but apparently not as much. I'd err on the wolf entry being the oddball rather than a core spell having been written to cover creatures few PCs will ever encounter.
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Divine Wrath & Divine Decree deal alignment damage that can harm neutral targets, though "Those that neither match nor oppose it treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better." And in the latter case also only take damage, not the other effects.
Divine Decree does untyped damage. It says "You deal 7d10 damage to creatures in the area" vs Divine Wrath saying "You deal 4d10 damage of the alignment you chose". So you wouldn't take damage from Divine Wrath at all as a N creature (you can still be Sickened by it), but Divine Decree not having a type means it wouldn't trigger weaknesses or resistances.
Divine Decree does untyped damage.
Which is also a bug. At face value, it doesn't look like 'untyped' is a valid damage type.
If that is indeed the case, then the sidebar on damage types should list out an 'untyped' damage and state that its purpose is for damage that is never affected by weakness or resistance.
Divine Wrath & Divine Decree deal alignment damage that can harm neutral targets, though "Those that neither match nor oppose it treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better." And in the latter case also only take damage, not the other effects.Divine Decree does untyped damage. It says "You deal 7d10 damage to creatures in the area" vs Divine Wrath saying "You deal 4d10 damage of the alignment you chose". So you wouldn't take damage from Divine Wrath at all as a N creature (you can still be Sickened by it), but Divine Decree not having a type means it wouldn't trigger weaknesses or resistances.
Good catch, as I'd only skimmed that one thinking it matched since they shared language. Have to wonder why they don't match given their deep similarity. Hmm.
Yet Divine Wrath still has the line: "Those that neither match nor oppose it treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better."
This would means either neutral targets take damage or that Paizo wrote that for the extremely limited number of creatures who have a Weakness to an alignment damage they wouldn't normally take.
I favor the former, though that still makes the wolf's ability zany specific, working against only one spell ever (even if prevalent among fiends).
ETA: And the former interpretation also mirrors how the spell operated in previous editions.
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Yet Divine Wrath still has the line: "Those that neither match nor oppose it treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better."
This would means either neutral targets take damage or that Paizo wrote that for the extremely limited number of creatures who have a Weakness to an alignment damage they wouldn't normally take.
Divine Wrath has non-damaging effects that vary with save result, so th he improved degree of success works without the damage.
Divine Wrath has non-damaging effects that vary with save result, so th he improved degree of success works without the damage.Yet Divine Wrath still has the line: "Those that neither match nor oppose it treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better."
This would means either neutral targets take damage or that Paizo wrote that for the extremely limited number of creatures who have a Weakness to an alignment damage they wouldn't normally take.
I hadn't considered that they might suffer those independently.
Always kind of figured they were rider effects. Hmm.
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I used Divine Wrath a LOT during Age of Ashes. So many evil enemies. One of the other PCs switched from neutral to good for flimsy reasons but it meant he was no longer at risk. The other one was convinced that being good and sometimes taking evil damage was worse than sometimes rolling a crit-fail (that gets upgraded to a normal fail).
Imagine a fireball that doesn't damage your party and that also debuffs enemies and that you can safely drop point-blank in the middle of the fight. Because it won't hurt your allies.
That's Divine Wrath.