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My understanding is that it has a bit of an edge due to the resistances and weaknesses of enemies. But the rate difference isn't very big. There are still more enemies that aren't resistant to any of the damage types than there are that are resistant to one of them.
Crit Specialization is a coincidence. The weapons that have the best Crit Spec also happen to commonly do bludgeoning damage.
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I would say crit spec is incidental as well. Flail crit is the favored one due to knocking enemies prone. Flail weapons tend to do bludgeoning damage.
As noted, I think the reason that's been popularized for bludgeoning to be the best damage type is due to it being less common as a resistance/more common to trigger weakness. But if you look at enemies as a whole, it's most common to have no damage resistance (based on bludgeoning, piercing, slashing) or weakness to the same. What is more common is damage reduction due to material types, especially cold iron or silver.
Personally I put little concern into what damage type my weapons do, and select for other things.
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Bludgeoning is also one of the less common damage types in my experience. Thinking of several different groups of PCs, only the Monk did bludgeoning damage, and that was only when he wasn't in tiger stance. Most other PCs use swords, daggers, polearms, etc. which all tend to be P/S; or Archers.
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My understanding is that it has a bit of an edge
Proper bludgeoning weapons are completely pointless and do not have an edge.
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Farien, that is only correct from a purely linguistic point of view.
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It's pretty common to imagine things that are hard, and therefore resistant to both slashing and piercing. In other words, when you get one you often get the other, which significantly swings the likelihood of facing either.
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Farien, that is only correct from a purely linguistic point of view.
He's technically correct, the best kind of correct. And that's the point. ;)
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My understanding is that it has a bit of an edgeProper bludgeoning weapons are completely pointless and do not have an edge.
A hammer could have a rectangular cross-section, so could have several edges. It just does its business with its face.
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Farien, that is only correct from a purely linguistic point of view.He's technically correct, the best kind of correct. And that's the point. ;)
I thought we were trying to avoid points here?
Bludgeoning is the type of damage appropriate for one of the most common enemy types in the game- skeletons (and other related undead such as liches).
Slashing is good for zombies. In fact, if something is weak to piercing, it is usually weak to slashing too.
Piercing... feels off. I am pretty sure it suffered from some ancient attempt at a nerf back in DnD 3.0, or even earlier, which got grandfathered in. A lot of its overall effect has been diluted with paizo's additions to the weapon charts, but the more familiar common weapons still seem to suffer from the effect.
Piercing is often the least useful as for resistances and weaknesses. However, it is the damage type on some significant things. It is on long spears, one of the more powerful simple weapons. It is on some of the rogue/bard specific weapons, such as rapiers and short bows. It is on bows in general.
I always felt it was an attempt to design in the negative. If a designer wanted full marital weapon proficiency to look attractive, they may have wanted to 'simple weapons' and semi-martial characters look weaker with damage resistance.
Back then, the common undead didn't have weaknesses- they had straight damage resistance. A low strength rogue might hit consistent 0's with a rapier or a bow. That is why a lot of the simple weapons from earlier editions were one handed NONFINESEE weapons. They were terrible options that let a rogue or a wizard out of spells at least hit a couple bits of damage.
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Bludgeoning lets you put on a crushing rune. Which is better for DPR on a fighter? A 1D6 damage rune or a greater crushing rune? It is most certainly the latter, especially on a flail/hammer weapon that drops them prone giving you another +2 to hit. A crit on your first attack basically gives you a 0/-1 attack sequence, so likely to crit again. Also it can easily let others crit. Combine that with Fighter extra reaction feats and you can be pumping out multiple 0 MAP attacks and smacking down debuffs.
You're not wrong that crushing rune is great, but again it only happens on crit. For non-fighters it isn't reliable. Yes over the course of play it will happen, but the chance of it happening on your first attack against an enemy to line up as perfectly as you lay out is low.
That said, I am considering using a guisarme with a shifting rune to turn into a metoer hammer with a crushing rune attached. Though I'm having trouble deciding if it's really worth it to sometimes get the crit effect vs the extra damage from d10 vs d8 and the shifting rune could be a energy damage rune instead.
There are some more monsters with some kind of weakness or that have less resistance to bludgeoning Strikes. But as already pointed the main benefit isn't come from the bludgeoning itself but from Flain and Hammer weapons that have "The target is knocked prone." as critical effect without any additional checks. This makes such weapons considered very good or even a little OP when compared to other weapon groups' critical effects.
But notice that critical effect is only one of many characteristics of a weapon. There are many traits that are also interesting in the weapons for many players and builds.
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Bludgeoning is the type of damage appropriate for one of the most common enemy types in the game- skeletons (and other related undead such as liches).
Not only are these enemies common, they are common for level 1 characters. That means most people fight them if they are starting at 1, and characters don't have big damage bonuses to punch through resistance yet. A level 1 archer is in for a really bad time against bone boys. That's part of why Concussive is a pretty nice trait.
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Oozes being immune to piercing and slashing is a good reason for everyone to have a bludgeoning option at least. Oozes are fairly common low and mid level enemies. It's not too hard to justify them being in a dungeon.
In theory you also want a smallish piercing or slashing weapon in case you get swallowed whole. Doesn't seem to be quite as frequent a concern.
There are some creatures that are weak to slashing, mostly plants and zombies.
Specifically wanting piercing is far rarer than the other two. The only thing I can think of where you really want piercing and slashing won't do, is rakshasas.
On the other hand, there are a lot of important piercing weapons. Like bows. Also, versatile piercing/X seems more common than versatile between slashing and bludgeoning.
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Specifically wanting piercing is far rarer than the other two. The only thing I can think of where you really want piercing and slashing won't do, is rakshasas.
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You do also want piercing if engaging in combat underwater.
Use these rules for battles in water or underwater:
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• You take a –2 circumstance penalty to melee slashing or bludgeoning attacks that pass through water.
• Ranged attacks that deal bludgeoning or slashing damage automatically miss if the attacker or target is underwater, and piercing ranged attacks made by an underwater creature or against an underwater target have their range increments halved.
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That's the only other case that springs to mind.
For some reason, 3/4 of the European classical elements deals bludgeoning damage instead of their supposed type. This might be one of the reasons why the bludgeoning damage type fares somewhat better than its two siblings...
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For some reason, 3/4 of the European classical elements deals bludgeoning damage instead of their supposed type. This might be one of the reasons why the bludgeoning damage type fares somewhat better than its two siblings...
I think it's mostly because "if you hit someone with a clod of dirt, a ball of water, or a blast of air... what kind of damage would that do if not bludgeoning?" Like "Air damage" and "water damage" aren't damage types, but you can hurt someone with air and water.
For some reason, 3/4 of the European classical elements deals bludgeoning damage instead of their supposed type. This might be one of the reasons why the bludgeoning damage type fares somewhat better than its two siblings...I think it's mostly because "if you hit someone with a clod of dirt, a ball of water, or a blast of air... what kind of damage would that do if not bludgeoning?" Like "Air damage" and "water damage" aren't damage types, but you can hurt someone with air and water.
I can see air as being slashing. Water focused to a fine point with enough pressure could qualify under piercing.
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Water can also slash (like Water Jet Cutter).
So IMO air and water are versatile.
Earth technically can do the 3 types of physical damage.(maybe water too, once technically Jet Cutter can pierce too)
I think it's mostly because "if you hit someone with a clod of dirt, a ball of water, or a blast of air... what kind of damage would that do if not bludgeoning?" Like "Air damage" and "water damage" aren't damage types, but you can hurt someone with air and water.
On that line of logic, shouldn't Fire and Lightning "damage" be merged into a single "heat/searing" damage? They both char the victim, and I don't think the difference is wider than getting crushed in a collapsing building or blown away by a random gale...
Anyway, AFAIK, that's how GURPS handles fire and electric damage types.
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It's because GURPS handle it differently. Maybe the visible effect is the same in many cases but the behavior of fire and electricity is way different.
For example. Fire with some magical/alchemical exceptions (when the flames are magically sustained or alchemy is providing oxygen) cannot affect underwater and even some few amounts of water over a body can diminish or even block it's effects. Also fire make put things on fire more easily than eletricity.
For other side electricity don't cares too much about water (except for pure distilled one) for the contrary a water way may potencialize the electricity effect, also some armors maybe also help with electricity while others not. An dry leather armor may diminish electricity effect while a metal one will not provide any protection against it (but a fullplate or a full chainmail may do if it act like a joule cage and redirect all electricity way to the ground) while against fire it still damage but not go on fire while a leather and clothes may burn.
Also in body the affects differently too. A high voltage with high amperage lightning may burn but this the secondary effect. The primary one is damage many sensible organs like heart and brain and usually kills more for heart attack than for the burning effects.
In order to abstract and make easier many of these mechanics D&D and PF just makes them different damage types that creatures may have immunity, resistance, weakness, vulnerabilities for each one separately. These abstractions off-corse are not perfect but address many of these cases and condition in a more simple way.
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I don't see much benefit in merging electricity and fire. They're both things we can easily imagine, and imagine behaving different. Why throw that in the bin?
I'd rather go the other way around: add some more variation in the other elemental damages. It makes sense that water, wind and earth deal physical damage, but maybe it doesn't all have to be the same bludgeoning by default.
Water could shape nicely into piercing icicles. Wind tends to scrape past objects so slashing could be a good default. Leaving blunt to earth.
Of course each of them could also be specialized into others, but maybe these defaults help to add some flavor.
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You aren't the only one complaining about this. Many players of Kineticist playtest made similar complains about Elemental Blast. Fire is only one to do some energy damage the rest was a physical.
You aren't the only one complaining about this. Many players of Kineticist playtest made similar complains about Elemental Blast. Fire is only one to do some energy damage the rest was a physical.
Rabble, Rabble, Rabble, Rabble!!!
It was lame for the sorcerer and it continued to be lame in the Kineticist playtest.
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I think the reason for making fire and electric damage is that yes, both burn you, but electricity will burn you internally because it will travel through your (electrically conductive) body to seek ground. Flames are potentially more intense but if you burn your hand you've only burned your hand, not "also your legs".
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It's because GURPS handle it differently. Maybe the visible effect is the same in many cases but the behavior of fire and electricity is way different.
For example. Fire with some magical/alchemical exceptions (when the flames are magically sustained or alchemy is providing oxygen) cannot affect underwater and even some few amounts of water over a body can diminish or even block it's effects. Also fire make put things on fire more easily than electricity.
For other side electricity don't cares too much about water (except for pure distilled one) for the contrary a water way may potencialize the electricity effect, also some armors maybe also help with electricity while others not. An dry leather armor may diminish electricity effect while a metal one will not provide any protection against it (but a full plate or a full chainmail may do if it act like a joule cage and redirect all electricity way to the ground) while against fire it still damage but not go on fire while a leather and clothes may burn.
Also in body the affects differently too. A high voltage with high amperage lightning may burn but this the secondary effect. The primary one is damage many sensible organs like heart and brain and usually kills more for heart attack than for the burning effects.In order to abstract and make easier many of these mechanics D&D and PF just makes them different damage types that creatures may have immunity, resistance, weakness, vulnerabilities for each one separately. These abstractions off-course are not perfect but address many of these cases and condition in a more simple way.
Fun fact: In the original D&D game, Fireball didn't work under water, but Lightning bolt behaved like Fireball would on land.(Also, a lightning bolt always traveled 120', so if you angled it right in a stone corridor, you could ricochet it to get more enemies. ;-))
Farien, that is only correct from a purely linguistic point of view.He's technically correct, the best kind of correct. And that's the point. ;)
or the lack of a point as the case may be.
I was disappointed that elemental magic for a sorcerer was fire for the fire element but bludgeoning for the rest...
Did they ever explain the logic of this cause I don’t get it
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I was disappointed that elemental magic for a sorcerer was fire for the fire element but bludgeoning for the rest...Did they ever explain the logic of this cause I don’t get it
It's already been covered in the thread. If you hit someone with a clod of dirt, a ball of water, or a blast of air... what kind of damage would that do if not bludgeoning?" Like "Air damage" and "water damage" aren't damage types, but you can hurt someone with air and water.
Cold, acid, and electricity are all damage types that CAN be mapped to the classic elements, but aren't one and the same. If you are going for representation of the elemental planes or earth, water, air, and fire, this is the logical consequence of throwing rocks and not acid at people.
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They could have been more flexible in their mapping when they did the Elemental Sorcerer.
Air could have chosen Bludgeoning or Electrical
Water could have chosen Bludgeoning or Piercing or Cold
Earth could have been Bludgeoning or Piercing or Slashing or Sonic
Fire coulkd have been Fire or ?
Maybe that is something they could open up with a new feat.
I mean if you hit someone with *air* or *water* I wouldn't expect to take electrical or cold damage. Now "lightning bolt" and "cone of cold" should absolutely.
The fact that the elemental sorcerer does bludgeoning is to indicate that you're actually hitting people with "a big jet of water" or "a big rock" not "cold" or "acid." You should be able to do those things too, but those other things aren't your "throw a rock at them" ability.
They could have been more flexible in their mapping when they did the Elemental Sorcerer.
Air could have chosen Bludgeoning or Electrical
Water could have chosen Bludgeoning or Piercing or Cold
Earth could have been Bludgeoning or Piercing or Slashing or Sonic
Fire coulkd have been Fire or ?Maybe that is something they could open up with a new feat.
Bludgeoning or fire.
...this is not a joke. Fire seems like it would logically have explosions as an option.
They could have been more flexible in their mapping when they did the Elemental Sorcerer.
Air could have chosen Bludgeoning or Electrical
Water could have chosen Bludgeoning or Piercing or Cold
Earth could have been Bludgeoning or Piercing or Slashing or Sonic
Fire coulkd have been Fire or ?Maybe that is something they could open up with a new feat.
Bludgeoning or fire.
...this is not a joke. Fire seems like it would logically have explosions as an option.
I think that is a good idea.