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There IS no exploit without a listed weakness to holy. Unholy on the skeleton lets it hurt, say, angels more by triggering their weakness, but only suffers against specific abilities that add on against unholy.
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Playing off the unholy trait is a good idea for a personal antithesis, but there is no mortal weakness to exploit by default.
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I'd say no, let the Thaum have one blind spot when it comes to weaknesses, they already get to invent their own fanfic nonsense for the other 95% of creatures to trigger weakness based on the invented aversion the player created about holding up a crusty sock or some other silliness.
Yup, it doesn't work on skeletons. How would you even know how much damage to deal? Mortal weakness pulls its value from the weakness amount in the creature's stat block.
I think breached defenses would work, but that has nothing to do with the unholy trait. Just use unholy as a creative prompt for it.
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The question doesn't make sense to me. Mortal Weakness lets you hit a creature's natural weakness. Since the skeleton doesn't have a weakness to holy, "allowing mortal weakness to trigger for holy" wouldn't do anything at all. Even if you 'allow' the interaction, I'm not sure what your player is hoping to get out of it, because there's no weakness to exploit.
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Yes, absolutely.
You may find this guide helpful:
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43y1z?Sanctificaton-and-You-A-Guide-by-Captain -Morgan
Yes, absolutely.
You may find this guide helpful:
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43y1z?Sanctificaton-and-You-A-Guide-by-Captain -Morgan
Oooh I hadn't seen this one, it'll probably help one of our co-GM whose feeling a bit overwhelmed with some remaster changes.
I also have one for remastering golems, if that helps.
The only thing that's a bit ambiguous to me is how Thaumaturge handles VERY SPECIFIC weaknesses like golem antimagic or demon sin vulnerability. You learn those weaknesses on a critical success on Exploit Vulnerability, but nothing specifically lets you trigger them from what I can tell. I might house rule otherwise, personally.
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The only thing that's a bit ambiguous to me is how Thaumaturge handles VERY SPECIFIC weaknesses like golem antimagic or demon sin vulnerability. You learn those weaknesses on a critical success on Exploit Vulnerability, but nothing specifically lets you trigger them from what I can tell. I might house rule otherwise, personally.
I disagree. Giving your party the knowledge to exploit it is enough. I wouldn't allow a Thaumaturge to, say, pull a Mirror out of their esoterica to trigger an Abrikalindu's hatred of mirrors (Obviously, this is for non-mirror thaumaturges. The mirror implement should absolutely work) unless they had prescient planner or can show me the mirror on their character sheet.
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Note that you can choose Mortal Weakness if they have a weakness, but you can choose to instead go with Personal Antithesis.
Why might you do this? Well, according to Mark Seifter, author of the class, on a Reddit post this is to add more damage on top if you already have access to a relevant weakness, like using a cold iron weapon against demons or fey - it hardly seems fair that you and the barbarian both get the weakness damage, and the barb also gets rage, just because you came prepared. So you can add Personal Antithesis on top if you don't need Mortal Weakness.
Whether this actually works depends on your GM and how "instances of damage" actually works on a strike and how various sorts of weaknesses interact with materials, damage types, elemental weaknesses, and the Personal Antithesis "weakness to your strike" all put together on one weapon strike. Good luck!
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The only thing that's a bit ambiguous to me is how Thaumaturge handles VERY SPECIFIC weaknesses like golem antimagic or demon sin vulnerability. You learn those weaknesses on a critical success on Exploit Vulnerability, but nothing specifically lets you trigger them from what I can tell. I might house rule otherwise, personally.I disagree. Giving your party the knowledge to exploit it is enough. I wouldn't allow a Thaumaturge to, say, pull a Mirror out of their esoterica to trigger an Abrikalindu's hatred of mirrors (Obviously, this is for non-mirror thaumaturges. The mirror implement should absolutely work) unless they had prescient planner or can show me the mirror on their character sheet.
Mechanically you learn and can exploit any standard weakness no matter how specific on a success, whether its weakness to slashing or weakness to gingerbread cookies. A critical success also reveals any other abilities that give the creature a vulnerability but does not give any further help in taking advantage of it. In the example of a thaumaturge against an Abrikalindu, a successful exploit vulnerability would let them learn their weakness to holy and cold iron and let them establish a mortal weakness against it, but only a critical success would reveal its Hatred of Mirrors ability and even then would not give you any additional ability to exploit it.
Whether this actually works depends on your GM and how "instances of damage" actually works on a strike and how various sorts of weaknesses interact with materials, damage types, elemental weaknesses, and the Personal Antithesis "weakness to your strike" all put together on one weapon strike. Good luck!
Well, that's not really complicated as all Weaknesses apply. It's not like Resistances where only the highest apply to a single instance of damage.
"If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing."
It is too bad that "instance of damage" is not actually defined anywhere.
Somehow I doubt that the developers forgot that Flaming runes exist. And that a sword with a Flaming rune would be a much more common occurrence than a cold iron axe.
If a creature is weak to both slashing damage and fire damage, wouldn't that very rule then mean that the weaknesses would both apply when hit with a +1 Flaming sword? Because it doesn't meet the 'only one weakness' rule.
So if the slashing damage from a sword and the fire damage from the Flaming rune on that sword are not subject to this 'only one weakness' rule, why would Personal Antithesis be required to not stack?
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As Xenocrat notes, though, Mark's commentary has made the intention of stacking clear even if the rules don't quite gel with that RAW.
Is there a link to this reddit post?
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Errenor's point is what I was getting at, the slashing/cold iron/personal antithesis combo doesn't seem to actually work out based on the most common "instance of damage" reading and how antithesis is defined in the class features.
What is more in doubt is stuff like a weakness to fire where you have flaming runes on your weapon and add on a personal antithesis. Is the flaming rune part of the same instance of damage? I think considerable electrons have been spilled on the matter.
Is there a link to this reddit post?
I can't find the Reddit post right now, but there's this Paizo forum post where he thinks Milos can do 20 points of weakness to a Glabrezu in that encounter with his cold iron weapon. A Glabrezu only has 10 points of weakness to cold iron, so the other 10 would have to come from 10 points of Pesonal Antithesis, which would be somewhat reasonable for a level 16 Thaumaturge facing a level 13 Glabrezu and level 7 Succubus and expecting to stomp them in that story.
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Personal Antithesis states that the enemy "gains a weakness against your unarmed and weapon Strikes". From a strict RAW reading (but that's what we are doing) it's not the damage itself that triggers the weakness but the fact that you Strike the enemy. So it isn't related to any instance of damage and as such should not interact with other weaknesses.
But, well, Weakness to Strike is undefined and as such can be read in a lot of different ways.
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Right, so the issue is something like this. Bob the thaumaturge has a sword with the flaming rune on it. d8 slashing + d6 fire. He's fighting Examplo, who has Weakness 5 to fire. Bob makes his Exploit Vulnerability roll (no crit). Now knowing that Examplo is already weak against his flaming rune, Bob picks Personal Antithesis. Bob swings and hits. Is the result:
1. [d8 slashing] + [d6 fire] + [higher of Weakness 5 or Personal antithesis], or
2. [d8 slashing + Personal Antithesis on "weapon strike"] + [d6 fire + Weakness 5 to fire]Keeping in mind the general rule on weaknesses, "If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing."
I think for balance and my admittedly guessing at RAI, I'd go with #1. After all, "strike vs. fire' is orthogonal but so is 'slashing vs. cold iron.' So the example case in the rules provides applicable guidance to this case (IMO). But I agree that it is somewhat unclear.
From a very strict RAW reading, it'd be:
3. [d8 slashing] + [d6 fire + Weakness 5 to fire] + [Personal Antithesis]Personal Antithesis doesn't interact with the attack damage at all, it's due to the fact that the Strike hits. As it's not associated with an instance of damage it is fully applied.
But... considering the lack of definition on instance of damage and the lack of explaination on how "weakness to Strike" applies, it's just the best I can do.