How do status bonuses to damage interact with spells and abilities that deal damage multiple times? Specifically, I’m trying to clarify the interaction between the Kineticist’s Consume Power and Molten Wire:
Consume Power: Quote: You absorb energy and hold it in your kinetic gate. You gain resistance equal to your level to the triggering damage—choose one eligible type of resistance. If this reaction prevents any damage, you gain a status bonus equal to half your level to the damage roll of the next metal impulse you use before the end of your next turn. Molten Wire: Quote: Spinning molten iron through a vortex of fire, you trap your foe in searing wires. Make an impulse attack roll against a creature within 15 feet. On a success, the target takes 2d6 slashing damage and is wrapped in molten wire for 1 minute. It is clumsy 1 and takes 2d4 fire damage at the start of each of its turns, with a basic Reflex save. The wire's Escape DC is your class DC. The wire has AC 10 and 75 HP. The impulse ends if the creature Escapes or the wire is destroyed. Molten Wire is a metal impulse so it qualifies, but it deals slashing damage on a hit, then additional fire damage each turn as long as the creature remains in the wire - notably, this isn’t persistent damage. Would the status bonus apply only to the slashing, or to both, or apply to a roll you choose? Most rules clarifications I’ve seen have dealt with damage that has multiple types but is dealt all at once, which the rules treat as one damage roll, but the second set of rolls and saves are throwing me for a loop.
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The bonus should apply only once for each instance of damage...
Whatever 'Instance of Damage' means.
Finoan wrote: The bonus should apply only once for each instance of damage...
Whatever 'Instance of Damage' means.
Yeah, the instance of damage thing is definitely an interrelated can of worms.
The Psychics Unleashed Psyche ability is also a status bonus to damage rolls, and it is… adding to my confusion:
“Dark Archive pg. 12” wrote: When you cast a damaging spell, you gain a status bonus to its damage equal to double the spell's level. This applies only to spells that don't have a duration and that you cast using psychic spellcasting. It specifically excludes spells that have a duration - you could infer that the exclusion is only necessary to control the damage output because a spell with a duration would receive the bonus multiple times. Or, it could be a confusing rules interaction that the designers wanted to avoid players running into. Who knows!
FreneticKineticAscetic wrote: Consume Power: Quote: You absorb energy and hold it in your kinetic gate. You gain resistance equal to your level to the triggering damage—choose one eligible type of resistance. If this reaction prevents any damage, you gain a status bonus equal to half your level to the damage roll of the next metal impulse you use before the end of your next turn. Molten Wire is a metal impulse so it qualifies, but it deals slashing damage on a hit, then additional fire damage each turn as long as the creature remains in the wire - notably, this isn’t persistent damage. Would the status bonus apply only to the slashing, or to both, or apply to a roll you choose? Maybe I'm being simplistic, but I'd read 'the' in 'to the damage roll' as singular, so it would be the very next damage roll of the next impulse etc., and no subsequent damage rolls.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
I had a similar problem with weaknesses and abilities that deal multiple type of damage, e.g. feral shades vs. spider swarms. In this case the RAW is fairly clear: each type of damage is its own "instance" of damage, and the victim's weakness applies to each of them separately, or at least that's how it works for resistances. Which makes area spells with multiple damage types (feral shades, cataclysm, I think there are others) absolutely brutal against swarms!
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Paul Zagieboylo wrote: I had a similar problem with weaknesses and abilities that deal multiple type of damage, e.g. feral shades vs. spider swarms. In this case the RAW is fairly clear: each type of damage is its own "instance" of damage, and the victim's weakness applies to each of them separately, or at least that's how it works for resistances. Which makes area spells with multiple damage types (feral shades, cataclysm, I think there are others) absolutely brutal against swarms! Not too sure on the specific interaction you mentioned. Each weakness can def only be triggered once. If a swarm has weakness to "area damage" then that can only happen once total. If the incoming damage is multiple types of area damage, they may all be compatible to trigger the weakness, but "area damage" is still a single weakness.
If the swarm has 3 different weakness, one to area, and one to each damage type in a split type spell, then you could trigger 3 weaknesses with a single spell(!), but not 4 (the area weakness twice).
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Trip.H wrote: Not too sure on the specific interaction you mentioned. Each weakness can def only be triggered once. If a swarm has weakness to "area damage" then that can only happen once total. If the incoming damage is multiple types of area damage, they may all be compatible to trigger the weakness, but "area damage" is still a single weakness. Then why would a resistance to "all damage" apply to each type separately? This is the example specifically mentioned in the RAW, and I refuse to believe that resistances and weaknesses are not supposed to be exactly reciprocal.
Paul Zagieboylo wrote: Trip.H wrote: Not too sure on the specific interaction you mentioned. Each weakness can def only be triggered once. If a swarm has weakness to "area damage" then that can only happen once total. If the incoming damage is multiple types of area damage, they may all be compatible to trigger the weakness, but "area damage" is still a single weakness. Then why would a resistance to "all damage" apply to each type separately? This is the example specifically mentioned in the RAW, and I refuse to believe that resistances and weaknesses are not supposed to be exactly reciprocal. Because resistance/weakness 5 to all damage translates to "has weakness 5 to fire, acid, cold..." and lists every damage type. It is shorthand for listing off every type.
In that case, if you theoretically had 2 instances of the same type of damage, like 2 different poofs of fire that happen simultaneously, "weakness all" would only trigger weakness once. A mixed-type hit would trigger 2 *different* weaknesses.
Area damage is more like a category. The "area" of "area fire" is identical to the "area" of "area cold", ect. Treat area damage almost like those trait tags that affects damage, like plant, water, ect. You can get spells effects to trigger 2 weaknesses at a time if they include "weakness to damage/spells with the __ trait" and another normal type weakness, but that plant/ect weakness is still a single weakness that can only be triggered once per attack. If that spell did split damage, you would not trigger the "vs plants" bonus damage twice.
Basically, weakness/resistance to area effects is *not* a long list of every [damage type + area] combo, but is a single weakness/resistance to all with that "area" tag.
Like weakness/resistance to splash damage. It doesn't matter what damage type the splash is, the splash dmg modifier is singular.
Trip.H wrote: Because resistance/weakness 5 to all damage translates to "has weakness 5 to fire, acid, cold..." and lists every damage type. It is shorthand for listing off every type. No, it is not.
That is a common interpretation of Resist All. But it is not stated in the rules as such, and it is not the only possible interpretation of Resist All.
It can also be interpreted that Resist Fire (5), Resist Acid (5), Resist Sonic (5), ... is in fact different than Resist All (5). That difference being that if an effect would cause multiple damage types and 'instance of damage' does not get separated out by damage types, then the rule about only applying one Resistance would apply and you would only drop 5 points from one of the damage types rather than Resist All that would drop 5 points from all of the damage types.
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Finoan wrote: Trip.H wrote: Because resistance/weakness 5 to all damage translates to "has weakness 5 to fire, acid, cold..." and lists every damage type. It is shorthand for listing off every type. No, it is not.
That is a common interpretation of Resist All. But it is not stated in the rules as such, and it is not the only possible interpretation of Resist All.
It can also be interpreted that Resist Fire (5), Resist Acid (5), Resist Sonic (5), ... is in fact different than Resist All (5). That difference being that if an effect would cause multiple damage types and 'instance of damage' does not get separated out by damage types, then the rule about only applying one Resistance would apply and you would only drop 5 points from one of the damage types rather than Resist All that would drop 5 points from all of the damage types. I thought of this too, but what changed my mind was that means Resistance [5] to each individual damage type spelled out, excluding one, is Better than Resistance all [5] not spelled out in the vast majority of cases. And that sounds both TBTBT and the kind of minute rules interactions that Paozo has tried to avoid.
In certain cases, it makes resistance fire [5] and resistance cold [5] better than resistance all [5] (if they take fire and cold in the same attack)
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turtle006 wrote: Finoan wrote: Trip.H wrote: Because resistance/weakness 5 to all damage translates to "has weakness 5 to fire, acid, cold..." and lists every damage type. It is shorthand for listing off every type. No, it is not.
That is a common interpretation of Resist All. But it is not stated in the rules as such, and it is not the only possible interpretation of Resist All.
It can also be interpreted that Resist Fire (5), Resist Acid (5), Resist Sonic (5), ... is in fact different than Resist All (5). That difference being that if an effect would cause multiple damage types and 'instance of damage' does not get separated out by damage types, then the rule about only applying one Resistance would apply and you would only drop 5 points from one of the damage types rather than Resist All that would drop 5 points from all of the damage types. I thought of this too, but what changed my mind was that means Resistance [5] to each individual damage type spelled out, excluding one, is Better than Resistance all [5] not spelled out in the vast majority of cases. And that sounds both TBTBT and the kind of minute rules interactions that Paozo has tried to avoid.
In certain cases, it makes resistance fire [5] and resistance cold [5] better than resistance all [5] (if they take fire and cold in the same attack) I think it would actually be the opposite - the rules for Resist All state that
Quote: When an effect deals damage of multiple types and you have resistance to all damage, apply the resistance to each type of damage separately. If an attack would deal 7 slashing damage and 4 fire damage, resistance 5 to all damage would reduce the slashing damage to 2 and negate the fire damage entirely. whereas when you have multiple types of resistance
Quote: If you have more than one type of resistance that would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable resistance value which can be interpreted to mean that if a character has Resist 5 slashing and Resist 5 fire, then takes the same damage as the resist all example (7 slashing, 4 fire) they would only get to apply their highest resistance (slashing 5) and would take 2 slashing + 4 fire. The whole thing hinges on Finoan's first post, which is the confusion around how to define an "instance of damage."
Given that the rules for resistance mention treating resistance values like weakness values and weakness values state
Quote: 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'd say the RAI interpretation is that an instance of damage is a single damage type within a damage roll calculation, since the example given is an edge case where the single roll (the axe dealing slashing) would contain two different weakness triggers (cold iron and slashing.)
So I'd lean towards saying that if a character had resist all 5 and took 7 slashing and 4 fire, they'd end up with only 2 slashing. If they had resist slashing 5 and resist fire 5 and took the same damage, they'd end up with 2 slashing. If the resistances were flipped for weaknesses, they'd take 12 slashing and 9 fire in both cases.
I'd accept otherwise if the designers wanted it to work differently for balance reasons, but I think that from a common sense perspective, it doesn't make much sense for it to work otherwise. It would be very odd for you to be specifically more sensitive to fire when it's on a sword you have resistance to, rather than, for example, a hammer that damages you normally.
As for my initial post about status bonuses to effects with a duration, I still don't feel like I've found a decisive clarification in the rules, and I'm on the fence on how I'd rule those effects in gameplay. I appreciate Easl's post on how Consume Power seems to be singular, but that would still raise the question of what the damage roll of an effect is.
It also doesn't help to answer the fundamental question of how status bonuses (or any other modifiers) interact with effects that have a duration. For example, the Marshal's Dread Marshal Stance grants a +1 to damage rolls for allies within the Marshal's aura, and the Bard's Courageous Anthem similarly grants a status bonus to damage within a 60 foot emanation. If an ally cast a damage dealing spell with a duration, received a status bonus to damage rolls from that effect, then left the aura/emanation, would the initial status bonus continue to apply to the effect? If not, would entering the stance or anthem grant a damage bonus to an effect already taking place?
I know it's all very specific and pedantic, but by gum I want to turn my fire/metal kineticists reaction into more damage by Consume Power-ing my own Thermal Nimbus, and I want to know if Molten Wire makes that plan better :P
FreneticKineticAscetic wrote: As for my initial post about status bonuses to effects with a duration, I still don't feel like I've found a decisive clarification in the rules, and I'm on the fence on how I'd rule those effects in gameplay. Yeah, that's where I am at too.
Resistance, weakness, and damage boosts pretty much all rely on 'instance of damage'. But if I cast Stoke the Heart on an ally, how many instances of damage are there if the ally:
* casts Fireball that hits 4 enemies.
* casts 3-action Force Barrage that targets one enemy.
* casts Ice Storm that hits 1 enemy.
* hits an enemy with a sword that has a Flaming rune while under the effects of both Flame Wisp and Energy Mutagen (fire).
* does any of the above against an enemy that has Resist 5 (cold), Resist 3 (fire), and Weakness 10 (bludgeoning).
This is exactly the same rules problem as Intercept Strike has.
This question has been around from the start of PF2, and it has yet to be answered.
Does this mean Dangerous sorcery is added twice to Thunder Strike?
ElementalofCuteness wrote: Does this mean Dangerous Sorcery is added twice to Thunder Strike? It could with a certain interpretation. Most GMs are not going to let you do that though.
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