Is Splash damage considered part of a strike with a bomb or scatter guns? And does this imply they provoke weakness from Exploit Vulnerability?

[Dyenamite with a laserbeam]

I don't find that it makes sense to state that splash is a secondary effect unconnected to the strike. Exploit Vulnerability in flavor is basically that the Thaumaturge puts something on their weapon, like shards of silver or dust of cold iron, the fact that those pieces don't fly when you hit something and itself provoking weakness seems weird. Especially since there is nothing explicitly stating that Splash damage is not part of a Strike

[Finoan]

Splash damage is poorly defined. So there isn't any RAW to rely on.

For balance, Splash damage is no-roll, no-save. The damage happens with no recourse for the target. So it is generally considered to be a fixed amount rather than being modified by things like Status bonus to damage or similar things.

Exploit Vulnerability is less ambiguous though. It only applies to the one target. Your splash damage won't trigger a weakness that you aren't applying to a different creature.

There may be a little bit of wiggle room if you Exploit Vulnerability against one target, then Strike against a different target and only the Splash damage hits the Exploit Vulnerability target. But again, Splash damage being auto-hit makes this be way too powerful to be something that meets the standard game balance.

[Errenor]

Finoan wrote:

Exploit Vulnerability is less ambiguous though. It only applies to the one target. Your splash damage won't trigger a weakness that you aren't applying to a different creature.

Not exactly, Mortal Weakness: "This damage affects the target of your Exploit Vulnerability, as well as any other creatures of the exact same type."

[Finoan]

Errenor wrote:

Finoan wrote:

Exploit Vulnerability is less ambiguous though. It only applies to the one target. Your splash damage won't trigger a weakness that you aren't applying to a different creature.

Not exactly, Mortal Weakness: "This damage affects the target of your Exploit Vulnerability, as well as any other creatures of the exact same type."

To be clear, are you trying to say that you will take up the case that splash damage from a Thaumaturge should trigger Personal Antithesis?

[Errenor]

Finoan wrote:

Errenor wrote:

Finoan wrote:

Exploit Vulnerability is less ambiguous though. It only applies to the one target. Your splash damage won't trigger a weakness that you aren't applying to a different creature.

Not exactly, Mortal Weakness: "This damage affects the target of your Exploit Vulnerability, as well as any other creatures of the exact same type."

To be clear, are you trying to say that you will take up the case that splash damage from a Thaumaturge should trigger Personal Antithesis?

I'm saying what I'm saying. And for splash damage I'm not actually sure. But I think it's very possible: if someone throws a fire bomb in a group of same creatures vulnerable to fire, all would get weakness damage from fire splash. So why Thaumaturge can't do the same when Mortal Weakness allows it? It's even more limited: you need same creatures, not same weakness.

__
I also want to somehow allow stacking Personal Antithesis and normal existing activated weakness (because it's fair), but not sure if I could.

[Baarogue]

I agree that it's probably fine to allow Exploit Vulnerability to activate on splash and persistent damage resulting from the thaumaturge's strikes. It's not going to result in more damage than if they just used the appropriate bomb

>I also want to somehow allow stacking Personal Antithesis and normal existing activated weakness (because it's fair), but not sure if I could.

I would rule no, due to the resistance/weakness rules about the same instance of damage having multiple types the creature is resistant or weak to

[Errenor]

Baarogue wrote:

>I also want to somehow allow stacking Personal Antithesis and normal existing activated weakness (because it's fair), but not sure if I could.

I would rule no, due to the resistance/weakness rules about the same instance of damage having multiple types the creature is resistant or weak to

Yes, it seems rules just can't allow it, despite probable RAI (people cited some of the devs playing/intending rules to work like that). It just leaves Thaumaturge without damage bonus when normal weakness is already activated. Can't be helped I guess.

[shroudb]

Errenor wrote:

Baarogue wrote:

>I also want to somehow allow stacking Personal Antithesis and normal existing activated weakness (because it's fair), but not sure if I could.

I would rule no, due to the resistance/weakness rules about the same instance of damage having multiple types the creature is resistant or weak to

Yes, it seems rules just can't allow it, despite probable RAI (people cited some of the devs playing/intending rules to work like that). It just leaves Thaumaturge without damage bonus when normal weakness is already activated. Can't be helped I guess.

Once more, everything hinges on "instance of damage" and how poorly defined that is. RAW wise... we still don't have a clue what"instance of damage" is, so it really can be judged either way.

Imo if you allow a silver flaming weapon to trigger both silver and fire weakness, then you should allow a Personal Antithesis flaming weapon to trigger both fire and personal.

Dev comments have indeed said that this is how they expected it to work, and at least Foundry also works like that as well, so that's good enough for me to allow it.

[Sanityfaerie]

One important bit to note is that silver flaming weapon has two different pieces of damage. It has both B/P/S(silver) damage and fire damage. Two different damage chunks triggering two different weaknesses.

So... Personal Antithesis Flaming weapon should do the same... but Personal Antithesis Silver weapon should not.

[Errenor]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

So... Personal Antithesis Flaming weapon should do the same... but Personal Antithesis Silver weapon should not.

Hmm. What about Personal Antithesis Flaming Silver weapon, when fire is not actually a weakness, but silver is? Can Personal Antithesis go to fire part?

[shroudb]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

One important bit to note is that silver flaming weapon has two different pieces of damage. It has both B/P/S(silver) damage and fire damage. Two different damage chunks triggering two different weaknesses.

So... Personal Antithesis Flaming weapon should do the same... but Personal Antithesis Silver weapon should not.

Why? Personal antithesis adds a weakness of your choosing that you use Esoterica to add externally to the Strike.

As an example, if you create a "weakness to blessed soil" and use blessed soil that you had in your pockets to add "Blessed Soil" in the Strike and trigger the weakness, why is that any different than using a rune to add Fire and trigger the weakness?

You're not changing your weapon properties, you simply add a weakness to an Esoterica you're using that's triggered every time you Strike, regardless of how you Strike.

Or to use your language:
Personal Antithesis just adds to all your Strikes a separate Weakness. Since it's added to the Strike in general, it's not tied to the physical pr of the weapon.

[Trip.H]

I think the one weakness per dmg chunk/instance question can be answered if we look at how holy/unholy weakness works.

If you swing a holy sanctified cold iron sword at a demon w/ weakness to both holy and cold iron, does that proc both weaknesses, or just one?

While it's intuitive for it to pop both weaknesses, the rules explicitly state that is not what happens. Instead, it's the highest weakness.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2317 wrote:

If you have a weakness to a certain type of damage or damage from a certain source, that type of damage is extra effective against you. Whenever you would take that type of damage, increase the damage you take by the value of the weakness. For instance, if you are dealt 2d6 fire damage and have weakness 5 to fire, you take 2d6+5 fire damage.

If you have a weakness to something that doesn't normally deal damage, such as water, you take damage equal to the weakness value when touched or affected by it. 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.

So Sanityfaerie is correct, each instance of damage can only trigger the best weakness that's triggered by that instance.

Splash *has* to be an unconnected instance of damage due to how it mechanically splashes for damage when a bomb strike misses. This is usually a big negative, as it makes buffing splash damage limited to Feats/effects that explicitly call out the splash mechanic, but it does appear to have the upside of allowing for the potential Strike to trigger one weakness, while the splash could trigger another.

However, if there was a rule callout to combine the splash and strike for purposes of resistance + weakness, then the two being separate instances would not matter.

And while bomb/splash rules are fragmented all over the place, yup, that is the rule.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2210 wrote:

Alchemical bombs are consumable weapons that deal damage or produce special effects, and they sometimes deal splash damage. You throw a bomb as a ranged Strike. It's a martial ranged weapon with a range increment of 20 feet and can't benefit from runes since it's a consumable.

A bomb deals any listed splash damage to the target on a failure, success, or critical success, and to all other creatures within 5 feet of the target on a success or critical success. Add the damage together before applying resistance or weakness, and don't multiply splash damage on a critical hit.

To restate: technically yes, bombs and splash are 2 instances of damage, but there a common "consider them the same for resistances & weaknesses" rule.

That's needed to allow splash to work, and to safeguard from "status bonus to strike damage" buffing 5x when a 10ft splash hits 5 foes.

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So a bomb hit can only proc the single largest weakness unless there's something specifically overriding that, which may be buried somewhere in Thaum, idk.

[Trip.H]

As far as I can tell from a 10min search of the new core pdfs, the damage from property runes like flaming are de-facto separate damage instances like splash, as they lack any mention of combining into the main strike.

This leaves them unable to get the benefits that PCs can put into their strikes, like Thaum's Personal Antithesis, cold iron damage, ect, but it does mean that a naked weakness to that damage type, such as flaming's fire, will proc a weakness separate from the main hit.

This could be an oversight, or I could have missed some oddly-placed mention of a standard "For the sake of weaknesses and resistances..." rule.

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Pre-post edit: Oh wow, the wording on the property runes varies amongst each other, WT actual F Paizo.

Quote:

A weapon with this rune is empowered by flickering flame. The weapon deals an additional 1d6 fire damage on a successful Strike, plus 1d10 persistent fire damage on a critical hit.

This one looks like it's a separate poof of fire done by the weapon in reaction to the hit. Meaning it is not a part of the hit, and would be a 2nd instance of damage.

=====================

Quote:

Acid sizzles across the surface of the weapon etched with this rune. When you hit with the weapon, add 1d6 acid damage to the damage dealt. In addition, on a critical hit, the target's armor (if any) takes 3d6 acid damage (before applying Hardness); if the target has a shield raised, the shield takes this damage instead.

This is the more common(?) wording. Adding into the damage you are already dealing is definitely a modification of that single instance of damage, and would NOT enable a 2nd weakness pop.

=======================

There's a chance that wording was 100% intentional and self-aware in the weakness popping department.

While the difference is easy to miss, it's imo black and white enough that I would by default actually have those runes function differently.

While those with the flaming wording may get an extra pop of weakness, they also might get double-resisted.

TBH, if this ever came up, I might allow any players to choose btwn those 2 options for any dmg rune when slot it in, but they would need to decide ahead of time and perhaps do a crafting check if they wanted to edit their rune's wording later.

[shroudb]

Trip.H wrote:

As far as I can tell from a 10min search of the new core pdfs, the damage from property runes like flaming are de-facto separate damage instances like splash, as they lack any mention of combining into the main strike.

This leaves them unable to get the benefits that PCs can put into their strikes, like Thaum's Personal Antithesis, cold iron damage, ect, but it does mean that a naked weakness to that damage type, such as flaming's fire, will proc a weakness separate from the main hit.

This could be an oversight, or I could have missed some oddly-placed mention of a standard "For the sake of weaknesses and resistances..." rule.

=============================

Pre-post edit: Oh wow, the wording on the property runes varies amongst each other, WT actual F Paizo.

Quote:

A weapon with this rune is empowered by flickering flame. The weapon deals an additional 1d6 fire damage on a successful Strike, plus 1d10 persistent fire damage on a critical hit.

This one looks like it's a separate poof of fire done by the weapon in reaction to the hit. Meaning it is not a part of the hit, and would be a 2nd instance of damage.

=====================

Quote:

Acid sizzles across the surface of the weapon etched with this rune. When you hit with the weapon, add 1d6 acid damage to the damage dealt. In addition, on a critical hit, the target's armor (if any) takes 3d6 acid damage (before applying Hardness); if the target has a shield raised, the shield takes this damage instead.

This is the more common(?) wording. Adding into the damage you are already dealing is definitely a modification of that single instance of damage, and would NOT enable a 2nd weakness pop.

=======================

There's a chance that wording was 100% intentional and self-aware in the weakness popping department.

While the difference is easy to miss, it's imo black and white enough that I would by default actually have those runes function differently.

While those with the flaming...

All this is conjecture.

The facts that we DO know are:
a)All damage from a Strike is combined before being dealt. That includes properties and etc.That combined damage is then dealt to the target.
b)After you roll, but before you apply, you calculate resistances/weaknesses.

We simply do not know if "instance of damage" is talking about end result, in which case it would include the property runes inside the main damage, or not.
We also do not know when there's multi-element stuff happenning from a single spell if each is a separate instance as well.

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we can make conjecture of what is and what isn't a single instance of damage, and we have a single example that helps with that, but unfortunately the example they chose does not actually clarify what happens when there are different damage rolls, like it's the case of property runes.

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that said, "the weapon deals additional X" and "add X to damage dealt (by the weapon)" are actually synonymous, so both flaming and acid property runes would behave the exact same way.