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So from what I've seen, the new bestial mutagen gives increasing damage die and then a later feat adds the deadly trait to these attacks. However, the mutagen doesn't count as having striking runes from what I can tell so the deadly trait won't scale unless you're wearing handwraps with those runes. Is that correct?
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So from what I've seen, the new bestial mutagen gives increasing damage die and then a later feat adds the deadly trait to these attacks. However, the mutagen doesn't count as having striking runes from what I can tell so the deadly trait won't scale unless you're wearing handwraps with those runes. Is that correct?
That... might be technically correct. Sec, I'll OCR the mutagen text out of a vid:
BESTIAL MUTAGEN ITEM 1
ALCHEMICAL CONSUMABLE
Usage held in 1 hand: Bulk L
Activate •> (manipulate)Your features transform into something bestial and lumbering.
Benefit You gain an item bonus to Athletics checks and unarmed attack rolls. You gain a claw unarmed attack with the agile trait and a jaws unarmed attack. Striking runes don't modify the damage caused by these attacks.
Drawback You take a -2 penalty to Reflex saves. Acrobatics checks, and Stealth checks.
Type lessen Level 1: Price 4 gp
You gain a +1 item bonus, your claw deals 1d4 slashing damage. your jaws deal 1d6 piercing damage, and the duration is 1 minute. Type moderate; Level 3; Price 12 gp
You gain a +2 item bonus, your claw deals 2d6 slashing damage, your jaws deal 2d8 piercing damage, and the duration is 10 minutes. Type greater; Level 11; Price 300 gp
You gain a +3 item bonus, your claw deals 3d8 slashing damage, your jaws deal 3d10 piercing damage, and the duration is 1 hour. Type major; Level 17; Price 3,000 gp
You gain a +4 item bonus, your claw deals 4d8 slashing damage, your jaws deal 4d10 piercing damage, and the duration is 1 hour. You gain weapon specialization with the claw and jaws, or greater weapon specialization if you already have weapon specialization with these unarmed attacks.
There is no text to make the increased damage to invoke anything that keys off of Striking runes.
...which is what Deadly does:
On a critical hit, the weapon adds a weapon damage die of the listed size. Roll this after doubling the weapon’s damage. This increases to two dice if the weapon has a greater striking rune and three dice if the weapon has a major striking rune. For instance, a rapier with a greater striking rune deals 2d8 extra piercing damage on a critical hit. An ability that changes the size of the weapon’s normal damage dice doesn’t change the size of its deadly die.
Sooooo, it'll at least get 1 more die to damage, but without the Bestial attacks being affected by runes, it will not upgrade.
Hmm... it actually seems worse, instead of clarifying that Striking does not stack, the language of the Bestial explicitly blocks Striking from affecting the damage, period.
Welp, that could have been caught by playtesting.
No one counting on the Bestial as an attack is going to neglect the Property runes and will wear Handwraps anyways, so this new increasing damage thing was already just smoothing out a very unlikely edge case of unplanned Bestial use.
For that effort to "improve" the item to have instead caused a new problem for all the actual users of the item is one of those "gotta laugh" moments.
I'm not sure what this ability that adds Deadly trait to the mutagen's attacks says. That is where it should specify how to resolve correlating the mutagen's item level or damage values to the appropriate striking runes needed to make Deadly work.
If it doesn't do that already, that is what I would table rule on. And I would probably rule that the damage dice numbers of the various mutagen attacks correlate directly to the runes that would give those damage dice numbers.