I would disagree, without damage property runes the game feels slower. I've done a high level game where property runes has saved 1-2 rounds of combat which otherwise might have party-wiped us. If you were to cap Property runes then you would need to boost the damage of all weapons or include a way to deal increased damaged on all of the martial weapon using classes!
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I would disagree, without damage property runes the game feels slower. I've done a high level game where property runes has saved 1-2 rounds of combat which otherwise might have party-wiped us. If you were to cap Property runes then you would need to boost the damage of all weapons or include a way to deal increased damaged on all of the martial weapon using classes!
Just add the damage as appropriate to weapon spec / greater weapon spec (might require adding another weapon spec tier), and change the runes to be something like
(1 action) Change all damage from your weapon to X damage. Lasts until you use this action again to change the damage back.
You could also increase the damage scaling of the weapons of the weapons themselves at each striking tier, or do a combination of both.
But yes I would also like to see property runes completely gone as is, a choice between +damage and other stuff is very hard for the other stuff to win in unless that other stuff is extremely powerful, being effectively +damage itself (e.g. Quickstrike).
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Yeah, elemental damage runes have always completely broken the design philosophy that there shouldn't be too large a gap between two PCs that cover the same niche.
If you have two versions of the same character, one stacking damage runes and one not, then the former is categorically stronger. By a very significant margin. And one that is growing with every new rune. That will even be more true with SF2's ranged meta.
I'd much rather have them add the modular or versatile trait for their element.
Gods, imagine a force needle at level 8.
If those base 3 upgrades are not a misprint and you had the money, then you could have a weapon that deals 2d4+4d6 damage plus weapon specialization and STR. At level 8. Damage that is beyond the intended damage for it and most other weapons at level 20.
This alone makes those base 3 upgrades an impossibility, rather than a fun quirk.
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Gods, imagine a force needle at level 8.
If those base 3 upgrades are not a misprint and you had the money, then you could have a weapon that deals 2d4+4d6 damage plus weapon specialization and STR. At level 8. Damage that is beyond the intended damage for it and most other weapons at level 20.
This alone makes those base 3 upgrades an impossibility, rather than a fun quirk.
To be fair the base damage on the weapon is terrible and it has no real traits aside from 3 upgrades
Yes a force needle can get Frost, Flaming, Shock, Loudener, Entropic Destabiliser
A normal 1h weapon at level 8 does 2d8+2d6 (=16) whereas the force needle does 2d4+4d6 (=19) + backstabber
By greater striking it’s 3d8+3d6 (=24) vs 4d4+4d6 (=24) because you ran out of d6 runes and have to use entropic destablizer. By major striking the d8 weapon pulls ahead, though if there were more d6 runes it would be 4d8+4d6(=32) vs 4d4+6d6(=31), slightly worse for the needle.
Assuming no one wants to change the Pathfinder 2e rules and runes, then I'd propose rolling it into the analog and tech traits as opposed to the classes.
You could have the analog and tech traits provide a flat damage bonus equal to the weapon's item level, unless the weapon also has the archaic trait. Thats the distinction between property runes and not.
Tactical: +2 damage (level 2, currently 1 module, can't afford property rune/module)
Advanced: +4 damage (level 4, currently 2 modules, still can't afford property rune/module)
Superior: +10 damage (level 10, currently 2 modules, can afford runes, so ~7 damage)
Elite: +12 damage (level 12, currently 3 modules, so ~10.5 damage from runes)
Ultimate: +16 damage (level 16, currently 3 modules, ~10.5 damage from runes)
Paragon: +19 damage (level 19, currently 4 modules, ~14 damage from runes)
So this would have about an extra damage die as you level up, for free. Or maybe not for free, since you'd roll the old rune prices into the upgrade price. Could also consider the bonus damage to be item level-4, minimum zero, which would shift it down to a better approximation of the current rune damage.
Less ideal would be a single upgrade module which gives damage per item level. So now you only have 1 must take module instead of 3 or 4. By setting the price correctly, you can limit the early game bonus damage if that is what is desired.
The weird thing is that, as far as we know, the damage runes are not part of the "expected player damage" math. They are a bonus on top, so removing them would presumably just be the intended experience.
Big caveat: This was said by the devs pretty early into PF2 and time (or my dumb brain) might make me misremember parts of this or even everything. So take this comment with a load of salt.
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Yeah. Looking at Soldier using a Star Gun, the first thing I'm going to do on hitting level 8 is dump just about everything into a bunch of flaming module/loudener/etc. upgrades, so that those two actions I'm spending every round are doing more reliable damage. Taking a fun "teleport your weapon to your hand!" option like I did in SF1 isn't going to be fun if it's "teleport your weapon to your hand, and do 2d6 less damage every round!"
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So we were discussing this-- there's some oddities here, a lot of weapon adjustments that don't take a rune in PF take an upgrade slot here e.g. if you want a bipod you have to use an upgrade slot for it, and OTOH it matches Orichalcum, which, since rarity isn't used for balance, is supposed to be kosher alongside 3 slots-- I guess part of the reasoning is that at the end of the day an extra 3-4 damage on average isn't a whole lot at level 19?
I have a friend who has a pretty good point that Paizo perhaps considers precious material equivalent to a rune slot, so since you don't get precious material tech, maybe the extra slot is supposed to be the replacing benefit. The only issue is with that reasoning is that while that's the benefit of orichalcum, I don't recall other precious materials stacking up that way.
The weird thing is that, as far as we know, the damage runes are not part of the "expected player damage" math. They are a bonus on top, so removing them would presumably just be the intended experience.
Big caveat: This was said by the devs pretty early into PF2 and time (or my dumb brain) might make me misremember parts of this or even everything. So take this comment with a load of salt.
The ABP rules have this to say, which implies the opposite:
If you choose to eliminate runes entirely, this can reduce the PCs' damage since they won't have runes like flaming or holy. If you've removed nearly all treasure, challenges might become more difficult, even with automatic bonuses.
So they indeed consider you having Property damage runes. Interesting! So they do in fact expect you to have at least 1 or 2 runes at certain levels unless Paizo made a mistake and in that case I don't really know how to fix this because addign more levels of Striking only makes bigger dice weapons more meta over smaller ones.
Making it a flat bonus D6 would not be a bad idea of the same weapon damage though, would fix the thing of doing 4d6 vs 4d12 which is aver damage of the d12 is on par with the max damage of the d6 soooo would you really want more weapon dice being thrown about?.
For the few characters that went high level I always got 1d6 rune of whatever was thematic and two utility runes. I never felt like the options I got were a bad trade for an avg 6-8 damage
Do you think property runes apply to area/auto fire ?
They do. Aoe attacks are replicating everything that would have happened if you actually hit the target, minus anything that explicitly only benefits Strikes.
For starters, I definitely agree that there is no reason whatsoever for SF weapons to accommodate more properties (and therefore bonus damage effects) than PF weapons. That alone is going to be significantly disruptive to balance and compatibility for what seems like little real gain.
On a broader level, I'm also in full agreement that damage property effects need to be done away with in both PF and SF. It's not that weapons need to deal less damage (it would in fact be better if that extra damage were baked into the fundamental runes or equivalents), but when the choice is between bonus damage and a bit of niche utility, damage always wins. The point of property runes was supposed to be that you'd get to outfit your weapon with some nifty side benefits, and that they're instead used as part of the weapon's damage progression flies in the face of the work done across 2e to eliminate false choices. If those weapons let you switch your weapon's damage to a certain type, if only partially, then that could be fine, but bonus damage was a mistake.
Correction: actually, most damage upgrades do not work on aoe weapons, as they explicitly only work on Strikes. (Thanks for pointing that out, Elemental!)
When answering the question, I only read the Entropic Stabilizer again, which is the one that would work.
If damage upgrades are kept, the rest of them would need to be changed.
entropic and Shocking does work with Area/Auto-fire 2 action because I don't know if 2 actions basic save is good enough to not include damage runes outside of those two because they say hit instead of Strike.
entropic and Shocking does work with Area/Auto-fire 2 action because I don't know if 2 actions basic save is good enough to not include damage runes outside of those two because they say hit instead of Strike.
No matter how you answer the balance question, arbitrarily having two kinds of rules for a set of the "same" item is just not something you want to do. Especially not when it is this easy to miss. It gets even worse, because all of them would apply to Primary Target, which is guaranteed to confuse people even more. It is a mess that needs to be solved.
As for my take on the balance question: essentially reducing the maximum weapon damage of two entire weapon categories by up to 4d6 (if it is unified to only affect Strikes) or even "just" 2d6 (current version) never goes well. Like, take a Rogue and cut their Sneak Attack in half (or even take it away completely) and see if they have any complaints. It is technically more complicated due to the aoe thing, but past this point it really doesn't matter. Having it is probably a bit too good, but not having it 100% breaks the game, so you have to commit to the bit.
Sneak attack hits as hard as a great sword but yeah the four damage increasing items need to be errata'd because something is noty right, and Entropic is only a d4 not a d6 of ovice, so it'd be 3d6+1d4 of bonus damage which I am not sure why void is 1d4 other then it's crit effect which is strange and feels like it's better set on something like a 2E's Vanguard.