This isn't a new issue. From Core Rulebook (4th Printing):
When you throw an alchemical bomb and that bomb has the splash trait, you can add your Intelligence modifier to the bomb’s usual splash damage, and it deals splash damage to every creature within 10 feet of the target.
So, similar language. Every table I've ever been at allows the damage boost even when the Bomber Research Field ability limits the Splash zone.
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Agree. As written, you can't use the regular five-foot splash and get the bonus damage, but if you're not dealing damage to the splash area anyway then it doesn't matter how big it is.
I choose to splash 10 feet, and I also choose not to deal damage in the splash zone.
(And honestly, if a player wanted to use the 5-foot radius and added the bonus, I'm not gonna argue with them about that.)
Like ottdmk put, this one's been a thorny issue for a while.
To me, the "usual area" part of the Bomber Discovery applies to Expanded Splash. Or, to put it another way:
"What would be the usual area for an Expanded Splash bomb if I want the extra intelligence damage?" ->"10 feet" -> "Well, I choose to affect only the main target instead of those 10 feet".
I mean the whole point of the bomber discovery is to manipulate the splash area, it seems very weird to me to not allow them to do so here.
New version of Expanded Splash OCRed out of the PC2 pdf:
EXPANDED SPLASH FEAT 10
ALCHEMIST
You can throw bombs at just the right trajectory to create especially large and powerful explosions. When you throw an alchemical bomb and that bomb has the splash trait, you can have the splash damage affect all creatures within 10 feet of the target instead of 5 feet. If you do, you gain a status bonus to the bomb’s splash damage equal to your Intelligence modifier. If you have the bomber 5th-level field discovery, this additional damage applies even if you caused your bomb to deal splash damage equal to your Intelligence modifier instead of the normal amount, allowing your bombs to deal splash damage equal to double your Intelligence modifier.
I guess I'm playing devil's advocate here. The Expanded Splash Feat was rewritten in PC2 and is meaningfully different. Appeals like "it did technically work in the old version" seems to be a cope to avoid confronting the new trigger/hook phrase, which was the entire reason OP posted to begin with.
It's not a fun thing to notice, but the new Feat really does tie the status bonus splash to the use of the expanded AoE. The old one only required the alch to throw a splash bomb to provide 2 effects (+dmg & bigger AoE).
This "if you do" wording is new for PC2, and being able to compare against the old version that lacks the requirement only emphasizes this as a mechanical difference between them.
"Specific overrides general" does not save this; a specific override is not the same thing as the Bomber L1 splash on/off passive allowing one to selectively edit Expanded Splash in order to remove the required trigger tied to that bonus status damage.
The entire point of writing such {if} --> {then} triggers/hooks inside of abilities is to allow authors to future proof against being specifically overrode by outside text in ways they did not want.
The new version even has a full sentence to enable compatibility with Bomber's splash = INT passive, but lacks compatibility for the L1 passive.
I get the knee-jerk reaction to "not nerf Alchemist" but such considerations ought be put aside when trying to determine the actual RaW.
The Bomber L1 passive could have been written to provide allies with immunity to Bomber splash, or for it to "miss up to __ creatures you designate", etc. Instead, it was written to toggle the AoE on/off. Same goes for Expanded Splash, there's loads of ways to write it to avoid the expanded AoE being a requirement for the bonus dmg. If Paizo actually wanted the two to be compatible, they could have made it so. Homebrew them if you want (seriously, homebrew is great), but the RaW is what it is.
It sucks that Alch was nerfed in a number of ways with the remaster, but that's what happened.
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Short version,
(old) Expanded Splash: If you throw a splash bomb, you can add INT to the bomb's splash damage, and can also boost the splash zone to 10ft.
(new) Expanded Splash: if you expand your splash zone, you get a status bonus to splash damage equal to INT.
Using an ability to reduce your splash zone certainly does not allow that bonus damage to trigger.
Backfire Mantle, Energy Mutagens, Spellhearts, energy resist rings & runes, etc all seem to have gotten a bump in their appeal for those who want to pump their splash damage as much as possible.
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Just to try to respond narrowly/specifically,
Since expanded splash could be taken by any alchemist, while the L1 bomber field is only by bomber (so 1/4 of the alchemist available). The more specific would still be the L1 bomber (since it's way more narrow to anyone than a class feat cross field).
That's not what "specific overrides general" means. There is no set "priority order" that says class Features override Feats, or vice versa. If there were, that would also NOT be "specific overriding general," that would be a hierarchy based on rule categorization.
"Specific overrides general" means that you just have to place all the text that interacts with the same thing adjacent to each other, and then do the best you can to figure out which is the most specifically defined and should therefore take priority. "Should", because, there's no RaW that you can follow like a script to perfectly apply to body text like that.
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Because the (new) Expanded Splash is so specific about the damage happening "if you do [expand the splash zone]," IMO there is not any wiggle room to allow the [Splash AoE: Off] L1 feature to function without disabling the Expanded Splash damage.
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The old version let one use Expanded Splash, which provided 2 different effects. It was arguable that because the two effects were not linked and were independent of each other, you could *also* use the L1 [Splash AoE: Off] and it would not affect the increased damage half of Expanded Splash.
It is honestly quite likely that the (new) Expanded Splash was specifically edited by Paizo because they did not want that ruling to be possible anymore.
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Just to try to respond narrowly/specifically,
Since expanded splash could be taken by any alchemist, while the L1 bomber field is only by bomber (so 1/4 of the alchemist available). The more specific would still be the L1 bomber (since it's way more narrow to anyone than a class feat cross field).
That's not what "specific overrides general" means. There is no set "priority order" that says class Features override Feats, or vice versa. If there were, that would also NOT be "specific overriding general," that would be a hierarchy based on rule categorization.
"Specific overrides general" means that you just have to place all the text that interacts with the same thing adjacent to each other, and then do the best you can to figure out which is the most specifically defined and should therefore take priority. "Should", because, there's no RaW that you can follow like a script to perfectly apply to body text like that.
That's also not quite what specific and general mean when talking about the 'Specific overrides general' rule.
A rule that is more specific affects a smaller set of things. A rule that is more general affects a larger set of things.
So a rule that affects any Move action that you take is going to be more specific than a rule that affects every action that you take, and is going to be less specific than a rule that affects any Stride action that you take. A rule stated in the description of one Bomb is going to be more specific than a rule stated in the rules for all bombs or all alchemical items.
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And I also read RAW as saying that you have the option of dealing splash damage in the 10 foot area an only if you do so does the additional damage from Expanded Splash happen.
If you decide to only deal damage in the 5 foot radius or only to the primary target, then Expanded Splash does not apply.
Houserule (or errata) as you desire, of course. But that is what I am reading RAW as being.
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I think this is more an "order of operations" question than a "specific overrides general" question. Let me explain.
The feat states:
When you throw an alchemical bomb and that bomb has the splash trait, you can have the splash damage affect all creatures within 10 feet of the target instead of 5 feet. If you do, you gain a status bonus to the bomb’s splash damage equal to your Intelligence modifier. If you have the bomber 5th-level field discovery, this additional damage applies even if you caused your bomb to deal splash damage equal to your Intelligence modifier instead of the normal amount, allowing your bombs to deal splash damage equal to double your Intelligence modifier.
Okay, so looking at the feat, you would conclude that first you apply the field discovery, and then this feat. And you can only apply the feat if your splash radius was currently 5 feet. If for some reason you had a bomb that had a splash radius of something else, you couldn't meet this requirement either.
Now let's look at Bomber;
Field Benefit When throwing an alchemical bomb with the splash trait, you can choose to deal splash damage to only your primary target instead of the usual splash area.
(...)
Greater Field Discovery (13th) You can increase the splash on your bombs to damage creatures within 10 feet, or 15 feet if you have Expanded Splash.
The level 13 ability looks a lot like you'd be applying it after Expanded Splash. Because if you did it first, it wouldn't be a 5 feet radius anymore and you couldn't use Expanded Splash for extra damage.
But if the level 13 ability is applied after the feat, then why not the level 1 ability?
The way the feat and the field reference each other, they're clearly intended to work well together, not have a subtle hard to spot conflict built in that half the players won't notice. The rules are not meant to be broken or intentionally obscure. So I think the best RAI reading would be:
* If you use Expanded Splash, you'll increase the base area from 5 to 10.
* After that you can use your research field to shrink or grow it.
* In no case are you getting the Expanded Splash bonus damage in a 5ft splash radius. But 0, 10 and 15 are all in the cards.
The "order of operations" idea you are referencing is in conflict with the idea of letting the specificity of the Feat text exist as written.
"Order of operations" is another way to try to invoke a hierarchy to selectively edit/trump just the parts of Expanded Splash that you wish to.
Again, this selective cutting to change the meaning of the text is not valid. The whole thing must be considered. Expanded Splash is written to specifically tie the boosted AoE size to the bonus damage. You cannot claim "Ord o Ops" to -re-write- the damage boost to cut out the "if you do" clause.
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Another rephrasing:
Expanded Splash doesn't care about why nor by what mechanism you are not expanding the splash zone, it makes an ultimatum that the bonus damage happens "if you do." Most abilities do not have a specific mandate like that, and that includes (old) Expanded Splash.
As I have mentioned before, there were plenty of ways Paizo could have changed the wording of the L1 feature or the Feat to allow the two to combo. Such as the L1 granting allies immunity to the splash, instead of the L1 being a binary splash zone on/off switch.
Expanded Splash even includes text to ensure that the L5 feature is compatible, even when that ruling would not require that extra text. That Paizo went out of their way to mention that, yet they did not give a mention to the L1 is very strong bit of (unnecessary) circumstantial evidence.
Again,
You can throw bombs at just the right trajectory to create especially large and powerful explosions. When you throw an alchemical bomb and that bomb has the splash trait, you can have the splash damage affect all creatures within 10 feet of the target instead of 5 feet. If you do, you gain a status bonus to the bomb's splash damage equal to your Intelligence modifier.
I do not think there is any argument that after getting the Feat, if the Alchemist chooses to throw a bomb and use the regular 5ft splash zone, the damage will not be added.
I would wager that every reader here can agree that you cannot get the bonus damage when throwing a bomb normally.
And because the effect of the bonus damage is tied to the increasing of the splash zone, this is why a different feature that shrinks the splash zone is incompatible. This really should not be a difficult conclusion to reach.
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In order for some combo Feat/feature to loophole with the (new) Expanded Splash and still award the bonus damage, it would need to not disrupt the splash zone expansion part of the Feat.
Thankfully, we do have an example of that.
And like with Expanded Splash making sure to call out the L5 bonus dmg feature to ensure compatibility when it is intended, Directional Bombs also calls out Expanded Splash to make sure there's no ambiguity.
You can lob bombs with great force and a precise trajectory to angle the splash in a cone that sprays in a single direction, potentially allowing you to avoid allies and splash deeper into enemy lines. When throwing an alchemical bomb with the splash trait, instead of splashing all squares adjacent to the target, you can create a splash in a 15-foot cone. You choose the cone's direction, but its first square must be a square in the target's space.
Special If you have the Expanded Splash feat or another ability that increases the radius of splash damage, you can have the splash damage be a 20-foot cone.
Compared to many other tricky and genuinely ambiguous rulings, IMO this Expanded Splash one is very straightforward. Sure, it is a power limitation that will prickle some who would rather it not exist, but that's no excuse to pretend that such a clear rule does not exist.
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Bomber Greater Field Discovery (level 13) and Directional Bombs (feat 6) mention clearly how they work together with Expanded Splash to make the splash bigger; 15 feet instead of 10 feet, or a 20 foot cone. Neither of those is still a 10 foot splash radius, but they don't say you should go back and take off the extra damage from Expanded Splash. But if you were supposed to do that, that would have been the perfect place to say it. At that point, saying you don't get the damage anymore is so surprising, so weird, so bad, that it can't be true.
Paizo doesn't want to trick people into doing the rules wrong. They don't want to make an option that looks like it's really obviously meant to work with another option, but if you look really closely, it doesn't work. They don't set out to write trap options.
So, it's pretty clear to me that the Greater Field Discovery and Directional Bombs don't cancel Expanded Splash bonus damage. I bring up "order of operations" because that's the easiest way to map that:
1. Decide to throw a bomb with 5ft splash.
2. Apply Expanded Splash, increase damage
3. Apply Bomber Greater Field Discovery, Directional Bombs, or Bomber Field Benefit; keep the bonus damage, because you already passed the point where you check if you qualified.
Because, if you can do the Greater Field Discovery or Directional Bombs after Expanded Splash and keep the damage even though the area is not exactly a 10ft area anymore, why can't you apply the basic Field Benefit at that late stage?
If the design goal was really that you couldn't combine these things, it would need to be called out more clearly. Right now it falls into the "too sneaky to be true" category to say that the Field Benefit is different from Greater Field Discovery or Directional Bombs.
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Buddy, it's not "too sneaky too be true" just because you literally cannot super combo every single mod simultaneously.
This really comes down to "I don't like the way it was written, therefore I can edit the ability to work the way I think it should."
You are trying to rules lawyer to get the benefit of a "power throw" type ability without the single possible downside of performing said "power throw."
To be frank, Bomber is crazy lucky that Expanding the splash is the only catch to getting that bonus damage. There's very little in the system that does not have some other downside or trade to an enhanced strike like that. Most stuff will have very significant tradeoff like extra MAP progression. For Bomber to just add their stat every throw like that? That's actually crazy strong.
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Again, if Paizo had made the friend-safety feature as an immunity, a selective avoidance, or literally anything that did not turn off the splash, then it would combo/stack.
You have to give the devs the benefit of the doubt that they wrote what they did on purpose, you cannot assume accident or else the entire notion of following the rules as written is gone, and it becomes a nonsense vibes-based free for all.
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In the case of (new) Expanded Splash, it is very specifically written so that one must Expand the splash to gain a bonus to splash damage.
There is no "trick", that's just how the Feat functions. If you posses the Feat, you have the new option to Expand your splash. Expanding the splash means increasing the AoE, and when done, there is a bonus secondary effect to increase the splash damage.
If you do not increase your splash zone AoE, you are not using the Feat, and can not gain its secondary benefit.
If this were a computer game, any time you would toggle the L1 feature on, it would auto toggle Expanded off, and vice versa. After the remaster they are 100% incompatible.
What are we even arguing about this for? What does the Alchemist get if we allow it, the chance to do their so big splash damage to a single target? Oh boy! Even fing Investigators can use their Int bonus with DAS, but what does THE bomb class get? Alchemists still have the worst odds of all martials at hitting with their OWN bombs
I know I sound cynical when I say it, but alchemists are still best played as bomb vending machines for the other martials. At least after passing out their party favors during daily prep they can sit back and throw VVs every fight
Let them have their expanded splash on a single target. It's the least we can do
That's the path that runs directly opposite to objectivity. I cannot support an approach like: "because the class is numerically poor, who cares about the real rules."
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I fully support any table/GM that wants to homebrew buff the Alchemist class. The Remaster nerfed them very hard in a lot of ways. My own favorite type, the Chiurgeon, was hit especially hard.
None of that personal desire for Alchemist to have more potency changes the reality of the rules as they exist.
It is also important to acknowledge that 2xInt to damage on miss is actually very, very potent. 10 flat damage on miss is no joke, that's basically 3d6 when every other strike is doing 0.
No other type of Strike can get what's essentially 1/2 dmg on miss, and from a design reverse-engineer PoV it's clear that Bomber's significant output on miss is why the Class was balanced via lagging accuracy, and also why splash was nerfed to require a hit for the full AoE.
While martials can land the bomb hits better than Alch, they cannot get the 10 dmg on miss like the Alchemist can (nor use Additives), and would require a feat tax via Quick Draw to even begin to bomb part-time. All that is to say, even with lagging accuracy, a Bomber is still absolutely the best bomb-thrower.
(Though I 100% agree it was and is dumb as s~~@ for a designer to use lagging strike accuracy as a balancing lever in a system like pf2e. It never should have been used in the first place, and now it looks like Guardian might get a similar crippling albatross)
A quick tip for Bombers adjusting to the new normal.
The potent features like Expanded are not Additives, which are now limited to 1 p turn and there are no more Perpetuals to enhance with Additives.
Even after reaching R2 bombs, I highly recommend looking to see if you want to trade away 1 d6 of damage that you could get from the R2 Q-Vials, and instead consider throwing bought/crafted R1 bombs when you want to conserve VVs. I personally see the gain of bomb on-hit effects to be well worth the trade of 1d6 damage most of the time. Continuing to use R1s due to their cheap price is something that Bombers did not have much reason to think about before, but there's more complications to consider in the new system.
And if yall want a recommend homebrew buff to Alch, the very first thing I'd suggest is to remove the "no Additives with Q-Vials" rule. That alone would give the class a lot more reason to use the otherwise horrendous QVials, and to take the Additive Feats.
Buddy, it's not "too sneaky too be true" just because you literally cannot super combo every single mod simultaneously.
This really comes down to "I don't like the way it was written, therefore I can edit the ability to work the way I think it should."
You are trying to rules lawyer to get the benefit of a "power throw" type ability without the single possible downside of performing said "power throw."
To be frank, Bomber is crazy lucky that Expanding the splash is the only catch to getting that bonus damage. There's very little in the system that does not have some other downside or trade to an enhanced strike like that. Most stuff will have very significant tradeoff like extra MAP progression. For Bomber to just add their stat every throw like that? That's actually crazy strong.
That's the whole point of playing bomber though? To be, y'know, better with bombs?
Besides why are we speaking as though making the splash zone bigger is always a bad thing? It's only a bad thing if one of your buddies would be caught in it, otherwise it's just a straight up upgrade to your bombs, letting you damage significantly more enemies.
Choosing to only affect a single target with Splash will save your buddies, but it will also prevent you from damaging any other enemies in the zone. That's a trade off, which is fine.