| sacrelicious2 |
Let's say you have a rogue using a flaming shortsword, and he does a sneak attack. After hitting, he does his damage rolls and does 5 piercing, 4 fire and 3 precision damage. Are these damage types treated as separate instances in regards to immunities, weaknesses and resistances? Or are they combined into a single damage instance with multiple damage types, meaning one damage instance of 12 piercing/fire/precision damage?
The former seems to make a lot more sense, but I don't see it explicitly called out anywhere in the books. The only thing I can find that implies multiple damage types should be treated independently is in the Resistances section:
"It's possible to have resistance to all damage. 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."
Now, if we treat it as a combined damage instance, this means that if the rogue is attacking an enemy with precision immunity, the attack would deal 0 damage, since the instance has the precision type.
This has interesting implications for Thaumaturges. Let's say the thaumaturge used Personal Antithesis to grant a creature weakness 5 to it's strikes. If the strike is doing multiple damage types, which damage type does it apply the damage to? The Personal Antithesis feature doesn't specify, just that they have weakness to your strikes. RAW, I would think this means that the weakness gets applied to each damage type separately, given that we are treating them as distinct damage instances.
There are also interesting implications for Double Slice when using weapons with different damage types. How can they be combined if they are different types?