Exemplar Ikon Titan's Breaker Fracture Mountains Clarification

[Urgnok]

So my players and I were going over some of the Exemplar Ikons when we came across Titan's Breaker. When reading the Transcendence, there was some confusion on how to interpret the wording.

The Transcendence reads "Your spirit is so dense it takes on tangible
force. Make a melee Strike with the titan’s breaker. This
counts as two attacks when calculating your multiple
attack penalty. If this Strike hits, your additional spirit
damage from the ikon’s immanence increases to 4 plus an
extra die of weapon damage. If you’re at least 10th level,
it’s increased to 6 spirit damage and two extra dice, and if
you’re at least 18th level, it’s increased to 8 spirit damage
and three extra dice."

The relevant portions up to debate were "If this Strike hits, your additional spirit damage from the ikon’s immanence increases to 4 plus an
extra die of weapon damage..." and "The titan’s breaker deals 2 additional spirit damage per weapon damage die to creatures it Strikes." from the immanence

Now, there were several different arguments on how this ability works.
Using a Maul as an example.
X= # of damage dice Y= 4+1d12

Option A) Xd12+X(Y)
The transcendence retains the imminence's scaling with weapon damage dice

Option B) Xd12+Y
The transcendence loses the imminence's scaling with weapon damage dice

Option C) Xd12+4X+1d12
The transcendence only retains the imminence's scaling with weapon damage dice, but only for the increased spirit damage.

Options A and B are the most literal of the interpretations, while option C was what some members of my group thought was the intended effect.

I'm sure that the wording for Fracture Mountains will be changed in a future errata, but until then I'm not sure what to do.

[Squiggit]

I believe the correct interpretation is that the transcendence benefit wholly replaces the immanence benefit and has no scaling outside the explicitly mentioned scaling. "Increases to" puts option C off the table cleanly.

As a point of comparison, look at Shadow Sheathe and Barrow's Edge, both of which also have damage increasing. Both of them spell out that 'per die' scaling is preserved. By contrast, Fracture Mountains doesn't include the per die language. It simply says it increases from 2/die to 4+D.

So B is correct.

A I don't think passes the smell test either. Consider that at level 19 with a major striking rune, option A would mean the attack does 24+12d12 additional damage.

[Xenocrat]

If they want it to be terrible as Power Attack/Vicious Swing, then it's B. If they want it to be well balanced with other ikon options like Gleaming Blade, then it should be 4/6/8 per weapon die, replacing the 2 value.

Gleaming Blade has a good chance to hit twice (and an excellent chance to guarantee one hit), with the second hit providing the full effects of all weapon dice, elemental rune dice, strength, weapon specialization, and any other special status/other damage bonuses that might count for both hits.

Compared to that, Titan Breaker needs the higher bonus per weapon die and the extra dice from the Vicious Swing effect just to keep up, and then becomes more of a "one huge hit or nothing" vs Gleaming Blades "two crippling hits or excellent chance of at least one good hit or relatively small chance of nothing." Gleaming Blade also can totally bypass physical or energy resistance, which Titan Breaker can't.

[Dubious Scholar]

Yeah, the way that scales is very odd, since it either generates a ludicrous amount of extra flat damage (surpassing Giant Barbarians handily) or basically none at all (because 8 is already just 2/die)

In all cases, the extra dice from the ability don't get extra spirit damage though. Abilities that scale damage with weapon damage dice always mean just the base dice number from striking runes.

As written, yeah, it breaks the per-dice scaling of the immanence and replaces it... with the exact same amount of spirit damage anyways, give or take 2 depending on rune status.

You can make a case that it's intended to be a flat amount of extra damage, in which case that would cap out at 4d12+8 base strike gaining another +8 and +3d12, which would effectively make it equal to Barbarian rage damage for the one attack. It's not how it's written, but it should function cleanly in play if run that way.

[shroudb]

The outlier is Gleaming Blade.

As an example, Noble Branch is basically 1-4 dices where Titan breaker is 1-3 dices +8 (which should always be higher, but has the chance to miss, but also crit, as opposed to Noble only activating on a hit)

Or Sheath giving a +4 on your second attack, but only if the 1st attack miss.

---

I'd say that since most of the base weapon Transcends are slightly better versions of preexisting martial feats (Gleaming is Double slice with 1 weapon, Titan is Vicious swing with upsides, Sheath is better Exacting Strike, etc) and Double Slice is much better than Vicious Swing for damage, the difference is larger.

[ElementalofCuteness]

Really it just needs a rewrite of how it is suppose to work in my opinion. I too got confused and I guess still am confused by it since it makes literally no sense to me. I suppose I just need to figure out which is the right call. No other Transcended removed your immenence effect which is the confusing part here.