Does ghost touch rune affect other runes in the same weapon?

[Sc8rpi8n_mjd]

Hi everyone.

This question appeared in our last session as a character with a flaming ghost touch weapon hit a wraith. That creature has the following ability:

Resistances all damage 5 (except force, ghost touch, spirit, or vitality; double resistance vs. non-magical)

Does a creature with that kind of resistance take full damage only from the weapon damage dice and applies the resist all 5 to the flaming rune, or does it take full damage from both types of damage?

Thank you!

[Finoan]

It depends on how you define 'instance of damage'.

[NorrKnekten]

There is an clarification underneath the incorporeal trait which reads.

Incorporeal wrote:

Incorporeal creatures usually have immunity to effects or conditions that require a physical body, like disease, poison, and precision damage. They usually have resistance against all damage (except force damage and damage from Strikes with the ghost touch property rune), with double the resistance against non-magical damage.

So by RAW Ghost Touch is applied to the strike itself as a whole, not just the weapon damage. Runes, Buffs and such that increases your strike damage also fall under the Ghost Touch property in this case.

[Finoan]

NorrKnekten wrote:

There is an clarification underneath the incorporeal trait which reads.

Incorporeal wrote:

Incorporeal creatures usually have immunity to effects or conditions that require a physical body, like disease, poison, and precision damage. They usually have resistance against all damage (except force damage and damage from Strikes with the ghost touch property rune), with double the resistance against non-magical damage.

So by RAW Ghost Touch is applied to the strike itself as a whole, not just the weapon damage. Runes, Buffs and such that increases your strike damage also fall under the Ghost Touch property in this case.

That's kinda flimsy. And doesn't cover all of the cases.

Does it cover the damage from Energy Mutagen that is added to your Strike damage? How about Flame Wisp?

[Squiggit]

Why wouldn't it apply to the mutagen? Your strike benefits from ghost touch and the mutagen modifies the damage your strike does.

I think you're trying too hard to look for an edge case here. There's nothing all that flimsy.

[NorrKnekten]

It may be flimsy, but its not like we have any other instructions within the rune other than it pointing to the incorporeal trait where the quote was taken from, It very explicitly states their resistance to all damage is negated by damage from strikes, that benefit from the ghost property rune. No further specifications were made in regards to it being physical damage or even base weapon damage only.

We can define strike damage as 'Damage Dice+Strmod+Bonuses+Penalties'. So the argument entirely depends on wether an effect adds to the damage of the strike's damage roll in the form of a bonus or not.

Energy mutagen very obviously states that "you add x damage on a hit with a melee weapon" yes it is untyped but much like any other item/circumstance/status bonus you add it to the strike and would double it on a crit like any other bonus.

Flame wisp is also (In My Own Opinion) a clear example of a spell that when you hit you don't add the damage to the roll, as written it deals its own damage separately, similar to Echoing weapon. Thus you don't double it on a crit. Making them distinctly different from spells like Infuse Vitality where you do add additional damage to the strikes.

Spellstrike is also something that I don't think would not benefit from a weapon with the Ghost Touch rune as the damage from the spell does not come from a strike RAW.

[Sc8rpi8n_mjd]

NorrKnekten wrote:

There is an clarification underneath the incorporeal trait which reads.

Incorporeal wrote:

Incorporeal creatures usually have immunity to effects or conditions that require a physical body, like disease, poison, and precision damage. They usually have resistance against all damage (except force damage and damage from Strikes with the ghost touch property rune), with double the resistance against non-magical damage.

So by RAW Ghost Touch is applied to the strike itself as a whole, not just the weapon damage. Runes, Buffs and such that increases your strike damage also fall under the Ghost Touch property in this case.

Wow how could I miss that? that I think answers my question about damage runes on the ghost touch weapon not being reduced by the incorporeal resist all damage standard ability.

About the rest of the rules elements mentioned, I agree with NorrKnekten. There are certain cases where damage is added to the strike, and others where damage is triggered by a Strike but not part of it, and so it is not affected by the Ghost Touch rune.

Also, I hope one day we get an official ruling about "instances of damage" :-)

Thanks a bunch for the answers!

[NorrKnekten]

Sc8rpi8n_mjd wrote:

Also, I hope one day we get an official ruling about "instances of damage" :-)

Agreed, Currently we only have very old examples from Mark Seifter and design feedback(also from Seifter regarding Thaumaturge) to go off, Like the ones I mentioned in the previously mentioned thread. But its all tucked away underneath long dead forum posts.

[Finoan]

NorrKnekten wrote:

We can define strike damage as 'Damage Dice+Strmod+Bonuses+Penalties'. So the argument entirely depends on wether an effect adds to the damage of the strike's damage roll in the form of a bonus or not.

A type of damage is not a bonus. Bonuses come in three types, four if you count untyped: Circumstance, Item, Status.

Fire is not a bonus type.

So if Strike damage is defined as 'Damage Dice + STR + Bonuses + Penalties' as you stated, then all damage from Mutagens or Flame Wisp would not be part of it. The damage from an Energy Mutagen would be a separate instance of damage just like the damage from Flame Wisp.

[NorrKnekten]

Damage-Type Isn't Bonus-Type and the two aren't mutually exclusive, With bonus dice and flat modifiers happening before damage types are assigned. So it being fire damage really does not matter.
Is Burn It!'s Status bonus to persistent fire damage not a bonus because it is fire damage?

And why would they include the addition of "for weapon's damage die , don't count extra dice from abilities, critical specialization effects, property runes, weapon traits, or the like." if these added dice is not part of the damage roll as a bonus and therefore part of the strike?

No rather clearly the intention on what is a bonus is already apparant within RAW.

Damage Rolls wrote:

A damage roll typically uses a number and type of dice determined by the weapon or unarmed attack used or the spell cast, and it's often enhanced by various modifiers, bonuses, and penalties.

Like checks, a damage roll—especially a melee weapon damage roll—is often modified by a number of modifiers, penalties, and bonuses.

This explains it rather well that modifiers, penalties and bonuses exists for both Dice Amount and flat amounts to the Damage Roll.

So what matters is if the effect states that damage is added to the strike, or that the strike deals additional damage. At which point it becomes a bonus to the damage roll by definition unlike the effects that do not do this, like Flame Wisp.

[Witch of Miracles]

The wording on ghost touch is similar to the wording for Thaum's personal antithesis, and my read on that is it only applies to the weapon damage.

That being said, if I hadn't thought about it for this thread, I'd have run it as applying to the whole weapon strike, elemental damage runes included. I guess it's sort of a question of if ghost touch is parsed like cold iron, adamantine, etc., or has its own rules. I'm definitely not sure which is the intent.

[pH unbalanced]

I have always had Ghost Touch and Merciful apply their effects to all other property runes on a weapon -- doing otherwise would seem to undercut their intended function.

[NorrKnekten]

Witch of Miracles wrote:

The wording on ghost touch is similar to the wording for Thaum's personal antithesis, and my read on that is it only applies to the weapon damage.

That being said, if I hadn't thought about it for this thread, I'd have run it as applying to the whole weapon strike, elemental damage runes included. I guess it's sort of a question of if ghost touch is parsed like cold iron, adamantine, etc., or has its own rules. I'm definitely not sure which is the intent.

Isn't that behavior regarding thaumaturge specific to weaknesses and thus covered underneath the section of weaknesses, When you have a weakness to damage from a specific source instead of a damage type(or collection of damage types). You only take the additional damage once. With weakness to precious material and traits being the sole examples of this applying to the weapons base damage.

Your entire strike may be Holy as a champion but a fiend is still only taking +5 instead of +5 for every damage type present because thats the defined behavior for weakness to a trait. Likewise if you are affected by something that normally doesn't deal damage you take damage equal to the weakness value without it applying to any pool of damage. If a creature has a weakness to ghost touch it is indeed only added once aswell.

So there are absolutely different rules when dealing with weaknesses and resistances. Here we shouldn't be treating Ghost Touch as triggering weakness but rather as a modifier to damage used to bypass resistances with it as an exception. Where resistance exceptions in this case is defined as damage type or damage from a source.

Reistance wrote:

A resistance also might have an exception. For example, resistance 10 to physical damage (except silver) would reduce any physical damage by 10 unless that damage was dealt by a silver weapon.

The Strike of a Silver Hammer affected with Serrate would be dealing both bludgeoning and slashing and thus bypass this entirely because both damage types were dealt by a silver weapon.

Because serrate states "Strikes with the target weapon deal an additional 1d4 slashing damage until the start of your next turn."

This is the exact same position we sit in with Ghost Touch
Resistance 5 to All-damage(Except Ghost touch) would reduce any damage by 5 unless that damage was dealt by a Strike with Ghost Touch.