Example of a single instance of damage.

[Helvellyn]

Starfinder Player Core page:200

"If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a plasma doshko critically hitting a monster that has weakness to fire and electricity."

A doshko normally does fire damage however on a critical hit it also does electricity damage. However, this electricity damage is persistent damage and so does not take place at the same time as the strike from the Doshko. The example seems to imply that the damage from the Doshko plus any persistent damage over potentially multiple rounds, arising from a critical hit represents a single instance of damage.

This seems a lot more restrictive in terms of what an instance of damage is, very much supporting the viewpoint that it is all damage relating to an individual attack that counts as an instance of damage not separate damage types as is often ruled.

[Finoan]

Best of luck. The Pathfinder2e community has been begging for a clarification on this since the initial release in 2019.

[Squiggit]

Oh cool another example that suggests something completely different should be happening. Absolutely wild that this basic idea is still so hard to figure out.

So a creature with weakness/resistance to electricity modifies the damage of the basic strike even though no electricity damage is dealt until the end of their turn, and then would never apply weakness or resistance again because the entire persistent damage condition is a single instance?

This seems pretty clearly wrong, especially since the example doesn't even match the rest of the sentence, a plasma doshko dealing persistent electricity on a crit isn't a weapon with a special material or trait, the 'such as' doesn't make sense.

But who really knows at this point.

[Xenocrat]

Yeah, this is a shockingly incompetent answer. It will be less popular than the “mistaken” dying rules in remastered PF2 Player Core.

[Perses13]

This seems like a clear case of "The PF2 example doesn't exist in SF2, we need to copy in an SF2 example" and the editing process didn't catch that the SF2 example didn't make sense.

[Christopher#2411504]

They made it worse. Because I think they don't even have a working example for it?

This is the PF2 rule:

Quote:

If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing.

It makes sense in PF2, because it does have stuff like material weakness (Cold Iron, Silver) or Holy/Unholy Weakness (which are not in SF2 right now).

I can't imagine a SF2 weapon where it might apply. Maybe if it was wielded by the right/wrong PF2 class.
Spells are mostly likely. They might get stuff like Moonbean down the line. Which has Cold damage that counts as Cold, Magical and Silver at the same time.

[Finoan]

It doesn't actually make sense in PF2 either.

For any game devs that happen to read this, let me spell it all out. The difficulty is that 'instance of damage' is used in resistance and weakness rules, but is never defined.

So...

Simple case: A fire spell is cast at an enemy with Resist Fire (3).
Fire: 2d4 ⇒ (2, 2) = 4
How much damage does the enemy take and what definition of instance of damage was used to determine that?

Complex case: A slashing weapon with a fire rune on it is used on an enemy with Resist Slashing (2) and Resist Fire (3).
Slashing (sword): 2d6 + 4 ⇒ (3, 6) + 4 = 13
Fire (flaming rune): 1d6 ⇒ 3
How much damage does the enemy take and what definition of instance of damage was used to determine that?

Paradox case: A Magus casts Blazing Armory to create a sword made of fire, casts Runic Impression to add a Flaming rune on it, and drinks an Energy Mutagen (Fire)(Moderate) and swings at an enemy with Resist Fire (3).
Fire (sword): 2d6 + 4 ⇒ (4, 6) + 4 = 14
Fire (flaming rune): 1d6 ⇒ 1
Fire (mutagen): 1d4 ⇒ 4
How much damage does the enemy take and what definition of instance of damage was used to determine that?

[Mangaholic13]

Finoan wrote:

It doesn't actually make sense in PF2 either.

For any game devs that happen to read this, let me spell it all out. The difficulty is that 'instance of damage' is used in resistance and weakness rules, but is never defined.

So...

I feel like, Finoan, and this might just be me being dumb, the answers are:

Simple: between 0-5

Complex: between 4-19

Paradox: between 5-23

And I'd define the instance of damage as the attacking action alongside any other factors that add to the damage, then subtract the highest resistance that applies to the individual damage types.

In the case of the OP, I'd say the fire weakness applies only to the doshko strike, while the electricity weakness applies only to the persistent damage.

...Which, admittedly, means the Plasma Doshko vs Monster with weakness to fire and electricity is still a terrible example.

OP, you should submit that example for Errata.