It’s a great rune but ghost oil is often enough. At least if your DM isn’t insane enough to make you drop your weapon on the ground first to apply it.
It’s a great rune but ghost oil is often enough. At least if your DM isn’t insane enough to make you drop your weapon on the ground first to apply it.
Why would a GM having an item work as written require insanity? Sounds like a dubious demand on your part just to get to "often enough".
Yet we're talking about three classes that typically use one-handed weapons so they should have fewer issues applying oils than others. Except the oil still uses two actions, which is costly IMO. And the Astral Rune comes with extra damage to most critters. It's simply better, albeit for later levels.
So maybe I'd use the oil as a patch until then, but I also dislike making my primary weapon useless against corporeal creatures, even if just a minute. Versus mixed enemies I wouldn't bother and in a dynamic dungeon, I wouldn't risk it. Heck, that enemy might just be an illusion or Haunt.
I think the mechanical principle of "try something else" is good to have in a game that's meant to encourage tactical flexibility, but it also entails certain responsibilities on the part of monster design: for starters, the intended targets need to have other things to be able to try that are comparably effective, if not necessarily optimal in a frictionless vacuum. I do think this is still the case with the Investigator, Rogue, and Swashbuckler, but then I think that ends up hitting another risk factor, which is that every time you build a "try something else" into your monster design, you reduce the number of options available against that monster, so that monster normally ought to make sure that the number of options that remain are realistically available to any character. Thus, when your verdurous ooze is immune not only to precision damage and mental effects, but also to piercing and slashing damage, each of those immunities that could individually be fine reduces options down to such a small number that your Swashbuckler's contributions largely just end up being whichever damage property runes they have on their weapon (except for corrosive runes, against which the ooze is also immune). This in my opinion does not necessarily make for tactically interesting, let alone enjoyable gameplay.
In general, the risk I see with immunities is that they make gameplay more brittle: whereas soft counters like resistances generally allow a minimum level of effectiveness for suboptimal tactics, hard counters such as immunities shut those options down completely, which increases the risk of completely hard-countering a character if there isn't enough room for other options. If we're treating combat in the game as a puzzle to be solved with lots of different tools, that's fine, but then that implies that these counters should always leave characters with enough options to solve the puzzle given to them, which clearly isn't always the case. I also think that broad, hard counters to an entire range of mechanics, like fire or mental, is incompatible with thematic builds that focus on one of those mechanics, e.g. a mentalist or a single-element fire Kineticist, so a game that has these hard counters in place is a game that implicitly bans certain characters from play in adventures featuring lots of those counters.
The other issue I personally take with immunities is how they interact with common class mechanics: it never feels good for a caster to waste most of their turn and an entire spell slot, particularly a high-rank one, and having that happen due to immunity can be particularly frustrating. A martial class being unable to put their smaller subset of feats and mechanics to effective use because the monster hard-counters them all is also in my opinion not a great feeling, because at that point "try something else" doesn't work when that is the monster's answer to everything you do. There's a subtler problem at hand here as well with mixed damage types going up against mixed resistance, which if the resistances are high enough can effectively turn into immunity all the same as Ascalaphus mentions.
This is probably worth a separate discussion, which I think has already happened as well, but on top of instances of damage being poorly-defined in-game, the fact that damage is broken up into separate types that then each hit separate resistances, weaknesses, and immunities can make dealing damage far swingier than is healthy in certain instances, which also carries balance implications that I think negatively impact classes meant to excel at hitting different weaknesses, like the Alchemist. It also pushes martial characters towards the rainbow damage builds commonly seen on weapons, which prevents those classes from getting their Strikes 100% shut down but doesn't always lend itself to the most interesting build decisions either in my opinion.
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We have to strike a balance between extremes here. Being completely useless every fight is of course horrible. But on the other extreme, "I missed my to-hit roll and that doesn't feel good, maybe we should just not roll to-hit but auto-hit" is also absurd.
If you throw a high-rank spell and it hits an immunity you didn't know about and doesn't do anything, well that can happen now and then. I wouldn't overhaul the game to make sure that never happens.
But maybe it should be somewhat rare that you hit an immunity and didn't see it coming at all. If that happens it should be because it's the gimmick of that particular enemy - like a vampire pretending to be a normal citizen, but weirdly fine after getting hit with some death magic. Often, an immunity shouldn't be too surprising. Fire not working on a fire-breathing dragon that lives in a volcano isn't a gotcha.
The current game design is kinda harsh on single-strategy characters like the strict fire-only kineticist. It only takes one level 1 feat to be more versatile but I guess you could be dead-set on being fire-only. And then some fights you'll be useless.
My sympathy with that character's player is limited. If you choose to narrow yourself down that far, then part of your character concept is that you'll be hosed sometimes. That's like making a negative con elf wizard and complaining that the game punishes you for being in the front row of the party.
Pathfinder 2 has a lot less monsters with wide-ranging immunities than PF1, as well as a lot less resistances. It's pretty unusual for a monster to resist three or more elemental damage types. I can't think of any monster that's immune to both slashing and bludgeoning damage (there might be one; I can't think of any). There are some immunities though that frequently appear together; not-living creatures don't care much about poison and void at the same time for example.
I think some of the responsibility for backup plans has to be on the players. It's easier if you play from level 1 up, because having to brute-force things without a backup plan gets a lot harder at higher level than at level 1. Ideally, at low level you've fought some oozes and realized you need a plan for that; ran into a minor ghost and figured out you need something for that; fought a swarm and done your homework.
Talking about responsibility - I think Paizo could do better with pregens and player guides for APs. Sometimes those player guides seem a bit idealized by the writer's original outline, and not really informed by what was actually put in the final published versions of the adventures. And the pregens may be more high-concept than really well-kitted. It's pretty common that you realize that a pregen is really missing some key things like a backup weapon, or enough ammunition for more than two fights. I realize that a pregen shouldn't be optimized with resources from a dozen niche books, but they should feel like they were put through their paces in a couple PFS scenarios at least.
The current game design is kinda harsh on single-strategy characters like the strict fire-only kineticist. It only takes one level 1 feat to be more versatile but I guess you could be dead-set on being fire-only. And then some fights you'll be useless.
To me, the problem with this is that the fire-only Kineticist who doesn't pick that 1st-level feat is a build the game readily offers to the player. It's also not a terribly niche build: you just pick a single gate, and pick some other 1st-level feat, so unlike the hypothetical caster who prepares nothing but fashionista, the single-element fire Kin is very much a build that can easily happen in the wild and not just in online discussion, especially when a player has a specific pyromancer theme in mind and believes that's something the game will let them do. I wouldn't overhaul PF2e to prevent this from happening, but I do think there's a degree of false advertising in enabling ultra-specialized builds such as those in a game that can punish players quite hard for that same kind of specialization. "Screw you for playing this build we offered you" is really not 2e's general style, and the fact that it otherwise makes an effort to make most player characters decent at minimum right out the box I think is to the game's credit.
Putting aside the specifics of 2e's immunities for a moment, the notion that players must be punished for committing to a specific theme is one I question: although this is certainly part of Pathfinder's legacy, the concept of a bag-of-tricks Wizard who has lots of different spells up their sleeve isn't one I personally consider more interesting than, say, a mentalist spellcaster who's all about weaving illusions and tricking the mind. I don't think one concept needs to be elevated above the other, and I certainly don't think being a generalist needs to be the default. If someone really wants to play a fire-based character and commit to a theme, my first instinct as a designer would be to make sure that character gets lots of different options so that they don't just use the fireball effect every time, and that is something I think PF2e does already with a variety of spells and impulses that use fire as a medium for area control, damage over time, mobility, and debuffing. Punishing a player for bringing a perfectly valid character concept to life just because it's not "correct" to me just comes across as arbitrary at best, and at worst needlessly petty in a medium that otherwise celebrates diversity of choice. It's not like the game doesn't enable simple concepts either, as Fighters and Barbarians are extremely straightforward classes that are nonetheless really strong and unlikely to get completely shut down. Were this extended to a greater range of classes, more likely in a future edition than the current one, I think it would be to the benefit of diverse and interesting gameplay, not its detriment.
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I mostly agree with you. I think the pure-fire kineticist is a bit of an outlier case; all the other elements offer multiple damage types. I don't think this was an "interesting" design choice so much as a footgun. It would have been better to find a contorted reason to add a second type, such as cold (removing fire) and avoid that.
For martials it's notable that outright immunity to all physical damage is not something I think exists. I can't even think of any examples of monsters that are immune to both slashing and bludgeoning at the same time. So strength-based martials with big weapons can almost always brute-force things. It's the double whammy of precision immunity + resistances vs smaller weapon dice that really hurts the precise martials.
Looking at the mentalist caster, I think if you narrowed your theme to "I do offensive mental effects", that's a risk you took. You could have done a "I do mental stuff" and included ally-buffing (heroism, courageous anthem) in that theme. Or perhaps add in a few edge cases such as haste and slow that aren't strictly mental but also don't leave the kind of "physical evidence" that a fireball would.
I don't think that PF2's "don't rely on one tactic exclusively" means everyone must be a generalist. When fighting oozes, the bard might focus more on buffing because he can't do as much offense. And the swashbuckler might kite the ooze, trying to get the mindless critter to go left this turn, right that turn, but keeping it from beelining at the wizard who's actually frying it effectively. Against a fast-flying dragon the melee barbarian can't really keep up, but he can provoke it by going rooting around in its hoard so that the dragon is distracted from focusing on the archer magus.
All that works better of course if the adventure has a healthy variation of enemies. If everything in the adventure is a slithering ooze, of course it's miserable to be a swashbuckler.
And considering this, I really think it's the double whammy of generalized resistance + precision immunity that is the real problem here. Other classes get untyped ways of brute-forcing past resistance (barbarian rage; thaumaturges just because) that don't hit this immunity. So that makes you wonder what precision classes got in return for precision being generally worse than untyped damage?
I guess rogues and investigators do have all those skills, maybe that gives them an edge when trying to use skill-oriented combat stuff to fight "puzzle" enemies. An investigator who's trying very hard to figure out what the Case Of the Room Behind This Door is might be more inclined to carry some consumables, too. Swashbucklers have a fair amount of skills too and panache does give you a lot of speed, so if you just don't Finish, you could be kiting pretty well. But these are all kinda "maybe" solutions, and not something that's as obvious as the barbarian's solution of just hitting it hard. So people may not find the solution.
I don’t know of blanket immunity to all physical damage, but some monsters are immune to two physical damage types, like the aforementioned verdurous ooze. The Swashbuckler could attempt to kite the thing, but that I think requires the GM throwing the player a bone when the class’s mechanics could often easily end up being completely ineffective. It really is possible for a character to have no options here.
This is also IMO why “monsters as puzzles” only work when the solution to the puzzle is readily available. If the monster is resistant to stuff but vulnerable to a particular thing like cold or silver, a party without that will have a harder time but can still stand a chance without having to rebuild. If a monster is immune to a particular thing but otherwise vulnerable to other things that are universally-available, that can prevent some strategies and favor others by comparison. When a monster is immune to everything but a few specific and character-dependent effects, that I think is when the puzzle becomes so overly prescriptive that some characters just cease to be able to play the game properly for a bit. This is why I generally feel like resistances, rather than immunities, are generally better at discouraging certain strategies, because you can still favor certain tactics and characters without ending up with situations where other party members effectively just have to sit the encounter out.
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The reason I mentioned bludgeoning and slashing is because immunity to piercing&slashing does co-occur, like on the verdurous ooze. Should be noted that that immunity is based on the types of damage that split it; it's not really immune, it just reacts very differently. Considering that it's a level 6 monster with a +8 reflex save, it's a legitimate tactic to go fire some arrows at it to split it and then throw a fireball at all of them. (Woe you if you make a mistake about initiative order..)
Also, if you have to go punching it, yeah that sucks. If you have a club you're fine, that would not even risk getting acid damaged. A light mace would be at risk from the acid, but it's a pass/fail reflex save which you're good at, and can't crit-fail for double damage. Also, hardness isn't bypassed. A light mace would still have hardness 5 vs 2d4 acid damage, and a break threshold of 10, so in the unluckiest case that's 4 hits.
So if you're fighting level 6 monsters and you didn't bring any bludgeoning weapons you're hosed. But if you did, well a swashbuckler fighting level 6 monsters should be level 3+, so with panache you'd have a speed of 35+, meaning one Stride is more than double the monster's speed. If you're level 5 then you're also likely gonna score some crits (AC 12) which on a light mace would knock it back 10 feet.
It'd be tedious kite fight, but actually everyone would be running for their lives the whole fight anyway because the sleep gas attack is terrifying if aren't high enough level to benefit from the incapacitation trait. You're just much better at fighting back while running.
The reason I don’t think kiting really works here is that if your Swashbuckler is making themselves very hard to catch up to, the ooze could always just move to someone else, and if they do that the Swash can’t do much about it. Ideally yes, someone else will have AoE, but that still leaves the Swash in a position where they themselves are next to useless. The Swashbuckler is unlikely to be fighting that ooze alone, but then no character should ever feel disempowered to that extent, in my opinion, as the anti-fun of that I think surpasses the fun of defeating the monster.
This talk of precision-damage PCs unprepared for precision-immune opponents make me take mental inventory of the PF2 rogues and swashbucklers in my campaigns (no investigators yet).
My PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign had a rogue with sorcerer dedication named Sam and a sniper rogue named Binny. They mostly fought humanoids, but I do remember a fight against a gelatinous cube at 3rd level and against a pair of specters at 7th level. The cube was defeated by the party ranger rupturing it from the inside, so the damage of other people was not significant. At 7th level, Sam attacked with cantrips with sneak attack via Magical Trickster, but without the sneak attack damage, the cantrips still dealt reasonable damage. Binny was weak in the battle against the specters, but that was just one battle.
My mini-campaign that began with A Fistful of Flowers had the pregenerated rogue Reaching Rings and a swashbuckler Blade Slinger. A Fistful of Flowers had a hazard with precision immunity, but the party members with ranged attacks broke it from a distance.
My current Strength of Thousands campaign has the rogue Roshan with both Gelid Shard and elemental Sorcerer archetypes. Roshan does not depend on precision damage. The player realized at the beginning that the spellcasters and the archer in the party would not provide flanking, so she trained Roshan in Athletics to grapple or trip opponents to make them off-guard for sneak attack. However, in the long run, the ranged attackers appreciated having their opponents off-guard, so Roshan became a debuffer via Athletics rather than a main damage-dealer. In the "Oozing into Trouble" mission in Spoken on the Song Wind the party did battle several Ochre Jellies and Verdurous Oozes. The party kept their distance and Roshan attacked with her meager supply of spells. Roshan might be shifting her focus back to precision damage by taking Analyze Weakness feat at 8th level.
I can't say I have had much issue with immunities in any system I've played. Just need to avoid the situation where the vast majority of things in the system or campaign are immune to something. Otherwise, you end up in the same situation poison is in, where nobody uses it that doesn't have explicit bypass to the immunity.
On the topic of oozes, I do think it's a little silly that their mere existence rewards players for just always picking a bludgeoning or versatile B weapon. These weapons aren't any worse than slashing or piercing weapons but also have fewer resistances/immunities even outside of oozes, so there's no reason not to pick one if you can. It's really only archers that lose out unless they're so fed up with it that they spend two feats on inventor for a modular innovation.
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To me, the problem with this is that the fire-only Kineticist who doesn't pick that 1st-level feat is a build the game readily offers to the player. It's also not a terribly niche build: you just pick a single gate, and pick some other 1st-level feat, so unlike the hypothetical caster who prepares nothing but fashionista, the single-element fire Kin is very much a build that can easily happen in the wild and not just in online discussion, especially when a player has a specific pyromancer theme in mind and believes that's something the game will let them do.
This is a good point because "single element Kineticist" is literally an iconic character. Yoon is a PFS pregen and thus something actively available to first time players or players playing out of band in PFS.
PF2's left hand gives this build to players to play while the right hand makes it a bad idea that players shouldn't play. This sets up a situation where players need enough system mastery to know that the pregens are giving bad advice otherwise they can walk into a trap and get hard countered by doing nothing other than something Paizo themselves did.
Double weapon immunity (piercing/slashing) has similar issues to me where the game doesn't tell you "if your primary attack is piercing or slashing, you should have a backup bludgeoning weapon because nothing is immune to bludgeoning and another weapon type." You can do the right thing by having a backup weapon with a different damage type and still get hard countered just due to not having the system mastery to know it should be bludgeoning. (In fact, I can only find 3 creatures in the entire game that are actually immune to bludgeoning damage, which is less than the number immune to both piercing and slashing.)
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Well suppose you're fighting a zombie, which has weakness to slashing 10. Are you being forced to have a slashing weapon? No, but the zombie does have a LOT of HP for its level.
Now you're fighting a skeleton and it resists piercing and slashing. Are you being forced to have a bludgeoning weapon now? Note that the skeleton has really low HP.
My impression is that bludgeoning tends to avoid more resistances/immunities, while slashing tends to benefit more from weaknesses.
Piercing seems to be left in the cold, I get the impression they get deadly/fatal more frequently (pick, bow, rapier, wolf style), and of course apart from guns/inventors, piercing absolutely rules long-range weaponry. And there's underwater combat, and maybe an occasional rakshasa.
All in all piercing definitely seems a bit worse than the others. But it's always good to have multiple damage types at hand.
Well suppose you're fighting a zombie, which has weakness to slashing 10. Are you being forced to have a slashing weapon? No, but the zombie does have a LOT of HP for its level.
Now you're fighting a skeleton and it resists piercing and slashing. Are you being forced to have a bludgeoning weapon now? Note that the skeleton has really low HP.
I feel this makes a great case for why resistances and weaknesses make for better puzzle monsters than immunities, IMO. The skeleton and zombie are still puzzle monsters in the sense that some damage types and strategies work better than others, but not showing up to the fight with the perfect answer doesn't prevent that fight from being winnable, it just makes the fight tougher. By contrast, when you get an extremely prescriptive list of immunities, as can happen with golems or oozes, those fights I think tend to be much more binary, so even if the party overall will still have the tools to beat the enemy, individual characters may end up feeling completely ineffective, which I think is a feeling worth not engineering in this kind of heroic fantasy game. In general, I think puzzles that can be solved in different ways tend to flow smoother than puzzles that can only be solved in a single, specific way, so even if both can be stimulating and rewarding when solved, one model I think lessens the frustration element by quite a bit compared to the other.
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A little off topic but I personally don't think a fire kineticist with weapon infusion is solving the problem of fire immune enemies. A kineticist that can do nothing but elemental blast is like a caster that fights enemies immune to all spells but cantrips. I would say it's more of an issue than precision immunity creatures (unless the creatures have precision immunity and resistance to physical damage on top of that, that's just silly.)
Well suppose you're fighting a zombie, which has weakness to slashing 10. Are you being forced to have a slashing weapon? No, but the zombie does have a LOT of HP for its level.
Now you're fighting a skeleton and it resists piercing and slashing. Are you being forced to have a bludgeoning weapon now? Note that the skeleton has really low HP.
Part of this is mathematical, but part of it is also player psychology: Taking advantage of a weakness feels good. Not taking advantage of a weakness due to lacking the thing to do it is a nuisance but doesn't feel that bad since you're still doing damage (and if its happening a lot, you go get the thing and feel good).
Hitting a resistance can feel lousy if it's big enough because it can shut down a large percentage of your damage, depending on the build or what resist you're hitting. You can feel like you're doing very little. Bypassing a resistance feels good.
Even if these work out math wise so that one isn't actually better than the other, one of them feels better to the average player than the other.
Immunities, of course, can feel real bad since you you can be effectively shut down. It's pretty rare for a resistance to be high enough to actually fully shut someone down.
My impression is that bludgeoning tends to avoid more resistances/immunities, while slashing tends to benefit more from weaknesses.
Did some searches on AoN. Resistant creatures by type:
Bludgeoning: 471Piercing: 538
Slashing: 499
Physical: 378
There's a lot of overlap in them because anything that resists physical or resists all (like every incorporeal creature) will count in all 3. Swarms also do that by often listing all 3 damage types, sometimes being more resistant to one than the other (like the feral skull swarm is Bludgeoning 5, Piercing 10, Slashing 10).
For weaknesses:
Bludgeoning: 24
Piercing: 13
Slashing: 87
Piercing seems to be left in the cold, I get the impression they get deadly/fatal more frequently (pick, bow, rapier, wolf style), and of course apart from guns/inventors, piercing absolutely rules long-range weaponry. And there's underwater combat, and maybe an occasional rakshasa.
Based on what I've seen, a slashing/bludgeoning combo is your best bet, since slashing can take advantage of the most weaknesses and almost nothing is actually immune to bludgeoning. There's also no overlap in terms of immunities for those two, unlike Piercing/Slashing.
Precision Immunity should certainly be rarer than it is. Considering all the things you can do bleed damage to, it shouldn't be a stretch that most things have a weak point that is more effective to target than a different point (this is, in fact, easier to justify than "it bleeds some kind of essential fluid.")
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Based on what I've seen, a slashing/bludgeoning combo is your best bet, since slashing can take advantage of the most weaknesses and almost nothing is actually immune to bludgeoning. There's also no overlap in terms of immunities for those two, unlike Piercing/Slashing.
Yeah. That along with reach, trip and the bleed crit spec is what makes kusarigama such a good weapon.
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What does everyone else think about precision immunity?
Bad mechanic that just makes certain classes weirdly terrible in certain encounter setups.
PF2 doesn't have the per-character tactical nuance to make this kind of encounter fun, so you end up just feeling shitty whenever this happens.
Same reason premaster golems sucked, because if you were the wrong kind of caster you could easily end up with just a fight where you can't meaningfully participate.
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It’s a great rune but ghost oil is often enough. At least if your DM isn’t insane enough to make you drop your weapon on the ground first to apply it.Why would a GM having an item work as written require insanity? Sounds like a dubious demand on your part just to get to "often enough".
It’s too stupid to be true. Any sane GM (and probably Paizo’s intent on writing) would have the two hands requirement include the hand used to hold the sword, because obviously you apply oil to a weapon while holding it, one hand to move the weapon around and one hand to squirt the oil.
Like seriously how are you going to oil a weapon you’re not holding anyways? Cover one side and then flip it over while you hunch over it in the middle of a fight? It’s non-sensical, if someone did it in an action movie you’d laugh. Imagine you were watching the recent dnd movie and the barbarian, in the middle of a fight, drops her axe, bends over it, and carefully applies oil to each side of the weapon before picking it up. The only way it would work is if it was literally a joke about the item needing two hands.
Anyways I’ve been informed ghost oil thankfully lacks this problem, but other oils don’t.
Yes, the item being discussed, Ghost Oil, lacks that problem (according to AoN). So not an issue for this thread. I still find it a stopgap solution when Astral Runes are strong enough I'd favor them on non-precision martials too.
I sympathize with your point re: two-handed oils, but that'd be a topic for a new thread or addition to the Spring 2026 errata thread someone just started. It seems even Remaster Oils have this issue, so yes, I'd presume Paizo meant it's because you're holding the oil & the object to be oiled (so as to be able to cover all portions rather than splash it on).
I'm curious now. What runes are you taking if not astral? Or is it just something lile prioritizing flaming and decaying for the persistent crit damage? Or maybe frost for the extra weakness coverage?
For me, even aside from ghost touch coverage, I like the nearly unresisted damage and the option to combo with shining symbol to inflict a spirit weakness the whole party can exploit.
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I'm curious now. What runes are you taking if not astral? Or is it just something lile prioritizing flaming and decaying for the persistent crit damage? Or maybe frost for the extra weakness coverage?
For me, even aside from ghost touch coverage, I like the nearly unresisted damage and the option to combo with shining symbol to inflict a spirit weakness the whole party can exploit.
Astral is great, no doubt. Flaming is also pretty great. In a campaign where it's relevant (like Spore War), Holy will do a lot of work because you're going to hit a bunch of weaknesses.
But I really enjoy the utility runes for the fun in play. Had a Thaumaturge using a Whip to trip (the ranged Rogue REALLY loved me) and Shifting was great on that for avoiding a resistance or needing to do lethal damage without penalty. It also goes with the theme of the class in a sense to go from "I'm tripping this guy at reach" to "I now have an Earthbreaker so I can smash through something."
My son used Extending in Extinction Curse and it was absolutely hilarious when he'd crit stuff that was flying around theoretically well out of sword range. 2 actions hurts in the optimization department for sure, but the whole table would grin every time he crit something with this comically long range sword.
That's something I really like about high level play: once you get multiple property runes, you can mix in a good damage rune and a fun utility rune. The opportunity cost is a lot higher at lower level when you only get one.
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Precision damage is a relic of past editions and should be gone in any future Pathfinder/Starfinder editions.
I can see a case where a Rogue might pull off a bit too high damage numbers overall, if the class were allowed to just spam sneak attacks (and somehow hit sufficiently with MAP), but that can easily be solved by lowering the base damage of sneak attacks or make the progression slower, so that the class stays within expected damage parameters.
But the other big precision damage class, the Swashbuckler, only gets one big attack with precision damage per round, anyway, since Finishers are limited to one per round (until level 20, when things really don't matter that much anymore).
There is no reason why some melee classes should have arbitrary extra resistances other strength based melee classes don't even have to care about.
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Precision damage is a relic of past editions and should be gone in any future Pathfinder/Starfinder editions.
I don't agree about that. Precision is definitely a flavor that you can identify clearly and that you can build interesting mechanics around.
But maybe they need to fee a bit more balanced between good and bad. Right now, it's very rare that precision damage feels better than untyped damage. More often, you wish your precision damage were untyped instead.
If there were some abilities that did stuff like "increase the die size of your precision damage" or such, it might feel more like there are also upsides.
I can see a case where a Rogue might pull off a bit too high damage numbers overall,
So I think it's possible that there is a sort of quiet effect of "this damage type seems to be mostly bad, but that's because you get benefits" going on. Precision damage is not as reliable as untyped damage, but maybe you get bigger precision damage than you'd get untyped. Likewise, piercing weapons do badly with resistances/weaknesses, but being piercing damage is a price you pay to have long-distance ranged weapons at all.
But that isn't that obvious to players. Maybe covertly, piercing and resistance are prices you pay for good benefits, but from where you're standing, they're just bad damage types that get treated poorly.
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One problem with assigning like, prescriptive benefits like that is that players don't have that much control over their builds. You can't choose to switch out your precision damage for something slightly worse or different to better handle oozes, you just don't get your damage... and precision damage isn't widely available enough that balancing how much to invest in it is a consideration you can even make.
Plus enemy typing just isn't consistent enough to even be able to make those balance calls. Many campaigns will never encounter precision immune enemies in any serious encounter. Some campaigns will be stuffed full of them such that you're advised to just not play those classes at all, so it doesn't really work as a balancing measure.
Like an Ooze's statblock could just say "takes less damage from rogues, swashbucklers, and investigators" (maybe a couple other things that I'm missing) and practically very little would change. That's kinda stupid.
I could see a world where in a future edition precision damage isn't a boost to damage (like sneak attack) but rather a way to ignore physical resistances. The logic behind precision damage is that you are making a, well, precise attack that pierces the enemy's defenses, right?
In PF2e I could see a feat for rogues that allows you to reduce an enemy's resistance to either bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage equal to half your sneak attack roll. If the enemy is immune, you create a "weakness" equal to half that amount (1/4 your sneak attack roll) instead.
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Precision damage is a relic of past editions and should be gone in any future Pathfinder/Starfinder editions.I don't agree about that. Precision is definitely a flavor that you can identify clearly and that you can build interesting mechanics around.
But maybe they need to fee a bit more balanced between good and bad. Right now, it's very rare that precision damage feels better than untyped damage. More often, you wish your precision damage were untyped instead.
If there were some abilities that did stuff like "increase the die size of your precision damage" or such, it might feel more like there are also upsides.
Okay, please identify where it ever feels better to do precision damage instead of regular damage? As far as I can see, using precision damage is a debuff for any class which does it, because it runs into immunities other classes simply don't have to deal with.
Precision damage didn't use to double on critical hits in PF1E and Paizo did away with that, but for some reason still kept the damage type in the game, probably for "verisimilitude" reasons, which they did away with in numerous other cases for a better game experience. I stand by my point, precision damage is a relic of the past and should be abolished.
Although I can agree with the part where there could be tangible benefits for doing precision damage, so that it balances out against the numerous disadvantages (i.e. the large group of enemies which is simply immune to the damage type by RAW).
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Having some enemies with precision weakness would probably help, because then there's some cases where it's actually better.
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My $0.02 on precision damage is as follows:
So to me, precision damage as a mechanic is somewhat redundant, because it tries to do something that other mechanics already do, and arguably better as well. Were I to replace it, I'd do it in one of two ways:
In both cases, it would help avoid singling out precision damage as this bonus damage that's easier to shut down than any other similar mechanic. Option #1 would likely be the most straightforward replacement, whereas Option #2 would change the gameplay of precision damage classes by quite a bit in ways that could impact their build decisions, even if it could result in the same overall damage output.
Why circumstance bonus instead of just plain additional damage? Additional damage is already the default way to handle martial gimmicks, and making it a circumstance bonus would just make rogues and investigators not benefit from a handful of feats and buffs, which doesn't feel necessary.
Why circumstance bonus instead of just plain additional damage? Additional damage is already the default way to handle martial gimmicks, and making it a circumstance bonus would just make rogues and investigators not benefit from a handful of feats and buffs, which doesn't feel necessary.
This is perhaps my own excessive personal tendency, but I'd prefer it if bonuses were more consistently typed and tied into existing systems, as it would limit stacking and allow existing effects to be stronger if needed. Strikes in 2e I feel already have a bit of an issue with tracking in that they eventually end up with this rainbow assortment of damage from property runes that can each trigger different weaknesses, resistances, immunities, and other effects. Although I know of several different status bonuses to damage, I'm struggling to think of that many circumstance bonuses to damage besides the forceful or twin traits, though this is likely more my own ignorance than anything else, as those feats and buffs likely do exist.
I'm struggling to think of that many circumstance bonuses to damage besides the forceful or twin traits, though this is likely more my own ignorance than anything else, as those feats and buffs likely do exist.
They aren't too common. A Nethys search lists 23 feats and I know horse's support bonus adds a circ bonus in addition to those weapon traits.
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Why circumstance bonus instead of just plain additional damage? Additional damage is already the default way to handle martial gimmicks, and making it a circumstance bonus would just make rogues and investigators not benefit from a handful of feats and buffs, which doesn't feel necessary.This is perhaps my own excessive personal tendency, but I'd prefer it if bonuses were more consistently typed and tied into existing systems, as it would limit stacking and allow existing effects to be stronger if needed. Strikes in 2e I feel already have a bit of an issue with tracking in that they eventually end up with this rainbow assortment of damage from property runes that can each trigger different weaknesses, resistances, immunities, and other effects. Although I know of several different status bonuses to damage, I'm struggling to think of that many circumstance bonuses to damage besides the forceful or twin traits, though this is likely more my own ignorance than anything else, as those feats and buffs likely do exist.
There's a handful of specialty feats, most notably like ancestry feats that give you a circumstance bonus against a certain type of enemy. It's not common though.
While I agree broadly about limiting stackability, I feel like it's not a bad design principle for martial class features to be uncategorized because they're more about the baseline assumptions of the class. Sneak attack, rage, exemplar immanences, etc. aren't really buffs they're core to how the class operates. Creating scenarios where rogues can't use the twin trait feels janky to me rather than sensible, even if it's somewhat of a niche issue.
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That's fair, in which case option #2 might be a better alternative by comparison. There are only very few effects that let you crit on a 19 or lower when you hit, and one of those effects is on the Swashbuckler class itself, so you could conceivably give those classes this special, ultra-rare trait that boosts their crit rate without boosting their hit rate (unlike the Fighter's improved proficiency, which boosts both). Not only would this avoid interfering with other circumstance bonuses to Strike damage, this would synergize particularly well with on-crit effects like the deadly and fatal traits (which, in my opinion, do make sense on these classes), and feed into the Investigator, Rogue, and Swashbuckler's ability to output utility or debilitations via crit spec effects in addition to their own tools.
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My $0.02 on precision damage is as follows:
* We already have another mechanic to represent hitting a weak spot, and that's critical hits. This is presumably why oozes are immune the the effects of those too.
* We already have another mechanic to represent dealing more damage, and that's status and circumstance bonuses. Despite how damage bonuses tend to always be typed on spells, as with the Sorcerer's sorcerous potency, there's a lot of untyped bonus Strike damage running around willy-nilly on top of precision damage. So to me, precision damage as a mechanic is somewhat redundant, because it tries to do something that other mechanics already do, and arguably better as well. Were I to replace it, I'd do it in one of two ways:
1. Option #1: change precision damage to a circumstance bonus to damage to represent hitting a more vulnerable spot. This would avoid going up against immunity unless a monster happens to be immune to circumstance bonuses to damage.
2. Option #2: invent a new trait, let's call it precise, that on a hit, adds its value to the attack's die roll; if the total is 20 or higher, the hit becomes a critical hit. For example, if you hit with a precise 1 attack and rolled a 19, for instance, you'd add 1 to the roll of 19 and get a 20, turning your attack into a critical hit, though if you'd rolled an 18 you'd only still get a regular hit. If this replaced precision damage, then Investigators, Rogues, and Swashbucklers would land critical hits more often, though not more regular hits, and could also leverage greater benefits from critical specialization effects and deadly or fatal weapons such as guns. They'd still get shut down by critical immunity, but in a manner much more similar to Fighters and other martials. In both cases, it would help avoid singling out precision damage as this bonus damage that's easier to shut down than any other similar mechanic. Option #1 would likely be the most straightforward replacement, whereas Option #2 would change the gameplay...
I'm surprised TTRPGs (to my knowledge) haven't tried making sneak attacks automatic crit attacks when I think that's kinda common in videogames when there's a rogue / thief class. Obviously automatic crits in a TTRPG would be an immense damage boost, specially in PF2e, but something like your #2 Option that could reduce how high you need to roll to make a critical hit sounds like something that could exist in PF2e or in a future edition.
Sadly it probably won't happen since crits seems to be the fighter's niche in this edition, but if we ever get a 4th rogue-ish class in PF2e it could be fun to experiment with this idea.
Hold on, this search cannot be right.
I cannot get an AoN search to show more than one single creature in pf2 as weak to poison? Does that seem correct to yall? Is poison type really just outright not considered to be a valid/normal weakness?
Game balance aside, how would the concept of "weak to poison" work? Isn't that redundant? More or less by definition, if a poison affects you at all, it is because you are "weak" to it. It's not like they a pumping you so full of toxins that you pop from internal pressure....
I think that alone can explain why authors "neglected" any balance considerations that adding "weak to poison" to more creatures would have helped.
On the other hand... some poisons certainly are much more effective against some creatures. It might be cool to have insecticides that work extra well vs insects, metabolic disrupters that work best vs warm blooded animals, etc. The problem is we don;t have traits for that. Best we could maybe do is oozes, humanoids, beasts, animals, etc.
I'm surprised TTRPGs (to my knowledge) haven't tried making sneak attacks automatic crit attacks...
Isn't that pretty much what backstabbing attacks were back in AD&D (and maybe 3e, I'm not a D&D player except by 1980's childhood origins) days? Was just a straight multiplier to the damage you did, like a cit in PF2e is!
Yeah but my point is, fire does some baseline damage because it has X energy. A small amount of fluid that only does damage because of how your physiology reacts to it, doesn't have any baseline effect; its effect is entirely due to your "weakness" to it.
Sure, a few rare things might uptake poison more strongly in some cases, but that's nothing like the difference between hitting a rock with fire vs hitting a cloud of whirling paper with fire.
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Personally, "this monster is abnormally susceptible to toxins" seems like a perfectly valid justification for a weakness to poison damage (after all, we're already operating at the level of abstraction where all toxins deal the same 'poison' damage) but at the same time, I don't think weakness to poison would ever be a broad enough category to excite poison users. It strikes me as a much more niche thing that would have to be on a case-by-case basis rather than 'these types of monster burn more easily, these general traits make you weak being frozen'.
I don't think there's any broader category for 'these monsters are allergic to peanuts' that can be multiply applicable, and the categories we might think (plants, insects) are only that way because we specifically employ poisons to kill them.
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I’ve recently re-watched the Season 3 finally of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in which the vampire Angel, is struck with an arrow coated with a mystical poison, who’s name translates to “Killer of the Dead”.
This got me thinking, what if the Toxicologist had an ability (probably upper level) to create toxins that affect creatures normally immune to poisons. Maybe they could only affect a specific sub-type.
Just a thought.
A small amount of fluid that only does damage because of how your physiology reacts to it, doesn't have any baseline effect; its effect is entirely due to your "weakness" to it.
I mean yeah but that's not how Poison works in pathfinder. There's no physiological component. There's no selective immunity based on species, it's not like a substance commonly used by elves is poisonous to leshies.
Poison as a damage type is indistinguishable from fire. You can even take instantaneously contact damage from poison just like a firebolt.
Damage weaknesses don't really make sense and damage types don't particularly comport to reality... there's no real sense trying to force it by scrutinizing the logic.
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I take it you're not familiar with the Player Core 2 Toxicologist.This got me thinking, what if the Toxicologist had an ability (probably upper level) to create toxins that affect creatures normally immune to poisons. Maybe they could only affect a specific sub-type.
Just a thought.
Field Benefit ... In addition, you flexibly mix acidic and poisonous alchemical compounds. Your infused poisons can affect creatures immune to poison. A creature takes acid damage instead of poison damage from your infused poisons if either the creature is immune to poison or that would be more detrimental to the creature (as determined by the GM). Typically, this benefit applies when the creature has an immunity, resistance, or weakness to one of the damage types.
I am surprised there is not a poison or something that makes creatures more susceptible to precision damage (e.g., a weakness to precision similar to the current items/abilities providing a weakness to bleed). Until there’s a more thorough examination of this problem in the next edition, Paizo should provide some patches to make it less painful when a creature essentially debuffs the rogue, swashbuckler, etc.
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I want more creatures with more different kinds of immunities and resistances, and I want more creatures that have these to have meaningful weaknesses to more (and different) damage types as well.
Which is to say that I am fine with precision immunity as long as Adventure writers do a better job broadcasting to GMs what to talk to players about. Additionally, I feel like campaigns that deal with a fair bit of creatures with similar immunities and resistances in bunches should feature more ways to learn about them and include downtime activities and locations in the adventure that can help mitigate these issues. Towns folk often plagued by ghosts, for example would probably have some accessible knowledge about what works to keep them away and fight them.