Spells with the Force Trait that do physical damage: Are they sticking around?

[Unicore]

So a very contentious change in the Dark Archive book is the Imaginary Weapon focus spell change, which drops the damage dice to d6s and makes the spell do force damage instead of an option of 2 physical damage types.

I don't want to talk about the balance of the damage die change at all in this thread, but I do want to talk about whether the change of damage type to force, on a spell that already had the force tag, is a net positive change or negative change and whether/why the few other spells that do have the force trait but not damage type are from the Dark Archive, and should be changed similarly for consistency? or if the Force trait + Physical Damage type is an intentional design space, maybe it is better if Imaginary Weapon stays in that space to offer the damage type flexibility it had previously?

Personally, I feel like it really should be either/or. Force spells generally would be cooler if they did physical damage, because conceptually pure force damage doesn't really make any sense to me. Most existing ones should probably do a physical damage type and keep the force tag, (which might be a slight nerf to some spells like force barrage, I guess?) or all the spells that are damaging spells with the force tag should just be force damage.

The reason I think this is that rules around damage are already convoluted and it is easy to have different readings on things like Incorporeal that specify that force damage bypasses their resist all in the Incorporeal trait, but in stat blocks just list "force" in the same way that other traits might be referenced.

[Tridus]

I guess the obvious reason to change it is how many people didn't even realize it had the Force tag, or understand how that interacts with things. If something is resistant to Slashing and you're doing Slashing with the force tag... is it still resistant? I'd assume yes.

How about if it's resistant to all physical? Still yes, probably?

Now if it's "all damage except force", presumably now it kicks in?

It's wonky because having the trait on there makes it more of a rider like Holy is rather than a damage type. Holy has lots of things weak to it so "my slashing sword is now also holy" makes sense, but literally only two creatures in the whole game are weak to force and they're both in a single AP. So that end of it doesn't do much.

"Force damage" doesn't make a ton of sense since at the end of the day bludgeoning damage is effectively force damage after all: you're hitting something really hard with lots of force. But since we've got it, the most practical direction here is to make things that are meant to do force damage do force damage rather than "bludgeoning damage that is also force" (as opposed to the other kind). That just seemed to cause more confusion than anything else.

(Maybe they should rename it EXPLOSION! damage and then we can at least channel Mr. Torgue or Megumin when using it.)

[Castilliano]

Force has never made sense to me as non-physical because I can't imagine anything hitting something with force without it being a physical interaction, whether concussive, tearing, or whatnot. And how is one interacting with a Wall of Force if not kinetically? Awkward.

BUT, if Magic Missiles are going to be barrages of force w/o a physical aspect (despite its damage being depicted much like gunshots) then continuity should apply that essence across the board.

And Spiritual Armament, once Force, is now Spirit damage, as its name suggests so the imagery's shifted. It's bashing enemy spirits, not their bodies. Yet what of other pseudo-physical manifestations? Do they need to be made of shadow-stuff or only invoke material objects to do physical types of damage? Seems so.

And in that vein, Imaginary Weapon should probably do Mental damage! :P

ETA: If a creature crashes into a Wall of Force, wouldn't the default be bludgeoning damage? Yet if said wall (somehow) struck the creature, it'd be Force damage? Yeah... Reminds me of how The X-Men's Cyclops has kinetic eye blasts somehow transferring kinetic punches without any actual material component, just "energy go smash".

[shroudb]

i *think* that the original idea was something along the lines of "since you make up the weapon from your imagination, you choose if you want it to be a slashing weapon or a bashing weapon" that would help vs specific enemies with resistances/weaknesses, but it still is ultimately a thing made out of force, so ghosts and such get hit normaly. While something like a force barrage it's just chunks of energy hitting stuff.

now, that said, it obviously has some holes how that is translated into game terms hence the change to be more uniform with other force effects.

Castilliano wrote:

And in that vein, Imaginary Weapon should probably do Mental damage! :P

nah... IW is Tangible dream which is:

Quote:

You pull colors and shapes from the depth of your mind, projecting impossible creations into the world as tapestries of astral thread or sculptures of force and light.

aka, you literaly use your mind (hence imaginary) to create stuff made out of force and light (so physical entities).

in order for it to be Mental it would have to be Silent Whisper

[Castilliano]

So more imagined into being than being imaginary.

[Xenocrat]

Astral Rain also does physical damage with the force trait, and reportedly that didn't change. Maybe they were wrong or spreading disinformation. (At least one guy on a Discord I'm on gave an answer to a question then embarassedly admitted he'd said it as a joke after it got repeated on that Discord, another one, and Reddit as a thing really in the remaster that no one, including other people with the new book, bothered to check...)

[Unicore]

The issue is that there are at least 2 other spells in the dark archives that do what imaginary weapon used to with the [physical] damage type but with the force trait, and they only appear in that book. Astral Rain, for example is all over the place narratively. It should probably just flatly do force damage as well, but that does take away one interesting non-direct damage boosting element of both these spells.

The more I think about it, the more I wish force was not a damage type, just a trait, but the more certain I am that there is no way that happens for PF2, so the more I think things that have the force trait should just do force damage and keep it as clear and simple.

[graystone]

Xenocrat wrote:

Astral Rain also does physical damage with the force trait, and reportedly that didn't change. Maybe they were wrong or spreading disinformation. (At least one guy on a Discord I'm on gave an answer to a question then embarassedly admitted he'd said it as a joke after it got repeated on that Discord, another one, and Reddit as a thing really in the remaster that no one, including other people with the new book, bothered to check...)

I can confirm, it's Force trait and deals bludgeoning or piercing damage.