How many ways are there to add weaknesses (preferably elemental) to an enemy to help PCs stack up multiple weakness triggers per strike (via things like elemental mutagens, arcane cascade, spellstrike, Flame Wisp/Blazing Armory and similar spells, Bespell Strikes, flaming runes, etc.) under the new Player Core errata/clarification of how damage instances work?
1. Inflammation Flasks alchemy bombs (Uncommon, AP)
2. Elemental Betrayal focus 1 spell (witch, two feats deep via archetype)
3. Wish-Twisted Form focus 5 spell (unremastered Genie bloodline)
4. Vicious Debilitations ruffian rogue feat 10 (B/P/S only, but there are definitely some ways to add an extra instance or two of slashing to strikes, e.g. Serrating rune and Serrate focus spell).
5. Seal Fate spell 4 (it's bad!)
6. Forcible Energy wizard feat 12
What else?
Blisterwort, L11 injury poison. Adds weakness 2 to physical and force damage at stage 1, ramps up to weakness 6.
Very weird to see imposed force damage weakness...
Holy rune adds spirt damage as well so a shining symbol loadout is looking like:
Astral rune, holy rune, exemplar (base class or dedication), draconic barrage.
This gives 20 weakness damage per hit, 15 over the old rules. If you have major shining symbol it’s 40 damage a hit, 30 over old rules. Bonus points for certain strike to do this on misses.
You do of course lose a bit in having to take holy and astral over whatever else, and maybe draconic barrage wouldn’t be worth it without the weakness (is costing actions and feat space compared to pre-change build if so) but like come on guys this is ridiculous why did they do this.
All the Redditors were always talking about how martials squashed casters and after this and the psychic archetype nerf they might actually be right, as much as it pains me to see them vindicated going forwards.
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It clearly wasn’t
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Don't forget bombs do damage on miss.
And there's also alchemical means to add additional damage.
Energy Mutagen: melee weapon attacks
Weapon Siphon: melee weapon attachment
Rainbow Vinegar / Iron Wine: unarmed attacks
Elemental Ammunition: splash dmg and persistent dmg
Alch Xbow: Built in 1d6 elemental dmg for 3 shots
As boring as it sounds, it might be easier to stack fire damage due to how abundant of an additional damage effect it is.
Witch's Reaction for Portents of the Haruspex is random type, which is a problem, but it imposes an abnormally high weakness of =level. Ah, only good for one Strike though, not a duration, that explains it.
A triple sustain of Blood in the Water is a good way to usually get three hits of spirit damage in a round - if you manage to hit once with a astral rune strike as a witch you can get four instances. But this isn’t anything to do with the new rule.
So, how exactly does this work for abilities that say to "combine damage for the purpose of resistances and weaknesses" like Flurry of Blows?
Will the fire damage from the first strike's Flaming rune be combined with the fire damage from the second strike's Flaming rune or will all fire damage be combined into one?
The latter would make such abilities much weaker when it comes to triggering Weaknesses – in terms of Resistances it would work as it did so far.
And since it clearly says to only combine "damage", but makes no mention of non-damage weaknesses, would both strikes still trigger these twice/separately (e.g. Cold Iron, Holy)?
So, how exactly does this work for abilities that say to "combine damage for the purpose of resistances and weaknesses" like Flurry of Blows?
Will the fire damage from the first strike's Flaming rune be combined with the fire damage from the second strike's Flaming rune or will all fire damage be combined into one?
The latter would make such abilities much weaker when it comes to triggering Weaknesses – in terms of Resistances it would work as it did so far.
And since it clearly says to only combine "damage", but makes no mention of non-damage weaknesses, would both strikes still trigger these twice/separately (e.g. Cold Iron, Holy)?
My source tells me foundry devs asked some questions and were told it’s down to damage types and original source separation is lost for flurry and double slice and the like. Which is really dumb if true (you might end up with higher damage from missing a strike!), but grain of salt on that as this is like thirdhand info at this point.
If we're just looking for number of procs, you end on flurry ranger attacking 7 times with impossible flurry+quicken. In the magic world where everything hits you trigger weakness at least 21 times, probably more with all the other ways to add rider damage.
Core set up:
1. Draconic Barrage
2. Holy rune
3. Exemplar ikon
4. Astral rune
Debatable:
1. Axiomatic rune, if what happens to the law damage is that it turns into spirit like the pre-remaster holy and unholy runes.
Situational:
1. Vow of mortal defiance (only 1/turn, on holy or unholy)
2. Many exemplar meta strikes also do spirit damage
3. Synchronize spirit (that familiar ain’t cheap)
Your flurry ranger can actually be triggering shining symbols weakness 4 times a strike, maybe more, for 40 extra weakness damage a strike -> 280 if everything hit.
If they took hands of the wildling, they’d still get one weakness trigger on misses via splash damage. I’m not sure if that justifies having to use a free handed weapon with smaller die size over a normal one though, would have to run damage calcs.
Ranged characters don’t miss out either, as everything in the core lineup works for them. And their best ranged ikon already happens to do splash.
Alchemist with Witch dedication just became funny, with being able to simultaneously give both bombs for Weapon Siphon and Energy Mutagen for 2 extra procs of a weakness he can inflict himself with Justin a focus point.
Oh you don’t need alchemist for those. They’re cheap enough to just buy.
If only exemplar and its archetype weren't rare and unavailable so often. It's why I almost never recommend anything that's uncommon without an access clause either. If it's not common more often than not it may as well not exist.
Same for gunslinger, inventor, and most ancestries.
If only exemplar and its archetype weren't rare and unavailable so often. It's why I almost never recommend anything that's uncommon without an access clause either. If it's not common more often than not it may as well not exist.
Exemplar archetype is but one of the damage sources in the shining symbol stack. If you can’t get it you’re down 5-10 damage a strike, still a busted combo.
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exemplar archetype would be banned at many table with or without rare trait
No, rare trait biases people pretty severely. People occasionally ban champion but not nearly as often, and that’s a more powerful archetype.
Leaden Steps (electricity weakness, requires failed fort save and sustain to keep it going, heightened slot for meaningful weakness)
and
Incendiary Ashes (ash oracle focus 3, failed fort save gives heightened 3-10 fire weakness for 1 minute)
Are other options for imposing a weakness. Incendiary Ashes is pretty great because it’s a good AOE blast as well, and the save requirement is less painful if you target more than one enemy.
Each spell still gives a round of weakness on a successful save, so you can still semireliably do an alpha strike on a boss if you set it up.
If only exemplar and its archetype weren't rare and unavailable so often. It's why I almost never recommend anything that's uncommon without an access clause either. If it's not common more often than not it may as well not exist.Exemplar archetype is but one of the damage sources in the shining symbol stack. If you can’t get it you’re down 5-10 damage a strike, still a busted combo.
Oh, I'm well aware. Especially when you have a whole party built to activate and exploit this new damage source.
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Reading this my impression is that Shining Symbol is strong, but it's kind of exceptional. The other ways to impose a weakness I've seen suggested so far don't give so much weakness that this really gets out of hand. I mean, yeah you're doing damage through a fun combo, which is nice. But you also have to put in work to switch the combo on, which could have also been used to do damage in other ways. So it's nice but so far looking reasonably balanced.
Am I overlooking something?
Before this rules change weakness activation was niche, but good. Shining symbol was solid pick with the astral rune or exemplar dedication and maybe some shields of the spirits action. Some extra spice on an otherwise fine setup. I’m not as familiar with the witch weakness set up but I’m sure it was fine, make weak to fire and have your allies have flaming. Or have a bomber.
Now, it’s too good to skip. Everyone has to weakness stack because it is simply the most effective way of dealing damage vs most enemies. An optimized martial (at least at mid to high levels, and honestly probably at low) is one who is weakness stacking. And multiple hits is the name of the game, the more you hit the more you proc. People have brought up magus as having a lot of weakness stacking ability, and while they have easy access to the buffs, they’re single strike nature conflicts with it. No, the real danger is flurry rangers and monks.
In the new era your party should have multiple shining symbols and every source of spirit damage on strike they can get their hands on (ironically this might push exemplar dedication over the line into truly OP, now that it has an extra 5-10 damage tacked on, it’s way less skippable now). You should have a backup such as fire damage for constructs - or just use more dailies on them, not like you sacrifice *that* much to stack spirit damage.
(Paizo pls fix your broken game put it back how it was it worked fine, damage type was simple and prevented this b%~+++%%.)
No, the real danger is flurry rangers and monks.
I don't think so. Most Flurry Rangers and Monks will go for Hunted Shot, Twin Takedown, Flurry of Blows, et.al. and these abilities specifically combine damage (and thus damage instances) for weaknesses on their Strikes. So these two Strikes won't trigger weaknesses more often than a single Strike.
No, the real threat are agile weapon Fighters.
EDIT:
You know, now that I think about it, Twin Takedown might actually work in triggering weaknesses twice: If you're wielding two weapons and both have a Flaming/Astral/… rune, then their damage does come from two different runes. Same with Holy, Cold Iron, … since only "damage" is combined for weaknesses.
Hmm maybe the real winner is certain strike maxing fighter then. It’s already a hard damage carry, now it’s even better.
4 strikes, 3 of the certain strikes.
5 strikes if you dip swash for that finisher feat that uses your reaction - which if memory serves me right can also be a certain strike.
Yeah, agile grace fighter is looking pretty good. Strike, two weapon flurry at 14, strike, quicken strike is 5 vs flurry ranger's 7 but with all the other benefits of being a fighter and much more flexible action economy. Plus the usual reaction attack stuff.
Weakness stacking is thankfully easy. Elemental betrayal starts at 2 and hits 4 when shining symbol first becomes available so it's not particularly beneficial to switch to shining symbol until 17+ when the weakness spikes to 10 vs EB's 6. It's easy enough to get fire procs too. Two runes, mutagen (melee), siphon (melee), ammo (ranged, also sets persistent), draconic barrage to start. I don't think we need to worry about magus, they haven't stopped being strong and this is just in time for fire ray to be the new meta pick anyway.
Bonus points since we can layer EB on top of shining symbol. Ammo, mutagen, siphon and a fire rune don't stop triggering fire weakness after all and the barrage makes an easy transition to spirit anyway.
I suppose this is where we wonder how combined damage works. I assume it's all sources with the same name and from both weapons physical damage merge together.
For weakness combo, who knows! Fun mystery to find out when the foundry team implements it :)
Someone already opened an issue requesting it. Let us wait to see what they will do.
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exemplar archetype would be banned at many table with or without rare traitNo, rare trait biases people pretty severely. People occasionally ban champion but not nearly as often, and that’s a more powerful archetype.
I know that this is a tangent to the main subject of this thread, but saying that champion is a more powerful archetype than exemplar is just completely wrong.
Sure, there are some characters (largely casters) who will gain more from champion from exemplar but EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER in the game (other than exemplars, obviously) will gain significantly from the Exemplar dedication. And even those characters who gain more from Champion can get most of the benefits (Armor proficiency and lay on hands) by other means while the Exemplar benefits are often totally unique to Exemplars. All martials love getting, at a minimum, +2 per dice of damage stacking with everything and a cool transcendence effect. And they often get even more than that (eg, a rogue with Shadow Sheath)
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Exemplar dedication benefits more classes, champion dedication benefits those classes more.
Exemplar dedication is certainly nice to fit on a build, but that s*~& hits the cutting room floor the second there’s some build specific synergy in competition (except shadow sheath, which *is* the build specific synergy for throwers, and is singlehandly responsible for them actually being pretty good now). If you do take it it’s probably at like 13th or 17th level as your last archetype, because you don’t have anything better to do with multitalented.
Champion, on the other hand… champion is on a different level. You get the best reaction in the game on classes with no reliable reaction. Stellar damage resist and additional bundled utility. There are entire classes that outright rely on champion dedication - I sure as hell wouldn’t play summoner without it. Put 4 exemplar dedication users in a party and not much of consequence changes, you genuinely might not notice, but you put 4 champion’s reactions and I can tell you from personal experience you’re in for a wild ride.
Now I do think this has changed a bit with the new weakness rules, because now exemplar effectively has a +5 to +10 damage bonus if you’re using spirit weakness stacking, which is one of the better ways to weakness stack and an easy one to do. So it’s way less skippable. But honestly, I’m blaming this one on the new weakness rules, not exemplar itself. Unless you want to call the astral rune OP now because it benefits from this busted ass ruling.