So you use divine immolation on a swarm and they catch fire.
The inital damage definatly triggers the swarms area weakness but does the persistent damage ?
Does persistent damage from an area effect inherit the area trait or is now the persistent damage just persistent damage.
Hard to say as it seems like we havent yet found a concensus on how Area is treated. The initial damage is for sure area-damage but does that just mean "damage from an area effect". My guess is that it is intended to apply as described below.
Player Core pg. 445 2.0: Persistent Damage/Sidebar wrote: Immunities, resistances, and weaknesses all apply to persistent damage. If an effect deals initial damage in addition to persistent damage, apply immunities, resistances, and weaknesses separately to the initial damage and to the persistent damage.
Given what the Area Weakness signifies, I'd say yes.
You aren't doing more damage because swarms are magically vulnerable to the area aspect, you're just doing more damage because you are hitting a whole lot of tiny individual things.
Similarly, your persistent would be burning an equally large number of them, hence the weakness should apply.
shroudb wrote: Given what the Area Weakness signifies, I'd say yes.
You aren't doing more damage because swarms are magically vulnerable to the area aspect, you're just doing more damage because you are hitting a whole lot of tiny individual things.
Similarly, your persistent would be burning an equally large number of them, hence the weakness should apply.
I don't think I agree with this argument. When you throw a Force Barrage at a swarm it also hits a large number of individual things, with several bolts even. But it has no area trait and triggers no weakness. And persistent damage doesn't have to be area by default.
Should it inherit the trait from the parent spell? I don't know yet. Would holy be inherited, for example?
Errenor wrote: shroudb wrote: Given what the Area Weakness signifies, I'd say yes.
You aren't doing more damage because swarms are magically vulnerable to the area aspect, you're just doing more damage because you are hitting a whole lot of tiny individual things.
Similarly, your persistent would be burning an equally large number of them, hence the weakness should apply.
I don't think I agree with this argument. When you throw a Force Barrage at a swarm it also hits a large number of individual things, with several bolts even. But it has no area trait and triggers no weakness. And persistent damage doesn't have to be area by default.
Should it inherit the trait from the parent spell? I don't know yet. Would holy be inherited, for example? I'd argue that "a dozen" is not a large amount of units when we're talking about swarms.
I would agree with Shroud here,
A Force Barrage may target and hit several individual creatures with effects that are individually resolved, but its not doing it in an area.
Area additionally is not a trait, nor a weakness on its own. Weakness to Area-Damage exists and is typically described as area effects doing more since they are able to affect every creature within the Swarm/Troop.
For example as to why area and Holy ought to be treated differently, I don't think anyone would argue that Swarms/Troops would take damage from their weakness whenever they are affected by an area-effect. Even beneficial ones such as Bless. But creatures weak to holy absolutely do take damage just from being affected by anything with the holy trait.
The persistent damage comes from an area effect. I would say the weakness applies.
They have a higher surface-area-to-volume ratio, so they burn more, have more of themselves coated, lose a larger proportion of their blood, or whatever the persistent damage is. Seems reasonable enough, but I'm not going to fault any GM who decides to only apply it on initial damage.
RAW no. Persistent damage is a condition and it lacks the area trait.
Narratively? It absolutely makes sense that if you set them on fire with an area/splash effect, that trait should carry over to the persistent damage.
GMs should feel encouraged to say "that makes narrative sense so I'm going to give it to you."
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