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Please consider adding fundamental new ways for Casters to trigger an enemy's Weaknesses!
A recent discussion between Paizo & Foundry devs clarified the rules on "instances of damage":
In short, new instances of damage are any given damage that has a distinct damage type.
Theory-crafters have already demonstrated builds capable of triggering a single Weakness ~10 times with a single Strike. Options like the Shining Symbol and the Witch's Elemental Betrayal allow parties to "manufacture" Weaknesses (often Fire or Spirit) that are then exploited by high-frequency Martial attacks.
Traditionally, Casters were the masters of Weaknesses due to their versatility. However, the "instance of damage" rules have flipped this:
- Martials now massively outperform Casters in Weakness exploitation by stacking multiple damage types onto high-frequency attacks.
- Casters are limited by the fact that most Spells—even multi-hit ones—count as a single instance or a single action, preventing them from benefiting from the "manufactured" Weaknesses that are becoming central to high-level play.
To remedy this and restore the Caster’s niche as the "Weakness specialist," I suggest the following:
- Multi-Hit Logic: Allow spells like Blazing Bolt to target the same enemy multiple times, or allow Force Barrage to trigger Weaknesses (and Resistances) per shard.
- Expanding Spell Buffs: Create new spells—or broaden existing ones like Infuse Vitality or Flame Wisp—to apply their additional typed damage benefits to Spells as well as Strikes.
- Caster Class Features: Update Blood Magic or similar features so their additional typed damage remains a distinct instance rather than merging with the spell’s primary damage.
- New Item Categories: Introduce specialized Rods or Orbs—distinct from the "extra slots" utility of Staves and Wands—that specifically add secondary damage type instances to Spells cast through them.
- Runes for Staves: Allow Potency and Property runes on Staves to impart their benefits to Spells. For example, a +2 Striking Holy Flaming Staff could grant its +2 item bonus to Spell Attack Rolls and add the Holy trait and 1d6 Fire damage as a separate instance to spells cast.
The goal isn't to make Casters better at "burst" than Martials, but to ensure that when a Weakness is present (or created), the Caster has the tools to exploit it just as effectively as someone swinging a sword.
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Paizo just needs to revert this errata. This level of burst damage trivialises encounters far more than Starlit Span IW builds ever did.
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I completely agree that a revert would be the cleanest solution. The current "instance" definition seems to push the math into a territory the encounter design wasn't built for.
That said, if Paizo decides that this is the intended direction for PF2e, it leaves Casters in a very awkward position. While Martials can effectively triple their damage output against certain enemies without spending any resources, Casters—who have traditionally been the "Weakness specialists"—are now left with a much lower return on investment for their limited daily spell slots.
If this rule stays, do you think there's a way to give Casters similar "frequency" tools without further breaking the encounter math?
Edit: This ofc also applies to Kineticists, though I expect their abilities are brought much more into line with Strikes and Spells once Impossible Magic remasters that class, so they work with other abilities (e.g. Commander).
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Although I'm very glad that there is actual errata to clarify what an instance of damage is, I definitely agree that the errata could use errata. Treating bonus damage as its own instance is, in my opinion, counter-intuitive and highly prone to exploits when stacking lots of bonus damage of the same type. As mentioned above, it also means martials can all too easily double-, triple-, or even quadruple-dip into the same weakness, which carries disproportionate returns under certain circumstances. I'd much rather bunch damage together and count on-hit effects as part of the same instance as the base damage. This would nerf certain edge cases with martials in particular, and mean casters don't get left behind by dealing damage in more spaced-out bursts.
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This specific errata was asked for by nobody (people just wanted a explicit codification of what we already had and written rulings on how it worked with Mortal Weakness et al) and is arguably more game warping and awful/hated than the ‘mistaken’ change to Dying rules were.
My suggestion for dealing with this martial/caste disparity is to just revert the errata, which seems to also be the majority opinion in the community by a huge margin.
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I wouldn't ever say casters were masters of hitting weaknesses, or at least they're not so much better at it than martials that I'd make a distinction between the two.
They don't really do physical damage and weaknesses to electric, acid, etc are rare enough that martials can hit the most common weaknesses often enough with mutagens and runes anyway. They're also not really hitting weakness to weapon material outside of needle darts, an attack roll cantrip, while the most common material weakness, silver, is trivial thanks to silver salve.
Does feel a little bad I guess that they fall even further behind with exploiting this new damage source, but casters were never great at sustained damage through the day anyway.
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I wouldn't ever say casters were masters of hitting weaknesses, or at least they're not so much better at it than martials that I'd make a distinction between the two.
They don't really do physical damage and weaknesses to electric, acid, etc are rare enough that martials can hit the most common weaknesses often enough with mutagens and runes anyway. They're also not really hitting weakness to weapon material outside of needle darts, an attack roll cantrip, while the most common material weakness, silver, is trivial thanks to silver salve.
Does feel a little bad I guess that they fall even further behind with exploiting this new damage source, but casters were never great at sustained damage through the day anyway.
This really isn't true; arcane and primal casters in particular are masters of dealing energy damage with spells, and have plenty of physical damage spells to boot. I would go as far as to say that preparing spells of different damage types is an essential part of playing a caster of either tradition, both to trigger weaknesses and avoid resistance or immunity. Preparing spells of different damage types each day is also far easier to achieve than purchasing a new weapon, etching a new rune, remaking a weapon in a new material, or crafting alchemical items when you're not an Alchemist (who's also designed to be good at triggering weaknesses).
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Paizo just needs to revert this errata. This level of burst damage trivialises encounters far more than Starlit Span IW builds ever did.
Yup. This really isn't good for the health of the game. It buffs folks with a lot of system mastery massively and makes weakness game-warping powerful instead of just the good thing to try to land that it was before.
I mean, they gave us the answer we asked for, but the answer is really not a good idea.
I wouldn't ever say casters were masters of hitting weaknesses, or at least they're not so much better at it than martials that I'd make a distinction between the two.
They don't really do physical damage and weaknesses to electric, acid, etc are rare enough that martials can hit the most common weaknesses often enough with mutagens and runes anyway. They're also not really hitting weakness to weapon material outside of needle darts, an attack roll cantrip, while the most common material weakness, silver, is trivial thanks to silver salve.
Does feel a little bad I guess that they fall even further behind with exploiting this new damage source, but casters were never great at sustained damage through the day anyway.
Casters had an easier time carrying lots of damage types so they could hit a weakness more readily than a Fighter, who has much more limited options in terms of changing damage types on the fly. That's what people mean by it.
But yeah, this change massively helps martials who can trigger a weakness (especially if they can get a weakness added reliably), who frankly did not need the help when it comes to doing damage. Casters can't really take advantage of it in the same way.
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Yup. This really isn't good for the health of the game. It buffs folks with a lot of system mastery massively and makes weakness game-warping powerful instead of just the good thing to try to land that it was before.
I mean, they gave us the answer we asked for, but the answer is really not a good idea.
Even if they revert this swiftly, it shakes my faith in the current team that this ruling ever saw print. It's like the writers don't even play-test their own game.
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Even if they revert this swiftly, it shakes my faith in the current team that this ruling ever saw print. It's like the writers don't even play-test their own game.Yup. This really isn't good for the health of the game. It buffs folks with a lot of system mastery massively and makes weakness game-warping powerful instead of just the good thing to try to land that it was before.
I mean, they gave us the answer we asked for, but the answer is really not a good idea.
I'm not sure about playtesting in this case since the errata text specifically calls out a weakness triggering twice. They can't have been surprised by it when they pointed it out themselves. So the only way they could be surprised by this is if they didn't realize you could stack it up a lot more than twice.
But it seems entirely probable that this is actually what was intended and they think it's fine. Which is concerning in its own right because this ruling is not a good idea.
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I do think the new instances of damage clarification raises issues that will require additional errata. I think it would be nice and clean for every source of damage to count as its own instance of damage. For that to work though, the ability to give out weaknesses needs to be dialed in significantly. Some, like elemental betrayal are not as gross of offenders as they might seem, with the number of creatures that have fire resistance and how little weakness it really gives, and to only one creature at a time. But others, like shinning symbol become broken immediately since it gives weakness to a damage type rarely resisted, to every creature in a near radius for a duration that works easily as a prebuff, and the weakness it gives out is too high.
Casters and alchemists remain good at triggering weaknesses if it requires versatility to be able to hit them. Being able to “win” weakness triggering in item purchasing (with items that don’t cost enough actions to offset the bonus damage) is worse than just handing the keys of weakness over to martials, it pushes PF2 much further back towards winning encounters in character building/precombat decision making and undermines the game’s excellent emphasis on tactical decision making.
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The one caveat I would say about elemental betrayal, which is also still a confusing issue with the damage instance errata, is that fire as both a trait and a damage type creates a problem in the “elemental weakness triggering” game because none of the other elements get to work as damage types. If fire could only invoke at the trait/categorical level, and how that is supposed to work is that it can only trigger once per strike, then there would be no concerning exploit with elemental betrayal.
Elemental betrayal and shining symbol are almost identical in weakness until the level 17 upgrade. At 9 when shining symbols become available, EB provides weakness 4 vs symbol's weakness 5 and they even out at 13.
It's my honest opinion that, given how much earlier EB is available, you can build completely around fire damage and symbol can be skipped until 17 when the weakness hits 10. At that point you just run both to trigger weakness 10 and weakness 6 multiple times per attack. Just need to find some time to test it.
Elemental betrayal and shining symbol are almost identical in weakness until the level 17 upgrade. At 9 when shining symbols become available, EB provides weakness 4 vs symbol's weakness 5 and they even out at 13.
It's my honest opinion that, given how much earlier EB is available, you can build completely around fire damage and symbol can be skipped until 17 when the weakness hits 10. At that point you just run both to trigger weakness 10 and weakness 6 multiple times per attack. Just need to find some time to test it.
That is why I pointed out the problem with elemental betrayal giving fire weakness as a problem, but not any other elemental type. It is the fact that fire gets to be both when it feels like EB is (or should) just be targeting the higher order elemental trait.
Elemental betrayal is also one enemy per focus point spent and must be sustained. The action cost is very real with it.
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On the other hand, wizard finally has a real niche. At level 12 they have forcible energy to apply weakness to any energy type.
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lots of good thoughts
Yeah, I guess that is why it is not the change that bothers me, it is the fact that some of this has been (and continues to remain) confusing for a long time, but it didn’t have clearly over powered exploits so people just ignored the confusing bits. Without the ability to generate specific weaknesses, these edge cases were fine to just resolve at the table in specific encounters.
I still don’t think elemental betrayal for Fire is particularly broken as it is resource intensive to maintain and any fire resistance pretty much neutralizes the whole strategy since resistance tends to exceed the weakness this gives.
If the Fire kineticist aura applied to other characters, that would be broken because the resource usage is nearly negligible, so it does seem like every weakness granting ability is going to have to be very closely balanced.
The one caveat I would say about elemental betrayal, which is also still a confusing issue with the damage instance errata, is that fire as both a trait and a damage type creates a problem in the “elemental weakness triggering” game because none of the other elements get to work as damage types. If fire could only invoke at the trait/categorical level, and how that is supposed to work is that it can only trigger once per strike, then there would be no concerning exploit with elemental betrayal.
Elemental Betrayal in the remaster specifically removed fire damage as a weakness it can grant. It only works with things that have the fire trait.
Energy mutagens, weapon siphons, and brilliant runes are examples of fire damage without the trait that post remaster don’t work with EB. They still work with the higher level and often save required options available to the 12th level wizard feat, ashes oracle focus spell, and genie sorcerer focus spell.
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The one caveat I would say about elemental betrayal, which is also still a confusing issue with the damage instance errata, is that fire as both a trait and a damage type creates a problem in the “elemental weakness triggering” game because none of the other elements get to work as damage types. If fire could only invoke at the trait/categorical level, and how that is supposed to work is that it can only trigger once per strike, then there would be no concerning exploit with elemental betrayal.Elemental Betrayal in the remaster specifically removed fire damage as a weakness it can grant. It only works with things that have the fire trait.
Energy mutagens, weapon siphons, and brilliant runes are examples of fire damage without the trait that post remaster don’t work with EB. They still work with the higher level and often save required options available to the 12th level wizard feat, ashes oracle focus spell, and genie sorcerer focus spell.
Blazing Armory now grants double weakness procs now, for the whole team, at higher levels.
Elemental Betrayal in the remaster specifically removed fire damage as a weakness it can grant. It only works with things that have the fire trait.
Energy mutagens, weapon siphons, and brilliant runes are examples of fire damage without the trait that post remaster don’t work with EB. They still work with the higher level and often save required options available to the 12th level wizard feat, ashes oracle focus spell, and genie sorcerer focus spell.
Well that's unfortunate. Hm. Not sure EBs worth it if it's limited to only the base fire rune. Draconic barrage doesn't have the fire trait either. Dragon barbarian rage gains the trait. Presumably a weapon siphon would still work since the base bomb the damage comes from has the trait but that's debatable.
What other sources do we have? Seal fate is pitiful. That one oracle spell which can be poached at level 12 and scales really nice. A few other spells with pitiful weakness amounts or that require failed saves. Oracle stocks in the rise it seems.
Blazing Armory now grants double weakness procs now, for the whole team, at higher levels.
This is a pretty neat tech, but too slot intensive I think.
It is going to be unfortunate for the party that goes hard into fire damage and doing all this weakness proc stuff on a final boss who ends up being unexpectedly resistant or immune to fire damage.
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Trying to stay positive, I guess it's a good thing that the errata has kinda forced a reckoning with the definition of "instance of damage" is.
From reading the rules alone and tuning out the community zeitgeist, it kinda demands that each impact/swing/boom is a single instance. Not the "+dmg chunk adds new instance" version.
Otherwise it creates multiple issues, one of which is where things like Resist / Weakness All do not make sense.
If each +dmg chunk is a new, separate instance, then you cannot have multiple types of damage inside one instance. Res/Weak all cannot function.
Furthermore, the only reason this issue has not been forced before now is because the same source of ~misinfo on this instances of damage thing also told people that, even if you add 3 fire dmg instances, you only pop that fire weakness once.
That, on it's face, is a contradiction. Worse, re-grouping different fire instances into one instance is completely beyond the text. It's just not there, and you cannot do a procedure like that if there's no rule to instruct it.
But, crap, that OG source of misinfo was a dev post from 2018 so it's no wonder that people took the dev's word for it.
____________
My tinfoil take is that there's a tiny rule change that turns the weakness rules into what was in Mark's head.
If you change from the community norm to the 'real RaW' where the instance is the swing/spell/etc, changing one line gets you to Mark's post (in a way that genuinely works, and doesn't create edge cases like his does).
If you swap the "only the highest" rule into:
"You may apply each listed weakness only once per each instance of damage."
That kinda fixes everything. I'm guessing that at one point, that was the rule, but Paizo on the whole changed it into the "only the highest" before publishing to reduce how much weakness damage affected combat, but Mark forgot about the change, and then messed up with the "instance of damage" to try to get back to what was in his head.
(and his post never worked. This errata is what happens when you take that idea seriously.)
A recent discussion between Paizo & Foundry devs clarified the rules on "instances of damage":
In short, new instances of damage are any given damage that has a distinct damage type.
Does anyone else notice that this isn't what the errata says?
The two instances of cold damage come from different spells, so each sets off cold weakness individually
Even if the damage amounts have the exact same damage type, they are still different instances of damage.
That same Reddit thread says the same thing:
So weapon specialization damage and vicious swing dice aren't instances, but inventor's offensive boost is -- even if you make it the same damage type as your weapon
Same damage type -> still a different instance of damage.
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That specifically is claiming there is a difference btwn "+3 damage" versus "+3 fire damage"
In their view, one is boosting an existing instance while the other creates a new instance.
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Yes, that conversation was focused on things like weapon specialization (and strength damage, which somehow gets treated like a totally different thing from spec but shouldn't), and the exemplar weapon ikon spirit combined with their version of weapon spec that does spirit.
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It is going to be unfortunate for the party that goes hard into fire damage and doing all this weakness proc stuff on a final boss who ends up being unexpectedly resistant or immune to fire damage.the spirit vunerability one is the most reliable unless the final boss is a construct greater astral ensures full effect.
Holy is a good rune, astral is a good rune, brilliant is a good rune. Shining Symbol is 2 actions for 10 minute aura
Yes, I think the shining symbol is going to be problematic, especially because it is a once a day option that is so good in severe encounters that it has a real possibility of leading to parties investing in multiples only for the encounter=win option or having only one or two and ending adventure days after 10 to 20 minutes.
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The one caveat I would say about elemental betrayal, which is also still a confusing issue with the damage instance errata, is that fire as both a trait and a damage type creates a problem in the “elemental weakness triggering” game because none of the other elements get to work as damage types. If fire could only invoke at the trait/categorical level, and how that is supposed to work is that it can only trigger once per strike, then there would be no concerning exploit with elemental betrayal.Elemental Betrayal in the remaster specifically removed fire damage as a weakness it can grant. It only works with things that have the fire trait.
Energy mutagens, weapon siphons, and brilliant runes are examples of fire damage without the trait that post remaster don’t work with EB. They still work with the higher level and often save required options available to the 12th level wizard feat, ashes oracle focus spell, and genie sorcerer focus spell.
I don't know what this even means in practice. If we're at the point of "fire damage is not a fire effect by traits", that's... something?
Like that doesn't make logical sense. How is literally setting something on fire not a "fire effect"?
I'm pretty sure changing it to a trait was so that things that add a trait but don't do damage can work (like "water damage" is not a thing but the water trait is). I don't think it's intended to make people parse out which fire effects are "fire trait effects" and which ones are "the other kind of fire effects".
Hell, it takes a high degree of system mastery to even recognize that those are two different things!
That specifically is claiming there is a difference btwn "+3 damage" versus "+3 fire damage"
In their view, one is boosting an existing instance while the other creates a new instance.
That's not what I am talking about.
What I am pointing out is that there is still confusion being caused on threads like this one because people are being lazy about how they describe what the new rules even say.
When the poster in that thread said "instances of damage are any given damage that has a distinct damage type" that is incorrect.
Damage type is not what causes separate instances of damage. Damage source is. It doesn't matter if the damage type is the same or not, if the source is different then it will be a separate instance of damage.
A Spirit Instinct Barbarian using a weapon with the Holy rune has two different instances of Spirit damage with each Strike (Rage damage being Spirit damage, and Holy rune damage being Spirit damage). Even though that is not a "distinct damage type".
It is going to be unfortunate for the party that goes hard into fire damage and doing all this weakness proc stuff on a final boss who ends up being unexpectedly resistant or immune to fire damage.
That is another side to this, yes. A build designed around doing multiple instances of the same damage type are going to do fantastically well against a creature weak to that damage type. But they are also going to do fantastically badly against a creature resistant to that damage type.
There are two more things to consider in the balance analysis.
One: there is a lot of build cost and often action cost involved in setting up these builds that do multiple instances of the same damage type.
Two: how often does the party actually face a creature that has that particular weakness in real gameplay? Not just in theoretical or hypothetical encounters designed to show just how bad the math is and how horrible of an idea this and how Paizo really screwed this up.
Because if the answer is that a Cold damage instance stacking build only encounters a creature weak to Cold damage once or twice in the campaign, then that build with 4 different instances of Cold damage is probably doing worse overall than a build with 4 equivalent damage boosts of different types - the chances that a creature is weak to one of those various types is higher than it being weak to the one chosen type when you put all of the type weakness eggs in one basket.
So I feel like I am seeing a lot of "the sky is falling" mentality, but without much practical gameplay reason for it.
The one caveat I would say about elemental betrayal, which is also still a confusing issue with the damage instance errata, is that fire as both a trait and a damage type creates a problem in the “elemental weakness triggering” game because none of the other elements get to work as damage types. If fire could only invoke at the trait/categorical level, and how that is supposed to work is that it can only trigger once per strike, then there would be no concerning exploit with elemental betrayal.Elemental Betrayal in the remaster specifically removed fire damage as a weakness it can grant. It only works with things that have the fire trait.
Energy mutagens, weapon siphons, and brilliant runes are examples of fire damage without the trait that post remaster don’t work with EB. They still work with the higher level and often save required options available to the 12th level wizard feat, ashes oracle focus spell, and genie sorcerer focus spell.
I don't know what this even means in practice. If we're at the point of "fire damage is not a fire effect by traits", that's... something?
Like that doesn't make logical sense. How is literally setting something on fire not a "fire effect"?
I don't know, ask Paizo. It's the way things have been forever. They wrote the fire trait to say "things with this trait generally do fire damage." They've chosen to never write a general rule saying "things that do [energy] damage have the [energy] trait." It most blatantly came up with the SF2 GM Core alternate rules for using energy damage in a vaccum. They don't actually apply to any energy weapons, because the rules refer to traits, and none of the weapons have energy traits.
I don't know what this even means in practice. If we're at the point of "fire damage is not a fire effect by traits", that's... something?
Like that doesn't make logical sense. How is literally setting something on fire not a "fire effect"?
The same thing that requires barbarian's dragon rage to explicitly state that it adds the damage trait that matches the damage type. That's just how it goes.
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That is another side to this, yes. A build designed around doing multiple instances of the same damage type are going to do fantastically well against a creature weak to that damage type. But they are also going to do fantastically badly against a creature resistant to that damage type.
There are two more things to consider in the balance analysis.
One: there is a lot of build cost and often action cost involved in setting up these builds that do multiple instances of the same damage type.
Two: how often does the party actually face a creature that has that particular weakness in real gameplay? Not just in theoretical or hypothetical encounters designed to show just how bad the math is and how horrible of an idea this and how Paizo really screwed this up.
One: The thing is that it takes almost no build cost. Spirit's build cost is measured entirely in gp for shining symbols and setting your runes to astral and holy. Fire's build cost is running witch or ash oracle plus setting two of your three damage runes to fire and brilliant. It's not like you weren't already running energy mutagens and such on melee martials, though those are now fire too instead of some other damage type.
Two: always. That's the power of inflicting weakness instead of just waiting for it to come up. Witch applies fire trait weakness at level 1. Ash oracle applies universal fire weakness at 6+. Wizard can apply any energy weakness at 12+. Spirit weakness is on an item you can buy multiples of at 9+. This isn't a "what if" that only applies once in awhile. This is a purpose built damage engine that acts as a core party strategy. And when it runs into immunity, you just do the usual de/buff and swing because it doesn't actually stop you from taking all the usual good options anyway.
It is going to be unfortunate for the party that goes hard into fire damage and doing all this weakness proc stuff on a final boss who ends up being unexpectedly resistant or immune to fire damage.That is another side to this, yes. A build designed around doing multiple instances of the same damage type are going to do fantastically well against a creature weak to that damage type. But they are also going to do fantastically badly against a creature resistant to that damage type.
There are two more things to consider in the balance analysis.
One: there is a lot of build cost and often action cost involved in setting up these builds that do multiple instances of the same damage type.
Two: how often does the party actually face a creature that has that particular weakness in real gameplay? Not just in theoretical or hypothetical encounters designed to show just how bad the math is and how horrible of an idea this and how Paizo really screwed this up.
Because if the answer is that a Cold damage instance stacking build only encounters a creature weak to Cold damage once or twice in the campaign, then that build with 4 different instances of Cold damage is probably doing worse overall than a build with 4 equivalent damage boosts of different types - the chances that a creature is weak to one of those various types is higher than it being weak to the one chosen type when you put all of the type weakness eggs in one basket.
So I feel like I am seeing a lot of "the sky is falling" mentality, but without much practical gameplay reason for it.
Setting aside weakness infliction, if you have intel that a specific enemy is i.e. weak to cold you can roll up with cold energy mutagens and a weapon siphon and double inflict weakness, triple if you were lucky enough to happen to have a property rune already in that damage type.
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When the poster in that thread said "instances of damage are any given damage that has a distinct damage type" that is incorrect.
Damage type is not what causes separate instances of damage. Damage source is. It doesn't matter if the damage type is the same or not, if the source is different then it will be a separate instance of damage.
You're just not reading it right.
A new instance of damage is any given damage (e.g. +2 damage, +1d4 dmg) that has a distinct damage type (e.g. fire damage, spirit damage, slashing damage).
A simple +2 damage or +1d4 danage without a distinct damage type, e.g. precision damage are not new instances of damage because they lack a damage type.
Source doesn't matter, only (additional) damage with its own damage type.
Example:
A Fighter with Exemplar archetype (& Fire-Spark) with a Brilliant Flaming weapon ikon hitting an undead fiend has 5 additional instances of damage:
+ 2 fire from ikon (Energy Spark: Fire)
+ 1d4 fire from Brilliant
+ 1d4 spirit from Brilliant
+ 1d4 vitality from Brilliant
+ 1d6 fire from Flaming
But the +3 damage from Weapon Specialization would not be a new instance of damage, because it lacks a distinct damage type – it just increases whatever damage the weapon already deals.
distinct = definite & obvious
distinct != different
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It's a bad change. Weakness wasn't made to proc more than once per smack; I won't be using that rule for my tables.
I think some middleground can work.
Effects that add additional damage to the strike shoudldn't be extra instances (stuff like arcane cascade or rage) but certain effects like Flame Wisp, that are more of an additional effect occuring along with the strike rather than modifiying it, should still trigger the weaknesses/resistances independantly.
Though to be fair, I do not know how this could be written in a concise and clear way.
Yeah the case by case basis is a bit of an issue.
Take Draw the Lightning and Flame Wisps.
Mechanically, both just add dices of damage to your strikes.
NARRATIVELY though one is coating your weapon in lightning, same as a shocking rune so it's basically upping the voltage, while the other is extra projectiles flying by themselves to hit the target automatically when you and a hit.
It honestly could be worth it letting it be an interpretation based thing, it is a RPG afterall. But I understand the issues it would pose for online tabletop softwares like foundry and their automation system.
However I don't think the situation is as dire as some people claim. Yes there IS party setups that can get to crazy stuff, but it's still quite specific and takes a lot of investment. (specific classes, spells, consummables etc... that can be counterred individually with stuff like reactions, immunities, spells from the enemy side and so on)
Would it be so bad if bonus damage and other riders of the same damage type were just combined before factoring in weaknesses and resistances? I'm trying to think of what that would break compared to the current ruling, as it just seems like the more straightforward way to go.
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That was pretty much the assumption people had before.
In a way I like the change because it does reward preparation and setup, but it is also very abusable. And yes, it does widen the gap in damage between martials and casters.
If if depended on the source it could work but it'd be a case by case ruling so it's not practical.
For casters it'd be nice if they had ways of triggering weaknesses multiple time as well (they really need to get access to runes on attack spells imo, at least potency runes). But there's no good way to implement that in their spells. Unless individually you add "each projectile counts as its own instance of damage" or something but then again it'd be a handful of spells.
Who knows, maybe impossible magic will add a ton of spells meant to exploit weaknesses for casters to benefit from this errata ?
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Beyond all the balance concerns, this clarification adds a lot of bookkeeping for damage calculation, and the GM reward for all that extra work .......is the boss melting faster if the martials are properly built and buffed. From the GM perspective, this just seems bad from both ends, unless you're a GM that actively hates running combats and would sooner have your players receive their victory endorphins and pat them on the back while cheekily placing gold star stickers on their forehead. The idea of each martial getting an extra 20-40 damage early-mid game on EACH BONK......it *really* boggles the mind.
Ultimately, it's not a concern for me bc I flatly won't be running this ruling, but I really do feel for pfs GMs and GMs using automated programs.
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Would it be so bad if bonus damage and other riders of the same damage type were just combined before factoring in weaknesses and resistances? I'm trying to think of what that would break compared to the current ruling, as it just seems like the more straightforward way to go.
This is what was happening before in Foundry. All the fire damage was added together and would trigger fire weakness.
It worked quite well. Hitting a weakness was rewarding because of the bonus damage, but it didn't make sense to stack four ways to trigger the weakness so you wanted to spread your options out.
In the new version you want to stack a single weakness and then use things that let you apply that weakness to enemies so you can benefit from it much more often for much more damage.
I think this also harms utility runes, which already weren't a community favorite, too. Before you were trading a bit of damage and the chance to hit another weakness for utility. Now you could be trading much more reliable weakness damage stacking to have a utility rune.
Beyond all the balance concerns, this clarification adds a lot of bookkeeping for damage calculation, and the GM reward for all that extra work .......is the boss melting faster if the martials are properly built and buffed. From the GM perspective, this just seems bad from both ends, unless you're a GM that actively hates running combats and would sooner have your players receive their victory endorphins and pat them on the back while cheekily placing gold star stickers on their forehead. The idea of each martial getting an extra 20-40 damage early-mid game on EACH BONK......it *really* boggles the mind.
Ultimately, it's not a concern for me bc I flatly won't be running this ruling, but I really do feel for pfs GMs and GMs using automated programs.
Yeah if Foundry switches to this I'll have to go back to handling it all manually. Which is what I did before Foundry so I can do it, but it was a bunch of work that stopped existing when it was automated.
It's just bad news all around.
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If yall want the same-type damage to only trigger once, that means that you need all those additional damages under the same hood.
It's super easy to do, but you do need to house edit one rule, and flip your interpretation of another thing.
If the safety value, or "once per ___" that you want to limit is the Strike, spell, etc, then it makes sense to consider each instance of damage to be the entire impact, spell boom, etc.
With that as your instance bucket, you change the 'only the highest weakness' rule into 'each separate weakness contributes damage once per instance'
Mirror that for resistance, and you're done.
You've gotten to the platonic ideal of allowing things to pop multiple different weaknesses, but only once per hit. The rare effects that trigger a separate impact, like Flame Wisp, sill work to extra-pop weakness.
You do enable that cold iron slashing to pop twice per swing though.
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And for folk that want a game that's less swingy due to weakness/resistance, and as far as I can tell is genuinely how pf2 was written, just change to the new instance interpretation without editing the "only the highest" rule. Strikes can still get significant bonus damage by finding a weakness, but there's less of a meta incentive to optimize for that when you really do only get the single highest weakness per impact.
I think this also harms utility runes, which already weren't a community favorite, too. Before you were trading a bit of damage and the chance to hit another weakness for utility. Now you could be trading much more reliable weakness damage stacking to have a utility rune.
Agreed. The only non-damage rune still standing is rooting and honestly if they printed a third spirit damage rune even rooting, the “my opportunity attacks disrupt movement on crit GOAT” would be on thin ice.
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Utility runes are also a point of annoyance for me, because even before this errata, etching those instead of damage property runes represented a major loss in consistent damage. With the current ruling, damage property runes are still likely to be stronger even if they added only a single point of damage of their type, simply because each of those runes gets to trigger weaknesses as its own instance. All of this I feel runs counter to the basic limitations imposed upon weaknesses as well, since there's no point in only triggering the highest weakness per instance if one Strike can trigger the same weakness four times.