If a creature is immune to spirit damage (e.g. construct) and also has a weakness Holy 20, and is hit by a Divine Lance (Holy trait) that causes 10d4 (=17 points) of spirit damage with the Holy trait, what damage does the creature take?
37 points (i.e., the spirit damage + the damage from the weakness) or only 20 points (= damage from the weakness)?
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With Holy;
- Divine Lance does spirit damage; it strikes at the 'soul'.
- You shoot a demonic construct with a Holy divine lance, doing xd4 spirit damage.
- The holy weakness adds 20 more spirit damage; nothing in the rules allow weaknesses to deal a different type of damage than the attack which triggered them. It would only be untyped if the attack dealt no damage but still triggered a weakness.
- So you deal xd4+20 spirit damage, which the construct ignores due to its immunity; it has no 'soul' to strike.
Generally speaking, sources of "holy damage" are things that deal spirit damage and have the holy trait.
But this instance is confusing because this creature has immunity to spirit damage, but also has a weakness to holy (which is basically a subtype of spirit damage).
How is this supposed to work? I'm honestly not sure.
Do you have an actual creature that has immunity to spirit and weakness as an example?
If it was merely a resistance to spirit damage and a weakness to holy, my ruling would be that it still triggers the weakness and grants that additional damage, regardless of if the resistance fully negates the spirit damage.
But with immunity....I'm not sure how it should function, since it the immunity should stop any spirit damage from happening.
It honestly mostly seems to me like an editing error that should have been caught creating a contradiction. Because spirit is basically a combination of the old "good and evil" damage types, which weren't really damage types but dealt damage based on a creatures alignment. But with alignment removed, and the damage types rework not everything works quite as intended if you didn't pay close attention.
Likely such a creature pre-remaster would have has a resistance to evil aligned damage and a weakness to good aligned damage. And when editing it, someone just simply replaced the evil aligned resistance to spirit. And didn't notice the contradiction they create in giving a weakness to holy.
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It would only be untyped if the attack dealt no damage but still triggered a weakness.I guess the argument stems from the fact that this is actually not 100% clarified anywhere. It uses the phrase "If you have a weakness to something that doesn't normally deal damage, such as water" which could also apply to this situation - "holy" does not normally deal damage, and a construct does not normally take spirit damage so you could also consider spirit to be "something that doesn't normally deal damage" in this instance.
I disagree. Spirit damage does 'normally deal damage'. The immunity blocks it in this specific instance. It's not the same.
Also, with your reading of a holy weakness; would this construct take damage for being in the aura of an Angelic Halo spell?
https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=2093
I would say no. But it's in the area of effect of a Holy spell (that doesn't normally deal damage, and in fact normally does nothing at all to foes); should it take 20 untyped damage? Each round?
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Also, with your reading of a holy weakness; would this construct take damage for being in the aura of an Angelic Halo spell?https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=2093
I would say no. But it's in the area of effect of a Holy spell (that doesn't normally deal damage, and in fact normally does nothing at all to foes); should it take 20 untyped damage? Each round?
I would say in this case no, because the creature is not targeted by and thus not "affected by" the spell.
That does call to mind some other weird interactions though. If a Witch used Elemental Betrayal to give a creature a weakness to Wood, and then cast Entangling Flora, when would the weakness trigger? Each time it fails a save? Each time it moves in the difficult terrain? Every round regardless of both?
Weakness to traits could really use some better wording...
From my POV easiest would be to rule that weaknesses can only trigger on damaging effects, and inherit the damage type of the triggering effect. Would mean RAW you could no longer do some 'thematic' things like hurting a fire elemental with a non-damaging water spell, but would make the rules a lot easier to adjudicate.
I was able to find one Unholy Construct the Levaloch. No weakness to Holy though.
I think you may have crossed some wires, because the stat block you linked does have weakness to holy.
It doesn't call out specifically having an immunity to spirit, but I'm not sure there's a creature that actually does in the stat block.
Many Constructs have immunity to Spirit listed like the new MC2 Golem. Some do not because they have a spirit/soul/whatnot, like the Levaloch above or Soulbound Doll for another example. Of course Spirit being a new damage type, the pre-Remaster Constructs don't even know to list it.
As for OP, I side with saying it's a bump to the damage, and if the creature's immune to all the damage, it still is. Water explicitly states it works differently, doesn't it?
Many Constructs have immunity to Spirit listed like the new MC2 Golem. Some do not because they have a spirit/soul/whatnot, like the Levaloch above or Soulbound Doll for another example.
I see in the Soulbound Doll's stat block that it says that it is not immune to Spirit damage. I am not seeing anything like that in the Levaloch stats.
One of the things that I do expect to see persist after the re-errata regarding instance of damage is how a weakness to something that is not a damage type (such as the Holy trait or Area effects) would only apply once to the entire attack.
The difficulty here is because the interaction is not defined. None of the rules fully apply in this case.
Spirit damage is something that normally does deal damage. So the rule in Weakness regarding things that don't normally deal damage, doesn't accurately apply.
And the rule for complex effects in Immunity to a trait is backwards. The Levaloch is not immune to Holy, it is immune to the Spirit damage type and weak to the Holy trait. So that doesn't accurately apply either.
As with most things that are not fully defined in the rules, it is best to just make a ruling at your particular table that the players there will be happy with. And if this thread is coming from a PFS forum question, then PFS leadership is going to need to make the ruling for their tables.
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Spirit damage doesn't harm creatures that have no spirit, such as constructs.There are a few exceptions, like poppets etc, that have souls.
Whenever you would take that type of damage, increase the damage you take by the value of the weakness.
As no damage is taken (immunity is applied first), the weakness is not applied.
a weakness to something that doesn't normally deal damage
I think that does not apply here, as the spell does normally deal damage.
I would actually rule with those in the "does not trigger weakness" camp on this one.
The way the Immunity part is written imo has the default functionality to be that when triggered, that reaction is to induce immunity to all the effects, not just damage.
And the holy-ness of the spell is very much a creation of the spell, it is not an outside effect that the spell somehow inherited from elsewhere. The spell is creating the holy lance of spirit energy.
The spell is not an arrow that you strap a holy payload onto. The entire arrow is created by the spell.
As such, I'd rule the immunity to spirit does mean that method of delivering holy to the target flat out does not work.
You need to overcome the immunity and affect the creature first, then effects/attributes carried by the spell can take effect.
If a spell's text called out the telekinetic delivery of a preexisting holy ____, or similar, that would be enough for me to consider the "processed separately" idea.
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For the sake of consistency, try to imagine a different immunity mix with Holy weakness. Like a bleed or mind spell. If a mindless construct were to be targeted with a holy mind control spell, it is perhaps more intuitive as to why you do not trigger that Holy weakness.
I agree with the idea that you need to breech the immunity first; when you fail to do so, you don't even check for weaknesses.
I'm mostly reaching my conclusion by the immunity text, not weakness text.
When you have immunity to a specific type of damage, you ignore all damage of that type. If you have immunity to a specific condition or type of effect, you can't be affected by that condition or any effect of that type. You can still be targeted by an ability that includes an effect or condition you are immune to; you just don't apply that particular effect or condition.
If you have immunity to effects with a certain trait (such as death effects, poison, or disease), you are unaffected by effects with that trait. Often, an effect both has a trait and deals that type of damage (such as a lightning bolt spell). In these cases, the immunity applies to the effect corresponding to the trait, not just the damage. However, some complex effects might have parts that affect you even if you're immune to one of the effect's traits; for instance, a spell that deals both fire and acid damage can still deal acid damage to you even if you're immune to fire.
The only time you get to bypass immunity's "full nullification" is if a complex effect deals damage that a GM would see as outside the immunity. Such as a spell dealing mental + bldg damage VS a construct. The construct would still take the bldg.
That's it. All other default cases of immunity being triggered, the entire effect is nullified. The "holy" part of the equation is nullified at that step, before the weakness procedure is even reached.
Which is why I'm focusing on checking if the holy is an effect of the spell, or if it's independent of the spell. Due to sanctification, you do need to think about it for a sec, but I think the answer is still clear.
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as far as the weakness text:
"you take damage equal to the weakness value when touched or affected by it."
I read that "touch or affected" as two mutually exclusive types of event. You don't "touch" an effect like a spell. Those affect you.
And due to immunity, the all the spell's effect, make no affect upon the target. They were never affected by it, so weakness never pops.
Do we even have an actual creature with an immunity to spirit damage and a weakness to holy or unholy?
Also, the exact rules about all of this are up in the air right now, with the clear admission that the existing definition of instance of damage is incomplete. What will the answer be? Who knows. The current answer is very much “your GM is going to make a call based on their own ideas and game expectations.
But that immunity just makes the spell like a bucket of water or a holy symbol; it is now a spell that has no combat effect on the opponent except for the weakness.
Not it does not, you just made that up.
The werewolf example points the opposite direction you claim. The werewolf was not immune to the improvised attack, so the weakness could trigger.
Immunity is a rather inflexible mechanic, but the text is rather black and white. If you trigger immunity, the entire thing is rendered null. Damage and other effects.
Unless, you meet the specific criteria for an exception. Which, this does not match.
Full immunity nullification is in effect.
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Think of a breathless creature that is immune to [inhaled] and similar effects, that is then exposed to an inhaled toxin that "burns the lungs" and deals fire damage.
Whether or not the creature is weak to fire is irrelevant; they are immune to the cloud, and you don't even need to check weakness/resistance.
That cloud exposure does not count for [fire] trait 'contact' weakness, rubbing up against something carrying a ____ effect is not the same as "being affected" by it, nor does it count for contact weakness.
The mechanism of the poison, that breathing in the toxin mechanic, needs to function for the weakness to be triggered, delivered.
That's why those texts keep listing "contact" and "affected by" as two different things. Spells, alchemy, etc, "contain effects" packaged inside them, and they need to actually take effect to deliver them.
Other weaknesses, like water contact, are a lot easier to trigger. Most water spells also throw actual water at the foe, which can trigger the contact weakness. But just because something has the trait, doesn't mean it's exposed on contact.
Also note that the mechanic to deal 2x weakness per round is in the trait itself, because the base rules do NOT do that.
Some [fire] creatures even have specific text to add more mechanics like this;
"If a gallon or more of water touches the lava otter, or if it's affected by a water effect, ..."
Because those are distinct, different things. Aside from the gallon+ option, some [water] spell, etc, needs to actually "affect" the lava otter for that to trigger. Immunity could block that.
yeah this thread has gone down in a pretty unnecessary hypothetical train derailment. "How would rules we don't really know yet handle a situation that has never happened?"