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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
I've always considered experimenting with a houserule where you could use an unlisted damage type for a step down in dice size if it's a clearly feasible method, stabbing with a longsword, or two steps down if it's explainable but not really feasible, like a butt spike on a battleaxe. It wouldn't make it an improvised weapon, either. I would allow all feats and similar abilities to still apply. I've seen GMs make it an improvised weapon and it make the practice genuinely pointless. The to-hit penalty is one thing, but it usually also means you lose access to relevant feats and is a bit annoying when you might also lose access to enchantments. "You have a +1 Flaming Longsword, not a +1 Flaming Pommel!"
The reason I've never really tried to implement this stuff is that, outside a few specific undead, 3.5, PF, and PF2 don't really have many meaningful enemies with specific DR against them, as others have said. And they become fewer and further between as you level up. MM2-5 enemies, from 3.0, were the major bastion of weird DRs and vulnerabilities to damage types, and even then it was still mostly undead. Blood Hulks were neat.
None of the systems are really purpose-built for that level of granularity and introducing it might be neat, but it's just that: neat. Novelty and potentially annoying.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
That's one of the problems with PF 2e. It does not evaluate the assumptions made nearly a decade ago. If every monster had some type of resistance them different damag types would be far more relevant since it'd always come up. An skeleton might have good resistance to slashing and piercing while a zombie resists piercing and so on.
Honestly, for a system that's ostensibly all about fighting monsters, D&D/PF always lacked complexity in its monster design.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sir Chuckles
I've always considered experimenting with a houserule where you could use an unlisted damage type for a step down in dice size if it's a clearly feasible method, stabbing with a longsword, or two steps down if it's explainable but not really feasible, like a butt spike on a battleaxe. It wouldn't make it an improvised weapon, either. I would allow all feats and similar abilities to still apply. I've seen GMs make it an improvised weapon and it make the practice genuinely pointless. The to-hit penalty is one thing, but it usually also means you lose access to relevant feats and is a bit annoying when you might also lose access to enchantments. "You have a +1 Flaming Longsword, not a +1 Flaming Pommel!"
In P1 this is simply a feat: Weapon Versatility. You need Weapon Focus with the weapon in question, but that allows you to keep the same damage amount, weapon properties, and use your other feats with that weapon as well e.g. Weapon Specialization.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sir Chuckles
The reason I've never really tried to implement this stuff is that, outside a few specific undead, 3.5, PF, and PF2 don't really have many meaningful enemies with specific DR against them, as others have said. And they become fewer and further between as you level up.
There are use cases for multiple damage types other than DR though. For example, you might not want to slash an ooze, you can't bludgeon your way out of a creature's stomach if you got swallowed, and you might have trouble trying to smash a lock/chest open by piercing it. And while undead are the most common low-level foes with DR, there are others like plants or constructs that you'might run into before too long.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Crake
Well, gunslingers specifically actually do both piercing AND blugeoning with their weapons. The pathfinder feat clustered shots also helps overcoming DR in that it makes all of your attacks for each round only get affected by DR once, and the aformentioned alchemist's fire does 2d6 damage per flask that hits, over 2 rounds, and thus likely actually does about on par what a 1d12 musket would do, it's just slightly more expensive. Without clustered shots though, powering through DR may not be an option if it's DR 10 and you only have, say, a rifle that does 1d10.
If gunslingers can deal bludgeoning damage, then this is only going to become relevant if they encounter an enemy that specifically needs slashing damage. Thus reinforcing the notion that it's either going to be irrelevant or just annoy the gunslinger (or archer) until they encounter something else.
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That was the hypothetical "your", not you specifically. I'm saying, if you play at high end optimization where things like DR become basically irrelevant due to the proportionate damage, then yeah, it's basically irrelevant.
As characters become more powerful and deal more damage, specific DR types become less important, yes. I'm not sure how this supports your case, exactly.
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I dunno about half baked, but I'll tell you what, you take a sword and try to use it to chop at wood, and then take a club and try to beat the wood, and then take a shiv, and try to stab the wood. Then tell me which you think will chop the wood first. I'd say the sword would, pretty much every time. Yes, you're right, the way a sword and an axe function is decently different, but the fact is, chopping at a tree, regardless of what kind of too you're using, is vastly more effective than blugeoning or stabbing it.
Except you're still not going to chop through wood with a sword, especially when the wood is moving and trying to kill you. At the end of the day, fighting a literal living tree with melee weapons has nothing do with realism, but we accept that this game is not realistic.
And while a club or a shiv may not be effective, I would rather have a huge sledgehammer or log spear against a treant than a slender scimitar - even though damage types would have them as less effective. I've seen wood split under sufficient piercing force. You can make a case for powerful and heavy attacks being better against such an enemy than quick and precise ones... which is something worthwhile for a combat and weapons system to portray. Damage types, not so much.
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If you want a game where punching a tree is just as effective as chopping it, sure, go ahead and eliminate those damage types, but not everyone wants a game where everything is so homogenised that what kind of weapon you're using becomes irrelevant.
I am arguing specifically against the three damage types for mundane weapons. Don't extrapolate it to mean something I never said. I do prefer weapons to be varied, damage types just don't accomplish this at all. They're just one of the ways in which edition after edition of D&D conceals the fact that weapons are mostly interchangeable within a given size category.
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But I mean, next thing you know, you're gonna be advocating for dealing fire damage to fire elementals, or poisoning undead.
See above. Where did I mention anything about non-physical damage types?
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
If you want a weapon system where you have a meaningful interaction with damage reduction, you could do something like this:
Heavy weapons get to make a combined attack where the damage of two attacks is counted together to overcome DR, while Light weapons can't do that but get some other form of bonus.
Generally, my preferred way of doing a Weapon System would be to combine it with the three-action system, and assume that every Attack Action is Special.
The idea would be to give every weapon several tags that indicate what actions it can be used with, and thus enable you to do multiple things. Carrying the right weapon for the right situation would actually become a thing outside of specific damage reductions, and it would demonstrate how weapons are used as martial instruments at the same time.
To demonstrate, let's take the most ubiquitous of weapons, the Spear.
It's classic, most dangerous propery is obviously that it has reach. Thus, we give it the Reach (1D8 P) tag. This tag does multiple things - it means you can make a normal attack at greater range, but it also gives us a Readied Action where we can hold enemies at bay (=make an attack against them, and move away if we hit with it). The tag also conveniently gives us the damage the weapon does, as well as the damage type (Piercing).
Spears can also be used to sweep someones leg, so we include the Trip (1D6 B) tag. This does less damage (and I was tempted to make this 1D4), but it gives you a two-action action to attack and trip an enemy at the same time, as well as access to bludgeoning damage.
Now imagine constructing a Polearm with an added hammerhead or blades instead, like a pollaxe or guandao.
All you'd have to do is add an additional tag to represent each of those abilities. A Hammerhead could be represented with a two-action Sunder-attack (doing both bludgeoning damage and sundering armor), while the blades could be used to disarm.
Now, the nature of polearms shows quite well that sometimes, you either need unique tags or a way to combine tags - after all, both our sunder and our disarm woudl be done at range, no? But that's a solvable problem.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
I'm inclined to agree with the tags idea. That coupled with a more interesting bestiary where creatures have different resistances to different types of damage or maybe suffer different effects when hit by certain types of damage would lead to some very interesting gameplay.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
This actually sounds quite a bit like 4E's martial exploits, only tied more to the specific weapon than to the martial class you're in. I think 4E also does a good job of representing the granularity of fighting styles, with 1 'default' attack (melee/ranged basic attack) and 2-3 special maneuvers (your at-will attack powers).
Anyone wanting to homebrew a more granular weapon system could do a lot worse than nicking powers and weapon feats from 4E.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
In P1 this is simply a feat:
Weapon Versatility. You need Weapon Focus with the weapon in question, but that allows you to keep the same damage amount, weapon properties, and use your other feats with that weapon as well e.g. Weapon Specialization.
Yech, I don't like it. Not only does such a feat become a tax were one to make a world where damage type matters more, it has prereqs and costs a Swift action. Just let people do the thing, don't make it frustrating.
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Originally Posted by
Psyren
There are use cases for multiple damage types other than DR though. For example, you might not want to slash an ooze, you can't bludgeon your way out of a creature's stomach if you got swallowed, and you might have trouble trying to smash a lock/chest open by piercing it. And while undead are the most common low-level foes with DR, there are others like plants or constructs that you'might run into before too long.
When you do 1d12+7 damage, DR 5/Piercing is surmountable. When you do 4d8+37 with rider effects and +10 fire damage you can outright ignore it. If you can't smash a lock with a knife, do it with a rock. Please do not start a but-what-if argument about the availability of rocks.
I think 5e and maybe PF2 could do well to take advantage of it, but the ship has sailed very thoroughly for 3.5e and PF1. Even in the examples you're giving, they don't exactly come up every campaign. Hell, 5e doesn't even have dedicated Swallow rules like that.
I'm all for granularity and support a system for it, but I dunno if 3.5e is that system. The semi-recent The Witcher RPG has an armor-based resistance method, including being able to add upgrades and reinforcements to armor to give it additional Resistances (half damage) as well as armor-as-DR natively. It even has Serafina's Heavy attack idea baked right in. All characters can use two Fast attacks a turn but can choose to instead make a single Heavy attack that does double damage with a small to-hit penalty. It's specifically for opening enemy tin cans. A completely average man only has a 50/50 shot of damaging an enemy wearing the lowest-quality light armor when attacking with a dagger (1d6 vs. DR 3), give that moldy gambeson steel reinforcement, granting resistance to Piercing and +4 DR, and even a Heavy attack can't hurt the target. Even the Spear's 3d6 is reduced to near-nothing, as Resistance is applied first.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Yep, that's pretty much the system I would have gone for: a combination of 5E-style flat resistance (halve the damage, applies first), and 3.5 damage reduction, except this time it's mostly universal (so your better magical armor just substracts 10 from all incoming damage).
As a quick math example, let's assume you're not too strong (+2 Strength) and a one-handed weapon does 1D8 damage. The armor you're swinging at gives DR 5, what happens if it has resistance to your weapon, what happens with various versions of a heavy attack?
- 1D8+2 vs. DR 5 with no resistance gives us 0 to 5 damage
- 1D8+2 vs. DR 5 with no resistance and a heavy attack that doubles damage gives us 1 to 15 damage
- 1D8+2 vs. DR 5 with resistance gives us 0 damage in all cases
- 1D8+2 vs. DR 5 with resistance and a heavy attack that doubles damage gives us 0 to 5 damage
- 1D8+2 vs. DR 5 with no resistance and a heavy attack that allows ignoring resistance gives us 0 to 5 damage
- 1D8+2 vs. DR 5 with resistance and a heavy attack that allows ignoring resistance gives us 0 to 5 damage
Obviously, those values can be adjusted by lowering DR, or actually giving our chump here better strength. But the best heavy attack model seems to be "heavy attacks allow ignoring resistance", since it's least swingy. If you want heavy attacks to be interesting, weapon tags and feats add riders to heavy attacks, such as sundering, trip, stun, or the like. At the same time, that shouldn't be overdone since resistance should matter, and players should consider switching to a different weapon to actually get through though armor, or rock-like carapace, or stuff like that.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Serafina
Yep, that's pretty much the system I would have gone for: a combination of 5E-style flat resistance (halve the damage, applies first), and 3.5 damage reduction, except this time it's mostly universal (so your better magical armor just substracts 10 from all incoming damage).
Personally I prefer just DR instead of having both. This is because DR affects different tactics differently (against an enemy with DR 10, one attack for 30 damage works better than two attacks for 15); whereas halving damage has less of an impact on tactics.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sir Chuckles
Yech, I don't like it. Not only does such a feat become a tax were one to make a world where damage type matters more, it has prereqs and costs a Swift action. Just let people do the thing, don't make it frustrating.
Well first of all, it's only a swift action from levels 1-4 then it becomes a free action, so I don't think the action is an issue in most campaigns.
Second, while there are several taxes I'm happy to remove, this isn't one of them. Learning how to not just use a sword in an unintuitive way, but keep all your other bonuses and magical properties while doing so, feels like a special technique to me and therefore worthy of a feat. I might expand its application to all weapons in a weapon group instead of just one however. (Fighters can do this more or less for free via Advanced Weapon Training anyway.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sir Chuckles
When you do 1d12+7 damage, DR 5/Piercing is surmountable. When you do 4d8+37 with rider effects and +10 fire damage you can outright ignore it. If you can't smash a lock with a knife, do it with a rock. Please do not start a but-what-if argument about the availability of rocks.
Sure, rocks are quite available, but so are steel and even adamantine locks (for rich folks, who usually have the locks you want to bypass the most). DR isn't actually the problem here - Hardness is, plus object resistances that apply before hardness is even factored in.
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Originally Posted by
Sir Chuckles
I think 5e and maybe PF2 could do well to take advantage of it, but the ship has sailed very thoroughly for 3.5e and PF1. Even in the examples you're giving, they don't exactly come up every campaign. Hell, 5e doesn't even have dedicated Swallow rules like that.
5e does have swallow rules actually, they're found in the indiividual statblocks of creatures that can use the ability like Giant Frogs or Krakens. I find them lacking because they boil down to "deal X damage, force creature to vomit" rather than the far more metal option of cutting your way out. But I digress.
Yes, you can certainly reduce or eliminate the use cases I mentioned by changing the rules to remove granularity, I'm not denying that. For me though, that granularity and intuition is what makes 3e and PF appealing. It makes inherent sense to me that a slashing weapon is more useful if you're swallowed than a bludgeoning one, and it makes sense that chopping up slimes results in more slimes. None of these are required for a game to function, but I find it adds valuable texture and am glad that 3.P has them.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PoeticallyPsyco
This actually sounds quite a bit like 4E's martial exploits, only tied more to the specific weapon than to the martial class you're in. I think 4E also does a good job of representing the granularity of fighting styles, with 1 'default' attack (melee/ranged basic attack) and 2-3 special maneuvers (your at-will attack powers).
Anyone wanting to homebrew a more granular weapon system could do a lot worse than nicking powers and weapon feats from 4E.
Yeah, despite dropping the three types as far as I remember, 4E gets closest to actually making weapons distinct. Weapon-specific powers are limited to fighters, but everyone can take the feats.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
Sure, rocks are quite available, but so are steel and even adamantine locks (for rich folks, who usually have the locks you want to bypass the most). DR isn't actually the problem here - Hardness is, plus object resistances that apply before hardness is even factored in.
While we're at it, why have these be separate? Hardness can just be DR, no need for both.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
Well first of all, it's only a swift action from levels 1-4 then it becomes a free action, so I don't think the action is an issue in most campaigns.
Second, while there are several taxes I'm happy to remove, this isn't one of them. Learning how to not just use a sword in an unintuitive way, but keep all your other bonuses and magical properties while doing so, feels like a special technique to me and therefore worthy of a feat. I might expand its application to all weapons in a weapon group instead of just one however. (Fighters can do this more or less for free via Advanced Weapon Training anyway.)
I'd be very happy to get rid of the 'master of the longsword, can't use a katana' problem. I can understand gating all the super-special things you can do with some kinds of weapons and not all weapons, but at some point you're splitting hairs and putting an opportunity cost like a feat cost on that kind of thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sir Chuckles
Even in the examples you're giving, they don't exactly come up every campaign.
Let's consider this then:
Remove S/B/P
- Will have no impact on the majority of circumstances
- When the time arises, have no rules to handle requiring specific kinds of weapons to do specific things
Keep S/B/P
- Will have no impact on the majority of circumstances
- When the time arises, have rules in place to handle requiring specific kinds of weapons to do specific things
So.... What's the argument for removing S/B/P again? That it, what, simplifies the game? It doesn't, because keeping it or removing it will both have no impact on standard gameplay, but removing it creates a hole in the ruleset, while keeping it does not.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kane0
While we're at it, why have these be separate? Hardness can just be DR, no need for both.
Well, the biggest difference is that hardness applies to energy damage while DR doesn't. With that said, consolidating down to something like "Hardness 15/adamantine or fire" probably wouldn't be a big deal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kane0
I'd be very happy to get rid of the 'master of the longsword, can't use a katana' problem. I can understand gating all the super-special things you can do with some kinds of weapons and not all weapons, but at some point you're splitting hairs and putting an opportunity cost like a feat cost on that kind of thing leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
PF got rid of this for the Fighter, but it's certainly something that could be extended to other martial classes.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Crake
So.... What's the argument for removing S/B/P again?
That there are too many damage types.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kurald Galain
That there are too many damage types.
Three is too many for you?
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Ad hoc I count 10, and there probably are more obscure ones.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Damage types that I am aware of: acid, bludgeoning, chaotic, cold, electricity, evil, fire, good, lawful, mental, negative, piercing, poison, positive, slashing, sonic
That makes sixteen. I don't think I missed any.
Edit:
Force, which makes 17.
Breakdown:
Energy Types: Acid, Cold, Electricity, Fire, Force, Negative, Positive, Sonic
Physical: Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing
Alignment: Chaotic, Evil, Good, Lawful
Misc: Mental, Poison
Personally, I like having mental and poison as damage types, as they cover things that don't fit well in other areas. Alignment damages only affect opposite alignments, so are useful in cutting down on specific text ("this attack does an additional 1d6 damage against creatures with the Good trait" becomes "+1d6 evil").
My list is for PF2, which is the topic of the thread.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
If we mean "anything you can have a resistance or DR against", there's also silver, cold iron, adamantine, and a bunch of more obscure or setting-specific ones. You can also have things that care about the various combinations of adjectives, as well as Vile damage that can't be healed. Flamestrike also has "divine power" damage, but I'm not sure if that ever got any kind of rules interaction to differentiate it from just "damage".
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Still I have yet to see an argument for reducing the number of damage types. "There are too many" is not a convincing point since damage type is irrelevant until it isnt. And when it is relevant it is advantages if you have enough damage types to model the usual fantasy tropes. Just having "Elemental" damage instead of the usual 4 elements or DnDs fire/electricity/cold/acid/sonic would not be enough.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Of the ones I listed, the only one I would personally like to see cut is force. Force never made any sense to me. What is force? It a magical force. What kind of force? FORCE! Its bludgeoning, but MAGIC!
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Zombimode
Still I have yet to see an argument for reducing the number of damage types. "There are too many" is not a convincing point since damage type is irrelevant until it isnt. And when it is relevant it is advantages if you have enough damage types to model the usual fantasy tropes. Just having "Elemental" damage instead of the usual 4 elements or DnDs fire/electricity/cold/acid/sonic would not be enough.
Because alignment damage and force damage are nonsensical concepts that were originally ad-hoc anyway, so removing them can simplify a lot of statblocks without losing any depth at all.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Psyren
Well first of all, it's only a swift action from levels 1-4 then it becomes a free action, so I don't think the action is an issue in most campaigns.
Second, while there are several taxes I'm happy to remove, this isn't one of them. Learning how to not just use a sword in an unintuitive way, but keep all your other bonuses and magical properties while doing so, feels like a special technique to me and therefore worthy of a feat. I might expand its application to all weapons in a weapon group instead of just one however. (Fighters can do this more or less for free via Advanced Weapon Training anyway.)
Except now you're delving into an awkward "Is it actually unintuitive?" space. Is it really unintuitive to do slashing damage with a shortsword? Or Piercing with a long or greatsword? Halberds do piercing or slashing, but many halberds had a hammer side. Something like the murder stroke with a longsword is something that I'd assume to be apart of basic proficiency, as that is completely normal in swordfighting.
I'd make it a feat to remove the damage penalty from my proposed houserule, not a feat to stab someone with a sword. Especially not if I'm going to make damage reduction more important in the game.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Psyren
Yes, you can certainly reduce or eliminate the use cases I mentioned by changing the rules to remove granularity, I'm not denying that. For me though, that granularity and intuition is what makes 3e and PF appealing. It makes inherent sense to me that a slashing weapon is more useful if you're swallowed than a bludgeoning one, and it makes sense that chopping up slimes results in more slimes. None of these are required for a game to function, but I find it adds valuable texture and am glad that 3.P has them.
I don't think anyone here is arguing to remove granularity. I think we're, at least I am, saying that the granularity is largely either purposeless or comes up far less often than you tout. I'm not denying that the texture is there, I'm denying the notion that slimes and zombies are gonna be constants in any given campaign. Especially when not all oozes even have the Split ability to begin with. The texture is the anomaly, not the norm.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
stack
Alignment: Chaotic, Evil, Good, Lawful
Can you actually give me examples of alignment damage? Most of the aligned spells I can think of simply do untyped damage that scales differently based on the alignment of the target, and most of the resistances are based on the source of the damage, rather than the damage themself. A holy sword, for example, doesn't do holy damage, it merely does an extra 2d6 slashing damage is against evil creatures, and allows it to bypass DR/good. Likewise, an angel wielding a mace doesn't do holy damage with the mace, but it still bypasses DR/good. In either case though, that extra 2d6 damage would not bypass DR/bludgeoning due to it's alignment nature.
As a side note, not all alignment based spells only affect exclusively the opposite alignment. Holy smite, order's wrath, unholy blight and chaos hammer all deal half damage to neutral creatures for example.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
On the question of the necessity of damage types, this classic quote seems relevant:
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
if damage types don't add much to the game, it can be better to remove them simply to avoid clutter. I feel like I should have a way to further elaborate the point, but it's not coming to me (which makes me wonder if that's an instance of the quote itself, it already says all I needed to say succinctly)
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
zlefin
On the question of the necessity of damage types, this classic quote seems relevant:
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
if damage types don't add much to the game, it can be better to remove them simply to avoid clutter. I feel like I should have a way to further elaborate the point, but it's not coming to me (which makes me wonder if that's an instance of the quote itself, it already says all I needed to say succinctly)
I dunno, I think damage types add plenty to the game in the form of facilitating interactions between various abilities. Fire elementals are immune to fire damage, demons are immune to electricity, piercing or slashing damage causes an ooze to split etc.
You could try and get away with removing them and just leaving it up to the DM and players to determine the interactions. For example, you could just say "Fire elementals are immune to attacks based on heat", but without defined descriptors, that becomes open to ambiguity. Is a lightning bolt considered a heat-based attack? Lightning sure does create a lot of heat after all. What about earth elementals? Are they immune to lightning because they're grounded? Or does the heat of the electricity still hurt them? Undead are immune to poisons, if you remove poison damage, how will you determine if an undead is immune to a particular attack? Etc etc.
So I think it's evident that there's value in keeping damage types, the question is what is improved by removing them? As outlined previously "simplifying the game" is not a valid reason when the damage types don't actually impact the game until an interaction is met, so having more damage types doesn't complicate the game in and of themselves, the complications arise from the abilities that interact with the damage types, which presumably would still exist should the damage types be removed (fire elementals would remain immune to fire), but those interactions would become more ambiguous and thus more complicated, so there's an argument to be had that removing damage types from the game would actually make it MORE complicated by making interactions not immediately apparent.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Crake
Can you actually give me examples of alignment damage? Most of the aligned spells I can think of simply do untyped damage that scales differently based on the alignment of the target, and most of the resistances are based on the source of the damage, rather than the damage themself. A holy sword, for example, doesn't do holy damage, it merely does an extra 2d6 slashing damage is against evil creatures, and allows it to bypass DR/good. Likewise, an angel wielding a mace doesn't do holy damage with the mace, but it still bypasses DR/good. In either case though, that extra 2d6 damage would not bypass DR/bludgeoning due to it's alignment nature.
As a side note, not all alignment based spells only affect exclusively the opposite alignment. Holy smite, order's wrath, unholy blight and chaos hammer all deal half damage to neutral creatures for example.
As noted in my post (in an edit within a couple minutes of posting it), I was listing PF2 damage types. There, alignment damage shows up starting with a divine cantrip (divine lance) and appears in other spells and on many aligned creatures (aeons, celestials, fiends; what would be alignment-associated outsiders in PF1; PF2 does not have outsider as a creature type)
As in 5e, in PF2 all damage is typed. No untyped damage to my knowledge.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sir Chuckles
I'd make it a feat to remove the damage penalty from my proposed houserule, not a feat to stab someone with a sword. Especially not if I'm going to make damage reduction more important in the game.
I'd be fine with that - much like you can natively do nonlethal with any weapon but need a feat to remove the penalty. But I can see the other side too - where you might not need a special technique to bludgeon someone with your sword pommel, but arguing that you get to keep your flaming bonus with it isn't kosher either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sir Chuckles
I don't think anyone here is arguing to remove granularity. I think we're, at least I am, saying that the granularity is largely either purposeless or comes up far less often than you tout. I'm not denying that the texture is there, I'm denying the notion that slimes and zombies are gonna be constants in any given campaign. Especially when not all oozes even have the Split ability to begin with. The texture is the anomaly, not the norm.
I don't think texture has to be common/routine in order to be appealing or worthwhile. Sure, splitting oozes might not be the most common foe, but when your fighter goes up against them and encounters the for the first time, I guarantee it will be a memorable fight for him, and that's ultimately the GM's goal - like any good game designer, their job entails crafting engaging and memorable experiences, whether the players continue to gush about it or curse their name from the depths months later.
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Re: What's pathfinder 2e like?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sir Chuckles
I don't think anyone here is arguing to remove granularity. I think we're, at least I am, saying that the granularity is largely either purposeless or comes up far less often than you tout. I'm not denying that the texture is there, I'm denying the notion that slimes and zombies are gonna be constants in any given campaign. Especially when not all oozes even have the Split ability to begin with. The texture is the anomaly, not the norm.
Yeah, this. Arguments about removing granularity or simplifying things are disingenuous. The three physical damage types (I don't know why some people keep bringing up the elemental ones) are simply a poor way of differentiating and detailing weapons. They come up rarely and don't provide an interesting tactical layer when they do - the player will switch weapons or just grit their teeth and deal with it. The former becomes harder on higher levels as magic weapons become a necessity. They're an illusion of realism at best.