Stacking elemental damage

[Madscientist]

Do lashes stack? Are there limits or exceptions?

The default rule is that passives stack (equipment or right side of skill tree) and actives do not (left side of skill tree or things that can be used). I am not sure about elemental damage.

Lets say we have a paladin/monk in a full party. You have:

- A weapon with additional fire damage (passive)

- eternal devotion (active)

- the monk ability that adds fire damage for each wound you have (active)

- A friendly chanter with the fire lash chant (active)

- maybe there can be other sources of fire damage

Are all these effects added to become one big lash? Is it x% of total physical weapon damage done, or what is the base value? (So no elemental damage if the target is immun to your physical damage) Does elemental damage use its own penetration/AR and if yes, what is it based on? (e.g. the penetration of your weapon?)

 

I cannot remember if this has been discussed before. There are just too many game machanics to remember.

 

 

PS:

Why is it called "lash"? According to the dictionary a lash is an attack with a whip.

[omgFIREBALLS]

10 minutes ago, Madscientist said:

Why is it called "lash"?

Because in Pillars 1, there was a choice of generic enchantments you could slap on your weapons, and they were called Burning/Freezing/etc Lash   added 20% of that damage type to your attack, if I recall.

I can't answer the entirety of your main question, but I can mention some behavior I'm familiar with. There are fire immune enemies, and there are also fire immune enemies. See the difference? Well, me neither, but some types of fire immune enemies are only immune to fire damage, which means that if I attack them with Flames of Devotion, I do normal attack damage. Others are seemingly immune to the entire Fire keyword, in which case attacking them with FoD does nothing at all. It actually shouldn't matter for anything you asked, but it might be interesting anyway.

[Madscientist]

I have not seen this so far, but I would like to know this as well.

[ArnoldRimmer]

I had a priest of berath using a summned great sword which comes with a corrode lash. I also had Pallagina with that FoD ability that gives nearby allies a burning lash. This actually replaced the lash on my summoned great sword so it did burn damage instead of corrode. Not sure if this is a bug or how lashes work

 

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by ArnoldRimmer

[thelee]

2 hours ago, Madscientist said:

Are all these effects added to become one big lash? Is it x% of total physical weapon damage done, or what is the base value? (So no elemental damage if the target is immun to your physical damage) Does elemental damage use its own penetration/AR and if yes, what is it based on? (e.g. the penetration of your weapon?)

 

lashes stack. additively. you can see this with like flames of devotion on a bleakwalker, you'll see three different numbers for each hit in your combat log. Edit: so two 15% fire lashes will combine into one 30% lash. A 15% fire lash and 15% corrode lash will still combine into net 30% damage, just as two distinct damage types. This matters for PEN issues and also how it gets rendered in your combat log. Two fire lashes will just show up as one bigger number attached to your weapon damage, whereas you'll see a distinct fire and distinct corrode number on top of your weapon damage. I don't think there's a limit.

they are based on % total weapon damage (including bonuses like sneak attack or might); this is why lashes are really good in deadfire because they are multiplicative damage bonuses.

they each have their own PEN/immunity check using their own elemental type and your weapon-based PEN. this is why woedica spiritual weapon is best spiritual weapon because their lash is raw, so even if the enemy you're up against is immune to your fist damage, you will still be doing full lash damage to them. Edit: also unlike all other sources of raw damage, it doesn't get a damage penalty compared to the alternatives, which is normally the case to balance its complete bypass of AR.

Edit: this is all in my gamefaqs guide along with other mechanical stuff, if you're curious.

Edited February 19, 2020 by thelee

[Madscientist]

Sorry, but you say:  "they are based on % total weapon damage"

and then you say: " this is why woedica spiritual weapon is best spiritual weapon because their lash is raw, so even if the enemy you're up against is immune to your fist damage, you will still be doing full lash damage to them."

If your weapon damage is zero because the enemy is immun, x% damage of it should still be zero.

If the enemy has very high AR, the full lash damage of a very small weapon damage should still be very small.

Thats a problem with % calculations. A high % value of a very small effect is still a very small effect.

[thelee]

35 minutes ago, Madscientist said:

Sorry, but you say:  "they are based on % total weapon damage"

and then you say: " this is why woedica spiritual weapon is best spiritual weapon because their lash is raw, so even if the enemy you're up against is immune to your fist damage, you will still be doing full lash damage to them."

If your weapon damage is zero because the enemy is immun, x% damage of it should still be zero.

If the enemy has very high AR, the full lash damage of a very small weapon damage should still be very small.

Thats a problem with % calculations. A high % value of a very small effect is still a very small effect.

No you misunderstand. The PEN check is separate.

There's a "total weapon damage" that goes through PEN/immunity. The lash is based on that total weapon damage, with its own PEN/immunity check.

 

Put another way, the input for the lash isn't the weapon damage number you see in the combat log, it's a number BEFORE pen/immunities are checked. The weapon damage number you see (or don't see, for immunities) in the combat log as the final result is something else entirely that isn't directly related to your lash.

 

This isn't hypothetical. Go get a spiritual weapon with contrasting weapon damage and lash damage types and use it against an enemy with immunity to your weapon damage. You will still do lash damage. You can get NO PEN alerts even if you have full penetration on the enemy, because your lash is underpenetrating.

Edited February 19, 2020 by thelee

[Madscientist]

OMG I think I regret now that I once said this game is easier to understand than DnD.

For BG2 (my first RPG) I had to read the manual to understand whats going on and I had to do tons of reading again to understand the basics of Pathfinder: Kingmaker even though I played NWN2 in between.

In PoE/DF its easier to understand the basics, so reading the tooltips and using some commen sense should be enough to finish the game on normal with a full party. But if you dig deeper it will get so complicated that everyone except complete nerds will get a headache when trying to understand things.

PS: I have never played PnP so I can only talk about computer games.