Horizon Walker: Planar Warrior

[BronzeDodger]

I have a guess at this but thought best to check with the hive mind:

First session with a Horizon Walker Ranger bringing the pain with Planar Warrior. Melee vs. creatures with resistance to 'bludgeoning, piercing, slashing from non-magical attacks'.

The effect shows slashing, force as the damage type but was still getting resisted (the extra pure force 1d8 was not). Would I have to make the string 'slashing, force, magic' for it to work properly? Guessing it's keying on the 'slashing' and resisting it after-the-fact so the force is not applying?

(as an aside no player mind having an excuse to use light-sabre sound effects)

[Zacchaeus]

This might be helpful https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...har-Archetypes

You'll need DMGTYPE: force to change the normal damage to force and an additional damage line DMG: 1d8, force to handle the extra damage.

[BronzeDodger]

Indeed! We dragged the effect from the Xanathar Ranger when he leveled-up. The 'slashing,force' combo comes from the IFT matching with the 'chosen' on the target, while the straight 1d8 force is from the second effect (which works and is not resisted). Am I right in guessing that with 'slashing,force' showing in the chatbox it should in theory be working and not getting cut in half from the resistance?

[Zacchaeus]

Hmm, ok I see what you mean. DMGTYPE just adds whatever the specified damage is; it doesn't wholly replace it. So if you hit with something that normally does piercing and add force to it then the damage being dealt is piercing and force. It doesn't change the damage from piercing. So reading the ability again it seems that it actually changes the damage type and that can't be done via an effect. You would need to add weapon lines for any weapons potentially used to change the damage type on that weapon to force damage. So if you had a bow which normally does piercing you would need a new weapon line for the bow which does force damage. The DMGTYPE effect in that sample ranger then becomes redundant actually. I suspect that in most cases the way I set it up on that sample character is fine; but when you come up against a resistant or immune creature the result is incorrect. You could add DMGTYPE: force, magic which would be a sort of workaround but would still not work properly if the creature was immune or resistant to magical piercing.

[BronzeDodger]

Thought: PC has a versatile weapon, backup weapon, ranged weapon. Rather than trying to make a list of weapons requiring the scroll bar just to use - if I made an effect that was just damage. So had buttons for each option (one-handed sword, one-handed w/ Planar Warrior, two-hands on sword, etc. I could do a line of buttons and PC just click appropriate. Given they would be die combo, if they used the standard attack roll in the weapons list, then applied damage from a effect, would things like crits still apply automatically?

edit: does not seem like you can add a text description in a damage effect so I it will take two damage entries for each grip/weapon as an effect too.

[Zacchaeus]

You could do it all with effects, sure. You can always force critical damage by holding down SHIFT whilst applying damage.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly in your edit line.

[BronzeDodger]

RE: damage effect text description - when you have an effect with multiple sub-effects, when it's two or three buttons, generally the player can figure out which applies where. But in this case it would be 8 or 9 buttons, all with identical 'damage' icons, and you'd have to hover over each until you found the right button. I think it would be too dense and slow the player down with so many very similar choices that you can't prefix with a description - you only see the formula when you hover the mouse.

So while it's long list, doing one damage entry, each with it's own title (i.e. 'planar dagger' vs. 'std dagger') makes it a much more condensed than if it were in the weapon group. While it's a bit long on the sheet I think having all these will make the player's life a lot easier. As it was they had to apply three each turn (first to the target, second and third to the PC), before making an attack. Now it's just a visual "chosen" to the target (so we know they used their bonus action) and then attack roll + damage effect, so a lot less picky, and not having to squint to see if all the effects are applied on the CT before rolling.

[LordEntrails]

How many of all these possible options are you actually going to use? Sure you can come up with a list of 10 or 15 possible, my experience shows most players are going to only use 3-4 different attack actions (a max attack, a defensive attack and a ranged attack).

[Zacchaeus]

Another possibility is the you create an effect of DMG: 1, force. You then roll all the necessary damage without targeting anything and then type the total - 1 into the modifier box and then drag the DMG onto the target. That should then do 1+ modifier force damage.

[Nickademus]

Well... if FG applies the resistance whenever slashing, etc. is part of the damage, and the only time it matters that the damage is not force is when the target is resistance or immune to slashing, etc. damage, then just do things backwards.

Make all the ranger's weapons deal pure force damage. Then for the attacks that are not made with Planar Warrior, add the effect "DMGTYPE: slashing" (or piercing/bludgeoning). This will cause the resistance or immunity to trigger and the rest of the time it won't matter if the weapon is dealing force or physical damage at all.