Any Pathfinder adventuring political party is likely to have a pocket-size arsenal of weapons and dangerous magic at their disposal. They ameliorate for chirapsia the snot out of all the creatures, cutthroats, and cultists they're sure to fight. Simply not every attack does the same kind of damage—later on all, a sword hurts differently than a splash of acid to the face.

Plus, many monsters a political party will run into will have resistances to certain kinds of damage. It adds variety to combat encounters and forces players to work out a strategy for taking downwardly highly resistant enemies. It likewise makes the fantasy world you're exploring feel more than real and consistent. Considering it wouldn't brand sense to kill a burn down elemental with a fireball.

x Physical Damage

Physical damage types are the most common. They comprehend bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, which are generally the kinds of impairment a party's weapons—swords, spears, maces, etc.—will bargain. Bludgeoning comes from edgeless force trauma, like being clubbed with a warhammer or falling from a great height.

Piercing is stab or puncture wounds, caused by arrows, spike traps, or a fauna's fangs. Slashing is being cut open up, similar from the swing of a sword or axe. Many incorporeal monsters, similar ghosts, will be heavily resistant to nonmagical physical damage, and volition sometimes have some resistance to even enchanted weapons.

9 Elemental Damage

Elemental damage caused by players is almost oftentimes delivered through the use of offensive spells, only tin can also be caused by the environment. The kinds of harm covered by this are acid, common cold, electricity, fire, and sonic damage.

Most of these are self-explanatory. Fire burns, acrid dissolves, and a daze of electricity tin can shut down your nervous organisation. Cold can also kill by freezing solid, or but the slow running downward of existence defenseless in a blizzard. Fifty-fifty sufficiently loud sounds can hurt if used correctly. Elemental impairment is a keen fashion to overcome a monster'south resistance to physical impairment types.

eight Positive & Negative Damage

Positive and negative energy piece of work a little differently than the more straightforward elemental damage types. Positive free energy, often from a divine source, is about often used to heal the living, closing their wounds and giving them dorsum their force.

But it's so at odds with the negative energy that infuses the undead that casting a healing spell will cause them to wither and weaken, dealing positive damage. Conversely, the negative necromantic free energy that gives the undead power will sap a living beings force, dealing negative damage while at the same time revitalizing the undead.

7 Force Damage

While this could be considered a kind of elemental damage, it works a little differently than the other more natural elements. Force damage is acquired past an exceptionally pure and powerful magical effect. Like if the weave of mystical energy that permeates the globe made a fist and punched you lot with it.

Very few creatures have resistance to strength damage, fifty-fifty incorporeal creatures similar ghosts, making spells that cause it a powerful tool in a spellcaster's armory.

six Alignment Damage

If you accept a weapon or spell that deals a certain kind of alignment damage, it's kind of like playing Rock Paper Scissors with whatever you lot're fighting. Alignment damage comes in 4 flavors: lawful, chaotic, good, and evil. Whatever kind of damage you're dealing volition just affect creatures that have opposing alignments, considering the damage is antithetical to their nature.

So if you have a blessed bract that deals expert harm, simply evil creatures volition be afflicted, or a spell that deals chaotic damage will just harm lawful creatures.

v Mental Impairment

Some effects specifically target the mind of a creature. Depending on the spell, it tin twist the target's mind with plenty force to actually cause harm. Whether it'southward a cosmic listen break acquired past forces beyond comprehension or just insulting a baddie so precisely that they drop dead, the mental harm it causes tin exist just as fatal equally a stab wound.

However, non all enemies will exist vulnerable to mental damage. Creatures with particularly rudimentary intelligence just won't take enough of a listen to rend. And constructs, like golems or robots, whose actions are programmed by someone else, probably won't be affected either.

4 Toxicant Damage

Poison damage can be caused past many dissimilar vectors. The player characters might have eaten something entirely inadvisable and fabricated themselves sick. Or they might exist fighting a monster with venomous barbs designed to paralyze them. Or maybe they just brushed up against a patch of evil poison ivy.

Poison harm volition oftentimes be recurring due to long term afflictions, which volition take their own special negative effects for you lot players. But the impairment itself is distinct from other kinds of physical or elemental harm.

3 Bleed Damage

Bleed damage is like in some ways to poison impairment. It'due south usually a secondary effect acquired past some other physical attack. What sets it apart from any slash or puncture wound that really injured the character is that bleed damage is persistent.

It will keep to drain wellness and forcefulness from the injured creature for a period of fourth dimension without its enemy having to brand any further attack rolls. This can make information technology especially dangerous for political party members, or very valuable to them during a difficult boss encounter. Simply make sure yous take a healer in the party.

ii Nonlethal Damage

Nonlethal damage works differently from pretty much every other form of damage. Essentially, reducing an enemy's HP to 0 using nonlethal impairment knocks them out instead of killing them. Certain weapons have the nonlethal belongings, which makes them deal nonlethal damage past default. Making a lethal attack with a nonlethal weapon incurs a penalty.

However, you lot can choose to make a nonlethal attack with a weapon normally used for lethal strikes, in case you desire to keep one of those goblins for later on. It does incur the same kind of penalization though, and so be aware.

1 Precision Damage

Precision damage is another kind of specialized physical harm. The flavor is commonly that, through precise movement and cognition of your enemy's weaknesses, you can crusade actress damage with a well-place strike. If, for case, rogue's sneak assail deals 1d6 precision harm, they are striking at a vulnerable office of their foe with their dagger.

Precision harm does the same kind of damage as the assail that triggered it, so in this instance the target would receive an actress 1d6 piercing impairment from the dagger for precision. There are a few enemies that are immune to precision damage entirely, usually creatures like oozes with undifferentiated anatomy.

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About The Writer

Courtney Osteen (ix Manufactures Published)

Courtney graduated from the University of Tampa with a writing degree and has merely just at present got effectually to using information technology professionally. In addition to writing for Valnet, she also lives the ultimate bookworm fantasy of working in a library. She spends her costless time rereading the same five books over and over, being bad at video games (only when other people are watching), and desperately trying to get her friends to play board games with her.

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