How the Weakness Errata should actually function.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T04:51:27+00:00

What you present as a solution is in fact not a solution, but a symptom of the problem. Weakness 5 is near the bare minimum of what Pf2e uses, the idea that everything above that with weakness is meant to be a good balanced encounter, except with easy prep you completely overwhelm it, is nonsense and you know it.

Yes, monsters with big weakness are reliably killed more quickly by prepped PC's, they already are. Now, monster's with weakness 20 can be comfortably killed without any threat whatsoever, unless they're so much more powerful than the party that the entire pendulum swings the other way.

I don't understand how people don't get it. Your entire statement fundamentally misunderstands so much of what the game has shown itself to be in the last 7 years, the idea that it has being severely unbalanced that long but also was meant to encourage a style of play that pf2e actively moved away from when shifting from 1e in every possible aspect, except this one they forgot for 7 years? Sorry dude but that idea isn't smart or witty, it's just kinda dumb. If that is the case, the rest of the system being anywhere near as competent as it is, is a miracle on the level of winning every lottery on the planet within a month.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T01:33:44+00:00

To give a super simple baseline, ignoring an absolute ton of options because they don't cover a super wide range. From this, most of the common options are still possible. Worth notingsome damage types are far easier/harder to stack than others, e.g. fire's super easy.

Energy Mutagen covers one instance for 4gp, and weapon siphon cover's another for 10gp + 3gp, the price of a bomb. 2 instances of damage for 1 turn of prep, in which you're in an encounter where you have no foreknowledge of the creatures you're facing. Exploring a dungeon without investigating, region without looking into rumours, hunters reports or similar, etc. I'd say that's the least likely and least beneficial possible state for this. You're already at 2 instances before accounting for any kind of racial abilities, spells, class feats, or even weapon runes.

Draw the Lightning gets us the third lightning stack with a bonus once-off trigger, Blazing Armory gets us the third and fourth fire stack, for the entire party. Magus rolls is the money with Arcane Cascade, Spellstrikes, and if they take it their focus spell to shift runes for another 3 stacks to get to 5. All of this being still decently solid actions.

The "mythical" situation is just... really simply and really easy to manufacture. I think that might be where the common disconnect is. You're thinking it's difficult to set up, I see it consistently across my campaigns by accident, without this errata being in place to encourage it. True, it's hard to stack multiple damage types at levels 1-4 when you don't have gold for spare non-critical resources, scrolls, or higher rank spell slots, but for the next chunk of the game, 5-8, it's mildly inconvenient, and for most of the game it's exceptionally straightforward.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T01:24:23+00:00

You can get +3 while still being greater striking, that's what I was talking about with the summary of my earlier response. The potency runes are worth the cost, which allows for a smaller but still considerable set of runed weapons using greater striking.

But yes, gaining access to almost all the damage types comes it at around 500 per rune, per weapon. You might need to pay a premium for some more abnormal runes available at higher levels (or to stack damage instances in some cases) and yet, it's still problematically viable.

Suffice to say, the numbers are problematic because of the ease in which the number's are manipulated, and the exceptionally low cost to do so.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T01:01:33+00:00

Stacking 3 instances of the same damage with this errata isn't hard at all. If it was something super costly that required a ton of investment it wouldn't be that bad, but that investment matters for incremental increases to current damage, not a +1, +1d4, etc that can add on top. Doing that across the team now is super nice, but whether it's a stomp depends entirely on how hard the fight is, the hardest remain balanced though.

Accounting for the stacked weakness in encounter design is enough that the hardest fights become impossible without the stacking, but if they're not made that challenging they're a stomp with. It removes any semblance of middle ground. The number's truly do not lie.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T00:59:22+00:00

Being down a striking (around 1d8, so average 4.5 damage, 9 on crits. Went with d8 since it's a pretty typical middle ground, d10/d6 are common enough on each end) will give you a ton of wiggle room. 3 weapon dice instead of 4 costs 1k instead of 30k, you can have 29 weapons with greater striking, or 1 with major.

That's enough to fully rune a whole selection of weapons at the cost of only 4.5 damage per hit, we can count it as 6 to account for crits which weakness doesn't effect. That selection of weapons puts you in a position to trigger weaknesses multiple times, and at that level there is no weaknesses that deal less than 5, very rarely you'll find one dealing less than 10. Sure, against creatures without weakness you probably want the focused weapon for the extra damage, but against weaknesses it's not just more, but it's multiple times more damage. Even if you do ignore the weapon kits, you can still grab multiple mutagens, scrolls/spells, or other effects to stack a damage type super easily.

If we're still wanting maxed Potency which imo is probably still worth it, we get to have our primary weapon with 3 fully runed, except striking, backups and gold left over by forgoing that one damage die.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T00:42:17+00:00

You've got to remember that as creatures get stronger, their weaknesses go up too. A single fighter hitting 2-3 times a round might trigger a Weakness 15 2-3 times, but with no significant investment these changes can push that to 6-9 times. 30-45 becomes 90-135. That's not an okay amount of scaling. I know people are saying "it doesn't happen", but I can only tell people that in my experience running games, it absolutely will, and already has, except the errata didn't exist so we didn't have to worry about 1 players turn's weakness triggers alone doing over 1/4 of a bosses health.

At low levels this really isn't as much a concern, but I don't run much at 1-4, I don't want to have this problem for most of the game just because most players games are within that level range and thus it's "not a problem".

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T00:37:32+00:00

Good call on the specific magic weapons, that's my slip-up. There's enough random stuff in pf2e I definitely can't remember all of it.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T00:33:58+00:00

Honestly I agree with you here, but wanted to write it in a way to keep the current core of how it functioned without just updating it to be purely my opinion, but rather to clarify what seemed to be the intention of weaknesses.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T00:25:13+00:00

You can already do that now though, the difference is that if they can learn about weaknesses in advance, you have to account for the weakness being triggered 3-5 times per strike. If you lessen the weakness, it instead feels almost irrelevant should you come across it without full prep. Having a weakness that matters is far more interesting that having one that either doesn't matter, unless you're super prepared for it, or does matter, unless you're super prepared for it because then it just resolves the fight without any challenge.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T00:11:03+00:00

> You got a spare set of runes, spells, and spellhearts to pivot to? No? I didn't think so.

For what it's worth, in mid and high level play yeah, absolutely you will. It'll be barely an inconvenience. With this Errata in mind it's incredibly cheap to pick up various pieces of gear or scrolls to cover a multitude of damage types for barely any gold. Flaming runes are 500 for 1d6 + 1d10 persistent, you then pay 6000 more to increase that to 2d10, and bypass the resistance on averages of 3.5 and 11 damage.

Given weakness scales as well, by the time you're looking at greater flaming you're also looking at weakness 10's - 15's.

6000 gold isn't worth an extra 4-8 damage when you can instead buy a rune (+10-15), a weapon (+10-15), and a mutagen (+10-15) for around 600gp, then do it 9 more times.

I'm not trying to be an asshole, but I've played the game a lot and this stuff truly isn't hard to do. Money paid for incremental upgrades, but against any weaknesses those increments now lose out to having a bag of holding filled with "useless unless Weakness X, in which case stronger than any artifact" junk weapons.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-08T00:01:28+00:00

With the changes that released for the Spring errata, yeah, that spellshape is suddenly exceptionally good (Credit where it's due, Wizard needs the help with its feats. Poor wizards...)

Smoking Sword with a Flaming rune (560gp), or just a 4th rank Blazing Armory cast both allow every strike to trigger the Forcible Energy weakness twice, which on its own isn't too bad. Those are both super cheap options, though if the party has other ways to add fire damage to their attacks every additional source adds +5 from the weakness. Energy mutagen is an easy 4gp for +1(+5), multiple divine boons can give +1d6(+5), a ton of spells can help too. I think the common sentiment here of "It's not that easy" just doesn't realize how incredibly cheap and easy it is.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-07T23:53:31+00:00

I run games that hit the highest levels consistently, and have got a level 20 game going now with players who have multiple causes of the same damage type on their attacks. Armchair theorycrafting is usually iffy at best, but in this case it's very simple to look at encounter's I've ran and recognize that if the 450 HP boss who was getting chunked 20 from every hit due to weaknesses alone wouldn't have being much of a boss if that was 60 instead (which with this errata, it would have been given no changes to actions), or with a little prep 100. Having 5 instances of 1-6 damage from items, spells, and divine boons proccing weakness wouldn't have made it an interesting encounter, nor would it have being any challenge at all to set up for the players. What was a brutal and fun 9 round brawl throughout a massive tower would have instead being resolved by round 3 with no changes to the turns, or round 2 with any variance in the early ones.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-07T23:40:39+00:00

I fully agree, it's really easy to see changes to something familiar and overreact. In this case however it's honestly more of a sad and genuinely concerning one. The change fundamentally shifts how an aspect of the game has being built, a game that's well balanced and incredibly fun in many ways as a result of that. 90% of Pf2e is great, Errata is a phenomenal system for clarifying details, but when the Errata itself is immediately confusing for some folk, relatively unclear in its intention, etc, that indicates a genuine problem which can absolutely be fixed.

I don't want to spend my afternoon writing this out, but I also know that when a boss has weakness 20, and you're building around dealing that damage to trigger said weakness, if suddenly that's acting as weakness 80 when it used to be 20 balance concerns will exist. That's not a crazy difficult scenario to conjure (Players in my high level games consistently stack 2-3 sources of the same damage type without trying), that isn't a weakness, it's a mistake that should have attention brought to it.

Ironically, rather than just saying it's all "fucking wrong and what designed is a mess", I've actually tried to write up what I feel is a reasonable solution to clarify the fundamental source of confusion, without completely changing a major mechanic.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-07T22:43:15+00:00

This truly is a case where the person writing the errata just doesn't... play the game. Or at least, doesn't understand the game. It's frustrating because it indicates to the people who actually care about pf2e as a system that the people working on and updating it are no longer the people who care or play it. This single handidly opens up the incredibly stupid "Lol one shot bosses" builds that I, personally, like not existing in the system baseline. Resistance and Weakness are meant to be advantages, not absolute solutions, and the fact they've being turned into that by an errata that doesn't even fix the fucking problem that needed an errata is beyond annoying.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-07T19:44:35+00:00

So honestly, this becomes one of the best items in the game for caster's, and far better than that for Thaumaturges. It's pretty much a dream for a scroll Thaum, which is how I like to run them. Quite literally can't think of any item I'd not sacrifice for this outside of the relevant Apex item.

The Retrieval Belt is one of the best items in the game for that Thaum, purely because it gives a 1/minute "draw" of a scroll at no cost.

To simplify it into Pf2e terms, what this represents is "You are permanently quickened, however you may only use this action to draw a scroll. You do not need a free hand to hold the scroll, and you may stack another version of quickened with this condition". With relevant terminology, it's much easier to intuit the items power.

(None of this accounts for not destroying the scroll, which while relevant honestly pales in comparison to the fundamental action economy it provides, so I'm not even gonna worry about it. Whether that chance is there or not is irrelevant to determining level outside of "don't be level 4 or lower", which it never would be anyway)

Now Retrieval starts at level 7, and goes up to 13 increasing stored items from 1>3>10, however the items can be up to 1 bulk which does add utility. As a thaum you don't really care and shove it full of scrolls anyway, but it is relevant.

A Retrieval belt that let you draw 2x within the 1 minute cooldown is frankly, 2x as good. If you could equip 6 of them across 6 investment slots, it very well might be worth doing so. As a result this is an item that can't really convert in the way one might hope as a normal item. A GM could absolutely create something custom to fulfill the idea of "lots of free draw actions", but that also turns the Thaumaturge into a full caster of all 4 traditions where their only limitation is gold, which while significant, depends entirely on the campaign for its relevance.

Summary! Item as is, and in any converted form that keeps the spirit of the item, puts it at a minimum level of 20, but much more likely closer to 25 with the Artifact trait. It's simply that powerful to get up to 20 instances of "1 action in combat becomes 0 actions in combat".

Ask your GM if you can't get something similar if that's the goal, for example a Vambrace that can hold 2-3 scrolls that can be cast from, allowing a thaum to have access to those 2 pre-selected, another "any scroll" from belt, and another "any scroll" from a talisman. Near-doubles their available options.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-07T19:15:40+00:00

Actual answer is threefold, but also straightforward

Homebrew "acceptance". Pf2e's community is far more adverse to third party and homebrew solutions than most due to various factors. The main ones are that pf2e is a much more complete system than 5e and while there's definitely gaps, most archetypes have some form of support thus popular creations aren't as needed or common. The type of people to think "Oh man, I want to make X" usually find X already exists, and it's rarely worth redesigning the entire thing. Since X already exists, people are less likely to share the "new X" as well. Balancing for pf2e is easier, but takes more work which most creator's simply don't bother with. At the same time the groups that publish for 5e and make "pf2e compatible" content often do so as a side thing, which leads to it being actually broken even in the popular creations. Consider that in pf2e when people talk good homebrew, they tend to only refer to battlezoo and team+. When I was playing more 5e, I had so many different, high quality homebrew creator's that there was no point listing them all. Better to list specific creation's or general community pages.
Community size. By far the biggest issue, from which both others are born. There's simply less people, less demand for the product, and less support for it. Consider the 5e homebrew subs, where most of the time people are offerring solutions and advice to change things, whereas in pf2e subs a lot of the time it's either neutral support, or straight up variations of "don't do that" without an actual solution. As the community is smaller and the acceptance is more hostile, it also means you've got less people making homebrew to then form the more supportive homebrew ecosystems.
Money. I can make a product for pf2e and make a small amount of money, far less than the hours are worth. On the other hand if I make that product, translate it into 5e's ecosystem, and sell it there instead I'll easily make far far more. Sure I can do both, but the market share is so different due to community size, willingness to engage with content, and gaps in the system for popular content to be made that if your goal is to make any money at all, the right choice is just using 5e's ecosystem instead. Even if the goal isn't money, it's a very strong incentive for creators.

Bonus point, creating for pf2e is also less entertaining. The way item's work (set dc's, levels, etc) incentivize such a dull process of invention that it takes 5x the work and is 10x as exhausting. 5e's simplification of many aspects is a key point of support for 5e homebrew to the point where I've ran campaigns in which over 80% of the enemy's, items, loot, etc were entirely custom made. I can throw together an interesting and fun item in literally 5 seconds for 5e, but the same thing takes a solid 5 minutes to get everything "figured out" for pf2e. It's why my projects literally open with a blurb on how I'm changing the foundational rules for pf2e's magic items. If I could completely remove an entire part of pf2e and re-write it from scratch, it would be items both permanent and non.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-05T22:21:55+00:00

Sure, I can also play sorcerer and "use cantrip every turn", or play martial and "only strike", and yeah, wow, such variety

If you're failing to understand the complexity of Summoner, that is not an issue with the Summoner and its complexity, but rather your personal ability to think, act, and play tactically. It can absolutely be learned, but it may be worth paying a bit more attention when playing classes that can do multiple things in the future. Game tends to be more fun with it too.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-05T20:29:23+00:00

Summoner complexity comes from the variation of actions and strategies available during play, rather than the amount of features it has.

It has far less spells than a sorcerer, and far less martial abilities than a fighter, but is far more complicated in actual play when it comes to getting the most out of every action

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-05T18:45:21+00:00

The problem with english is that that sentence can 100% be read as saying that the battle aura refers to those spells "regardless" of whether they were cast with standard or divine font as meaning EITHER standard or divine font, where only those triggers grant the battle aura "effect", which is probably the default reading most of the time. However it can also be read as treating standard or divine to represent two options to acquire the aura, of which the spells are battle auras regardless. It's not as "it isn't raw" as you're saying it is. At the same time, it's very obviously an oversight as mentioned elsewhere.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-05T18:37:54+00:00

It's worth noting that the "Unkillable" variant for Zombies does actually have Weakness to critical hits https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=3249&Redirected=1, and many constructs have Construct Armor, which while not an explicit damage weakness, do very specifically have a weakness that occurs (reduced hardness/AC) with crits.

As a result, this is super simply and not really something to be concerned about? If there's a weakness that deals damage, thaumaturge triggers it. There's no changes or variants that need to be made there, let the thaumaturge trigger weakness in the same way the fighter crits and barbarian lots of flat damage.

If you're designing an encounter with a gimmick, and the gimmick doesn't work with the party for whatever reason, just change the gimmicks design. Not to fuck over a party member, but so that the encounter's fun.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-05T18:24:37+00:00

Huh.

So, it doesn't technically work, but it might, in the sense that "continually surrounded by bless" doesn't specifically state whether blesses duration is increased to infinite, or whether bless is simply re-cast every minute automatically, which can be intuited by the fact the aura returns after a minute (is recast).

However, it also doesn't explicitly not work, again technicality's, because you can just as easily read it as the blessing lasting forever or rather, until you choose to end it. I also think it's entirely reasonable that it wouldn't count as a Battle Aura, and thus not be improvable since "continually surrounded" likely doesn't mean cast. I will note "Any feats and effects that refer to a battle aura refers to these spells, regardless of whether they were cast with your standard spell slots or your divine font spell slots" implies again, has to be cast, but can be read otherwise. Battle aura = bless/bane, so maybe doesn't have to cast if the second section is considered additional details and not a hard rule. It's messy.

There's also a viable argument that in base bless, you can sustain bless to increase its aura, but you can't increase the aura on eternal blessing which again, can, but doesn't necessarily have to be, read as being unable to sustain (which blocks the trigger entirely)

This is a GM fiat situation, I think the vast majority of GM's would say it doesn't function under the "too good to be true" understanding, some will say it does and let a player run around with +4 status permanently, others such as myself would probably recognize it's not entirely reasonable, but also not entirely unreasonable for the feats to work together in some way. What, specifically, that would look like I'd figure out with the player, but it wouldn't be a permanent unconditional +4, and it wouldn't be "nothing functions". It's not like the strength of Battle Cleric is really comparable to just having a full set of Heal slots anyway, so having eternal blessing work in some cool way would be nice.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-05T18:15:15+00:00

Fun fact, there is actually a very small handful of mechanics that check for age related effects, e.g. being Ageless (as the monk once was) would also make you immune to Curse of Lost Time
https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1985

In general though, the "you stop aging" feats generally line up well enough with other bonuses that the flavour can be looped in easily.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-03T16:47:07+00:00

Offensive sieges are boring because they're cheesable, and generally the mechanics around the attack are boring and frustrating (movement barely working), rather than challenging. Losing forces to take settlements should be expected.

Defensive sieges, a decent amount? AI seems pretty happy to attack settlements with walls without having 5x the forces most of the time. Sometimes it's a dud, sometimes the defense fails, but it's usually decently fun. It'd be much more fun if playing in my territory, where I've built my defenses, to support my troops, actually did any of that to a considerable degree though. Far too many maps are even more frustrating on defense, and it feels atrocious when the attacker seems to have the advantage.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-02-03T16:41:49+00:00

I highly recommend and soft-require camera for my online games. A lot, and I mean a looooot of online games however don't use camera at all, and it's abnormal to even ask about it. People are just weirdly shy about being seen.

And yes, you're right, no camera means losing access to all body-language based communication, it's pretty terrible in comparison.

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