[RPG] Does Desna’s Divine Fighting technique advanced benefit apply flaming or other enchantments multiple times

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Desna's Shooting Star:

Advanced Benefit: You can impart a powerful spin to a thrown starknife so that multiple blades strike the target rather than just a single blade of the four, dealing extra damage with the other blades. As a full-round action, you can make a single attack with a thrown starknife, rolling 1d4 to determine how many effective strikes you gain with the attack (if you roll a 1, then only one blade strikes). If the attack hits, all of the effective strikes damage the target. Apply precision-based damage (such as sneak attack damage) and critical hit damage only once for this attack. The damage bonus from your appropriate ability score modifier applies to each strike, as do other damage bonuses, such as a bard’s inspire competence bonus. Damage reduction and resistances apply separately to each strike.

Ordinarily, I'd say yes, but I came across this thread about it while I was looking up other things, and it made me wonder if it would or not.

So I came here to see if SE can answer the question, does Desna's Shooting Star get the benefits of flaming (or other similar enchantments) on it's initial hit and each effective hit?

Best Answer

Normally, when you multiply damage, extra bonus damage dice, like sneak attack or flaming, apply only once.

But Desna’s divine fighting technique doesn’t multiply damage. It says you score multiple hits, which is not the same thing even if it is off of one attack roll. It then mimics damage multiplication for the purposes of precision damage, but neglects to mention any other source of bonus damage dice—like flaming. And then its says “other damage bonuses” all apply to each strike, i.e. are “multiplied” (but technically aren’t).

So the written rules say yes, you get bonuses like flaming repeatedly with Desna’s advanced technique. Do I suspect that whoever wrote this misremembered the actual damage multiplication rule, and meant to say that all bonus damage dice don’t get multiplied? Yes I do—but I can’t back that up.

Anyway, it doesn’t really matter because you shouldn’t use Desna’s advanced technique anyway—even if you can apply flaming repeatedly, even if you could apply sneak attack repeatedly, it’s completely without purpose. Any character that qualifies for it and has any business making weapon attacks1 has far higher expected damage with a full attack than with this technique, so don’t bother with it. Paizo shouldn’t have bothered to print it.

  1. While you can contrive situations where the technique is mathematically superior to a full-attack, you must remember that “better” is not the same thing as “good.” Because what you cannot do is contrive a situation where it is better than a full-attack and a good idea. Rather, in those situations, the technique may be a little less-bad than the full-attack, but in reality both are bad ideas and neither is the right choice for your action. This is what I mean by not having “any business making weapon attacks.” If you are any good at all with a weapon, a full-attack is superior. If you are not, the fighting technique is less-bad but still bad and you should do something else. And if you really have no other option, what you should be doing is running away, because you are clearly unprepared for the threat you’re dealing with.
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