Martyred Bloodrager bloodline clarification

Question

I want to make sure I'm reading this ability correctly because I feel my dyslexia is making it difficult for me to understand properly. The "Ancestral Champion" Bloodrager Martyred bloodline power on page 19 of the Antihero's Handbook reads:

Ancestral Champion (Su) At 12th level, when your ancestral strikes target a creature whose alignment is opposite to the type of damage the strikes deal, your ancestral strikes instead deal 2d6 additional 2d6 points (sic) of damage of that type.

When using this power, I do the following when the alignment is opposite of the damage type. First roll 2d6 = x. Another 2d6 is then rolled x number of times for additional damage. Or in other words x(2d6) is rolled.

When this occurs and the DM says the target is the opposite alignment, is this how the power is used: I roll 2d6 resulting with a 7. That means I roll 7*2d6, or 14d6 extra damage? To me, this is an awful lot since it can do a maximum of 24d6 extra damage for an upper limit of 144 extra damage.

Do you also feel that the part of the description where it says "deal 2d6 additional 2d6 points of damage" is a typo that should probably state "deal an additional 2d6 points of damage". I feel like that's probable however I've been happily surprised before regarding something like this in Pathfinder!

Thanks for your time and assistance 🙂

Answer 1

I contacted one of the Antihero's Handbook's development leads, development coordinator Amanda Hamon Kunz, about whether the supernatural ability ancestral champion of the bloodrager bloodline martyred is supposed to be only 2d6 points of damage or if it really is supposed to be 2d6 × 2d6 points of damage. Kunz was kind enough to grant me permission to post the answer:

Yes, this is an error that slipped through--it's supposed to be 2d6 additional points of damage of that type, not 2d6 x 2d6. Thanks for the question!

Kunz goes on to note that "this is just me as the book's developer clarifying the ability's intent." So this isn't, like, errata or anything, and, like this fine answer says, officially the ability remains as printed, allowing one reading of the ability to permit the martyred bloodrager to deal, on average, an extra 49 points of damage per attack due to that special ability alone.

Paizo typically declines to release errata for its shorter books, so there may never be any official clarification for this special ability, but if you want to play a martyred bloodrager in accordance with the author's vision, Kunz's clarification is probably the best way to go.

Answer 2

Yup, that's how it works

It's not really grammatically correct regardless, but that is the most sensible interpretation of the text-as-written; it almost says '2d6 additional sets of' or '2d6 additional rolls of', which is what would be needed for this to make grammatical sense, but it doesn't.

Yes, it's very probably a typo

Not only would this power, as interpreted, allow the bloodrager to do more damage than Paizo normally allows non-casters to do with melee attacks (although the bloodrager is a half-caster, so it fits a little better, this bloodline is supposed to be not very good, as can be seen from the rest of the granted powers), it also definitely has at least one error; there is no interpretation where the sentence makes grammatical sense. Right now you can probably get away with the 2d6X2d6 damage in games that try to follow the rules very closely, but expect that ability to be stripped down to 2d6 when errata is released.