Which Elemental Assessor damage type persists when the rolls are equal?

Question

Elemental Assessor

You must make a successful ranged touch attack to hit your target with the ray, which deals 2d6 points of acid damage, 2d6 points of cold damage, 2d6 points of electricity damage, and 2d6 points of fire damage.

The type of energy that does the most points of damage to the target then persists, dealing another 4d6 points of that type of damage per round for 1d4 rounds.

When I closely read the final part, its the elemental type that does the most damage. So if I happened to roll really well for a damage type that its not immune or resistant to, but also not its weakness, its weakness isnt guarenteed to be that type.

What happens when two or more energy types deal the same amount of damage, say when you maximized the spell? They all did the most damage, so should they all not persist?

Answer 1

This is most likely one of those occasions WotC/Paizo didn't bother to make a specific rule that applies because the check for it (which of these equal damages is 'greater') would come up so infrequently that there is no point to make dedicate extra lines in the Magic section to it.

Therefore, the decision falls to your GM.

a Game Master (or GM) is the player who arbitrates the rules of the game and controls the actions of every game element that isn’t explicitly controlled by the other players.

In such a situation, I would request that if a creature's weakness is one of the tied damages, that should be the one to persist (per the intent of the spell). Otherwise, the type of damage becomes semantic.