Magic Weapons and Keyword Inheritance

Now, granted, -most- powers that do typed damage have that type as a power keyword, that's good design after all. And if you use a power that allows you to select the kind of damage it does, the power gains that damage type. That's a game rule, and that makes sense as well.

But, to say that the Class Power changes types based on the Item used with it, even tho the -paragraph- used as precident is refering to damage types is stretching.

Here's another interpretation.

If you do two or more things to accomplish something, that something gets the keywords given to it by all the things used to accomplish it.

If you got a power that says it deals radiant damage, and a power that says that it'll now do fire damage.... "...they all apply."

That's not hard to figure out. You do radiant and fire damage... because -all- powers affecting the effect apply.

That -makes- sense.

But to say 'That power is now a Fire power and all those fire feats make it better just because the item you -happened- to use it with can be used to make some fire once a day' is -reaching- and inventing definitions that don't exist. "...they all apply" is refering to the powers going into creating the gestalt effect. It doesn't mean, nor even mention powers that the item might have that aren't being used, nor does it say that it changes the powers contributing to the effect, merely, that all the powers used APPLY to the effect.

Fortunately for us all this is D&D where DM's make rules and rational rules calls based off of what seems reasonable, not explicitly what the book states. Maybe the dev's took that into account?

Obviously this particular example is flawed in some way. And nobody go saying "they didn't playtest enough, because they didn't catch this" because they playtested a ton and in every game or bit of software there's always a bunch of bugs that slipped through.

But we're all intelligent people, and can make rules decisions that make sense when the book seems to conflict with that.

Really, we do not want them to have to include a section like the Magic: the Gathering rules block in the PHB. That takes situations like this and breaks them down into the minuteia of lawyer-ese and is over 60 pages long of that kind of text, to make sure there are no loopholes. I can't think of anything that would make me (or many of my friends, or any new players) want to play the game less than feeling like I need to read 60 pages of lawyer-ese just to play the game.

If you're really intent on saying that a Doomsayer using a wand with a fear effect spell in it gets bonuses on ALL his save spells, or that a thief with a cold dagger can use the wintertouched power that's fine. Talk to your DM, make an agreement on it, and nobody here is hurt. But if you think that's what the devs actually intended, then you're not paying attention to all the other problems that crop up from allowing that.

A huge design goal in 4e was minimizing broken combos like that. They've been explicit about that from the beginning.

CustServe Response

So I got a response from custserve to the question I posted prior to this post. I will let you refer to post #33 to see the question. Here was the answer.

Joe said:

Subject-Keyword inheritance from magic items

PrecociousApprentice,

Again, you are correct in how magic weapons work with powers and keywords.
Whether a power is an at will, encounter or daily power is not tied to keywords in any way.

Good Gaming!

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So in summary:
1) When using a magic item as a weapon or an implement in conjunction with a class or racial power, all the keywords for the powers of the magic item apply to the class or racial power.
2) At-Will, Encounter, or Daily keywords are not inherited in this way. They are not tied to this ability of magic items. Only damage and effect keywords.
3) The inheritance is only one direction, from the magic item powers to the class or racial power. This stops any stance or reliable shenanigans.
4)Damage is handled in the normal way when dealing with elemental weapons (eg. frost and flaming weapons) when the weapons At-Will power is off, and is handled by over-riding the other damage keywords when turned on. This is the major effect of weilding an elemental weapon, for both good and bad.

So far, the responses from custserve have been very consistent about this subject. They back the literal meaning of the text. The other interpretations of these rules posited on this thread have all been interpretations based on what the posters have supposed the designers must have wanted, despite the fact that it is in direct contradiction to both the text and repeated answers from custserve. Maybe a good house rule for those posters would be to interpret this rule however they please, but the official stance up to this point is that the literal meaning of the text is the correct interpretation, and WotC backs this position exclusively. This does not necessarily rule out an eratta in the future to clear this subject up further, but I think that it seems sufficiently clear to me at this point.

So... let me get this straight.

At-will, Daily, and Encounter are not keywords and are not tied to keywords in any way?

PHB said:

KEYWORDS

At-Will - Martial, Weapon
Encounter - Divine
Daily - Acid, Arcane, Implement

A power's keyword entry gives you important rules information about the power. The first keyword indicates whether the power is an at-will, encounter, or daily power.

Click to expand...

So they aren't tied to keywords at all?

Seems Customer Service needs read more PHB before they start rules-interpreting. Either that or the PHB is lies.

PrecociousApprentice said:

So far, the responses from custserve have been very consistent about this subject. They back the literal meaning of the text. The other interpretations of these rules posited on this thread have all been interpretations based on what the posters have supposed the designers must have wanted, despite the fact that it is in direct contradiction to both the text and repeated answers from custserve. Maybe a good house rule for those posters would be to interpret this rule however they please, but the official stance up to this point is that the literal meaning of the text is the correct interpretation, and WotC backs this position exclusively. This does not necessarily rule out an eratta in the future to clear this subject up further, but I think that it seems sufficiently clear to me at this point.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

I've been curious as to how people justify to themselves saying, "Clearly this is what the designers intended," in all sorts of various topics. How can anyone actually know without talking to them? Yes, you can sometimes look at something and say, "Well, common sense tells me that it means this," but that only works in extremely specific and obvious instances, and even then doesn't tell you anything about designer intent. Most of the time, it seems like people are just trying to say, "Well, I thought it worked like this, and since I thought it worked like that, the designer's must have intended it that way. If the actual text disagrees with how I interpreted it, then clearly there was a mistake in the wording, not the conclusion I gathered about how it was 'supposed' to work."

PrecociousApprentice said:

1) When using a magic item as a weapon or an implement in conjunction with a class or racial power, all the keywords for the powers of the magic item apply to the class or racial power.

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This is correct, to an extent.

A cold longsword would add the Cold keyword (and damage) to a power that is used in conjunction with it (if it was activated to deal cold damage rather than weapon damage). However, a wand of Icy Rays would not add the Cold keyword (and damage) to a power that is used in conjunction with it, because the daily power contained in the wand is entirely separate from the implement's interaction (aka enhancement) with class/racial powers.

2) At-Will, Encounter, or Daily keywords are not inherited in this way. They are not tied to this ability of magic items. Only damage and effect
keywords.

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Correct. And even further, any powers that come from a magic item are not applied to powers used in conjunction with said item. Thus, as stated above, a Wand of Icy Rays does not add the Cold keyword when using Burning Hands.

4)Damage is handled in the normal way when dealing with elemental weapons (eg. frost and flaming weapons) when the weapons At-Will power is off, and is handled by over-riding the other damage keywords when turned on. This is the major effect of weilding an elemental weapon, for both good and bad.

Click to expand...

When you're adding a second damage type (from a magic weapon) to a power that deals a different damage type, you divide the damage equally between the two types. As the example in the PHB says, a paladin using a Radiant power with a flaming longsword would deal 50% radiant, and 50% fire damage.

DracoSuave said:

So... let me get this straight.

At-will, Daily, and Encounter are not keywords and are not tied to keywords in any way?

Click to expand...

He's saying they aren't applicable to use with weapons and implements.

So, that +1 cold longsword does not change the at-will, encounter, or daily nature of any of your class/racial powers, even when used with the weapon.

Huh!

When I made this thread, I never thought it would end up plumbing the depths of crazy rule-mongering!

That'll teach me.

-O

WTB Sage Advice back.


(And lord help us if they come up with D&D Comprehensive Rules)

So after further thinking about this subject, I am not sure that my initial conclusion that this was an extremely broken rule is correct. What it does is turn a lot of sub-par choices (all the feats that trigger off of damage and effect keywords) into relatively good choices. It also turns one really bad choice (Doomsayer) into a pretty fantastic choice. Seeing as this is the only choice for a single classed Starlock, I am in favor of making sure that their only choice doesn't suck.

I think that probably if we play with the custserve backed RAW for a while, we will find that this isn't really broken, and it actually is fun.

The Rogue who uses a cold weapon to take advantage of the Wintertouched/Lasting Frost combo, you will add a couple of d6s to your damage every hit. Good, but when compared to the padded sumo effect of ballooning HP at higher levels, the extra damage might not even scale well.

The Doomsayer/Fear keyword might just allow a controller to control a little with his max 4 Daily spells with a save ends condition that lasts more than 1.5 rounds on average. Since there is only one spell that gives the unconscious condition, the other three won't even make them helpless, just not as good.

The fighter that applies an elemental keyword to all his powers may get an advantage from enemies that have vulnerability to that keyword, but he has to switch out weapons when facing enemies that are immune to it. There are trade offs for every choice. This is good.

Seems to me that this just adds more meaningful choices, and adds more meaning to choices in other areas of the game.

Saying that this is broken at this point may be a little premature. We should play with the rules as they are written and explained by custserve before we get too bent out of shape. I will likely have a campaign that has no magic items at some point. This was an interesting twist to the RAW that I was not anticipating, but it does make the game as written more cohesive and interesting, so I will play it as they tell me to for now. I can always change later.

PrecociousApprentice said:

Saying that this is broken at this point may be a little premature. We should play with the rules as they are written and explained by custserve before we get too bent out of shape. I will likely have a campaign that has no magic items at some point. This was an interesting twist to the RAW that I was not anticipating, but it does make the game as written more cohesive and interesting, so I will play it as they tell me to for now. I can always change later.

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My concern is that stacking was, in my opinion, the biggest thing that allowed for broken character stuff in 3e. Repeatedly in 4e we've seen where that ability has been removed or reduced. Class abilities can't be taken via multiclassing, different powers can't be used at the same time, etc.

So far this is one of the few cases in which we've seen any two things work together with significant synergy, and can potentially work in ways that aren't obviously transparent. That alone makes me hesitant, and cautious.