Flaming Weapon Stealth Errata?

[Nemesis Destiny]

...it should make sense that you can provoke the same type of vulnerability cycle as Wintertouched / Lasting Frost.

E.g. "Firestarter / Deep burn". What would be even more fun was if "Deep burn" would confer, instead of extra damage, the inability to recover / regenerate any lost hit points UEONT. That would be far better than just a boring albeit powerful +5, and thematically aligned with fire damage too. Essentially it would mirror cold's needing extra damage because it has status effects, and add a status effect to the burn. Burninate!!

Preventing enemies healing is at least as worthwhile a goal to killing them faster as just straight up damage.

Eh... it would be, if enemies ever actually healed. Very, very few do. The only ones that come to mind are the old MM1 orcs (who gained a tiny amount of HP if they hit with their encounter power) and monsters with regeneration.
And, I suppose, monsters with the Cleric template. But then the DM's just screwing with you.

Agreed. If you want to do "flamecheese" without just adding a flat bonus to damage, I would suggest some amount of ongoing fire damage when you hit a fire-vulnerable monster with a fire attack with CA, or whatever the frostcheese condition is.

 

[Walking Dad]

Yeah, the fact that the other elemental weapons weren't changed makes this even worse.

Also aggravating is tha the two wizard fire at-wills stink. I was planning to take Winged Horde and Beguiling Strands... Scorching Burst is the worst area burst 1 at-will in the game these days.

Makes me really hating Freezing Burst more... not for what it does, but because it was the 'errated' scorching burst with another elemental key word ...

 

[garyh]

Makes me really hating Freezing Burst more... not for what it does, but because it was the 'errated' scorching burst with another elemental key word ...

Absolutely. Between Freezing Burst, Winged Horde, and Stone Blood, the wizard alone has three better area burst 1 at-will powers than Scorching Burst. Of course, the way the new item is written, you can still make Stone Blood fire, since it's naturally untyped. Which makes this all even more bizarre.

 

[Saeviomagy]

But I still don't like having your magic flaming sword change the keywords of your attacks. IMO it's "cheesy" in that it's an effect that I wouldn't expect to come from having a sword that lights on fire - it's purely a rules contrivance so far as I see things, so far.

it's not when, for instance, you down a troll with a flaming weapon - if the attack doesn't gain the keyword then he doesn't burn. I mean you could argue that damage type keywords themselves are these problem. I'd probably agree with that.

 

[kaomera]

it's not when, for instance, you down a troll with a flaming weapon - if the attack doesn't gain the keyword then he doesn't burn. I mean you could argue that damage type keywords themselves are these problem. I'd probably agree with that.

Well, I meant "change" as in cold -> fire, not as in adding fire to a power that didn't already have an elemental keyword... Which I suppose isn't actually what happens anyway, since (with the old flaming sword) it would now be cold + fire? In any case, I was specifically speaking of switching or adding elemental types of or to implement powers. Adding "fire" to an otherwise non-elemental weapon attack seems more reasonable.

 

[Marshall]

The balance comes in with: "If someone specializes in energy type X, they are getting the mechanical baggage of energy type X".

Nice idea, but a failure when it comes to actual application. In order for this to be meaningful, every power of a Type would have to have the same baggage. Once, you make it a tendency instead of a rule the Keyword becomes Fluff. You need only Cold to target FORT and Slow and all Fire to target REF with Ongoing Zone or some other level of rule before you can claim that any Keyword actually HAS a territory that can be poached.

IOW, there has to be consistent Keyword application before the claim that changing the Keyword creates inconsistency is valid.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Nice idea, but a failure when it comes to actual application. In order for this to be meaningful, every power of a Type would have to have the same baggage. Once, you make it a tendency instead of a rule the Keyword becomes Fluff. You need only Cold to target FORT and Slow and all Fire to target REF with Ongoing Zone or some other level of rule before you can claim that any Keyword actually HAS a territory that can be poached.

IOW, there has to be consistent Keyword application before the claim that changing the Keyword creates inconsistency is valid.

So, there are enough fire powers that slow, immobilize, attack Fort, etc, to be able to take powers like that at all levels without extensive multiclassing? I punched in "fire slowed" into the compendium and there are 21, including stuff from spellscar, paragon paths, and a number of them don't actually cause the slowed condition to an enemy (one is the magma genasi's racial power that causes you to be slowed, and a number are powers that give your allies bonuses to save against being slowed). Also, one of them is only there because fire is in the title, it doesn't have the keyword. Not to mention a number of powers that are both fire and ice.

It doesn't matter if not EVERY cold power causes slow/immobilization ... or that powers with different keywords do it too ... but when a keyword DOESN'T do it, or does it rarely enough to no matter, you end up making a choice ... specialize in a damage type or get an effect.

A pyromancer, for example, has two powers total that have slow + fire, and one of them is prismatic spray. None that immobilize. So yes, there are niches that, at the very least, certain damage types do not cover.

 

[Squire James]

Incidentally, I never understood why it makes more sense for something made of elemental fire to be automatically assumed to be immune to fire attack. They could be two different "types" of fantasy fire. The fire of the attack can certainly be a "foreign body" and therefore quite possibly harmful. After all, rock smashed into rock doesn't make the rock stronger, right?

My first though upon reading the other post was similar to yours. By this line of logic, a monster made of metal should be immune to metallic weapons, and so on. My second thought is that there's a difference between matter and energy (oops, I think I heard a catgirl scream). For instance, an effective weapon is usually shoved inside someone while an effective energy attack generally just exposes the enemy to the energy. I can kind of see it going both ways.

 

[Mirtek]

Actually, as of PHB1, not only was staff the only "weapliment", but only Staff enchantments counted as staff implements (while also being a magic quarterstaff). A weapon enchantment on a quarterstaff would not be a magic staff implement.

So, until the swordmage (and then sorceror, etc)

Actually there was a wizard PP in PHB1 that made longswords into implements and the swordmage barely missed inclusion into PHB1 (so unless using swords as implements was one of the very last changes the almost finished swordmage received, they should have known about what was about to come in regards of weaplements)

I got what you're saying, WalterKovacs, but two things:

1) Why just Flaming Weapon?

Because so far that's the only damage type that matters as far as essentials is concerned (not getting pyromancer benefits on every power). Don't worry, I am sure once we get a "forstmancer" essentials-school they will never frost weapons again. Annother example of Essentials breaking something that then has to be fixed at the expense of classic 4e

 

[Marshall]

It doesn't matter if not EVERY cold power causes slow/immobilization ... or that powers with different keywords do it too ... but when a keyword DOESN'T do it, or does it rarely enough to no matter, you end up making a choice ... specialize in a damage type or get an effect.

A pyromancer, for example, has two powers total that have slow + fire, and one of them is prismatic spray. None that immobilize. So yes, there are niches that, at the very least, certain damage types do not cover.

Which is the reverse of the argument originally put forth, so Fire doesnt usually slow, Acid doesnt usually push, Lightning doesnt usually reduce defenses....yada yada. The point is that no element has effects that are exclusively its territory and no element is banned from generating an effect so there is no 'power up' associated with Keyword A doing Effect B other than Fluff.