How broken is energy substitution?

[nightspaladin]

I am converting a 3.5 sorcerer over for my campaign and all of his spells were Energy substituion to Acid. I see there are items like the staff of acid and flame in AV that make all fire damage acid or vice versa. I am thinking about making an wand like the elemental weapons, that simply say all the damage done by powers from this wand are acid, but i am worried that it will unbalance the powers.

Honestly, taking a feat like burning blizzard and then making all damage acid isn't much different that taking weapon focus and making sure that you only use that class of weapon. A smart melee player can make sure they all always get the Weapon focus bonus. I really don't see why that shouldn't be allowable for spellcasters.

Any thoughts?

 

[Saeviomagy]

Elemental substitution is fine as long as you treat different energy types as "tiers", which are primarily defined by how many foes have resistances and immunities to them.

Necrotic and poison form the lowest tier. Lots of things are resistant or immune to them and almost nothing is vulnerable.

Cold and fire are next - there are lots of resistant creatures and quite a few immune ones. To make up for that there's a decent number of creatures that are vulnerable. Cold is worth special note however, because lasting frost/wintertouched form a very powerful pair of feats when compared to what is available for anything except radiant damage (and radiant only gets it's feat at epic). Allowing people to trade INTO cold is possibly too good purely for this reason. If they agree not to take wintertouched and lasting frost, it's all good.

thunder, lightning and acid are mid-tier. Few resistant creatures and few vulnerable ones. Very small numbers of immune ones.

Psychic and force are next up - there's hardly any resistant or immune or vulnerable creatures.

At the top of the tiers is radiant damage. It's almost never resisted and pretty much every undead creature has vulnerability to it.

 

[nightspaladin]

Thanks for the advice. I was considering making the item or feat paragon level. The staff starts at 10th level and i figured that any effect would need to be around that level too.

The odd thing is that the sunblade, which does all radiant damage at will starts at level 4, which seems really broken to me. It effectively ends all heroic tier undead threats, as a paladin or fighter with that blade would mow through undead.

 

[HighTemplar]

Saeviomagy: I know this is pointless and ridiculous semantics but I think tiers comes from three or one third if you prefer, thats why theres always just 3 tiers ^^

nightspaladin: meet my solarplated vampirelord immortal npc^^

 

[Nikosandros]

Saeviomagy: I know this is pointless and ridiculous semantics but I think tiers comes from three or one third if you prefer, thats why theres always just 3 tiers ^^

According to the Merriam-Webster online, tier comes Middle French tire which means rank. I've never heard of tier being related to the number three... but then again English is not my first language.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Saeviomagy: I know this is pointless and ridiculous semantics but I think tiers comes from three or one third if you prefer, thats why theres always just 3 tiers ^^

???

tier

• noun 1 one of a series of rows or levels placed one above and behind the other. 2 a level or grade within a hierarchy.

Edit: Ninja'd

 

[HighTemplar]

Nooooo I have been wronged !!!

shame... You guys play too much WoW (or not)

It's funny tho, because french is my first language, and the myrrian-webster is an english dictionnary In french one third is written "un tiers". I guess ive been mislead as everything with tiers that i know only has 3 ranks =x

 

[Starfox]

Cold is worth special note however, because lasting frost/wintertouched form a very powerful pair of feats when compared to what is available for anything except radiant damage (and radiant only gets it's feat at epic). Allowing people to trade INTO cold is possibly too good purely for this reason. If they agree not to take wintertouched and lasting frost, it's all good.

I think there's a good chance the other damage types will get similar combos in the arcana book.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

don't allow cold substition...winter touch and Last frost FTW!!!!

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think there's a good chance the other damage types will get similar combos in the arcana book.

But for now, the other elemental feats are totally blown away by those available for radiant or frost damage. The balances could also be messed with if a new monster manual came out, and it happened to be stuffed with radiant-immune creatures.

I desperately hope that the arcana book makes other elements worthwhile.