Magic Weapons and Keyword Inheritance
PrecociousApprentice
First Post
So the interesting thing about all the CustServe answers that either deny the keyword inheritance or say that no ruling is possible at this time is that the questions were all specifically about the staff of storms. We already knew that this bit of rules was somewhat of an unsolvable problem. All the other rulings, the ones that were given in the positive for keyword inheritance, were about various other scenarios.
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Precocious Apprentice, I hesitate to disagree with you, but I think "normal damage" is defined on p 276 of the PHB, under the description of "Damage Types": "In addition to normal damage, such as the damage a weapon or a monster's claws deal, powers and other effects can deal specific types of damage."
So a Magic Item Power that allows one, at-will, to choose that certain damage be "normal" seems to me to be a power that allows me to strip that damage of all types.
Now, how that interacts with Class Powers that allow the magic item to be used to deliver non-normal damage (eg Paladin Powers with the Weapon keyword that deal Radiant damage) I don't pretend to know, although my feeling is that they should probably be handled as Mourn suggested above.
I don't think that your "literal interpretation" is consistent with the definition of "normal damage" on p 276 of the PHB.
In fact your reading of p 226 of the PHB, together with that definition, generates a contradiction: the Flaming Weapon simultaneously adds the Fire keyword and makes the attack deal Fire damage, while the At-Will power says that it strips away all Types and delievers normal damage.
It is not uncommon for rules texts to be contradictory (it happens in the law all the time, for example) - but when contradictions occur, literal interpretations won't help, and some sort of purposive or other normatively-guided interpretation becomes inevitable. In the case of D&D, the relevant norms would be non-brokenness and simplicity, which together contribute to playability.
My own view is that, with these norms in mind, the best reading of the reference on pages 226 and 276 to Magic Items and keywords is this: "When you use [the power of] a magic item as part of [ie in conjunction with] a racial power or a class power [or, probably, a feat power or a basic attack or any other sort of power we forgot to mention here], the keywords of the item's power and the other power all apply." This minimises the keyword inheritance (thus reducing prospects of broken-ness) and is simple in play (because I only need to think about an item's power's keywords when I actually use that power and thus bring the relevant power card to the top of my deck).
Now, it might seem that this reading generates another contradiction, because the other crucial paragraph on p 276 refers to the Paladin with the Flaming weapon dealing half Fire and half Radiant damage. But in fact there need be no contradiction: when we look at the Flaming Weapon entry, the phrase "all damage" occurs directly after the reference to critical damage. I think that the "all" in "all damage" is best interpreted as generating a contrast with what would otherwise be the limitation of fire damage to the extra critical dice, and should not be interpreted as excluding the operation of the general rule for mixed damage types (ie "all damage is fire damage" means "not just critical damage is fire damage", as but does not mean "all damage is fire damage and fire damage only"). Is this a "literal" interpretation of the Flaming Weapon text? Well, it's one tenable literal interpretation, and I opt to prefer it because it does the least damage to the - presumably balanced - distribution of Keywords and damage types among the multitude of class powers.
So, in the end, I think I agree with Mourn.
And just to conclude: those who suggest that the "rules as written" can be interpreted without thinking about the "rules as intended" have (IMO) an extremely overoptimistic theory of interpretation for any text of the complexity of the D&D rules (as I hope my diagnosis of a contradiction in Precocious Apprentice's otherwise very carefully reasoned "literal interpretation" illustrates).
Almost every time I see the phrase RAW invoked, its in an attempt to bypass or ignore the RAI of the ruie. That is to say, to invalidate the common interpretation with a strictly literal one.
Can you imagine trying to play DnD with Amelia Beledia? /shudder
Hypersmurf
Moderatarrrrh...
Has this gotten anywhere in the past 3 months, or are we still confused?
The PHB FAQ, for what it's worth, now says this:
15. When do a Magic Item's keywords apply?
If you use a magic item's power in conjunction with a power granted to you by your race or class, that item's keywords are added to the regular keywords of the power you are using. For example, if you are have a Flaming Weapon, and you use an at-will power to attack an enemy along with the at-will power of the Flaming Weapon, your attack will have the Fire keyword in addition to the normal keywords of your attack. You have to be using the powers of the weapon for those keywords to be added; simply using the magic item does not necessarily mean every keyword attached to a power of that item will be added.
-Hyp.
