Reflavoring powers and game balance

[Atlemar]

I got the impression, especially from the DMG, that it's okay to take powers and reflavor them, specifically changing damage types. You want a fire wizard? Take a bunch of powers, and make them all fire based. Voila, pyromancer!

And then, take feats! Arcane Fire makes fire powers better! If you're a fire-breathing dragonborn, there's a feat to make fire powers better! Etc.!

Or, if my cleric is of a winter god instead of Pelor, change radiant damage to cold.

This sounds awesome.

But, is this an unbalancing thing? Since there's a big spread of damage types across powers, maybe the game means for there to a limited number of powers available to a wizard/sorcerer/cleric of a specific damage type, and therefore a limited amount of powers that will interact with any given feat.

On the other hand, the unbalanced distribution of damage types across powers makes me think, maybe not.

So my real question is, if I'm a DM, and a player says he wants to take a pile of powers and change all the damage types for flavor (and also power gaming) should I allow it? What about feats -- should I allow Arcane Fire to be changed to Arcane Cold?

(Really, I want to do this as a player. I want to make a dragonborn hybrid sorcerer-barbarian with all the sorc powers being cold, along with the dragon breath.)

 

[Maddach Urquhart]

Changing the flavor of the power is perfectly fine in order to help a player's character concept come together - and it can really make for some great RPing.

Allowing the player to change the damage types of the wizards powers in your example, though, has a lot of potential for unbalancing. It's up to you to think about how big the changes actually are and what kind of wrench can they throw in your game. It can make other players wonder why they didn't just change their powers to be more beneficial.

 

[LuckyAdrastus]

It's best to re-flavor without changing mechanics whereever possible. There are so many options using the rules right now, that you can usually get close to what you want without changing mechanics much. I.E. there are several options for changing the damage types of your attacks, plus enough options for most classes that you can just find a cold power at the appropriate level for your wizard/sorcerer/etc.

If you do want to change damage types, the main thing to consider is that certain types are commonly resisted, whereas other types are commonly vulnerable spots for enemies. As a result, radiant tends to be really good for PCs, and psychic also is often nice (with many feats to help it). Thunder/Lightning/Cold/Force are pretty even, with various feats to boost them, but not terribly common vulnerabilities or weaknesses. Fire is both frequently resisted, and frequently vulnerable for monsters. Necrotic and Poison tend to be the weakest, with many monsters resisting vulnerability, and even worse, being immune to poison. So, broadly speaking, you can switch damage types in the middle without TOO much harm, but switching out from the strong (radiant) to the weak (necrotic, poison) can be troublesome.

A lot of this also depends on what kinds of monster the DM tends to throw at the party.

 

[Kaelkatar]

There is a paragon feat in Arcane Power, called Arcane Admixture which does basically what you described (though it simply adds the damage type, not replace).

To me this still suggests that having all your powers be the same damage type should cost 1-2 feats. Many characters I've built have utilized this without any problems, and have ended up strong mechanically and conceptually still.

 

[Connorsrpg]

The actual damage type in my mind doesn't really matter (other than considering the vulnerabilities and resistances mentioned already).

It is more that associated secondary effects that you need to watch out for. Certain secondary effects are often associated with a particular damage type. Such as slow being associated with cold powers and ongoing damage with fire. That is what I would be looking at in such a case.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It can matter with certain feats, like those that have a stat minimum prereq and add +1 damage to powers with X and Y damage types, but of course you as DM might not feel that matters.

 

[Mengu]

I'd be willing to create a feat to accommodate what a player wants but has no other way to achieve.

The way Power of Winter works is pretty much how I'd be inclined to allow a character to create a signature at-will.

For instance a sorcerer wants to use cold blasts instead of fire blasts. I might allow them to take a feat to gain +2 Endurance, change the type of Burning Spray to cold, and give enemies that are hit -2 AC.

A leonine Razorclaw Shifter Invoker wants to roar at his enemies with Visions of Blood, so he wants to change the type from psychic to thunder (but keep the fear). So we make a feat, +2 Intimidate, change type to thunder, and increase the penalty to all defenses from -1 to -2.

If you let it get abused, this sort of tweaking can indeed be abused, like there is a lot of nice support for cold or thunder damage. But in the case of say the invoker, it's nothing a thunderwave wizard can't already do, so the benefits might be inline with existing options. And the former example is no more abusable than arcane admixture.

I would shy away from a blanket type change to all powers at no cost. You could want to just assume the use of a typed weapliment, such as a sorcerer using a frost dagger, but make it so that character's frost dagger property is actually innately coming from them rather than the weapon (this is just refluffing).