Undead and Vulnerabilities

[keterys]

Radiant often dazes and blinds, does additional damage if the target attacks, slides, gives bonuses to allies, etc.

Radiant is the standard damage type for several divine classes. It's got _all_ the bases covered.

And it's not less effective against other monsters, unless you're talking about angels specifically. And I find those don't really come up that often.

 

[eamon]

I still don't see the issue with having some asymmetry in the damage types.

Poison damage is pretty terrible for instance, and necrotic isn't the best either. But so what? That's just yet another balancing factor to keep in mind.

Balance between players is important. PC-monster balance is important to keep the rewards sane and encounter building simple. Monster-monster balance is important to keep the DM sane. Damage type balance? That doesn't intrinsically matter.

You could argue that it's bad for player balance or PC-monster balance, say - but I'm not seeing those arguments being made here.

Disregarding the undead, I don't find radiant to be that brilliant. And most powers prescribe a particular damage type; so this isn't a choice in the first place; it's just one of the factors contributing to the choice. Having perfect symmetry in such choice factors merely makes the game uniform - and boring, as far as I can tell.

 

[keterys]

The main oddity at the moment is that you have a sharply different experience throwing most undead against a radiant-ish party vs a not. It's very easy to have a party that deals no radiant, for example, while there are other parties that _all_ deal radiant, and even have multiple Solar Enemy channels to spike it even further.

Throw a group of wraiths against both, and the balance guesses end up all over the place.

 

[Starfox]

I kind of like how good radiant damage is. it keeps the "evil is cool" faction in check. Yes, sure you can be the darikitty-dark of gothdom, but you'll be dealing crappy necrotic damage. And you will be just as weak against the powers of darkness as you thought you would be against these masters of the night. Besides, I like Lovecraftian mad starlocks a lot better than goth darklocks.

If you do want to balance these damage types, I'd do it the opposite way the OP proposes. I'd grant undead a bonus after being hit with radiant damage, but make necrotic damage give them a penalty and/or slow them. The rationale? Desperation when faced with the powers of divine vengeance and complacency in the face of the "peace and comfort" of death. Maybe even make necrotic blind undead - sure you cannot harm them, but you can pass them by.

 

[jstomel]

I think that radiant damage is definitely the most useful damage type. To my mind this is a balancing factor. Many divine classes (specifically the paladin and avenger) would be somewhat underpowered were it not for the fact that radiant damage is so dang useful. Ditto for the starlock. Cleric is another matter, but dealing with overpowered clerics is practically a tradition in D&D. I haven't worked enough with the invoker to know how it measures up. When I have a radiant heavy party I either don't put them against undead or I put them against lots of undead and up the level of encounters by 2 or 3.

 

[keterys]

I've got a 14th paladin in one game whose at-will deals 1d12+27 radiant and slowed (and nothing special for a +3 weapon) and his divine challenge is 14 radiant. I don't think he really needs the help I mean, my 14th barbarian hits for less damage (7 less at-will, 3.5 less on a charge).

 

[jstomel]

I've got a 14th paladin in one game whose at-will deals 1d12+27 radiant and slowed (and nothing special for a +3 weapon) and his divine challenge is 14 radiant. I don't think he really needs the help I mean, my 14th barbarian hits for less damage (7 less at-will, 3.5 less on a charge).

How's the build on that one work? I admit that I'm not completely up to speed with the material in Divine Power.

 

[keterys]

Actually, I think he only has a couple feats from divine power for +3 damage on his at-will and +Str to his divine challenge. He's using Holy Strike (+Wis against marked) and a paragon path (Son of Mercy?) that adds Wis against a marked target and slows it.

So against a marked target, he adds his Wis twice and slows on hit. His base damage is 1d12+14, +3 for Holy Strike, +5 (Wis) * 2 = +27

 

[jstomel]

Hmmm... So you must have a +6 strength and two handed weapon. Am I correct in assuming that you went for a weak Cha in order to optimize for high Str and Wis?

 

[keterys]

That is the standard Str-based paladin build, yes.