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Vulnerabilities: an underutilized mechanism?
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<blockquote data-quote="Doctor Proctor" data-source="post: 5041224" data-attributes="member: 78547"><p>The problem is that you're kind of comparing apples to oranges. There are no monsters with a vulnerability to untyped damage, it's just that there's not much resistance to it. As such, saying that typed damage needs to be damage by sweeping vulnerabilities won't necessarily fix anything, because then typed damage will become more powerful than untyped.</p><p></p><p>Secondly, you have to look at the types of powers involved. My Fighter doesn't have a ranged Burst 2 power that does 2[W] to all creatures in the burst...but the Wizard does. It's called Shock Sphere. Now, since Shock Sphere has the Lightning keyword, it's possible that the Wizard using this might run into enemies that have a resistance to Lightning, and this will hamper his ability to do damage. Despite that though, Shock Sphere is still a great power and covers a <em>massive</em> area (and it would be Burst 3 if enlarged, at the cost of -4 to damage).</p><p></p><p>There's also a lot of ways to get around those resistances. Sorcerers have the ability to reduce certain resistances, there's a staff that converts power from acid to fire (and vice versa), and there's feats like Surging Flames that help out themed PC's who take a lot of powers of one damage type (there's also a few that give bonuses for using a Thunder power after a Lightning power and such).</p><p></p><p>Now, I'm not saying that vulnerabilities are a bad thing...but like everything else, they must be balanced. I don't think the system needs a total overhaul though, since typed damage powers have a lot of utility and can typically do more interesting things than untyped powers.</p><p></p><p>I would also be careful about tweaking monsters based on the abilities of one player, such as the example of the Rogue with a flaming weapon. If you up a creature's HP because someone has a flaming weapon (or radiant, or frost cheese, etc...) and that PC goes down, what you're left with is a party with one member down fighting a creature with a lot more HP than it should normally have...which could end rather nastily.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Doctor Proctor, post: 5041224, member: 78547"] The problem is that you're kind of comparing apples to oranges. There are no monsters with a vulnerability to untyped damage, it's just that there's not much resistance to it. As such, saying that typed damage needs to be damage by sweeping vulnerabilities won't necessarily fix anything, because then typed damage will become more powerful than untyped. Secondly, you have to look at the types of powers involved. My Fighter doesn't have a ranged Burst 2 power that does 2[W] to all creatures in the burst...but the Wizard does. It's called Shock Sphere. Now, since Shock Sphere has the Lightning keyword, it's possible that the Wizard using this might run into enemies that have a resistance to Lightning, and this will hamper his ability to do damage. Despite that though, Shock Sphere is still a great power and covers a [I]massive[/I] area (and it would be Burst 3 if enlarged, at the cost of -4 to damage). There's also a lot of ways to get around those resistances. Sorcerers have the ability to reduce certain resistances, there's a staff that converts power from acid to fire (and vice versa), and there's feats like Surging Flames that help out themed PC's who take a lot of powers of one damage type (there's also a few that give bonuses for using a Thunder power after a Lightning power and such). Now, I'm not saying that vulnerabilities are a bad thing...but like everything else, they must be balanced. I don't think the system needs a total overhaul though, since typed damage powers have a lot of utility and can typically do more interesting things than untyped powers. I would also be careful about tweaking monsters based on the abilities of one player, such as the example of the Rogue with a flaming weapon. If you up a creature's HP because someone has a flaming weapon (or radiant, or frost cheese, etc...) and that PC goes down, what you're left with is a party with one member down fighting a creature with a lot more HP than it should normally have...which could end rather nastily. [/QUOTE]
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Vulnerabilities: an underutilized mechanism?
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