Mearls talks about how he hates resistances

[maddman75]

It would seem to me the solution to the ice mage/fire mage is not in changing the monsters, but in changing the spells. Maybe the ice mages from the north have spells, especially dailies, that have a 'resistence effect'. They Slow the opponent in addition to the lessened damage. Maybe the fire spells of the desert nomads flare up on the skin of the resistant, dazing them. It would seem to be a faster fix than changing the effects of the keywords.

 

[Phaezen]

I am going to be experimenting with some idea for alternative resistances/vulnerabilities in my campaign. I am currently running Sleeper in the Tomb of Dreams, and while with my party the resistances to necrotic damage won't come up, the vulnerability to radiant for several of the creatures will. Any suggestions for thematic vulnerabilities for

Spoiler

ghouls, a beholder zombie and wraiths

?

 

[billd91]

I can sort of see the point about wanting to play an ice-mage in an ice-campaign, but such a specific campaign should come up with its own rules on energy types anyway. I don't see why vanilla D&D should have to incorporate all those permutations.

I too can see the point of playing an ice-mage from the frozen north... but the character is truly most interesting in contrast to the prevailing environment. In any real world in which creatures would be well-insulated from the cold, relying on doing freezing damage would be crazy. The natural tactic would be to use magic that the insulated creatures are vulnerable to. The association an ice-mage from the frozen north (or from an ice-campaign) using those spells as his bread and butter in his home environment is a misplaced one.

If someone really wanted to work on resistances and evening them out, I can think of two solutions that would help though not completely fix things.

1) Elemental damage is only half a spell's damage. Think of 3e's flame strike. Half is fire damage, half is holy. In the case of wizard spells, half would be just plain magical power. That would make even ice spells have some function against cold resistant creatures.

2) Go the route of the psionic power energy damage and give each energy type a different profile and then work out the balance between them.

Personally, I don't see a problem with different energy types being better than others over the course of the campaign. Characters need to adapt sometimes rather than hold to the holy grail of "the build concept" if their choices aren't doing the job against reasonable encounters that fit in with the campaign and adventure's setting.

The idea that a fire elemental can walk through magma but is hurt if you poke it three times with a torch is also fascinatingly bizarre.

You are far more charitable with your words that I am. I think it goes beyond just bizarre and into the dumb territory.

 

[RangerWickett]

I like the guy at One Bad Eggs suggestion about making vulnerability have seperate effects to just more damage. We already have a theme where cold slows, fire has ongoing damage, etc etc. I think adding these effects into vulnerabilities would help to seperate the elements in an interesting way.

I agree. Vulnerabilities could be a bit more diverse.

I had a nasty experience in Red Hand of Doom when one PC's hard core fire mage (fire genasi evoker with all the fire feats possible) was helpless against red dragons. So here's my solution for the themed wizard problem.


Elemental Magic User Solution
Any magic using character can grab a few fire powers, and he should rightfully expect that his fireballs shouldn't do much against fire elementals. But if a player wants to make his character heavily themed toward one element, he can select the following feat.

Elemental Mastery
When confronted by a creature resistant to your preferred element, you can alter your attacks to disrupt the energy that fuels them.

Benefit: Choose an energy type -- acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder -- that at least half of your attack powers (round down) possess. Whenever you use an attack power with that energy type, you can choose to alter it so it only affects creatures with resistance or immunity to your chosen element. Against those creatures, your attack ignores their resistance or immunity to your chosen element, and your attack deals an extra 10 damages. This increases to an extra 15 damage at 11th level, and 20 damage at 21st level.

This extra damage only occurs once per round.

So basically, say you're a fire mage. That red dragon snarls at you? You use your mighty control of fire magic to grab the flames that run through his veins, and you rip that power out of him. Instead of attacking him with fire, you attack the fire within him. Instead of fireballing a swarm of fire snakes, you snuff them (in a 3-square burst).

 

[Ourph]

I can sort of see the point about wanting to play an ice-mage in an ice-campaign, but such a specific campaign should come up with its own rules on energy types anyway. I don't see why vanilla D&D should have to incorporate all those permutations.

I agree. In such a campaign I'd probably create a house rule somewhat like Oni's suggestion where the player could take a feat allowing his "Ice" Wizard to ignore some amount of cold resistance in exchange for doing less damage with fire-based powers.

Another alternative might be to just get rid of resistances and keep vulnerabilities. So the Ice Wizard can go up against a White Dragon and be on the same footing he would be against any other creature, while the Fire Wizard gets a small advantage because the White Dragon has fire vulnerability 5 or something.

 

[jgsugden]

Everyone picks on resistances, but to me the real culprit is on the opposite side of the fence - it is the damage that causes the problems.

D&D has always handled damage and hps poorly.

The idea that wearing platemail makes it harder to hit you rather than making you better able to endure it when things hit you is counterintuitive and causes ridiculous situations to occur. Being unconcious suddenly negates all benefits of wearing a massive tin can?

The idea that a fireball deals only heat damage, but has no concussive force is ridiculous. Blowing things up is not a gentle process.

A lot of Mearls complaints could be addressed with better damage dealing mechanics. As the damage dealing is the thing that seems less intutitive as written, I suggest we address it rather than pick on the poor resistances...

 

[Ed_Laprade]

This is amazing. The answer to this 'problem' is incredibly simple. Chuck the keywords. Everything becomes Elemental. Period. The player writes in his prefered element, which is pure fluff and has no mechanical effect whatsoever. Everything is now balanced.

Done.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Everyone picks on resistances, but to me the real culprit is on the opposite side of the fence - it is the damage that causes the problems.

D&D has always handled damage and hps poorly.

...

A lot of Mearls complaints could be addressed with better damage dealing mechanics. As the damage dealing is the thing that seems less intutitive as written, I suggest we address it rather than pick on the poor resistances...

While I agree that D&D on the whole emphasizes that dealing hit points of damage is the fastest way to dispose of enemies and get on to the next encounter, I think that's a broader scope of a topic than the discussion at hand.

I really like Mike's thinking. I would say though that the problem is a little different than defined.

If I want to play an ice-themed wizard in a game (or a fire-themed wizard), and I want to use my spells, the issue isn't the resistances. The issue is that the DM will want to use resistant creatures against me so they don't all die off instantly. There's a sort of silent arms race that I see all too often (including in my own play habits) where the DM wants to have a critter or BBEG threaten the party so they pick out ways to resist the players' big attacks, especially powerful spellcasters. This leaves the grinding force of combat to the heavy fighter types who get to wear away at the enemy.

I think in D&D right now you can have an elemental-themed character who is effective as long as the DM avoids having too many opponents who can resist your powers. It requires clever encounter design and more thought.

 

[Cadfan]

I kind of hate resistances too, mostly because I like themed spellcasters, and D&D sucks at them almost entirely because of elemental resistance.

I don't have a good solution for this, except to make resistances much less common, and much less powerful. Use them where they make thematic sense, and leave them out where its questionable. In my way of thinking, fire elementals might continue to resist fire, but red dragons wouldn't, and duergar definitely wouldn't. And if they did, they'd resist very small amounts. Just enough so that the PCs notice, but not enough that they will greatly care.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I too can see the point of playing an ice-mage from the frozen north... but the character is truly most interesting in contrast to the prevailing environment. In any real world in which creatures would be well-insulated from the cold, relying on doing freezing damage would be crazy. The natural tactic would be to use magic that the insulated creatures are vulnerable to. The association an ice-mage from the frozen north (or from an ice-campaign) using those spells as his bread and butter in his home environment is a misplaced one.

If someone really wanted to work on resistances and evening them out, I can think of two solutions that would help though not completely fix things.

1) Elemental damage is only half a spell's damage. Think of 3e's flame strike. Half is fire damage, half is holy. In the case of wizard spells, half would be just plain magical power. That would make even ice spells have some function against cold resistant creatures.

Indeed - or even none of the damage.

A 'hail of icicles' spell needn't be doing cold damage at all, just damage from big jagged icicles. Same with 'ice storm'.

In fact a good option would be to have more elemental spells which have two keywords, so you are only resistant if you have resistance to both, but you are vulnerable if you have vulnerability to either. There are a few which exist in the wizards lexicon, but they could be much more widely spread.

Regards,