Changing damage type of various powers

[Perun]

Would you allow a player to change the damage type of a power for flavour reasons?

Say you've got a player who wants to play a necromancer-type wizard, and he'd like to change an existing at-will spell to deal necrotic energy. So his proposed changes to Scorching Burst, for example, would include changing keywords to "Arcane, Implement, Necrotic" (from the original "Arcane, Fire, Implement"), and changing damage to 1d6 + Intelligence modifier necrotic damage.

I know such a modification would not by itself change or unbalance the game, but would that change to various powers across levels, combined with the damage-bonus-to-specific-energy-type feats and abilities be a bit too much?

To continue with the example above -- Necrotic damage is thematically linked to either psychic or cold with feats such as Dark Fury or Student of Moil, respectively. If the player is not allowed to change powers to deal necrotic damage, he can always pick Phantom Bolt, Illusory Ambush or Ray of Frost as his at-wills, and still gain that feat damage bonus. I presume there will be at least one power of the type such feats give bonus to at each power level.

Regards.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Changing to Necrotic damage isn't something I would do to "optimize" a character if I had the choice. If he doesn't find and use any broken combo's, let him do it. It would have been a whole other matter if he had selected Radiant instead of Necrotic.

BTW: lots of undead have necrotic resistance, it will probably bug him a lot.

 

[Eric888]

It is dangerous to do it because changing damage types has a much larger effect on the game than just flavor. Some damage types are very good (Cold, Radiant, Psychic) and some are very bad (Necrotic, Poison, Fire), and powers are, I hope, balanced according to the damage type they use.

In this case I would not allow it because necrotic is a very bad damage type and he would be gimping his character if he changed all his powers to necrotic. He may like the idea, and say he doesn't mind, but he may not realize all the consequences yet and may become very frustrated later down the road.

A possible solution is to give him a sorcerer-esque feature or feat that allows him to ignore 5/10/15 tiered necrotic resistance or something.

 

[Perun]

It is dangerous to do it because changing damage types has a much larger effect on the game than just flavor. Some damage types are very good (Cold, Radiant, Psychic) and some are very bad (Necrotic, Poison, Fire), and powers are, I hope, balanced according to the damage type they use.

In this case I would not allow it because necrotic is a very bad damage type and he would be gimping his character if he changed all his powers to necrotic. He may like the idea, and say he doesn't mind, but he may not realize all the consequences yet and may become very frustrated later down the road.

A possible solution is to give him a sorcerer-esque feature or feat that allows him to ignore 5/10/15 tiered necrotic resistance or something.

Thanks, folks! That's the answer I've been looking for. The question is purely theoretical, I picked necrotic damage randomly.

I wasn't certain if there were "good" and "bad" damage types, I kind of suspected it, but was too lazy to go about checking

Thanks again for the answers!

Regards.