D&D 5E Is it just me or does it look like we are getting the "must have feats" once again?

[KarinsDad]

Edited to add: A quick count of the monsters in the Bestiary comes out to 143 monsters (I might be off by one or two). Koprus plus gray oozes plus nine types of demon is 11/143, which is about 8%. So technically speaking, yes, 5-10% of all monsters. But I don't think it counts when most of the monsters on that list are all variants of a single monster type. EA for pyromancers is basically "Your fire spells deal full damage to demons."

Look up Acid Resist, Cold Resist, etc.

I wonder if you will find that the percentage is even lower.

 

[Mistwell]

If I take Elemental Adept and build a pyromancer with a full loadout of fire spells, I will discover to my chagrin that fire resistance is very rare; most creatures are either normally affected by fire or immune to it, and EA is doing pretty much nothing for me.

I am really curious now. Have you, A) Read the Monster Manual and violated yours (or someone else's) Non-Disclosure Agreement, or B) Decided that your best guess as to how prevalent Resistance is in the Monster Manual should be presented as Fact?

None of this discussion makes sense to me until we actually know for a fact that "fire resistance is very rare". So where are you pulling this fact from, an Alpha book covered by an NDA, or your own guessimate based on known-to-be-flawed beta and pre-release products?

In the playtest bestiary,...

Ah, so now we know the answer. You're using the playtest document, which Mearls said was seriously flawed in terms of monsters (I am paraphrasing), and which he said monsters have since then been re-worked. And every product since the playtest document which has shown any monsters had show those monsters to have been re-worked pretty extensively.

Why are you passing off the playtest document as a good indication of how many creatures have something, when we know that of all the things in the playtest, the monsters are the things which most drastically changed since the playtest?

 

[Dausuul]

Look up Acid Resist, Cold Resist, etc.

I wonder if you will find that the percentage is even lower.

Cold resistance: All demons, most devils (Asmodeus, barbed, bone, horned, spined, and pit fiend), storm giant, and gray ooze.

Lightning resistance: All demons, air elemental.

Acid resistance: Water elemental, gray ooze, and ochre jelly.

Thunder resistance: Air elemental.

Cold resistance seems to be the only one that might be common enough to bother with. EA exists to let you play Elsa from "Frozen."

 

[Dausuul]

Ah, so now we know the answer. You're using the playtest document, which Mearls said was seriously flawed in terms of monsters (I am paraphrasing), and which he said monsters have since then been re-worked. And every product since the playtest document which has shown any monsters had show those monsters to have been re-worked pretty extensively.

Why are you passing off the playtest document as a good indication of how many creatures have something, when we know that of all the things in the playtest, the monsters are the things which most drastically changed since the playtest?

Because it's all we have to go on at this time. I have carefully and repeatedly pointed out that things may have changed in the final Monster Manual, and EA might turn out to be more viable if that's the case.

However, IIRC, the green dragon in the Starter Set had full poison immunity, which is not a good sign. I've asked MerricB on his "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" thread whether the blue dragon in that adventure has lightning immunity. If that's the case, I think we can safely take it that dragons at least have full immunity to their respective elements. Dragons are a classic example of a monster whose immunity derives from D&D tradition rather than any obvious fictional necessity--I don't think any non-gamer would bat an eyelash at dragons being resistant rather than immune--so if they're immune, it suggests that the designers were not going to any great lengths to rein in widespread elemental immunity.

 

[doctorhook]

KarinsDad: My better judgement has led me to not respond to most of your post. I'm only interested in trying to make Elemental Adept into a better option.

And if you think that you should go to the name of feats to get a good understanding of their intent instead of looking at the details, then you and I really cannot even discuss it. Do you buy a car based on its name, or based on its features?

Cars are a very poor comparison, because everyone understands what a car should be able to do. Elemental Adept is a creative interpretation of a concept, and as others have pointed out, it fails at accomplishing that concept.

I understand you disagree with our interpretation. You believe this feat accomplishes exactly what it was designed to do: allow a character to overcome a specific type of elemental damage resistance. You agree that this is an underwhelming option, but yet you don't seem to want to talk about fixing it or making it more useful; why not? You've stated that you're not interested in the elemental specialist character concept, which is your business, but do you like having trap-options in your Player's Handbook? I honestly don't understand why you wouldn't want to try to make this feat more useful for your game. At the very least, if you're not interested in fixing it, I can't figure out why you insist on debating others' interest in discussing it.

Elemental theme based PCs are not yet well supported. So, I'm not going to worry about them and I will suggest to any of my players who want a theme and want to plug that hole with Elemental Adept that they would be better off getting a more versatile feat and using a backup damaging spell of some other type (even force damage like Magic Missile) than trying to shoehorn a PC concept into a narrow box which is not yet well supported by the game system. No concept is 100% supported by the game system, so many players adapt. At least my players do. But, adaptation does not require houserules.

That's fine and entirely your business. Since you're not interested in helping create a houserule to fix Elemental Adept, please leave alone those of us who want to discuss doing so until you have a constructive contribution to make. "It sucks; why bother?" (I'm paraphrasing) isn't constructive.

 

[Mistwell]

Because it's all we have to go on at this time. I have carefully and repeatedly pointed out that things may have changed in the final Monster Manual, and EA might turn out to be viable if that's the case.

I believe you that you've mentioned previously you were speaking sticking to what we know from the playtest document. In the post I was replying to however, there was no such explanation.

I do think that penetrating immunity is a bad idea - because it just makes no sense you can do something to make something immune to fire, suddenly harmed by fire. If they were to change anything, it should not be to make things less immune to things they are immune to. That's just purely gamist and doesn't make sense to me.

 

[KarinsDad]

That's fine and entirely your business. Since you're not interested in helping create a houserule to fix Elemental Adept, please leave alone those of us who want to discuss doing so until you have a constructive contribution to make. "It sucks; why bother?" (I'm paraphrasing) isn't constructive.

Yup, that's me. Never make constructive contributions.

 

[TwoSix]

I do think that penetrating immunity is a bad idea - because it just makes no sense you can do something to make something immune to fire, suddenly harmed by fire. If they were to change anything, it should not be to make things less immune to things they are immune to. That's just purely gamist and doesn't make sense to me.

It's an interesting conceptual question, actually. If I make a character who's themed as a pyromancer, should I be terribly ineffective against fire elementals, or should I be really effective against them? There's pretty solid arguments for either approach.

 

[KarinsDad]

Dragons are a classic example of a monster whose immunity derives from D&D tradition rather than any obvious fictional necessity--I don't think any non-gamer would bat an eyelash at dragons being resistant rather than immune--so if they're immune, it suggests that the designers were not going to any great lengths to rein in widespread elemental immunity.

I also think that any non-gamer (or many gamer for that matter) would bat an eyelash at dragons being immune to their respective element.


To me, Dragons are the epitome of D&D monsters. They should be immune. They are DRAGONS!!! (and it doesn't take much to figure out which element that they are immune to).


Same with Fire Efreeti, Water Elementals, etc. But I don't think that devils or demons or a wide variety of other monsters that do not live on elemental planes should. With the exception of Dragons, a very few named NPCs (like certain Demon Lords or such) and a few very specific crafted monsters, mostly only monsters from a given elemental plane should be immune. If WotC followed a model similar to this, then they can have a higher percentage of resist monsters if the immune monsters are rare.

 

[KarinsDad]

It's an interesting conceptual question, actually. If I make a character who's themed as a pyromancer, should I be terribly ineffective against fire elementals, or should I be really effective against them? There's pretty solid arguments for either approach.

There might be arguments for either approach, but one of them is not very solid. It's totally gamist.

There is a fair argument that a pyromancer should do more fire damage than normal casters with the same spell, but if a creature is immune, it's immune. Just because immunity exists in the game system does not mean that being able to ignore that immunity should. Just because an idea can be thought of does not necessarily make it a good idea.