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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James McMurray" data-source="post: 1404556" data-attributes="member: 743">Almost nothing? Turning someone's AC from a 40 to a 20 is "almost nothing". That's odd, it looks like an extra 10+ points of power attack damage to me.  Actually it makes it a must have item. High CR creatures are frequently a challenge because they can't just be power attacked into oblivion by the party fighter. Let's take the Tarrasque as an example, he's a fairly scary CR 20 critter. AC: 35. Touch AC: 5. At 20th level that's an extra 100 points of damage per round that the fighter will be able to output with a full attack. Another example: Great Wyrm Red Dragon. AC: 41. Touch AC: 2. Yet another major difference. Now we'll step away from the reqlly big critters and look at things that have less of their offense put intot heir size (since that's where the big AC penalties come from). Balor: AC 36 (with Unholy Aura). Touch AC 20 (with unholy aura).Pit Fiend: AC 40. Touch AC 17. Need I continue? Alowing touch attacks with a weapon is far from "almost nothing." There is the downside that the weapon cannot harm undead, constructs, or items. So what? Get yourself a sun blade backup for undead, and an adamntium +1 construct bane weapon for constructs and you'll be just fine, but you'll be dealing an extra 10-40 damage against most foes because of your increased abilty to power attack.  Have you seen the average attack bonuses for high level fighters? An AC of 20 means that the chances of missing with all but the last attack are pretty darned slim. And AC 40 is not "nearly impossible to hit" to begin with.  Hence the idea of a backup weapon.  Huh? I don't see anywhere in the item description that says you can't sheathe a briliant energy weapon or that if you drop it is disappears. Yeah, if you toss in house rules that make weapons disappear, you'll probably have to up the power level on them. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Many magical swords that are found will shed light, and can't be put out. How is Brilliant any different from those? If you put it in a sheathe, its light is going to be blocked, just like with any other weapon.  Come play in one of my campaigns at some point. Generally its humanoid foes that are the movers and the shakers, alongside their extraplanar or undead allies. A brilliant energy weapon will be useful about 60% of the time, not so useless about 20% of the time, and completely useless the other 20%. Who bans vorpal now? Nobody I know. And I find it hard to imagaine a group that would contemplating allowing Briallant Energy to ignore natural armor but be worried about the less than one in twenty chance of instant death that vorpal grants.</blockquote>

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