Chilling Cloud & Magic Missile interaction with Empowering Lightning (Answered)

[Logosync]

I asked Wizards to answer this one and I have gotten a response, so I thought I would share it with the folks on this forum.

I asked this question:

Empowering Lightning's text modifies Wand of Accuracy to have it grant a damage bonus to an attack's damage roll.
Does Chilling Cloud's damage qualify as a damage roll for this bonus? How about Magic Missile? No dice are actually rolled for the damage of these attacks, but I'm inclined to think the WoA damage bonus from Empowering Lightning should still apply if WoA is used on the attack.

I got this response:

If you do not do a damage roll then powers that give bonus to damage rolls would not apply.

 

[Camelot]

I'm guessing you posted this because you weren't sure of the answer. And if you're unsure about the answer, then it must be wrong...for you. Go with your gut, and you can change your houserule if playtesting proves something different. If you're a player, well, just go with what the DM says.

I would probably grant the bonus, as it doesn't affect average damage differently, I don't think.

 

[Logosync]

Thanks for the advice, going with your gut feel is a great plan especially while actively in a game session. Nevertheless, there's no harm in educating oneself on Wizards' technical game design intents. I posted this so the next curious person looking for this answer on the web can have a better shot than I at finding it.

More interesting than what happens with these particular abilities is the more general conclusion which can be drawn from this ruling. There is no implicit 0d# damage roll on powers whose effect text on hit deals damage without rolling a die.

 

[mneme]

This is well known here -- powers that don't have a damage roll generally have terrible damage (and in theory, at least, the point of them is the effect, with just enough damage to knock off minions who don't have resistance). A more interesting question is whether granting them rolled "extra" damage (for instance, today's Half Giant Thug's daily stance, which lets you do static damage to adjacent creatures, plus 1W to those you have combat advantage against 1/turn when you hit) makes it a damage roll that you get bonuses to rolled damage (in this case, non-keyword based) on.

 

[WalterKovacs]

The general rule is that effects that would normally add to damage refers to rolling for damage, and thus won't apply to static effects. With the errata to Magic Missle, they made sure to include a "special" trait which increases the damage by the enhancement bonus of the implement, and also errata'd the items which had previously increased the damage of Magic Missle to make sure it does increase the damage to the no-dice for damage version. However, those are all worded to get around the rule which makes it generally not work.