Cold Iron Brilliant Energy Longsword?

[XO]

Living Tissue (a parenthesis)

If brillant-energy ignores any non-living material, would it not ignore dragon scales ? Presuming such to be horn / nail type material, that is DEAD material as opposed to living !

So is horn (with some bony exceptions), nail, hair, hoof, etc...

 

[Ferret]

I wouldn't allow it, cos it doesn't seem right. If it was called ghost weapon, or something, that didn't turn it into a piece of energy, but made it go shimmery and 'fade'.

It must really be a pisser to put in its sheath.

What if the scabbad is living? Living metal!

 

[Lela]

Hmmmmmm, how does Brilliant Energy affect DR x/Bludgening, x/Piercing, or x/Slashing? I don't have my book with me but I don't recall that part changing.

And Felix, I think you may have hit it on the head. It's not considered energy damage or a force effect. It simply passes through non-living substances. Once it gets to the live matter it slashes, bludgeons, or peirces just like any other weapon.

 

[Wolf72]

It must really be a pisser to put in its sheath.

Mine comes with an on/off switch ... I don't know what problem y'all are hav ... "AAAHHH"

*wolf forgets to turn brilliant energy switch to off, ... again*

 

[Lela]

*Lela chases after rolling head*

 

[Majere]

There is no reason in the RULES the actual written RULES that states that you cant have a cold iron brilliant energy weapon. Or an adamantite or mithril or whatever brilliant energy weapon.
People are reading far to much into the flavour text.

In the RULES AS WRITTEN there is no effect on weapons other than those stated.
In particular NOWHERE is it stated that a weapon made of special materials loses the properties of those materials. There is no such suggestion in any part of the text either, infact there is nothing written to support the idea you cannot have a brilliant energy weapon made of a special material, or that such a weapon loses its ability to bypass DR.

And if you insist on pointing me back to the flavour text I will point you to a dictionary.
Significant amount is not equivalent to all, a nonzero amount of the original blade (and the special material it was made of) still is present.

Majere

 

[UltimaGabe]

If brillant-energy ignores any non-living material, would it not ignore dragon scales ? Presuming such to be horn / nail type material, that is DEAD material as opposed to living !

So is horn (with some bony exceptions), nail, hair, hoof, etc...

According to the game producers, the "passes through non-living matter" clause is purely a flavor description. In game mechanics, it ignores Armor Bonuses and Shield Bonuses, and nothing else. For this game-mechanic reason, it even ignores Bracers of Armor, even though there's no other game reason it should.

I posted a topic about this a few months back. The way it is, Brilliant Energy is NOT worth the cost, no matter what- unless you routinely fight humanoid enemies in enchanted Full Plate and Tower Shields- which, if you do, something's wrong with your DM. Against monsters, monks, or casters, it's no more useful than if you didn't have it. Against undead or constructs (or bashing down a door, or sundering, or anything along those lines), it's WORSE than if you didn't have the enchantment- no matter what, your weapon is WORTHLESS against those kinds of opponents, and there's NOTHING you can do about it. Even if you have a Merciful weapon, you can turn it off. A Holy weapon against a good foe simply provides no bonus, but other enchantments apply. Brilliant Energy, however, makes your weapon useless, regardless of its other enchantments or prior composition, and there's nothing you can do to fix it.

Like I said, it's only worth the +4 in extremely limited situations. One fix I've found is to either lower the enchantment bonus to a +3 (and make it turn-off-able), or to instead have it strike as an incorporeal touch- it would bypass armor, natural armor, and shield bonuses, but wouldn't get past Ghost Touch armor or Bracers of Armor (or any other force effect, such as a Wall of Force of a Mage Armor spell). Otherwise, it's useless. Honestly.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

There is no reason in the RULES the actual written RULES that states that you cant have a cold iron brilliant energy weapon. Or an adamantite or mithril or whatever brilliant energy weapon.
People are reading far to much into the flavour text.

That's only because you're looking at the wrong rules.

Items without metal parts cannot be made from adamantine. An arrow could be made of adamantine, but a quarterstaff could not.

Items without metal parts cannot be made from cold iron.

Brilliant Energy: A brilliant energy weapon has its significant portion transformed into light, although this does not modify the item’s weight.

In other words, if it's a Brilliant Energy weapon, the "significant portion" of the weapon is transformed into light.

If the signifant part of the weapon is made out of light, then the weapon no longer has a significant part made out of metal. If the weapon does not have a significant part made out of metal, then it cannot be made out of Cold Iron or Adamantine, unless you want to follow the rules established with darkwood, which state:

. Items not normally made of wood or only partially of wood (such as a battleaxe or a mace) either cannot be made from darkwood or do not gain any special benefit from being made of darkwood.

 

[Deset Gled]

In other words, if it's a Brilliant Energy weapon, the "significant portion" of the weapon is transformed into light.

If the signifant part of the weapon is made out of light, then the weapon no longer has a significant part made out of metal. If the weapon does not have a significant part made out of metal, then it cannot be made out of Cold Iron or Adamantine, unless you want to follow the rules established with darkwood, which state:

Of course, the fact that it is made out of light (not metal) is also rather inconvenient in that light is not solid. Since you have no solid blade (just rather heavy light), it can never actually hit anything. You just kind of swing it around and look at the pretty shadows.

The above is, of course, ridiculus, but if what you claim were completely true, it would be as well. The bottom line is that you can't expect a magic weapon to follow real life physics.

It is obvious from the weapon description that some properties of the original weapon's material have to remain the same. Unfortunately, the only one that is spelled out is weight. Most people would assume that other mundane properties such as damage type (slashing, etc) also remain the same. Since it gives no statement to the contrary, I can see no reason why the weapon's damage reduction properties would not remain the same. There is no pure proof of this, but it is both the simplest (as interpreting it other ways gets into the strangeness above) and most balanced way of doing things. At the same time, there is no actual proof that what you are stating is true. But since the proof you give leads to unrealistic situations, I see it as an arguement against your side rather than for it.

 

[Taloras]

Is energy the same as cold iron? I would say no. But thats just me.

As for getting it into the sheathe....I always saw it as an activation.....like a light saber. Which is how I use my soul knife's mind blade......everyone thought it was a light saber when my 1st level soul knife just had this glowing blue blade appear.