Flaming Weapon Stealth Errata?

[Aegeri]

Hence, we have illogical things such as pyromancers that can burn fire elementals. Whether this is because of some deep-seated desire to appeal to the punters, or to ensure that organised play functions no matter what is brought to the table, or some other reason, it is, IMHO, the crux of the problem.

While true, many of these creatures take the punishment off resistances and put it onto other mechanisms. Your pyromancer poisons the entire party when he attacks a Volcanic Dragon, or causes a fire elemental to inflict automatic damage on his allies. These mechanics are actually far better than resistances and immunities: Because they have more tactical interest and relevance.

I am a great fan of powers as a form of resistance, such as attacking a shambling mound with a lightning power makes it take an action immediately. Reducing damage is boring, but doing something that has a real impact on the game without just rendering a power less effective (unless you take a feat tax or are the right class) is much more interesting.

 

[Aulirophile]

There are effects commonly tied thematically to damage types. Ditto with tying defense targetted and type of damage.

Cold, Necrotic, Poison? Probably Fortitude quite often. Psychic? Almost always against Will. Fire is often against Reflex.

Want to slow something or immobilize it? Cold is the most common source of that ... fire, not so much. Want to weaken something? Necrotic or Poison is more likely to do that than radiant. Now, blinding or dazing something ... that does fit with radiant a bit more often than cold or acid.

It's not always that way, but if you are a pyromancer, and you have to stick with "natural" fire powers ... you are going to be getting most of your riders being conditional damage (making a zone that deals damage if people enter it) or ongoing damage ... but less dazing, slowing, stunning, forced movement, etc, etc, etc ...

With a feat and a flaming dagger, voila, you get to pick ANY power you want (well, nearly any, it has to deal some damage) and you can make sure you ALWAYS get past resistance, get the best rider effects you can find, and get all the fire boosting riders. And you can grab stuff that targets will and fortitude to be able to have a good mix of defenses to target, instead of taking the "drawback" of specializing by targeting Reflex exclusively, or giving up on fire damage.

The "cost" for a pyromancer to specialize is a feat for arcane implement prof and grabbing a flaming item. Then they can make nearly EVERY power be part of their school.

If it was always intended that implement users can use these kinds of items ... wouldn't it have made sense to have given them implements that do this instead of requiring them to get a weapliment? And of course, screwing over divine, primal and psionic characters (outside of the primals that can use spears as implements) since they don't get arcane implement proficiency to grab a flaming/frost/lightning weapon. [I would love for a weapon that makes the damage thunder, and then be able to increase EVERY damaing burst/blast with the paragon feat]. A lot of stuff, especially stuff from the first book, (remember weapon focus staff for bonus damage ... they FINALLY made implement focus after how long?) seemed to shrug and accept that what they actually wrote didn't do what has intended. They are STILL erratta'ing stuff from the PHB (only with the marshall did they format commander's strike correctly).

Have people been designing powers and class features, and feats, etc ... with the assumption that people can pick up weapliments to just get the energy type they want? Some powers may be that way, but others don't seem that way as much.

And.... that has what to do with balance? Actually you proved my point: keywords have nothing to do with balance, and everything to do with thematics: also known as fluff. Let me take you through the process. "I want this power to slow. OK, we usually do that for Cold powers. So this is Cold. Cold powers target Reflex." Where does the question of balance come into that? It doesn't.

Considering it has been this way for a year now? Yeah, I'd say they knew about it... and it they wanted to revise it they'd revise all elemental weapons. Argument doesn't hold up.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

Still, whether Living FR, Living 4th, or a random home game, I don't think assuming the DM can and will hand-wave things is a good idea.

Agreed. For a "random home game", one doesn't or shouldn't assume anything. Hence, my recommendation for the DM-player discussion. Even though I suspect that the majority of posters on ENWorld are DMs (or are usually DMs), I do see "player entitlement" arguments on these boards relatively frequently. Normally, I let them slide - as my post count vs. my length of membership will attest - but I gotta say I'm not enamoured of the argument "they changed the description of this one item that my whole character concept was based on, and it undermines the whole thing and makes it useless". I grok the "but they didn't do it to these other similar items; they've taken my cheddar, but they're leaving blue vein on the table; they're being inconsistent" argument. Yep. Darn right. I didn't see any guarantee of fairness or consistency either in life or on the D&D packet. The D&D 4E rules - like the D&D 3E rules before them - are a patchwork sewn roughly over the holes in the patches burnt through when the patchwork quilt dropped on the bar heater. C'est la vie. YMMV etc.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[WalterKovacs]

And.... that has what to do with balance? Actually you proved my point: keywords have nothing to do with balance, and everything to do with thematics: also known as fluff. Let me take you through the process. "I want this power to slow. OK, we usually do that for Cold powers. So this is Cold. Cold powers target Reflex." Where does the question of balance come into that? It doesn't.

The balance comes in with: "If someone specializes in energy type X, they are getting the mechanical baggage of energy type X".

If you go with fire based powers, you aren't getting the effects of cold based attacks. If there were absolutely no feats or class features that interacted with energy types, then it would just be fluff. However, that's not the case. If nothing else, the balance is basically this: Not every power has every keyword (or the same keyword). So, if you specialize, there is a price attached, you can't just use ANY power at all. [Also, if they do update all the elemental weapons, this would mean that, at least for non-martial classes, there will be some powers they can't automatically convert to cold/radiant since they have untyped damage. The reason for that could be simply to make it so that people can't go "vulnerability fishing" by having say a fire power they can change to cold, and thus if they are fighting say ... giants, having the same power be usable against Frost Giants and Fire Giants.

Presumably, the idea that sometimes you fight a troll, and sometimes you fight a Red Dragon, that the 'risk/reward' of having an energy type balances out over time ... and being able to just change that energy type easily diminishes that.

Again ... I'm just speculting. However, they DID change the wording on flaming weapon, in a printed book. That's all we know at this point ... and it went unnoticed until now. [Of course, they ALSO haven't followed up on other overhauls of magic items from Essentials ... there are very few rare or common items, the rarity system would have similarly curbed a lot of frost cheese and similar concepts since the system would inherently require DM permission to function ... at the very least, a DM would be unlikely to equip an entire party with frost/radiant weapons.]

 

[TheUltramark]

first off [MENTION=48215]Kinneus[/MENTION] - if you were at our table, and I was DM, I'd let you do it.

second, it's been my experience that the 'cooler' a player thinks his "build" is, the lamer it actually is once its put in the game. (Not always ! )
It's one thing to be creative on the sheet, but another thing entirely to be creative on the grid

 

[Incenjucar]

Honestly, this is one of those "cat is out of the bag" things. Magic weapons only enhancing martial-style attacks was probably what they intended all along, and making things work that way again would probably clean up a lot of balance issues, not to mention make much more room for new options to fulfill a similar function. The thing is, the ability to change the damage type of your spells has been around for SO long that it's going to cause a lot of problems to fix it now, especially without releasing equivalent implements.

 

[aurance]

Incidentally, I never understood why it makes more sense for something made of elemental fire to be automatically assumed to be immune to fire attack. They could be two different "types" of fantasy fire. The fire of the attack can certainly be a "foreign body" and therefore quite possibly harmful. After all, rock smashed into rock doesn't make the rock stronger, right?

 

[Aegeri]

I don't know what world you live in, but I happen to be made of flesh and so I am firmly immune to other things made of flesh. Let me just pick a fight with this kung fu master over here to prove my point.

BRB.

 

[eamon]

This is not a good errata. The aim of errata should not be to turn 4e into what it ideal should have been (call that 4.5, if you need to), it should be to make necessary fixes.

It's bad for players because nobody likes their rug pulled out from under them. It's bad for DM's because it's inconsistent. Particularly global changes are bad. Some errata are bad because they introduce extra complexity (like the awful free action errata) or affect a broad range of other rules without real need (like the expertise-is-a-feat-bonus errata).

In this case, errata was not needed and thus should not have occured. There was nothing unclear or illogical that needed fixing; and if anything the new rule is even less logical. If indeed this was felt necessary due to the pyromancer (I've never seen one in play and can't comment), then the fix should have been to the pyromancer and thus at least avoid collateral damage. For example, the pyromancer's resistance-defeating feature could have been fixed to include something along the lines of "You can only ignore the resistance to damage types a power normally deals; damage types added by means of feats or items are resisted by the target as normal".

I'm with Kinneus: blunt instruments aren't appropriate for errata.

 

[garyh]

There's two other factors that also make it odd.

1) They continue to tinker with PHB1 rules elements three years later (as mentioning with Come and Get It in the fighter threads). C'mon, guys, give it a rest!

2) Why is it okay for me to use a flame staff to make Scare or Stone Blood fire damage, but not Winged Horde or Freezing Burst? If they REALLY wanted to stop implement power energy-type changing, this is an odd way to do it (on top of only doing it for one energy).