Flaming Weapon Stealth Errata?

[IanB]

It does seem like a RAI sort of change, but I do wonder why it isn't all of the elemental damage weapons.

 

[Aegeri]

It does seem like a RAI sort of change, but I do wonder why it isn't all of the elemental damage weapons.

You expect Wizards post essentials to be consistent? Because that has hardly been the case with the way things have been.

Personally I don't understand this change whatsoever. Unless they update all of the elemental weapons to be similarly restricted, then I simply don't believe this is intended errata.

 

[Tony Vargas]

1) Why make this change? Why is it okay for a Rogue, Fighter or Ranger to effortlessly turn all their attacks into Fire attacks, but implement-users have to blow all their Paragon feats on Arcane Admixture to achieve the same?

A number of reasons. First, implement users tend to have a selection of damage types they can dish out. Picking almost all 'fire' spells isn't that tough for some classes, the Wizard included. Weapon-users almost always do untyped damage, which is it's own trade-off, come up against fewer resistances, benefit from fewer vulnerabilities.

Yes, with a weapon that appends a keyword, a weapon-user can form a cheesy build around that keyword. But, it's just the one weapon. Going that route means giving up any other magic weapon functions you might've liked to have had, and you still can't get the implement-user's versatility in choosing from a variety of damage types, because the 3.5 'golf bag of weapons' just isn't practical in 4e.

So, yes, weapon-users and implement users are still a teeny bit different in this one little corner-case.

Just pick lots of fire spells for your implement powers, and use the sword's function with your weapon powers.

 

[IanB]

What I mean by a "RAI" sort of change is that it is the sort of change that probably reflects what the guy who originally sat down and made flaming weapons meant for them to do. They predate people who could use them as implements, after all. EDIT: Well, maybe not, staff/wizard. But I never felt like that particular thing was particularly well thought out.

If they end up changing it back I'll seriously consider house ruling them all to be this way personally (assuming I ever get around to running a game again), it feels like the right way for them to work to me.

 

[kaomera]

[MENTION=38357]kaomera[/MENTION]: If powers were natively given keywords for balance, instead of fluff, reasons your argument would make some kind of sense. But they give them keywords purely for fluff reasons, not mechanical ones, for the most part.

Why the keyword is applied to a power doesn't matter, they are evaluated and balanced with that keyword in place. And as I said that should make cherry-picking elemental types overpowered, because 4e balance is supposed to be that good. And if I thought it was that good I wouldn't have suggested that I thought it was perfectly reasonable to allow the weapons to function as previous at least until the end of the current campaign, provided no-one who isn't a pyromancer gets ahold of easy / free ability to ignore fire resist / fire immunity. (And I'll buy that this isn't an issue - I haven't looked too closely at the feats for swapping out features from the article that went up the other day, certainly not close enough to know if and / or how they can be broken. And even if you could grab the pyromancer benefit this could be reasonable - I'm just saying that without further information / evidence I think it's reasonable without it.)

But I still don't like having your magic flaming sword change the keywords of your attacks. IMO it's "cheesy" in that it's an effect that I wouldn't expect to come from having a sword that lights on fire - it's purely a rules contrivance so far as I see things, so far. So the above assumes I'm being a lazy DM (and so far I definitely have been) and would prefer to fall back on something much closer to rules as written, rather than try and convince players to accept the way I feel the rules actually make sense.

 

[Aulirophile]

Why the keyword is applied to a power doesn't matter, they are evaluated and balanced with that keyword in place. And as I said that should make cherry-picking elemental types overpowered, because 4e balance is supposed to be that good. And if I thought it was that good I wouldn't have suggested that I thought it was perfectly reasonable to allow the weapons to function as previous at least until the end of the current campaign, provided no-one who isn't a pyromancer gets ahold of easy / free ability to ignore fire resist / fire immunity. (And I'll buy that this isn't an issue - I haven't looked too closely at the feats for swapping out features from the article that went up the other day, certainly not close enough to know if and / or how they can be broken. And even if you could grab the pyromancer benefit this could be reasonable - I'm just saying that without further information / evidence I think it's reasonable without it.)

But I still don't like having your magic flaming sword change the keywords of your attacks. IMO it's "cheesy" in that it's an effect that I wouldn't expect to come from having a sword that lights on fire - it's purely a rules contrivance so far as I see things, so far. So the above assumes I'm being a lazy DM (and so far I definitely have been) and would prefer to fall back on something much closer to rules as written, rather than try and convince players to accept the way I feel the rules actually make sense.

That is speculation... and bizarre speculation, at that. There is zero evidence that powers are in any way balanced with their keywords in mind. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

And it is actually the other way around. Being able to convert types makes several builds barely competitive, being forced into either bad spells or ignoring your whole shtick being the other options, are both very bad choices.

 

[WalterKovacs]

What I mean by a "RAI" sort of change is that it is the sort of change that probably reflects what the guy who originally sat down and made flaming weapons meant for them to do. They predate people who could use them as implements, after all. EDIT: Well, maybe not, staff/wizard. But I never felt like that particular thing was particularly well thought out.

Actually, as of PHB1, not only was staff the only "weapliment", but only Staff enchantments counted as staff implements (while also being a magic quarterstaff). A weapon enchantment on a quarterstaff would not be a magic staff implement.

So, until the swordmage (and then sorceror, etc) there were no implements able to switch the damage type of implement powers, and the fact that there are basically no implement echantments that do that (except for a few like Staff of Acid and Flame, or Hellfire Staff, that are much more restrictive than frost weapons and the like). The "idea" behind a flaming weapon (or similar elemental weapons) seem to be that the weapon damage would become fire ... it also seemed a bit "cheesy" to have it work as an implement modifer (especially since they seem to go out of their way to NOT give those kinds of properties to 'normal' implements). The 'flavor' of the flaming weapon fits better now, I could see them doing that with all the other elemental weapons.

The keywords on powers aren't just fluff ... they interact with feats and class features AND the riders on the powers are often thematically tied. A cold power is more likely to slow or immobilize. A fire or acid power will often have ongoing damage. Poison weakens. Radiant blinds, etc ... Having a pyromancer, for example, grabbing just the best damage dealing powers for a wizard, and then turning all the damage types to fire would get MUCH better rider effects than having to pick natural fire powers. Natural fire powers generally deal damage, with some ongoing damage or conditional damage riders. They aren't likely to throw out blinding, stunning, dazing, and other great control effects. Even Acid powers (that they can get via Staff of Acid and Flame) or melee/close powers (Hellfire Staff) at least leaves some powers that can't be made into fire powers.

Not to mention the other effect ... the "all damage is cold damage" of the frost weapon also means that it removes the previous damage type. So necrotic/fire/poison damage types, which are expected to run into resistance on occaision suddenly gets to get around that easily. People may like that, but it does presume that no one even considers the damage type issue when creating powers (which might be quesitonable).

I will say, however, that the stealth errata where it just gets put in there without telling anyone OR explaining the change, is not the way to go about it. If it is something they want to change, go all the way and explain why ... because if it is "we don't want implement users to have this", than we at least know. (The whole "weapons as implement benefiting from stuff meant for weapons" thing has always seemed like something unintended they let slide, so a lot of things were designed on what turned out to be false assumptions.)

 

[garyh]

Given that I'm in the middle of planning a tiefling pyromancer, this makes me very, very, VERY mad. This is a really, really horrible nerf. If someone wants to take an expensive for it's + item that does a single thing (convert powers to fire), I don't see the problem.

 

[Kinneus]

Given that I'm in the middle of planning a tiefling pyromancer, this makes me very, very, VERY mad.

Tell me about it. My planned Swordmage/Wizard was a Tiefling, too. Seriously, I conceived of this guy on Monday, built him on Tuesday, and then had my dreams dashed to pieces on Wednesday.

Anyway... as to the other posters' concerns, like I said, I can understand this errata in a vacuum. What gets me is that they recently issued errata to specifically allow this sort of thing, and now they're backpedalling. Also, I simply don't find claims that allowing a implement-user to choose their damage type is "overpowered." Most of the wackiness that comes from optimizing for damage types comes from feats, and weapon-users qualify for those same feats. Like I said... if this is "overpowered," why was Flaming Weapon changed, but Frost Weapons and "Frostcheese" - which have been around since day one - have not?

 

[WalterKovacs]

That is speculation... and bizarre speculation, at that. There is zero evidence that powers are in any way balanced with their keywords in mind. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

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.