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<blockquote data-quote="WalterKovacs" data-source="post: 5535957" data-attributes="member: 63763">The balance comes in with: &quot;If someone specializes in energy type X, they are getting the mechanical baggage of energy type X&quot;.&nbsp;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 &quot;vulnerability fishing&quot; 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.&nbsp;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.&nbsp;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.]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="WalterKovacs, post: 5535957, member: 63763"] 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.] [/QUOTE]

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