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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WalterKovacs" data-source="post: 5536794" data-attributes="member: 63763">Untyped damage starts off doing well untyped damage. It isn't going to trigger resistances or vulnerabilities (unless it's "all"). I could be wrong, but I don't think there are any, or at least very many, monsters with vulnerability untyped, or resistance untyped. On the other hand, freezing burst deals cold damage. If you can switch back and forth between it being either fire or cold, you are more likely to be able to have the right power to hit a creatures vulnerability. Against a troll? Make it fire. Against a FLAMING troll? Wow, suddenly this cold comes in handy, so I'll just turn the fire off.  They do have some fire based attacks and some untyped damage attacks. True, the theme would now restrict their power choice.   Well sure. If you have a flaming weapon you cry ... until you turn it off and all your powers go back to their original damage type. And you are now fine against those fire immune creatures. So the "thematic" fire swordmage is able to just stop being fire based when it's convenient. And building around an element using a weapon ends up being what? Grab the feats to be able to use the weapon as an implement (if necessary), grab some feats to boost that element and ... grab any powers you want since you can just make them into that element if you want. If anything, it's better to pick powers that DON'T have that element since you can't turn "off" the fire on those powers.   In "sanctioned" games where the DM plays it by the book yes. It's possible that a DM will basically allow it ... so long as the player's don't go to the extremes and abuse the power. It does suck that it eliminates fun reflavoring of powers, but there are lots of other tricks out there that aren't about flavor and fun. EDIT: Ultimately, for people with 'inherent' elemental attacks, they have two options (ditto with attacks that target different defenses): They can specialize. If you focus on cold powers and targeting Fort, for example, feats that improve your cold powers and hurt your opponent's fort, etc ... will be more useful because they will apply more often. However, if you run into enemies with high fort or cold resistance ... you are going to be less effective.  OR, they can be versatile. They can have the whole spectrum of energy types and all three defenses as their options. They are less likely to get caught with their pants down against resistant enemies, and if an enemy has a vulnerability, they probably have a power that hits it. Similarly, if they can figure out the lowest defense, they'll be able to target it. However, any feats/items that boost specific types of powers would be less useful, since they would only apply to a few powers. With a flaming/frost/radiant weapon you would have the ability to do both. At least with the flaming weapon's new wording, you can go with the first one... and you do have the benefit of turning it off against resistant enemies BUT you lose the big bonus from versatility (at least the "you probably have the right damage type they are vulnerable to" part) since your options are fire or untyped.</blockquote>

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