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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mneme" data-source="post: 5540592" data-attributes="member: 59248">Why?Let's hit that point first: If every single power with a given type had the same baggage, it would be bad design.Characters are better if they can do different things.  It's usually (barring features that grant a great benefit from doing the same thing over and over again, like damage bonuses and/or crit optimization plus multi-attacks) better to have different attacks that do different things,  so you can choose them situationally rather than being stuck doing the same thing over and over again throughout a fight.The same is true for damage types and defenses--it's better to hit different defenses, and to do different damage types, so you can pick attacks to avoid traps and hit vulnerabilities.So...tying a damage type to an effect to a defense as you suggest would not only be boring; it would also be bad design; when taking a character who focused on a particular damage type, you'd be completely sacrificing all other flexibility.By contrast -- presuming a finite number of effects, it's fine to have a -trend- towards a particular effect type or effect types associated with an element (or, for that matte,r a trend towards a particular defense).  Fire effects tend to hit an area, tend to do moar damage rather than inflict control effects, tend to inflict ongoing "I'm on fire" damage, tend to be (like all the elements) "all creatures" effects, and tend to target Reflex.  Lightning effects tend to affect a single target, inflict status effects, target reflex, and cascade. Cold tends to drop zones, inflict movement-based status effects like immobilzie and slow, etc.Sure, not all appropriate effects follow all the iconic marks -- Shroud of Fire can tell friend from foe and targets Fort; Freezing Burst targets reflex and is an area burst power.  But as long as the number and quality of such exceptions is limited, this still makes an "ice mage" feel substantially different from a "fire mage" or "lightning mage."Now, this principle is aside from the love affair that Wizards apparently has with cold.  Cold gets more or less all the goodies --- the best burst 1 at will (high damage + type + bunch-up effect), the best feat chain (frostcheese) the excellent combination of real control effects combined with good damage and area spells, etc.  Compare to Fire (which has the best level 1 daily and Fire Shroud, but not a lot else that's worthwhile in some levels, except for good damage-on-miss area spells now) or lightning (which tends towards single target spells without an accompanying advantage to make it worthwhile to take all these single target spells).</blockquote>

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