Heroes of Shadow

[Aegeri]

Once again it's important to realize that poison as a damage keyword is quite unique: It actually has non-damaging effects under its purview. Necrotic does not. Even if your power is necrotic and poison, it's irrelevant because the necrotic doesn't count for the non-damaging parts of the power whatsoever. The poison part WILL take over those non-damaging parts of the power - so an immune creature now ignores them.

Noting that the power will gain necrotic + poison, which may matter in the case of a poison immune (but not necrotic anything) creature. It won't be able to resist the poison damage anymore, but the non-damaging effects are still ignored.

 

[TwoSix]

More striker classes fits the party demographic I seem to observe, as the typical party will have at least as many or more strikers in it than any other role. Typical 5-man party is LDCSS, LDSSS, or LDDSS. 6 man parties I've seen are typically LDDCSS, LDCSSS, LDDSSS, LLDDSS, LDSSSS, etc. There does need to be twice as many striker classes as any other role to maintain a healthy variety.

More strikers isn't necessarily a bad thing, there was a pretty good thread on RPG.net which discussed the plausibility of an all-striker party, and it seems to have a lot of unintentionally positive side effects.

Every player is a striker?

 

[Jhaelen]

Did you say you ahve 20 characters?

In our group? Yep.
It's two DMs and eight players with two pcs each!

 

[hbnetto]

"For example, when a creature that is immune to thunder is hit by a power that deals both thunder damage and pushes the target, the creature takes no damage, but the power can still push it So the poison immunity still cancels all the non-damaging portions of the power. Like it or not."

Are we are talking about the same thing? It says poison immunity ignore effects, it doesn't say that poison+whatever damage makes effect be ignored. I didn't get it yet.

 

[Klaus]

If a power has the poison keyword, a creature immune to poison ignores the non-damaging effects, regardless of other keywords, although it still takes damage if the power deals damage with another keyword the creature isn't immune to.

 

[Incenjucar]

Yep. Hence why poison is the worst damage type in the game. Now, you can make it better with the right feats if you have the right character options available to you, and it tends to come with some decent ongoing effects, but if you can't negate resistance and immunity, it's a massive trap. Hopefully, with MM3's design examples, this will become less and less of an issue as the game grows, but as it stands, "necrotic/poison" is just a masochistic combo.

Hopefully 5E will have "toxic" damage that is seperate from the "poison" keyword, or otherwise does away with major immunities.

 

[mudlock]

Effects should have had types, just like damage has.

So like, "You take 5 thunder damage and are weakened (save ends)," thunder immunity protects you from the damage but not the push, as now, but:

"You take 5 thunder damage and are weakened (thunder, save ends)," then thunder immunity would protect you from both.

This is mostly not a problem, barring a few wacky powers (oh god prismatic anything), but being explicit about it in each power's write-up is, I think, a lower-cost solution than these constant rules clarifications and the ensuing debates.

 

[Incenjucar]

Yeah, that's one possible solution. There IS the risk of making powers look too much like flow charts, but they certainly have to work out a way to negate some of these issues in the next edition. I'm not one of the "5th edition to be announced before Mayan doomsday!" people, but I DO hope WotC is taking copious notes for when that time does come.

 

[mudlock]

Yeah, that's one possible solution. There IS the risk of making powers look too much like flow charts, but they certainly have to work out a way to negate some of these issues in the next edition.

It doesn't have to be too complicated. Really, it only needs to be done for poison; illusion and charm powers that do damage always (?) do psychic damage. Maybe the "toxin damage" idea is better.

Actually, considering the already-close tie between them, and the real-world source for necrotic damage, I wonder if it would work to replace all instances of "poison damage" with "necrotic damage", and put poison in the "effects only" box with illusion and charm.

Hmmm.... I'm liking that. Anything it would break?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It doesn't have to be too complicated. Really, it only needs to be done for poison; illusion and charm powers that do damage always (?) do psychic damage. Maybe the "toxin damage" idea is better.

Actually, considering the already-close tie between them, and the real-world source for necrotic damage, I wonder if it would work to replace all instances of "poison damage" with "necrotic damage", and put poison in the "effects only" box with illusion and charm.

Hmmm.... I'm liking that. Anything it would break?

It would probably work pretty well in practice. It would increase the utility of necrotic resistance/immunity a bit, and downgrade the utility of poison immunity some, but then again poison immunity isn't something players can generally get hold of anyway.