Magic Item Keywords Question Answered

[Seeker_of_Truth]

The rediculous thing about this interpretation is that it leaves some of the most powerful uses of keyword inheritance in the game, but only for some characters. Meleers are free to exploit this rule to no end, but casters are left in 3.x era?

It doesn't prevent implement users from using similar tricks, it just doesn't force all items to have strange keyword side effects. Invent a "Wand of Frost" if you want with a similar at-will power to that of a weapon of frost. This is a much better solution because it "plays nice". You can add magic implements using this interpretation that don't affect every spell cast with them.

 

[Rith the Wanderer]

It doesn't prevent implement users from using similar tricks, it just doesn't force all items to have strange keyword side effects. Invent a "Wand of Frost" if you want with a similar at-will power to that of a weapon of frost. This is a much better solution because it "plays nice". You can add magic implements using this interpretation that don't affect every spell cast with them.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw these in a supplement of some sort. They wouldn't be the ridiculousness that is adding effect keywords like fear, and they wouldn't be adding several keywords that allow for abuse of keyword feats. Lastly they would actually be balanced with that in mind, we won't have people running around with wands that have spells they don't really care about just to get the keywords attached.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

You see, this does not fix the problem that is being claimed. The frost/falming/lightning weapons can abuse the wintertouched/lasting frost combo every attack. It is at will. So the meleers are left with what many consider to be a huge rules loophole, and casters are not. The implements are supposed to be the arcane equivalent to a melee weapon. They function in basicaly the same way mechanically. Allowing the meleers to use this loophole but not casters is plain stupid. Adding wands that have the At-Wills of the elemental weapons just bring us basically back to what many of the people that objected to the RAW disiked about the whole thing.

So by this rule, a rogue can spam the wintertouched/lasting frost combo with his trusty frost rapier every attack he makes, as long as he uses a class or racial power and the frost at-will is on. Combat advantage every round and the enemy has vulnerability to cold 5, so 5 extra damage per hit. He can do this with any of his class or racial powers, so we have

[SBLOCK=Riposte Strike]Riposte Strike Rogue Attack 1
At-Will - Martial, Weapon, Cold
Standard Action Melee weapon
Requirement: You must be wielding a light blade.
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Dexterity modifier damage. If the target attacks
you before the start of your next turn, you make your
riposte against the target as an immediate interrupt: a
Strength vs. AC attack that deals 1[W] + Strength modifier
damage.
Increase damage to 2[W] + Dexterity modifier and riposte to
2[W] + Strength modifier at 21st level.[/SBLOCK]

Moderate damage at-will that can be spammed every round, and likely maintains sneak attack damage every round. Up to two attacks, granting combat advantage, both do an extra 5 damage because the foe has vulnerability to cold 5. All damage is cold. This is OK by the text, and can be repeated ad nausiem.

[SBLOCK=Cloud of Steel]Cloud of Steel Rogue Attack 7
Encounter - Martial, Weapon, cold
Standard Action Close blast 5
Requirement: You must be wielding a crossbow, a light
thrown weapon, or a sling.
Target: Each enemy in blast you can see
Attack: Dexterity vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Dexterity modifier damage. Miss: Half damage, and no ongoing damage. [/SBLOCK]

Area of effect for moderate damage, and probably some sneak attack damage added in. Every enemy within 5 square can be attacked, all damage is cold, they are given vulnerability to cold, you get combat advantage against them next turn, and the cycle can be repeated on any that you continue to attack the next round. OK by the ruling.

[SBLOCK=Snake's Retreat]Snake’s Retreat Rogue Attack 19
Daily - Martial, Weapon, cold
Standard Action Melee or Ranged weapon
Requirement: You must be wielding a crossbow, a light blade,
or a sling.
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity vs. AC
Hit: 6[W] + Dexterity modifier damage.
Effect: When the target makes a melee attack or a ranged
attack against you, you can shift 1 square as an immediate
interrupt. The target can make a saving throw to end this
effect. [/SBLOCK]

Large damage, made larger by automatic sneak attack damage. Attack and move out of enemies way, do cold damage, give vulnerability to cold 5, get combat advantage next turn. Just fine by ruling.

[SBLOCK=Eldritch Blast]Eldritch Blast Warlock (All) Attack 1
At-Will - Arcane, Implement, Cold
Standard Action Ranged 10
Target: One creature
Attack: Charisma or Constitution vs. Reflex
Hit: 1d10 + Charisma or Constitution modifier damage.
Increase damage to 2d10 + Charisma or Constitution
modifier at 21st level.
Special: At 1st level. you determine whether you use Cha-
risma or Constitution to attack with this power. Once you
make that choice, you can’t change it later.
This power counts as a ranged basic attack. When a
power allows you to make a ranged basic attack, you can
use this power. [/SBLOCK]

Moderate damage, doesn't interact with curse, but can be spammed. You cannot do this by the ruling. If you could, it would give combat advantage with wintertouched, but not to the advantage that the rogue gets. Vulnerability to cold 5 is good, but ruling says no.

[SBLOCK=Fire Burst]Fire Burst Wizard Attack 7
Encounter - Arcane, Fire, Implement, cold
Standard Action Area burst 2 within 20 squares
Target: Each creature in burst
Attack: Intelligence vs. Reflex
Hit: 3d6 + Intelligence modifier fire damage. [/SBLOCK]

Area of effect for moderate damage, but combat advantage doesn't add a great deal. Can't do this by ruling either. Why is it possible to do cold with a weapon, but not do cold and fire with a magical spell? I see no reason that this should be limited. Still, the lasting frost/wintertouched feat combo looks good with this, but definitely not to the degree to which the rogue can take advantage of this. Casters get the suck, meleers get a huge boost.

[SBLOCK=Disintegrate]Disintegrate Wizard Attack 19
Daily - Arcane, Implement, cold
Standard Action Ranged 10
Target: One creature or object
Attack: Intelligence vs. Reflex
Special: You don’t need to make an attack roll to hit an
unattended object with this power.
Hit: 5d10 + Intelligence modifier damage, and ongoing 10
damage (save ends). If the target saves, it takes ongoing 5
damage (save ends).
Miss: 3d10 + Intelligence modifier damage, and ongoing 5
damage (save ends). [/SBLOCK]

Single target big damage. no interaction with combat advantage, so no extra dice. Making this cold doesn't do much except enable the wintertouched/lasting frost combo. This is not allowable under the FAQ ruling. Why no cold disintigrate combo?


Seems to me like the things that people were calling cheese are still in, but the casters just don't get to do them. Rip off. I didn't try to find any game breaking combos for either set of powers. I just wanted to show a few legitimate uses of the ruling, and compare to some that are not allowed. The ones that are not allowed are not any more powerful than the allowable ones. In fact, besides the Doomsayer, I think that the rogue would get the most out of keyword inheritance, and they get that with the current nerfed ruling.

I have never claimed that the Doomsayer was perfectly ballanced. In fact, I have stated that any mechanic that allows or requires multiple rolls will disrupt the math of the game. That is not the fault of the keyword inheritance. That is it's own issue, and will not be solved by limiting keyword inheritance to meleers. As it stands, some of the most powerful mechanics in the game include a double roll (twin strike - ranger, foresight and terrifying insight - divine oracle, elven accuracy - elf, doomsayers proclamation - doomsayer). The keyword inheritance only interacts with two of these, and one get's it with the current ruling.

It just strikes me as stupid to limit this to weapon using classes, and say that a magical change in effect and damage is OK with weapons, while a magical change in effect and damage is game breaking/bad fluff for implements. Why can't spells be manipulated with magic, when combat techniques can?

This change in rule doesn't eliminate any cheese, doesn't fix any of the potentially broken aspects of the system, favors a certain subset of options and increases the necessity of system mastery, doesn't improve fluff, and makes it obvious that the rulebooks were badly edited. What is WotC's motivation?

 

[Rith the Wanderer]

I think granting combat advantage to rogues every turn is a very optimized combo. I don't think its game breaking, as rogues are supposedly intended to have it almost every turn anyway.

I think applying a -2 to all enemies attacks, having a larger area, gaining a +2 to a defense of your choice, and forcing enemies to reroll on every single save, for every single attack, is ridiculous.

I think allowing casters to deal half cold damage or half fire damage, or whatever, on spells while using an implement specifically designed to allow that would be perfectly fine, game balance and fluff-wise. The casters/meleers who choose this route will be limited in that they have to pick a weapon with that ability, and it will only be allowing one damage type (with a common resistance, if the PHB weapons are any indication) and the feats going with that damage type (not several of them).

Adding effect keywords (which, despite what your post says, is in fact disallowed by this ruling) is ridiculous. You shouldn't have a disintegrate that is fear, or a fireball that is charm. Also, you shouldn't have a spell absorbing random keywords just because the wand they are holding can cast a spell with those keywords once per day.

Fluff-wise, it is easy for me to imagine a weapon sheathed in cold dealing cold damage when it hits. It is easy for me to imagine a frozen wand that allows energy admixture. It is not easy for me to imagine a psychic, thunder, fear wand causing a fireball to be scary, psychic, and thunderous, especially considering that wand has no special effect to allow it, it just holds a spell with those powers.

 

[Benly]

Adding effect keywords (which, despite what your post says, is in fact disallowed by this ruling) is ridiculous. You shouldn't have a disintegrate that is fear, or a fireball that is charm.

While it is problematic from a balance standpoint (as basically all keyword inheritance is) there is no fluff reason that this is any more difficult than changing damage types.

Example:
Orb Of Murderous Dread
"This orb contains a fragment of pure nightmare plucked from the far planes of madness, which taints and empowers the magic flowing through it, conjuring lethal figments of absolute terror."
At-will, free action: Spells cast using this orb acquire the fear keyword and deal psychic damage.
Daily, free action: Any target damaged by the next spell cast using this orb must use a move action to move away from the caster as far as possible before taking any other action on any given turn (save ends).



Mechanical balance problems? Yes, there are. Fluff problems? No more so than on a "wand of energy admixture".

 

[Jawa1972]

I really like that orb, the fluff is great. Since with custom magic items everyone can get into the fun here's another concept a mind blade with an at will make all damage psychic to allow the Psychic Lock feat for those melee types

 

[laesin]

It really can--the PHB talks about item power keywords quite extensively, there's one and only one instance where the phrase "item power" is omitted.



It makes perfect sense. The power of a flaming weapon (which has the Fire keyword) is to cause all damage the weapon inflicts to become fire damage. As long as that power is active, any attack power you use in conjunction with that weapon has the Fire keyword.

I believe that, under that interpretation, as written any attack power you use in conjunction with that power only has the fire keyword. Which is quite clearly unintended

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

Nice work Benly. That is a great fluffing of a magic item. Makes sense to me. The only balance issues that I see are the problem of Doomsayer, and the balance problems stem more from the double rolls for saves than the orb itself.

I think that most of the objections to keyword inheritance are in fact either an inability to imagine the fluff (lack of imagination), an objection to the fact that this is different than 3.x (edition change issues) or an objection to the Doomsayer and a wand of Howl of Doom (misplaced fear about the balance of this combo).

The keyword inheritance is not unbalanced by itself. It takes other rules that are unbalanced by themselves to make unbalanced combos. The degree of meaningful choice that keyword inheritance added was incredible, and now we are left with a badly edited PHB with less meaningful choice and less balance. For what?

And no, the elemental weapons with the FAQ interpretation of keyword inheritance does not just put melee guys on par with casters. Melee guys can spam keyword powers with keyword triggered feats every turn. Casters have a limited subset of their powers that will ever have the right keywords, making those keyword triggered feats much less valuable to casters, to te point of being sub-par choices. Meleers do not have to choose between a better power and one with the corect keyword, there is no trade off. Casters always have to chose between the best power and the power with the right keyword, and they still only get a small subset of powers that work with their keyword triggered feats/class abilities.

When a rule interpretation makes it so that virtually every melee guy will want an elemental weapon and the keyword trigger feats, but most casters will not because they can hardly use them, then it is obvious that meleers get the most out of the rule. Casters were nerfed. Meleers get to exploit away. Where is the balance in that? Fear of one combo got the casters nerfed, and left most of the unbalancing combos in the game, but only for meleers. What a waste of space in the books.

 

[Rith the Wanderer]

While it is problematic from a balance standpoint (as basically all keyword inheritance is) there is no fluff reason that this is any more difficult than changing damage types.

Example:
Orb Of Murderous Dread
"This orb contains a fragment of pure nightmare plucked from the far planes of madness, which taints and empowers the magic flowing through it, conjuring lethal figments of absolute terror."
At-will, free action: Spells cast using this orb acquire the fear keyword and deal psychic damage.
Daily, free action: Any target damaged by the next spell cast using this orb must use a move action to move away from the caster as far as possible before taking any other action on any given turn (save ends).



Mechanical balance problems? Yes, there are. Fluff problems? No more so than on a "wand of energy admixture".

I think it does (the psychic damage is only a little weird, but the fear keyword seems to have major fluff problems). Fear applies to effects and parsing out effects is already really confusing. This means you could have things like conjurations, ongoing damage, sleep, healing(not specifically with this item, but if there were a similar holy symbol), teleportation, all be connected with fear somehow. If anything had a particular vulnerability or immunity to fear would become vulnerable or immune to things that have nothing to do with fear.

For example, a wizard casts Elemental Maw on a blood fiend(immune to fear) through this orb. The effect keywords would become Teleportation and Fear instead of just teleportation, and the Blood Fiend would become immune to the vortex and teleportation effect of Elemental Maw, because its not scared of anything. I think thats a fluff problem.

Damage works fine because you don't run into this problem, if elemental maw now dealt half psychic damage, then the orb turned it into a psychic and physical assault simultaneously, and things immune to psychic damage wouldn't be hurt by the psychic assault. I have trouble thinking up an example with damage keywords that is nearly as absurd as I can with effect keywords. If you think there is some example I'm missing, let me know.

 

[Benly]

I think it does (the psychic damage is only a little weird, but the fear keyword seems to have major fluff problems). Fear applies to effects and parsing out effects is already really confusing. This means you could have things like conjurations, ongoing damage, sleep, healing(not specifically with this item, but if there were a similar holy symbol), teleportation, all be connected with fear somehow. If anything had a particular vulnerability or immunity to fear would become vulnerable or immune to things that have nothing to do with fear.

I guess I wasn't clear enough with the fluff on the example item. The idea is that as all the damage done is psychic damage, the fireball (for example) is actually a nightmare of a fireball made real - the conjuration is a living nightmare, the ongoing damage is spasms of fear, and so forth. Giving any effect of your choice the Fear keyword is no more fluff-difficult than changing a spell's psychic damage into fire damage through a "wand of elemental substitution" as you suggest.