mythusmage said:
You're thinking of mere cold. Piercing Cold deals with COLD. The kind of cold that can freeze-dry a white dragon. We're talking Kelvin Scale cold. The kind of stuff that, at the lower end, gives us metallic hydrogen and Helium II. Now, true, it's doubtful Piercing Cold ever gets that bad, but you can still produce temperatures so low even creatures unaffected by normal cold are harmed. So in that area Piercing Cold is not broken.
In D&D, cold is cold ... the variable effects are all in the hp damage dealt, not in the temperature. You don't have creatures with "immunity to cold that's not colder than 9 degrees Centigrade" or "immunity to cold attacks that remove less than 1,000 joules of energy from the target" ... because D&D defines the coldness of its effects in terms of how many hp the attack deals, not how much "cold energy" (an oxmoron in scientific terms) the attack applies to the creature.
Is it reasonable to say that a frost giant should be able to tolerate lower temperatures than an Inuit? Yes. Do we express this in terms of tolerance for joules of energy absorbed by the environment in a certain time period? No, because that is FAR more complex than it needs to be for D&D. D&D is simple with its "energy" resistances (and remember that cold isn't an energy); otherwise you have to express all of its "energy" resistances in scientific terms (acid resistance = able to tolerate pH levels as low as X, electricity resistance = able to tolerate voltages and amperes as high as X, fire resistance = able to tolerate joule-inputs as high as X, cold resistance = able to tolerate joule-extractions as high as X, and so on). Then you have to define all acid, fire, cold, and elec attacks in terms of scientific principles ("this
fireball spell deals 1d6x1000 joules of heat to all creatures in the target area"). Do you want to turn D&D into that? It would suck.
Your argument is that it's OK to have cold that's so cold it hurts even cold-subtype monsters with cold immunity. With that, let me give you some examples of how your argument breaks down.
* A spectre. This creature is incorporeal. It has no body. It is immune to environmental cold. A spectre can fly through the cold heart of the darkest space and never take damage from it. By your argument, a cold attack with Piercing Cold should hurt this creature, a creature that can exist in the cold void between stars (scientists estimate space is about 3 degrees Kelvin just because of ambient energy) because Piercing Cold lets you make "absolute zero-temperature" attacks. (Let's ignore that the incorporeal subtype doesn't make you immune to magical cold ... you're the one confusing the issue by bringing up real-world physics in D&D spells so we've already erased the line between "cold from magic" and "cold not from magic."
* Aaz, the Avatar of Absolute Zero. This monster I just made up is a living embodiment of 0 degrees Kelvin, a strange elemental creature that is the coldest state for matter. It is immune to cold and has the cold subtype. By your argument, a cold attack with Piercing Cold should hurt this creature.
* Aazfather, the primordial being that created Aaz. Scientists theorize that there are temperatures colder than "absolute zero;" temperature is defined as the average kinetic energy of molecules or atoms, and in theory there may be even colder states where the nuclear vibrations of the protons and neutrons slow down and even colder when the electrons slow down, too. Aazfather embodies this concept. It is immune to cold and has the cold subtype. By your argument, a cold attack with Piercing Cold should hurt this creature.
It also introduces a bad precedent. If you can have cold attacks that harm ultimate-cold creatures, you can have fire attacks that harm fire creatures ("I'm Novablast, god and embodiment of supernovas ... ouch, that's hot!"), acid attacks that harm acid creatures (by definition a powerful acid doesn't attack itself, and there is a limit to how acidic you can make a substance, and your argument implies that a creature of pure acid like an "acid elemental" can take damage from pure acid), and electricity attacks that harm electricity creatures ("I'm a living lightning bolt, I'm just electrons running around in this space, oh no, don't add MORE ELECTRONS TO ME!").
mangamuscle said:
I think that was a bad example. Frostburn has a feat that makes cold spells so cold that they can harm even creatures with cold immunity. The inverse I saw once in the anime Bastard! where Dark Scneider managed to cast a fire spell so hot it damaged even a fire immune Efreeti. If you going to say "anime is non-cannon" then must have not read what Jeff Grub wrote "The heat here is so intense that even creatures immune to flame like fire elementals take 1d2 points of damage per turn unless protectyed by Kossuth" in 1the st edition Manual of the Planes, page 40.
Yes, because 1E game rules are
so relevant to a 3E rules discussion. Shall we take a moment to talk about exceptional strength and how 1E females can't get the same high numbers as 1E males?
devilish said:
I can see Sean's point -- sneak attack is a core component of the system...
However, I have experienced this personally and was extremely frustrated.
Played a WOTC-published module that was loaded with undead, and
with some of them having damage-reduction, the fighter couldn't get
decent damage in (and ended up getting in the face of a lich), and my BAB
as a rogue was nowhere near where I could attack, even with a nat 20.
And my usual crossbow maneuver was useless -- regular bolts!
In this case, how would you make an undead-prevalent game more balanced for fighter/thieves?
I'm guessing you're talking about Underdark, which is very undead-heavy, and that is unfortunate for the nonmagical classes. The DMG cautions against this sort of thing for the reasons you state ... it ruins the fun of some of the characters, just as much as only having opponents immune to magic ruins the fun of spellcasting characters. How would I make it more balanced? Well, I wouldn't make the proportions so overwhelmingly undead with DR. Introduce slaves, guardian monsters, and living allies of the undead creatures so all characters can shine. But that's off-topic for this already off-topic thread.
jester47 said:
After reading your post, oh heck yeah.
I totally missed considering these factors...
I have trained my robot brain to consider many factors. It is What I Do. It's what makes me a ruthless critic of sloppy game design, and probably contributes to my insomnia because I overthink everything.
Anyway, I'm glad I turned you around on this one. Phew!
{This does make me ask the question: Is it wise to have a property that is essentially is the combination of two properties?}
As long as the individual properties add up to the same as the combo property, it's fine. After all,
flaming burst (+2) is just
flaming with a never-defined
burst property added, each worth +1.
Mercule said:
Or, they could create a spell to drown water elementals, if they wanted. Doesn't mean it isn't absurd.
Exactly.
