Pyromancer Mage: Balanced?

[TerraDave]

The essential pyromancer (from Dragon 391) can ignore fire resistance.

This seems pretty potent. Thoughts?

 

[Mengu]

The essential pyromancer (from Dragon 391) can ignore fire resistance.

This seems pretty potent. Thoughts?

No more potent than my non-magical club I broke off a tree ignoring all elemental resistances...

It's just a tool for the arsenal, and it doesn't ignore immunity, insubstantial, etc. It's nice to have because when most your attacks are fire, you don't want to be handicapped against all the fire resisting creatures.

Fun tidbit, you ignore all your allies' fire resistance too.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

It makes the sorcerer's ability to ignore some resistances seem a little less potent (especially since they don't get two selections of every level like the Pyromancer does), but it isn't exactly game-breaking.

 

[twilsemail]

This seems pretty potent. Thoughts?

I mostly see it as a method of allowing a specialist to specialize. Fire resist is the most popular in the game. Cutting a break for fire wizards seems like a decent idea.

Combining this feature with Burn Everything(D388 p. 36) seems a bit OTT.

Dudes are just really good at mancing some pyro.

 

[Iron Sky]

I'm playing on in ENWorld's Living World right now. Depending on your power selection, it turns your controller into an AoE striker while still retaining a decent amount of Wizardly control (especially with a Flaming Weapon so all powers have the Fire keyword).

Combine it with a tiefling and you have something that looks like this.

In L4W we just fought a volcanic dragon and burning a fire creature to death makes the character feel powerful.

 

[renau1g]

I mostly see it as a method of allowing a specialist to specialize. Fire resist is the most popular in the game. Cutting a break for fire wizards seems like a decent idea.

Combining this feature with Burn Everything(D388 p. 36) seems a bit OTT.

Dudes are just really good at mancing some pyro.

I get 547 monsters with fire resist, and 754 with necrotic resistance

As a DM for Iron Sky's L4W PC, I've not felt it overpowered, as it lets you play an archetype without being ineffective against over 500 different foes vs. about 170 if you focused on lightning.

Even with Burn Everything, you've devoted a feat and one of your class features to it, just to be able to do your regular damage to fire resistant/immune foes.

 

[Aegeri]

The essential pyromancer (from Dragon 391) can ignore fire resistance.

This seems pretty potent. Thoughts?

Doesn't stop a volcanic dragon poisoning the party every time you hit it with a fire attack, so it isn't really that great given how new monsters often respond to damage types. All it does is mean the pyromancer pays his feat tax with a class feature. Given that Wizards were wanting to de-emphasize resistance since MM3 I'm not surprised to see newer classes just automatically deal with it anyway.

 

[radja]

Even with Burn Everything, you've devoted a feat and one of your class features to it, just to be able to do your regular damage to fire resistant/immune foes.

looks like it doesnt affect immunity, just resistance. this basically means it's a very restricted damage bonus... nothing more.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Speaking as someone playing a githyanki pryromancer at the moment...

All it's really done is made my character actually effective against the couple of fire-resistant critters I've bumped up against. I'm a pyromancer. All of my attacks (though by choice) are fire damage. If I don't have this feature, I can't contribute very much at all against fire-resistant creatures. And if the creatures happen to be a theme in the campaign....I'm back into 3e Rouge vs. Undead levels of unhelpful.

Me and the 40 Legion Devils I killed single-handedly in the last session speak to the fact that this works well, since otherwise, the party's only controller would be sitting around doing jack squat while the army mowed down our melee troops.

Izzussan is geared toward damage, too. I'm in no danger of outdoing the party strikers (an Avenger and a Warlock) any time soon, though I'm better with crowds.

Fire immunity still works, though it's rarer to find that on monsters than resist (and I'll probably pick up Burn Everything sooner or later). 4e cuts down on immunities in general.

Basically, it's not overpowered, it's there to help the pryomancer do his job without borking him depending on DM monster selection.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

looks like it doesnt affect immunity, just resistance. this basically means it's a very restricted damage bonus... nothing more.

At the end of Burn Everything it says something like 'if they have immunity, treat it like resist fire 25' which then means, as a pyromancer, you get to ignore it.

Not sure if it actually works that way, but that is one interpretation of it.