Sonic Damage Equalization

[Plane Sailing]

The energy feats aren't bad in concept-- they just need some finetuning.

I can especially see certain Wizards or Sorcerors consistently using one type of energy in their attacks, or having certain preferences, that metamagic feats would allow them to use.

Munchkin or not, Mostin's (from Heretic of Wyre) usage of sonic-damage spells is a part of his character, and it seems to fit him. Being able to replace the energy damage of your spells with your signature type is a cool ability.

By this reasoning, you would be quite happy with a "force substition" feat that allowed you to turn any damaging attack into a force effect then?!?

Can't you see the abuse inherent in a feat which allows you to throw 10d6 acid damage when under the straight rules the best you can hope for is 2d6 acid damage a round from the high level acid cloud spell? It doesn't even INCREASE THE SPELL LEVEL??

I'm not surprised that players are pleased to use some of these wacko offerings from Tome & Blood...

 

[Hashmalum]

I dont care how much Sound you have it doesnt have any damaging characteristics until you include the overpressure/concussive/ harmonic effects. Its not the SOUND that does damage, Its the side-effects.

Without the sound, you don't have the effects. Harmonic effects are the result of the sound vibrations being of the right frequency to set up a resonating vibration in the target. The pressure is also a direct result of the sound wave, not a "side-effect". Concussive effects are the result of violent shaking. If there's no sound, there's no vibration, no shaking, and no concussion.

Sonic is just Force damage that doesn't auto-hit incorporeal creatures.

No, force effects that don't affect incorporeal creatures or objects have no spell descriptor at all. See unseen servant, which creates an "invisible, mindless, shapeless force" but has no force descriptor and no ability to move ethereal objects. See also telekinesis. There's also the fact that there is no "force resistance" special quality and there is no endure elements (force). Sonic damage and force damage don't have anything to do with each other.

A Sonic Fireball is a Silent Blast of Concussive Force is just as viable as a Cacophonous Roar.

No. That is something that you made up. The feat says that you can modify a spell with an energy designator to use the chosen type of energy instead. For Energy Substitution (sonic), that means that the spell uses sonic energy. See the definition of "sonic" again, and read it until you understand it.

A +1 Screaming Sword is a Star Wars Vibro-blade. Sonic doesnt have to make noise.

Maybe not noise that humans can hear, due to it being outside their range of hearing. That doesn't mean it isn't stopped by silence. Silence negates the blindsight quality of bats and other creatures that use ultrasonic sound for echolocation. As for a vibroblade, that's a completely seperate issue; the vibration of the metal aids the metal's cutting effect. Anyway, we're discussing what silence does in D&D. I don't play Star Wars and I don't care how they handle sonic damage or any other type of damage there.

Actually, Cold is the most powerful substitution. There are quite a few Fire Subtypes that take double damage from Cold and fewer resistant than vice-versa. Sonic just has (nearly) no-one resistant, but also no-one vulnerable. Except Crystal creatures, which is what? 2? 3?

The Order of Preference is

1 Cold
2 Fire-Sonic
4 Acid-At Least it stops some regens
5 Electricity- Lots of Resistance, Only the Iron Golem is sort-of vulnerable

Cold damage is completely useless against cold creatures. And there's no need to take a feat to get cold spells (or fire spells, for that matter) with so many efficiently damaging spells of that type already existing. As a substitution (which is what you were arguing), cold (and fire) don't make sense unless you need to qualify for a PrC or want a themed character at the expense of power.

Sonic damage, OTOH, without a feat isn't efficient at all (2d6 for shout, a 4th-level spell? No damage at all for shatter except against crystalline creatures?); the upside is that almost nothing has any protection against it. Sonic substitution gives you both great penetrating power and efficiency, which is why it is the best substitution.

At the point of casting Shatter makes a sound, but you dont have to hear the noise to be affected by it. Unless the caster is in the Silence effect the spell goes thru.

You don't have to hear the noise, but the noise has to strike the target, and silence prevents the noise from entering. The wording of the shatter spell says flat-out that it is the noise that has the effect. Unless you can find some errata that changes what shatter actually says, I'm not going to argue this point any further because the plain wording of the spell makes it obvious that you are simply wrong.

Only Shout is affected by Silence, and Yes "the designers did always feel the need to spell everything out in simple terms." If the book doesnt say it, it isnt the Rule. That been the general rule of 3e.

If I pour water on a campfire, does it not extinguish it because the designer never said, "Rule 1 of campfires: pouring water on them will put them out?" If I leave a glass of water in the sun, will it never evaporate because the designers never made a rule about evaporation? Of course not. The players are expected to use logic and common sense in interpreting the rules. And it's a logical, common sense interpretation of the rules that silence blocks sonic damage.

 

[Hashmalum]

Subdual substution is very broken, since per the rules it get around all energy resistance. but that's easy enugh to fix...

How do you deal with it? IMC, subdual is attached to other damage types, not replacing them. Like vile damage that way. Just like there is vile electricity damage, vile acid damage, and so on, I have subdual electricity damage (think of a stun gun here), subdual sonic damage, and so on. Obviously you can't attach both vile and subdual types to damage, since subdual damage is basically damage that you recover quickly from and vile damage is something you never recover from.

 

[Hashmalum]

The energy feats aren't bad in concept-- they just need some finetuning.

I can especially see certain Wizards or Sorcerors consistently using one type of energy in their attacks, or having certain preferences, that metamagic feats would allow them to use.

Of course the idea of a mage having a particular theme type of damage that they prefer to use is a cool idea. But there are other, better ways to do it than the T&B feats.

First of all, the way the feat treats the 5 "basic" damage types as if they are interchangeable is a bad idea for balance reasons. Second, the way the feat is written with the inconsistent secondary effects (as I mentioned earlier) is horrible.

It's almost as bad if you just negate all the secondary effects, because it seems rather strange and inconsistent for some acid (Melf's acid arrow) to have lingering effects, and some (acid fireball) not to, some sonic effects deafening people (shoutand some not (sonic fireball, etc. It's bad enough that you have certain core spells doing things like arbitrarily dealing double damage to undead (wall of fire) while other fire spells don't and so on. That's one reason I bar not only the T&B feats, but Mastery of Elements from the Forgotten Realms archmage.

Another reason I don't like the spell damage-type dealing mechanic is that logically certain changes ought to change the school of the spell. Conjuring up physical substances, such as acid, is conjuration magic (see Melf's acid arrow). Conjuring up energy, such as fire, is evocation magic.

Personally, I'd prefer Energy Focus feats similar to the Spell Focus feats, although for balance reasons they shouldn't stack with the latter (Spell Focus (evocation) + Energy Focus (fire) + Greater Spell Focus (evocation) + Greater Energy Focus (fire), for example, would be a real nightmare).

And if it's personality you want your mage to have, the lack of spells of certain damage types is actually an opportunity. Why settle for just a sonic version of fireball when you can create something like Mostin's howling wind from beyond?

Munchkin or not, Mostin's (from Heretic of Wyre) usage of sonic-damage spells is a part of his character, and it seems to fit him. Being able to replace the energy damage of your spells with your signature type is a cool ability.

Eh, it doesn't seem to fit him all that well to me. Sonic damage just seems weaker thematically than fire, cold, electricity, or even acid. "I AM THE MAGE WHO MAKES A LOT OF NOISE! FEAR ME!"

The other thing I don't like about Mostin's use of Energy Substitution (sonic) is the gamespeak with characters referring to their metamagic'ed spells in D&D game terms.

IMO Mostin is a cool character with one somewhat munchkin-ish ability, which in his case is partly justified by the fact that as a mage who specializes in dealing with outsiders he needs something to bypass their energy resistance.

 

[Destil]

The problem with preserving the hiarachy of enery type damage is that there's no set rules or guidelines for it. Just poor examples. And I don't think the designers ever intended to keep sonic damage as weak, it's just that this is D&D. There are sacred cows that need to be converted, and precious few new spells were added in 3E to allow the space to even out damage a bit.(thankfully we at least got dimentional anchor! A shame 'teleport block' was overlooked...). Monsters, likewise, were mostly converted, and the new sonic monsters are mosly vunurable to sonic (ytharik, and that screaming thing), for plasuable reasons.

The DMG does not cover any rules about every types and max damage / spell level, for instance. The fact that there's few sonic & acid damage spells and even fewer with real kick is an artifact of the older spells. So we're left with equalizing the damage types and letting everything fly, or restricting them and building a hiararchy... and for me adding a few resistance is far easier than an entire new set of spell rules.


This is exactily how I deal with it. A subdual fireball is a wave of exausting and fatiguing heat, it deals 1d6/level fire subdual damage. Hard to rationalize for acid but far more balanced.

By this reasoning, you would be quite happy with a "force substition" feat that allowed you to turn any damaging attack into a force effect then?!?

Can't you see the abuse inherent in a feat which allows you to throw 10d6 acid damage when under the straight rules the best you can hope for is 2d6 acid damage a round from the high level acid cloud spell? It doesn't even INCREASE THE SPELL LEVEL??

I'm not surprised that players are pleased to use some of these wacko offerings from Tome & Blood...

I don't use the feats as written from Tome and Blood, I came up with my own version long beforehand and refinded it a bit to be silimar. It's +1 (+0 is problematic, since you can often do double damage against certian creatures, but going 2 levels higher on the spell damage charts would often nearly double the max and general have added effects). Force substution should be +2 or +3, I'd allow it at that.

How do you deal with it? IMC, subdual is attached to other damage types, not replacing them. Like vile damage that way. Just like there is vile electricity damage, vile acid damage, and so on, I have subdual electricity damage (think of a stun gun here), subdual sonic damage, and so on. Obviously you can't attach both vile and subdual types to damage, since subdual damage is basically damage that you recover quickly from and vile damage is something you never recover from.

I don't have the BOVD, but I think I deal with it the same way. A subdual substution (I call mine knockout spell, but that's sematics) fireball deals damage through exaustive heat, mostly, and is still blocked by fire resistance / immunity.

All in all I don't really use the splat books for anything more than insperation. Good ideas, but not as well balanced as the core rules, IMHO. I'll be a bit annoyed if some of this makes it into the revised PH, since it's more of a pain to take away than to add. (Like having to take persistant power from the PsiHB, since I hate that feat and have something much more interesting I call persistant spell...)


Xarlen - Lighting as air also annoys me, but I'm not feverant against it, like I am with water and cold (I've just seen water == cold in far to many games to let it slide anymore). One day I'll get around to re-working the Air and Water domains to rely on.... well, Air and Water. Makes more sense to me that air spells deal with things like air pressure, vacumes and gasses.... eletricity is an entirely diffrent force. I'd even be more inclined to make eletric a 'bridge' bewteen the four. Static charge builds between clouds (air & water) and on the ground & lighting can start fires.

I think a lot of it has to do with my DragonRealms upbringing, where the 6 elements are Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Eletricity and Aether.

 

[Xarlen]

Xarlen - Lighting as air also annoys me, but I'm not feverant against it, like I am with water and cold (I've just seen water == cold in far to many games to let it slide anymore). One day I'll get around to re-working the Air and Water domains to rely on.... well, Air and Water. Makes more sense to me that air spells deal with things like air pressure, vacumes and gasses.... eletricity is an entirely diffrent force. I'd even be more inclined to make eletric a 'bridge' bewteen the four. Static charge builds between clouds (air & water) and on the ground & lighting can start fires.

I think a lot of it has to do with my DragonRealms upbringing, where the 6 elements are Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Eletricity and Aether.

Well, I'm tired of seeing Kobolds as little mooks in campaigns, but some things never change.

Now, what's this about Aether? And what is DragonRealms? Hmmm.

 

[Destil]

Well, I'm tired of seeing Kobolds as little mooks in campaigns, but some things never change.

Now, what's this about Aether? And what is DragonRealms? Hmmm.

Kobolds mooks? Not in my campaings! A pair of Kobold sorcerers got a near TPK (6 of 7 PCs down) in my last campaign.

Dragonrealms is a MUD. Their magic system is one of the finest I've seen. Unfortunatly, there's not one water spell in the water book, with 5 ice spells and 1 mist spell as of now... I originaly started playing in beta, and at that time the magic GM assured us that water was gonig to mostly be water, with some ice and steam... ah, well.

Warrior Mage (Elemental) Magic:
http://www.play.net/dr/info/spells/spelllist.asp?guild=1&name=Warrior Mage

 

[Marshall]

Cold damage is completely useless against cold creatures. And there's no need to take a feat to get cold spells (or fire spells, for that matter) with so many efficiently damaging spells of that type already existing. As a substitution (which is what you were arguing), cold (and fire) don't make sense unless you need to qualify for a PrC or want a themed character at the expense of power.

Cold does double damage to a decent percentage of creatures in the MM, is resisted by another percentage, is ignored by a minute portion, and does normal to the rest.
Fire does double damage to a decent portion, is resisted by a pecentage, is ignored by quite a few, and does normal to the rest.
Sonic does normal damage to almost all, no specific vulnerabilities, no particular resistants. Its useful, but not overpowering.

Sonic damage, OTOH, without a feat isn't efficient at all (2d6 for shout, a 4th-level spell? No damage at all for shatter except against crystalline creatures?); the upside is that almost nothing has any protection against it. Sonic substitution gives you both great penetrating power and efficiency, which is why it is the best substitution.

The best Substitution is the one that will cause the greatest effect. Sonic is only good in that you'll never be stuck with a Fireball against a Red Dragon. Of course, The Coldball is so much better in that scenario than the Sonicball. Cold has the most instances where this occurs and the fewest where the fireball/red dragon happens. Sonic has none of the good and is still vulnerable to the Energy Protection spells.

You don't have to hear the noise, but the noise has to strike the target, and silence prevents the noise from entering. The wording of the shatter spell says flat-out that it is the noise that has the effect. Unless you can find some errata that changes what shatter actually says, I'm not going to argue this point any further because the plain wording of the spell makes it obvious that you are simply wrong.

The fact that Shout specifically states that it is affected by Silence and Shatter does not, leaves your blanket statement in doubt.

If I pour water on a campfire, does it not extinguish it because the designer never said, "Rule 1 of campfires: pouring water on them will put them out?" If I leave a glass of water in the sun, will it never evaporate because the designers never made a rule about evaporation? Of course not. The players are expected to use logic and common sense in interpreting the rules. And it's a logical, common sense interpretation of the rules that silence blocks sonic damage.

We're talking about the Spell System here, if you really want to be that picky there is also no rule for actually lighting that fire.

In the spell system and the feat system, you cant apply broad generalities. Spells (should)do exactly what they say, No More/No Less. If Silence doesnt specifically say it blocks Shatter, and Shatter doesnt say its affected, Its not.

 

[Plane Sailing]

FWIW in my own campaign I produced a simple blanket "secondary effects" for each energy type - fire could always ignite, electricity could always daze 1r, sound could always deafen 1d6r etc.

The "elements of magic" system sold by Natural 20 Press takes this a step further and ties each of a couple of dozen available elements to minor, major and extreme elemental effects. I like the idea that elemental earth powers always at least make the target dirty

I think the whole "elemental damage" buisiness could do with some rationalisation. There was a whole lot of rationalisation that went on between 2e and 3e, and I would see this as the next stage (although I think it is too big a task (and not important enough) to be tackled in the forthcoming revision this summer.

Cheers

 

[SylverFlame]

Sound does enter a silence spell because the sound itself does not cause the effect.

When an opera singer shatters a crystal glass they are not actually "singing" the glass apart. When the sound waves hit the glass they cause the perfectly faceted crystal to vibrate, cracking the glass and shattering. In effect, the glass breaks itself due to its structural qualities. This is why crystal creatures are so vulnerable.

This is also why sound actually moves so well in water, and is the reason why all underwater communication (ie. sonar, whales, dolphins, etc.) is by "sound." The actual sound a dolphin makes ends shortly after leaving the dolphin, the waves it creates echo on and are converted into information (ie. a fish) when they bounce back. The dolphin does not hear its own voice, aside from what we hear in our own heads when we talk (that is, the reverberations).

By the way, this all comes from basic chemistry and physics. Pick up a high school book or check out a university web-site and you'll probably find all of this there.