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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Destil" data-source="post: 584489" data-attributes="member: 1980">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. 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.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.</blockquote>

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