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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hypersmurf" data-source="post: 3367518" data-attributes="member: 1656">As written, absolutely.There's an FAQ answer that suggests otherwise:The new descriptions for the flaming, frost, and shockweapon special abilities say that these weapons’ energyeffects work only on command. Why was this changed inthe revision? Does that mean that their wielders must use astandard action to activate them for each attack? Or do theenergy effects last awhile? If so, how long do they last?What’s the chance that you burn (or freeze or shock)yourself when holding onto an activated weapon? Can youput away an activated weapon without damaging thescabbard where you store it? What happens if you haveammunition with these effects? Do you have to activateeach piece of ammunition separately? What happens if youhave a flaming, frost, and shock weapon? Logically, such aweapon couldn’t exist, but what if it did? Would you haveto activate each property separately? Finally, how does allthis affect flaming burst, icy burst, and shocking burstweapons? Do these weapons’ flame, frost, and shockproperties have to be activated for the burst powers towork?The flaming, frost, and shock weapon special abilitiesalways have been command activated; the revision justclarified that.Activating an energy power requires a standard action, butonce you activate energy power, the power works until you useanother action to deactivate it. You can activate or deactivateone of these powers on up to 50 pieces of ammunition at thesame time, provided that all the ammunition is in yourpossession, all the ammunition is the same kind, and all theammunition has the same power.Any attack you make with an activated weapon dealsenergy damage to your foe if you hit—you don’t have to doanything special to deal energy damage with an activatedweapon.A burst weapon’s burst power is use activated and it workseven when the weapon’s energy power is not activated (see thelast sentence in each power’s description).The energy from a flaming, frost, shock, flaming burst, icyburst, or shocking burst weapon never harms you while you’rewielding or carrying the activated weapon (see the powerdescriptions), and it will not harm your equipment. If you loseor set down an activated weapon, the energy it produces willharm other objects it touches, so it is best to deactivate it first.There’s nothing illogical about a flaming, frost, shockweapon (at least not within any framework that allows weaponsto generate energy in the first place), and there’s no rule againstsuch weapons (think of the weapon as having fiery, frosty,shocking flames). The character creating such a weapondecides how it can be activated. Most such weapons probablyare made so that the wielders can activate all three powerssimultaneously, or activate them one at a time, as desired.I can't find any rules support for the bolded section, however.  Activating Flaming is a standard action; activating Frost is a standard action; there's nothing in the item creation rules to suggest that it's possible to make two standard action activations happen on the same standard action.The "Give them the same command word" argument doesn't hold water, since I can say "Activate!" as a free action, but I can only say "Activate!" to activate the Flaming ability as a standard action.  It's already possible for me to say the command word without activating the ability... so if I have two abilities with the same command word, each will still only activate when I take a standard action to do so, regardless of how many times I say the word outside of that standard action.-Hyp.</blockquote>

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