What's sonic magic do?

[Mclane]

My friend is making a wilder and asked me what effect does sonic magic have? He told me that it gets a -1 to damage, so is there any benefit that evens it out?

[Drachasor]

What does it do? Everything but wood (apparently).

Sonic attacks in D&D typically have lower damage, but almost nothing has sonic resistance, so it is good against pretty much everything.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Do you mean sonic damage type?

[Flickerdart]

It's not magic - element swapping is a psionic option. The benefit of using Sonic over Fire or Cold (the types that deal the most damage) is that the fewest creatures are resistant to Sonic, and it's very good at damaging objects (second only to Acid, an energy type not available to such powers).

[Thrawn183]

-1 damage per dice, which is balanced by the fact that nothing resists it.

[DarkestKnight]

If i remember rightly, sonic ignores hardness, which means it's good for blowing holes in walls and such.

[HappyBlanket]

The lure is that next to nothing resists it, compensating for the -1 per dice. By contrast, fire substitution adds +1 per dice, but fire is resisted by a great host of monsters.

Just to nitpick, by the way; a Wilder doesn't use Sonic magic. Wizards and Sorcerers use Sonic magic. But all three use Sonic energy.

[sreservoir]

the nice thing about psionics is that you can choose the energy you want dynamically. so even if you prefer to kill things with fire, you can still kill it with sonic in a pinch.

[Jack_Simth]

My friend is making a wilder and asked me what effect does sonic magic have? He told me that it gets a -1 to damage, so is there any benefit that evens it out?
As has been stated:

1) Very, very few critters in the monster manuals have any resistance to Sonic. Fire and Cold resistance/immunity? They're very common. Electricity? Happens often enough. Sonic? Almost nobody. It thus makes for a great go-to effect... so it needed toning down so that it's not going to be the obviously best choice in 95% of cases.

2) Sonic does full damage to objects (Link (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm#energyAttacks)) which makes it much more efficient for such things as opening walls than are a great many other spells/powers available at the same level.

[Optimator]

If i remember rightly, sonic ignores hardness, which means it's good for blowing holes in walls and such.

Nothing ignores hardness unless it is explicitly called out. Acid and Sonic do full damage to objects (subject to hardness) as opposed to the other elements, which automatically do half damage.

[Knaight]

Nothing ignores hardness unless it is explicitly called out. Acid and Sonic do full damage to objects (subject to hardness) as opposed to the other elements, which automatically do half damage.

Cold does only 1/4, making it even worse.

[Hanuman]

Sonic damage is damage caused by vibration, if it hits you it's either going to rip you apart or simply crush you, that'd depending on if it damages you due to a blast (concussion wave such as an explosive), or damages you due to a directed scream, or sound lance where it'd contort and shatter you.

In the image of sound lance it actually just rips a hole in you and atomizes the remains, oddly enough.