Buffing Elemental Adept/Sorcerers

[Tenmujiin]

So the feat Elemental Adept allows you to ignore resistance with a specific damage type and minimum 2 on any damage die. While I realise that this feat is already quite strong for draconic sorcerers the lack of any arcane admixture style effect on any feats and/or a large selection of spells for each damage type has been annoying me for some time. Would it be reasonable to add the following effect to Elemental Adept to help with this lack of variety without being too strong?

When you cast a spell that deals a damage type other than the one chosen you can have it deal the chosen damage type instead (however you can not apply any other benefits of this feat to the spell)

[Starsinger]

To clarify your intent... "You ignore (for example) Fire resistance. If you cast a spell that does not deal fire damage, you can instead deal fire damage but do not ignore any fire resistance"?

[TheOOB]

Elemental Adept is working as intended. Feats are not supposed to make you more powerful, that's what ability score increases are for, they are supposed to allow for new character archetypes. This allows you to play an elemental caster, and gives you a small bonus to damage(in a system where bonuses to damage are rare).

The effect you mention would be very powerful.

[Sartharina]

I for one would like it if you could swap magic damage type out for the one of your chosen element. That's my favorite part of the Genie-bloodline sorcerers in Pathfinder.

How are you a Cryomancer if you're launching Fireballs instead of Iceballs?

[Giddonihah]

Instead of changing Elemental Adept, why not just add it to the list of Sorcerer Metamagics?

[Kyutaru]

Another option is to just allow more versions of the same spell. Wizards who know Fireball can also research the Iceball spell, or the Thunderball, or the Acidball. This was actually one of my favorite aspects of the Forgotten Realm books from 3rd edition... instead of Fireball you could cast Vitriolic Sphere or Scintillating Sphere. You have a CHOICE between Firebrand and Ball Lightning for your 5th level mayhem!

Having Snilloc's Snowball Swarm and Gedlee's Electric Loop adds more variety than you can handle. But just in case all of that still didn't please you, they had the feat Energy Substitution.

Good times.

[Strill]

Instead of messing with feats, I'd rather just say that you can learn alternate-element variants of existing spells. Like a fire-based version of Acid Spray that works the same but deals fire damage.

[Cambrian]

Another option is to just allow more versions of the same spell. Wizards who know Fireball can also research the Iceball spell, or the Thunderball, or the Acidball. This was actually one of my favorite aspects of the Forgotten Realm books from 3rd edition... instead of Fireball you could cast Vitriolic Sphere or Scintillating Sphere. You have a CHOICE between Firebrand and Ball Lightning for your 5th level mayhem!

Having Snilloc's Snowball Swarm and Gedlee's Electric Loop adds more variety than you can handle. But just in case all of that still didn't please you, they had the feat Energy Substitution.

Good times.That's always been my thoughts.

I don't need WotC to print level appropriate damage spells-- they've already given appropriate examples and it's no work to change a spell over. Just be careful to limit the damage type it's changed to. The damage types of the Elemental Adept feat (acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder*) should be interchangeable while something like a Forceball should have it's damage reduced.

Yorrin's MM breakdown on damage type (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?379165-MM-Resistances-Immunities-Vulnerabilities-and-Damage) is an awesome guide to see how common resistances are and helps to see roughly how similar a damage type is to another.

*Thunder is actually too good-- a Thunderball would be rarely resisted-- but if a character already had the Elemental Adept feat there would be no harm in allowing it.