What if Weapons did Elemental Damage?

[TaiLiu]

A longsword does slashing damage. For the same price, imagine that you could buy a longsword that did fire damage, or cold, or some other damage type other than the weaponry base of slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning.

Would this be unbalanced? I figured that if the casters can spit out cantrips that can do elemental damage, it might be reasonable for noncasters to as well. Am I missing anything?

[Dankus Memakus]

A longsword does slashing damage. For the same price, imagine that you could buy a longsword that did fire damage, or cold, or some other damage type other than the weaponry base of slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning.

Would this be unbalanced? I figured that if the casters can spit out cantrips that can do elemental damage, it might be reasonable for noncasters to as well. Am I missing anything?

I mean, it shouldnt be unbalanced. Id definitely make radiant and force damage, and possibly a few others off limits due to the power increase of that damage type.

[stoutstien]

A longsword does slashing damage. For the same price, imagine that you could buy a longsword that did fire damage, or cold, or some other damage type other than the weaponry base of slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning.

Would this be unbalanced? I figured that if the casters can spit out cantrips that can do elemental damage, it might be reasonable for noncasters to as well. Am I missing anything?
So magic weapons that replace the normal damage for X type? reasonable be a funny way of looking at it depending on if you're planning on using creatures with resistance/ immunity to non magic damage at the plot point.
Most likely you'll probably end up regretting it. But I'm pretty stingy with magical weapons as a personal rule.

[Man_Over_Game]

A longsword does slashing damage. For the same price, imagine that you could buy a longsword that did fire damage, or cold, or some other damage type other than the weaponry base of slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning.

Would this be unbalanced? I figured that if the casters can spit out cantrips that can do elemental damage, it might be reasonable for noncasters to as well. Am I missing anything?

Cantrips generally deal less damage than weapon equivalents and deal elemental damage, but as a result, elemental damage is less resisted than the physical damage types.

But mostly, this would circumvent a lot of the enemies that are designed to be planned around. Creatures that require silver or magical damage against can now be countered by anyone. Barbarians effectively become useless. Expanding the Barbarian's rage to block more than just the physical damage types now makes the Bear totem redundant. It has a lot of rippling problems.

[Connington]

Call it a common magical item and price it at 50 gp.

A lot of tables prefer to limit that kind of access to magic damage and flashy magical effects, but it's not really a problem for game balance.

EDIT: Or rather, weapon cost + 50 gp

[Man_Over_Game]

I mean, it shouldnt be unbalanced. Id definitely make radiant and force damage, and possibly a few others off limits due to the power increase of that damage type.

"Yeah, I'll buy the lightsaber for 15 gp."

[Rukelnikov]

Call it a common magical item and price it at 50 gp.

A lot of tables prefer to limit that kind of access to magic damage and flashy magical effects, but it's not really a problem for game balance.

EDIT: Or rather, weapon cost + 50 gp

I can speak from experience when I say it DOES create balance problems. 5e, for whatever reason, has an aversion to put monster that a resistant to phisycal damage period. 90% or more of those are resistant/magic, which renders them incredibly fragile in all tiers of play if the players have magic weapons. Giving them out at lvl 1 seems to nerf half the MM.

Personally I removed the clause from many of the higher CR creatures and added proficiency-2 to ac to all enemies. We play with MC, feats and all the books allowed, I'm pretty sure the MM wasn't balanced for that kind of play.

[Man_Over_Game]

I can speak from experience when I say it DOES create balance problems. 5e, for whatever reason, has an aversion to put monster that a resistant to phisycal damage period. 90% or more of those are resistant/magic, which renders them incredibly fragile in all tiers of play if the players have magic weapons. Giving them out at lvl 1 seems to nerf half the MM.

CR 15 monster, immunity to all damage that isn't non-magical. Watch the players scramble to punch this thing to death. Or, for a "cleaner" version of it, it gains Temporary Hitpoints when it takes magical damage.

[Rukelnikov]

CR 15 monster, immunity to all damage that isn't non-magical. Watch the players scramble to punch this thing to death. Or, for a "cleaner" version of it, it gains Temporary Hitpoints when it takes magical damage.

That truly brings the 2e flavor back to the game

[Foxhound438]

for the same price it's definitely more powerful if you're going to use enemies with specific damage resistances. As many others say, resistance to weapon (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing) is more common but the balancing factor is that you can typically get more damage at-will with weapons than with cantrips, especially once martial characters pick up extra attack.

I do like the idea in concept though. It would give a nice way of personalizing a martial character and a way of dealing with physical resistant enemies if you need that to happen. Probably the way that I'd work with this is to have price multiplication based on damage type. Not sure how drastically I would increase the prices, but I would make it more expensive for something like radiant or force that's almost never resisted compared to fire or cold which are almost as commonly resisted as physical damage. Some level of scarcity and price barrier would also help work around the issue of barbarians losing the benefit of their damage resistance sometimes since most enemies wouldn't have these weapons to use against the players.

[Man_Over_Game]

for the same price it's definitely more powerful if you're going to use enemies with specific damage resistances. As many others say, resistance to weapon (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing) is more common but the balancing factor is that you can typically get more damage at-will with weapons than with cantrips, especially once martial characters pick up extra attack.

I do like the idea in concept though. It would give a nice way of personalizing a martial character and a way of dealing with physical resistant enemies if you need that to happen. Probably the way that I'd work with this is to have price multiplication based on damage type. Not sure how drastically I would increase the prices, but I would make it more expensive for something like radiant or force that's almost never resisted compared to fire or cold which are almost as commonly resisted as physical damage. Some level of scarcity and price barrier would also help work around the issue of barbarians losing the benefit of their damage resistance sometimes since most enemies wouldn't have these weapons to use against the players.

From what I remember about damage types, it goes something like this:

Force>Radiant>Psychic>Thunder>Necrotic>Lightning>Acid>Fire>Cold>Poison

With Force being the least resisted and Poison being the most.

[TaiLiu]

Thanks for the replies, y'all!


I mean, it shouldnt be unbalanced. Id definitely make radiant and force damage, and possibly a few others off limits due to the power increase of that damage type.

I do like the idea in concept though. It would give a nice way of personalizing a martial character and a way of dealing with physical resistant enemies if you need that to happen. Probably the way that I'd work with this is to have price multiplication based on damage type. Not sure how drastically I would increase the prices, but I would make it more expensive for something like radiant or force that's almost never resisted compared to fire or cold which are almost as commonly resisted as physical damage. Some level of scarcity and price barrier would also help work around the issue of barbarians losing the benefit of their damage resistance sometimes since most enemies wouldn't have these weapons to use against the players.

Call it a common magical item and price it at 50 gp.

A lot of tables prefer to limit that kind of access to magic damage and flashy magical effects, but it's not really a problem for game balance.

EDIT: Or rather, weapon cost + 50 gp

From what I remember about damage types, it goes something like this:

Force>Radiant>Psychic>Thunder>Necrotic>Lightning>Acid>Fire>Cold>Poison

With Force being the least resisted and Poison being the most.
Yeah, I was thinking of maybe making force, radiant, necrotic, and psychic weapons off limits, just cuz of how many immunities and resistances they can ignore. (Well, necrotic a little less, but it and radiant seem an inseparable pair.)

Both the +50 gp solution and the pricing table solution seem reasonable to me. The latter might be more balanced, but the former seems a lot simpler.


So magic weapons that replace the normal damage for X type? reasonable be a funny way of looking at it depending on if you're planning on using creatures with resistance/ immunity to non magic damage at the plot point.
Most likely you'll probably end up regretting it. But I'm pretty stingy with magical weapons as a personal rule.

Cantrips generally deal less damage than weapon equivalents and deal elemental damage, but as a result, elemental damage is less resisted than the physical damage types.

But mostly, this would circumvent a lot of the enemies that are designed to be planned around. Creatures that require silver or magical damage against can now be countered by anyone. Barbarians effectively become useless. Expanding the Barbarian's rage to block more than just the physical damage types now makes the Bear totem redundant. It has a lot of rippling problems.

I can speak from experience when I say it DOES create balance problems. 5e, for whatever reason, has an aversion to put monster that a resistant to phisycal damage period. 90% or more of those are resistant/magic, which renders them incredibly fragile in all tiers of play if the players have magic weapons. Giving them out at lvl 1 seems to nerf half the MM.

Personally I removed the clause from many of the higher CR creatures and added proficiency-2 to ac to all enemies. We play with MC, feats and all the books allowed, I'm pretty sure the MM wasn't balanced for that kind of play.

for the same price it's definitely more powerful if you're going to use enemies with specific damage resistances. As many others say, resistance to weapon (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing) is more common but the balancing factor is that you can typically get more damage at-will with weapons than with cantrips, especially once martial characters pick up extra attack.
Okay, so what I'm hearing here is that this is unbalanced and might warp the game in undesirable ways. Weapons will deal more damage than cantrips, a lot of monster resistances will become irrelevant, and some class abilities will need to be changed.

On damage: what if elemental weapons just didn't add your strength or dexterity modifiers to damage? Would that knock it down to cantrip level?

On resistances: I confess that I've never found resistances a particularly compelling narrative device, so that might be why I've overlooked them. A monster that can't be killed except with a silver weapon? Interesting. A monster that takes half damage from all weapons except silver ones? That's just like having extra HP. Would something like adding more hit points to previously-resistant monsters solve the problem? What if the weapons, for whatever reason, weren't magical - the longsword's made with exotic fire-steel, or something like that?

On class abilities: Good point. I wonder if you could just expand the typical Barbarian resistances to thunder, lightning, acid, fire, cold, and poison; or some subset of that. (Maybe just acid, fire, and cold - the most primordial elements.) Then Bear Totem would still have relevance to the Barbarian.

[holywhippet]

Sounds like you are talking about a Sun Blade: https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Sun%20Blade#content just without the +2 to hit and damage and without the light.

[TaiLiu]

Sounds like you are talking about a Sun Blade: https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Sun%20Blade#content just without the +2 to hit and damage and without the light.
Huh! Yeah, and without the bonus damage to undead. It's a rare item, but it's also a +2 longsword with a buncha goodies on top, so I wonder how a sword that just has the radiant damage feature would do.

[Foxhound438]

T
On damage: what if elemental weapons just didn't add your strength or dexterity modifiers to damage? Would that knock it down to cantrip level?


It'd be about cantrip level at that point, and rather than being just "I use this acid sword because it's less resisted so it's safer", it becomes "I carry this acid blade in case of resistance", which is probably fine overall. I think most people playing a fighter would gladly pick up and carry around an assortment of slightly weaker energy sticks for the sake of having them.

[lordarkness]

Seems like this would undermine the value of spellcasters -- especially at lower levels.

[MrStabby]

I may need a refresher on the Monster Manual, but how many creatures are actually resistant to B/P/S damage that comes from a magic weapon? Vs how many like a Rakshasa that has a vulnerability? Is this really a problem? Especially if the DM decides which of these items the PCs find?

On the other hand we shouldn't be comparing the power of a fire sword to a normal sword as presumably it wouldn't be tough for a PC to get a normal sword as well. So we should compare the choice of which damage to do to doing only B/P/S damage.

[dave2008]

A longsword does slashing damage. For the same price, imagine that you could buy a longsword that did fire damage, or cold, or some other damage type other than the weaponry base of slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning.

Would this be unbalanced? I figured that if the casters can spit out cantrips that can do elemental damage, it might be reasonable for noncasters to as well. Am I missing anything?

Interesting idea. I don't see any difficult issue with it, but there are consequences to keep in mind:

1) Creatures resistant or immune to B,P,S damage would be nerfed
2) Creatures with resistance to the particular elemental types are buffed
3) The cost should probably be higher than a typical weapon

Good luck!

[sithlordnergal]

Seems like this would undermine the value of spellcasters -- especially at lower levels.

I'm not sure that it would...I mean, yes, spell casters would no longer be the only ones who can do elemental damage at will, but most spells and cantrips have riders the weapons would lack.

A Necrotic Longsword can do 1d8 to 1d0 necrotic, but Chill Touch does 1d8, prevents a target from healing through any means, and if the target is undead it forces them to have disadvantage on all attack rolls against the caster.

Firebolt can set things on fire while doing a scaling d10, ray of frost lowers speed by 10 feet, acid splash can hit two adjacent targets, ect. I think they'd be balanced