Optimizing Song of Cosmic Fire

[Rebel7284]

So in a previous thread I stated:


Song of Cosmic Fire is widely considered a disappointment as far as capstone abilities go


But this is the character optimization forums! We can find a way to make doing damage with a skill check passable, right!?



Song of Cosmic Fire (Su): A 10th-level sublime chord with 20 or more ranks in a Perform skill learns the song of cosmic fire. Using this ability costs a sublime chord two of her daily uses of bardic music. The song of cosmic fire creates a 20-foot-radius spread of fire anywhere within 100 feet of the sublime chord (provided she has line of effect to the fire's point of origin). Creatures in the area take damage equal to the Sublime Chord's Perform check result. All affected creatures are entitled to a Reflex save (DC 10 + sublime chord level + Cha modifier) for half


Some problems with this:
- Low base damage: while Perform is probably kept high for a Sublime Chord, the base perform check of 23+Charisma might mean as little as 32-33 damage while average HP for CR 20 opponents is a bit over 400.
- Fire Damage: fire is known as one of the most resisted energy types, and most ways of mitigating this (Searing Spell, Silver Pyromancer, etc.) don't work with Supernatural Abilities.
- Allows a reflex save: Things with Improved Evasion are probably not terribly scared either.
- Range: At level 20, 100 feet is pretty close.
- Since this is a capstone ability, levels 11-20 need to be Sublime Chord, so any class abilities that could improve this would need to come at levels 1-10.

Some approaches:
- Perform Check at least close to 400 would go a long way toward making Song of Cosmic Fire relevant.
While I am familiar with some methods of greatly boosting skill checks, 400 is quite a lofty goal. As a starting point these might help improve skill checks:

Item Familiar
Motivate Charisma from Marshal
Divine Insight
Guidance of the Avatar
Improvisation


Possibly using Greater Spell Matrix to apply the three low-level spells as a contingency.

also, improving Charisma itself would help,

Nixie's Grace +8 Enhancement
Inner Beauty +4 Sacred (if good)
Snowsong +4 Morale
Devil's Ego +4 Profane


Empower Supernatural Ability may also help, but it's only usable once per day. :smallconfused:
- Veil of Allure increases the save DC by 2
- Circlet of persuasion is nice too
I have not seen any way to change the damage type of a supernatural ability, but maybe something is out there!

Any ideas on how to make this work without infinite loops?

[Rebel7284]

[b]Tenzen the Transmuter

Evil Magic-Blooded Mulan Human Bard 1/(Trickster?) Spellthief 1/Transmuter 3/Trapsmith 1/Chameleon 1/Wu-Jen 1/Dread Necromancer 1/Assassin 1/Sublime Chord 10.

1. Able Learner
H. Heighten Spell
Flaw: Extend Spell
Flaw: True Believer of Vecna
3. Item Familiar
6. Theurgic Specialist
Wu-Jen. Persistent Spell
9. Metamagic School Focus
12. Master Spellthief
15. Southern Magician
18. Divine Metamagic[Persistent Spell]

BAB 6. :smallbiggrin:
High saves due to so many dips, might calculate later

Caster level for regular spells for all classes
20 Master Spellthief
+1 Create Magic Tattoo
+1 Ring of Arcane Might
+1 Orange Prism Ioun Stone
+1 Tome of the Stilled Tongue [Relic]
+5 Persisted Suffer the Flesh
+4 Bead of Karma (10 minutes)
= 29 / 33


Caster level for transmutation spells
= 261 (Theurgic Specialist)
or 297 with Bead of Karma

Using Metamagic School Focus + Heighten Spell on the Wizard to qualify as casting 3rd level spells to enter Sublime Chord.

Assuming starting Charisma of 18, but probably need some int too for all the skill prereqs.
18
+ 2 Template
+ 5 level up
+ 5 Inherent
+ 8 Enhancement (Nixie's Grace)
+ 4 Morale (Persisted Snowsong)
+ 4 Profane (Devil's Ego) (best way to cast this? limited wish+persist? UMD staff?)
= 46 Charisma (can be improved by aging and artificers, but eh?) +18 modifier


Perform check:
+23 ranks
+23 item familiar
+18 Charisma
+30 item (competence)
+25 (Insight) Moment of Prescience
+148 (luck) <- Improvisation pre-cast under Bead or Karma
+8 Sirine's Grace
= 1d20 + 275 + anything from Sadism + other misc bonuses like aid another or a friendly marshal.

DC 40 Reflex with Veil Of Allure

That's getting into usable territory, even if still relying on persisted Sadism to do half the work.

As a side effect, caster level 261 for transmutation spells is nifty.

(note: looks like Guidance of the Avatar gives a competence bonus and doesn't stack with item. If item is banned, Guidance of the Avatar becomes good again. )

pretty sure I am over the level 20 WBL slightly

Edit: After reviewing this several times, I realized that both Improvisation and Sadism grant a luck bonus. Darn it! Foiled by the stacking rules again!

[Anthrowhale]

Ability Enhancer and Fell Energy (both in Dragon Compendium) each increase the bonus of bonus granting spells by +2.

You can automatically hit a 20 on the perform check with Surge of Fortune.

My experience with these kinds of optimizations is that you really need to start laying out the numbers. I expect 100 damage will be easy, but 200 will be difficult to achieve.

Is there any way to use some other check in place of a perform check?

[pabelfly]

What about a custom competence item? If you can go with the custom item rules, you can spend 90k for a +30 competence item. If you really want to spend money up to the 200K spending cap on non epic custom items, you could go for a +44 competence bonus for 193,600 gold, although I think the latter would be too much to spend when you have other things your character needs to buy.

[Gruftzwerg]

Bard 4 / Warlock 3 / Eldritch Theurge 3 / Sublime Chord 10

+ Obtain Familiar
+ Able Learner (for Perform & UMD)


We get 1 lesser invocation and pic either crawling eye or disembodied hand.
Use the invocation and let it become a Symbiotic template for your familiar.
Now your familiar can use your ranks and gets your ranks as racial bonus, effectively doubling the ranks you have.

And since your familiar also gains all your special abilities, it also has now its own bardic music ability and also gets Sublime Chord's "Song of Cosmic Fire" ability.

Add the common wands for extra boost.

[AvatarVecna]

There's another problem: this is a 20 ft spread, not a 20 ft burst.

As a sublime chord, you should have access to sorcerer/wizard spells, including Sadism. Sadism gives you +1 luck bonus on all skills for every 10 points of damage you dealt last round. It does other good stuff too, but that's the main thing we care about here. Damage is rewarded with even more damage. Example: if you bomb 20 people, dealing 30 damage to each of them, you dealt 600 dmg, and so next turn you have +60 to skills. If you bomb them again, now you're dealing 90 damage to each of them, for a total of 1800, so +180. This is not an infinite loop, primarily because you will run out of targets and also run out of bardic music uses - so I guess it could be an infinite loop, but only if both you and your enemies are also doing infinite loops.

Anyway, best advice: use a really big AoE blasting spell to take out huge swathes of fodder enemies (Meteor Swarm is great for this), then use the big bonus you got from dealing 20 damage to 500 guys to power this, which you use to melt the BBEG.

I wouldn't worry too much about Improved Evasion, that's really more a thing that enemies have to deal with than player characters. It's plausible you'll face enemies who have at least 9 levels in a non-spellcasting class, but more likely you're facing base monsters. Even evasion is a two-level dip, and there's like two spells that give it as a temporary benefit so caster monsters are mostly out of luck too.

The bigger issue you'll run into as a player is that it's fire damage, and yeah the usual ways around ER/immunity aren't an option here. You can't even use other metamagics like City Spell to turn half the damage to something not-fire. Tome Of Magic has some feats applying metamagic options to supernatural abilities, which at least provides a precedent for the hypothetical existence of a Searing option. But that's not even a rule interpretation, that's straight into homebrew territory.

[AvatarVecna]

What about a custom competence item? If you can go with the custom item rules, you can spend 90k for a +30 competence item. If you really want to spend money up to the 200K spending cap on non epic custom items, you could go for a +44 competence bonus for 193,600 gold, although I think the latter would be too much to spend when you have other things your character needs to buy.

Epic Level Handbook clarifies that any item giving more than a +30 is considered an epic item. You are extremely unlikely to convince a DM to let you purchase an epic item pre-epic under any circumstances, but also, being an epic item that gives an epic benefit means it gets the obligatory x10 multiplier. A +30 competence item is 90000 gp. A +31 competence item is 961000 gp. Besides, there's a better option: non-epic artificers can alter the bonus type of items temporarily via infusions. If you've got ten different +30 competence items for the same skill in different item slots, and the artificer has enough of the right infusions, they can turn all those into different bonuses (or even just all into circumstance bonuses, since circumstance generally self-stacks), and now you've got +300 for "only" 900k gp.

You can also get items cheap if they can only be used by someone of the right class/alignment/skill rank. It's unclear if you're allowed to mix those, but it's a way to abuse that artificer thing for a bit cheaper. You can also craft the items yourself, substituting time and XP for at least half the GP price, allowing for bigger bonuses to be cheesed in.

[pabelfly]

Epic Level Handbook clarifies that any item giving more than a +30 is considered an epic item. You are extremely unlikely to convince a DM to let you purchase an epic item pre-epic under any circumstances, but also, being an epic item that gives an epic benefit means it gets the obligatory x10 multiplier. A +30 competence item is 90000 gp. A +31 competence item is 961000 gp. Besides, there's a better option: non-epic artificers can alter the bonus type of items temporarily via infusions. If you've got ten different +30 competence items for the same skill in different item slots, and the artificer has enough of the right infusions, they can turn all those into different bonuses (or even just all into circumstance bonuses, since circumstance generally self-stacks), and now you've got +300 for "only" 900k gp.

You can also get items cheap if they can only be used by someone of the right class/alignment/skill rank. It's unclear if you're allowed to mix those, but it's a way to abuse that artificer thing for a bit cheaper. You can also craft the items yourself, substituting time and XP for at least half the GP price, allowing for bigger bonuses to be cheesed in.

Ah, forgot about the +30 limit. Thanks for the correction.

[Rebel7284]

There's another problem: this is a 20 ft spread, not a 20 ft burst.
Why is this a problem?



As a sublime chord, you should have access to sorcerer/wizard spells, including Sadism. Sadism gives you +1 luck bonus on all skills for every 10 points of damage you dealt last round. It does other good stuff too, but that's the main thing we care about here. Damage is rewarded with even more damage. Example: if you bomb 20 people, dealing 30 damage to each of them, you dealt 600 dmg, and so next turn you have +60 to skills. If you bomb them again, now you're dealing 90 damage to each of them, for a total of 1800, so +180. This is not an infinite loop, primarily because you will run out of targets and also run out of bardic music uses - so I guess it could be an infinite loop, but only if both you and your enemies are also doing infinite loops.

Anyway, best advice: use a really big AoE blasting spell to take out huge swathes of fodder enemies (Meteor Swarm is great for this), then use the big bonus you got from dealing 20 damage to 500 guys to power this, which you use to melt the BBEG.


I have usually seen Sadism being used to generate infinite loops, but at these high levels, it checks out that regular blasting spells might be sufficient to get a very notable bonus with minimal other optimization! Maw of Chaos is nifty for this since it can daze-lock while dealing damage turn after turn, although the area is much smaller. With that said, while this might be by far the most practical approach, I wonder if something a little less dependent on the enemy (or on strategic chicken placing) is out there as well!

Thanks!

[Inevitability]

Quickened Energy Vulnerability is a 7th-level spell (so reasonably spammable for a 20th-level spontaneous caster) that ups fire damage by 50% against a number of targets, the issue is that Sublime Chords don't actually get 3rd-level wizard spells without Extra Spell.

Frostburn also introduces Ice Shield, which works on a single creature but is a 4th-level wizard spell, so sublime chords naturally get it.

Both allow a Will save and SR, but 50% more damage isn't nothing.

[Anthrowhale]

Energy Substitution[fire] Waves of Cold removes fire immunity based on subtype.

Energy Substitution[fire] Creaking Cacaphony is another way to create vulnerability to fire damage.

[Biggus]

Empower Supernatural Ability may also help, but it's only usable once per day. :smallconfused:


No use unless you can somehow convert the flat damage into dice of damage; as it is, there are no variable numeric effects to empower.

Widen SN Ability and Enlarge SN Ability (both ToM) would work to improve the area and range, but they're both also once per day.

[AvatarVecna]

Why is this a problem?



I have usually seen Sadism being used to generate infinite loops, but at these high levels, it checks out that regular blasting spells might be sufficient to get a very notable bonus with minimal other optimization! Maw of Chaos is nifty for this since it can daze-lock while dealing damage turn after turn, although the area is much smaller. With that said, while this might be by far the most practical approach, I wonder if something a little less dependent on the enemy (or on strategic chicken placing) is out there as well!

Thanks!

Spread is good because it goes around corners, but bad in that I'm pretty sure it's spreading on the ground like fog. Its no different from fireball if you fight ground-bound enemies, but flying creatures are harder to catch.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Find a way to make fire heal you, since you're in the middle of the AoE with no stated immunity to your own ability. At the very least, find a way to become immune to fire.

[Rebel7284]

Quickened Energy Vulnerability is a 7th-level spell (so reasonably spammable for a 20th-level spontaneous caster) that ups fire damage by 50% against a number of targets, the issue is that Sublime Chords don't actually get 3rd-level wizard spells without Extra Spell.

Frostburn also introduces Ice Shield, which works on a single creature but is a 4th-level wizard spell, so sublime chords naturally get it.

Both allow a Will save and SR, but 50% more damage isn't nothing.


Energy Substitution[fire] Waves of Cold removes fire immunity based on subtype.

Energy Substitution[fire] Creaking Cacaphony is another way to create vulnerability to fire damage.

Oooh! I like these options! If you can't change the ability, change the target!


No use unless you can somehow convert the flat damage into dice of damage; as it is, there are no variable numeric effects to empower.

Widen SN Ability and Enlarge SN Ability (both ToM) would work to improve the area and range, but they're both also once per day.

Good catch, thanks!


Find a way to make fire heal you, since you're in the middle of the AoE with no stated immunity to your own ability. At the very least, find a way to become immune to fire.



20-foot-radius spread of fire anywhere within 100 feet of the sublime chord

You don't have to be in the middle. With that said, energy immunity is pretty easy to get if you want more targeting options, that's part of the problem with this ability. 😆

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You don't have to be in the middle. With that said, energy immunity is pretty easy to get if you want more targeting options, that's part of the problem with this ability. 😆Sorry; I think my cold meds are messing with my reading comprehension.

[ShurikVch]

Channel Greater Celestial spell (Book of Exalted Deeds): Tulani Eladrin got about 22 ranks in Perform

Empower Supernatural Ability feat (Tome of Magic)

[Rebel7284]

Channel Greater Celestial spell (Book of Exalted Deeds): Tulani Eladrin got about 22 ranks in Perform

Okay, but we got 23 ranks ourselves, so while this is a nifty idea, not sure if we get much of an improvement, unless I am misunderstanding and the ranks stack.


Empower Supernatural Ability feat (Tome of Magic)

I suggested this in the OP, but others have since pointed out that it doesn't work. :smallfrown:

Also, I updated the builds section with an actual character! Check it out!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Well, Perform [Sex] technically works with this...

[Rebel7284]

Well, Perform [Sex] technically works with this...

Depending on the tenor of the campaign, perhaps, but I don't see any mechanical benefits.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Depending on the tenor of the campaign, perhaps, but I don't see any mechanical benefits.There might be some kind of benefit you can glean from convincing someone you have a very rare magical STD.

"It burns when I... Never mind."

[ShurikVch]

Okay, but we got 23 ranks ourselves, so while this is a nifty idea, not sure if we get much of an improvement, unless I am misunderstanding and the ranks stack.
OK, it's a bit of a less RAW, but Titan (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/titan.htm) have 23 ranks, and was not just of Good subtype in 3.0 - but also listed as "Outsider (Good):" in the "Monsters by Type (and Subtype)" sidebar of Monster Manual for 3.5
Thus, they, apparently, intended it to be "like in the 3.0", but lost during the editing (and never corrected)...



No use unless you can somehow convert the flat damage into dice of damage; as it is, there are no variable numeric effects to empower.
But there is variable effect: we're rolling d20 to determining the damage done. It's variable...

[Promethean]

But there is variable effect: we're rolling d20 to determining the damage done. It's variable...

Wouldn't that mean maximize works as well?

Would that count as a crit? A critical roll is the maximum effect a d20 can do and maximize supernatural ability explicitly says "all variable, numeric effects of the supernatural ability are increased to their maximum effect".

[Jack_Simth]

Leadership - for the followers, for once. Get a choir. Lots of Aid another. Expert-1's with skill focus and masterwork instruments should make dc 10 on a 1. Each is worth a +2.

[Gruftzwerg]

Wouldn't that mean maximize works as well?

Would that count as a crit? A critical roll is the maximum effect a d20 can do and maximize supernatural ability explicitly says "all variable, numeric effects of the supernatural ability are increased to their maximum effect".

maximize should also work in that case.

But the perform roll you make is not substituted for an Attack roll. It is a skill roll which is used to determine dmg. No crit rule here. You sole have critical "Attacks" (anything involving an attack roll), but your damage roll can't crit.

[Rebel7284]

Leadership - for the followers, for once. Get a choir. Lots of Aid another. Expert-1's with skill focus and masterwork instruments should make dc 10 on a 1. Each is worth a +2.

While this works, I suspect trying to keep level 1 experts alive when facing CR 20+ opponents will not be terribly sustainable. Also, leadership is just so broken through and through. Good to keep in mind for the more TO side of things though if we want the perform check to be in the thousands!

[Gruftzwerg]

While this works, I suspect trying to keep level 1 experts alive when facing CR 20+ opponents will not be terribly sustainable. Also, leadership is just so broken through and through. Good to keep in mind for the more TO side of things though if we want the perform check to be in the thousands!

while we are at broken TO:
Get Body outside Body either via Recaster or Wyrm Wizard. They can also use the ability and aid another if needed.

[Rebel7284]

while we are at broken TO:
Get Body outside Body either via Recaster or Wyrm Wizard. They can also use the ability and aid another if needed.

This is harder to pull off since any other prestige class taken after SC would delay the capstone to Epic.

[Gruftzwerg]

This is harder to pull off since any other prestige class taken after SC would delay the capstone to Epic.

Ah, I forgot that you can't enter SC before lvl 11.

Hm.. maybe Wu-Jen as base class and a dip for the bardic music to enter SC?

[Inevitability]

Ah, I forgot that you can't enter SC before lvl 11.

Hm.. maybe Wu-Jen as base class and a dip for the bardic music to enter SC?

Virtuoso can grant Bardic Music without losing caster levels, though the Perform requirement necessitates some type of skill-granting feat.

[Promethean]

This is harder to pull off since any other prestige class taken after SC would delay the capstone to Epic.

There's a feat in ravenloft that allows you to raise the skill rank limit to Level+5, effectively allowing sublime chord at level 8

[Inevitability]

There's a feat in ravenloft that allows you to raise the skill rank limit to Level+5, effectively allowing sublime chord at level 8

That's 3rd-party material, though, isn't it?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

That's 3rd-party material, though, isn't it?2nd party, I think. Ravenloft is official material given blessings by WotC, even if it wasn't published by WotC.

[Rebel7284]

There's a feat in ravenloft that allows you to raise the skill rank limit to Level+5, effectively allowing sublime chord at level 8

For the record, what's the name of this feat?


2nd party, I think. Ravenloft is official material given blessings by WotC, even if it wasn't published by WotC.

My understanding is that even though "second party" is sometimes used colloquially, it's an utterly nonsense statement linguistically.

It's either first party or third party. It's true that third party can further be broken down by license or lack thereof, but if it's not published by WotC directly, it's third party.

[Jack_Simth]

For the record, what's the name of this feat?



My understanding is that even though "second party" is sometimes used colloquially, it's an utterly nonsense statement linguistically.

It's either first party or third party. It's true that third party can further be broken down by license or lack thereof, but if it's not published by WotC directly, it's third party.

2nd party would be your homebrew at your table. Ravanloft is licensed 3rd party.

And... I think Laborous Training? Int-based skills only, though, so you'll need to find a way to migrate Listen.

[Chronos]

Even if we argue that the d20 roll makes it a "variable numeric effect", and hence subject to Maximize and Empower, Maximize still doesn't do much for us. Usually, an ability's damage is all or almost all dice, and so getting the maximum result will be nearly twice the average (compared to 1.5 times for Empower), but here, most of our damage is going to come from the flat plusses (even at low op, you'd be looking at +23 from ranks and another dozen-ish from Cha bonus), so the d20 doesn't matter much.

Empower would still be good, though, since the x1.5 applies to all the damage, not just the portion from the die roll.

[lylsyly]

3.5 virtuoso loses a level of casting at 1 - 3.0 does not

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Even if we argue that the d20 roll makes it a "variable numeric effect", and hence subject to Maximize and Empower, Maximize still doesn't do much for us. Usually, an ability's damage is all or almost all dice, and so getting the maximum result will be nearly twice the average (compared to 1.5 times for Empower), but here, most of our damage is going to come from the flat plusses (even at low op, you'd be looking at +23 from ranks and another dozen-ish from Cha bonus), so the d20 doesn't matter much.

Empower would still be good, though, since the x1.5 applies to all the damage, not just the portion from the die roll.In case anyone tries to argue, magic missile's variable, numeric damage is (1d4+1), not (1d4)+1, because the number rolled is between 2 and 5, not 1 and 4 with no bonus. That's even an example given in the PHB:


EMPOWER SPELL [METAMAGIC]
You can cast spells to greater effect.
Benefit: All variable, numeric effects of an empowered spell are increased by one-half. An empowered spell deals half again as much damage as normal, cures half again as many hit points, affects half again as many targets, and so forth, as appropriate. For example, an empowered magic missile deals 1-1/2 times its normal damage (roll 1d4+1 and multiply the result by 1-1/2 for each missile). Saving throws and opposed rolls (such as the one you make when you cast dispel magic) are not affected, nor are spells without random variables. An empowered spell uses up a spell slot two levels higher than the spell’s actual level.

Thus, SoCF's variable, numeric damage is (1d20+all Perform bonuses that apply), since it works by the same metric.

[Chronos]

Quoth lylsyly:

3.5 virtuoso loses a level of casting at 1 - 3.0 does not

Doesn't matter much in Sublime Chord builds, though. The usual trick is to take 9 levels of bard, then one (non-casting) level of virtuoso, then one or two levels of sublime chord, and then the rest in virtuoso (with casting advancing sublime chord, of course). You still get full sublime chord casting this way, which means that the lost level of bard casting hardly matters. It's nearly a pure upgrade over pure bard: Compared to a pure bard, you have 2 or 4 fewer skill points and one fewer daily use of music, but you gain much better casting, all of the ways to use bardic music and then some, and all of the other bard abilities.

In this particular case, though, we need all ten levels of sublime chord itself, so no prestige classes that advance its casting. In this context, I'm not sure what any levels of virtuoso would give us.

[Rebel7284]

Thanks you everyone for your help so far. I have personally enjoyed this optimization exercise!

The sample build in the second post has gone through several revisions and can easily reach almost 300 damage now, so with energy vulnerability, actually hitting the 400 damage benchmark!

Some conclusions I came to:
- Even with all of this work, Song of Cosmic Fire was made good, but still not amazing or exceptional, which checks out...
- Since Sublime Chord only gives 1 use of bardic music every 2 levels, the sample build spends all of these resources on an ability it can only use 3 times a day. :smalltongue:
- Once your caster level is high enough, uncapped damage spells + Sadism really is the best way to get very high skill checks. It would take only TWO targets getting hit for average damage by Maw of Chaos at CL 297 to surpass the bonus from Improvisation.
- There are MUCH MUCH more silly things that you can do with a caster level that high in any school than some Fire Damage, which I knew conceptually (especially with Blasphemy), but it was funny looking at specific things (CL 300 Hunter's Eye would make a rogue cry, for example from a diviner. Or extended Shapechange lasting 4+ days for a transmuter).
- Kobold + Leadership + Epic Learship seems like a fun approach too that could easily get a higher skill check, but I think I am done with builds for now, too many moving parts.

Thank you again, everyone with your assistance with this piece of TO!

[Vaern]

Energy vulnerability? Does SoCF actually specify that the fire it creates deals fire damage? I thought it created a spread of magical fire that dealt unspecified/untyped damage 🤔

[Rebel7284]

Energy vulnerability? Does SoCF actually specify that the fire it creates deals fire damage? I thought it created a spread of magical fire that dealt unspecified/untyped damage 🤔

No, it does not explicitly say that the damage is fire.

It's a fairly good assumption that it's fire damage, however. The ability describes a spread of fire without indicating anything special about the fire. Fire does indeed deal fire damage barring the rules saying otherwise...