Snorter's page

So a Shark Shaman, has a shark for a companion. Any ideas on how to bring it onto land and or make it function in a fight?

A drink helmet, and a go-kart?

That's not to say that 3E didn't introduce confusion of its own, but I believe the writers took on board what had been flagged in 2E.

Believe it or not, this is exactly what happened with 3E->4E.

I am totally willing to take your word on that, and I've argued as such on several threads.

I believe there are lots of players willing to accept that 4E is a decent game in its own right, that it may even be better balanced and smoother running. But they don't make the jump, since they don't see the line of continuity through the previous editions.

Using the example of U1 mentioned above, I can trace the evolution of an NPC like Sanbalet through my homebrew for three (and a half) editions.
I don't think I have to put spoilers on an adventure that's over 30 years old, but ....
He goes from being a member of an awful base class, with needless prerequisites and a craptastic spell list (but still a potential TPK encounter, even then); gets merged with the other arcane casters (still has a mad Dex requirement, but at least his spell list has opened up); later gets the option of picking his own opposition schools, writing scrolls, brewing potions (so he can actually use the lab that the writer gave him), picking metamagic feats like Silent Spell, so he can actually carry off illusion magic without giving himself away.

His statblock may grow longer each time, but I can point to each iteration, and say 'That's the same guy.' each time. It takes till 3.0/3.5 for him to actually come into his own, and match the flavor of the story with mechanics to back it up. To go from 'swingy encounter in a cave' to 'shapeshifting psycopathic leader of a gang of poisoners', a guy willing to change to female form, 'take one for the team', if it gives him the opportunity to murder his way through the town council, killing every friendly NPC the PCs know, and framing them for the deaths when the bodies start being discovered.

Can I recreate that guy in 4E? Do the same spells exist? (I get that some could be rituals) Do they do the same things? Do they have the same names? If I want to recreate his iconic Color Spray attack, does Color Spray exist as a low-level power? Or do I have to trawl through a list of hundreds of powers, looking for a substitute?

Is the DM someone with a lot more experience of the proposed new ruleset, or just one of the guys from your home group who's had the same time to digest the same rules as everyone else?

My long running 1e campaign was fairly easy to convert to 3x. Spell casters more or less worked the same, rogues, rangers and druids just had to update their class features to skills and feats for the most part,...

I can attest to that; I've run some adventures, such as U1 (Saltmarsh) several times, in three editions of the game, and found it relatively easy to do so. Obviously, familiarity with the material helps, as does having more mature players than when I was 12, and more confidence in myself.

But the fact that each edition tended to build onto the frame of the last, meant I could spend my time adding to the adventure, filling in less explored chapters (like the town itself), weighing up the new options for NPCs (NWPs, skills, feats), rather than having to reinvent the wheel by rewriting them from scratch.
It's interesting to view the evolution of an NPC like Sanbalet, from Illusionist (1E base class), through Magic-User (illusion specialist, fixed opposition schools), to Wizard (illusionist, with free choice of opposition schools, and churning out poisons and potions to his minions like a lemonade stand).

I mean, seriously, and I've heard this a lot from some old schoolers, 3x just codified a bunch of stuff we were already doing anyway.

Again, I can attest to that.

I had copies of all the Sage Advice columns from Dragon Magazine which I kept in a box file. Some of the questions were rather pointless, being from people who couldn't understand how to use an index, or were just being wilfully obtuse (just like now, eh?), but a good number did actually cause the Sage to stop and ponder how certain effects interacted.

We didn't convert to 3E immediately, being in the middle of a 2E campaign at the time, though that did convert early 2001. I still wasn't convinced I was going to make the permanent jump, especially as I hadn't appreciated how my PC had been castrated in the conversion ("You know that thing you've always been able to do? That everybody's always been able to do for 20 years? Now you need a feat for that..."), so I kept all my 2E articles, just in case.

We played some more 3E, and I enjoyed those games better, with PCs that had been intended for that system, rather than ported in. I decided to make the change and went through those old Sage Advice pages, in case there were some nuggets of wisdom that would still aid me.
What I found was that virtually every single one was no longer required. The adoption of specific bonus types, standardised conditions, clearly marking actions as full-round/standard/move/swift, the table of what triggered an AoO, etc, all made those reams of FAQs redundant.

That's not to say that 3E didn't introduce confusion of its own, but I believe the writers took on board what had been flagged in 2E.

As to the AC/THAC0 comment, it irks me. They changed it from subtraction to addition. That's it. No earth-shattering change, no system-breaking departure. See that 10 AC? Add to it instead of subtracting. By the same token, I want to beat my head off a desk when people complain about "how complicated" THAC0 was. IT'S SUBTRACTION! SUUUBTRACTION! Lordamighty.

You find it straightforward; I find it straightforward. But you wouldn't believe how many people I've known had trouble with it.

The biggest problem I found, was people doubling their bonuses;

Player: "I've got THACO 14 for class, +2 to hit for Str, +2 for magic weapon, +1 because we're blessed, +1 for flank attack....so that's like having THACO 8, really, isn't it?

DM: "In a way, yes. You can either adjust your roll or reduce your THACO. Same difference."

Player: "Okay, so let's see...<roll>...a 2. Hmmm. Plus 2 for Str, 2 for magic, 1 for bless, 1 for flank....that's 8. Versus THACO 8...I hit AC 0!"

DM: "What?"

From the almost-but-not-quite-completely-useless department...

Flaring Spell. Seriously, nobody gives a crap about the Dazzled condition; please stop making new feats/class abilities/spells to make people Dazzled.

Better dazzled then vajazzled.

Vajazzling Display

Your dedication to body modification can confuse, enthrall, and stupefy onlookers.

Prerequisite: female, Inscribe Magical Tattoo.

Benefit: While opening the front of your lower clothing, you can perform a bewildering show as a full-round action. Make an Perform (Dance) check to daze all foes within 30 feet who can see your display.

"Is that a ...unicorn? No! It's a dolphin! I see it now!"

The Paladin in my group is mounted, being a mounted Cavalier made this feat one of my top choices for tactician... after all mounts are allies too, so swap places applies... need to set up a charge lane anyone? ;)

Are you just swapping places between the cavalier and the paladin, or are the horses switching, too? The mount is at least one size larger than the cavalier, yes?

Hah. I get what he's doing, now.

The cavalier is granting the feat to his mount, the paladin, and the paladin's mount. Both mounts are more than your average horse, so can be trained to work this tactic.

It's not the cavalier swapping places with the paladin, or with either of the mounts; it's the two horses putting their heads together, and working out when to switch places, backed up by verbal or empathic cues from their riders.

The point is it should be something anyone can attempt It should not be a cavalier/inquisitor only ability. It's not a crappy feat because it codified something people have been house ruling for years/ editions. It's a crappy mechanic because of how it was codified, as a feat. Even worse as a teamwork feat.

It wouldn't be so stupid if it wasn't a teamwork feat. All teamwork feats are on the list for crappiest feat award. Teamwork feats just seem like they were feats that required some sort of action from an ally so someone came up with the bright idea that "hey, let's make them BOTH take the same feat to pull off the action, that way, it inspires group dynamics and teamwork!" No, no it doesn't.

This is like saying bad guys would need feats to perform combat maneuvers on them. "If your enemy has 'Get Bullrushed', you may push it back with an additional 5' for every 5 you succeed on your check."
Why doesn't it suddenly become less stupid to require this for an ally? Just make Swap Places a standard action normally then you can take a feat to make it a move action.

If they really believe that the move requires a conscious ally to buy in to the action, they could make it use up their unused swift action (or next immediate).

Healthy Swapper: "I'm here! Grab my hand!"
Wounded Swappee: "Got you!"
<swivel>

I too have seen people take run as a feat. This happens most often when I'm running a very small game--e.g., 2 players and a GM. Being able to run faster and longer than your foes is pretty useful in such a context.

Being able to outrun the other PC isn't a bad thing, either.

When there's a monster on your tail.

Swap Places from the APG. Its a teamwork feat therefore a feat tax on 2+ players and should have been a combat maneuver.

Not arguing that it shouldn't be a combat manuever(special action...whatever), BUT I will say that this is really useful for a Cavalier's Tactician ability(they share the TWfeat with their friends) and possibly for the Inquisitor's ability (whatever it's called - they get the benefit without needing friends with said TWfeat)

The Paladin in my group is mounted, being a mounted Cavalier made this feat one of my top choices for tactician... after all mounts are allies too, so swap places applies... need to set up a charge lane anyone? ;)

Unfortunately, there's a size restriction on that feat, so there won't be any cavaliers lifting their horses out of melee any time soon...

It helps to have a supply of figures you're not too attached to.
Even better, if they're identical members of the same unit, to test the different paints against each other.

I'm waiting for a DR and Quinch movie myself. Animated by Pixar. Definitly an R rating.

"MIND THE ORANGES, MARLON!

Then by now there should have been a retraction or a correction. In the absence of such, and the high visibility of the conversation, I'll conclude that Mike Mearls said something that could be reasonably interpreted as them paying little attention to playtest results, and Tito reported it in such a way that Mike Mearls feels no need to clarify his intention, suggesting that it is accurate enough to not require clarification.

That seems by far the most likely scenario.

Mohammed al-Fayed has maintained for 15 years that the British Royal Family murdered his son. They have been silent on the matter.

IT MUST BE TRUE!

Or, maybe, just maybe, they consider that responding to such an egregiously self-confessed self-publicist, liar, and criminal (this is a man who took Members of Parliament to court, because he didn't believe he got his money's worth from the bribes he gave them...0_o?) is beneath them, and would not make one blind bit of difference to the conspiracy theorists out there.

In a similar way, you're not going to get game designers with any class getting into a public brawl on the internet. It's a lose-lose situation for them.

You don't have any authority to play the 'no smoke without fire' card.
This is the equivalent of the National Enquirer or Weekly World News declaring that their headlines must be true, since the celebrities don't sue. The reason they don't, is that it's counter-productive. Only fat, idiot trailer trash believe such 'articles', and by tomorrow, they'll have forgotten what they read, and the paper will be fish and chip wrapping. Slapping a writ on them keeps the lies in the public eye.
Unfortunately there are morons out there, who believe silence = confirmation.

Same with groups like Outrage, labelling everyone in the public eye as a closet homosexual.
Silence? HA! I KNEW IT!
Denial? HA! WE GOT HIM RATTLED!

You've chosen to take hearsay, and declare it to be gospel.
Whatever Mearls says, will only strengthen your preconceived stance.
The least you could do is have the integrity to be ashamed of yourself.

<makes mental note not to patronise Doodlebug's roadside lemonade stand.>

Every Who down in Whoville loved partners a lot,
But the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not.
The Grinch hated couplings of similar kinds,
For reasons nobody was able to find.
It could be, perhaps, he was taught it’s not right.
It could be he thought it should stay out of sight.
But I think the most likely of all of the causes
Was that 'buggery in public would frighten the horses'.

You cannot compare civil rights and womans suffrage to same gender marriage b/c homosexuality is condemned in the Bible and the other issues are not.

I think somebody needs to go back to Bible study class.

Looks like I've started a meme...sorry Chris.

Any more of you out there?

That was quick!

The thread in question is THIS ONE.

I've asked the remaining players, and they don't object, so I was considering something simple and informative, such as "GM Snorter runs Rise of the Runelords.".

If that renames all the pages, will it change the header in their post history, will they be able to find it again, and do I need to warn them of any upcoming change?

I also see that there appears to be a new tab in my profile for 'Campaigns', or at least it's new to me.
Should it/could it be moved to there?

Thanks for the response.

I joined a pbp some months ago, for which the GM disappeared.

Since we were enjoying ourselves (and I was using the opportunity to playtest one of the APG classes), I asked the others if they wanted to carry on, with me stepping into the GM shoes, and they said yes.

We've been going several months, and the players have remained stable throughout. We now have more posts under me GMing than the previous GM.

I feel rather odd posting in a thread named after someone else, and wonder, is it possible to alter the original title, once you're 30 pages in? Are there any practical reasons why this wouldn't work? Would the change be reflected in the current players' post history?
People who dropped out a long time ago may not be able to find the thread again, but I'm not going to lose sleep over that.

The thread in question is the one under my 'GM Snorter' alias.

...is it really too powerful to just have channel energy just be a blast or positive or negative energy effecting all coming from one source?

Yes.

I think one statement relates to the hand holding the charge, and the other statement to attacks made via the spare hand.

The hand covered in glowy octarine flames is 'armed'.
The other hand he is throwing a punch with, is not*.

*Unless he's multiclassed as a monk, taken Unarmed Strike feat, or otherwise has a natural attack he is proficient in, of course.

Dotting this for later, and to send to a Magus-player.

One thing I'd really like to see addressed (and has been houseruled for three decades, ever since my group allowed any 1st Edition caster to send shocking grasp through a weapon) is whether a partial hit is allowed, or if it's all or nothing.

I.E., If the attack roll totally fails to hit Touch AC, the result is obvious, no effect at all.
If the attack roll beats Full AC, the effect is obvious, weapon damage and spell damage apply.
If the attack roll lies between Touch AC and Full AC; what is the writer's intent?
Does the Touch effect go off, but without the weapon damage?
After all, you have, by definition, struck the opponent on target, but merely failed to find the chink in his armor, or failed to power the blade through thick hide.

I've never had any problems adjudicating this, even in editions that didn't even specify Touch AC. I was always able to rule which AC mods made you 'tougher to hurt', and which made you 'not stood there'.
But the concept seems to hurt some people's heads.

Am I deluded? Is this actually a complicated concept?

In their defence, Justice Dept aerial units have been in the strip for decades. The technology is certainly there to combine them with the standard Lawmaster.

I've always thought the character would work best as an ongoing series (Hill Street Blues, Law and Order, etc), rather than individual films. The episodic nature of the typical strip lends itself better to the 'crime of the week', while still allowing for a series metaplot investigating some particularly troublesome criminal mastermind (P.J. Maybe, etc).

If they can manage to fit two cases per episode (like Law and Order, CSI) that could satisfy the competing markets for the 'satirical comedy' and 'serious dystopian commentary', while leaving the occasional film to scratch the itch for 'balls-out explosion-fest', a la Judge Cal/Cursed Earth/Block War/Apocalypse War/Judda Bloodline/Mechanismo Project, et al.

Give every story (and vilain) the room they need to tell the tale they deserve. What I particularly dislike in films, is when several plotlines are jammed together, in a way that wastes their potential.

Question to the original poster:

How many other players at the table have cohorts, henchmen, animal companions, familiars, or otherwise allied NPCs?

That would make a big difference to how I viewed rp'ing an extra voice every session.

WOW! Not only are we getting the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's guide, and Monster Manuel...

I think that last one will be for the Hispanic market.

But how feasible would it be for each player to have an entry for their character stored at Paizo? More than the little profile currently could do.

I thought that was the whole point of the profiles?

That every player had to have a Paizo account, so that every PFS PC had to be entered there?

If you're meaning there needs to be more space to record the chronicle info, then I get where you're coming from.

Cool! I just got one yesterday, with Seoni swinging in a wreath. Is that still good?

<tongue firmly in cheek>

There are limits but I doubt anybody will run into them. If it becomes a problem we may change those limits.

You've not met the FAWTL crew, I take it?

Does happy dance.

Private Messaging Service; the good kind of PMS.

Has our gaming become so influenced by video games, that a player would quit a character just based on game mechanics? Are we completely split as a gaming community? I never thought mechanics were more important than personality and story.

Have a look at what one of my players has said about his PFRPG L13 wizard. Has ROLL-playing replaced ROLE-playing for good?

Has Pax' life become so lacking in relevant examples, that he has to really work this hard, to twist any and every passing comment he hears into a false dichotomy between 'true ROLE-players' and 'dirty ROLL-players'?

Absolutely.

I've always wondered about the fantastic amounts of wild life the average summoner psuedo-kills over the course of their career and how it lives on coping with the trauma. One can only hope they don't get summoned repeatedly.

That's where all those fiendish animals come from...what better reason for an otherwise innocent animal to sell its soul to an infernal power, than revenge?

WOW! Not only are we getting the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's guide, and Monster Manuel, we're getting a Menzoberranzan campaign book and Elminster's Forgotten Realms by Ed Greenwood. With future support for Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, and possibly Dark Sun. They state the core books are exactly how they were originally besides the adds in the back! 5th edition is still far away so these should keep true D&D fans happy in the meantime.

Actually, that's not the impression I got.

The blog was previewing all their upcoming releases.
First Edition reprints were one product, the Dungeon Survival Guide, Menzoberranzan, Realms book, etc, were other products. They go on to describe several of the items in that list as being board games or minis.

Greg: Where do you start with your design when approaching the next edition. Are you looking at all of the classes, or a specific edition version?

Monte: To start with we kind of shot at the moon, and said everything that's been in a Player's Handbook 1, we want to potentially have in our new player's book. That includes things like the warlock and the warlord from 4th edition, but also includes the classes from other editions like the ranger, the wizard, the cleric. Going along those lines we separated things along the lines of what's common or uncommon. So for example fighters, clerics, wizards and clerics might be commmon while warlocks, bards, and paladins fall into uncommon and something like the assassin might be rare. This helps DMs determine what options they want to run in their games as well.

Bruce: It also might be the case that some of the classes labeled rare might be a bit more complex or difficult to pick up, so players could also have a gauge with how they want to pick their classes.

It could also be that a certain class isn't necessarily mechanically complicated, but opens up play styles that have proven troublesome in the past.

E.g. I think we'd all agree that a Cultist class, that fuels its power pool via cannibalistic blood rites, would be something that would either be absent from the game, or kept behind a firewall with other optional rules marked 'mature gamers only', preferably by a 3PP, so the official owners of the game can disown it.

Obviously, that was an extreme example, but the same could also be said for graphic critical hit results, overly-detailed disease and poison effects, seduction powers, etc.

Where different groups draw the line can vary wildly; I'd not expect any of the above to be in the offical material, despite them not fazing me. They faze somebody, somewhere.

And for other groups, that line could be much less forgiving of classes like the assassin, whether it be 'Not in MY game!", or "Hmmm, only as an NPC.".
Some groups may not want the drama associated with the paladin class. Again, I find them very straightforward to adjudicate, but other GMs seem to tie themselves in knots by trying to enforce 20th-century morality (and IMO, a badly-interpreted reading of same, but that's a topic for a thousand and one other threads...).
Races like half-orcs and tieflings can make some players uneasy, due to the implications inherent in their origin.
Some religious players have misgivings about playing a game where PCs gain powers from visible pantheistic deities. A variant like the BECMI model, where they choose a general Ethos may be more to their taste.

And those groups deserve the chance to set up their own campaign in the way they want, and feel as if they're still playing the game as the authors intended, a game where there are modular layers that can be opted in or out, rather than being told they're having badwrongfun for stripping out core options.

I think he means "Can you canibalize your own spell book, to use as if they were scrolls?"

I think it was a house rule from 1st/2nd Edition that we used.

We used it since the wizards had a tendency to a) run out of spells during the day, and b) accumulate several looted spellbooks that were filled with a lot of duplicate junk.

Protection from MealyMouthedness/WishyWashyness

Level 1 Spell

This spell functions as Protection from Good/Evil/Law/Chaos, only it targets those without the intestinal fortitude to actually take a stand on something. =}

Vocal component - "Get some NUTS!"

The only difference between chaotic neutral and chaotic evil is the owning player realises he ought to at least pretend to feel bad about it, whereas the other player thinks it was funny.

Fixed that for you ;)

Chaotic neutral is "I'll do anythiing i want... but i won't do THAT"

So... Meatloaf is CN?

Good all the Poms are in the one spot and I don't mean a backpackers in Bondi.

Now to unleash my nefarious plan.... "Neighbours" themed shopping centres and pubs.

Quick; what's the telephone number for the Geneva Convention?

Reading that this is in the works... what happens when people see the slovenly trull, the common street walker and the rest of the random prostitute table, in a book published today? *sighs*

I knew a guy who misread that entry as 'slovenly troll', which led us to remark that the 'soiled doves' of his home campaign left much to be desired, and the menfolk must have been really hard up.

http://t.co/rfhrrL4d

Wizards has a live chat of one of the seminars going.

I haven't time for a full read of that just yet, but they appear to be hopping from topic to topic very fast. I hope it settles down so an idea can be discussed in more detail.

Anyone know if you need a DDI sub to be able to add a comment?

Do you know i didn't even have mash tatties and neeps tonight and definitely no haggis!! - mind you they are hard to catch at this time of year ;)

If you leave out a saucer of milk, the haggis will come to lap it up, and you can drop a bucket over him.

Not me, but I am obsessed with the British if that counts for anything.

<winks>

"Well, hellooooooooooooooo there!"

Never write "past history" again. It's like writing "free gift." History is by definition in the past. FOR LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THE UNIVERSE, STOP THE MADNESS!

Quite right, bugleyman.

It's an unnecessary redundancy.

4E kicked me -- and pushed me back 2 squares.

If you'd been a blink dog puppy, you could have shifted straight back.

And got combat advantage.

Maybe I can provide a different perspective: I started playing D&D in the late 70s with the Red Box, followed shortly by AD&D (and yes, my mom did take a sharpie to certain illustrations in my copy of Dieties and Demigods). Switched to Traveller, Car Wars, and Battletech for a while until my mom stopped freaking out about me becoming a satanist due to D&D.

o_0?

She didn't mind you being an amoral mercenary, a couch potato wired up 24/7 to a virtual game suit (that's what a mech pilot is, after all), or running over pedestrians at the shopping mall?

But D&D? Ohnoes! He might be subjected to unsuitable role models!
Who will think of the children!

Makes me glad to have been an 80s gamer in the UK. We didn't have quite the same Satanist hysteria; we just were thought of as dorks.
LOL

+ The very idea that anyone would even consider the possibility of 'group initiative' makes my head spin. If I'm playing a Dex 19 elf, I fail to see why I should go last in the round, simply because I chose to befriend Fatty McPieFace(Dex 3), prior to travelling into the dungeon.

Or, conversely, why Fatty and his friends should ignore their rotundness and lack of agility, due to having made friends with me.

I do want to point out that you can roll a 1 on the d20 in the same round Fatty rolls a 20... :)

True, but that reflects that individual failing, at that one moment, to be aware of their surroundings, rather than being forever slowed down by association with Fatty (who, if he rolled a 20 for initiative, probably just happened to be looking in the right direction, thinking he could smell a pie...).

Shisumo sounds familiar to me. One of every race/class combo.
If you can't find something to fit your concept here, then you're just being fernickety.

The very idea that anyone would even consider the possibility of 'group initiative' makes my head spin. If I'm playing a Dex 19 elf, I fail to see why I should go last in the round, simply because I chose to befriend Fatty McPieFace(Dex 3), prior to travelling into the dungeon.

Or, conversely, why Fatty and his friends should ignore their rotundness and lack of agility, due to having made friends with me.

You're one of the sensible ones, Matthew.
Your posts show that you think things through, rather than just adopt some buzz-phrase that you heard second-hand off some forum.
[Charlton Heston]("It's an MMO! On paper! G!@ D!*n you! You really did it! You blew it up!")[/Charlton Heston]

I never implied that you had to adopt 4E; I haven't.
It doesn't stop me defending it, and its creators (who I assume intended to make the best game they could), from wild accusations.

WotC did get hate-mail for 3.5; they were accused of a money-grab, for re-releasing a game that was virtually the same.* So they went into the mailbag, read the complaints over 3.5 and went for something more bold, that addressed those issues.

It didn't gel with some people, but I can't blame them for trying.
There's things about it that don't gel with me. Swapping powers, rather than learning more, is something that breaks verisimilitude for me. I can see the gamist argument of keeping things neat, and fitting on a sheet of A4, but I'd rather have the continuity of building on what I had before.

None of which makes me 'hate' the game.
I'm an adult, I'm capable of looking something over, going "Hmmmmm....maybe not." And going off and playing something else.

*Has anyone compiled a list of the differences? The only ones I can think of off-hand are haste not giving an extra standard action, rogues having two abilities swapped round, and rangers having their abilities delayed, so they weren't as much of a front-loaded dip-class. There's bound to be more, but we ported to 3.0 late, so weren't as invested as in 3.5.

1- non-lethal damage can be done with a -4 penalty to hit. Also casters can prepare spells as "merciful" with a metamagic feat +0 caster level.

I'd be glad to have both those concepts removed from the tabletop game, and sent to the Island of Stupid Rules.

The idea that someone can swing a sharp blade around, and never accidentally hit with the edge or point, is ludicrous, even with a self-imposed -4 penalty.
And even if you did, congratulations, all you've done is wield your finely-crafted heirloom longsword as if it were an iron bar.
An iron bar, where all the weight is balanced nearer the grip than the middle.
So, it's not even as good as a real iron bar.
Great, you can gimp your attack roll, and do 1d4 damage.
Oh, but you think that's weak? You want to do the 'proper' damage, as listed in the book? Well, maybe you should start wielding your weapon 'properly', then?
And, no, you do not get to benefit from the keen weapon property. The 'flat' of your blade isn't razor-sharp, is it?

And as for the 'merciful' fireball?
"Ow, ow, I'm burnt, ...oh, except I'm not...seems like I'm OK after all. So why do I still have a compulsion to lie down on the floor as if I'm unconscious?"

A fireball deals damage because it creates flames. A spell that doesn't produce flames, just produces pretty pictures of flames, that aren't hot, is just a silent image.