Just like a Flaming sword, right?
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Feasibly? I suppose. Though it doesn't say the arrow does flaming damage by just touching something, which means you could just activate them all immediately and then store them in your quiver. They only do the fire damage on a successful attack.
Generally speaking I think it's best that the weapons are assumed to be activated by the PCs, unless they deactivate them for some other reason. The only reason I could think of them not being on is if they found some deactivated weapon in the middle of combat and needed to spend time re-activating it then.
(Also, using a command word is a standard action, not a move one)
I would think most arrows are activated by shooting them as, unlike a sword, you don't really want your arrows to be on fire while you're readying them in your bow.
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As Kauri Kage says it's best to just assume that weapons with energy modifiers are always active and do not effect anything except the target of an attack. The standard action activation/ deactivation is more for when you want to turn it off and likely doesn't apply to ammo.
This is essentially the same as the flaming sword which James Jacobs commented on.
While it's a command word to activate or deactivate a weapon like a flaming or a frost weapon... once activated it stays on. Sheathing it suppresses the energy automatically, and when you draw the weapon later it's ready to go. You'd only want to turn off the energy effect, as a previous poster said, when you're facing something that using that type of energy against is a bad idea.
James' comments are not binding rules and you could certainly make life more difficult for players by ruling otherwise but why?
James' comments are not binding rules and you could certainly make life more difficult for players by ruling otherwise but why?
The childish glee of forcing your players to verbalize "Excelsior!" before he gets the extra damage?
Creative Director
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Yup; flaming arrows stay activated. You can activate them on day 1 when you identify them and then stash them in a quiver, and then on day 24 when you finally use them, they're still burning. They only deal fire damage when they hit.
The rules for activating and unactivating a weapon's energy damage is not in the game to force users of those weapons to spend an extra action to get ready above the action of drawing a weapon. The rules are mostly there for the cases where you want to turn OFF the effect, such as if you're entering an encounter where having visibly magic weapons might be a disadvantage.
Otherwise, the game assumes that the energy damage effect is left on all the time. It's not like those weapons will run out of power if they're left on all the time, after all.
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Yup; flaming arrows stay activated. You can activate them on day 1 when you identify them and then stash them in a quiver, and then on day 24 when you finally use them, they're still burning. They only deal fire damage when they hit.
The rules for activating and unactivating a weapon's energy damage is not in the game to force users of those weapons to spend an extra action to get ready above the action of drawing a weapon. The rules are mostly there for the cases where you want to turn OFF the effect, such as if you're entering an encounter where having visibly magic weapons might be a disadvantage.
Otherwise, the game assumes that the energy damage effect is left on all the time. It's not like those weapons will run out of power if they're left on all the time, after all.
This has been semi-addressed in other threads, but I assume Amulet's of Mighty Fist that grant energy damage work the same way. So if my monk has "flaming" hands, he doesn't light everything he touches on fire, but his hands are constantly giving some visual effect that they would deal flame damage. Correct?