I can't believe no one has ever asked this! Say Maxwell has a +1 Brilliant Energy Ghost Touch Mithril Earthbreaker hammer, and his teacher returns as a ghost. Maxwell attacks. The hammer is Brilliant Energy, so it should fail to affect the ghost at all, but the hammer is Ghost Touch, so it should affect the ghost just fine. What is the ruling?
The hammer doesn't work, because brilliant energy trumps ghost touch?
The hammer works partially: it damages the ghost in the manner of ghost touch weapons, but the touch attack property of brilliant energy doesn't work.
or maybe
It's full on: Bang, bang Maxwell's Silver Hammer, baby!
I don't know, but I suddenly hope I some day have the opportunity to play a martial character named Maxwell who is the reformed former student of a major villain.
I'm thinking maybe an eldritch knight with ex-antipaladin as the martial dip.
Brilliant doesn't do any thing to a ghost as the ghost's AC is deflection dodge and dex. There is no physical armor to bypass. Ghost touch allows you to ignore the 50% miss chance due to being incorporeal. So brilliance is kind of waste against ghosts.
voska66 wrote: Brilliant doesn't do any thing to a ghost as the ghost's AC is deflection dodge and dex. There is no physical armor to bypass. Ghost touch allows you to ignore the 50% miss chance due to being incorporeal. So brilliance is kind of waste against ghosts. Brilliant weapon explicitly does not affect non-living matter.
The brilliant energy ghost touch weapon won't hurt the ghost because it is undead. Ghost touch ability only overcomes limitation of striking incorporeal beings for 50% of damage, which is separate quality than being undead.
There are creatures that are incorporeal but are alive (shadow demon for example) that would be affected by this weapon but as voska66 noted, brilliant energy property would be wasted on them because incorporeal creatures in general lack armor and natural bonuses to AC. Ghost touch and brilliant energy[/i] properties have rather poor synergy in that regard.
The ghost, on the other hand, can pick such weapon and use it against the living.
Brilliant energy is a trap.
Are there any weapon abilities more useless than brilliant energy? There's certainly no worse use of an entire +4 for certain, but are there any "monkey lunge" abilities that simply do not work?
Drejk wrote: voska66 wrote: Brilliant doesn't do any thing to a ghost as the ghost's AC is deflection dodge and dex. There is no physical armor to bypass. Ghost touch allows you to ignore the 50% miss chance due to being incorporeal. So brilliance is kind of waste against ghosts. Brilliant weapon explicitly does not affect non-living matter.
The brilliant energy ghost touch weapon won't hurt the ghost because it is undead. Ghost touch ability only overcomes limitation of striking incorporeal beings for 50% of damage, which is separate quality than being undead.
There are creatures that are incorporeal but are alive (shadow demon for example) that would be affected by this weapon but as voska66 noted, brilliant energy property would be wasted on them because incorporeal creatures in general lack armor and natural bonuses to AC. Ghost touch and brilliant energy[/i] properties have rather poor synergy in that regard.
The ghost, on the other hand, can pick such weapon and use it against the living. Great, now i have to make a ghost in my campaign that uses a brilliant energy ghost touch weapon against the party.
Because it would seem that for ghosts, this combination rocks.
Jamie Charlan wrote: Are there any weapon abilities more useless than brilliant energy? There's certainly no worse use of an entire +4 for certain, but are there any "monkey lunge" abilities that simply do not work? I can imagine it, theoretically, being useful, it just never is in practice. The theoretical part is that it can represent the equivalent of anywhere from +1 to +23 to hit against armored opponents (from padded armor to +5 full plate and +5 tower shield). However, because players fight monsters that don't wear armor or shields as often as they fight NPCs that do, combined with the fact that these players rarely have problems hitting high ACs anyway, especially at the level where they can afford a +5 weapon, it's just never useful in practice.
I could see it helping a build with a very low to-hit, but it'd be such a niche case and it wouldn't be particularly better than other options anyway.
Jamie Charlan wrote: Are there any weapon abilities more useless than brilliant energy? No.
First, for what it does +4 is insane. I'd rate it as +1 or +2, because it's useless as a power against a lot of enemies, and even useless as a weapon against a few.
Second, the power doesn't make sense. If the blade is immaterial and passes through matter and just affects the life-force (this is why it doesn't hurt non-living), then it should bypass natural armour (make it an incorporeal touch attack) which would not affect objects but would affect undead.
It passes through natural armor i thought.
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It's not that it bypasses material matter and hits their "life force." It's that it bypasses inorganic matter and strikes only living flesh. Natural armour is part of a creature's living body, thus it isn't bypassed.
redcapscorner wrote: It's not that it bypasses material matter and hits their "life force." It's that it bypasses inorganic matter and strikes only living flesh. Natural armour is part of a creature's living body, thus it isn't bypassed. then it may be reasonable to houserule just that(bypass Natural Armor, Strike at life force basically making it touch attacks).
Because yeah, for a +4 ability thats pretty weak unless you got a ton of humanoid enemies with class levels.
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Just get a wand of flame blade if you want a melee touch lightsaber. :-P Brilliant Energy seems like it was designed kind of poorly, IMHO.
redcapscorner wrote: It's not that it bypasses material matter and hits their "life force." It's that it bypasses inorganic matter and strikes only living flesh. Natural armour is part of a creature's living body, thus it isn't bypassed. What your saying is how it's written, no doubt.
But the design choice to make the power work that way resulted in an awful power, and the decision to make it +4 just compounded the error.
In 3.0 the speed weapon special ability was also rated at +4, but they changed that to +3 for 3.5. They should have taken the opportunity to adjust brilliant energy.
Also, the idea that a blade of light would not be stopped by steel but would be stopped by flesh is poor.
Yeah, I don't disagree. I kind of like Brilliant Energy for a magus using the Ghost Blade magus arcana, but for some reason I thought a magus using the property in this way effectively got to count it as a +1 equivalent enhancement bonus. Going back and reading everything again now, it seems this isn't the case. At +1 equivalent bonus, Brilliant Energy's awesome, though. (:
It's possible (and likely in fact) that the designer of the Ghost Blade arcana just didn't realize Brilliant Energy was so over-costed, as the prerequisite for Ghost Blade is nine levels of magus, by which point your arcane pool can only be used to add +3 equivalent bonuses. That Brilliant Energy property isn't even usable when you gain the power.
Not to mention this thread brought to light (for me at least) how awkward it is that Ghost Blade expands your list of options to include both Ghost Touch and Brilliant Energy. I see what they were going for... Having Brilliant Energy is sort of like being incorporeal, so it's tacitly related. It is kind of a nonbo, though.
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