Ramifications of swapping energy damage for blunt / sladhing / piercing?


Homebrew and House Rules


As a GM I don't particularly care for the odd grab bag of spells wizards tend to have and so was thinking to change some of the fluff in spell descriptions so they adhere better to a theme. One of my players is playing a dwarven wizard and I thought it'd be more thematic to have his spells be earth based. To that end, I was thinking some of his damage dealing spells could have their energy component substituted with a spray of battering rocks or slashing obsidian shards; dealing blunt or slashing damage instead.

So my question is, if I take a cold-based ranged touch spell like Snowball and replace it with a ranged touch attack that deals blunt damage will game balance be preserved or is the notion too powerful?


Well, spells that deal energy damage are balanced around the notion that they quite often will come up against energy resistance or immunity. There is hardly any immunity to physical damage (swarms and incorporeal creatures aside) and DR tends to work with far lower numbers than energy resistance (i.e. you don't see creatures with DR 30/-). In essence, most of the time, you're going to grant this mage higher and more consistent damage. That's about it.

Sczarni

The problem that I see is that, it doesn't make sense, at least to me. Why would you pigeonhole a person into casting partially fire-based spells if the spell is called "Flaming Sphere" or such. Perhaps he is casting such spell deliberately against fire vulnerable creature. Give him instead a free Elemental Spell (acid) Metamagic feat so he can transform some of the spells whenever he wants so.

Adam

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