Elemental Sorcerer question

[Redblade8]

Hey,

Really quick. Do you think it'd be reasonable to allow Air or Water Elemental Sorcs to let their bloodline schticks do lightning or cold damage instead of bludgeoning like the rules say?

Just curious.

Later!

[Amaya/Polaris]

I mean, sure, lightning and cold have pretty balanced tradeoffs with physical damage types. They can hit weaknesses, but they run into resistances and immunities. Bludgeoning doesn't interact as often so it's less risky -- and if lightning and cold were broken, fire would be too.

For the record, the 1E energy type for Earth was acid. I think bludgeoning would still do a better job for that one.

[Ventnor]

I personally don't think it would be too overpowered, though I'm of the opinion that Wind Elemental Sorcerers should be doing slashing damage instead of bludgeoning.

[Redblade8]

Sure, bludgeoning makes a ton of sense for Earth (I always had a tough time making the mental contortions needed to justify acid there). It's not even like I have a build at hand, I just sometimes get a jonesing for lightning or ice themes. :)

[thenobledrake]

It's not over-powered... but it's also not really thematically appropriate. And yes, I realize that saying that I am saying that decades of established elemental mage versions are given thematically inappropriate powers - but I thought those things didn't fit the theme back then too.

Just like acid representing earth seems to be an adjacent concept rather than smack-dab in the middle of the concept of earth, electricity is adjacent to air and cold is adjacent to water.

This is why if you look back at the elemental planes as envisioned by the devs of D&D back in the day, you get the para-elemental plane of ice (cold) being the area where the planes of air and water come in contact, the para-elemental plane of ooze (acid) being the area where the planes of water and earth come in contact, and lightning being one of the quasi-elemental planes and thus produced where the elemental plane of air makes contact with the positive energy plane. And that's why it has always seemed weird to me to have the elemental disciplines be fire (from the plane of fire), water (but actually mostly ice), air (but actually most lightning), and earth (but actually mostly ooze) instead of sticking to the 4 elements more specifically or extending the list so an elementalist could be fire, earth, air, water, ooze, ice, smoke, magma, lightning, minerals, radiance, steam, ash, dust, salt, or vacuum so that all of the various elemental, para-elemental, and quasi-elemental planes could be represented.

[lemeres]

Redblade8 wrote:

Sure, bludgeoning makes a ton of sense for Earth (I always had a tough time making the mental contortions needed to justify acid there). It's not even like I have a build at hand, I just sometimes get a jonesing for lightning or ice themes. :)

Grass type pokemon, canary-killing gas in a mine, and arc of the covenant levels of radioactive plutonium. Combined with a cave that gives the impression of a gapping maw that will swallow any foolish adventurer that dare to try to explore the depths below.

thenobledrake wrote:

Just like acid representing earth seems to be an adjacent concept rather than smack-dab in the middle of the concept of earth, electricity is adjacent to air and cold is adjacent to water

...ok, I might be able to come up with some cool imagine to justify acid, but still, it is nowhere near as close to the element as frozen seas are to water and thunders storms are to air.

And it is certainly better than "you are either a pyromancer, or you are generic". There is not really a functional difference between the three elements when they all do bludgeoning.

[thenobledrake]

lemeres wrote:

And it is certainly better than "you are either a pyromancer, or you are generic". There is not really a functional difference between the three elements when they all do bludgeoning.

This is true. Right now most of the ability to differentiate comes down to what spells are selected, rather than granted, which is kind of limited and might not appeal to everyone since they are having to choose whether to build up their theme or whether to pick spells with a different strategy (such as what is most likely to be of use).

In the way-back days, the difference between one elemental focus and the next was that each element had it's own spell list. That created a lot of distinction between the four elements, and was also kind of the only way that existed to differentiate one type of caster from the others back then because there weren't things like class feats to hang the differences on.

Now, PF2 doesn't have any class feats for a particular elemental bloodline sorcerer to take to make them more distinct from the other non-fire options either... but those could be added.

It might be a more difficult and time-consuming home-brewing to add in these element-specific feats, but I think it's overall a better solution than sacrificing thematic consistency over what are basically zero-gain mechanical changes.

[Samurai]

I simply created new granted spell lists for each element. Some may say they are not perfectly balanced, and I'll look for better spell choices once I get the APG, but I believe that is the best option. Still, Lightning and Ice damage are better choices for Air and Water than just Bludgeoning.

[Redblade8]

lemeres wrote:

Grass type pokemon, canary-killing gas in a mine, and arc of the covenant levels of radioactive plutonium. Combined with a cave that gives the impression of a gapping maw that will swallow any foolish adventurer that dare to try to explore the depths below.

Indeed, what I sort of head-canoned there was the "acid" as the burns left behind by weird residual energies of starmetals found deep in the earth (okay, so at that point they're likely not really *star*-metals, just work with me here!). :)

[gnoams]

I too think the everything else does bludgeoning damage choice was super lame.

Ice and lightning are too iconic not to support. They'll add bloodlines for them eventually, I hope.

[Grankless]

There's always the very-fun Legendary Kineticist. /shill

[Lucas Yew]

Personally I would have separated Air(gas)/Earth(solid)/Water(liquid) damage from bludgeoning for an easier "programming" of rules effect simulations, just like the Paizo team seems to have already divorced radiation from poison...