Details of Orichalcum Dust

[Joesi]

Arcane Anthology p.23 wrote:

The alchemist sprinkles a small quantity of colorful dust that comprises the essence of all four elements. By favoring one element over another in this mixture, the alchemist temporarily changes the energy type of one weapon into another. For example, the alchemist can choose for a bomb to deal acid damage or a weapon with the shocking burst special ability to deal fire damage instead. Once an elemental effect is changed, it cannot be changed again until the anointing’s duration expires.

I feel like unless developers chime in on this —which seems highly unlikely to me(maybe the writer would come forward unofficially?)— I don't expect any definitive conclusion, but I'm still curious what you guys think of this.

Orichalcum Dust is an Alchemist/Investigator Annointing (available as/instead-of a discovery) from Arcane Anthology which says that it converts the energy type of the energy damage of a weapon to any other. However in it's flavor text it also mentions "four elements". Now whether sonic is an "element" might be irrelevant (debatable), but it is an energy type, and the description of the skill says "the energy type of one weapon into another" without listing any restrictions.

So it seems like sonic may not have been considered when this skill was created, however would it be considered too strong for the ability to convert to and from sonic? One could easily assert that they simply forgot that sonic was an option and that they would still allow it.

Alchemists already have the ability to take Concussive Bombs for instance (which does not waste a round of combat, and which allows changing bomb damage types on the fly. The only downside being dealing a little less damage). In fact, it would be a quite underpowered ability if one was to rule that each bomb has to individually have a round spend to alter the energy type, but even if it affected all bombs, there's no way for the player to deal multiple different elements of damage for the entire duration of the effect, which is also a downside (I suppose much less-so if it was sonic damage though).

I suppose another question would be would you allow the ability to work on all of a character's arrows/bullets/bombs or only one at a time?

Come to think of it, another issue with Orichalcum dust is that it doesn't state anything about special bombs. Would it still function to convert the damage of an Explosive Bomb to cold, while also causing the Explosive bomb to ignite the target with a cold fire? or maybe a normal fire?

This is a super obscure ability, as it seems like nobody on the internet used it or asked about it, except one case I found just a month ago asking the same question about sonic type. It would be nice to see a bit of use, but if people rule it a certain way then it will probably never really see any use.

It would be nice at the least to see someone wielding Lemongrab's sound sword. Granted that would be extremely weak and bad, but at least it would be cool.

[Diego Rossi]

Technically an arrow is an ammunition (unless you use it as an improvised melee weapon). So you are asking if you can affect multiple ammunition in one go (the usual grouping of 50, normally).

As written you need ammunition with a form of elemental damage. I would allow you to modify 50 identical ammunition as a single set, but they must have exactly the same abilities (i.e. they have to be +1 flaming arrows, as an example).

RAW you seem to affect a single arrow at a time.

Bombs are even worse. They don't have an energy damage type until they are mixed, but the Bomb ability say:

Quote:

Bombs are unstable, and if not used in the round they are created, they degrade and become inert

so you don't have the time to annoint them after mixing them.

I would allow you to annoint the catalyst before making the bomb, but again we are in RAI/houserule territory. RAW simply it doesn't work.
In every instance, I would allow you to prepare a single catalyst with each use of the ability. But it lasts 1 minute/level of the alchemist, so you can prepare them in advance.

Annointing

[Pizza Lord]

By the reading of the specific item's description, it seems clear that it applies to the 4 classic elements (earth, air, fire, and water). How those necessarily correlate with acid, cold, electricity, fire, sonic or other energy types is debatable. I think most agree it's Earth/Acid, Fire/Fire, Air/Electricity, Water/Cold ... but is water really Cold? This isn't philosophical discussion forum, unfortunately.

In some historical sciences, metal was considered a fifth element. Likely they're keeping it as consistent to its classic inspiration as reasonably possible.

So, rules wise, it uses both elements and then energy-type in its description. While the description of the dust and its use could be termed flavor-text, it does actually state the way it's used (ie. favoring an element of its mixture over another), which is explicit in its use or preparation (whether that's actually performed is irrelevant).

So to even get an 'energy-type' (and is Positive or Negative energy an energy type?) you'd probably have to have an element associated with that energy type to change a weapon's property. And since it specifically mentions only four elements (just in various proportions) as its only typical constituents... it's probably not possible to unlock the 'sonic potential' of an object that way.

However, by the reading I don't see why it couldn't transform the sonic energy of an object to one of the other element-based energy types.

The fact that allowing less common energy types (which fewer creatures have resistances to) is actually a likely reason on one hand... while the fact that (I hate to say 'historical') orichalcum is based of something and they probably wanted to keep it having some graspable sense of its 'real-world' equivalent and history probably helped. Same thing with the Philosopher's stone object with people believing it could be used to convert lead to gold... the in-game version could be oil into wine... but, probably better to just keep the inspirational item in a recognizable form and call something that does something else...well... something else.

[Joesi]

Diego Rossi wrote:

Bombs are even worse. They don't have an energy damage type until they are mixed, but the Bomb ability say:

Quote:

Bombs are unstable, and if not used in the round they are created, they degrade and become inert

so you don't have the time to annoint them after mixing them.

I would allow you to annoint the catalyst before making the bomb, but again we are in RAI/houserule territory. RAW simply it doesn't work

It explicitly calls out as working for bombs, even though I agree that bombs are in a very odd position when it comes to definitions and categorizations (a non-item (non-weapon. No official weight or carrying method) used to make attacks as if using a weapon)

[Diego Rossi]

Joesi wrote:

Diego Rossi wrote:

Bombs are even worse. They don't have an energy damage type until they are mixed, but the Bomb ability say:

Quote:

Bombs are unstable, and if not used in the round they are created, they degrade and become inert

so you don't have the time to annoint them after mixing them.

I would allow you to annoint the catalyst before making the bomb, but again we are in RAI/houserule territory. RAW simply it doesn't work

It explicitly calls out as working for bombs, even though I agree that bombs are in a very odd position when it comes to definitions and categorizations (a non-item (non-weapon. No official weight or carrying method) used to make attacks as if using a weapon)

It officially calls out as working on bombs, but RAW it can't as bombs exist only for 1 round, and the ability doesn't say anything that changes that. Spending a standard action annointing the bomb means that you don't have the action to throw it.

The possibilities are:
1) this specific annointing can be made as an immediate action. But it doesn't say so;
2) the annointing can be done on the catalyst you use to make the bomb, even if the ability says that you annoint the bomb, not the catalyst.

RAI probably the author thought that bombs were items that last more than a single round, but the item is the catalyst, not the bomb.
So you need a workaround for that.