TOPIC: "Magical Fire" - Can we do better?

I have been arguing this for years.

So yes, I agree.

Having done the run on hardcore, we were told all of our fire reducing items worked fine. Given the fact the adventure heavily telegraphed fire damage, both from the event name and all the fire reducing items in the boosters, I made sure our whole party had some combination of flame guard greaves, ruby prism, and bead firehold.

Had I run on nightmare and been told none of that stuff worked, I would have been annoyed. On the other hand, had we played on nightmare and had the fire damage be 20 each splash, we would have loved it. We could handle everyone taking 11 - 14 fire damage each round with healing, and would have thought ourselves very clever to fit so much anti fire damage.

So, my vote is let the items work and crank up the damage.

Philip Goodman wrote: I was having a conversation with my wife who is more fed up with "non-conventional" damage types than I am.

She told me that if the damage is not an official TD damage type, she ignores it. In recent memory it includes:

• Moist
• Steam
• Necrotic
• Trample
• Magical fire (treated as spell and fire)
• Slashing (treated as melee)

As far as the magical fire is concerned, I interpreted the damage as "fire spell damage" and figured the "unmitigated magical fire damage" was a misinterpretation from the DM and discarded it. I also heard similar explanations about reasoning centered around the ability to use the FoP: Salamander or Lamp of the Efreeti, but I figured the idea of designing an encounter focused on the exclusive use of out-of-print rares was ridiculous.

Slashing, Piercing, and Bludgeoning are TD damage types - they are also D&D damage types - they are subtypes of physical attacks (e.g. axes slash, rapiers pierce, maces bludgeon - some creature types have vulnerabilities or resistances to one or the other).

I did hear Moist as well, which I thought was amusing.

Rust never sleeps.

IMO the goal of some damage should be to be resisted. Players like feeling like they accomplished something and having a situational item trigger falls into that category.

On one run we a character get moisted. Not really sure what this was intended. But definitely a new damage type. Just curious if melee mosited damage is reduced by melee damage reduction.

E1 SPOILER!

Quick side tangent, originally there was talk about the Swamp Beast dragging party members underneath the swamp without any means of mitigation, and we eventually settled on only effecting the person if they're hit in melee combat (sticking true to AD&D).

I completely agree with the removal of unmitigated damage types, tokens that players equip should have tangible effect, and if you want the AOE or effect to deal damage, double the damage! Don't change the damage type, leave it the same.

You are correct.. partially. TD is based mostly on AD&D 1st edition, at least that is my understanding. Weapons could BE slashing, blunt or piercing... but the damage dealt was still damage. In 1st edition, there was no melee damage, ranged damage, fire damage, etc. there was simply damage. The source of the damage could matter at times but certainly not always.

TD seems to be gravitating more and more to specific types of damage. In the situation above, I would have assumed, probably incorrectly, that the damage was both spell and fire and applied BOTH resistant types, adding them together. Saying that something an "irresistible fire damage" will only confuse players. I agree with what others have been saying. Keep it simple, let DR work.

Well it's kind of a no win for TD. On one hand they've got people not happy with Nightmare being so easy, so sounds like they decided to try and adjust on the fly to increase the difficulty and then they wind up with different people unhappy because their Tokens don't work. At least I'm guessing that's what happened. I think Nightmare should be a lot harder and if they need to "moisten" or "magical fire" everyone to make it more challenging then I say go for it.

Rob F wrote: Well it's kind of a no win for TD. On one hand they've got people not happy with Nightmare being so easy, so sounds like they decided to try and adjust on the fly to increase the difficulty and then they wind up with different people unhappy because their Tokens don't work. At least I'm guessing that's what happened. I think Nightmare should be a lot harder and if they need to "moisten" or "magical fire" everyone to make it more challenging then I say go for it.

I think moisten May be more or less ok, magical fire clearly is not - on this very thread you can see it was interpreted variously as:

Completely unmitigatable (what was intended)

Could be resisted with fire stuff

Could be resisted with spell stuff (what my party did)

Could be resisted with both fire and spell stuff.


This is confusing and inconsisent, and makes creating a consistent experience impossible.

Rob F wrote: Well it's kind of a no win for TD. On one hand they've got people not happy with Nightmare being so easy, so sounds like they decided to try and adjust on the fly to increase the difficulty and then they wind up with different people unhappy because their Tokens don't work. At least I'm guessing that's what happened. I think Nightmare should be a lot harder and if they need to "moisten" or "magical fire" everyone to make it more challenging then I say go for it.

TD added Epic difficulty for those people that find Nightmare too easy. Telling people to play on Epic should be the answer if they find Nightmare too easy. Nightmare shouldn't be made more difficult just because some people are finding it too easy. Widening the gap between Hardcore and Nightmare impacts significantly more people.

Fiddy wrote:

Rob F wrote: Well it's kind of a no win for TD. On one hand they've got people not happy with Nightmare being so easy, so sounds like they decided to try and adjust on the fly to increase the difficulty and then they wind up with different people unhappy because their Tokens don't work. At least I'm guessing that's what happened. I think Nightmare should be a lot harder and if they need to "moisten" or "magical fire" everyone to make it more challenging then I say go for it.

TD added Epic difficulty for those people that find Nightmare too easy. Telling people to play on Epic should be the answer if they find Nightmare too easy. Nightmare shouldn't be made more difficult just because some people are finding it too easy. Widening the gap between Hardcore and Nightmare impacts significantly more people.

I agree that Epic is the way to go if you need to feel more challenged in the dungeons. My issue is trying to get an Epic run arranged - especially at Gen Con. I'm not sure how many Epic runs happened over the past weekend, but I could not any Epic runs to do. I hope this is because Epic is relatively new and that we will see more Epic runs happening in the future.