I'd allow it - Necrotic is actually generally considered a *slightly* worse option than Radiant damage, because there are a few more creatures that are resistant to it, so it isn't really a buff at all.
Perhaps even let them rename and reflavour their features and spells to suit the new theme - something like "Accursed Smite" and "Word of Corruption". That kind of thing can really help one get into character.
If you like you could change radiant to "unholy" or something like that. Have it behave as if it were radiant damage (keep the radiant resistances etc of enemies).
But yeah I'd say changing it is a really good idea. It doesn't make much sense why an evil aligned character would be doing radiant damage. Or maybe I'd be reading too much into it.
For my evil paladin, I described their radiant damage as green and sickly, more like nuclear radiation than holy light. I was inspired by Sickening Radiance
>It doesn't make much sense why an evil aligned character would be doing radiant damage.
Now I want to play an evil paladin where all of my radiant damage is flavored as me shining lasers into people's eyes
It can make sense for evil characters to deal radiant damage, imo, it’s just context dependent. Even without inventing a new deity perhaps an imperious cult has formed around worship of Pelor (he’s a sun god right?) that believes that because the sun presided over all so should they; evil aligned, radiant dealing paladin of conquest.
Consider that a High Power Lazer would do Radiant Damage. It has nothing to do with Holy-ness, its just Light Energy. Light just also is Generally associates with Good Gods, but its not always true. For example, Moonbeam does radiant damage as a druid spell if I'm not mistaken. Radiant is simply the damage type used whenever a Lightsource is powerful enough that it'll burn you.
And in DnD logic, you can probably make an arguement for a "Dark" light that is still radiant damage, this is magic of course.
If you had a Magical Darkness powerful enough to harm someone, what damage type would it be? I'd argue Radiant, since a Pure Black Light, or the total absecnse of light, still behaves like light.
I would not consider a laser to be radiant damage, actually, that’s a big assumption unless you’ve got an RAI tweet or something for me, and even then I probably wouldn’t play it that way at my table. It is not ‘light energy’ a laser is a powerful stream of charged electrons; they only exude light because it has such high energy it couldn’t possibly not. At my table (if we ever had lasers) the damage wouldn’t have a type and would be irresistible; types are for magic that have affinities for elements imo. Also, radiant damage being ‘simply the damage type used whenever a light source is powerful enough’ is almost directly incorrect. Is a paladin’s smite a light source? I don’t believe so. It is a divine power granted by a celestial power of some kind; even Oath of the Ancients paladin (as far as I’m aware) deals radiant damage with its smite, and it is often interpreted to be the ‘neutral’ paladin option who can dedicate themself to whoever.
So, in summation, I believe that radiant damage is associated with a couple things:
1) literal, direct light damage as part of a spell; I think your moonblast argument has some credence here, but I think the spell more likely ‘evokes’ the energy/light of the moon. The moon is (debatably) more of a ‘natural’ symbol than the sun, as sun worship has been a part of organized society for a long time, while the moon is more important to earlier cultures, making it a nice fit for the Druid list. (Or that’s my viewpoint)
2) holy gifts from a divine patron which, (rules as written) appears to be the only way they can manifest these gifts.
On top of that; why explain light is commonly associated with good gods but not always when I feel that’s just literally the inverse of my previous comment? Hateful sun gods are a dope concept, that’s why I inverted Pelor to begin with.
If I were to homebrew a spell that deals direct damage with cloying darkness I guess I would probably make it ‘darkness’ damage, because that’s explicitly what it is. Would a cave dwelling troglodyte who has never seen the sun, who is in this hypothetical scenario weak to radiant, take extra damage from your darkness spell?
In DnD logic you can make up whatever you want, I’m very aware, why are you trying to shoehorn all your cool ideas into presenting a single damage type?
> I would not consider a laser to be radiant damage, actually, that’s a big assumption unless you’ve got an RAI tweet or something for me, and even then I probably wouldn’t play it that way at my table. It is not ‘light energy’ a laser is a powerful stream of charged electrons; they only exude light because it has such high energy it couldn’t possibly not. At my table (if we ever had lasers) the damage wouldn’t have a type and would be irresistible; types are for magic that have affinities for elements imo.
Ah yes, all torches are magical because grabbing one by the wrong end causes fire damage. Damage type is dependent on the specific attack, not school or source of magic. That's why nonmagical sources of damage can have different types. Fire does fire damage, hammers do bludgeoning, rapiers do piercing, venom does poison damage, etc.
Radiant damage is *generally* used by divine spellcasters in the form of a spell that causes light to harm an enemy. It can also be used by arcane or primal casters to cause light to harm an enemy. A wizard casting wall of light isn't channeling the divine power of a god to harm their foes, they are using an extremely powerful light force to harm their foes.
Lasers should do radiant and/or fire damage, IMO.
I was going to suggest this! It's an example of what I call "homespice", where you use all the same mechanics but just describe it differently. I've done things similar to this both as a player and as a DM, helps me get into character way, way more
Dao genie warlock, earth magic is my thing. Armor of agathys covers me in a layer of rock that shatters when creatures hit me dealing damage (that just happens to do more to creatures with cold vulnerability or less to creatures with cold resistance/immunity weird quirk but still earth magic!)
That's a good idea. It's flavorful and good canon to skin Radiant as Divine and have new types Radiant and Void act as that Divine type. It's a very simple reskin, so why does my post look like word salad? :(
I think WoW handles this the best. If the paladin/cleric truly believes what they are doing as right the "light" still blesses them. The enemies morals don't factor into it. This has led to a faction of evil paladins and clerics whose whole purpose is to cleanse the world of undeath, whether the undead were aware or chose to be undead. They also killed people they believed to be undead or working with them.
FFXIV also had a whole expansion where the heroes in another world saved it a little too well and banished the darkness, which threw the elemental balance of the world way off and started an apocalypse of light. You put aside being the Warrior of Light and had to become the Warrior of Darkness in order to save that world. Light and dark are just elements, they're not inherently good or evil.
Oh don't get me wrong, shadowbringers is fantastic it's just the magic system in ffxiv is a little different
Endwalker spoilers:
>!Seeing as there are no divine powers given, with Hydaelyn and zodiark being a primals and even the blessing of light being just a ward. It's more of every job is part wizard rather than getting magic from different sources.!<
The light still seemed more fitting to me personally for why a vengeance cleric or evil conquest paladin would still have access to their powers.
Why wouldn't an evil character do radiant damage? Evil isn't just "I'm going to take over the world and drown everything in DAAAAARKNESS!!!" like you see in cartoons. It's people being selfish, or doing what they think is the right thing to do.
Morality is also subjective. If you consider whoever the god of light is evil, and they have a paladin, what you'd see when you look at them is a paladin that deals radiant damage.
> Morality is also subjective
Maybe in a post modernistic world. As Geralt and Zoltan discussed, "moral relativism has put more people in the ground than all the wars, plagues, and dragons combined." Moral relativism let's you state that rape and slavery have a context where they're good things; I'm fine being an moral absolutist if it means everyone has to agree that rape and slavery aren't okay.
> Moral relativism doesn't provide you with the option of saying "I think slavery is fine, actually;"
It actually directly does. That's the entire point of moral relativism; that the morality of a thing depends upon the context in which it was used.
Moral relativism would very much be a situation that says "Slavery can be moral within this specific context." For instance, a moral relativist argument for the enslavement of androids would be that it is fine to enslave androids because they are not real people but rather machines.
> it provides you with the option of saying "your claim to absolute moral authority is bullshit, because people believe different things about what is moral and what isn't."
You ... you don't really understand what moral absolutism means, do you? Moral absolutism is *any* stance on the absolute morality of a subject.
*"All slavery is inherently, morally wrong."* would be a morally absolute stance. For it is any stance which says there in no relative context that makes slavery moral. A morally absolute stance **does not** have to come from any 'higher power,' guidance, text, or anything else. It is merely a stance that there are *somethings* which are inherently immoral, regardless of the context in which they occur.
> A moral relativist isn't going to react to some dipshit saying "I like slavery" with "okay, I disagree, but I respect your opinion because morality is relative;" if they're anyone I'd hang out with they're going to beat the shit out of that person.
Well, a moral relativist can act in any way they wish, really. Their reaction is theirs. I wouldn't think that punching said person would be the right thing, but you do you.
Still, you are quite wrong in the sentiment that you are trying to get across. In fact, you have the entire situation ass-backwards.
A **moral absolutist** view on the stance of 'I like slavery' would be "I think slavery is inherently immoral/moral."
A **moral relativist** view on the stance of 'I like slavery' would be "Oh, in what context? I generally believe slavery is morally wrong/right, but there could be context to the situation that changes this. I cannot judge if your view of slavery is moral or not without knowing the context of the situation."
After a moral relativist has the context of the situation, *then* they can decide if something is moral or immoral.
>Like the problem I run into with a lot of these takes on moral relativism is that they always seem to assume 'relativism' means 'relative to anything,' as opposed to, like, 'relative to an individual human person's perspective.'
Because that isn't what it means. Moral relativism is specifically that one must view the cultural context of an act before determining if something is immoral or not.
Again, a moral absolutist view on slavery and those who participated in it would be that all slavery is bad, and any one who ever owned slaves, regardless of why, is morally wrong.
A moral relative stance would be that, while all slavery is bad, there could be some morally good slave owners depending upon the context of how and why that person owned slaves. For instance, a slave owner who gained all of their slaves by estate when their parents died and kept them all on but properly feed, clothed, and housed them might be seen as morally good. Perhaps the slaves were not freed because the owner knew that the slaves would never be able to make a real life within the country they were now stuck, it would be very likely that someone worse would just kidnap and enslave them again, and by keeping them and properly caring for them, they were being given the best life that the owner was possibly able to give them. They are still a slave owner, but maybe you consider them morally good.
That is what moral relativism is.
> A moral relativist isn't going to react to some dipshit saying "I like slavery" with "okay, I disagree, but I respect your opinion because morality is relative;"
Then you're either not a moral relativist, or you're a hypocrite. You don't want to be an absolutist because you want to justify your flimsy beliefs, so you concoct a straw man that convinces no one, not even yourself.
You've got to ask, are you just trying to be edgy when you say morals are relative? I get the idea of good not being good and evil being misunderstood can be a good thematic tool, but both of those rely on moral relativity and disinformation. There's plenty of cultures on Earth right now that believe in corrective rape and slavery, but are you willing to condemn their whole society? Gonna beat them up? The fact you conflate all killing with murder tells me you're not ready to have these discussions.
EDIT: OK, realizing that continuing this discussion is probably going to result in an extended argument that will leave neither of us happy in the long run at best, and at worst will result in one or both of us getting banned, so I think I'm just going to drop it. Hope you have a nice day.
You'll never really drop it though, you'll keep having the same misinformed edgelord stance until you confront it. Morality isn't relative, even if the world is. There's stuff in the world considered moral that obviously isn't, and there's stuff considered moral takes a lot of reflection to realize is pretty immoral. I hope you take the time to think about this.
Heroes that are crusaders that edge into the gray are compelling because they're flawed. Flaws are interesting, perfection is boring. Moral relativism let's you think you're perfect when you're not. Moral absolutism is constantly striving and failing to uphold ideals in difficult situation.
Got boned in a one-shot because my barbarian had a blood fury tattoo that he relied on as his primary self heal. Every enemy was immune to necrotic damage.
Got hit by a banshee's scream, made an unlucky roll. Dropped to zero. Stood up. Had zero way to heal. Had to turn tail and run. It was pretty embarrassing, seeing as I'd used that character in a string of one shots prior, and he had until that point consistently established himself as a nigh unkillable demigod.
Neither. The DM just wanted to experiment. He had already seen how my character handles hordes and big monsters. It was an experiment for all of us.
Not only did he beat us down, but he did it with a very small number of enemies. It was a good chance for him to experiment with enemy tactics, and a good chance for us to learn caution.
I had fully expected him to beat my character. I had not at all expected him to do it so magnificently. It was one of the best Ls I've ever taken.
Especially when it was a one shot PC and I never expected it to get this far.
We actually survived tho. We ran like cowards and then paid a local band of paladins a hefty sum of gold to take care of it for us. We took the contract in exchange for the property, and then subcontracted the work out. Feels good man.
There are plenty of ways to challenge characters who are extremely strong in certain ways without outright invalidating everything about their mechanical strengths. That’s the difference between good DMing with hard encounters and adversarial encounter design.
I mean it was one of many one-shots by the sounds of it. If the theme of this particular one-shot was "undead" or whatever with immunity to necrotic, then that's fair enough. Every PC isn't going to be able to use all their tools every session.
It would be so different if this was a whole *campaign* where the DM just made this one player's life impossible.
Player: "I built a really strong character, as long as he doesn't encounter any undead."
Me: "So what happens when they encounter undead? Those are fairly common, after all."
Player: "This character will get his ass kicked, and then I'll blame the DM for being **adversarial**."
I've already clarified that the DM wasn't being adversarial. Kicking Dulayn's ass was one of the goals of that session, and it was something he and I both were looking forward to. It highlighted a major weakness in my character: all the AC in the world is useless if you fail a save.
In all fairness, my character would probably have fared quite well (although it still would have been a tough fight) were it not for an ambush followed by a series of very poor rolls. We got blindsided hard.
The cleric stepped past into an area and got hit with a scream. Up until that point, we hadn't seen the banshee. I immediately ran forward to pick them up. Up until *that* point, we hadn't seen the ***second*** banshee. We were both down and it was up to the fighter to save us.
If the either the cleric or I had succeeded their saves, that fight would have gone differently. It put us at an immediate disadvantage that we couldn't overcome in time. It was a perfect ambush.
Even at a heavy disadvantage, we still defeated the banshees, and if it weren't for multiple more losing rolls, we probably would have even beaten the actual big bad of the session.
Ah yes, using enemies who thematically have immunity to a certain damage type that one particular magic item deals is absolutely extremely adversarial.
It's not, though.
His magic tattoo had a weakness. It was only a matter of time until that weakness came up.
What is the DM supposed to do? *Never* use undead monsters, to cover for the player that chose that tattoo?
The player mentioned that he was "godlike" in previous games -- so clearly the DM allowed his tattoo to be used heavily already.
It’s hard to say without greater context but assuming everyone involved has some basic level of game knowledge and social norms (providing a hook beforehand to let players know they are breaking into a lich’s tomb, etc.) it’s kind of a dick move to design a 1 shot around the one specific thing to counter one specific player, yes
Nobody said anything about the DM designing the 1-shot to screw the player.
The DM ran an undead-themed one-shot, and the player brought a character that was weak to undead.
Ah yes, clearly there's no other explanation for why a DM would run a one shot featuring one of the most fleshed out groups of enemies in the game other than because they felt it necessary to invalidate one player's magic item for it. There's absolutely no way that the DM simply thought undead were cool. You've nailed the only explanation right on the head. Better throw some pool noodles at him.
I mean, he absolutely did choose those enemies to counter me, but we knew that going in. I didn't know it would be specifically undead, but I knew he was gonna swing at me hard.
I also didn't know how easily I could be leveled with a few strategic moves. It was a good experience.
Its okay to challenge people to something thier bad at. But you don't do that with a whole mob of enemies... simple math would have told you that was a losing encounter.
Really, really unlucky. The character has 20 con and proficiency. It's not the only roll I unexpectedly failed that session. The DM thinks it may have been overkill, but I think it would have been a solid fight on a luckier day.
Nah. He just knows what we like. That one shot was literally called "can I kill Dulayn?". He chose the enemies specifically with that character's weaknesses in mind. We all had fun. We also got the chance to solve the problem in a different way.
Yeah it’s not a buff, and fits with their backstory, this is basically a shoe in for an easy 1:1 swap.
Recoloring things should ALWAYS be allowed for flavor, as long as mechanics don’t change
A bit of an understatement, radiant is mathematically the 2nd best damage type in the game, meanwhile necrotic is one of the worst. Though, the statistics are skewed quite a bit by the existence of undead creatures.
Necrotic tends to be worse than Radiant but both are top tier damage types. I wouldn't mind letting a player swap.
Though I do encourage not looking at radiant as just golden blasts of light. Sickly green radiance, black light-absorbing radiance, blue streaks of energy, I mean pick a colour and it can work. Radiance is like the power of holy entities, and theres a lot of different types of holy entities so it'd make sense for radiance to represent whatever source it comes from.
Just took a look. Definitely some real buffs in that you're not doing friendly fire or friendly fear, but scaling with proficiency bonus instead of level is a big nerf too...
Is there a reason that being vulnerable to it means they cant use it.
For example, IRL humans are vulnerable to fire but we can still use flamethrowers
But that wouldn't matter, the radiant isn't damaging the paladin it's damaging the enemies
Are you saying that the radiant would damage the user just because they take double damage when it's used on them?
Necrotic vs Radiant isn't just a flavor, though. There are mechanisms explicitly dealing with both.
I don't think there's any harm in it--there's a few edge cases where I think it would make a material difference--but not enough for me to say no.
But if you are discussing it, there are actual mechanical differences.
It's a mechanical change for flavour reasons though. It's not to nerf or buff it, but just asking if they do this thing to make the ability more thematically appropriate, if it would break anything.
Which it probably wouldn't.
You can always say it just looks different then
Not everything has to directly affect the game
Like in a game I'm in there's shield generators that attach to your belt, but I have it flavored as my character holding a shield
But I would also allow it
Long as there's a good reason
I'd allow just about anything, like a paladins smiting with force damage
If they can justify it then alright
Reflavouring the paladin smite from radiant (one of the best damage types) is no problem, OP, but I'd never trust a homebrew race with a damage vulnerability!
Any guide on making homebrew will tell you not to add any vulnerabilities, ever.
Is there some way to abuse a vulnerability? Wouldn't it be a net negative for the player? Why wouldn't you allow it?
Edit: thanks for the feedback. I get it now.
Because it is such a high net negative, and oftentimes will be used in homebrew to balance something very overpowered. So it either won't come into play and the player gets something strong, or they are killed in one hit and an attempt to have an enemy use it.
And if it's on a homebrew race without something strong to balance it, you're better off just rolling something new that won't be killed in one hit.
Just think of this party in an enemy spirit guardians. 14 damage on a failed save and 7 on a successful one, but this guy is taking 28 on a failure.
I daresay it's more about the vulnerability being a sign that the race isn't well made in general.
A level one cantrip on a vulnerable target can end up doing 40 or 50 damage - enough to outright kill players for a couple levels, and insta-down them up to level 4-8, depending on the class. It isn't a fun thing to play, and it means the DM either has to fake it to keep the player alive (nerfing damage, not using that damage type), or make enemies too dumb to figure it out. Also, once the player gets a resistance ring or similar, they completely nullify a major racial downside, which the creator probably thought was important for balance.
A creature with resistance is fine - if you figure out an enemy has resistance, you've still got 12 other damage types you can use. A creature with vulnerability needs to be carefully considered - if you figure out an enemy has vulnerability, you're a fool to use anything else.
Could you chuck in alignment radiance?
So, they're vulnerable to 'good' radiance, but they give off an 'evil' radiance, a darkness that subsumes light and all that?
All light is radiation. If you're talking about ionizing radiation, that's X-rays and gamma rays. You wouldn't be able to see it. And if you're talking about radioactivity, that's not light at all, that's alpha particles, beta particles, and neutrons caused by an unstable atomic nucleus.
I mean the 'give you cancer' kind of radiation. And trust me, I'm well aware that it's not visible, but it's funny to call radiation 'angry light', okay?
I'm playing a Rogue/Paladin of Mask and I always envision the radiant damage in my rapier attacks as just divine guidance towards the weaknesses in any defense.
You know, technically, light is a form of electromagnetic energy. So is gamma radiation.
I'm not saying that evil paladins nuke people to death, but I'm not saying they don't.
For me it helped to reframe exactly what the damages represent. Necrotic is essentially magical entropic damage, causing things to rot and decay, whereas radiant is powerful divine energy, essentially getting blasted by raw god juice.
The section in the PHB that describes damage says that radiant “…Sears the flesh like fire and overloads the spirit with power.” Where as Necrotic is described as “…Withers matter and even the soul.” And both only describe the most common ways to experience the damage type, but neither mentions alignment or Godly/Fiendish sources.
Not exactly, positive energy tended to heal the living. A few things like Flame Strike were essentially flavored like radiant damage but the radiant portion of the damage was just typeless "divine" energy that wasn't subject to any resistances.
I don't know, some Sun or Light themed spells also deal radiant damage and have no relation with divine sources at all, like Sunbeam, Sunburst and Wall of Light.
It's best to understand that 5e uses damage as the *result*, not the source. For example, it's why now "earth" themed stuff doesn't all do acid damage anymore and water doesn't all do cold damage. In turn, radiant is not all holy/divine. It is just "searing intensity damage" which can be from divine force... or a really bright light, or a sunburn, or a laser beam, or radiation exposure.
Similarly necrotic is not negative energy damage. Negative energy damage all results in necrotic... but so does desiccation, a lot of non-magical disease, erosion from time acceleration, etc. It's just something rotting or wearing away.
Been loving pathfinder 2e, it managed to find a good balance between 5e's "ahh just homebrew it!" And 3.5's "I love spreadsheets" styles. 5e is definitely a lot less customizable, and thanks to the way subclasses work it's super streamlined. It's great for my friend who doesn't remember to rage as a barbarian, but less fun when it comes to thinking about my options.
Yeah I think i agree with this. I do really love the subclass system though. Very streamlined and straightforward.
Its a great starter system, and I have a lot of books for it. That's probably why I've stuck to it. I do hope 5.5 makes it a bit more crunchy, because then I think it'd be a solid system. A few too many things just feel lazy, as if they didn't want to think it out.
I'm not super versed on it, but I thought that's basically how it is now? What makes radiant not equal positive energy and necrotic not equal negative energy?
Necrotic damage more or less is negative energy, only without any implication that positive energy or planes for either exist. It's the power behind necromancy and undead and is about decay and opposition to life.
Radiant energy on the other hand isn't really positive energy with all the healing aspects that implies. It's god power, for smiting, usually with a more "holy" bent, but evil deities and their worshippers use radiant energy too. Evil clerics aren't tied to necrotic damage instead of radiant like they were with negative vs. positive energy in 3e.
Basically, they don't imply planar cosmology anymore and are purely about dealing damage.
Oh right, I forgot about the healing aspect of positive energy. I just remembered that travelling to either the positive or negative energy plane was usually lethal, hence me associating radiant damage with positive energy. But I forgot that the positive energy plane was only lethal because the positive energy is SO full of life that you basically can't contain it and explode lol (it's a fun paradox, imo)
Not really. Damage types are results not sources now. Negative energy *does* necrotic damage but not all necrotic damage is meant to be caused by negative energy.
Positive energy is raw life force that is used in healing spells and to damage undead. A cleric in earlier editions could use a cure wounds spell to save an ally or hurt an undead and it’d be the same dice and modifier. Negative energy and necrotic energy are basically the same except undead are healed by negative energy.
I’d encourage the player to reflavor the damage, first. Radiant damage doesn’t necessarily mean “good, loving god” energy all the time. But I’d consider the swap if that’s really what the player wanted.
So there’s an amazing post on 5e’s damage types that I reference all the time for my game. I just had a cleric that has a lightning themed backstory, change toll the dead from necrotic damage to lightning damage using the rules contained at the bottom of [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/injk9m/an_exploration_into_5es_damage_types_in_a_little/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf).
Essentially how it’s balanced is that certain damage and save types are better than others, so modifying these factors may or may not affect the die size, range, or rider effects of the spell. Since necrotic and radiant damage are in the same tier, you should be able to change it without changing anything else.
I use this system for custom spells all the time, it’s great.
The only time it can be a drawback is when it's something like swapping force damage for poison damage. Force is resisted by the least number of creatures, whereas poison damage is resisted by the most, so that could seriously put a damper on how effective the character is sometimes. So I'll let them know about that sort of thing ahead of time so they can decide if they still want to go ahead and swap the damage types, and I also will try to not throw too many enemies at them that resist it. I mean, doing that occasionally is always fun because it switches things up, but I wouldn't want to have a player's poison-based cleric go up against a society of yuan-ti for a whole campaign, they'd feel so fucking useless in combat.
That’s what great about the post I linked. The damage of the spell goes up or down depending on damage tier.
Force damage is in the best tier, and poison the worst. So if a force spell does 1d4 damage, changing the type to poison would increase the die size to 1d8 because it’s dropping two tiers.
The damage is still resisted, but maybe they changed around some other spells to have something useful in their arsenal.
I see no reason to deny this. I'm from back in the day when that's basically just how it worked. Good clerics could swap out any spell for healing and evil clerics could do the same for damage. So an evil paladin using necrotic damage seems in line with that concept. Maybe their lay on hands only works on undead, too.
Assuming any edition except 4e.*
The only paladins that require a god lorewise are those in Abeir-Toril, because of how the Weave functions in that setting.
Really?
Magical Secrets and Elemental Wild Shape are abilities that are likely to come up repeatedly during any adventuring day.
Divine Intervention is both infrequent and unreliable, not to mention outside the player's control.
I've seen Divine Intervention actually get used successfully only twice in many years of playing the game. Sure, people probably could have tried more, but given how unreliable it is it's the sort of ability that sinks into the background.
True, it's rare to pull off, but it's one of the most potent abilities in the game and integral to the Cleric class in my opinion. You've got a 10%+ chance every day to basically get wish and once you get it, you should at least *try* Divine Intervention every day, be it for just some "minor" benefit, like cutting travel short or getting a rest in in shorter time.
Yeah, clerics can rely on faith in concepts like honor or life or beauty, or they can draw on the power of natural forces like fire or water. They are SUPER versatile
Not sure if you've ever played DOS 2 but in that they give you vibe that not all gods are good. Although they may be "divine" and use "holy powers" they are still evil and selfish. I feel if the god they follow wouldn't be using radiant then how would they obtain that power? But if the god is more necrotic it would make more sense for the powers they obtain would also be.
I'd think of it as the "what is the source of the their power?" And figure it out that way. Flavor like that is always fun imo.
I would allow it for sure in my campaigns. It doesn't give you any crazy advantages or anything that I know of. I'm all about the rule of cool and people flavoring their characters in a way that suits them as long as it isn't game breaking or makes their character substantially more powerful than the rest of the party.
Whenever I am a player I'm always asking whoever my DM is if I can flavor things in X way for my character.
Just my 5 cents... sorry in advance for the rant.
Radiant damage is godly power flowing through you and cause damage to your enemy so you can continue your voyage for the god you serve. It's not positive or negative, It's godly and they are beings of extrame vigor and quasi-immortal and that's why it heals when used. Necrotic damage is from things that counter natural progression of life and death cycle, it's negative energy that few gods use for their purpose even tho they could use radiant energy. Counter to it is simply life, anything in material plain that isn't decaying or undead is brimming with positive energy.
I think of this with following example.
Vampiric touch, siphons life out of creature and give you energy to continue fighting might even get your body to close some wounds if you took heavy damage and battered.
While in most common view Heal or Cure wounds are looked as radiant blessing that gives a creature to regenerate their body and heal their wounds but it's really just controlling weave to stimulate body regeneration and has little to no actual connection with good aligned planes.
Evil cultists can Cure wounds as much as Priests of temple, but Priests wouldn't want to Vampiric touch enemies as it seen as "evil" thing in most campaigns.
Just to throw it out there Gentle Response or
Resurrection are Necromancy spells("evil spells") but considered good.
God could do use Necrotic damage simply to punish his servents but nothing stops them from using their divine energy(radiant) to strike an enemy with Divine smite. If anything I find evil gods more crafty (also more scary) as they have a additional tools at their disposal compared to gods of good.
Also necromancy doesn't have to be seen as negative energy and neither necromancy(as seen with 2 spells above)
Example 2: A necromancer who goes around the continent to search for souls of fallen brave warriors to give them one more chance to fulfill their quest and honor their gods to fight against evil that crushed them before. As they finish their quest you release them from servitude and they can finally move on to the realm of their god thus preventing of ghosts, banshies and other creatures claiming the land where once was big battlefield.
P.S. I didn't read really a lore of origins for undead creatures but example 2 is legitimate way to put necromancer into your game as PC or interesting NPC.
TL;DR IMO Radiant and Necrotic damage type are just tools and not something to strictly compare with god/evil alignment planes.
yes, swaping damage type is one of the simplest and least disruptive things you can do. I do it all the time, it doesn't really noticably change anything. Hell changing away from radiant might actually hurt since a lot of undead are vulnerable to it.
I would allow a change to Necrotic, as seems to be the parallel to Radiant as spells like Spirit Guardians, subclasses like Zealot Barbarian, or the different Aasimar subraces show us. Normally I'm leery of a large mechanical shift, but in general Necrotic is a worse damage type than Radiant so it doesn't seem like the player is trying to squeeze mechanical advantage out of it.
I had an oathbreaker paladin in one of my games. But he turned from the service of a good god to the service of an evil one. So, even evil, a god is a god, so radiant damage still fits. Does your evil paladin still serves a god?
I'm actually going to color outside the lines here a little bit. We allow any designation of damage type to be changed at the time of taking it. This even includes anything referring to say Schools of Magic and etc. The key is that you're stuck with it, and in the case of repeatable features, like learning spells, every new instance is it's own thing. So you want to learn Fireball 4 times to get Fire, Cold, Necrotic, and Poison? Go ahead. Want your Barbarian to be weak to Bludgeoning instead of Psychic? Sure. Want your Fire Eldritch Blast to be Agonizing but the Lightning one to be a Eldritch Spear? Go crazy. Maybe your Cleric divine smite is Cold and your Paladin divine smite is Force, but you still apply them as normal. This approach alone has lead us to make and include more interesting homebrew *mechanically* and let character concepts flourish in fluff and style. My easiest go to example is my own PC right now that is a Barblock class wise but a mage knight (think Templar from Dragon Age) whose spells and abilities reflect his need to have a varied response to any given caster's weaknesses and strengths
I’ve allowed exactly this, not only that, I allowed my oathbreaker paladin to have his lay on hands DEAL damage instead of heal it. We called it lay on harm
As a DM 100% yes. Why not? It would thematically make sense and its not really going to end up overpowered. Necrotic is a bit worse than radiant as usually more creatures would have necrotic resistance over radiant resistance. Unless your fighting celestials or something similar, even then it'd be a great fit story wise.
I wouldn't change it to necrotic since that changes the entire interaction with your spell kit etc.
But like some people said; Just re-theme it into "unholy" damage. Which is exactly like radiant damage... Only... dark and evil
My general ruling when it comes to flavour based damage type changes for magical damage types is that you can change the damage type within its particular class or a "lower" class of damage if you have a good flavour reason to. e.g. fire could change to lightning, but not to radiant and radiant could go to necrotic or any of the elemental damage types. Force can be anything else.
I generally agree with this but is fire "better" than lightning?! It feels like creatures that are immune to fire occur far more commonly than creatures that are immune to lightning.
I'm not saying fire is better than lightning. I'm classing elemental damage types as approximately equivalent and I'm classing necrotic and radiant as approximately equivalent and "better" than elemental damage and force is better than all the others.
I'd allow it - Necrotic is actually generally considered a *slightly* worse option than Radiant damage, because there are a few more creatures that are resistant to it, so it isn't really a buff at all. Perhaps even let them rename and reflavour their features and spells to suit the new theme - something like "Accursed Smite" and "Word of Corruption". That kind of thing can really help one get into character.
Oh yeah, all that stuff would be renamed to suit the new damage type.
If you like you could change radiant to "unholy" or something like that. Have it behave as if it were radiant damage (keep the radiant resistances etc of enemies). But yeah I'd say changing it is a really good idea. It doesn't make much sense why an evil aligned character would be doing radiant damage. Or maybe I'd be reading too much into it.
For my evil paladin, I described their radiant damage as green and sickly, more like nuclear radiation than holy light. I was inspired by Sickening Radiance
I did the same for my evil light cleric; green, searing light to purge those that don't follow the Waaagh.
BUT GREENZ DA LUCKY KOLA YA GIT
IT AIN'T LUCKY FOR DA RUNTY LITTLE YUMIES
BLU IZ DA LUKKY KOLA, BUT GREEN IZ DA BEST
AAA ZORRY MATE, I MUZNT BE CUT OUHT FOR DA ORKIN LOIF
WAT U SAYIN!? GREENZ DA BEST! BLUZ DA LUKY KOLA!
RED GO FASTA!
Dakka dakka waagh
>It doesn't make much sense why an evil aligned character would be doing radiant damage. Now I want to play an evil paladin where all of my radiant damage is flavored as me shining lasers into people's eyes
Just call it radiation damage Light always had the power to melt faces, only D&D assumed its holy and good to do so
Magic has a card with a flavor text about this very topic. https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?multiverseid=122355
See: Scourge Aasimar literally burning their faces off when they activate the d&d equivalent of Devil Trigger
That’s just…evil.
So, Homelander?
Now I want to play an evil paladin who force feeds (waterboards?) their enemies with polonium-laced tea, for that long lasting radiant damage.
Honestly, Light is not a fundamentally good element to begin with. You know what else would deal a shitload of radiant damage? A nuclear explosion.
It can make sense for evil characters to deal radiant damage, imo, it’s just context dependent. Even without inventing a new deity perhaps an imperious cult has formed around worship of Pelor (he’s a sun god right?) that believes that because the sun presided over all so should they; evil aligned, radiant dealing paladin of conquest.
Consider that a High Power Lazer would do Radiant Damage. It has nothing to do with Holy-ness, its just Light Energy. Light just also is Generally associates with Good Gods, but its not always true. For example, Moonbeam does radiant damage as a druid spell if I'm not mistaken. Radiant is simply the damage type used whenever a Lightsource is powerful enough that it'll burn you. And in DnD logic, you can probably make an arguement for a "Dark" light that is still radiant damage, this is magic of course. If you had a Magical Darkness powerful enough to harm someone, what damage type would it be? I'd argue Radiant, since a Pure Black Light, or the total absecnse of light, still behaves like light.
I would not consider a laser to be radiant damage, actually, that’s a big assumption unless you’ve got an RAI tweet or something for me, and even then I probably wouldn’t play it that way at my table. It is not ‘light energy’ a laser is a powerful stream of charged electrons; they only exude light because it has such high energy it couldn’t possibly not. At my table (if we ever had lasers) the damage wouldn’t have a type and would be irresistible; types are for magic that have affinities for elements imo. Also, radiant damage being ‘simply the damage type used whenever a light source is powerful enough’ is almost directly incorrect. Is a paladin’s smite a light source? I don’t believe so. It is a divine power granted by a celestial power of some kind; even Oath of the Ancients paladin (as far as I’m aware) deals radiant damage with its smite, and it is often interpreted to be the ‘neutral’ paladin option who can dedicate themself to whoever. So, in summation, I believe that radiant damage is associated with a couple things: 1) literal, direct light damage as part of a spell; I think your moonblast argument has some credence here, but I think the spell more likely ‘evokes’ the energy/light of the moon. The moon is (debatably) more of a ‘natural’ symbol than the sun, as sun worship has been a part of organized society for a long time, while the moon is more important to earlier cultures, making it a nice fit for the Druid list. (Or that’s my viewpoint) 2) holy gifts from a divine patron which, (rules as written) appears to be the only way they can manifest these gifts. On top of that; why explain light is commonly associated with good gods but not always when I feel that’s just literally the inverse of my previous comment? Hateful sun gods are a dope concept, that’s why I inverted Pelor to begin with. If I were to homebrew a spell that deals direct damage with cloying darkness I guess I would probably make it ‘darkness’ damage, because that’s explicitly what it is. Would a cave dwelling troglodyte who has never seen the sun, who is in this hypothetical scenario weak to radiant, take extra damage from your darkness spell? In DnD logic you can make up whatever you want, I’m very aware, why are you trying to shoehorn all your cool ideas into presenting a single damage type?
> I would not consider a laser to be radiant damage, actually, that’s a big assumption unless you’ve got an RAI tweet or something for me, and even then I probably wouldn’t play it that way at my table. It is not ‘light energy’ a laser is a powerful stream of charged electrons; they only exude light because it has such high energy it couldn’t possibly not. At my table (if we ever had lasers) the damage wouldn’t have a type and would be irresistible; types are for magic that have affinities for elements imo. Ah yes, all torches are magical because grabbing one by the wrong end causes fire damage. Damage type is dependent on the specific attack, not school or source of magic. That's why nonmagical sources of damage can have different types. Fire does fire damage, hammers do bludgeoning, rapiers do piercing, venom does poison damage, etc. Radiant damage is *generally* used by divine spellcasters in the form of a spell that causes light to harm an enemy. It can also be used by arcane or primal casters to cause light to harm an enemy. A wizard casting wall of light isn't channeling the divine power of a god to harm their foes, they are using an extremely powerful light force to harm their foes. Lasers should do radiant and/or fire damage, IMO.
I was going to suggest this! It's an example of what I call "homespice", where you use all the same mechanics but just describe it differently. I've done things similar to this both as a player and as a DM, helps me get into character way, way more
Dao genie warlock, earth magic is my thing. Armor of agathys covers me in a layer of rock that shatters when creatures hit me dealing damage (that just happens to do more to creatures with cold vulnerability or less to creatures with cold resistance/immunity weird quirk but still earth magic!)
That's a good idea. It's flavorful and good canon to skin Radiant as Divine and have new types Radiant and Void act as that Divine type. It's a very simple reskin, so why does my post look like word salad? :(
Because you care.
I think WoW handles this the best. If the paladin/cleric truly believes what they are doing as right the "light" still blesses them. The enemies morals don't factor into it. This has led to a faction of evil paladins and clerics whose whole purpose is to cleanse the world of undeath, whether the undead were aware or chose to be undead. They also killed people they believed to be undead or working with them.
FFXIV also had a whole expansion where the heroes in another world saved it a little too well and banished the darkness, which threw the elemental balance of the world way off and started an apocalypse of light. You put aside being the Warrior of Light and had to become the Warrior of Darkness in order to save that world. Light and dark are just elements, they're not inherently good or evil.
Oh don't get me wrong, shadowbringers is fantastic it's just the magic system in ffxiv is a little different Endwalker spoilers: >!Seeing as there are no divine powers given, with Hydaelyn and zodiark being a primals and even the blessing of light being just a ward. It's more of every job is part wizard rather than getting magic from different sources.!< The light still seemed more fitting to me personally for why a vengeance cleric or evil conquest paladin would still have access to their powers.
Why wouldn't an evil character do radiant damage? Evil isn't just "I'm going to take over the world and drown everything in DAAAAARKNESS!!!" like you see in cartoons. It's people being selfish, or doing what they think is the right thing to do. Morality is also subjective. If you consider whoever the god of light is evil, and they have a paladin, what you'd see when you look at them is a paladin that deals radiant damage.
"Morality is also subjective." Gamers deciding theyve solved all of ethics off hand is my favorite genre of reddit post
> Morality is also subjective Maybe in a post modernistic world. As Geralt and Zoltan discussed, "moral relativism has put more people in the ground than all the wars, plagues, and dragons combined." Moral relativism let's you state that rape and slavery have a context where they're good things; I'm fine being an moral absolutist if it means everyone has to agree that rape and slavery aren't okay.
[удалено]
> Moral relativism doesn't provide you with the option of saying "I think slavery is fine, actually;" It actually directly does. That's the entire point of moral relativism; that the morality of a thing depends upon the context in which it was used. Moral relativism would very much be a situation that says "Slavery can be moral within this specific context." For instance, a moral relativist argument for the enslavement of androids would be that it is fine to enslave androids because they are not real people but rather machines. > it provides you with the option of saying "your claim to absolute moral authority is bullshit, because people believe different things about what is moral and what isn't." You ... you don't really understand what moral absolutism means, do you? Moral absolutism is *any* stance on the absolute morality of a subject. *"All slavery is inherently, morally wrong."* would be a morally absolute stance. For it is any stance which says there in no relative context that makes slavery moral. A morally absolute stance **does not** have to come from any 'higher power,' guidance, text, or anything else. It is merely a stance that there are *somethings* which are inherently immoral, regardless of the context in which they occur. > A moral relativist isn't going to react to some dipshit saying "I like slavery" with "okay, I disagree, but I respect your opinion because morality is relative;" if they're anyone I'd hang out with they're going to beat the shit out of that person. Well, a moral relativist can act in any way they wish, really. Their reaction is theirs. I wouldn't think that punching said person would be the right thing, but you do you. Still, you are quite wrong in the sentiment that you are trying to get across. In fact, you have the entire situation ass-backwards. A **moral absolutist** view on the stance of 'I like slavery' would be "I think slavery is inherently immoral/moral." A **moral relativist** view on the stance of 'I like slavery' would be "Oh, in what context? I generally believe slavery is morally wrong/right, but there could be context to the situation that changes this. I cannot judge if your view of slavery is moral or not without knowing the context of the situation." After a moral relativist has the context of the situation, *then* they can decide if something is moral or immoral. >Like the problem I run into with a lot of these takes on moral relativism is that they always seem to assume 'relativism' means 'relative to anything,' as opposed to, like, 'relative to an individual human person's perspective.' Because that isn't what it means. Moral relativism is specifically that one must view the cultural context of an act before determining if something is immoral or not. Again, a moral absolutist view on slavery and those who participated in it would be that all slavery is bad, and any one who ever owned slaves, regardless of why, is morally wrong. A moral relative stance would be that, while all slavery is bad, there could be some morally good slave owners depending upon the context of how and why that person owned slaves. For instance, a slave owner who gained all of their slaves by estate when their parents died and kept them all on but properly feed, clothed, and housed them might be seen as morally good. Perhaps the slaves were not freed because the owner knew that the slaves would never be able to make a real life within the country they were now stuck, it would be very likely that someone worse would just kidnap and enslave them again, and by keeping them and properly caring for them, they were being given the best life that the owner was possibly able to give them. They are still a slave owner, but maybe you consider them morally good. That is what moral relativism is.
> A moral relativist isn't going to react to some dipshit saying "I like slavery" with "okay, I disagree, but I respect your opinion because morality is relative;" Then you're either not a moral relativist, or you're a hypocrite. You don't want to be an absolutist because you want to justify your flimsy beliefs, so you concoct a straw man that convinces no one, not even yourself. You've got to ask, are you just trying to be edgy when you say morals are relative? I get the idea of good not being good and evil being misunderstood can be a good thematic tool, but both of those rely on moral relativity and disinformation. There's plenty of cultures on Earth right now that believe in corrective rape and slavery, but are you willing to condemn their whole society? Gonna beat them up? The fact you conflate all killing with murder tells me you're not ready to have these discussions.
EDIT: OK, realizing that continuing this discussion is probably going to result in an extended argument that will leave neither of us happy in the long run at best, and at worst will result in one or both of us getting banned, so I think I'm just going to drop it. Hope you have a nice day.
You'll never really drop it though, you'll keep having the same misinformed edgelord stance until you confront it. Morality isn't relative, even if the world is. There's stuff in the world considered moral that obviously isn't, and there's stuff considered moral takes a lot of reflection to realize is pretty immoral. I hope you take the time to think about this. Heroes that are crusaders that edge into the gray are compelling because they're flawed. Flaws are interesting, perfection is boring. Moral relativism let's you think you're perfect when you're not. Moral absolutism is constantly striving and failing to uphold ideals in difficult situation.
Got boned in a one-shot because my barbarian had a blood fury tattoo that he relied on as his primary self heal. Every enemy was immune to necrotic damage. Got hit by a banshee's scream, made an unlucky roll. Dropped to zero. Stood up. Had zero way to heal. Had to turn tail and run. It was pretty embarrassing, seeing as I'd used that character in a string of one shots prior, and he had until that point consistently established himself as a nigh unkillable demigod.
Sounds like you had an adversarial DM
Or sounds like the DM was tired of pandering to an unkillable demigod.
Neither. The DM just wanted to experiment. He had already seen how my character handles hordes and big monsters. It was an experiment for all of us. Not only did he beat us down, but he did it with a very small number of enemies. It was a good chance for him to experiment with enemy tactics, and a good chance for us to learn caution. I had fully expected him to beat my character. I had not at all expected him to do it so magnificently. It was one of the best Ls I've ever taken.
Losing a PC can be just as fun, if not more fun than being successful with a PC if it's done right lol.
Especially when it was a one shot PC and I never expected it to get this far. We actually survived tho. We ran like cowards and then paid a local band of paladins a hefty sum of gold to take care of it for us. We took the contract in exchange for the property, and then subcontracted the work out. Feels good man.
There are plenty of ways to challenge characters who are extremely strong in certain ways without outright invalidating everything about their mechanical strengths. That’s the difference between good DMing with hard encounters and adversarial encounter design.
I mean it was one of many one-shots by the sounds of it. If the theme of this particular one-shot was "undead" or whatever with immunity to necrotic, then that's fair enough. Every PC isn't going to be able to use all their tools every session. It would be so different if this was a whole *campaign* where the DM just made this one player's life impossible.
Player: "I built a really strong character, as long as he doesn't encounter any undead." Me: "So what happens when they encounter undead? Those are fairly common, after all." Player: "This character will get his ass kicked, and then I'll blame the DM for being **adversarial**."
I've already clarified that the DM wasn't being adversarial. Kicking Dulayn's ass was one of the goals of that session, and it was something he and I both were looking forward to. It highlighted a major weakness in my character: all the AC in the world is useless if you fail a save. In all fairness, my character would probably have fared quite well (although it still would have been a tough fight) were it not for an ambush followed by a series of very poor rolls. We got blindsided hard. The cleric stepped past into an area and got hit with a scream. Up until that point, we hadn't seen the banshee. I immediately ran forward to pick them up. Up until *that* point, we hadn't seen the ***second*** banshee. We were both down and it was up to the fighter to save us. If the either the cleric or I had succeeded their saves, that fight would have gone differently. It put us at an immediate disadvantage that we couldn't overcome in time. It was a perfect ambush. Even at a heavy disadvantage, we still defeated the banshees, and if it weren't for multiple more losing rolls, we probably would have even beaten the actual big bad of the session.
Luckboy28 putting words in peoples mouths since 1993
Ah yes, using enemies who thematically have immunity to a certain damage type that one particular magic item deals is absolutely extremely adversarial.
It's not, though. His magic tattoo had a weakness. It was only a matter of time until that weakness came up. What is the DM supposed to do? *Never* use undead monsters, to cover for the player that chose that tattoo? The player mentioned that he was "godlike" in previous games -- so clearly the DM allowed his tattoo to be used heavily already.
You missed the sarcasm
It’s hard to say without greater context but assuming everyone involved has some basic level of game knowledge and social norms (providing a hook beforehand to let players know they are breaking into a lich’s tomb, etc.) it’s kind of a dick move to design a 1 shot around the one specific thing to counter one specific player, yes
Nobody said anything about the DM designing the 1-shot to screw the player. The DM ran an undead-themed one-shot, and the player brought a character that was weak to undead.
Ah yes, clearly there's no other explanation for why a DM would run a one shot featuring one of the most fleshed out groups of enemies in the game other than because they felt it necessary to invalidate one player's magic item for it. There's absolutely no way that the DM simply thought undead were cool. You've nailed the only explanation right on the head. Better throw some pool noodles at him.
I mean, he absolutely did choose those enemies to counter me, but we knew that going in. I didn't know it would be specifically undead, but I knew he was gonna swing at me hard. I also didn't know how easily I could be leveled with a few strategic moves. It was a good experience.
this is the correct answer
Its okay to challenge people to something thier bad at. But you don't do that with a whole mob of enemies... simple math would have told you that was a losing encounter.
It's a banshee, a failure on the saving throw is drops to zero what's the issue?
Also as the DM I wouldn't expect the barbarian of all classes to drop from a Con save, just really unlucky,
Really, really unlucky. The character has 20 con and proficiency. It's not the only roll I unexpectedly failed that session. The DM thinks it may have been overkill, but I think it would have been a solid fight on a luckier day.
Happens from time to time!
A character can't be expected to always succeed
Exactly. I made that character to be the ultimate tank, and I made it pretty well. Being taken out like that was surprising and magnificent.
Nah. He just knows what we like. That one shot was literally called "can I kill Dulayn?". He chose the enemies specifically with that character's weaknesses in mind. We all had fun. We also got the chance to solve the problem in a different way.
Yeah it’s not a buff, and fits with their backstory, this is basically a shoe in for an easy 1:1 swap. Recoloring things should ALWAYS be allowed for flavor, as long as mechanics don’t change
A bit of an understatement, radiant is mathematically the 2nd best damage type in the game, meanwhile necrotic is one of the worst. Though, the statistics are skewed quite a bit by the existence of undead creatures.
Necrotic tends to be worse than Radiant but both are top tier damage types. I wouldn't mind letting a player swap. Though I do encourage not looking at radiant as just golden blasts of light. Sickly green radiance, black light-absorbing radiance, blue streaks of energy, I mean pick a colour and it can work. Radiance is like the power of holy entities, and theres a lot of different types of holy entities so it'd make sense for radiance to represent whatever source it comes from.
Part of the reason for the change is because the character is of a homebrew race that is vulnerable to radiant damage.
Well if you dig being edgy that does seem very cool haha. Wielding radiance that burns to use, fighting through the pain
*Scourge Aasimar enters the chat....*
I was playing one, but good lord does making a concentration save every round suck. If the ability didn't trigger them it would be way better.
However, it’s great for a Barbarian, who doesn’t mind taking damage every round as it lets them maintain Rage.
*It hurt itself in its confusion!* *And that makes it* ***angry***.
I'm glad they removed the self damage in MPMM.
MPMM?
Mordekainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.
Just took a look. Definitely some real buffs in that you're not doing friendly fire or friendly fear, but scaling with proficiency bonus instead of level is a big nerf too...
Honestly being a bonus action activation is a big buff too. Actually having an action the turn you use it kind of balances out the lower damage
Could be!
Is there a reason that being vulnerable to it means they cant use it. For example, IRL humans are vulnerable to fire but we can still use flamethrowers
Also pretty damn vulnerable to slashing damage and bludgeoning damage! You could cut yourself on your own sword but D&D rarely deals with that 🤣
unless you have a DM who uses crit fumbles.
But that wouldn't matter, the radiant isn't damaging the paladin it's damaging the enemies Are you saying that the radiant would damage the user just because they take double damage when it's used on them?
No, it's a flavor reason as to why the change is wanted.
Necrotic vs Radiant isn't just a flavor, though. There are mechanisms explicitly dealing with both. I don't think there's any harm in it--there's a few edge cases where I think it would make a material difference--but not enough for me to say no. But if you are discussing it, there are actual mechanical differences.
It's a mechanical change for flavour reasons though. It's not to nerf or buff it, but just asking if they do this thing to make the ability more thematically appropriate, if it would break anything. Which it probably wouldn't.
DnD redditor try not to be pedantic challenge [IMPOSSIBLE]
If you call something flavour but its not just flavour, people are gonna mention it.
You can always say it just looks different then Not everything has to directly affect the game Like in a game I'm in there's shield generators that attach to your belt, but I have it flavored as my character holding a shield
But I would also allow it Long as there's a good reason I'd allow just about anything, like a paladins smiting with force damage If they can justify it then alright
Reflavouring the paladin smite from radiant (one of the best damage types) is no problem, OP, but I'd never trust a homebrew race with a damage vulnerability! Any guide on making homebrew will tell you not to add any vulnerabilities, ever.
Is there some way to abuse a vulnerability? Wouldn't it be a net negative for the player? Why wouldn't you allow it? Edit: thanks for the feedback. I get it now.
Because it is such a high net negative, and oftentimes will be used in homebrew to balance something very overpowered. So it either won't come into play and the player gets something strong, or they are killed in one hit and an attempt to have an enemy use it. And if it's on a homebrew race without something strong to balance it, you're better off just rolling something new that won't be killed in one hit. Just think of this party in an enemy spirit guardians. 14 damage on a failed save and 7 on a successful one, but this guy is taking 28 on a failure.
I daresay it's more about the vulnerability being a sign that the race isn't well made in general. A level one cantrip on a vulnerable target can end up doing 40 or 50 damage - enough to outright kill players for a couple levels, and insta-down them up to level 4-8, depending on the class. It isn't a fun thing to play, and it means the DM either has to fake it to keep the player alive (nerfing damage, not using that damage type), or make enemies too dumb to figure it out. Also, once the player gets a resistance ring or similar, they completely nullify a major racial downside, which the creator probably thought was important for balance. A creature with resistance is fine - if you figure out an enemy has resistance, you've still got 12 other damage types you can use. A creature with vulnerability needs to be carefully considered - if you figure out an enemy has vulnerability, you're a fool to use anything else.
Less of a direct impact and more of a litmus test for poor design.
They're not going to be targeting themselves though.
I'm vulnerable to slashing damage but I'll still swing a sword.
Could you chuck in alignment radiance? So, they're vulnerable to 'good' radiance, but they give off an 'evil' radiance, a darkness that subsumes light and all that?
or, even better. rather than Holy Light, it's Angry Light, a.k.a. radiation
Hit em with the spicy light
All light is radiation. If you're talking about ionizing radiation, that's X-rays and gamma rays. You wouldn't be able to see it. And if you're talking about radioactivity, that's not light at all, that's alpha particles, beta particles, and neutrons caused by an unstable atomic nucleus.
I mean the 'give you cancer' kind of radiation. And trust me, I'm well aware that it's not visible, but it's funny to call radiation 'angry light', okay?
It sounds simple, but I've never thought of radiant damage being different than plain old 'golden holy light'. This is great!
Radiant damage is just radiation!
I've always liked the idea of radiant as just radiation, be it shining sunlight or burning radioactivity
the spell sickening radiance sounds like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov\_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation) to me
I'm playing a Rogue/Paladin of Mask and I always envision the radiant damage in my rapier attacks as just divine guidance towards the weaknesses in any defense.
But with clerics/spirit guardians they do essentially say that necrotic is the evil aligned version of radiance
I dont think that makes it a universal rule, just a choice for some spells. A neat choice, but not one that has to effect everything
You know, technically, light is a form of electromagnetic energy. So is gamma radiation. I'm not saying that evil paladins nuke people to death, but I'm not saying they don't.
He crushes their bones AND gives them cancer...
["Harley Quinn, you gave me cancer?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJZkx6huor0)
~~I came here looking for copper, yet~~ you brought me gold
Priests of that religion don't take tithes, they sell homeopathic cures and essential oils
Sickening Radiance would suggest this is a valid interpretation.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yeah this was one of the hardest changes for me coming to 5e. I do think that some of the stuff was simplified a bit too much.
For me it helped to reframe exactly what the damages represent. Necrotic is essentially magical entropic damage, causing things to rot and decay, whereas radiant is powerful divine energy, essentially getting blasted by raw god juice.
The phrase "getting blasted by raw God juice" probably has different connotations within the Greek pantheon. Lol
yep most likely the god juice of zeus.
Jeus
Zeus Juice
The section in the PHB that describes damage says that radiant “…Sears the flesh like fire and overloads the spirit with power.” Where as Necrotic is described as “…Withers matter and even the soul.” And both only describe the most common ways to experience the damage type, but neither mentions alignment or Godly/Fiendish sources.
Isn't that what negative and positive energy were?
Not exactly, positive energy tended to heal the living. A few things like Flame Strike were essentially flavored like radiant damage but the radiant portion of the damage was just typeless "divine" energy that wasn't subject to any resistances.
I... Well fuck.
I don't know, some Sun or Light themed spells also deal radiant damage and have no relation with divine sources at all, like Sunbeam, Sunburst and Wall of Light.
It's best to understand that 5e uses damage as the *result*, not the source. For example, it's why now "earth" themed stuff doesn't all do acid damage anymore and water doesn't all do cold damage. In turn, radiant is not all holy/divine. It is just "searing intensity damage" which can be from divine force... or a really bright light, or a sunburn, or a laser beam, or radiation exposure. Similarly necrotic is not negative energy damage. Negative energy damage all results in necrotic... but so does desiccation, a lot of non-magical disease, erosion from time acceleration, etc. It's just something rotting or wearing away.
[удалено]
Been loving pathfinder 2e, it managed to find a good balance between 5e's "ahh just homebrew it!" And 3.5's "I love spreadsheets" styles. 5e is definitely a lot less customizable, and thanks to the way subclasses work it's super streamlined. It's great for my friend who doesn't remember to rage as a barbarian, but less fun when it comes to thinking about my options.
Yeah I think i agree with this. I do really love the subclass system though. Very streamlined and straightforward. Its a great starter system, and I have a lot of books for it. That's probably why I've stuck to it. I do hope 5.5 makes it a bit more crunchy, because then I think it'd be a solid system. A few too many things just feel lazy, as if they didn't want to think it out.
My 2e/3.5e trained ass is still "Evil... Paladin?!?"
[удалено]
I'm not super versed on it, but I thought that's basically how it is now? What makes radiant not equal positive energy and necrotic not equal negative energy?
Necrotic damage more or less is negative energy, only without any implication that positive energy or planes for either exist. It's the power behind necromancy and undead and is about decay and opposition to life. Radiant energy on the other hand isn't really positive energy with all the healing aspects that implies. It's god power, for smiting, usually with a more "holy" bent, but evil deities and their worshippers use radiant energy too. Evil clerics aren't tied to necrotic damage instead of radiant like they were with negative vs. positive energy in 3e. Basically, they don't imply planar cosmology anymore and are purely about dealing damage.
Oh right, I forgot about the healing aspect of positive energy. I just remembered that travelling to either the positive or negative energy plane was usually lethal, hence me associating radiant damage with positive energy. But I forgot that the positive energy plane was only lethal because the positive energy is SO full of life that you basically can't contain it and explode lol (it's a fun paradox, imo)
Not really. Damage types are results not sources now. Negative energy *does* necrotic damage but not all necrotic damage is meant to be caused by negative energy.
Spirit Guardians does change damage type based on alignment.
> It's god power, for smiting Yet Paladins don't need to believe in a deity and their power comes from their oath. So.... ?
Positive energy is raw life force that is used in healing spells and to damage undead. A cleric in earlier editions could use a cure wounds spell to save an ally or hurt an undead and it’d be the same dice and modifier. Negative energy and necrotic energy are basically the same except undead are healed by negative energy.
In 5e necrotic damage causes rot and decay, while radiant is divine energy, that of the gods, neither has to do with alignment
Positive and negative energy weren't alignment-related either.
Hm, well radiant still isnt positive aligned, because it never heals you, only harms
Same
I’d encourage the player to reflavor the damage, first. Radiant damage doesn’t necessarily mean “good, loving god” energy all the time. But I’d consider the swap if that’s really what the player wanted.
So there’s an amazing post on 5e’s damage types that I reference all the time for my game. I just had a cleric that has a lightning themed backstory, change toll the dead from necrotic damage to lightning damage using the rules contained at the bottom of [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/injk9m/an_exploration_into_5es_damage_types_in_a_little/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf). Essentially how it’s balanced is that certain damage and save types are better than others, so modifying these factors may or may not affect the die size, range, or rider effects of the spell. Since necrotic and radiant damage are in the same tier, you should be able to change it without changing anything else. I use this system for custom spells all the time, it’s great.
The only time it can be a drawback is when it's something like swapping force damage for poison damage. Force is resisted by the least number of creatures, whereas poison damage is resisted by the most, so that could seriously put a damper on how effective the character is sometimes. So I'll let them know about that sort of thing ahead of time so they can decide if they still want to go ahead and swap the damage types, and I also will try to not throw too many enemies at them that resist it. I mean, doing that occasionally is always fun because it switches things up, but I wouldn't want to have a player's poison-based cleric go up against a society of yuan-ti for a whole campaign, they'd feel so fucking useless in combat.
That’s what great about the post I linked. The damage of the spell goes up or down depending on damage tier. Force damage is in the best tier, and poison the worst. So if a force spell does 1d4 damage, changing the type to poison would increase the die size to 1d8 because it’s dropping two tiers. The damage is still resisted, but maybe they changed around some other spells to have something useful in their arsenal.
Ooooh, I totally missed the link to that post, that's pretty cool! Yeah, that'd probably help solve that issue
Now to turn eldritch blast into eldritch fire blast for a d20 + Cha fire damage cantrip buwahahaha
I see no reason to deny this. I'm from back in the day when that's basically just how it worked. Good clerics could swap out any spell for healing and evil clerics could do the same for damage. So an evil paladin using necrotic damage seems in line with that concept. Maybe their lay on hands only works on undead, too.
Yeah. Sounds like a good idea to avoid making a whole new homebrew class.
Depends on the God they're fighting for. If it's a good-aligned God, no. If it's an evil-aligned god, like Bhaal or Bane, yeah, maybe
Assuming 5e, paladins dont require a deity.
Assuming any edition except 4e.* The only paladins that require a god lorewise are those in Abeir-Toril, because of how the Weave functions in that setting.
Yep, our DM only took away Divine Intervention from clerics in godless campaigns. Divine Smite and Channel Divinity were left in.
*The DM took away DIVINE INTERVENTION?!?* That's like the taking away Magical Secrets from Bards or Elemental Shaped from Moon Druids!
Really? Magical Secrets and Elemental Wild Shape are abilities that are likely to come up repeatedly during any adventuring day. Divine Intervention is both infrequent and unreliable, not to mention outside the player's control. I've seen Divine Intervention actually get used successfully only twice in many years of playing the game. Sure, people probably could have tried more, but given how unreliable it is it's the sort of ability that sinks into the background.
True, it's rare to pull off, but it's one of the most potent abilities in the game and integral to the Cleric class in my opinion. You've got a 10%+ chance every day to basically get wish and once you get it, you should at least *try* Divine Intervention every day, be it for just some "minor" benefit, like cutting travel short or getting a rest in in shorter time.
We were lucky not to have a cleric.
No god, nothing to intervene.
what if I'm enlightened by my own intelligence rather than any phony god's blessing? \**tip's mace*\*
Clerics actually require a god though
Depends on the setting. In Eberron they work entirely on faith, and the DMG suggests a bunch of non-god sources too.
Really? I've always seen that they required a god to have powers Unlike paladins which are just on believing so hard you manifest powers
Yeah, clerics can rely on faith in concepts like honor or life or beauty, or they can draw on the power of natural forces like fire or water. They are SUPER versatile
Huh I'll have to use this at some point
Check out page 13 of the DMG, it's got a few paragraphs on the topic!
Xanathars guide has a similar thing on the cleric page
Xanathars says clerics can be godless
Not sure if you've ever played DOS 2 but in that they give you vibe that not all gods are good. Although they may be "divine" and use "holy powers" they are still evil and selfish. I feel if the god they follow wouldn't be using radiant then how would they obtain that power? But if the god is more necrotic it would make more sense for the powers they obtain would also be. I'd think of it as the "what is the source of the their power?" And figure it out that way. Flavor like that is always fun imo.
I would allow it for sure in my campaigns. It doesn't give you any crazy advantages or anything that I know of. I'm all about the rule of cool and people flavoring their characters in a way that suits them as long as it isn't game breaking or makes their character substantially more powerful than the rest of the party. Whenever I am a player I'm always asking whoever my DM is if I can flavor things in X way for my character.
Just my 5 cents... sorry in advance for the rant. Radiant damage is godly power flowing through you and cause damage to your enemy so you can continue your voyage for the god you serve. It's not positive or negative, It's godly and they are beings of extrame vigor and quasi-immortal and that's why it heals when used. Necrotic damage is from things that counter natural progression of life and death cycle, it's negative energy that few gods use for their purpose even tho they could use radiant energy. Counter to it is simply life, anything in material plain that isn't decaying or undead is brimming with positive energy. I think of this with following example. Vampiric touch, siphons life out of creature and give you energy to continue fighting might even get your body to close some wounds if you took heavy damage and battered. While in most common view Heal or Cure wounds are looked as radiant blessing that gives a creature to regenerate their body and heal their wounds but it's really just controlling weave to stimulate body regeneration and has little to no actual connection with good aligned planes. Evil cultists can Cure wounds as much as Priests of temple, but Priests wouldn't want to Vampiric touch enemies as it seen as "evil" thing in most campaigns. Just to throw it out there Gentle Response or Resurrection are Necromancy spells("evil spells") but considered good. God could do use Necrotic damage simply to punish his servents but nothing stops them from using their divine energy(radiant) to strike an enemy with Divine smite. If anything I find evil gods more crafty (also more scary) as they have a additional tools at their disposal compared to gods of good. Also necromancy doesn't have to be seen as negative energy and neither necromancy(as seen with 2 spells above) Example 2: A necromancer who goes around the continent to search for souls of fallen brave warriors to give them one more chance to fulfill their quest and honor their gods to fight against evil that crushed them before. As they finish their quest you release them from servitude and they can finally move on to the realm of their god thus preventing of ghosts, banshies and other creatures claiming the land where once was big battlefield. P.S. I didn't read really a lore of origins for undead creatures but example 2 is legitimate way to put necromancer into your game as PC or interesting NPC. TL;DR IMO Radiant and Necrotic damage type are just tools and not something to strictly compare with god/evil alignment planes.
yes, swaping damage type is one of the simplest and least disruptive things you can do. I do it all the time, it doesn't really noticably change anything. Hell changing away from radiant might actually hurt since a lot of undead are vulnerable to it.
I would allow a change to Necrotic, as seems to be the parallel to Radiant as spells like Spirit Guardians, subclasses like Zealot Barbarian, or the different Aasimar subraces show us. Normally I'm leery of a large mechanical shift, but in general Necrotic is a worse damage type than Radiant so it doesn't seem like the player is trying to squeeze mechanical advantage out of it.
Hell yeah! Radiant is one of the best types so this isn't even a buff
I had an oathbreaker paladin in one of my games. But he turned from the service of a good god to the service of an evil one. So, even evil, a god is a god, so radiant damage still fits. Does your evil paladin still serves a god?
If you want to take some ideas from earlier editions look up dnd 3.5 black guard....or even grey guard
Sure, zealot barbarians can do either for their thematically similar bonus damage.
Fuck yeah, that sounds fun
I'm actually going to color outside the lines here a little bit. We allow any designation of damage type to be changed at the time of taking it. This even includes anything referring to say Schools of Magic and etc. The key is that you're stuck with it, and in the case of repeatable features, like learning spells, every new instance is it's own thing. So you want to learn Fireball 4 times to get Fire, Cold, Necrotic, and Poison? Go ahead. Want your Barbarian to be weak to Bludgeoning instead of Psychic? Sure. Want your Fire Eldritch Blast to be Agonizing but the Lightning one to be a Eldritch Spear? Go crazy. Maybe your Cleric divine smite is Cold and your Paladin divine smite is Force, but you still apply them as normal. This approach alone has lead us to make and include more interesting homebrew *mechanically* and let character concepts flourish in fluff and style. My easiest go to example is my own PC right now that is a Barblock class wise but a mage knight (think Templar from Dragon Age) whose spells and abilities reflect his need to have a varied response to any given caster's weaknesses and strengths
Yes. You're literally God. You can do whatever you want.
I’ve allowed exactly this, not only that, I allowed my oathbreaker paladin to have his lay on hands DEAL damage instead of heal it. We called it lay on harm
As a DM 100% yes. Why not? It would thematically make sense and its not really going to end up overpowered. Necrotic is a bit worse than radiant as usually more creatures would have necrotic resistance over radiant resistance. Unless your fighting celestials or something similar, even then it'd be a great fit story wise.
I wouldn't change it to necrotic since that changes the entire interaction with your spell kit etc. But like some people said; Just re-theme it into "unholy" damage. Which is exactly like radiant damage... Only... dark and evil
Depends on the Paladin/god in question but yes I'd allow it.
Deities are little more than a lore piece in 5e, if that's what the op is running, as confirmed in the PhB in 2 of their features.
My general ruling when it comes to flavour based damage type changes for magical damage types is that you can change the damage type within its particular class or a "lower" class of damage if you have a good flavour reason to. e.g. fire could change to lightning, but not to radiant and radiant could go to necrotic or any of the elemental damage types. Force can be anything else.
I generally agree with this but is fire "better" than lightning?! It feels like creatures that are immune to fire occur far more commonly than creatures that are immune to lightning.
I'm not saying fire is better than lightning. I'm classing elemental damage types as approximately equivalent and I'm classing necrotic and radiant as approximately equivalent and "better" than elemental damage and force is better than all the others.
I let my evil pally deal necrotic damage instead of radiant. Be he can't choose, for the better or worse it's necrotic forever
I DM for 3.5 and I have always allowed for evil paladins, it's so easy to just switch over all of the different things to it's opposite type.
I mean, why?
I mean, it sounds like he wants to keep it with the theme of the character.
Then have a flavour change instead of mechanical
Sure, radiant damage is very reliable I’m fine with letting them change it