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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Edit: I know it seems silly because nobody has really done it, but 1,235 damage could easily be 123.50 or 12.35 as far as 4-digit numbers go.
@damokles I saw your point a while ago. Entirely fine to defend your point, I guess it just wasn't originally worded in an easy-to-understand way to me (which is totally fine given the HUGE scope of this topic/discussion). It's a really good point, too, I just think it needs to be fledged out more in how it relates to other abilities and the rest of the game.
I still think there should be a difference between physical and magical damage, even physical and magical effects, too. But it makes a lot of sense to have a giant ice spell deal physical damage. I would even be all for it. After all, it's the ice and the impact that's dealing the damage, not the "magic" or "magical strength" of it.
But this is where the discussion devolves in to other things related to stats and how they're handled in-game: resistances (typically magical resistance, since wearing armor is essentially physical resistance), spell penetration (essentially the opposite of a resistance), magical power (however that's defined - could be just a pure damage boost to a spell, or many other things), and any number of other ways magic could influence things. If there's a magic missile spell: Well, there's possible ethereal effects that exist on more than just the physical plane, so there wouldn't be a physical way to block it - essentially pure magical damage.
I also like things to be very "classic" in a sense, specifically relating to D&D, since it just makes more sense that way.
Think about the Fireball spell, since it's essentially been in every game there's been a mage in.
To use D&D 3.5e as a reference, it does 1d6 damage per caster level (since you can get the spell at level 5, that's a minimum of 5d6) with a maximum of 10d6 damage without other metamagic applied to it.
Spell damage scaling is based on level with a cap. Essentially no "magical power" or anything else can boost the spell's damage. You might find magical items that boost the caster level, but it wouldn't apply past 10th level in this case. Metamagic abilities are extremely rare and super expensive to have a feat applied to a piece of gear... so let's ignore that for now.
The damage: Not physical damage, not magical damage, just damage. Since it's effectively an area spell, armor has no effect. Reflexes matter, though (basically a quick reaction whether or not you can avoid it and/or roll to safety).
Sooo... what's the point? Why did I bring this up?
Because it's a great argument for 'not' separating out physical and magical damage, since the effect is the same: your character gets hurt. It's the heat of the fireball that does the damage, regardless of how the explosion was created.
But there's also lots of arguments in there for other stats, stat effects, or possibilities. Like the concept of "cover". If a fighter is hiding behind a tower shield when that fireball explodes, it wouldn't go past the shield unless it melted. So the fighter might still take a little damage from the surrounding area, but he'd practically negate the damage.
tl:dr - Arguments can be made either way: Magic can be physical damage, magic damage, or both. Depends how it's applied. But I think a reasonable argument can be made either way.
We especially don't know yet whether a giant Ice spell is dealing physical damage or magical damage.
We don't know if it is freezing people via physics or freezing people via magic - or both.
Is the spell magically summoning physical ice or conjuring magical ice?
Either of those make sense - we just need to know which rules the devs are using.
Again... in DC comics magically summoned physical ice should not penetrate Superman's invulnerability, but conjured magical ice would penetrate Superman's invulnerability. Just as a magically summoned mundane dagger would not cut Superman, but a dagger that is magically sharp would cut Superman.