# Damage of two types but immunity to one



## Hazard_53188 (Jun 17, 2010)

I can't find the rule for what happens when an attack has two damage types but the enemy struck has immunity to one of those two types.  Can someone provide that rule and let me know where it is please?


Thank


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## Solvarn (Jun 17, 2010)

Hazard_53188 said:


> I can't find the rule for what happens when an attack has two damage types but the enemy struck has immunity to one of those two types. Can someone provide that rule and let me know where it is please?
> 
> Thank




It should be in the section on resistances, but the monster will take full damage.


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## the Jester (Jun 17, 2010)

Yeah, when you're hit by a multi-damage type attack (say, fire and cold), you have to resist both or be immune to both in order to resist or be immune to any of it.


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## mneme (Jun 17, 2010)

That's not correct.

You always use the lower of your resistances when hit with multi-typed damage.

However, immunity is paramount.  If you're immune to cold, you're immune to fire&cold damage, fire&lightning&cold, etc.  "A creature that is immune to a damage type (such as cold or fire), a condition (such as dazed or petrified), or another specific effect (such as disease or forced movement) is not affected by it."

However, immunity to a damage type doesn't immunize you from the non-damaging effects of that type -- immuity to  charm, fear, illusion, poison, or sleep will protect from non-damaging effects of powers with those types (and poison is both an effect and a damage type, so poison immunity does double duty), but fire or cold immunity won't.

Back to the topic, note that the verbage above is absolute.  Combined damage types are hit with both immunities (ooh, if you do 3 fire damage and 25 radiant and necrotic damage, fire immunity will only stop 3 damage, despite the attack getting all three keywords and benefiting from all three vulnerabilities).

Note the difference in the language on resistance: "Against Combined Damage Types: Your resistance is ineffective against combined damage types unless you have resistance to each of the damage types, and then only the weakest of the resistances applies. For example, if you have resist 10 lightning and resist 5 thunder and an attack deals 15 lightning and thunder damage to you, you take 10 damage, because the resistance to the combined damage types is limited by the lesser of the two resistances."


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## the Jester (Jun 17, 2010)

mneme said:


> That's not correct.
> 
> You always use the lower of your resistances when hit with multi-typed damage.
> 
> However, immunity is paramount.  If you're immune to cold, you're immune to fire&cold damage, fire&lightning&cold, etc.  "A creature that is immune to a damage type (such as cold or fire), a condition (such as dazed or petrified), or another specific effect (such as disease or forced movement) is not affected by it."




Immunity doesn't work like that. Something that does 25 fire & cold damage is doing BOTH fire and cold damage. Your immunity to cold doesn't protect you from the "part" of that damage that is fire- and that's all 25 points of it. 

Although, if you have a solid cite, I'd like to see it. Your quote doesn't address multiple damage types at all. Being immune to cold and taking 25 fire and cold damage is exactly the same, in terms of damage you will take, as simply taking 25 points of fire damage.


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## SquareKnot (Jun 17, 2010)

In the PHB errata, found  here, it says to update your PHB page 55 with this text:


> Resistance or immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects. Also, resistance doesn’t reduce damage unless the target has resistance to each type of damage from the attack, and then only the weakest of the resistances applies. For example, a character who has resist 10 lightning and resist 5 thunder who takes 15 lightning and thunder damage takes 10 damage because the resistance value to the combined damage types is limited by the lesser of the two resistances.


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## mneme (Jun 17, 2010)

Yes, SK.  So immunity stops all the damage matching the type (even if it has other types), but resistance (not immunity) only works if you have all the types and then the lowest resistance applies.

Nowhere do they say that immunity stops working if you don't have immunity to all the types.

The "resistance or immunity to one keyword of a power"... refers to immunity to a damage type not affecting other affects of a power with that keyword, and immunity to sleep not meaning you don't take damage from a sleep power.

And no, Jester, that doesn't work.  If you 're not immue to untyped damage and you take 25 fire damage, you don't get hit with 25 damage -- fire and cold isn't separable any more than fire and untyped damage is.  If you're immune to cold and you're hit with 25 fire and cold damage, well, it's cold damage, isn't it?  If you're hit with 15 fire and 15 cold damage, you'll just take the fire damage. 

Wizards is -very- careful to not have immunity to damage have the "worst type applies" rule.  If you're immune to a damage type, you're immune to that damage type and never take any damage that has that keyword (regardless of what other keywords it has).  Let's roll the tape again:

. "A creature that is immune to a damage type (such as cold or fire), a condition (such as dazed or petrified), or another specific effect (such as disease or forced movement) is not affected by it."

Ignore everything you know about resistance; it's not relevant--immunity isn't resistance and you can't make arguments from one to the other.

Just based on the above (plus, sure "Resistance or immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects.") how would you rule attacks with fire and cold damage vs a cold immune character?


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## cdrcjsn (Jun 17, 2010)

mneme said:


> Just based on the above (plus, sure "Resistance or immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects.") how would you rule attacks with fire and cold damage vs a cold immune character?




"Resistance or *immunity* to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects."

It affects it fully.

20 fire and cold damage isn't the same as 10 fire and 10 cold damage.

It's 20 fire/cold damage.


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## keterys (Jun 17, 2010)

Full damage. Since they errata-ed combo damage types, they are almost always a good thing.


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## Solvarn (Jun 17, 2010)

mneme said:


> Just based on the above (plus, sure "Resistance or immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects.") how would you rule attacks with fire and cold damage vs a cold immune character?




If the character were being damaged by an attack that does fire and cold damage, and they were immune to cold damage, they would take the fire damage.

Recently errata'd rules made it clear that characters making attacks with one keyword and using a weapon with another keyword had to choose one keyword to apply to powers. I think the only way a character can achieve two keywords now is that:

a) they take the Energy Admixture (covers one power)
b) the power itself has multiple keywords


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## mneme (Jun 17, 2010)

Solvarn said:


> If the character were being damaged by an attack that does fire and cold damage, and they were immune to cold damage, they would take the fire damage.
> 
> Recently errata'd rules made it clear that characters making attacks with one keyword and using a weapon with another keyword had to choose one keyword to apply to powers. I think the only way a character can achieve two keywords now is that:
> 
> ...




Multiple keywords are easy, actualy; they're just not germane to the topic.  There's no contention about what happens if you get hit with an attack that does separate damage of different types -- the attack benefits from multiple vulnerabilities (and can't benefit from any given one once; 3 radiant + 3 radaint is 6 radiant, but 3 radiant + 3 fire and cold stays separate unless it hits a resist(all) 5, in which case 1 damage (your choice? frankly, I'm not sure [ ooh, that's a fun one.  You hit an undead which has resist(all) 10, vulnerable radiant (5), and regenerate (turned off if it takes radiant damage with 3 radiant damage and 10 fire damage [one damage source].  Have they taken radiant damage or not?]) slips through, but each damage chunk is separately resisted/checked on immunity.

That said, it's not that hard for damage chunks to have multiple types.  Admixture does it, lots of power does it, and hell, plenty of features do it (Radiant One, perhaps?  Radiant and Necrotic on everything you have CA against!).  I'm not really sure what RAI is (and would slightly lean towards "the damage should slip through"), but it's not a big deal, and if Wizards has intended to have immunities not zero out damage with multiple types, they haven't done that yet.  "it's also fire damage" isn't an other effect -- it's the -same- effect.  The one you're immune to.


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## keterys (Jun 17, 2010)

mneme said:


> if Wizards has intended to have immunities not zero out damage with multiple types, they haven't done that yet.




The PHB errata is more than likely them doing just that, as already noted upthread.


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## Hazard_53188 (Jun 17, 2010)

Solvarn said:


> Recently errata'd rules made it clear that characters making attacks with one keyword and using a weapon with another keyword had to choose one keyword to apply to powers. I think the only way a character can achieve two keywords now is that:
> 
> a) they take the Energy Admixture (covers one power)
> b) the power itself has multiple keywords




In case it helps with the discussion, the specific case that made me wonder how this works was a character attacking using a Mordant weapon with this power activated against a creature with poison immunity.  "Power (At-Will • Acid, Poison): Free Action. All damage dealt by this weapon is acid damage and poison damage. Another free action returns the damage to normal.
".

The attack power itself had no damage type.


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## Zieche (Jun 17, 2010)

mneme said:


> "it's also fire damage" isn't an other effect -- it's the -same- effect. The one you're immune to.




IMHO:

*AND* implies two seperate things combined. And it is completely reasonable to take damage from one even when immune to the other. 

Example: 
  You can drink water, you can't drink poison. So you can't drink water and poison in the same cup. Well... maybe once.


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## CovertOps (Jun 17, 2010)

> Resistance or immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects. Also, resistance doesn’t reduce damage unless the target has resistance to each type of damage from the attack, and then only the weakest of the resistances applies. For example, a character who has resist 10 lightning and resist 5 thunder who takes 15 lightning and thunder damage takes 10 damage because the resistance value to the combined damage types is limited by the lesser of the two resistances.






mneme said:


> Yes, SK.  So immunity stops all the damage matching the type (even if it has other types), but resistance (not immunity) only works if you have all the types and then the lowest resistance applies.
> 
> Nowhere do they say that immunity stops working if you don't have immunity to all the types.




I'm fairly sure this is a straw man argument.  You're trying to prove your point via the negative when 4e is an exception based system.  You take damage unless the rules tell you you don't take damage.  What it really comes down to is how you want to read the phrase "the power's other effects".  You can treat damage of type fire and cold as either one effect or two.  If you treat it as one then of course immunity protects you from all the damage.  If you treat it as two then it does not.  Treating it as two effects makes it work quite nicely when it comes to resistances.

The reason I believe you are wrong is that it lumps both immunity and resistance together "Resistance or immunity..." and treats them exactly the same.  Since the issue of resistance has come up many times they specifically address how to handle that situation, but the lack of additional text about immunity does not prove that immunity cold prevents all damage from a cold/fire power.  Just that the issue has not come up.  If I was a betting person I'd put my 2 coppers on a FAQ or errata saying that you need immunity to all damage types of a power to be immune to the damage, otherwise it makes immunities VERY powerful.

The whole point of multiple damage types is to get around resistances/immunities, not to have immunity cold (for example) grant you immunity to any other damage type "bundled" with it.


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## CovertOps (Jun 17, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> The whole point of multiple damage types is to get around resistances/immunities, not to have immunity cold (for example) grant you immunity to any other damage type "bundled" with it.




I got to thinking about this some more...what if you have immunity cold and vulnerability radiant and get hit with a power that does cold/radiant damage?  How is that supposed to work where you're suddenly immune to a damage type to which you have a vulnerability.


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## Dr_Ruminahui (Jun 17, 2010)

My own thoughts on the "no other effect" in the immunities section is for powers like this (for all powers, assume target has no immunity/resistance to the other key words):

Psychic, Fear

Target takes 2d6 psychic damage and runs away like a little girl (save ends).

My thinking is that the entry intends that if a target had Immunity: fear, that it would take the damage but wouldn't need to run away.


Likewise, a power like this:

Lightning, Poision
Target takes 10 lightning damage and 10 poison damage.

Immunity to Lighting would prevent its damage, but not the poison damage.


However, for a power like this:
Fire, Cold
Target takes 40 fire and cold damage, and ongoing 5 fire damage

Immunity to fire would prevent to ongoing 5, but would in no way reduce the 40 fire & cold damage.


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## Markn (Jun 17, 2010)

Dr_Ruminahui said:


> My own thoughts on the "no other effect" in the immunities section is for powers like this (for all powers, assume target has no immunity/resistance to the other key words):
> 
> Psychic, Fear
> 
> ...




This!


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## the Jester (Jun 18, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> I got to thinking about this some more...what if you have immunity cold and vulnerability radiant and get hit with a power that does cold/radiant damage?  How is that supposed to work where you're suddenly immune to a damage type to which you have a vulnerability.




If you have vulnerable 10 radiant and immunity to cold, and you get hit for 15 points of cold and radiant damage, you'll take 25 points altogether.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 18, 2010)

First:

If you take 10 fire and cold damage, and you have immunity to fire, that fire and cold damage isn't 'another effect'.  It's fire damage, and you're immune to it.

Resistance is not the same thing as immunity.  They are not the same words.  They do not do the same things.

They never have.

From the PHB3:

_Immune: If you are immune to a damage type (such as cold or fire), you don't take that type of damage...Immunity to one part of a power does not make you immune to other parts of the power. For example, if you are immune to thunder, a power can deal no thunder damage to you, but the power could push you._

[the parts about non-damaging immunities clipped for brevity and irrelevance]

So, is that 10 fire and cold damage fire damage?  Yes.  It cannot be dealt to you, because all fire damage is prevented.

Resistance on the other hand has a rule where if you are resistant to a damage type, and you are hit with a power with multiple damage types, you must have resistance to all those damage types.  However, that ONLY applies to damage types.  Resistance to melee and ranged attacks, resistance to all damage, resistance to arcane damage, resistance to weapon damage, all those things work fully against such powers because that rule ONLY applies to resistance to damage types.

That means:  Resistance to fire, cold, thunder, lightning, radiant, necrotic, poison, or psychic.  Nothing else.  Immunity is not resistance to a damage type.  Resistance to untyped damage is not resistance to a damage type.


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## OakwoodDM (Jun 18, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> So, is that 10 fire and cold damage fire damage?  Yes.  It cannot be dealt to you, because all fire damage is prevented.




Equally, if you look at it from a different angle:

Is that 10 fire and cold damage cold damage? Yes. Are you immune to cold damage? No. Take full damage.

Personally, I like the analogy given earlier. If you drink water, nothing bad happens to you. This is because water does not harm you. If you drink poison, it kills you.
If you drink water mixed with poison, that doesn't make you suddenly unaffected by the poison, just because the water's harmless.

Fire/Cold damage is different from both Fire damage and Cold damage, and so immunity to just one has no effect.

(And that's the answer I'd give to the specific situation mentioned by the OP. The creature's immune to poison. The attack toes Poison/Acid damage. Therefore the creature takes full damage.)


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## Ryujin (Jun 18, 2010)

Is fire and cold damage fire damage? Yes, but it's also cold damage. If you're immune to fire, the cold still gets you. This seems to be a fairly simple concept to me, that isn't contradicted by the passage that DracoSuave posted. That passage refers to an attack with one damage type, but additional *effects*.


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## Verision (Jun 18, 2010)

I don't know what the actual rules are, but I use a pretty basic house rule for this situation and it came up because one of my players has immunity to necrotic (intelligent item from one of the WotC campaigns).

My rule goes like this:
Any duel damage type is half and half. If something does X Necrotic and Poison damage, then I treat it as if it is X/2 Necrotic damage and X/2 Poison. 

-If the target is immune to Necrotic, then they take X/2 Poison damage.

-If the target is immune to Necrotic and has vulnerability 10 poison, then they take X/2+10 poison damage. 

-If the target had resist 10 necrotic and resist 5 poison, then they take X/2-10 necrotic and X/2-5 poison.

etc.

Personally, I think 4e is a little overcomplicated sometimes and I like to make rules as simple as possible. That way they are easier to remember during a game, and there is less chance that we will have to "pause" an encounter to go look up a rule.


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## abyssaldeath (Jun 18, 2010)

Verision said:


> I don't know what the actual rules are, but I use a pretty basic house rule for this situation and it came up because one of my players has immunity to necrotic (intelligent item from one of the WotC campaigns).
> 
> My rule goes like this:
> Any duel damage type is half and half. If something does X Necrotic and Poison damage, then I treat it as if it is X/2 Necrotic damage and X/2 Poison.
> ...




No offense, but how is your house rule less complicated than "unless you have resistance or immunity to both, you take full damage"?


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## Ryujin (Jun 18, 2010)

Verision said:


> I don't know what the actual rules are, but I use a pretty basic house rule for this situation and it came up because one of my players has immunity to necrotic (intelligent item from one of the WotC campaigns).
> 
> My rule goes like this:
> Any duel damage type is half and half. If something does X Necrotic and Poison damage, then I treat it as if it is X/2 Necrotic damage and X/2 Poison.
> ...




This sounds remarkably like the original method for dealing with multiple types of damage, which was removed by errata fairly early on. It was simplified because this method is quite cumbersome, thereby slowing play a great deal.


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## Solvarn (Jun 18, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> _Immune: If you are immune to a damage type (such as cold or fire), you don't take ***that type of damage***...Immunity to one part of a power does not make you immune to other parts of the power. For example, if you are immune to thunder, a power can deal no thunder damage to you, but the power could push you._




Cold damage and cold/fire damage are two different things. They are two different things in regards to resistance, I don't see any reason why based upon the above passage it would be inferred that they would be treated differently. You wouldn't take the cold damage but you would take the fire damage, so in this case full damage.

If the rule worked as you say it does, the words **that type of damage** quoted above would be replaced with **any damage from the attack**.

Especially given "Immunity to one part of a power does not make you immune to other parts of the power" clause in the aforementioned rule quote I don't see any reason without specific wording to the contrary declaring a separate clause that you would treat immunity differently than resistance for any specific reason, creating a subset of the damage mitigation rules.

The only reason immunity is mentioned at all is to specify that effects still take place. An immobilizing cold power hitting something immune to cold still freezes them in place, they just take no damage.


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## CovertOps (Jun 18, 2010)

the Jester said:


> If you have vulnerable 10 radiant and immunity to cold, and you get hit for 15 points of cold and radiant damage, you'll take 25 points altogether.




I think you missed my point Jester.  I was trying to show how absurd the opposite position was through example.

Their claim:  If you have (for example) immunity to fire, vulnerability 10 to radiant, and take 10 points of fire/radiant damage, then their position is that you take no damage because you are immune to fire.

Sans the specific text on resistances I'm not clear why they think immunity is any better than resistance.  *Immunity is nothing more than infinite resistance.*  Why would you need resistance to all damage types, but only immunity to one?  The intent is pretty clear even if the wording isn't.


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## Mesh Hong (Jun 18, 2010)

Solvarn said:


> The only reason immunity is mentioned at all is to specify that effects still take place. An immobilizing cold power hitting something immune to cold still freezes them in place, they just take no damage.




Does it though?

If a character is immune to fear and gets hit by the following attack:

* Scarey Face* - (minor, at will) - *fear*
Range 5; attack +X vs. Will; on hit target is immobilised until the end of scarey creatures next turn

Surely the PC immune to fear will not be immobilised.


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## mneme (Jun 18, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> I'm fairly sure this is a straw man argument.



There are a variety of logical fallicies involved in this argument, but no--no, it isn't.


CovertOps said:


> What it really comes down to is how you want to read the phrase "the power's other effects".  You can treat damage of type fire and cold as either one effect or two.  If you treat it as one then of course immunity protects you from all the damage.  If you treat it as two then it does not.  Treating it as two effects makes it work quite nicely when it comes to resistances.




...except that that's wrong.  The rules are really clear on what's one effect and what's two -- and "25 fire and cold damage" is one thing, one set of damage, and one effect--just one with two keywords.

Immunity is -supposed- to be powerful (though not as powerful as it was when the game was first released).

Lets turn the argument around for a moment:



			
				Compendium said:
			
		

> *Baleful Gaze of the Basilisk*
> 
> _You cast a toxic glance at your foe, leaving it paralyzed with fear._
> *Daily*
> ...




Immunity to poison and immuity to fear both grant immunity to a power's "other effects" (unlike straight damage types).

So, what happens when you use the Baleful Gaze of the Basilisk against a target that's immune to fear?

What about against one that's immune to poison?

My answers, of course, is that the target that's immune to fear taks the ongoing poison, but not the slide or the stun.

A target that's immune to poison is immune to all the effects of the power, as while they're fear effects, they're -also- poison effects and the target is immune to those.

Now, a real GM would probably (correctly) interpret the intent of the power that the slide is a poison effect (mabye) and that the stun is a fear effect.  But lets just look at RAW interpretation, not rule-by-intent here. (a similar example is Prismatic Spray--it's easy to figure out which of the three effects are -intended- to be tied to each keyword--but one cannot do so (for the stun effect) without flavor-based interpretation)

Similarly, you're hit with 25 ongoing poison and fear damage.  Would Plaguefire body help you?



			
				Compendium said:
			
		

> *Plaguefire Body*
> 
> _You feel your bones burning with an inner fire, and those around you see the faint outline of your skeleton glowing through your skin._
> *Encounter*
> ...




Basically, it seems like the anti-immunity people in the thread are trying to treat immunity as resistance(infinity).  But there's no support for that in the rules text, and you can't get there without more or less making up a rule (either immuity=infinite resistance or the [worse] "damage with multiple types is multiple effects" misrule).


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## mneme (Jun 18, 2010)

Mesh Hong said:


> If a character is immune to fear and gets hit by the following attack:
> 
> * Scarey Face* - (minor, at will) - *fear*
> Range 5; attack +X vs. Will; on hit target is immobilised until the end of scarey creatures next turn
> ...




That's correct, but that's because fear (along with poison, charm, illusion, and sleep) grants immunity to nondamaging effects (as does immune:gaze -- but immune:gaze is unique in that it works like original 4e immunities and blocks out the entire power rather than parts of it).  So immune:fear will stop nondamaging effect, but immune:cold won't because immune:cold is just immunity to that damage type.

CovertOps: I'd like to see textev there--that's the entire argument summarized in one sentence, both sides -- "immunity is infinite resistance" vs "no, it isn't, they never say that"


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## Black Knight Irios (Jun 18, 2010)

Mesh Hong said:


> Does it though?
> 
> If a character is immune to fear and gets hit by the following attack:
> 
> ...




Take a look at the last paragraph of the immune entry in PHB3 P221. No damage but effects can still "hurt" you.

There is this immunity fuzzyness:


Immunity against a damge type protects from HP damage., like, 1d6 necrotic damage or 5 radiant damage, etc. but not against the effects of the power like push, stun, etc.
Immunity against conditions protects only against those conditions, like stunned, slowed, etc.
Immunity against poison protects against poison effects/conditions and damage
Immunity against fear/charm/etc. protects against the effects of fear/charm powers but not against the damage b/c there is no 1d8 fear damage or 6 charm damage (except for immunity vs gaze attacks which negates the complete attack/power MM2).
Back to the topic wether 5 cold and fire damage get through immunity to fire or cold. I argue they do b/c cold and fire damage is not cold damage or fire damage it is both.
There are weapon enchants (like crusader's) that make half the damage you deal radiant/<damage type>! In this case I would say radiant immunity prevents half the damage. But not if the attack dealed fire and radiant damage which is not the same as 1/2 fire damage and 1/2 radiant damage.


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## CovertOps (Jun 18, 2010)

mneme said:


> CovertOps: I'd like to see textev there--that's the entire argument summarized in one sentence, both sides -- "immunity is infinite resistance" vs "no, it isn't, they never say that"




First:  What is textev?
Second:  Why would they need to include in the "rules" a truism?  
If I have an automobile, then I have a car.
If I have infinite resistance then I have immunity.
They are the *same thing*.  Anyway, based on 4e's exception based design they'd have to specifically call out if they were going to be treated *differently* as opposed to being treated the same.

I'd be really interested to see you defend immunity to a damage type protecting you from your vulnerability (in post #27).


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## mneme (Jun 18, 2010)

CO: textev = "textual evidence".

There are no truisms -- there's only exception based design.

They never say that resistance and immunity are the same -- sometimes they clump them; usually not so much.  More particularly, when they only say something about resistance or only about immunity, that clearly only affects one of them.

Re vulnerability--what's to defend?  If you take 25 fire and cold damage, and you have vulnerability(cold) 10, you take an additional 10 damage.  Not an additional 10 -cold- damage; the cold damages you more.  If you -don't- take the damage (because you're immune to fire, or immune to gaze and it's a gaze attack), then you don't take the extra 10.

If you say "if you are


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## unan oranis (Jun 18, 2010)

is anyone else going crazy reading the wrongest wrong people in all the lands of wrongdom just not get it?



edit:  lol i just read this on another thread...  







twilsemail said:


> My first thought when I read this.


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## Solvarn (Jun 18, 2010)

mneme said:


> CO: textev = "textual evidence".
> 
> There are no truisms -- there's only exception based design.
> 
> ...




If you take 25 fire and cold damage, and you have vulnerability(cold) 10, you take 35 damage. If you were immune to fire damage, you would still take 35 cold damage. In order to avoid damage, you need to have immunity to all of the keywords associated with the power.

Taking acid/poison damage, immunity to poison isn't going to stop your flesh being melted off.

The misconception you are operating under is that you are creating a new keyword, fire/cold, rather than treating fire and cold as separate keywords. It could get a little confusing.

What happens when you hit a creature with fire/cold that is immune to cold with the Arcane Fire feat twice for 10 damage each time?

The first hit would give the creature vulnerable 5 cold and do 10 points of damage.

The next attack would do 10 point of damage. Any of the cold damage is negated by the immunity. The fire damage goes through as normal. If the creature did not have cold immunity, it would have been hit with 15 points of cold damage.

Under the definition you are using, vulnerability wouldn't work with powers using more than one keyword, which is not the case.


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## the Jester (Jun 18, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> If I have an automobile, then I have a car.
> If I have infinite resistance then I have immunity.
> They are the *same thing*.  Anyway, based on 4e's exception based design they'd have to specifically call out if they were going to be treated *differently* as opposed to being treated the same.




Well, no.

If you have an automobile, you _might_ have a car, but you also might have a van, truck or other non-car.

Likewise, let's say you were fighting two monsters, one with fire immunity and one with fire resistance.

Let's say you have a power that removes the target's fire resistance until the end of your next turn. Only one of the creatures will be hurt when you follow up with a fire attack, even if both the suppression power and the attack power target both creatures. Likewise, if you have a power that suppresses fire immunity until the end of your next turn, you're going to be able to deal fire damage to one but not the other.


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## the Jester (Jun 18, 2010)

Hey mneme, am I reading your position correctly in that it makes "10 points of cold and fire damage" easier to take extra damage from, harder to resist, but easier to completely ignore than just "10 points of cold damage" or "10 points of fire damage" or "5 points of cold and 5 points of fire damage"?

If I'm not misunderstanding you, your position seems to have some weird implications.


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## mneme (Jun 18, 2010)

the Jester said:


> Hey mneme, am I reading your position correctly in that it makes "10 points of cold and fire damage" easier to take extra damage from, harder to resist, but easier to completely ignore than just "10 points of cold damage" or "10 points of fire damage" or "5 points of cold and 5 points of fire damage"?




Yes.

(actually, it's got a more complicated relationship than that with that last one.  equivalent to take extra damage from, harder to resist, and easier to ignore completely than 5 of each).

Mechanically, I think that's about right anyway.  Resistance is common enough that you don't want players getting hosed on resistance just because they picked up the wrong damage type.  But adding damage types is absurdly powerful if you can manage it, so it's really a-o-k if massively stacked damage hates immunity.  I mean, you've got this firey poison, or poisonous fire--whatever, that uses fire to make an entrance and then burns its way down.  So if you're immune to poison, it gets cleaned out of your system and don't care.  If you're immune to fire, again, sure, it's in your system, but it does its damage via fire--don't care.

It both does and doesn't make sense -- but more importantly, it's what the rules say.  At the table, I might very well go with "immunity to a damage type is infinite resistance to it" as that's pro-player -- but the only way to get there from RAW is to interpret the hell out of what you think the rules -should- say rather than what they actually do (similarly, I'd probably rule that "bag of effects" type effects with multiple nondamaging effects would tag each of those with the appropriate keyword rather than giving each of them all the keywords, but there's no way to get there via strict rules interpretation).

Does anyone (particularly those on the opposite side of the debate than yours truly) wnat to take a crack at my comment about effects with multiple immunities in #29?  If you're immune(fear) and you're hit with a Fear, Poison effect, do you take it or ignore it according to your interpretation?


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## mneme (Jun 18, 2010)

Solvarn said:


> The misconception you are operating under is that you are creating a new keyword, fire/cold, rather than treating fire and cold as separate keywords. It could get a little confusing.



Er, no.  I'm reading the rules literally.
They don't say "if you're immune to all keywords of a power, you're not affected by that power".   There's no "fire/cold" keyword -- there's a fire keyword, and if you're immune to it, you don't take any damage with the fire keyword (even if that damage has other keywords).  The same for the "cold" keyword.

The only thing the eratta to immunity did was separate out what keywords were counted for immunity to effects, which ones were counted for immunity to damage, and which stopped powers entirely (gaze only).



Solvarn said:


> Under the definition you are using, vulnerability wouldn't work with powers using more than one keyword, which is not the case.



Please don't project your own interpretations onto me.


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## Solvarn (Jun 18, 2010)

mneme said:


> Does anyone (particularly those on the opposite side of the debate than yours truly) wnat to take a crack at my comment about effects with multiple immunities in #29? If you're immune(fear) and you're hit with a Fear, Poison effect, do you take it or ignore it according to your interpretation?




"A creature that is immune to charm, fear, illusion, poison, or sleep is not affected by the *nondamaging* effects of a power that has that keyword." 

So yeah, they would take damage.


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## Black Knight Irios (Jun 18, 2010)

mneme said:


> Er, no.  I'm reading the rules literally.
> They don't say "if you're immune to all keywords of a power, you're not affected by that power".   There's no "fire/cold" keyword -- there's a fire keyword, and if you're immune to it, you don't take any damage with the fire keyword (even if that damage has other keywords).  The same for the "cold" keyword.




So your argument is since nowhere is stated that cold and fire damage is a new  "keyword/damage type" it must be fire AND cold individually. Therefore, immunity to either reduces damage to 0. 
- Sounds reasonable.
-- Feels just not right. The cold immune moster I hit with that spell that deals cold and fire damage takes zero damage even so I had the fire keyword and damage right there. But the again rules are not always like our logic.


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## mneme (Jun 18, 2010)

Solvarn said:


> "A creature that is immune to charm, fear, illusion, poison, or sleep is not affected by the *nondamaging* effects of a power that has that keyword."
> 
> So yeah, they would take damage.




Not damage, effects.


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## mneme (Jun 18, 2010)

Black Knight Irios said:


> So your argument is since nowhere is stated that cold and fire damage is a new  "keyword/damage type" it must be fire AND cold individually. Therefore, immunity to either reduces damage to 0.
> - Sounds reasonable.
> -- Feels just not right. The cold immune moster I hit with that spell that deals cold and fire damage takes zero damage even so I had the fire keyword and damage right there. But the again rules are not always like our logic.




Exactly so (including the "it doesn't feel quite right" bit).


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## Solvarn (Jun 18, 2010)

mneme said:


> Not damage, effects.




Per RAW, a creature immune to fear would not be affected by the effects of the power.

So if you had an attack with the Fire and Fear keyword, the creature would take damage, but not be subject to any of the additional effects of the power. Unless it happened to be ongoing damage with a specified damage type. I would argue that the ongoing damage is not related to the fear keyword but is related to the keyword of the type of damage it does.

So for example, a power that had the fear and fire keywords, immobilized until the end of the turn, did 14 damage, with 5 ongoing fire damage (save ends) to a creature immune to fear:

The creature takes 14 damage, 5 ongoing fire damage (save ends). The creature is not immobilized.

This could cause a problem for powers with the cold and fear keywords though, as some of those have similar types of effects when used. Are there are published cold and fear powers? I am pretty confident that this type of issue is why you don't ever see anything that let's a PC add the Fear keyword to their powers.


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## mneme (Jun 18, 2010)

Solvarn, try reading the initial question again.

The are powers with the -Poison- and -Fear- keywords.  Those powers typically have effects.

How would you rule those powers against someone who was Immune: Poison?
How about Immune: Fear?


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## Solvarn (Jun 18, 2010)

In the PHB errata, found here, it says to update your PHB page 55 with this text:



SquareKnot said:


> Resistance or immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects. Also, resistance doesn’t reduce damage unless the target has resistance to each type of damage from the attack, and then only the weakest of the resistances applies. For example, a character who has resist 10 lightning and resist 5 thunder who takes 15 lightning and thunder damage takes 10 damage because the resistance value to the combined damage types is limited by the lesser of the two resistances.



 

So to answer your question, if a power has the Poison AND Fear keyword, per this errata, in order to NOT be affected by the conditions imposed by the power, the creature would have to have both the Poison AND Fear keyword.

A Poison and Fear power immobilizes:

Creature is Immune to Poison: Immobilized, no poison damage
Creature is Immune to Fear: Immobilized, poison damage
Creature is Immune to Poison and Fear: Not immobilized, no poison damage

Fear, like illusion and charm, is a non-damaging keyword. You won't see a creature take charm damage, or illusion damage. These keywords are related to effects only. Powers like these typically do Psychic damage.

Poison, however, is a damaging keyword.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 18, 2010)

OakwoodDM said:


> Fire/Cold damage is different from both Fire damage and Cold damage, and so immunity to just one has no effect.




But if you do take damage from it, then you are at that point taking damage from fire damage.  The cold damage doesn't erase that bit.

Immunity doesn't say 'except if the damage has a second damage type.'  It says 'You take no damage.'

Again, confusing the word 'resistance' with 'immunity'.  Without the resistance rule, this discussion would be moot!  The only rule that could apply has to do with something other than immunity, does not mention immunity, and does not even hint at immunity.

This is the logical equivalent asking if bonuses to saving throws work on attack rolls 'because they both use the same die.'


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## DracoSuave (Jun 18, 2010)

Solvarn said:


> In the PHB errata, found here, it says to update your PHB page 55 with this text:
> 
> So to answer your question, if a power has the Poison AND Fear keyword, per this errata, in order to NOT be affected by the conditions imposed by the power, the creature would have to have both the Poison AND Fear keyword.
> 
> Poison, however, is a damaging keyword.




Bad example.

The rules for immunity in the PHB3 specifically tell you that immunity to poison specifically makes you immune to non-damaging parts of the power.

If you get hit with a power with the Fear and Poison keywords:

If you are immune to fear, you take damage, but nothing else happens
If you are immune to poison, you do not take any poison damage, no non-damaging parts of the power apply, but you'd take any non-poison damage the power has
If you are immune to fear AND poison, it works exactly as if you were only immune to poison.

Prismatic Ray, for instance, would still deal its fire damage.

The only keyword you can be immune to and avoid -everything- is gaze.

Doesn't happen often.


Also, realistically, how often does immunity to a damage type happen that you'd EVER need to adjudicate this rule?  ARE there monsters common enough immune to any damage type other than Poison?


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## Knowme (Jun 19, 2010)

AV, pg 121 - Storm Shield daily power:

"Power (Daily ✦ Lightning, Thunder): Immediate Reaction.
Use this power when you are hit by a melee attack.
Deal 2d6 lightning and thunder damage to the attacker.
(The attacker must have resistance or immunity to both
damage types to reduce or ignore this damage.)"

Since it's written in parenthesis I believe it's reminder text, which should indicate a general rule and not a specific exception.


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## Bold or Stupid (Jun 19, 2010)

Knowme said:


> AV, pg 121 - Storm Shield daily power:
> 
> "Power (Daily ✦ Lightning, Thunder): Immediate Reaction.
> Use this power when you are hit by a melee attack.
> ...




My xp quote should say - you unlurked to say that, have some xp. 

Also an excellent point.


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## Aegeri (Jun 19, 2010)

The funniest thing with that XP text is I couldn't work out why you were calling his post "Bold or Stupid: You". Until I read what you wrote I was wondering if you intended to call him either bold, stupid or both.


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## Solvarn (Jun 19, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> Bad example.
> 
> The rules for immunity in the PHB3 specifically tell you that immunity to poison specifically makes you immune to non-damaging parts of the power.
> 
> ...







> immune: If you are immune to a damage type (such as cold or fire). you don't take that type of damage. lf you are immune to a condition or another effect (such as the dazed condition or forced movement you are unaffected by it. If you are immune to charm, fear, illusion, poison, or sleep, you are unaffected by the nondamaging effects of a power that has that keyword. Immunity to one part of a power does not make you immune to other parts of the power. For example, if you are immune to thunder, a power can deal no thunder damage to you, but the power could push you.





Per the RAW there correct on all counts, thanks for the correction.​


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## Gradine (Jun 19, 2010)

it strikes me that a rule that is printed only once, buried in a magic item power in a splatbook, parentheses or no, is likely closer to an exception than a rule. This appears to be cooroborated by the only other non-wand magic item in the same book that deals multiple damage types: the Ring of Shadow Guard (AV, pg 159), which deals cold and necrotic damage but leaves out the "reminder text" that the Storm Shield contains. The argument could be made that the Storm Shield is printed earlier in the book, but who's opening the Adventurer's Vault at page 1 and reading it cover to cover? Said "reminder text" could simply be a special inherent trait of the Storm Shield's power. Sure, the parentheses _seem _to indicate otherwise, but trying to draw a definitive claim out of a buried parenthetical not mirrored later in the same book (or anywhere else in the RAW) is as much reading the tea leaves as trying to draw a definitive claim out of the oft-quoted vague errata'd PHB text.

Not trying to be too terribly difficult here, I also believe the RAI is that you need immunity to both types otherwise you take full damage, but it's not clearly stated and I frankly think you can infer whatever you want out of the vague offerings as written. It's not something I agree with on principle, personally, but at this point I think we can all (mostly) that whatever leads to creatures taking more damage is probably for the best. In a perfect world I'd house-rule in half-damage for immunities and stacking resistances (or at least using the highest resist value rather than the lowest), but once we start getting to the level where resistances and immunities start becoming commonplace, do we really need to make creatures _tougher _to kill? I tend to think not.


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## Aulirophile (Jun 19, 2010)

It is clearly clarified in the errata, which was posted on page 1.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 19, 2010)

Knowme said:


> AV, pg 121 - Storm Shield daily power:
> 
> "Power (Daily ✦ Lightning, Thunder): Immediate Reaction.
> Use this power when you are hit by a melee attack.
> ...




Since it contradicts the general rule, I'd say it's not reminder text, given there's NO RULE IN EXISTANCE TO REMIND YOU OF.  This is not Magic: The Gathering.  -That- game has the rule where text in perentheses is reminder text.  This game is not Magic: The Gathering.  Applying Magic: The Gathering rules to Dungeons and Dragons makes as much sense as applying Dungeons and Dragons rules to Monopoly.  (which could be awesome)  I've seen people confusing 'resistance' with 'immunity', it should not surprise me that there would be confusion between 'Magic: The Gathering' and 'Dungeons and Dragons.'

Anyways:

Using the PHB 1 rules to adjudicate it (and no other book) means that if you have immunity to something, and you get hit with a power with that keyword, nada happens.  No damage occurs.  This is because the PHB1 rule is that _foo_ effects do not affect someone who is immune to _foo_.  And while 25 fire and cold damage is both fire and cold damage, if the power in question has the Fire keyword, then all effects of that power _including damage_ are Fire effects, and therefore immunity to fire is a blanket NO to all of it.

That means Dire Radiance doesn't deal damage to creatures immune to fear.

And so on.

*This is why we do not apply only the PHB1 wording.*

That is not the rule you apply anymore, as it is superceded by the PHB3 rule which is more exact about what immunity actually means.

Now, in the case of damage with multiple types:

Resistance or immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects.

That's the ONLY part of the rule on multiple damage types that applies to or even MENTIONS immunity.  Then you follow immunity.

15 cold and fire damage is fire damage.  Immunity says you are not affected by fire damage.  It is not resistance infinity.  It is 'The Damage Does Not Happen.'

Therefore we search for any rule that says that damage with multiple types is not affected by immunity to only one.

THIS EXCEPTION DOES NOT EXIST.

In exception-based rules systems, when you have a general rule, if an exception exists, you follow the exception.

The corrolary of that is, if the exception does not exist, you DO NOT FOLLOW THE NON-EXISTANT EXCEPTION.

Also:

Vulnerability is -still- not 'negative resistance' and doesn't behave as resistance does.  It hasn't been for the entirety of the existance of fourth edition.  Immunity has never been resistance, in ANY edition.  This isn't difficult to grok. 

 A is not B.

Stop trying to apply the rules for resistance involving multi-typed damage to every other rule in the game.


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## mneme (Jun 19, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> Bad example.
> 
> The rules for immunity in the PHB3 specifically tell you that immunity to poison specifically makes you immune to non-damaging parts of the power.
> 
> ...



Actually, deliberately crafted example (on my part), but yeah.



> Also, realistically, how often does immunity to a damage type happen that you'd EVER need to adjudicate this rule?  ARE there monsters common enough immune to any damage type other than Poison?



Nope.  I've looked around for immunty to see how hosed some types are (who can pierce resistance, but would be hosed by immunity to their damage types), and they're -really- rare.

There are some, in nearly every common damage type (don't remember finding immune radiant or necrotic -- but the western elements? sure.)  But mostly as you get into the Epic zone, where you have the option of getting abilities that pierce immunities if you're woried about it.


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## Aegeri (Jun 19, 2010)

The one I can think of off hand is the Shambling Mound, which is a lowish level monster that is immune to lightning.


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## hvg3akaek (Jun 21, 2010)

mneme: One thing I cannot grasp from your take on this rule is as follows:

A "Fire and Cold" power, by your ruling, would be weaker than a "Fire" or a "Cold" power.

A simple "Fire" or "Cold" power would be effective against anyone not immune to Fire or Cold, whereas one that does both damage types would now not be effetive against either group.

But, as they are stated, multiple damage type powers are meant to me more potent than single damage type powers.

Not only is there a feat that can add another type of damage to your powers, but tehy had to change how such items as a "flaming dagger" worked, to limit the potential abuse of said items.  And then there's the clerical power of Astral Storm, which, by your reasoning, has to be an incredibly sucky power... anyone immune to Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder ignores it all?  Wow, what an underwhelming power...



But - if the rules are meant to support the mechanics, if additional damage types is meant to make things more potent (as, with the resistance rules, they are), then it would mean that immunities had to be in the same boat.  Multiple damage-type powers have multiple damage types so they can get around those resistances and those immunities.  Sure, the fire elemental is immune to fire, but this is fire *and* lightning - it still damages him!

Anything else, and the powers and feats seem most crazy!


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## CovertOps (Jun 21, 2010)

Ok...having just read and reread PHB p55 and the errata (sorry I don't have a PHB3 so feel free to jump in if something there modifies what I've read) I still think the whole rule hinges on how you read "...does not protect you from the power's other effects."  Here is my reasoning.

That partial sentence comes from the rules text under the heading "Keywords".  The very next heading is "Keyword Categories" that has subheadings of "Power Source", "Damage Type", and "Effect Type".  Since no one is immune to "Power Sources" I'll ignore that for now.

"Resistance or immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power's other *effects*."  I can see only two ways to read this.  Either damage IS or IS NOT an effect.

*Damage IS an "effect"*
In this reading (using the fire/cold example) it can be clearly read as "Resistance or immunity to (fire) does not protect a target from the power's other (damage types or non-damaging effects)."  This reading supports my position because the power also does cold damage and immunity fire does not protect you from other (damage types or non-damaging effects) so you clearly take full damage.

*Damage is NOT an "effect"*
With this stance I'm going with the idea that effects ("Effect Type" sub-heading p55) are all about the non-damaging parts of the power.  In other words immunity fire does not protect you from being pushed.  This is supported by the text on p57 under "Hit" in the first paragraph that says "...page 269, for how to make attack rolls, how to deal damage, and how to apply various effects, including conditions and forced movement."  This clearly separates "damage" and "effects" as separate things.  Since this makes the immunity rule completely silent on powers doing damage with multiple types and with no other rule to follow it is then left to the DM to decide.  To further clarify why this make the immunity rule silent..."Immunity...does not protect...from other (non-damaging) effects".  Since we are discussing damage this rule has no impact.


Of these two possibilities I'm leaning more towards the second reading if I was attempting to discern RAW.

Let the debate continue!


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## DracoSuave (Jun 21, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> *Damage IS an "effect"*
> In this reading (using the fire/cold example) it can be clearly read as "Resistance or immunity to (fire) does not protect a target from the power's other (damage types or non-damaging effects)."  This reading supports my position because the power also does cold damage and immunity fire does not protect you from other (damage types or non-damaging effects) so you clearly take full damage.




Except there's a problem with this logically.

The power isn't doing an instance of fire damage and an instance of cold damage.  If this were the case, then of course immunity to fire damage would not affect the cold damage.

What is occuring is that there is only one instance in question.

Now, because that instance IS fire damage, immunity protects you from it.  And because there are no *other* effects under discussion, the idea that other effects are not affected by immunity is not even a valid point of discussion.

---------------------

*If I have an element called 'X', then if I say 'X has a quality' and 'other elements do not have that quality' than 'other elements' does not and cannot refer to X.
*
---------------------

So:

If you have a power:

Elements in Opposition
Daily - Arcane, Implement, Fire, Cold, Fear

....

Hit: 1[W] + Intelligence fire and cold damage, and the target is weakened and has ongoing cold damage 5 (save ends both).
Effect:  The target is pushed 1 square.

Immunity to weakened would prevent that condition, but not the ongoing cold damage nor the primary damage.
Immunity to fear would prevent the weakened condition, and the push, but not the damage.

Now:

Immunity to fire.

Obviously this doesn't prevent the weakened, the ongoing cold damage, or the push.  But what about the 1[W] + Intellegence fire and cold damage?

Well, this IS fire damage.  So it is negated.  The cold damage aspect of it is not another effect.  It is the -same- effect as the fire damage, and there is no rule that says that immunity must double down on double-damage type abilities.  Because the damage cannot be an effect other than itself, it cannot be negated by the 'other effects' rule.

Therefore, it is negated.

Unless you can some how explain how something is a thing other than itself, your logic doesn't make sense, and requires some more explanation.


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## Nichwee (Jun 21, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> But what about the 1[W] + Intellegence fire and cold damage?
> 
> Well, this IS fire damage.  So it is negated.  The cold damage aspect of it is not another effect.  It is the -same- effect as the fire damage, and there is no rule that says that immunity must double down on double-damage type abilities.  Because the damage cannot be an effect other than itself, it cannot be negated by the 'other effects' rule.
> 
> ...




A thing is not something other than itself. 

Hence "fire and cold damage" is not "fire damage", thus the fire immunity is not going to affect it at all. However they indicated with resistances, not necessarily immunities, that doubling up on components can = total effect. So "fire and cold" damage can only be completely ignored if you have "fire and cold" immunity (not fire immunity and cold immunity, but "fire and cold" immunity) but I would probably allow component principles to stack up if you had both immunities or immunity to one and resistance to the other.

But basically "fire and cold" is a type of damage, not two types. So unless stated otherwise it is not effected by partial immunities (partial resistances are explained as a special case so we treat them specially) and as such if you hit a creature that is "immune fire" and "resist cold 5" with 35 "fire and cold" it should take 35 damage (as the immunity has no effect, as it is of the wrong type and the creature only has resistance to one component of the damage type not both) but I would hope a DM would see the sense in only dealing 30 damage.


Now that I have given my opinion on RAW, onto my opinion on RAI.
The way I look at "X fire and cold damage" (for example), from the explainations given, is that is works as "upto X fire damage + upto X cold damage, PC's choice on how it is devided, to a maximum of X damage before vulnerabilities" so if you are immune to the X fire damage the PC just makes the damage "0 fire damage + X cold damage".

This is definately how we play it in the game I play (as PC not DM, so my DM must agree with me on RAI I guess) and I am glad of it - as my Acid (Arcane Admixture) Stinking Cloud would be useless about 60% of the time at as we are doing P3 (I think) and almost all the undead are Immune Poison.


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## eamon (Jun 21, 2010)

_On the topic of Verision's house-rule to simply split multi-typed damage into equal portions:_


abyssaldeath said:


> No offense, but how is your house rule less complicated than "unless you have resistance or immunity to both, you take full damage"?




The house rule may involve more number-crunching, but as this thread illustrates, the normal rule may well suffer more from odd corner cases and unintuitive consequences.  It may be more involved at the table (which generally shouldn't be a big issue), but it's easier to understand and adjudicate, and with that perspective in mind - less complicated.


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## eamon (Jun 21, 2010)

mneme said:


> ...except that that's wrong.  The rules are really clear on what's one effect and what's two -- and "25 fire and cold damage" is one thing, one set of damage, and one effect--just one with two keywords.



The concept "effect" is vague.  It's just some consequence of a rule or power usage - basically, just _something_.  Is having 2 pounds of beef equivalent to two separate pounds?  Distinguishing discrete, atomic effects amongst a power's consequences is ill-defined.  So, irrespective of the specifics concerning immunities, let's hope this argument doesn't hold the balance.



mneme said:


> A target that's immune to poison is immune to all the effects of the power, as while they're fear effects, they're -also- poison effects and the target is immune to those.
> 
> Now, a real GM would probably (correctly) interpret the intent of the power that the slide is a poison effect (mabye) and that the stun is a fear effect.  But lets just look at RAW interpretation, not rule-by-intent here. (a similar example is Prismatic Spray--it's easy to figure out which of the three effects are -intended- to be tied to each keyword--but one cannot do so (for the stun effect) without flavor-based interpretation)



I agree, and it's worth highlighting this notion to underline the fact that the "rules" are _not_ complete.  Obviously, there's always rule 0 (the DM), but more subtly than that, weird corner cases or undefined rule behavior does occur and it's better to deal with it sanely than to go over rules with a fine-tooth comb when the particular corner case you're dealing with may simply have been an oversight.



mneme said:


> Basically, it seems like the anti-immunity people in the thread are trying to treat immunity as resistance(infinity).  But there's no support for that in the rules text, and you can't get there without more or less making up a rule (either immuity=infinite resistance or the [worse] "damage with multiple types is multiple effects" misrule).



The rule text is written in common-sense English.  If something that resist arbitrarily strong poison, one might say it's immune to poison.  If it can resist the effects of arbitrarily high temperatures, you might say it's immune to the effects of high temperature - or in a fantasy setting, immune to _fire_.  There's no need for the rules to state that immunity to damage is equivalent to "infinite" resistance _if_ that's a natural assumption to make in English.  I don't think that equivalence is sufficiently obvious to make it an unwritten rule, but it's natural enough to make it unfortunate use of terminology if it _doesn't_ hold and isn't explicitly addressed.



mneme said:


> CO: textev = "textual evidence".
> 
> There are no truisms -- there's only exception based design.



The game makes any number of assumptions it never describes or states.  Essentially, all those bits of common sense and knowledge the players (including DM) are presumed to have are truisms - and that's a bunch.



Gradine said:


> it strikes me that a rule that is printed only once, buried in a magic item power in a splatbook, parentheses or no, is likely closer to an exception than a rule. This appears to be cooroborated by the only other non-wand magic item in the same book that deals multiple damage types: the Ring of Shadow Guard (AV, pg 159), which deals cold and necrotic damage but leaves out the "reminder text" that the Storm Shield contains.




Perhaps it's not an exception rather than a misconception however - which would suggest that the assumption isn't an odd one to make.  And the opposite approach isn't clearly stated either, which makes RAI and reasonable assumptions that much more relevant - just as you say:







Gradine said:


> Not trying to be too terribly difficult here, I also believe the RAI is that you need immunity to both types otherwise you take full damage, but it's not clearly stated and I frankly think you can infer whatever you want out of the vague offerings as written.




...which is exactly what I think too: neither approach to immunities is clearly supported by the rules text which just omits this information; and it's probably best for the game to require immunities to all damage types, though it's not common enough to matter much either way.

Regardless, even if we _could_ conclude something from the rules, it's obviously not stated clearly and would require too much semantic trickery to have faith that the results actually represent rules by design rather than by coincidence.


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## CovertOps (Jun 21, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> Except there's a problem with this logically.
> 
> The power isn't doing an instance of fire damage and an instance of cold damage.  If this were the case, then of course immunity to fire damage would not affect the cold damage.
> 
> ...




You are correct in that you have not grasped my entire position.  Starting from the assumption:

Damage IS an "effect"
This assumption is based on the "Damage Type(s)" listed on page 55.  Damage by itself is not an effect unless it has a type as described in the rules (or it can be "untyped").  And to be clear I'm not trying to say that you have two separate effects (30 fire damage and 30 cold damage), but instead I have 30 damage of type fire and cold.  So back to the argument...  



> "Resistance or immunity to (fire) does not protect a target from the power's other (damage types or non-damaging effects)."



Because the 30 damage also has the "Damage type" "Cold", then immunity fire does not protect me from it because "...does not protect ... from other [damage *types*".  Again referring to the base assumption "Damage [types] IS an "effect".  If we can't agree that fire and cold are different types then you may as well say that any immunity makes you immune to ALL damage.


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## CovertOps (Jun 21, 2010)

One other thought.  All this is an unintended consequence of their errata.  The original rule made where any damage only had one type.  I'm at work and don't have my book, but the original rule said if you have a power with multiple types then you split the damage among the types.  So if your power did 30 fire/cold damage it now does 15 fire/15 cold.  They didn't errata immunity to take into account the change to how damage/resistance works now.

I'm sticking with DM's prerogative, meaning that the rules are mute on the subject based on the above or even if the rules are not mute at the very least they are not updated to handle the other changes in the system rendering them obsolete.


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## CovertOps (Jun 21, 2010)

I submitted the following to CustServ:

Based on the errata to keywords, resistance, and damage, immunity is no longer clearly defined. Pre-errata if you had a power that did multiple types of damage that damage was divided between the types (eg 30 fire/cold damage would be handled as 15 fire/15 cold damage). This works fine with immunity because if you have immunity fire then you clearly only take 15 cold damage. Now that damage can have multiple types instead of being split (you now take 30 fire/cold damage) immunity needs an update similar to what resistances got ("You have to have resistance to ALL types and even the you take the lowest as your resistance to the power"). That phrasing is clearly intended to make multi-type powers more effective and immunity needs similar phrasing such as..."You must be immune to all damage types of a power in order to not take any damage" or "Immunity to one type of a power's damage allows you to ignore all of that damage" depending on how the designers want immunity to work. My personal opinion is the former as the latter allows the weird situation of a multi-type damage power granting you immunity to your vulnerability. If that's not clear I'll give a short example:

Creature A
Immune Fire
Vulnerable Radiant

Power A
Implement * Fire * Radiant
Hit: 1d8 + Int Fire and Radiant damage.

In this example using the latter reading I offered above you are immune to all the damage because you're immune to fire even though you're vulnerable to radiant which seems silly.


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## mneme (Jun 21, 2010)

Actually, pre-eratta, all immunity worked like gaze immunity -- immunity to a fear effect that did fire and cold damage would mean the monster didn't take any damage.


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## Mand (Jun 21, 2010)

It seems quite clear to me that damage powers have the following structure:


Hit:   ( [ (number)  (type) ] damage ) + ....

Out of powers that have multiple damage keywords (not counting things like fear, charm, etc) there seem to be the following kinds:

A:   (number) (type) damage + (number) (type) damage + ....

B:   (number) (type + type + ....) damage.


In case A, I think it's pretty straightforward that if a power deals [10 fire damage] and [10 cold damage] that someone immune to fire loses 10 hitpoints.  Note that I said loses ten hitpoints - "takes damage" is, I find, an annoyingly vague thing.

In case B, however, the question is whether you need:

Resistance to (type) OR (type)
Resistance to (type) AND (type)

I would argue that the resistance must match the damage exactly:  resistance to fire is not the same thing as to resistance to fire and cold, and is insufficient to prevent loss of hitpoints due to fire and cold damage.

This, of course, brings up the issue that vulnerability and resistance are two opposite functions, but there is the explicit rule that the lower of the two resistances wins.  So, when you have vulnerability (fire) and resistance (cold), you will lose hitpoints equal to the initial damage plus your vulnerability, since your resistance is -5 for fire and 10 for cold, for example.  Without any resistance, though, something that is fire and cold damage is more versatile as either vulnerability (fire) or vulnerability (cold) will push the resistance to a negative number and cause greater hitpoint loss.

The combination of damage types is unbreakable - (fire and cold) damage is not [(fire damage) and (cold damage)].  They specifically changed away from that early after PHB was released.  If you have 10 resist fire, you don't lose 10 hitpoints from 20 fire and cold damage, you lose 20, as stated by the rules.  You don't take individual points of damage up to the total, trying to figure out which are fire and which are cold.

If you accept that (fire and cold) damage is not the same as [(fire damage) and (cold damage)], then you must conclude that you need immunity to both types to prevent all the damage.

If you don't accept that, then there is absolutely no function to type B of powers, and we're back to the pre-Errata PHB, except with no rule *whatsoever* about how the damage is split between the two types.

I hate to go all math notation on people, but it seems like the least confusing way of expressing things.


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## CovertOps (Jun 21, 2010)

mneme said:


> Actually, pre-eratta, all immunity worked like gaze immunity -- immunity to a fear effect that did fire and cold damage would mean the monster didn't take any damage.




This is completely untrue.  I didn't copy the entire text from the PHB and I don't have mine at work, but it said that damage is specifically divided among the existing keywords of the power.  So if you have a power that does 30 fire/cold/psychic damage then it does 10 of each...apply immunities and resistances.  Pre all errata you _*never*_ had damage of more than one type.  All damage was (as Mand puts it so well):

( [ (number) (type) ] damage )


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## DracoSuave (Jun 21, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> This is completely untrue.  I didn't copy the entire text from the PHB and I don't have mine at work, but it said that damage is specifically divided among the existing keywords of the power.  So if you have a power that does 30 fire/cold/psychic damage then it does 10 of each...apply immunities and resistances.  Pre all errata you _*never*_ had damage of more than one type.  All damage was (as Mand puts it so well):
> 
> ( [ (number) (type) ] damage )




Actually, he's completely correct, and it has nothing to do with damage types.

Take Frostfire.  It has the Cold and Fire keywords.  That means every effect of that power is a cold effect, and a fire effect, regardless of the damage types.

That means that under the PHB1 rules, immunity to fire renders you immune to fire effects.  All effects of a power with the fire keyword are fire effects, including cold damage, or radiant damage from certain sorcerer's powers, etc.

Immunity only started distinguishing damage types vs effect types vs conditions in the PHB3 incarnation of the immunity rules.


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## CovertOps (Jun 21, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> Actually, he's completely correct, and it has nothing to do with damage types.
> 
> Take Frostfire.  It has the Cold and Fire keywords.  That means every effect of that power is a cold effect, and a fire effect, regardless of the damage types.
> 
> ...




Again (wishing I had my PHB here to quote).  The only reference to immunities in PHB is p55 under the heading Keywords.  I know this because I searched my PDF version thereof.  There is only one sentence there about immunity and it has been quoted many times in this thread already.  Immediately following the line about immunity it tells you how to resolve damage with multiple keywords by splitting the damage among the keywords.  Unless there is a rules reference somewhere else I am unaware of (other than PHB3).


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## mneme (Jun 21, 2010)

*looks at p55*  Ah, I see what you mean.  Yes, if you took PHB p55 as gospel, it did imply that 1. damage was divided up between types, and 2. that even if you were immune to one type, you'd still take the other damage.

The problem was, while said books are no long as easily searchable due to eratta, phb 55 directly contradicted other texts that said that immunity meant you were immune to all effects of a power and that you didn't divide up multi-typed damage.

As such, one could either ignore phb 55 -- or ignore other rules.  Mostly, people here ignored p55--it didn't fit as well into the overall structure.


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## CovertOps (Jun 22, 2010)

mneme said:


> *looks at p55*  Ah, I see what you mean.  Yes, if you took PHB p55 as gospel, it did imply that 1. damage was divided up between types, and 2. that even if you were immune to one type, you'd still take the other damage.
> 
> The problem was, while said books are no long as easily searchable due to eratta, phb 55 directly contradicted other texts that said that immunity meant you were immune to all effects of a power and that you didn't divide up multi-typed damage.
> 
> As such, one could either ignore phb 55 -- or ignore other rules.  Mostly, people here ignored p55--it didn't fit as well into the overall structure.




Since you are citing rules text other than the PHB (which frankly ought to be the place for all rules..not hidden somewhere in a DMG or MM) could you kindly post what/where?


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## CovertOps (Jun 22, 2010)

CustServ said:
			
		

> When you have Immunity to a keyword and a damage source deals multiple types of damage you do not break down the damage. To be immune from an attack that has 2 types of damage you would need to have immunity from both.




As promised for what it's worth.


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## mneme (Jun 22, 2010)

CO: as I said, one aspect of compendium moving with the rules is that it becomes harder to identify the bases of earlier rulings without extensive research -- research that isn't actually worth doing any more.

Note that MM1 had a definition of Immune, though: (p282)

Immune: The monster has immunity to the stated kind of
damage or effect. For example, a monster with “immune
poison” never takes poison damage and can’t suffer any
other ill effect from a poison attack.

That does actually, read literally, imply that attacks with the keyword don't affect the target even if they're doing the wrong damage type.

The custserv ruling is a fine one in concept.  I've got an idea -- they should put it into the rules.


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## CovertOps (Jun 22, 2010)

mneme said:


> CO: as I said, one aspect of compendium moving with the rules is that it becomes harder to identify the bases of earlier rulings without extensive research -- research that isn't actually worth doing any more.
> 
> The custserv ruling is a fine one in concept.  I've got an idea -- they should put it into the rules.




Here here!  If immunity was originally defined in the MM then IMO they messed up.  The PHB should have been the complete rules text the way they set it up and the MM should only have been stats/fluff/ecology stuff.  I'm sure an extra 20 pages wouldn't have hurt them and the rules text use they could have gotten out of it would have been enormous.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 22, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> Again (wishing I had my PHB here to quote).  The only reference to immunities in PHB is p55 under the heading Keywords.  I know this because I searched my PDF version thereof.  There is only one sentence there about immunity and it has been quoted many times in this thread already.  Immediately following the line about immunity it tells you how to resolve damage with multiple keywords by splitting the damage among the keywords.  Unless there is a rules reference somewhere else I am unaware of (other than PHB3).




This is the problem:

You are confusing 'damage types' with 'keywords.'  They are not the same thing, in the same way an implement is not the same thing as the Implement keyword, the Beast Form is not the same thing as the Beast Form keyword, and a Spirit companion is not the same thing as the Spirit keyword.

Are they all related?  Yes.  The keyword indicates there is a relation, with varying rules to determine how they relate.  But the keyword and the game element they relate to are not the same thing.

The same thing occurs with keywords relating to damage, and damage types.  Take, for instance:

*Blazing Starfall - Sorcerer Attack 1*
*At-Will - Arcane, Fire, Implement, Radiant, Zone
Standard Action - Area* burst 1 within 10 squares
*Target:* Each creature in burst
*Attack:* Charisma vs. Reflex
*Hit:* 1d4 + Charisma modifier radiant damage.
Level 21: 2d4 + Charisma modifier radiant damage.
*Cosmic Magic:* The burst creates a zone bounded by
burning ground that lasts until the end of your next turn.
Whenever an enemy within the zone leaves it, that
enemy takes fire damage equal to your Strength modifier.

Let's assume for sake of argument you are not a Cosmic sorcerer.  This being your only Area at-will option, you might take it anyways because an Area at-will is good in the hands of -any- sorcerer.

The power only deals radiant damage.  Ever.  It can never deal a single point of fire damage. 

HOWEVER

The effects of the power are still Fire effects, because the power has that keyword.  The radiant damage?  A fire effect.  Also, a zone effect, an arcane effect, and an implement effect.

Abilities that interact with such effects will interact with ALL those effects regardless of the fact that all the power can do is a burst of radiant damage.

In the PHB, immunity states you cannot take damage from foo effects, and that is why someone immune to fire (pre-PHB3) would never take damage from this power.  The entirety of it is a Fire effect.  It just doesn't deal fire damage.

-------------------------------

Damage does not have a keyword, it has a damage type.  If you do '4 fire damage' that is not '4 damage with the fire keyword.'  Keywords are things powers have, and all effects of a power share that keyword.


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## keterys (Jun 22, 2010)

So... for clarity, are you saying that Blazing Starfall still deals no damage to a creature Immune to Fire?

Or has the PHB3 sufficiently worded the errata for you to allow the power to work?
immune: If you are immune to a damage type (such as cold or fire), you don't take that type of damage. If you are immune to a condition or another effect (such as the dazed condition or forced movement), you are unaffected by it. If you are immune to charm, fear, illusion, poison, or sleep, you are unaffected by the nondamaging effects of a power that has that keyword.
Immunity to one part of a power does not make you immune to other parts of the power. For example, if you are immune to thunder, a power can deal no thunder damage to you, but the power could push you.

Or MM2:
A creature that is immune to a damage type (such as cold or fire), a condition (such as dazed or petrified), or another specific effect (such as disease or forced movement) is not affected by it. A creature that is immune to charm, fear, illusion, poison, or sleep is not affected by the nondamaging effects of a power that has that keyword. A creature that is immune to gaze is not affected by powers that have that keyword.

Obviously enough, the rules have changed since the first PHB or MM.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 22, 2010)

keterys said:


> So... for clarity, are you saying that Blazing Starfall still deals no damage to a creature Immune to Fire?




No, I'm saying that the PHB1 wording allows that ruling but....



> Or has the PHB3 sufficiently worded the errata for you to allow the power to work?




...the rules have clearly changed since then.

In fact, it is because of the 'powers with foo keyword are foo powers with foo effects' rule that the PHB3 was required.  

Otherwise the 'immunity does not apply to other effects' line applies in the very rare instance where you have sub-effects of a power that do not have the keyword of the whole power.



> Obviously enough, the rules have changed since the first PHB or MM.




That's what I'm saying... with the caveat that at no point have vulnerability nor immunity ever acted like resistance ever has.


(That's why I mentioned it in the past tense, and remarked that was how things worked 'pre-PHB3')


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## keterys (Jun 22, 2010)

Good. I didn't see where in the discussion that switch happened, so wanted to make sure


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## sigfile (Jun 22, 2010)

Custserv said:
			
		

> When you have Immunity to a keyword and a  damage source deals multiple types of damage you do not break down the  damage. To be immune from an attack that has 2 types of damage you would  need to have immunity from both.






CovertOps said:


> As promised for what it's worth.




This recently came up for me, as well (in my case, Painful Oath versus a creature immune to Necrotic damage).  Customer Service had a different response.  



			
				CustServ said:
			
		

> So, in your example, if your character is immune to Necrotic damage  and takes five points of Radiant and Necrotic damage (from the Painful Oath feat), your character does  not take any Necrotic damage, but does take the radiant damage.




So, the damage still happens, but one damage type gets removed.


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## Solvarn (Jun 22, 2010)

*CustServ*

Do you guys think they show up to work with character sheets, and answer emails on their iPad while they play? In order to familiarize with rules and all. That would be the coolest job ever.


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## mneme (Jun 22, 2010)

Solvarn: amusing, but probably not.  roleplaying at work is for after-work or lunch breaks, methinks.

sigfile: Methinks custserv is still smoking something. Based on those two responses, at least, they've got an idea of what the PTB want the -result- to be (you still take the damage unless you have both immunities--though oddly the "remove a damage type" ruling, despite coming out of literally nowhere, would let immune: fire and resist cold (10) play well with, say, 9 fire and cold damage.  (on the other hand, so would the "immune to a damage type is identical to having resist: all to that damage type" idea, which seems to be the direction things are actually going -- and -that- would play well with a creature that was immune: fire, vulnerable: fire (5), resist: cold(10) and got hit with 9 fire and cold damage (my answer, -if- one assumes the above rule rather than the literal rules: the creature takes 4 fire and cold damage).


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## eamon (Jun 22, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> Let's assume for sake of argument you are not a Cosmic sorcerer.  This being your only Area at-will option, you might take it anyways because an Area at-will is good in the hands of -any- sorcerer.
> 
> The power only deals radiant damage.  Ever.  It can never deal a single point of fire damage.
> 
> ...




In pre-errata PHB, it's says that immunity to one keyword of a power doesn't protect from the power's other effects.  Interpreted over-literally, that's just fine, albeit meaningless: by definition the power has no other effects.  That's missing the forest for the trees, however: clearly, we're aiming to use the rules, not merely the words in which they are written.  Imperfection and incompleteness are inevitable, both in the concept of the rules and in the text.

This rule is obviously problematic in that it is not generally specified which part of a power's effect is attributable to which keyword - and obviously that flaw was one they had in mind in the errata.  But even pre-errata, it's possible to do much better (as in much more reasonably likely to make sense) - particularly in terms of damage, which _is_ explicitly labelled with a type.

Just because the rules are inconsistent or incomplete in a particular area does not generally mean that all interpretations are thus equal - or that, in particular, a mechanistic interpretation is somehow superior.  Often there's indirect evidence as to the intent, and a player's (DM or otherwise) common sense as to what works - which are much more likely to result in reasonable rulings.

The errata that eventually appeared underlines this: that errata is much closer to the "obvious" interpretation that infers effect types for damage based on damage keywords than the pre-errata mechanistic interpretation.

The rules are _not_ a computer program.  In human language, common sense, intent and implied context are real and usable - and we can use those to read more accurately - more _correctly_ - than a mechanical, blinkered reader that doesn't see or interpret the context.


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## Mand (Jun 22, 2010)

I'd say this is where we call the RAI as a closed subject.


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## eamon (Jun 22, 2010)

sigfile said:


> Custserv said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




They may have explained it a little differently, but it comes down to the same thing: you take the damage unless immune to all types.




Mand said:


> I'd say this is where we call the RAI as a closed subject.



My thoughts exactly; summing up this thread in my view then:


The rules are not clear on how immunity interacts with multiple damage types.
They are clear on how resistances interact with multiple damage types.
Immunity & resistance are related concepts and it makes sense to treat immunity like resistance when faced with multiple damage types - and that's what Customer Service is doing: in this view immunity to a damage type is like arbitrarily high resistance to that damage type.
However, clearly this isn't literally specified by the text; it's just a reasonable inference.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 22, 2010)

eamon said:


> In pre-errata PHB, it's says that immunity to one keyword of a power doesn't protect from the power's other effects.  Interpreted over-literally, that's just fine, albeit meaningless: by definition the power has no other effects.  That's missing the forest for the trees, however: clearly, we're aiming to use the rules, not merely the words in which they are written.  Imperfection and incompleteness are inevitable, both in the concept of the rules and in the text.




Actually that's not -entirely- true.

There exist a small handful of powers that have sub-effects that have different keywords than the power... for example 'Effect:  Push the target 4 squares, this effect has the fear keyword' and such effects would have had the sub-effect gibbled by immune to fear, but the entire power itself is otherwise unaffected.

But I do agree that the need for inference to determine such things is insufficient, given the 'everything is a foo effect' not two paragraphs beforehand.

However, I still disagree that immunity is like resistance; it is not.  Immunity is 'you are not affected by the property' and resistance is 'you take less damage but are otherwise fully affected by the property.'  Immunity can include pushes, prones, dazes, and all sorts of other nasty works.  Resistance can never touch those things, and is -only- related to the calculation of damage.

In otherwords, I can envision something that is difficult to resist being completely shrugged off by someone who cannot in any way be touched by that property.

As an analogy:

You can have a watch that is water-resistant (it is less likely to be affected by water, but succumbs to enough water pressure) or one that is water-proof (water does not affect its workings at all in any way, shape, or form)


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## Knowme (Jun 22, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> You can have a watch that is water-resistant (it is less likely to be affected by water, but succumbs to enough water pressure) or one that is water-proof (water does not affect its workings at all in any way, shape, or form)




The problem with a real-life analogy is that Immunity is solely a game construct - nothing in reality actually has it.  "Water-proof" is just a term for a certain level of resistance (water-proof for a certain amount of time or to a certain depth, for example).  If you throw a water-proof watch into the deep ocean it's not going to survive just fine.

Or take a diamond... you might call it fire-proof or force-proof, but get it hot enough and it will still melt.  And put it under enough pressure and you can still break it.


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## CovertOps (Jun 22, 2010)

@DS:  To be fair this whole discussion was mainly about the damage.  With the caveat that we are only discussing damage, then the interpretation that Immunity == Infinite Resistance is a valid statement.  It is also consistent with the 2 rulings from CS.

If this is the path that is being taken then it almost behooves Wizards to assign Keywords to "effects" instead of the power for adjudication of immunities.  For example:

Hit: 1d8 + Int fire damage and fear/charm push 3.

Boy will that be brutal.


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## Solvarn (Jun 22, 2010)

Mand said:


> I'd say this is where we call the RAI as a closed subject.




I definitely think there is enough information on both sides for someone with a lot of time on their hands to read and make an informed decision.


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## Mand (Jun 22, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> If this is the path that is being taken then it almost behooves Wizards to assign Keywords to "effects" instead of the power for adjudication of immunities.  For example:
> 
> Hit: 1d8 + Int fire damage and fear/charm push 3.
> 
> Boy will that be brutal.




That would make the most sense, and remove all doubt as to what affects what.  But apparently they decided to be more vague and let us try to guess in the name of simpler power stat blocks.


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## Gradine (Jun 22, 2010)

The Dracolich thread made me notice something else as well. All Dracolichs have an ability that causes the target to lose all all necrotic (save ends.) There seems to be some debate as to whether damage immunity is just resist infinity or its own special case. Does the Dracolich's ability (or any similar ability) affect immunity as well?


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## mneme (Jun 22, 2010)

Shouldn't think so, even if you choose to treat immunity(damage type) as resist damage type (infinity).  The keyword is different.

Obviously, if Wizards makes a rules change to say that the two are equivalent, this changes.


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## Black Knight Irios (Jun 22, 2010)

I personally think that immunity (damage type) == resistance infinite (damage type) is perfectly fine. And I will play it like this at my table.

We will see what WotC really wants or thinks it wants or seems to think it wants...


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## pemerton (Jun 23, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> given the 'everything is a foo effect' not two paragraphs beforehand.



Are you referring to this paragraph?



			
				PHB said:
			
		

> The other keywords define the fundamental effects of a power. For instance, a power that deals acid damage is an acid effect and thus has the acid keyword. A power that has the poison keyword might deal poison damage, or it might slow the target, immobilize the target, or stun the target. But the poison keyword indicates that it’s a poison effect, and other rules in the game relate to that fact in different ways.



This says that a power that deals damage type X is an X effect and hence has the X keyword. It also indicates that a power that has keyword Z might deal damage of Z type or have some other effect that is Z-ish in character. But it does not say that every effect of a power with keyword K is a K effect. Nor does it come anywhere near implying that. In fact, at least as I read it, it strongly implies that each keyword of a power is associated with one or more discrete components of a power - for example, that a power with the acid and poison keywords that does acid damage and inflicts the slowed condition has two effects, one an acid effect (the damage) and the other a poison effect (the slowed condition).


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## pemerton (Jun 23, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> it almost behooves Wizards to assign Keywords to "effects" instead of the power for adjudication of immunities.  For example:
> 
> Hit: 1d8 + Int fire damage and fear/charm push 3.



In my view this is what page 55 of the PHB strongly implies.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 23, 2010)

pemerton said:


> Are you referring to this paragraph?
> 
> 
> This says that a power that deals damage type X is an X effect and hence has the X keyword. It also indicates that a power that has keyword Z might deal damage of Z type or have some other effect that is Z-ish in character. But it does not say that every effect of a power with keyword K is a K effect. Nor does it come anywhere near implying that. In fact, at least as I read it, it strongly implies that each keyword of a power is associated with one or more discrete components of a power - for example, that a power with the acid and poison keywords that does acid damage and inflicts the slowed condition has two effects, one an acid effect (the damage) and the other a poison effect (the slowed condition).




Let's look at this thing:

'A power that deals acid damage is an acid effect and thus has the acid keyword.'

Using that phrase, we then examine this power:

Caustic Rebuttal   DracoSuave Feature Power
Encounter - Acid, Implement, Psionic, Psychic, Fear
Attack: Charisma vs Will
Hit: 2d6 + Charisma modifier acid damage, and the target is pushed 3 spaces.  The target is slowed (save ends)
Aftereffect: 2d6 + Charisma modifier psychic damage.

Alright.  That's a cluster%%%% of different effects, and so it makes a good example.

Now, does this power deal acid damage?  Yes.  Therefore, VERBATIM ACCORDING TO THE RULES, the POWER is an acid effect.

Is the aftereffect part of that power?  Yes.  Is the aftereffect part of an acid effect?  Yes.  Therefore, the aftereffect IS an acid effect.

_A power that has the poison keyword might deal poison damage, or it might slow the target, immobilize the target, or stun the target. But the poison keyword indicates that it’s a poison effect, and other rules in the game relate to that fact in different ways._

This here says that a power could have the poison keyword, and that keyword could be dealing with all sorts of different things.  BUT, it's a poison effect.  The POWER is a POISON effect.

That means that effects of that power are themselves poison effects.

I don't see how 'But the poison keyword indicates it's a poison effect' means 'it is not a poison effect except for the parts that are likely poison' as opposed to 'the keyword means its a poison effect.'

As for the caveat that immunity == infinite resistance, that is no where mentioned nor implied in the rules.

Let's make this clear:  Customer Service is often wrong, and has given two different interpretations in this thread.  They've come out with rules interpretations before that are diametricly opposite to that mentioned in the rules.  They've made claims that spirit companions are creatures, that weapon focus does not work on staffs, and that fighter's marks can stack with each other.

In fact, here's a misconception you need to clear up swiftly.

Customer Service is NOT WIZARDS OF THE COAST.

wizards.custhelp.com is a subset of custhelp.com, which is how the company RightNow deals with customers on behalf of their clients.

It isn't a room in the WoTC office where gamers gather to playtest the latest D&D stuff and play magic between responding to emails.  It's a place where a -third party agency- hires people to take care of this, who may or may not be experts, or may just be people making 8 bucks an hour and have no knowledge of D&D short of what training they get in the door.

They are NOT a primary rules source, and it's irrational to think they are, or depend on them.  My guess is that they are Rightnow employees who play D&D and are about as well versed in the rules as anyone here.  That makes them as much an authority as anyone posting in this thread.  No more than that.


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## Markn (Jun 23, 2010)

DS,

Not sure if this is relevant but if you take no damage (because of immunity or somethign else) you still suffer additional effects.

Also, I'm not sure that effects are classified the same as damage.  Taking poison damage and getting pushed does not mean it is a poison based push.

Edit:  Interesting, MM3 specifically points out that poison is a damage type AND and an effect type.  It is the only one like this though.  Others are damage type ONLY.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 23, 2010)

Markn said:


> DS,
> 
> Not sure if this is relevant but if you take no damage (because of immunity or somethign else) you still suffer additional effects.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure that effects are classified the same as damage.  Taking poison damage and getting pushed does not mean it is a poison based push.




1)  Damage is an effect.  There are non-damaging effects, and those would be your 'additional effects' but that doesn't mean that damage is magically not an effect.

2)  Yes, immunity to poison does make you immune to the push.  Even by the PHB3 rules.  And yes, the psychic damage is a poison effect.  It just isn't poison damage.  Why is that?  *Damage types are not keywords.*

3)  Powers have keywords, and that power IS that keyword effect, therefore all effects of that power are themselves that keyword effect.  This is the very reason why the PHB3 rules for immunity are the way they are.


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## Black Knight Irios (Jun 23, 2010)

Markn said:


> DS,
> 
> Not sure if this is relevant but if you take no damage (because of immunity or somethign else) you still suffer additional effects.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure that effects are classified the same as damage.  Taking poison damage and getting pushed does not mean it is a poison based push.




The problem is effects don't have keywords incorporated in the text like damage has damage types.

So a power that pushes and deals 1d8 damage has the fear keyword. What would be the fear effect if not the push itself. So immunity fear prevents the push.

But a power that has looks like this, 1d8 damage and push 1 with the fear and charm keywords does what(?) if you have immunity fear? If you follow DS reasoning then it would deal just 1d8 damage b/c immunity to one of the two keywords is enough to stop the effect. OTOH, the two keywords allow more feats/PP features/etc. to apply to the power.

Still the current immunity rules don't make me happy.


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## mneme (Jun 23, 2010)

Markn: This is clear in the current rules.  A power that has the poison keyword that does effects (as well as/instead of damage) applies that keyword to all effects that don't say otherwise.  And immune(poison), unlike immunity to most damage types, -does- block non-damage effects.

Conclusion: Poison sucks, and isn't worth using up and until Wizards buffs it a lot to make up for the likelyhood that your damage (unless mixed with other types) will be ignored and your effects simply ignored.  It's the most common damage type immunity, and effects are blocked as well.  The only silver lining is that -if- you see a lot of "don't break this barrel" style challenges, poison's one of the few damage types that never affects objects.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 23, 2010)

Black Knight Irios said:


> The problem is effects don't have keywords incorporated in the text like damage has damage types.
> 
> So a power that pushes and deals 1d8 damage has the fear keyword. What would be the fear effect if not the push itself. So immunity fear prevents the push.
> 
> ...




Of course, if charm effects didn't include things like forced movement, then you could make the argument that the two keywords could be seperable.

Hell I think it's wrong that immunity to thunder still means thunder effects can push you around, something thunder does OFTEN and is identified with thunder.

Hey, that's that tho.

RAW, a charm and fear power would have its non-damage effects countered by immunity, as per PHB3.

Remember, it's 'Rules as Written' not 'Rules As We'd Like It To Be.'  The former is how you adjudicate official stuff, and 'how do the rules work' questions.  The latter is how a game with friends is run.


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## Markn (Jun 23, 2010)

Thanks guys.

It makes sense now.  I never really dug too deep into this part of the game.  We'd always treated immunity like resistance but after reading this thread, and looking at relevant sections in the books, I tend to support DS's view.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 23, 2010)

mneme said:


> Markn: This is clear in the current rules.  A power that has the poison keyword that does effects (as well as/instead of damage) applies that keyword to all effects that don't say otherwise.  And immune(poison), unlike immunity to most damage types, -does- block non-damage effects.
> 
> Conclusion: Poison sucks, and isn't worth using up and until Wizards buffs it a lot to make up for the likelyhood that your damage (unless mixed with other types) will be ignored and your effects simply ignored.  It's the most common damage type immunity, and effects are blocked as well.  The only silver lining is that -if- you see a lot of "don't break this barrel" style challenges, poison's one of the few damage types that never affects objects.




Fortunately, poison's also -really- easy to avoid ever dealing with unless you're an assassin.

No, wait, even if you're an assassin.  

The game doesn't really support making poison from the building sense either, so it's not really that big a deal if monsters are immune to it; you generally built yourself around a good damage type.


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## pemerton (Jun 24, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> Let's look at this thing:
> 
> 'A power that deals acid damage is an acid effect and thus has the acid keyword.'
> 
> ...



Which already makes no literal sense, as powers are not effects - they have effects.



DracoSuave said:


> Is the aftereffect part of that power?  Yes.  Is the aftereffect part of an acid effect?  Yes.  Therefore, the aftereffect IS an acid effect.



You are now deploying a logic of parts-and-wholes applied to effects which, as far as I can see, is not expressly part of the rules - the rules never talk about some effects being parts of other effects, rather they talk about powers _having_ effects - and is therefore something you are introducing by implication. I don't accept the implication is necessarily there.



DracoSuave said:


> _A power that has the poison keyword might deal poison damage, or it might slow the target, immobilize the target, or stun the target. But the poison keyword indicates that it’s a poison effect, and other rules in the game relate to that fact in different ways._
> 
> This here says that a power could have the poison keyword, and that keyword could be dealing with all sorts of different things.  BUT, it's a poison effect.  The POWER is a POISON effect.
> 
> That means that effects of that power are themselves poison effects.



Again, you are using the notion of "the effects of an effect" which is already going beyond the express language of the rules.



DracoSuave said:


> I don't see how 'But the poison keyword indicates it's a poison effect' means 'it is not a poison effect except for the parts that are likely poison' as opposed to 'the keyword means its a poison effect.'



Well, the word "heavy", predicated of a car, indicates that a car is a heavy object. The word "wheeled", predicated of a car, indicates that a car is a wheeled vehicle. This is just like the word "poison", used of a power, indicates that the power is a poison effect. It doesn't follow that every part of the power is a poison effect, just as it doesn't follow that every part of a car is heavy - the hubcaps are not - or wheeled - the petrol tank is not.

To generalise - the logic of parts-and-wholes that you are deploying is not the only one available. An alternative logic, which (in my view) is closer to ordinary English usage, allows that a whole can be described as an X-ish thing even if only some parts of the whole exhibit X-ness. Furthermore, I think the references on PHB p 55, and in the PHB3 errata, to individual effects of powers (such as damage, stunnning, etc), suggest that it is this alternative logic which the designers had in mind.



DracoSuave said:


> As for the caveat that immunity == infinite resistance, that is no where mentioned nor implied in the rules.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I don't see how this is relevant to my post - I didn't make either claim. Although it seems to me that Customer Service probably is WotC, unless there's some sort of outsourcing arrangement that I'm not familiar with.



DracoSuave said:


> Remember, it's 'Rules as Written' not 'Rules As We'd Like It To Be.'  The former is how you adjudicate official stuff, and 'how do the rules work' questions.  The latter is how a game with friends is run.



I think that you are being overly sanguine about identifying the rules as written. As I've pointed out, your own analysis depends upon the imputation of a logic of parts-and-wholes that is not an express part of the rules text.

My take on the issue of "rules as written" is this: D&D designers do not have the same degree of training or institutional support as do the authors of legislation and other legal instruments. It's therefore natural that D&D rules will, on occasion, be at least as difficult to interpret, and as dependent for their interpretation upon implications and imputations, as are statutes, contracts, wills and so on. In these cases of legal interpretation, it is impossible to separate the question of "the law as written" from questions of intention, desirability of outcomes, consistency with common sense and so on. The same is true for the rules of D&D, only moreso, given that the sorts of considerations that tell against a liberal approach to legal interpretation (eg principles of legislative supremacy, the rule of law etc) are not operative in the context of a game, where there is really very little at stake and the possibility of subsequent correction is always there.

I think that verisimilitude (eg pre-errata immunity to fire doesn't stop you being zapped by the radiant damage of blazing starfall) and fun (a more elaborate power with more keywords doesn't become more liable to being blocked by resistances and immunities) are better served by implying my logic of parts-and-wholes rather than yours. And while both are consistent with the express rules text, as I already said I think mine fits better with the examples and the errata, which parse powers into their various constituent effects.



DracoSuave said:


> I think it's wrong that immunity to thunder still means thunder effects can push you around, something thunder does OFTEN and is identified with thunder.
> 
> Hey, that's that tho.



This is a separate point, I think. The solution would be to make "thunder" an effect type as well as a damage type (like poison). Another similar oddity would be creatures with icewalk still being vulnerable to being knocked prone by powers like Icy Terrain. From the design point of view, presumably at a certain point verisimilitude is compromised in the interests of simplicity.


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## Solvarn (Jun 24, 2010)

Adding some reference info here for folks:

Page 215 of PHB III under heading Power Source: arcane, divine, martial, primal, psionic, and shadow.

Page 215 of PHB III under heading Damage Type: acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, and thunder.

Page 216 of PHB III under heading Effect Type: Augmentable, Charm, Conjuration, Fear, Full Discipline, Healing, Illusion, Poison, Polymorph, Reliable, Runic, Sleep, Stance, Summoning, Teleportation, Zone.

Missing Effects from PHB III found in PHB II page 219: Beast, Beast Form, Invigorating, Rage, Rattling, and Spirit.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 24, 2010)

pemerton said:


> I think that verisimilitude (eg pre-errata immunity to fire doesn't stop you being zapped by the radiant damage of blazing starfall)




Actually, pre-errata, even pre-errata to how multiple damage types work, again, immunity to fire made you immune to the entire power, because the entire power was a fire effect.

I don't know how else to say it.  I understand how you have trouble getting the 'parts of a power share the traits of the entire power' and that 'a seperation should occur' but that doesn't happen and is expressly what it does not say in the rules.  Keywords cover the entire power's effect.  Every part of a power has those keywords.  And there are powers where keywords only apply to part of a power; those powers have and always have identified those parts and said 'This is a _____ effect.'

If there was a seperation of effects, the PHB3 rule wouldn't be necessary.  Even without that, there are instances where the 'immunity to one part of the power does not render you immune to the other parts of the power.'  Case in point:  Immunity to Forced movement renders you immune to forced movement, but any other effect takes place.

Regardless, you cannot start a 'This is how the rules are' argument and then go 'But what the rules say make no literal sense.'  You're not arguing rules as written at that point, you're choosing to ignore what the rules say and make up your own interpretation.

As I said, there's Rules as Written, and there's Rules as You'd Like Them To Be.   Your interpretation works well at your table, and I find no fault in it, but it is NOT what the rules -say-.  And when your first act of interpretation is to ignore the entire rule, the ONLY existance of the pertinent rule in play, then you've already abandoned the idea of discussion what the 'Rules as Written' are.


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## pemerton (Jun 24, 2010)

DracoSuave said:


> Actually, pre-errata, even pre-errata to how multiple damage types work, again, immunity to fire made you immune to the entire power, because the entire power was a fire effect.



My point was that this is at odds with verisimilitude, and hence that a desire for verisimilitude tells against your reading of the (pre-errata) text.



DracoSuave said:


> I don't know how else to say it.  I understand how you have trouble getting the 'parts of a power share the traits of the entire power' and that 'a seperation should occur' but that doesn't happen and is expressly what it does not say in the rules.



I don't have trouble getting it - I just don't agree with it. I agree that the rules don't expressly talk about the separation I favour. But they don't expressly talk about the "effects of effects" that you favour either. Both are implications that we are drawing from poorly-written rules. All I'm saying is that my implication is as consistent with the express words as yours, and I also think it fits better with the examples in the rules, and I think it is better for verisimilitude and for fun. I therefore favour my implication. I have no objection at all to you using your implication, but I do object a little bit to you describing it as "rules as written" when it is not expressly there in the rules.



DracoSuave said:


> Keywords cover the entire power's effect.  Every part of a power has those keywords.



Nowhere is this expressly stated. The rules don't talk about "entire powers". They don't use adverbs like "every" or "all". You are drawing an implication. I don't at all object to you doing so - some implication has to be drawn, given that the express wording of the rules is deficient. But I think a different implication is the better one to draw.



DracoSuave said:


> And there are powers where keywords only apply to part of a power; those powers have and always have identified those parts and said 'This is a _____ effect.'



You've got better knowledge than me of a wider range of powers, and none of these examples are springing into my mind at present. Are you able to tell me where to find a couple? (I don't have DDI, but have all PHBs and all Power books except Primal.)



DracoSuave said:


> If there was a seperation of effects, the PHB3 rule wouldn't be necessary.



I don't think this is right - the PHB3 rule clarifies that the non-damage effects of powers with no keyword but a damage keyword are still suffered by creatures with immunity to that keyword. Or to put it another way, the PHB3 rule clarifies that Immunity: X - where X is a damage keyword - is immmunity to damage only, and not to the other effects of those powers. Or to put it yet another way, which I don't think you will like because it is expressed in a way that favours my implication over yours, it clarifies that the non-damaging parts of a power are not governed by the damage keywords that characterise that power.

You posted upthread that without the PHB3 wording on immunities, the rule on PHB p 55 that "immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects" would only come into effect very rarely (when there was a discrete sub-effect of a power of the sort that you mentioned also in the post I'm replying to). One implication of my view is that the PHB3 wording is clarifying in order to achieve what was already there, rather than changing as dramatically as you think that it has.



DracoSuave said:


> Even without that, there are instances where the 'immunity to one part of the power does not render you immune to the other parts of the power.'  Case in point:  Immunity to Forced movement renders you immune to forced movement, but any other effect takes place.



I think these examples are a bit orthogonal, though, because they don't force us to have to make sense of the keyword rules.



DracoSuave said:


> Regardless, you cannot start a 'This is how the rules are' argument and then go 'But what the rules say make no literal sense.'  You're not arguing rules as written at that point, you're choosing to ignore what the rules say and make up your own interpretation.



I half agree with this and half disagree. The rules literally make no sense, because they simultaneously assert that powers _are_ effects and that powers _have_ effects - ie the rules are confused as to the part-whole logic of powers and effects. You have your preferred approach to constructing a coherent logic of parts and wholes here. I have mine. We are both engaged in something more than just reading the literal text. We are both drawing implications and arguing for them. If you like, we are engaged in constructive interpretation of the rules text. It doesn't follow from this that either of us is ignoring the text. Obviously, you're not. Given that my posts refer extensively to the text, neither am I. 

As to the question of whether, from a claim that the rules text is literally nonsensical, I can nevertheless reach a conclusion about what the rules are - I think this is quite possible. I know from my non-gaming experience that this can be done with legal texts, and with philosophical texts, so I've got no doubt that it can be done with gaming texts. Interpretation of a flawed text need not be just making it up. It can, at least on some occasions (depending on the nature of the flaw(s) and the other evidence available to support the interpretation) be working out what the text has "really" said. We do it all the time in ordinary conversation, correcting for the solecisms and mis-statements of our interlocutors. It can be done with written texts also.



DracoSuave said:


> As I said, there's Rules as Written, and there's Rules as You'd Like Them To Be.



And as I said, I think you're overly sanguine about this. Professional legal drafters are far better trained, far better paid, and have far better institutional support - precedents, judicial decisions, organisational memories, centuries of practice to draw upon - than do RPG designers, and they still manage to produce literally nonsensical texts a good portion of the time. It's no surprise that the D&D designers have done so as well. In these circumstances, there is no alternative but to try to extract some coherent interpretation out of the literally nonsensical text. Even in legal interpretation, one relevant consideration here can be what we would like the rules to be. In game rules interpretation, this consideration should be paramount, given that all the other factors that constrain this consideration in the legal context are not in play - ie there is nothing at stake but fun.



DracoSuave said:


> Your interpretation works well at your table, and I find no fault in it, but it is NOT what the rules -say-.



I agree. But your interpretation is not what the rules say either. We are both drawing implications. And I think my implication fits better with the rules text overall (subject to the examples of the powers with discrete sub-effects - the wording of these, depending on what it is, might persuade me that you're right).



DracoSuave said:


> And when your first act of interpretation is to ignore the entire rule



When did I do that? I focused on the rules text pretty closely, including the examples it includes and the phrase "immunity to one keyword of a power does not protect a target from the power’s other effects".



DracoSuave said:


> the ONLY existance of the pertinent rule in play



Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by this phrase.



DracoSuave said:


> then you've already abandoned the idea of discussion what the 'Rules as Written' are.



Well, I've already made it pretty clear that in my view the rules as literally written are not coherent, because they have a confused logic of parts and wholes. But I've also made it pretty clear that I think better or worse interpretations can be argued for. And I also hope I've made it pretty clear that I think it is unrealistic to hold rules drafted by game designers to standards of literal precision that even the best legal drafters are not always able to meet.


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## DracoSuave (Jun 24, 2010)

pemerton said:


> My point was that this is at odds with verisimilitude, and hence that a desire for verisimilitude tells against your reading of the (pre-errata) text.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## CovertOps (Jun 27, 2010)

On a total side note I have to say the thing that pisses me off most about this is that they have taken a PHB rule and re-written it.  


[soapbox]
This doesn't bother me so much as I'm happy with most of the errata so far, but the presentation of said changes in a brand new book (PHB3) instead of *actual errata to the original rule* forcing us to "buy" rules updates is outrageous in the extreme.
[/soapbox]

If this was actual "new" content/rules then so be it.  You could live without said new rule as it obviously applied to something in the new book itself (for example the class that has only at-will powers).  Having to check multiple different books/sources is poor organization (I know for sure that we have PHB, PHB3, MM, MM2, MM3) unless of course the definition is just presented for convience and should be ignored as not rules text.


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## Jhaelen (Jun 28, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> On a total side note I have to say the thing that pisses me off most about this is that they have taken a PHB rule and re-written it.
> 
> 
> [soapbox]
> ...



But nobody is forcing anyone to buy anything. This isn't errata, it's a rule update. Feel free to ignore it!


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## DracoSuave (Jun 28, 2010)

CovertOps said:


> On a total side note I have to say the thing that pisses me off most about this is that they have taken a PHB rule and re-written it.




I do agree with you on this.

I mean, if they're going to update the rule in later books, I have no problem with that... but then... update the PHB rule!  (or in this case, Monster Manual)


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