# Is radiant damage classed as normal damage?



## sylanc (Nov 10, 2009)

In terms of gameplay, it is confusing as to whether radiant damage can effect normal creatures (not undead) in combact as I would have thought radiant damage would be akin to sun-type damage and therefore not effect a normal creature. is this a wrong assumption??


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## Mad Hamish (Nov 10, 2009)

Yes it's a wrong assumption.
All 4th ed D&D damage types will affect any creature unless it has a resistance or immunity.

Consider what it would do to ranged clerics or Paladins if Radient damage only affected undead....


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## FireLance (Nov 10, 2009)

Think of it as "holy" or "divine" energy.


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## fba827 (Nov 10, 2009)

the others are correct, radiant damage will damage any creature as normal unless that creature has a special resistance or immunity to it.

Note that undead creatures are generally (but not always) vulnerable to radiant damage, meaning that they take -extra- damage from it.  So that is where the distinction is (others are still damaged by it, but undead are extra damaged by it).


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## Jhaelen (Nov 10, 2009)

sylanc said:


> In terms of gameplay, it is confusing as to whether radiant damage can effect normal creatures (not undead) in combact as I would have thought radiant damage would be akin to sun-type damage and therefore not effect a normal creature. is this a wrong assumption??



Well, have you ever suffered from sunburn? Light at certain wavelengths is far from harmless (think: laser).

The radiant energy type in 4e is used for a lot of things that were separate entities in earlier editions. It seems to combine aspects of 'brilliant energy' (which in 3e didn't do any damage to undead), 'positive energy' (which damaged undead and healed living beings), 'holy/sacred' (which damaged undead and evil aligned beings), etc. but affects everything (unless it's explicitly resistant or immune to radiant damage). 'Radiant' is also used for anything with an astral source. Therefore it's also not really the opposite of 'necrotic'.

Anyway, in 4e all energy types are treated equal (at least in theory).


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## ValhallaGH (Nov 10, 2009)

Radiant is a standard damage type, just like Cold, Fire, Thunder, or "normal".  It works on everything that isn't specifically resistant to it.

Have fun.


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## lukelightning (Nov 10, 2009)

Paladin/cleric radiant damage: Shiny holy wrath.
Warlock radiant damage: The Unwholesome Spectrum Which Was Not Meant To Be.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 10, 2009)

lukelightning said:


> Warlock radiant damage: The Unwholesome Spectrum Which Was Not Meant To Be.



It's simply Octarin, the 8th Colour. Also called the colour of magic.


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## FireLance (Nov 10, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> It's simply Octarin, the 8th Colour. Also called the colour of magic.



Yeah, right. Next you'll be telling me that you can actually _see_ octarine, Mustrum_Ridcully.


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## Eldorian (Nov 10, 2009)

Jhaelen said:


> Well, have you ever suffered from sunburn? Light at certain wavelengths is far from harmless (think: laser).




Light at certain wavelengths is far from harmless (think X-Rays).  Lasers are high intensity visible light.  It's not the wavelength, it's the amount of light.  You are however correct in that certain wavelengths are more dangerous, it's just that they're not usually used in lasers.  They're X-Rays and Gamma Rays and Microwaves and such.


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## Ryujin (Nov 10, 2009)

The easiest way to think of it is that damage is damage. The type of damage may have greater or lesser effects on specific targets, but it's all just damage.

Our Cleric has a Metric tonne of radiant powers and always holds back on things that aren't vulnerable to radiant, because he thinks that he won't really do anything. It's still damage and contributes to winning the encounter.


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## Nichwee (Nov 10, 2009)

Eldorian said:


> Lasers are high intensity visible light.  It's not the wavelength, it's the amount of light.




Not actually true.

First, lasers can be of any wavelength (Infrared being common in remotes).

Second, lasers get their strength from coherence, not intensity. A 10 Watt light bulb isn't good enough to read a book by normally. A 10 Watt laser can probably burn through the book. It is the fact that lasers are focused, and that the light waves are in synch, so each photon enhances the effect, that makes them impressive.


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## Eldorian (Nov 10, 2009)

Nichwee said:


> Not actually true.
> 
> First, lasers can be of any wavelength (Infrared being common in remotes).
> 
> Second, lasers get their strength from coherence, not intensity. A 10 Watt light bulb isn't good enough to read a book by normally. A 10 Watt laser can probably burn through the book. It is the fact that lasers are focused, and that the light waves are in synch, so each photon enhances the effect, that makes them impressive.





TV remotes use a light emitting diode, not a laser (otherwise you'd never be able to hit the receiver and would never be able to change the channel).  I was talking about intensity of light received, not of emitted, which I suppose is properly called irradiance (which is still a measure called intensity), and the vast majority of lasers emit light in the visible and near infrared spectrum.

Laser, the acronym, means light, not inferred, which would be an iraser, but this naming convention never caught on.  Though it'd be cool to fry some aliens with my graser.  Maser initially meant microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, but has come to mean something else, and masers emit light in other spectrum now.


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## epochrpg (Nov 11, 2009)

Radiant damage hurts everything- undead are usually just especially susceptible to it.


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## CapnZapp (Nov 12, 2009)

All kinds of damage hurts every kind of creature, except where specifically noted.

There is nothing like "all fire creatures are extra hurt by cold damage", "undead are immune to light spells" or even "fire creatures are immune to fire damage".

Unless a monster is listed as having an immunity, resistance or vulnerability, treat all types of damage as just damage.

In 4E, a cold creature and a fire creature takes fire damage just as everybody else. It's just that a fire creature is likely to be resistant to fire damage. 

Vulnerability is far less common in 4E - most cold creature is no more damaged by fire damage than, say, acid. Or being thumped on the head by a hammer (untyped damage). The main exception is that most undead is vulnerable to radiant damage. This does not mean other pairings exist.

Outright immunity is also very much uncommon in 4E. Mostly, you'll see creatures immune to things like fear, disease, or poison - which aren't damage types. Precious few fire creatures will be completely immune to fire, for instance.


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## Jhaelen (Nov 12, 2009)

However, there's one thing that is slightly bothering me:

Not all energy types are equally useful. I've recently read the E1 module 'Death's Reach'. It's selection of monsters is a bit ... one-sided. Almost every monster in this adventure is vulnerable to radiant. That's imho bad design, but it's also something that can easily happen if you're trying to have a certain theme for your encounters in an adventure.

Given the choice between two powers, one dealing radiant damage and one dealing, say, cold damage, I'd always pick the radiant one. At the opposite of the spectrum is probably poison - lots of monsters seem to be resistant or even immune to it.

In other words: The inequality of energy types is a remnant of system mastery I could do without.

I also find it puzzling that untyped damage always seems to be the best choice. Nothing is resistant, vulnerable or immune to it specifically (i.e. there's resist all, of course).


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## CapnZapp (Nov 12, 2009)

Jhaelen said:


> In other words: The inequality of energy types is a remnant of system mastery I could do without.



Not I.

The "inequality of damage types" is simply another tool to create variety.

Now, if designers weren't taking this into account, then you'd have a point. But as far as I am aware, indications suggest that fire and necrotic attacks are indeed valued lower than other types of damage. 

For one thing, they're very roughly available more easily and at lower levels. The fact divine characters do well against undead I would guess is balanced by the fact they do very slightly worse against all others.

In short: making all types of damage equally useful would be boring. Removing types of damage would be boring.

The remaining question is: is the extra challenge in designing play balance (and encounter balance!) worth this greater variety?


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## DracoSuave (Nov 13, 2009)

Fire damage has feats available at lower levels that allow it to negate resistance.  Also, Tieflings.

I wouldn't call 'More reliability' to mean 'Less capable.'


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 13, 2009)

Various damage types have their various niches. Some are overall better (radiant) or worse (poison) in the sense that they are more or less resisted by monsters in general. 

That being said many types evince a theme. Radiant works well against undead. Thunder often pushes, dazes, or stuns. Cold often slows or weakens. Acid and fire are often ongoing. Poison often imposes a variety of debilitating conditions and/or ongoing damage. 

There are specific feat paths that work well with specific damage types too, like frostcheese (Wintertouched and Lasting Frost). Its hard to say which types overall are "best". Radiant in isolation is probably better than the others, but remember that radiant powers take this into account (or should at least) and are presumably overall a bit weaker.

I agree with CapnZapp, variety is worth the price of an occasional difficulty formulating a good challenging encounter vs a specific party. The DM can take this into account though. Plus undead tend to be fairly nasty opponents in their own right, so its not clear its a problem.


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## Doctor Proctor (Nov 13, 2009)

Jhaelen said:


> However, there's one thing that is slightly bothering me:
> 
> Not all energy types are equally useful. I've recently read the E1 module 'Death's Reach'. It's selection of monsters is a bit ... one-sided. Almost every monster in this adventure is vulnerable to radiant. That's imho bad design, but it's also something that can easily happen if you're trying to have a certain theme for your encounters in an adventure.
> 
> ...




As others have pointed out, there's some balancing effects going on that help out with this.  That, and many powers have rider effects in addition to the typed damage.

In the example of fighting a lot of undead though, yes, lots of radiant damage will be beneficial.  However, I bet there will be quite a few of those undead enemies that use necrotic or cold powers, which aren't as easy to gain resistance to as say, fire.  So, while you'll be blasting away with radiant damage, they might be doing things like hitting you with nasty necrotic attacks that you have no defense against.  Or alternatively, the adventure might include a lot of hard hitting brutes or enemies of higher levels because a party with some radiant damage will be able to deal with them easier than if they were mundane creatures.

As for which damage types are the "best", that's complicated.  There was a damage resistance chart for the MM1 on EnWorld awhile back that broke it down, and if IIRC it went something along the lines of Force/Psychic, then Acid, Radiant, Thunder, Cold, Lightning, Fire, Poison, Necrotic?  Or something like that...  

Even still though, sometimes you get surprised.  When I rolled up my Dragonborn Fighter I went with Acid damage for the breath weapon and said to my group "Because nobody resists Acid!", and then of course we promptly ran into a group of Acid resistant Kobolds in the second encounter of KotS.    So even though one damage type might be the least commonly resisted type in the MM, that doesn't mean your DM can't make an encounter or two full of monsters resistant to that damage type.


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## Destil (Nov 13, 2009)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Various damage types have their various niches. Some are overall better (radiant) or worse (poison) in the sense that they are more or less resisted by monsters in general.
> 
> ...
> 
> There are specific feat paths that work well with specific damage types too, like frostcheese (Wintertouched and Lasting Frost). Its hard to say which types overall are "best". Radiant in isolation is probably better than the others, but remember that radiant powers take this into account (or should at least) and are presumably overall a bit weaker.



Unless I've missed something radiant has the worst energy kicker feat (it's nice but epic level and only on a crit). While there's some good general feat support for it in Divine Power, nothing you can do with it is on par with Psychic Lock or Resounding Thunder. Fire likewise isn't that great (no ongoing damage on a crit feat? Really?) but it's pretty easy to burn through resistance with it. Psychic is most likely the strongest overall, being rarely resisted and having a fantastic support feat.


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## Jhaelen (Nov 13, 2009)

Doctor Proctor said:


> As others have pointed out, there's some balancing effects going on that help out with this.  That, and many powers have rider effects in addition to the typed damage.



Yep, I know. But that knowledge is part of game mastery because the PHB doesn't explain this to new players.


Doctor Proctor said:


> There was a damage resistance chart for the MM1 on EnWorld awhile back that broke it down, and if IIRC it went something along the lines of Force/Psychic, then Acid, Radiant, Thunder, Cold, Lightning, Fire, Poison, Necrotic?  Or something like that...



Yep, Force and Psychic turned out to be on top because very MM1 monster had resistance/immunity against it. I don't think it took into account, how many monsters are vulnerable to radiant.
Imho, a party without a reliable way to deal radiant damage will be at a serious disadvantage. Obviously, it will be specific to a campaign, just _how_ much of a disadvantage it is. The DM may even completely negate the disadvantage by never using any monsters that are vulnerable to a particular kind of energy damage. Still, I feel, most campaigns will use undead at some point. They're very popular and in certain environments the only kind of monster that make any sense - besides constructs.

What I would have liked to see is a short paragraph in the PHB, pinpointing the differences between energy types. It's important information for players when they decide on a character concept, imho.

As a passing note, the sorcerer is currently my favorite class because they can make their targets vulnerable to their chosen energy type. That's just awesome! You no longer have to consider what foes you might face, just blast away with your favorite powers!


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## CapnZapp (Nov 13, 2009)

Jhaelen said:


> As a passing note, the sorcerer is currently my favorite class because they can make their targets vulnerable to their chosen energy type. That's just awesome! You no longer have to consider what foes you might face, just blast away with your favorite powers!



I would say a big part of _why_ that is awesome is that not everybody can do it all the time!


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