What damage type is it? Light? Negative? Magic? purple kool aid?

Negative, go try using it on most undead.

.

What's confusing about that is that all the damage types seem to come in pairs. Positive, negative, light, heat, cold, lightning. "Black light" is just sort of...out there by itself.

Searing light or something?

With black light being negative, the opposite of it and defilement being wrath or divine power, which are positive damage types. The nouns are just cosmetic, I think.

.

Yeah yeah- I'm just saying that from a symmetry/design point of view, if every other damage type has two nouns then that suggests a pattern. That's why I expected black light to be something other than negative- there already existed two negative nouns.

1) There is no such pattern. Weapon damage types have zero, two, three, twelve and various numbers in between of possible messages. If an author wants a new one, adding it is trivial and I'd rather have something that fits the weapon than pigeonhole them.

2) Why should there be a pattern? It doesn't impact game balance, and we don't try to put equal numbers of all damage types out there. Poison is much rarer than blunt, so why would we feel a need to force equal numbers of damage messages on those categories?

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>1) There is no such pattern. Weapon damage types have zero,
>two, three, twelve and various numbers in between of possible
>messages.

It seemed as if there was, at least with special damage types:

freezing bite / frigid chop
flaming bite / searing cut
shocking bite / electric discharge
wrath / divine power
defilement / infernal power
searing light / brilliant radiance

Guess it was just my imagination.

>2) Why should there be a pattern? It doesn't impact game
>balance, and we don't try to put equal numbers of all damage
>types out there.

I'm not arguing there "should" have been a pattern, I'm just saying it looked like one existed.

nt

A few physical damage types I've wondered about, but never bothered testing, since they only matter if fighting gnomes or various undead

charge, sting, whip, rending gale, and I'm sure there are more I can't think of now

Charge is almost certainly blunt. I would be surprised if sting and whip were blunt. Rending gale...no idea.

Stinging lash? Some have an acidyesque quality ot them, from the sound, but I think are physical anyway.

nt

as good as my ranger staff.

-----Abernyte

charge: Isildur says blunt, but I've always thought of it as pierce. Look at the weapon with this attack type. If it's spear, it's probably pierce. If charge damage type is blunt, why can't you charge with a staff but with polearm and spear you can?

sting: pierce or slash. I think there were daggers with sting, so I'll say pierce.

whip: I think it's slash

rending gale: Rending gale is slash.