Hi. I recently created a Wizard of the order of the scribes and noticed that their feature "Awakened Spellbook: Replace Damage (Special) When you cast a wizard spell with a spell slot, you can temporarily replace its damage type with a type that appears in another spell in your spellbook, which magically alters the spell’s formula for this casting only. The latter spell must be of the same level as the spell slot you expend." is quite powerful in combo with Absorb Elements. Since the text reads "THAT APPEARS in another spell in your spellbook" I assume that it would work with absorb elements?
If you are asking if you can swap a spell like ice knife with any element in absorb elements, then yes.
If you are asking if you can swap the damage absorbed with absorb elements with force damage from magic missile, for that I am less sure, but I don't think so.
Yea - to me when it says you can swap the damage type - you can swap the damage caused by a spell. So no changing the resistance offered. You could make it so that it absorbs one element and imbues your weapon with a different kind I suppose.
For me the key is the Reaction in Absorb Elements: "* - which you take when you take acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage". Even if you could change the type absorbed to Force for example - you still couldn't take the Reaction because Force isn't listed as a trigger for the Reaction.
Yea - to me when it says you can swap the damage type - you can swap the damage caused by a spell. So no changing the resistance offered. You could make it so that it absorbs one element and imbues your weapon with a different kind I suppose.
For me the key is the Reaction in Absorb Elements: "* - which you take when you take acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage". Even if you could change the type absorbed to Force for example - you still couldn't take the Reaction because Force isn't listed as a trigger for the Reaction.
Right. Scribes alters the spell when you cast it, so it can't alter the spell before you cast it, so there's just no way to change the list of types you can react to to cast it. You could definitely use Scribes to change the type of the damage the spell adds to your next melee attack. Since Scribes has almost no rules support, it's an utter mystery whether you could e.g. react to Acid damage by granting yourself Force resistance - the Scribes ability assumes the damage type of a spell is a well-defined concept, which it is not.
A spell that doesn't have that issue would be silence which grants everyone within the sphere of silence immunity to thunder damage.
Granted there are two issues with this:
Silence is not a wizard spell
Silence doesn't cause damage so it's probably not RAI meant to be applicable to damage swapping except as a source of thunder damage change another spell to.
The first issue is resolved by picking the Mark of Scribing Gnome which adds Silence (as well as other spells) to said gnome's class list. The second issue is one that spawned a lengthy discussion over in the wizard forum on whether or not a spell needs to actually cause damage for it to be considered to have a damage type.
However, if your DM is okay with this combo working that way it's a powerful way to grant a safe zone against a specific damage type in combat.
Keep in mind the spell has to be of the same level. Since absorb elements is a level 1 spell, you can't use it to change the damage type on a fireball, for example. Only on other level 1 spells. So it may be really useful at lower levels, (really mess with trolls as you turn your magic missile into fire damage) but as you start casting higher level spells, it won't come up as often. While I'd think it would still apply to an upcast level one spell, it won't do anything for something that is, at its base, a level 2 or higher spell.
I don't think we need to read Absorb Elements and Awakened Spellbook so critically that we insist that it can only replace instances of a damage type that are accompanied by damage dice (in other words, that you can't swap resistances, only damage delt), or that we can't swap damage types in a trigger but only the spell description. A spell that triggers on "take fire damage," I have no problem with the Scribe casting that spell when they take slashing or whatever else, if they can legally swap fire->slashing using Awakened Spellbook.
What I'm less sure of, is that you can legally swap SOME element mentions but not ALL element mentions. Absorb Elements mentions elements in three different ways: (1) the element is the trigger to cast the spell; (2) the resistance you gain; and (3) the damage you deal. Ordinarily the spell functions by reading (1) to define (2) and (3). I'm not sure that you can use Awakened Spellbook to interupt that logic chain, and say replace (3) so that it no longer matches (2) and (1).
Hi. I recently created a Wizard of the order of the scribes and noticed that their feature "Awakened Spellbook: Replace Damage (Special) When you cast a wizard spell with a spell slot, you can temporarily replace its damage type with a type that appears in another spell in your spellbook, which magically alters the spell’s formula for this casting only. The latter spell must be of the same level as the spell slot you expend." is quite powerful in combo with Absorb Elements. Since the text reads "THAT APPEARS in another spell in your spellbook" I assume that it would work with absorb elements?
Yes, and Chromatic Orb and spells of that nature, that let you choose a damage type.
If you are asking if you can swap a spell like ice knife with any element in absorb elements, then yes.
If you are asking if you can swap the damage absorbed with absorb elements with force damage from magic missile, for that I am less sure, but I don't think so.
Yea - to me when it says you can swap the damage type - you can swap the damage caused by a spell. So no changing the resistance offered. You could make it so that it absorbs one element and imbues your weapon with a different kind I suppose.
For me the key is the Reaction in Absorb Elements: "* - which you take when you take acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage". Even if you could change the type absorbed to Force for example - you still couldn't take the Reaction because Force isn't listed as a trigger for the Reaction.
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Right. Scribes alters the spell when you cast it, so it can't alter the spell before you cast it, so there's just no way to change the list of types you can react to to cast it. You could definitely use Scribes to change the type of the damage the spell adds to your next melee attack. Since Scribes has almost no rules support, it's an utter mystery whether you could e.g. react to Acid damage by granting yourself Force resistance - the Scribes ability assumes the damage type of a spell is a well-defined concept, which it is not.
Absorb elements has the reaction trigger issue.
A spell that doesn't have that issue would be silence which grants everyone within the sphere of silence immunity to thunder damage.
Granted there are two issues with this:
The first issue is resolved by picking the Mark of Scribing Gnome which adds Silence (as well as other spells) to said gnome's class list.
The second issue is one that spawned a lengthy discussion over in the wizard forum on whether or not a spell needs to actually cause damage for it to be considered to have a damage type.
However, if your DM is okay with this combo working that way it's a powerful way to grant a safe zone against a specific damage type in combat.
Keep in mind the spell has to be of the same level. Since absorb elements is a level 1 spell, you can't use it to change the damage type on a fireball, for example. Only on other level 1 spells. So it may be really useful at lower levels, (really mess with trolls as you turn your magic missile into fire damage) but as you start casting higher level spells, it won't come up as often. While I'd think it would still apply to an upcast level one spell, it won't do anything for something that is, at its base, a level 2 or higher spell.
I don't think we need to read Absorb Elements and Awakened Spellbook so critically that we insist that it can only replace instances of a damage type that are accompanied by damage dice (in other words, that you can't swap resistances, only damage delt), or that we can't swap damage types in a trigger but only the spell description. A spell that triggers on "take fire damage," I have no problem with the Scribe casting that spell when they take slashing or whatever else, if they can legally swap fire->slashing using Awakened Spellbook.
What I'm less sure of, is that you can legally swap SOME element mentions but not ALL element mentions. Absorb Elements mentions elements in three different ways: (1) the element is the trigger to cast the spell; (2) the resistance you gain; and (3) the damage you deal. Ordinarily the spell functions by reading (1) to define (2) and (3). I'm not sure that you can use Awakened Spellbook to interupt that logic chain, and say replace (3) so that it no longer matches (2) and (1).
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.