Magic Weapons with effects - weapon damage OR special effect

[Nezeray]

Reading through the Fantasy Craft rulebook, I noticed something interesting and wondered how everyone felt about it:

When you create a Fire sword, you give it the fire special effect.  When attacking with it, you get either the damage from the sword OR the fire effect but not both. 

At first the D&D player in me said, "what a rip off, how can this be right?" but then I thought about it some more, "That's cool, you can use it like a regular sword when you don't want to set the forest on fire."

What are your thoughts?

James / Nezeray

[Deral]

You've got to take in the FC aspect of fire too, you're not just going to deal extra damage to things vulnerable to it, but that damage at least carries the chance to actually set them on fire, dealing more damage that way and possibly disabling them for a little while if your damage was high enough by forcing them to roll out the fire (and depending on how you handle it, could also deal stress damage) and besides, all of your damage is converted to fire, that's not an insignificant change to begin with.

[Nezeray]

Yes, and in the end I LOVE it.

James / Nezeray

[Sletchman]

My reaction was the same as yours: "Wait, it's not extra damage? Forget that!" then I realised it was awesome, especially from a GM perspective where you don't have to worry about multiple damage types and resistances - 1 hit, 1 damage type - simple and easy.

[Crafty_Pat]

Precisely. It also helps to keep magic items from becoming the be-all/end-all they are in... that other game.