Vulnerable to Fire (Level 1): Whenever you take fire damage, you take 5 extra fire damage.
Let's say you (a plant/pyrokinetic) take 8 points of fire damage. Well, you apply your resistance to that -- now you've got 0 damage. Since you didn't take any damage from fire, you don't apply the vulnerability. If you had resist 5 fire, you'd have taken 3 points of damage.
I personally would handle it using the equation: Damage + Vulnerability - Resistance
Or, 8 + 5 - 10 = 3, meaning the plant/pyrokinetic would take 3 damage. Of course that's a debatable result, but I think it accounts for both the Vulnerability to Fire inherent to plants and the Fire Resistance granted through possessing pyrokinetic powers. Or that's my 2 cents.
Pyrokinetics get resist 10 fire
Is resist even defined in the player section, or is it only defined in the special resistances that just monsters get in their section?
If they ever make a revised edition of this GW I want it to have a big "Requires the D&D Compendium" slapped on the front and use standard terms for everything that they don't make specific exception to.
Then again, this is the game that never actually tells you that each square is 5 feet by 5 feet.
Let's say you (a plant/pyrokinetic) take 8 points of fire damage. Well, you apply your resistance to that -- now you've got 0 damage. Since you didn't take any damage from fire, you don't apply the vulnerability. If you had resist 5 fire, you'd have taken 3 points of damage.
I personally would handle it using the equation: Damage + Vulnerability - Resistance
Or, 8 + 5 - 10 = 3, meaning the plant/pyrokinetic would take 3 damage. Of course that's a debatable result, but I think it accounts for both the Vulnerability to Fire inherent to plants and the Fire Resistance granted through possessing pyrokinetic powers. Or that's my 2 cents.
Please note that plants don't have a vulnerability to fire in the rules sense. Read the first post again: Plants take an additional 5 points of fire damage *if* they take fire damage.
So there is no vulnerability to put in your equation. The name of the trait is "Vulnerable to Fire" the trait does not have the vulnerable keyword. It could have been named "Brubba's BBQ Pit Is Scary" and the same trait rules and the plant character still would not have the vulnerability keyword.
Please note that plants don't have a vulnerability to fire in the rules sense. Read the first post again: Plants take an additional 5 points of fire damage *if* they take fire damage.
So there is no vulnerability to put in your equation. The name of the trait is "Vulnerable to Fire" the trait does not have the vulnerable keyword. It could have been named "Brubba's BBQ Pit Is Scary" and the same trait rules and the plant character still would not have the vulnerability keyword.
True. "Vulnerable to Fire" is just a bad way for the rules to phrased it since Vulnerable, as a keyword, means something else and since this is D&D GW it's easy to assume it means what we expect it to mean. In my opinion, what should have been done here is it should instead use a different word, like "Flammable", to more accurately describe the effect and avoid any confusion.
But long story short, yes, worded as it is the intention would be that the 8 fire damage from the example would be resisted (reduced to 0 damage) thanks to the pyrokinetic's Fire Resistance, and as the plant takes no fire damage the vulnerability wouldn't be triggered. Of course if that 8 fire damage were 11 fire damage then that would be another story altogether.
Read the first post again: Plants take an additional 5 points of fire damage *if* they take fire damage.
Notice though that in the paragraph on p104 defining "Resist" in regards to fire damage they use almost exactly the same verbage in a specific example of what to do in the case of fire applying a reduction "whenever it takes damage from fire" (note that I don't have the book on me so I might have a word off or so). So conceptually wouldn't that indicate that both effects take place at essentially the same in the resolution of the attack and you could apply the "Brubba's BBQ Pit Is Scary" effect first (raising damage to 15) and then the "Resist" effect (lowering damage to 3), just as legally as applying them in the reverse order resulting in no damage?
As a related question since I don't have the GW book handy: Does it even define "taking damage" as the point that potential points of damage are allocated to the character versus the points hit points are actually reduced from their total? Is taking 0 typed damage defined or implied as "not taking damage" versus just having no impact on your hit points (for instance is there a statement that the special effect of an attack is negated if the damage is resisted to 0)?
When does it make a difference?
Let's say you (a plant/pyrokinetic) take 8 points of fire damage. Well, you apply your resistance to that -- now you've got 0 damage. Since you didn't take any damage from fire, you don't apply the vulnerability. If you had resist 5 fire, you'd have taken 3 points of damage.
Now let's say there's a monster that gives everyone in an aura 3 a vulnerability 5 fire effect.
Guess what! You don't have vulnerable 5 fire, so your trait doesn't stack as vulnerabilities normally do. You're gonna take 10 extra points of damage if you take any fire damage, not 5.
Interesting observation: even though the ability is called "Vulnerable to Fire", the concensus from the earlier discussion was that the name of the ability does not define it's effect.
I guess I'll probably just be sticking with whatever I feel RAI is (and rolling off if a player feels differently).
the book entry is:
Resist: A monster that has resistance takes less damage from a specific damage type. for Example, if it has resist 10 fire, it takes 10 less damage whenever it takes fire damage...
from that it sounds like your considered to take the damage regardless, it just negates it.