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In Princes of the Apocalypse,

each of the elemental prophets carries a legendary weapon imbued with a spark of their master. These have, among other properties, the ability to dominate certain creatures of their respective elements. Tinderstrike, for example (224), says:

You can cast dominate monster (save DC 17) on a fire elemental. Once you have done so, Tinderstrike can't be used this way again until the next dawn.

It is not clear whether "a fire elemental" means only the fire elemental, or any native of the Plane of Fire (as defined in the Monster Manual).

In 2015, Jeremy Crawford was asked this in a two-part tweet:

Druid's Elemental Wild Shape- just MM p124-125 guys or any creature w/ elemental type? Same with PotA prophets' weapons?

His response was

Air, earth, fire, and water elementals—those are specific creatures, not creature types or subtypes.

As common in his tweets, it was not clear whether he was referring to the first question, the second question, or both. His answer to the question about elemental wild shape was later made more official by inclusion in the Sage Advice Compendium, but as far as I can tell there has been no further clarification on Tinderstrike or the other weapons.

What kind of elementals do these weapons permit one to dominate?

Note that this question was prompted by @PeterCordes' comment on this, related question: What is 'a fire elemental' for the purposes of a ring of fire elemental command?

Kirt
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    @User23415 It does not, because of the context surrounding them. There is some similarity (both are legendary items), but the ring was an item printed in the DMG while the four weapons are held by specific NPC's in a specific module. AFAICT, the ring has not been addressed, officially or semi-officially, whereas the weapons were either addressed or ignored by a JC tweet back when such tweets were official. It might be that the two questions have the same answer, but I don't think it is clear that they necessarily do, and I think a good answer would address the context specific to each one. – Kirt Mar 29 '24 at 20:36

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