[Frostburn] Shivering Touch: The new Harm

FireLance

Legend
Those of you who have Frostburn, take a look at page 104. Shivering touch is a new 3rd-level cleric and sorcerer/wizard spell which does 3d6 points of Dexterity damage, requires a melee touch attack and gives no saving throw (but allows Spell Resistance).

Maximize it and you get a 6th-level spell that does 18 points of Dexterity damage - enough to make almost any creature helpless. Dragons, in particular, tend to have Dexterity scores of 10.

I smell potential errata here. The spell has a duration, so it was probably meant to impose a Dexterity penalty instead of dealing Dexterity damage. Like ray of enfeeblement, I would also put in a clause to say that Dexterity cannot be reduced to less than 1 as a result of this spell.

What do you think?
 

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Nice to see that the WOTC rules team is still up to their working strength: two concussed gnats and a drunk monkey. Testing potential spells with PHB metamagic feats to determine brokenness ought to be a no-brainer, but apparently the monkey didn't feel up to it this time.
 


The best part though is the touch attack. If you can touch it, it probably has a low-ish dex, and will probably then fall to the ground, tripping over itself.

Even not maximized. Heck, enhanced will pretty much automatically take out most MM monsters, I think.
 

They must have given it no save to prevent Spell Focus becoming overpowered again. ;)

IMHO only a very few offensive spells should have no save. A spell which requires a ranged touch attack roll is fine without a save, because there's still a chance to miss the target. A melee touch spell should always have a save (at least if it is potentially deadly), since you never really "miss" and waste the spell, you just lose time but not the spell.
 


Agamemnon said:
Nice to see that the WOTC rules team is still up to their working strength: two concussed gnats and a drunk monkey. Testing potential spells with PHB metamagic feats to determine brokenness ought to be a no-brainer, but apparently the monkey didn't feel up to it this time.

That's blatantly unfair.

To the drunk monkeys of this world.
 



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