Orb spells and Mettle

I just noticed a very strange and illogical intersection of rules, and I wanted to clarify that I'm interpreting these correctly.

Complete Arcane said:

ORB OF ACID, LESSER
Conjuration (Creation) [Acid]
[...]
Saving Throw: None

An orb of acid about 2 inches across shoots from your palm at its target, dealing 1d8 points of acid damage. You must succeed on a ranged touch attack to hit your target.

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Lesser Orb of Acid hits on a ranged touch attack. There's no saving throw to reduce or negate the damage. Possibly overpowered, but makes sense.

Complete Arcane said:

ORB OF ACID
Conjuration (Creation) [Acid]
[...]
Saving Throw: Fortitude partial

An orb of acid about 3 inches across shoots from your palm at its target, dealing 1d6 points of acid damage per caster level (maximum 15d6). You must succeed on a ranged touch attack to hit your target.
A creature struck by the orb takes damage and becomes sickened by the acid’s noxious fumes for 1 round. A successful Fortitude save negates the sickened effect but does not reduce the damage.

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Orb of Acid also hits on a ranged touch attack. It allows a Fort save to negate the secondary effect, but not the damage. This still makes sense.

Now let's look at the Hexblade's special ability Mettle.

Complete Warrior said:

Mettle (Ex): At 3rd level and higher, a hexblade can resist magical and unusual attacks with great willpower or fortitude. If he makes a successful Will or Fortitude save against an attack that normally would have a lesser effect on a successful save (such as any spell with a saving throw entry of Will half or Fortitude partial), he instead completely negates the effect...

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Lesser Orb of Acid doesn't allow any save at all. Mettle doesn't do anything here.

However, Orb of Acid has a save entry of "Fort partial." Therefore, if I'm reading this right, a 3rd-level hexblade who makes his Fort save against the orb's secondary effect negates the damage.

Is this an accurate reading of the situation? It's ridiculous to me that the hexblade could negate the 4th-level spell but not the 1st-level one. Does the stipulation in Orb of Acid's last sentence override Mettle? Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

Yes, you are correct.

No the last sentence of Orb of Acid does not override the text of mettle any more than the text of fireball overrides the text of evasion. In both cases, it's the other way around.

And yes it does seem a bit silly, but mettle itself is somewhat silly, because the spells it applies to are wild and varied.

This is where we always get bogged down in defining specific terms, but what the heck...

Note that the description of Mettle says it negates the "effect", not the entire spell or attack. The orb spell has two effects - direct damage, which has no save, and sickened, which is negated by a successful save. One could read Mettle to only apply to the effect which can be affected by the save, sickened, which is negated anyway. The damage would still apply.

This is different from disintegrate, which has one effect (disintegration) which can be partially nullified by a save (disintegration becomes damage). In this case, clearly Mettle would negate the damage.

In the end, this is vague enough that reasonable people will disagree about the interpretation. So choose the one that you think makes most sense for your group.

Mettle (Ex): At 3rd level and higher, a hexblade can resist magical and unusual attacks with great willpower or fortitude. If he makes a successful Will or Fortitude save against an attack that normally would have a lesser effect on a successful save (such as any spell with a saving throw entry of Will half or Fortitude partial), he instead completely negates the effect...

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The Orb spell is "an attack" that would have a "lesser effect" (damage only, as opposed to damage + something else) on a successful Fort save. A character with Mettle that passes his save completely ignores an Orb spell.

Klaus said:

The Orb spell is "an attack" that would have a "lesser effect" (damage only, as opposed to damage + something else) on a successful Fort save. A character with Mettle that passes his save completely ignores an Orb spell.

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So if the hexblade saves against glitterdust, nothing is outlined by the glitter?
And if he saves against the damage from incendiary cloud, the spell doesn't create a fog cloud-like effect?
And if he saves against Otiluke's Freezing Sphere, the spell doesn't cause water in its area of effect to freeze?

I can see both readings, and won't tell anyone that the broader interpretation is definitely wrong. But since the broader interpretation leads to some (IMO) silly situations, I wouldn't rule it that way.

There are so few things that Mettle actually realistically helps with, that I don't mind giving it a bit more power by applying it to things that have a secondary effect as negating the entire spell. It wouldn't be overpowered, and it still won't come up nearly as often as Evasion.

Mistwell said:

There are so few things that Mettle actually realistically helps with, that I don't mind giving it a bit more power by applying it to things that have a secondary effect as negating the entire spell. It wouldn't be overpowered, and it still won't come up nearly as often as Evasion.

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Good point - I missed the fact that it doesn't apply to reflex saves, which excludes quite a lot of common spells.

A successful Fortitude save negates the sickened effect but does not reduce the damage.

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If a character with Mettle makes his save, he still takes the damage. There is no way to prevent the damage from an Orb spell, thus the save does not apply. A character with Mettle is no different than a regular character there.

nute said:

If a character with Mettle makes his save, he still takes the damage. There is no way to prevent the damage from an Orb spell, thus the save does not apply. A character with Mettle is no different than a regular character there.

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Orb of Acid is "any spell with a saving throw entry of Fortitude Partial".

If he makes the Fortitude save against the attack, instead of the attack having a lesser effect, he negates the effect.

The 'lesser effect' the Orb of Acid has on a successful save is that it deals damage. Mettle negates that effect.

-Hyp.

There is no way to prevent the damage from an Orb spell, thus the save does not apply.

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That statement is completely backward, unless you can find a solid, non-conditional reason for claiming that nothing can prevent an Orb spell's damage.

I like Klaus' reading of the Mettle ability, because it makes the ability actually useful. Andre, however, brings up a good point about other spells with multiple effects that logically should not be negated. I would draw the line at effects that act specifically upon the target. An incendiary cloud would not affect the target with Mettle who made his save, but it would still produce a cloud that the target's allies and enemies would have to contend with. Because the cloud is still there, it would still provide concealment, and it would still affect the other characters and creatures in its area of effect.

I have no more justification for this interpretation than the RAW description of Mettle already provided here, with a dash of personal bias.