Cloud of Bewilderment (SC) - Too strong for a 2nd level spell?

[Olaf the Stout]

A little of the latter, and a lot of bad luck on your saving throws. It doesn't seem too powerful to me.

Poor rolling on saving throws has probably come into it a little. In all 3 cases I didn't roll particularly well for the saving throw. Having said that, the DC isn't too easy. The PC has an 18 Int (we used 30 point buy for character creation) so it is a DC 16 saving throw. That's probably a 50/50 or worse chance of succeeding for most creatures facing a 3rd-level party.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Aidan Milvus]

Well, at lower levels, yes it is a very powerful spell. I played a bard with it, a friend of mine in another campaign played a conjurer with it. But after 5-6th lvl, we really didn't see it all that often. Of course, we didn't have that particular feat combo for either of our characters, but still.

Honestly, the guy spent three feats to get that combo off.

I was curious about how you handled the Grell situation... He couldn't move because of grappling, so he'd have 20% concealment because of being in the CoB, correct? And shooting into a grapple means they had an even chance of hitting their companion as they did the Grell... Doesn't seem like it would have been that big of an encounter breaker...

 

[moritheil]

... so you say it's balanced based on comparing it to what is arguably one of the strongest spells of it's level in Core?

Yes, well, I didn't argue that it was not "strong" just that it was not "broken" or "too powerful" (the OP's wording.) Another poster has a relevant comment with a slightly different stance that I feel is reasonable:

You're allowing SpC spells, and feats from Complete Mage. A certain level of brokenness should be expected.

Mind you, a Blinded character can take a full attack against an opponent (with a 50% miss chance, so it's not a very effective attack, but it's still an attack), cast escape spells (teleport, Dimension Door, anything not requiring line of sight), cast offensive spells (area ones, anyway), cast a "fix it" spell (like Dispel Magic, or Cure Blindness) on themselves, and so on. A Nauseous character can't. Nauseous is the worse status condition. By a lot.

Of course blindness and nausea are not identical, but they are in many respects comparable in terms of quality as debuffs. Certainly nausea has its own issues, but blindness enables sneak attack, which I feel is quite potent at low levels. There are also very few ways of getting around blindness at level 3 - I don't think dimension dooring, etc. are real issues. Low-level opponents firing area spells into combat blindly (with a high potential for hitting their own frontliners) is also not something I perceive to be a terribly worrisome prospect in most cases. A full attack is fine, but you need to ascertain which square to full attack.

I guess I'm just not seeing eye to eye on the assertion that nausea is significantly more powerful than blindness. I can see situations where one would be better than the other for each.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Well, at lower levels, yes it is a very powerful spell. I played a bard with it, a friend of mine in another campaign played a conjurer with it. But after 5-6th lvl, we really didn't see it all that often. Of course, we didn't have that particular feat combo for either of our characters, but still.

Honestly, the guy spent three feats to get that combo off.

I was curious about how you handled the Grell situation... He couldn't move because of grappling, so he'd have 20% concealment because of being in the CoB, correct? And shooting into a grapple means they had an even chance of hitting their companion as they did the Grell... Doesn't seem like it would have been that big of an encounter breaker...

Yeah, I understand my player spent 3 feats to be able to cast a sculpted spell at no level cost. However, even without the spell being sculpted it still seems quite powerful. At least it has compared to other 2nd level spells I've seen.

As for the Grell situation, the combat happened in an area with a couple of balconies. The Grell had carried a PC off into the air but he was still within melee reach of an enlarged PC on the balcony. Enlarged PC's with Greatswords hurt when they hit.

From memory one of the other PC's used a crossbow, risking the chance that he would hit his ally. He managed to get 2 hits on the Grell and none on the grappled PC. I think I forgot that the spell granted a 20% miss chance though.

Between them they got a couple of hits on the Grell before the other PC finally escaped the grapple. The Grell did manage to drop down next to the newly escaped PC but he was killed before he could do any more damage.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Of course blindness and nausea are not identical, but they are in many respects comparable in terms of quality as debuffs. Certainly nausea has its own issues, but blindness enables sneak attack, which I feel is quite potent at low levels. There are also very few ways of getting around blindness at level 3 - I don't think dimension dooring, etc. are real issues. Low-level opponents firing area spells into combat blindly (with a high potential for hitting their own frontliners) is also not something I perceive to be a terribly worrisome prospect in most cases. A full attack is fine, but you need to ascertain which square to full attack.

I guess I'm just not seeing eye to eye on the assertion that nausea is significantly more powerful than blindness. I can see situations where one would be better than the other for each.

One big difference I see is that you can still attack (albeit with a 50% miss chance) while blinded. A nauseated PC can't deal any damage to his opponent, but a blinded one still can.

Also, a blinded PC can choose not to attack and use the Total Defense action to increase his AC until the Glitterdust spell expires.

I think that those 2 options make nausea more powerful than blindness.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Infiniti2000]

Note: In case you're wondering how the PC is using Sculpt Spell on a 2nd level spell when he is only 3rd level, here's how. He has taken a feat from Complete Mage called Metamagic School Focus. It reduces the spell level cost of Metamagic feats of a chosen school by 1 level. He can do this for up to 3 spells per day. Sculpt Spell is only a +1 level adjustment so Metamagic School Focus makes it a +0 level adjustment.

So, he's obviously a human metamagic specialist variant sorcerer with spell focus (conj), metamagic school, and sculpt spell. Sculpt spell leads to some wonkiness, so make sure you realize the range doesn't change. Feats/effects that reduce metamagic penalties are really just badly design; although that could simply be a carry over from the fact that metamagic is badly designed to begin with. But, as soon as you start mucking with it via splat books all bets are off. However, if you actually allow it then that means that the price of a feat is equal to the cost of reducing any three spells of the caster's choice by one level and allowing him to cast spells at a higher level than he otherwise could (this is the normal complaint about divine metamagic). For this, I point you to the errata on the FRCS with regards to the incantatrix. Unfortunately, and very much so, WotC did not carry this very nice errata through all of its billion source books to curb similar such abuses. My suggestion is to flat ban it, as otherwise you will be wanting to write a whole bunch of new posts just like this one, but with different spells.

One side comment, that grell should've gotten to as high an altitude as possible. The maximum range of the effect (not just the origin) is 30ft (although I'm not suggesting you metagame or anything, I am just pointing out the range of its effect here).

 

[Olaf the Stout]

So, he's obviously a human metamagic specialist variant sorcerer with spell focus (conj), metamagic school, and sculpt spell. Sculpt spell leads to some wonkiness, so make sure you realize the range doesn't change. Feats/effects that reduce metamagic penalties are really just badly design; although that could simply be a carry over from the fact that metamagic is badly designed to begin with. But, as soon as you start mucking with it via splat books all bets are off. However, if you actually allow it then that means that the price of a feat is equal to the cost of reducing any three spells of the caster's choice by one level and allowing him to cast spells at a higher level than he otherwise could (this is the normal complaint about divine metamagic). For this, I point you to the errata on the FRCS with regards to the incantatrix. Unfortunately, and very much so, WotC did not carry this very nice errata through all of its billion source books to curb similar such abuses. My suggestion is to flat ban it, as otherwise you will be wanting to write a whole bunch of new posts just like this one, but with different spells.

One side comment, that grell should've gotten to as high an altitude as possible. The maximum range of the effect (not just the origin) is 30ft (although I'm not suggesting you metagame or anything, I am just pointing out the range of its effect here).

Close. He's a Human Conjurer. I don't think that he has Spell Focus (Conj) yet but he did take the Focused Specialist alternate class feature (Complete Mage). What that does is you choose another banned school (for a total of 3 overall, 2 due to being a specialist wizard already) and give up a spell slot each level. In return you get 2 spell slots per level of your specialist school.

So now can cast 2 more spells per spell level per day than a general Wizard. Offsetting this is the fact that he has 3 prohibited schools and at most of the spells he prepares per day will have to be Conjuration spells.

I think his feats are Sculpt Spell, Extend Spell and Metamagic School Focus. He took a flaw (Non-Combatant) to get an extra feat.

I've had a look at the errata regarding the Incantatrix (the errata is from the PgtF). That's an interesting errata but I think it is a fair one. Here it the errata in question for anyone that may be interested:

[sblock=Incantatrix] Page 63: Incantatrix Prestige Class
Please add the following sentence to the end of the Instant Metamagic class feature description: The incantatrix cannot use this ability if the metamagicked spell would normally use a spell slot of a higher level than she can cast.[/sblock]

I might let my player know that I'll be using that ruling from now on. He probably won't be too happy about it since it nerfs his character a little bit but I think he'll deal with it. It will just mean he will only be able to cast Sculpt Spell on spells 1 level lower than the highest level spell he knows.

Unfortunately for the Grell, the Conjurer cast the spell as soon as the other PC was grappled so he didn't have a chance fly beyond the range of the spell. And I am aware of that Sculpt Spell doesn't allow spells to go beyond their usual range. After I saw he had taken Sculpt Spell for his character I immediately checked the rules forum to see what posts had been made about it. The range issue seemed to be one that people sometimes overlooked.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Chu Li]

there's a problem with blindness and total defense. you get a dodge bonus to AC from total defense, which you lose, courtesy to being flat-footed, unless you happen to have uncanny dodge

Chu Li

 

[roguerouge]

I had thought that you couldn't reduce a metamagic spell cost to below +1.

 

[Folly]

In the comparison of blind and nauseated, the spells should be compared and not the debuff. Nauseated is probably a better debuff, but the spells work differently. Glitterdust has a longer duration and effectively follows the targets (a person can step out of a CoD, but a person affected by Glitterdust has to wait out the duration). Further the secondary affects of the spells favor Glitterdust. I believe this since I consider the mitigation of invisibility to be better than a small fog affect. I chalk this up to some poor rolls and a few favorable situations.