pious templar mettle

[direcow]

Under the pious templar PrC, the templar gets the "mettle" ability, which allows him to take no damage if he makes a save against a spell that allows partial damage on a will or fortitude save. I guess the ability is somewhat like the rogue's evasion. However, I can't seem to find any spells that would apply to this ability. Does anyone know of any? How usuful is this "mettle"

 

[DanMcS]

Not terriffically useful, definitely not as often as evasion, but one example is horrid wilting (fortitude half).

 

[rowport]

Truthfully, while Mettle *sounds* very cool, it is essentially useless- or at least, comes into play exceptionally rarely.

I have played through three levels with a Pious Templar/Hammer of Moradin and Mettle has not come into play *even once*. I sure have failed a lot of Reflex saves, though...

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Spells that are Fortitude: Partial
Chill Touch
Cloudkill
Destruction
Disintegrate
Finger of Death
Phantasmal Killer
Prismatic Spray
Prismatic Wall
Ray of Exhaustion
Shout
Shout, Greater
Slay Living
Sound Burst

Spells that are Will: Partial
Cause Fear
Chaos Hammer
Fear
Inflict spells
Harm
Holy Smite
Order's Wrath
Scare
Unholy Blight

Granted, some of these spells list other effects aside from hit point loss, and may not be subject to Mettle depending on the DM's adjudication. Still, it's a fair number of spells. Mettle is not as useful as Evasion, certainly, but I wouldn't call it useless. It really starts to shine at mid- to high-levels, when 12th-level clerics and wizzies start appearing as minions and you start seeing the Fingers of Death, Disintegrates, and Chaos Hammers more frequently.

Edit: Added in Inflict spells and Harm. Didn't catch 'em because I was searching for "Will Partial" and missed "Will Half"

 

[molonel]

Mettle wasn't a very useful ability when it was introduced as an ability for the Templar in the 3.0 splat book Defenders of the Faith: A Guidebook to Clerics and Paladins.

It will never be as useful as Evasion.

However, under 3.5 rules, it is slightly MORE useful because all Inflict spells (which evil clerics can spontaneously cast) and Harm are both Save: Will Partial.

Even HALF damage on a Harm spell sucks. Being able to shrug that off as a melee combatant is kind of cool.

 

[Abstraction]

I thought the ability of Mettle allowed you to ignore any partial effect of a Will or Fort save, not just damage.

 

[Khaalis]

I thought the ability of Mettle allowed you to ignore any partial effect of a Will or Fort save, not just damage.

Correct.

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 ignores the effect.

Examples:
Disintegrate: Take no damage on successful save rather than 5d6.
Ray of Exhaustion: Suffer no ill effect instead of becoming Fatigued.
Fear: Suffer no ill effect instead of becoming Shaken.
etc.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

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 ignores the effect.

Excellent. I didn't have the text for Mettle in front of me, so I wasn't sure if it specified hit point damage or not. In this case, all the spells I listed can be affected by Mettle.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

More classes need to give out Mettle.