Take that Vance!

[Lela]

Improved Mage Bolt [General, Exclusive]
You can use stored up magical energy to make your mage bolts more potent.

Prerequisites: Mage Bolt

Benefit: The magical energy you have stored for spells makes your bolts stronger. As long as you have prepared spells or spell slots left you gain a bonus to damage equal to the highest level slot or spell you have remaining. So if sorcerer's highest level unused slot is 5th level, his bolts gain a +5 to damage.


This was designed to allow more powerful magic users to do more with their mage bolts but it also reflects the dimishing power as they cast spells.

What do you think?

Thought I'd seperate my comments. Hope no one minds.


I think this is an exellent idea. It allows more powerful characters to inhance this aspect of their magic. While a 12th level character might revert to using his sling again (it's now a +3 weapon), this would allow a character to do more damage (up to +6) with close to the same attack roll.

Most importantly, this entire idea would loose power when the Sorceror got stronger (higher levels) because of the sudden availibility of magic weapons. Being that the origanal feat was designed to reflect the connection to the magical world, not using it at higher levels would lesson the effect.

Plus, this would force a character to consider another option when deciding what to do in battle (do I loose that 6th lvl spell or not?). Which I love doing. Make a player think and you might actually get them to role-play. A delema can often be solved with "What would my character do?" After they develop a sense of what their character would do in combat, they start to branch out to everyday situations. It's fun to watch a good roll-player blossom into an equally good role-player.

 

[DreamChaser]

thanks Lela. Good comments. I'm still waffeling on the cost factor but we'll see. I'm glad you like the idea of the feat.

Anybody else? I like to hear pretty broad comments before I make a final decision. Anyone else following this thread?

 

[Lela]

thanks Lela. Good comments. I'm still waffeling on the cost factor but we'll see. I'm glad you like the idea of the feat.

Anybody else? I like to hear pretty broad comments before I make a final decision. Anyone else following this thread?

I would hope that widderslainte is, as he started it.

 

[Soltares]

I'm partial to a lower cost myself.

The point of this is to replace the 'sling' fallback with something more wizardy, and if it costs 10x as much, and provides no benefits at all, compared to a sling, then it isn't really worth burning a Feat on. (even a free one!)

I like the suggestion of making it something a Wizard can burn his free Feats on, and making it essentially a free class ability for Sorcerers.

One DM allowed all Wizards to use magic offensively or defensively, either producing 1 'magic blast' (that did 1 hp of damage / level) or invoking a 'shield' effect for a single round. He could only 'invoke magic' one / level / day (either as the bolt or the shield). This was a tad overpowered, IMO, but made for interesting flavor in that setting, and we'd just gotten done reading and loving Feists Magician, so we were a little gung-ho on Wizards throwing magic around.

So a 9th level Wizard would shoot a ray up to nine times a day that did 9 hp of damage (save allowed for half damage). Basically, nine times a day he could blow an orc out of its boots.

 

[Lela]

I'm partial to a lower cost myself.

The point of this is to replace the 'sling' fallback with something more wizardy, and if it costs 10x as much, and provides no benefits at all, compared to a sling, then it isn't really worth burning a Feat on. (even a free one!)

I like the suggestion of making it something a Wizard can burn his free Feats on, and making it essentially a free class ability for Sorcerers.

One DM allowed all Wizards to use magic offensively or defensively, either producing 1 'magic blast' (that did 1 hp of damage / level) or invoking a 'shield' effect for a single round. He could only 'invoke magic' one / level / day (either as the bolt or the shield). This was a tad overpowered, IMO, but made for interesting flavor in that setting, and we'd just gotten done reading and loving Feists Magician, so we were a little gung-ho on Wizards throwing magic around.

So a 9th level Wizard would shoot a ray up to nine times a day that did 9 hp of damage (save allowed for half damage). Basically, nine times a day he could blow an orc out of its boots.

How often did you actually face an orc at 9th level? I mean one with so few HP.

 

[widderslainte]

I'm still here. All the board switching and wonky dates threw me off the scent momentarily.

- Cost: I enjoy keeping characters poor, but I hadn't really thought about this initially. I've never been stingy with the slingstones though.

- Crystal Focus: I *love* Dreamchaser's idea in this regard, and I may expand it for other material component type uses. I love the idea of little, vaguely magical trinkets hanging off the wizards.

- Increasing power over level: I could see this as an equivalent to the Monk's Open Hand damage. But I might make it a separate feat - certainly if I give the power away for free. Does kind of fit the sorceror. Maybe I should write an Alt.Sorceror.

Of course, even in my "normal" games, I'd ditch the sorceror and spell preparation rules altogether, but that's a different thread.