Weakening Touch and Escalating Enfeeblement

[gnfnrf]

In the game I currently run, the PC monk and wizard have started using this combo at every opportunity.

Weakening Touch, from Complete Warrior, is an alternate Stunning Fist effect that deals no damage but imposes at -6 penalty to Strength with no save.

Escalating Enfeeblement is from Complete Mage, and functions as Ray of Enfeeblement but has a greater effect (1d10+) against creatures who have suffered a penalty to strength already.

This combines to reduce powerful foes to almost no strength very quickly. It hasn't quite become broken yet, but it is getting close.

1.) Is there anything I am missing about the rules as written about this situation?
2.) Is the combination actually too powerful?
3.) Is there some way to mitigate these effects without tailoring encounters too aggressively, or completely nerfing the concept?

--
gnfnrf

 

[eamon]

Looks to me like it's valid - they are two different penalty sources, so they should stack, weakening touch doesn't deal damage to offset its powerful effect, and it costs the mage an action and he needs to make a melee touch attack.

Frankly, I find Ray of enfeeblement too powerful as-is anyhow, and can imagine that this is nasty.

You can circumvent it by using lesser restoration which completely dispels all such penalties. You make it useless by using creatures immune to critical hits (which are also immune to stunning fist and thus weaking touch) such as constructs, swarms, oozes, plants, undead, incorporeal creatures, and elementals. Constructs and Undead are further immune to ability drain/damage (and I'm pretty sure this means ability penalties too, but do correct me if I'm mistaken).

For the monk this won't be such an issue, but the wizard needs to get quite close to pull this off, since the range of ray of enfeeblement is just Close (25ft +5/2levels), which can get quite dangerous.

And of course a simple but effective work-around is to use multiple creatures, not a single large threat. Lesser Restoration does have a casting time of 3 rounds, so you'll want it in potions.

But realize, you have 2 PC's spending two actions which deal no damage - the penalty better be hefty, else there's no reason to use it. Nevertheless, I somewhat nerfed ray of enf in my game, it's just too good. Just wait until they discover you can empower it for a measly 2 spell levels - sure its a 4th level slot, but at 10th caster level that then means you deal almost 16 STR penalty on average! thats.... SICK!
And it even stacks with weakening touch, for an average 22 Str Penalty.
Throw a ray of exhaustion after it, and you're at 28 Str penalty... brrr....


Anyways, if anyone knows a solution, I'm interested too. (incidentally, my nerf was -4 str penalty at first level and a further -2 for each 5 levels, meaning you can't empower it.)