D&D 3E/3.5 [3.0/3.5] Fire Shield

[Bauglir]

That's what I thought too, but then I saw it in action against a 20th-level drow cleric. That poor player would have suffered around 126 points of damage. I saw that and thought, "I have just _got_ to be reading this wrong."

That cleric was making at least 6 attacks per round. How much damage was he dealing?

 

[kreynolds]

That cleric was making at least 6 attacks per round.

How do you figure?

 

[kreynolds]

And how much damage did the cleric suffer?

A lot. Enough to kill her with the last hit.

Fire shield is balanced because usually the caster takes more damage per hit than the attacker.

It ended up being about the same, actually. I'm not actually worried about the balance of the spell though. It's just how it went down was the problem.

 

[Bauglir]

How do you figure?

Assuming max damage every time (15 + 6 = 21)

21 * 6 = 126

That poor player would have suffered around 126 points of damage.

 

[kreynolds]

Assuming max damage every time (15 + 6 = 21)

21 * 6 = 126

You've got it backwards. The cleric wasn't the player doing the hitting. The cleric was the one with Fire Shield on them.

 

[Camarath]

You've got it backwards. The cleric wasn't the player doing the hitting. The cleric was the one with Fire Shield on them.

So it was a cleric with the Fire domain. (Cleric could have also had the sun domain but that seems odd for a drow.)

 

[Bauglir]

Ah right - I misread "..in action against a .." to mean that the cleric was suffering the effects.

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

I just recently ran a 3.0 adventure where a monster had the half-fire elemental template from MoP. The fire shield ability tore the party's monk up. There was a brief argument over whether the spell caused you to take damage because you were getting close enough to strike, or because you were actually hitting. His argument was that the monk's fighting style would lend itself to staying very close and hitting with every attack, therefore only provoking the damage once. Still, I ruled that the spell indicates it's on every melee strike. At least they've capped the damage, for what it's worth. 3.0 fire shield has no limit on the damage per caster level.

 

[Plane Sailing]

My sorcerer intends to attempt empowering fire shield as soon as she gets the chance. It would probably have an excellent synergy with stoneskin

 

[Plane Sailing]

It didn't happen like that though. Here's how it went...

1) I looked at the spell, and at this point, it hadn't even crossed my mind that it might deal the damage with each successful strike.
2) Player performed full attack action.
...

Actually, it says in the rules that you can take your first attack and after seeing what happens there decide to turn it into a full attack or take a MEA instead... so the fighter wasn't committed to the full attack until he rolled that dice a second time - at which point he only had himself to blame!

Cheers