D&D 3.x [3.5] They didn't fix SR

[Steverooo]

Orbs of the Magi

These small, palm-sized crystal spheres are a powerful boon to Wizards, Sorcerers, and Bards. When held in either hand, it allows the arcane caster to add 1.5x his/her caster level for the purposes of SR penetration, only.

 

[Sinjin the Rogue]

SR

"The spellcaster has plenty of control over his affect on a creature's SR....he takes a specific feat, casts a spell that is unaffected by SR or chooses a higher level spell."

Discounting non-core material, there are two feats that will allow a caster to increase the possibility of defeating SR: Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration. The most a caster can hope to improve his/her chance is +4, by taking both feats. At high level (16-20) a caster can expect to face enemies with SR in the lo to mid 30's. A 16th level caster, with both feats, against a creature with a 33 SR has a 60 percent chance of failing. Without one feat, the chance of failure is 70 percent and without both feats, the chance of failure is 80 percent. You may argue that many creatures with SR will be in the SR 25 range, but a funny little thing about published adventures, which most DM's use, is that just when a caster gets to a level where he/she can start affecting creatures with SR's in the mid 20's, the creatures in the modules rise to 30-35. A 60-80 percent chance of failure does not give a caster a lot of control. Even if the spell gets off, most spells allow for a saving throw which negate or significantly reduce the spell effect.

I've seen a few people recommend that spells that don't allow for SR be used. There really aren't a whole lot of options. Dispel magic, greater dispelling and maze are about it. Maze just gives the group some time to heal or buff or escape, before the enemy returns. (It is a great spell though)

Choosing a higher spell level has absolutely no affect on SR. Defeating SR is based on the caster's level. Whether a caster casts a first level sleep spell or a 9th level meteor swarm makes no difference.

The designers of 3.0 and 3.5 compare SR to AC. If that's true, why doesn't a caster's primary ability bonus affect his/her ability to defeat SR?

If you take a 15th level fighter, with a 20 strength and a couple of fighter feats and a +3 weapon, the BAB for the fighter is at least 24/19/14, if not higher. Against an AC of 25, the fighter will hit 95%/75%/45%. And if he/she misses, the fighter doesn't lose his/her weapon.

A 15th level caster against a creature with an SR of 25 has a 50% chance of landing a spell, unless he/she has spell penetration, which giver him/her a 60% chance of success, and greater spell penetration gives him/her a 70% chance of success. Note, unless the particular spell is quickened, the caster gets only one spell per round, as opposed to the fighter's 3 attacks per round. If the spell succeeds, the saving throw might negate the effect, or reduce the effects by half. If the caster misses the SR roll, the spell is lost, unlike the fighter's weapon.

A nice fix to the SR system would be to allow a caster to add his/her primary ability bonus to the SR roll.

 

[allenw]

Sinjin,
Check out the link Nikolai posted two messages previously. Looks like there's now a lot more no-SR spells...

 

[Pax]

However, it doesn't look like SR's changed at all from 3.0 to 3.5. I still maintain that SR is a poorly thought-out concept, and consideration should have been given to revising it in 3.5. Why is it a poorly thought-out concept? Because it is a simple "roll to succeed" concept (like most in D&D) but there is no way for characters to affect the roll - with the obvious exception of two feats (Spell Penetration, Greater Spell Penetration).

Um, only two?

Spell Power (gained from prestige classes Archmage and Red Wizard in 3.5 DMG; from converted/adapted Prestige Class Shadow Adept in FRCS). As I recall, the ability no longer adds to spell DCs, but adds to effective caster elvel for all purposes ... including penetrating SR.

Tattoo Focus (regional feat from FRCS); adds +1 to all spell DCs in your specialised school (only specialist wizards can take this feat); adds +1 to SR penetration checks.

Spell Thematics (feat from MoF, and per the Errata'd text); your caster level is increased by +1 for one spell per spell-level; this would affect SR penetration as well.

Fortify Spell (metamagic from Unapproachable East); for each +1 level applied to the cost of preparing/casting the spell, you gain a +2 bonus to penetrate SR (the bonus stacks with itself and all others).

Shadow Weave Magic (feat from FRCS) and it's dependant metamagicks; for Illusion, Necromancy, and Enchantment spells, it has a benefit similar to Tattoo Focus; for Transmutation and Evocation, it has the opposite (a penalty), and for all others, it's neutral.

2. There's always a way of getting around DR - get the right weapon.

Which may be far easier said than done.

Anyway, there's always a way around SR: pick the right spell; not all of them are even SUBJECT to SR.

6. The feats which assist in overcoming SR are limited in use - i.e. they only assist in overcoming SR. Spell casters have limited numbers of feats, and won't take ones which are useful only in a few circumstances. The feats which assist in overcoming DR are useful against creatures without DR. Fighters get lots of feats and are quite happy to invest in feats which have limited use anyway.

Gee, I dunno. Tattoo Focus is both a nice +1 to save DCs in yoru specialty school, and, a door-opener to the Red Wizard prestige class.

And Spell Thematics is just darned FUN -- not to mention, you will occasionally see other benefits than SR penetration (before you hit 10th level, your Fireball (if in the main theme) will do +1d6 damage, for example).

...

With that said, I have an Epic spellcaster in the Exodus arena -- Dhao Mavri, a Thayan shadow-weave enchanter. With an enchantment spell, I roll 1d20+47 to penetrate SR; that, at least, won't change in 3.5e (though his save DCs will plummet, argh). In essence, SR of less than 50 doesn't even make it onto my radar, let alone slow me down.

 

[Pax]

I say we just go back to old 2ed way of spell resistance

Spell Resistance 50%

There you go, roll a percentile, no modifiers, no nothing. A 2nd level wizard has the same chance to get a spell through as a 20th level wizard.

Not exactly correct. In 1E and 2E, Magic Resistance 50% was the number in effect against an 11th level spellcaster (and would correspond perfectly to SR21).

For every level above 11th, the Magic Resistance was lowered by 5%. For every level below 11th, it was increased by 5%.

Just like the 3E SR mechanic.

3E's SR is basically the same probability-system, expressed in a format that uses a single d20 roll, and is UTTERLY intuitive; you don't have to say "hmmm, I'm Xth level so the resistance is REALLY Y%, so my roll of Z means ..."

No, now you just roll, add your level, and tell the GM the best SR you can beat. They compare that result to the critter's SR, and say yes or no -- and that's it.

 

[Pax]

Re: I sort of Agree

Just my 2 cents, I can see where SR might need some sort of tweaking. I am currently running a group through City of the Spider Queen and the Drow SR has pretty much killed the Wizard and Sorceror in the group.

Oni No Snippage wanders through ...

I don't, however, know quite what to do to fix it. 2 of the characters have spell resistance also (13th level monk and the 14th level wizard, Robe of the Archmagi) so whatever I do also affects them as well.

The spellcasters should change theri tactics (be especially kind to the Sorceror), and select spells which don't allow SR to come into play. The sorceror should only need one or two of those per spell-level.

Good choices are Dispel Magic and Greater Dispelling; Wall of Force/Stone/Iron/Ice (portable favorable terrain is ALWAYS useful, and Wall of Ice is more likely to be anchorable underground than above); buffing spells like invisibility, improved invisibility, blindsight, and so on. Summon Monster spellsalso works; throw a couple big creatures into the front line laongside those fighters, and suddenly, fewer fighters will die -- and SR doesn't help you against a polar bear's claws.

Sit them down; have them reselect spells that can sidestep worries about SR -- either they don't allow it, or they simply don't target SR creatures (nor include them in the AoE).

Here's another good one: underground, Earthquake can LITERALLY bring the house down ... and SR helps against multi-ton cave-ins about as well as it works against polar bear claws. Which is to say, not at all.

 

[sithramir]

Yeah, but when the Wizard rolls 3 straight Natural 1's, there really isn't anything he can do about that. It fails.

My fighter rolled 3 natural 1's against an orc. His AC is waay tooo high. The attack/ac system must be broken.

Riiiight. Natural 1's work both ways. For saving throws, melee attacks, skills. Most things you roll 1's on are bad.

Nobody mentioned enervate. Good spell to hurt a monster that SR is useless against. It also lowers their SR since they lose levels and most monsters SR are based off their HD.

HOLY COW! All conjuration attack spells avoid SR now. Now theres no problem killing a SR monster! And golems now are only immune to spells that allow SR. IE thse conjuration spells will still whack em good. SR isn't broken, to the right wizard now its next to useless!

 

[nikolai]

Folks, this is all so 3e...

You're all completely ignoring the links that have been posted to FireLance's post, for the record here's it in full:

Originally posted by FireLance

[3.5e] Conjuration, Spell Resistance and Golems

I just noticed something cool about the Conjuration school in 3.5e: Almost all the offensive spells, e.g. Acid Splash, Glitterdust, Melf's Acid Arrow, Web, Stinking Cloud, Evard's Black Tentacles, Cloudkill, Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound, Acid Fog, Incendiary Cloud, etc. do not allow spell resistance. This makes sense - the magic is used to bring something damaging to the location, but the damaging creature or substance is not itself magical.

The Conjuration school has now become the school of choice for offensive spells against spell resistant opponents.

What's more, the Immunity to Magic special quality of golems states that the golem "is immune to any spell or spell-like ability that allows spell resistance". Since these Conjuration spells do not allow spell resistance, they affect golems too! Well, except for Stinking Cloud and Cloudkill, which won't affect constructs.

Link: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=57662.

There's a whole bunch of offensive spells which ignore SR. Golems have a >50% chance of being blinded by glitterdust, Melf's acid arrow burns anyone. This is a big change, if it's correct then having spells available which automatically bypass SR is going to be a big part of any 3.5e wizards repetoire.

nikolai.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I didn't know you could blind a construct ... oh well, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere works wonders!

I ran some 3.5 encounters last night - in CotSQ, but I'm sharply reducing the drow content of the module.

SR was only a problem if they were facing opponents with CR 3 or so points above their level ... and I used cornugons near the end because there were 6 party members (they were all 15th-level). Even so, high level spellcasters (the ones most likely to face SR) can choose their spells more wisely.
DR was only a problem if the players were facing opponents with CR 3 or so points above their level with loads of hit points.

 

[Henry]

Not exactly correct. In 1E and 2E, Magic Resistance 50% was the number in effect against an 11th level spellcaster (and would correspond perfectly to SR21).

For every level above 11th, the Magic Resistance was lowered by 5%. For every level below 11th, it was increased by 5%.

Just like the 3E SR mechanic.

Actually, this was true for 1st edition, but not true for 2nd edition. Rereading the Magic Resistance Entry in the 2E Monstrous Manual and the first couple of Monstrous Compendiums notes nothing about higher level casters reducing the chance.

I kind of liked that feature of 2nd edition, myself.

But it does make better sense with 3E, though.

At high level (16-20) a caster can expect to face enemies with SR in the lo to mid 30's. A 16th level caster, with both feats, against a creature with a 33 SR has a 60 percent chance of failing.

On the other hand, I thought I heard that most creatures' SR's in the revision were getting changed to CR+10 in most cases. Can anyone confirm this?