Balance For Irresistable Damage?

[Deset Gled]

Irresistable Damage
Conjuration [Creation]
Level: Sor/Wiz 4
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One creatureDuration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
You surround your target with deadly energy, dealing it _____.

A Conjuration: Creation spell must have an effect, not a target. Plus, you have also just created a object that can damage anything with a spell that leaves the object around after the initial casting. This spells is just as much of a hack job as the Orb spells, and will never get any kind of support from me.

Option 5.

 

[Nail]

... do you think D&D would be a better game with SR removed (and compensated for by lowering spell damage dice, of course).

No.

SR provides a valuable parameter to vary, which makes for interesting monsters. It also makes CL (or Manifester Level) something to be concerned with. More options, not fewer, is what makes the game fun....for me, anyway.

 

[Pyrex]

Damage dealing spells have several balancing factors. I am confident that if you remove all but one (the raw damage), problems of all sorts will develop.

The problem isn't so much that such a spell can't be intrinsically balanced, but rather that the designer can't necessarily take into account all the various metamagic feats and class abilities that might make said spell broken.

For example, if we assume the entire rules universe contains only the SRD, the following would probably be balanced:

[i]Irresistable Blast[/i]
Evocation 
Level: Sor/Wiz 7 
Components: V, S 
Casting Time: 1 standard action 
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels) 
Target:  1 creature plus 1 creature per 3 levels above 13th
Duration: Instantaneous 
Saving Throw: None 
Spell Resistance: No

You blast your enemies. You may target one creature plus a second creature 
at 16th level and a third creature at 19th level.  No creature may be targeted 
more than once.

As per Scorching Ray, add +1SL to change damage from Fire to Untyped, +2 levels (effectively doubling the damage) to remove the attack roll, +2 levels (effectively doubling the damage again) to remove the SR.

 

[KarinsDad]

The problem isn't so much that such a spell can't be intrinsically balanced, but rather that the designer can't necessarily take into account all the various metamagic feats and class abilities that might make said spell broken.

Actually, I tend to disagree with this.

There are certain "norms" that most spells follow and when designing feats, the designers should take those norms plus the synergy of other feats into account.

In the case of the Orb spells, the designers ignored those norms and designed a spell that was better than Scorching Ray for example.

Until the Orb spells came out, Scorching Ray was the de facto standard for most effective ranged touch attack energy spells. Because of metamagic, there have been discussions on whether Scorching Ray was two powerful. Suddenly, Scorching Ray became semi-obsolete because Orbs had several things that Scorching Ray did not have:

Pro:

1) They took away the SR (which allows the Orbs to affect Golems and other SR creatures with impunity).
2) They added a secondary one round effect with a saving throw.
3) They increased the damage cap.
4) They changed the school of magic such that one interpretation of the Orbs allows them to pass through Antimagic Field.

Con:

5) They had the Orbs fire one more powerful missile instead of three lesser ones.
6) Orbs are 4th level spells instead of 2nd level spells.


In the Evocation school, the main advantage higher level spells tend to get is the increase in damage cap. Nothing else. For example, Chain Lightning gains increased damage cap and selective target at the cost of less damage for secondary targets when compared to Fireball.

Con #5 here is not much when compared to Pros #1, #2, and #4.

So, I think the designers ignored the "norms" in this case and totally foobared and that is why the Orbs are not balanced, not because of metamagic feats. IMO.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Psst...Con #5 is actually a significant Pro! Less Energy Resistance

 

[IanB]

Psst...Con #5 is actually a significant Pro! Less Energy Resistance

Well, unless you want to zap 3 different guys, are dealing with someone who has a miss chance from concealment, or a number of other different reasons why you might want more rays.

Call it a wash.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Well, unless you want to zap 3 different guys, are dealing with someone who has a miss chance from concealment, or a number of other different reasons why you might want more rays.

Call it a wash.

With concealment or any other miss chance (including just plain normal chance to miss the AC), there is no advantage between the two of them in average damage--good chance to do small damage (7/8 to do at least 4d6, but only 1/8 to do 12d6) versus decent chance of doing major damage (50% to do 12d6) is a wash. As to zapping three different guys, since your damage becomes so small to each target, that is usually less of an issue than Energy Resistance applies each time, at least unless you're fighting mooks who would be slain by less than a full Scorching Ray, in which case you shouldn't even be using that spell--AoE is better. The strategy of shooting all of them at the same guy is optimal unless the guy is so weak that he would die with less than all of them, since dropping one opponent is much much better than injuring three.

 

[KarinsDad]

As to zapping three different guys, since your damage becomes so small to each target, that is usually less of an issue than Energy Resistance applies each time, at least unless you're fighting mooks who would be slain by less than a full Scorching Ray, in which case you shouldn't even be using that spell--AoE is better. The strategy of shooting all of them at the same guy is optimal unless the guy is so weak that he would die with less than all of them, since dropping one opponent is much much better than injuring three.

I was actually thinking of the zap 3 guys Cons, but you are correct on the Energy Resistance issue. So:

Pro:

1) They took away the SR (which allows the Orbs to affect Golems and other SR creatures with impunity).
2) They added a secondary one round effect with a saving throw.
3) They increased the damage cap.
4) They changed the school of magic such that one interpretation of the Orbs allows them to pass through Antimagic Field.
5) They combined the three ray attacks into one attack so that it blows through Energy Resistance better.

Con:

6) Since, the Orbs fire one more powerful missile instead of three lesser ones, 3 weaker targets cannot be targeted instead.
7) Orbs are 4th level spells instead of 2nd level spells.

7 is a wash with 3, but I think that 5 is a slightly stronger Pro than 6 is a Con.

It basically comes down to 1, 2, and 4 (with a little bit of 5 thrown in since most opponents do not have Energy Resistance).

 

[FireLance]

Here's a question, though. With all the complaining I've heard about SR and energy damage - especially of late, do you think D&D would be a better game with SR removed (and compensated for by lowering spell damage dice, of course). People could still have energy protection/resistance. But would the game be better had SR never been introduced?

I think this deserves its own thread so that it can be discussed more fully, but I'll give my answer here (and if you start another thread, I'll post it there, too).

I think high-level D&D is balanced on the assumption that spellcasters will encounter opponents with significant SR fairly often (as many as 50% of encounters). What I would like to do is to remove SR as a balancing factor at high levels. This could be done in a number of ways - tinkering with the spells, metamagic feats, spellcasters, etc.

I would like to retain the concept of SR, but have it come up less often. This could be done by restricting the number of creatures that have SR, or by making SR a template, a monster feat or an alternate special ability (reducing AC or DR for creatures that have it, or replacing some other defence). This has the added benefit of being able to tailor the monsters better to the PCs. A party that is mostly composed of fighting types is going to largely ignore SR anyway, so a creature ought to have better meaningful defences to be worth its CR.

Essentially, I want SR to be an occasional speed bump that comes up once in a while to make encounters interesting for the spellcasters. I don't want it to come up too often or reduce the spellcasters' effectiveness too much.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Essentially, I want SR to be an occasional speed bump that comes up once in a while to make encounters interesting for the spellcasters. I don't want it to come up too often or reduce the spellcasters' effectiveness too much.

That's an interesting take on it. I thought most people thought that casters were already overpowered compared to non-casters, right?