Belker Claws Spell?

[Ogrork the Mighty]

From the Spell Compendium (p.26), this looks like another broken and/or badly designed spell.

Deals 2d12 dam with a successful touch attack and the spell lasts up to 4 additional rounds, "dealing another 2d12 points of damage per round."

Is that automatic additional damage after the initial successful touch attack (meaning up to 10d12 damage over 5 rounds, no save!!!), or should it be the ability to make additional touch attacks over the additional rounds?

 

[Vegepygmy]

Is that automatic additional damage after the initial successful touch attack (meaning up to 10d12 damage over 5 rounds, no save!!!)

Yes.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Yet another broken spell then.

 

[Jebb_X]

The spell is powerful because of its limited use: living target only, which means that it is useless against anything of the construct or undead lineage, and it only deals 10d12 at 12th level, over 5 rounds, and only after a sucessful touch attack (which isn't that hard to get off).

I'm pretty sure that the intent of the spell was to deal damage to breathing creatures (which means that elementals and other creatures that "do not breathe" would have been excluded), but that isn't how the spell came out in the rules.

Personally, I don't much like the Spell Compendium. I find a large swath of its new "improved" spells tend to beat the cra... uhm, heck, out of PHB spells.

 

[udalrich]

Another drawback is that it takes 5 rounds for the full damage to occur. Quite often, the target is dead after a round or two, especially if other characters are also attacking it.

It also requires either another spell (Spectral Hand), meta magic feat (Reach Spell) or for the mage to get up close and personal with the target, since it looks like it requires a melee touch. (I don't have rulebooks with me at the moment.)

Assuming a normal melee touch attack and the slow delivery of damage, the wizard probably isn't going to drop the attack, and is likely to get hit himself.

 

[Darklone]

Assuming a normal melee touch attack and the slow delivery of damage, the wizard probably isn't going to drop the attack, and is likely to get hit himself.

That applies to any touch attack spells like Shocking Grasp, Chill Touch, Vampiric Touch etc... and none of them is that strong.

As a DM, I would pretty much tend to allow to hold your breath to delay the damage.