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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SpadeHammerfist" data-source="post: 1539710" data-attributes="member: 15358">Gosh!What have I started here...However, I do think that perhaps we have strayed a bit off what my original point was......err. What was it again? Oh, yes. Blasphemy RAW is over powered. Just the fact that a properly DMed major clerical baddy is going to be higher level than the PCs and will nearly always have mini-onions, means that being automatically dazed for even one round is enough for a TPK. By that I don't mean, definitely a TPK, but the cleric and his mini-onions should have tactics based around their abilities. So:Cleric casts Blasphemy (PCs dazed, possible kills of cohorts, followers or animal friends - gosh, I've only just thought aboout this - familiars, animal companions and mounts!)Then fighters have attacks (probably using power attacks, trips, sunders, disarms, etc - yes they can use them normally, but they can do these while the PCs are dazed even if they don't have the relevant feats, as they won't draw any AoOs)Rogues get Flanking Sneak Attacks on dazed PCs (again, they can do this normally, but it's easier when your target can't make a 5 ft step, or ready a move away from you)Wizards get to place their spells without any need to cast defensively (out come the touch spells)AND the cleric then casts Blasphemy again (if possible) or some other spell (e.g. healing, Harm, Slay Living, etc)Now, I don't mean to say that the NPCs shouldn't be prepared to kill PCs, I think they definitely should (I play in an extremely high powered DM-altered version of Rappan Athuk - we're all 21+, with on average 1 artifact each). However, I think when a NPC/Monster has an ability or spell that has this much possibility for over kill, then it should be tempered.Interestingly enough, I thought that about Mordenkainen's Disjunction, and since then my archmage has come up with a spell that restores item that have been disjoined...Everybody's points about Deathward have been a bit beside the point, as it is the daze part of the spell that scares me in the middle of a combat... how do you protect against that?Now I know that someone is going to say that, yes, normally daze is a [Mind-Affecting] spell, but that the daze part of Blasphemy is still [Evil, Sonic].It is that sort of thinking that has caused all the difficulties in understanding the spell Deathward. The use of descriptors should be very specific, but unfortunately it is not...Perhaps it is the very descriptor that is the problem. If we look at the effects of the other word spells (Dictum, Holy Word and Word of Chaos) they are definitely linked to you hearing a divine word. In the first instance they deafen you, and so it makes sense that they have the [Sonic] descriptor, and are therefore defeated by the liberal use of Silence spells. But then we have Blasphemy, that doesn't deafen, the only one out of four extremely similar spells that doesn't . It dazes, does that imply that it is different? Do we think that that sounds more like a [Mind-Affecting] spell? But, if 3 of 4 spells are [Sonic], then the fourth MUST be, yes? Oh, to be a game designer and be able to decide these things for yourself...__________________OB!</blockquote>

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