Emulating Inspire Courage

[BSF]

So I was looking through the Charm lists in EoM the other night and somethig odd occurred to me.

If there is more than one creature in the area of effect, this spell affects those with the lowest Hit Dice first, until it reaches its Hit Dice Threshold. Creatures beyond the HD Threshold are not affected at all.

OK, so this makes it increasingly more difficult to emulate Inspire Courage. At low levels, a Bard could possibly Inspire Courage on the rest of the party. Assuming it wasn't a very big party. If you assume a 4 person group, the Threshold will only allow an Inspire Courage for 3 people up to 2nd level. From 3rd level up, you can only Inspire 2 people.

This will affect anything that in the core rules provides a mass morale affect.

Is this an intentional design decision? Am I misunderstanding the application of threshold? Once I realized this, I felt quite a bit of disappointment. Infuse spells are much more efficient about providing bonuses since you could create a discerning area of effect spell that would provide many more bonuses than the Charm lists. The thing is, I have always enjoyed the aspect of Bard's Inspire Courage to improve a great many people under the right circumstances. It would be kind of sad to have my bard actually become less effective at inspiring courage amongst his friends the higher level they all get.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I think you are reading it wrong...

In the case of a targeted charm, a creature with HD higher than the Threshold gets a bonus to its save.

In the case of a mass charm, a creature with HD higher than the Threshold automatically saves. You still affect creatures with a HD equal to or less than the Threshold.

So, your entire party is next to you, a 2 MP Charm, 1 MP Gen nets you a 10' area for Courage to all creatures of 5 HD or less.

Of course, you usually want to use discerning so the group can split up and avoid having the bad guys gaining courage as well

One of the advantages of Charm over Infuse is the stair step approach. A successful save against a strong Fear effect will still cause the target problems, at least for a round or two.

 

[BSF]

OK, so when calculating who is affected, the HD threshold isn't reached by adding all the affected targets together?

I can see that working out a little better then. So to inspire a group of 20th level PCs, you will need to put enough into it to reach a 20 HD threshold. Probably by starting with a Strong Brave (4 MP), and filling in the rest with Increase Threshold, then create an area of affect, probably with discerning, so an inspire for 20th level characters is just a little more expensive. But I can get on board with that because it should be a little harder to inspire a group of experienced, jaded adventurers.

 

[hs5ias]

I have an interpretation which gets round this oddity.

You only need a minimum strength charm effect (0, 2 or 4 MP) and a 1 MP radius enhancement. Any creature that would normally receive a saving throw or not be affected can choose to automatically fail their saving throw and be subject to the affect if they wish, which is what your allies do.

Harmless effects which characters opt not to make saving throws against is a common concept in D&D spellcasting, and using them here lets you get round this without needing any special exceptions or rules. I'm just extending an existing rule, which you could argue applies anyway.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Normally I would agree but the difficulty is the description that states "Creatures beyond the HD Threshold are not affected at all."

So your minimal enhancement + radii would normally not work.
Also, without the Discerning they would have to remain within the area of effect to maintain the benefits..and opponents in the area of effect who fail thier saves would also gain the benefit

All better to cast before you get into melee with Discerning...