Fell Weaken

[Old Gumphrey]

This metamagic feat, found in Libris Mortis, seems fairly well balanced and adds a fun new element to your favorite damage spells. For one spell level increase, you get to add a -4 penalty to Str for 1 minute to any living creature who is damaged by your spell. Even though it is an unnamed penalty you cannot stack this effect. There is no save against this effect. Against 1 target, this seems fairly reasonable. However, after the feat came into play, bad things started happening.

Level 5 wizard throws 3 magic missiles. At 3 different targets. Dropping each of their Str scores by 4 for 1 minute. So what we have is a level 2 spell that's a lot like an automatic ray of enfeeblement with multiple targets and additional automatic damage. This led me to think of another application: Fireball. Many multiple potential targets that, even if they pass ref saves to halve the damage, still automatically take a -4 str hit. While Ray of Enfeeblement has clearly superior Str penalty, especially when empowered, this Fell Weaken has the very nasty ability to apply this effect to as many targets as can be damaged by the spell.

My question is "Is this feat too strong, or is -4 str to as many targets as you can damage with 1 spell for what generally amounts to an entire combat balanced for 1 level?"

 

[Plane Sailing]

Seems to me way too strong as you describe it here.

I think to have any chance of being unbroken it should only take effect if a target fails a save (so if you make the save you don't get weakened at all).

Plus it should be exactly the same type of Str penalty as ray of enfeeblement, to prevent the two things stacking horribly.

Plus if I were designing it for my campaigns, I'd want to only allow it to affect a single target with the fell weakness.

After all, what level would be considered reasonable for a spell that automatically gave every target within a 20ft spread a -4 Str penalty at long range with no save? I bet it would be way above 4th...

 

[Hypersmurf]

Plus it should be exactly the same type of Str penalty as ray of enfeeblement, to prevent the two things stacking horribly.

The same type of penalty as Ray of Enfeeblement is 'unnamed'.

The reason Ray of Enfeeblement doesn't stack with itself is because the same spell generally doesn't. But the unnamed penalty to Str bestowed by RoE will stack with any unnamed penalty to Str from anything that isn't RoE. There isn't really a way to make another spell not stack with Ray of Enfeeblement unless you state "This spell does not stack with Ray of Enfeeblement" in the text.

-Hyp.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Yeah I'm thinking I'll just have the weakness affect one target at a time. Otherwise it's just crazy busted. It's bad enough already that it's in a metamagic rod, but that was my own doing. I just tend to feel that the intent here was not to drop a 4th level evocation and deal sick damage and -4 str to an entire party. Nor was it for a 2nd level evocation to do nearly the same thing, sans sick damage.