Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9620172" data-attributes="member: 907">I think it's a sad state of affairs that fireball (and direct damage magic in general) has been so devalued to the point where it has become a situational spell. I vaguely recall opening a thread on the topic back in the 3e days (summary: boom magic still does the same 1d6/level as in AD&amp;D, but everything has 2-3 times as many hp now so save-or-suck is now relatively much more powerful, particularly with all the ways you could pump your save DC back then). The situation is both better and worse now. On one hand, the hp disparity is much greater, but on the other hand the DM guidelines and bounded accuracy make hordes more of a valid threat than they were in 3e.After all, if fireball isn't the answer, you are asking the wrong question.But what could one do to make boom magic more useful and control magic less? I'm leaning toward the 13th age solution, which is to give hp caps to control-type spells, at least to those with significant effects. You could probably also combine that with a bit of damage even on those types of spells (so they contribute directly to the usual end state of your opponents: 0 hp). So something like hold could be &quot;Deal X points of psychic damage (save for half). If the target has Y hp or fewer left, they are paralyzed for 1 minute (save each round to break).&quot; That way you'd need to put a hurtin' on your opposition before being able to cheat them out of the fight. Of course, this would require significant rebalancing of the game, so best left to the next full edition.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 9620172, member: 907"] I think it's a sad state of affairs that [I]fireball[/I] (and direct damage magic in general) has been so devalued to the point where it has become a situational spell. I vaguely recall opening a thread on the topic back in the 3e days (summary: boom magic still does the same 1d6/level as in AD&D, but everything has 2-3 times as many hp now so save-or-suck is now relatively much more powerful, particularly with all the ways you could pump your save DC back then). The situation is both better and worse now. On one hand, the hp disparity is much greater, but on the other hand the DM guidelines and bounded accuracy make hordes more of a valid threat than they were in 3e. After all, if [I]fireball[/I] isn't the answer, you are asking the wrong question. But what could one do to make boom magic more useful and control magic less? I'm leaning toward the 13th age solution, which is to give hp caps to control-type spells, at least to those with significant effects. You could probably also combine that with a bit of damage even on those types of spells (so they contribute directly to the usual end state of your opponents: 0 hp). So something like [I]hold[/I] could be "Deal X points of psychic damage (save for half). If the target has Y hp or fewer left, they are paralyzed for 1 minute (save each round to break)." That way you'd need to put a hurtin' on your opposition before being able to cheat them out of the fight. Of course, this would require significant rebalancing of the game, so best left to the next full edition. [/QUOTE]

Verification