Flame Arrow smack?

[Plane Sailing]

OK, I know it isn't a true smackdown situation, but I was just thinking the other day about the possibilities of empowering flame arrow - the fiery bolts variant.

At 20th level a sorcerer would be casting 5 fiery bolts. If the 3rd level spell was maximised that is 24 points damage per bolt, which are ranged touch attacks - so they can do double on a critical hit. Although the target gets a reflex save against it, the best case for 6th level maximised fiery bolts is 5 crits doing 5x48 = 240 points damage.

An interesting alternative is to triple empower the spells up to 9th level. Not really as effective as a meteor swarm (especially against rogues or monks), but you would still get 5 x 10d6 fiery bolts, again which are capable of critical hits. If you were lucky enough to get 5 criticals (yeah,right!) you could do 100d6 damage to one target. Not too bad.

p.s. Yes, I know all about the sacks of fire seeds and other ways of scoring massive amounts of spell damage I hadn't seen anyone think about flame arrow though, and since it is a bit out of the ordinary run of spells I thought it might be interesting

Cheers

 

[Thanee]

An interesting note, maybe, an Incantatrix could empower it 6 times as a 9th level spell for a total of 20d6x4!

Bye
Thanee

 

[The Furious Puffin]

And here was little old me who had given up on flame arrows as I thought it was completely useless!

Maybe it does have a few redeeming features!

NOTE: The below smack has been inspired by Plane Sailing and Thanee

Incantrix could actually be pretty effective.

5th level wizard 10th level incantrix 5th level Archmage Sun elf

Stats Dex/Int 18 - int boosted to 26 by levels and race, Dex to 19

Precast Cat's Grace, then the INT booster, then improved invisability

9th level spell slot for fiery arrows +3

Maximized for free using the incantrixes 10th level ability, then quad empowered 3 (base) +(3 free) +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 (Note, you may only be able to get 7 empowereds? I don't have a copy of incantrix handy).

Bolt each doing 4d6 base, which goes to 24 +12 +12 +12 +12 +12+12 = 96 damage a bolt.

5 bolts = 576 damage assuming no criticals and no misses and a failed save.

To max the to hit roll have true strike and a maximized empowered cat's grace to boost your dexterity (assuming 18 base) we get 2 +(3 free) +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1

Dexs goes to 5 +2.5 +2.5 +2.5 +2.5 +2.5 +2.5 +2.5 = 40 dex total

for a +30 to hit bonus, with +50 on the first attack. Nothing spectaular, but if he cannot see invis he looses his dex bonus, and as it's a touch attack ACs will be dismal.

To boost the save, you can carbon copy on of the Wizard DC smacks listed in the sultans of smack thread. Basiclly get Greater Spell focus: Evocation, +6 head band of INT, and push the archmage spell bonus into Evocation.

(that above alone nets you INT +11 bonus +4 for focus +3 for the archmage +3 for spell level for a DC total of 31.)

If you have on miss, assume one criticals

Total Smack

+50/30 to hit (Note: futher optimisation is possible) Range touch attack with target having no dex bonus.

Save DC: 31 (could be better I think)

Damage: assuming all hits, no criticals and no successful saves: 576

If I have got my maximize and empowered spell stack wrong, it comes out as down above (assume you roll a 5 on that cat's grace

Except New Damage: 315 (assuming average damage)

 

[Darklone]

Bolt each doing 4d6 base, which goes to 24 +12 +12 +12 +12 +12+12 = 96 damage a bolt.

5 bolts = 576 damage assuming no criticals and no misses and a failed save.

5 bolts with less than hundred points of damage added together more than 500? Look at your maths

 

[Dr. Zoom]

I hate to rain on your parade.

But the smackdown is not quite as good as you have it listed, although still effective.

The empower spell feat will not piggy-back on the maximize spell feat like this. Your max is 24, but your empower is not 12. You still must roll the 4d6 and get your empower spell figures from what you actually rolled, not the max. For example, if you cast a maximized empowered fireball, you would do 60 points of damage for the maximize, and 10d6 x .5 for the empowered feat. If you rolled the average of 35, this becomes 17. Add 60 and 17 for a total of 77 points of damage.

See page 83 in the PH under the Maximize Spell feat (last sentence) for this rule.

 

[The Furious Puffin]

First question

Yeah - oops, it should be 480. I even used a caculator

Second post

Ok, just use the second version of the smack, which does 315 points of damage.

But thinking about is more the best spell is

Maximized (free) Twinned (free) 6 times empowered Flame arrows

for = (24 + 6 * 2D6)*10

= (24 + 6 *7) *10

= 660 points of damage per spell

If you cannot apply both to the same spell, just run with the twinned, damage drops to 490 then pre-cast haste and bash two out for 980 points of damage. Actually this (two twinned versions) works much better.

That should work!

 

[Voadam]

And so how good can sneak attacking flame arrows get? (supposing you were not in the realms with the incantrix).

 

[Victim]

You can't use Incantrix instant metamagic to take a spell over your normal limit. So, at most, you could do a 6x empowered flame arrow.

Try some of the metamagic rods in T&B.

 

[Gromm]

And here was little old me who had given up on flame arrows as I thought it was completely useless!

Obviously you've never been the archer in the party!
That extra damage makes a huge difference over time, not to mention it helps wear down trolls and the like. I love our party mage's fire arrows- instead of 1d8+4 I do 1d8+9 (I'm a cleric so I don't have any bow feats). Fire a couple a round and its pretty sweet.
As far as using the flaming bolts in combat, I'll take a lightning bolt any day.

 

[Plane Sailing]

And so how good can sneak attacking flame arrows get? (supposing you were not in the realms with the incantrix).

I would imagine that they would follow the general rule that only the first of the bolts could actually get sneak attack damage, the others would just do their normal damage