For the first time ever, I've banned a player class from my table

[Glyfair]

Ok. I asked the player the process for the wand. Here is what I got. I obviously missed some details at the table (considering I was keeping track of 17 bad guys against 6 good guys, I'm allowed that one ). I will quote where possible to make sure I don't get it wrong.

1. There was only one Wand of Empower Scorching Ray. The other wand was a wand of fireballs she didn't use at the time.

2. "It was a 9th level caster (bumped to 11th due to wand mastery) wand of empowered scorching ray."

3. "Total cost was 27000gp and each charge came out to be 540gp."

4. "She got the twined on it by casting a 3rd level artificer spell named something like Metamagic Item that lasted 12 rounds and applied a metamagic feat (Twin Spell) she knew to the wand for the durration [sic] with no extra charge cost."

So she used a combination of a fully purchased wand, a spell from the Eberron book and a known Metmagic feat to get the Twinned Scorching Rays. How much XP should this cost her per use of wand?

Hmmm...doesn't add up to 52d6. Empowered Scorching Ray should be the equivalent of 18d6, twinned is 36d6. Pretty powerful, but not as powerful as advertised (and still expensive).

The thing I'd consider tweaking in this case is the artificer infusion. I'd like to see something that makes it more difficult to add a more powerful metamagic feat to the item. Twin Spell is a +4 to the spell level normally and is as easy to add as Extend Spell.

Of course, I've never really liked Twin Spell to begin with. Still, it doesn't seem too powerful on the face of it.

 

[Klaus]

Okay, let's take this step by step:

1 - Wand of Empowered Scorching Ray at caster level 11th (due to Wand Mastery): With one charge, it fires of 3 rays, each doing 4d6 + 50% fire damage (Empower doesn't give you extra dice, it increases the numeric result by 50%). You still have to hit with a ranged touch attack for each ray.

2 - Twin Spell makes the spell take effect on the target twice, simultaneously. So the DM can rule as one of two things: a) each ray that hits takes effect twice (for another 4d6 + 50% fire damage); or b) Twin Spell gives you 3 additional rays (each requiring its own ranged touch attack. I'd rule as (a).

If you go for (a), you have each charge firing off 3 rays. Every ray that hits takes effect twice on its target, doing 4d6 +50% plus 4d6 +50% damage. On average, each ray would cause (3.5 * 4 = 14 +50% = 21; twice for Twin) 42 points of damage to the target.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

So, a wand of Empowered Scorching Ray.

That's a 4th-level spell, with minimum caster level of 7th. You said it was actually crafted at CL 9, so thats 4 * 9 * 750 = 27,000gp, or 540gp per charge. That math's good!

There's 4d6 damage per ray, three rays per "casting" at CL 11, so 12d6 Fire damage per charge. Empowered, you're looking at 12d6*1.5 Fire (often abbreviated as 18d6 Fire, though this isn't strictly correct).

Twinned will get you 36d6 Fire damage - in 6 batches of 4*1.5 (6) dice each, to which energy resistance applies separately (meaning that ER 5 / Fire will subtract up to 30 points of damage, out of the average of 126, and ER 10 / Fire will cut the average damage roughly in half).

The infusion - metamagic item - has a 1 round "casting time." Did the artificer spend a hero point to cast this infusion as a standard action?

Could someone with the ECS at-hand post the text of the Wand Mastery feat? Does it have any cost associated with it? I can't recall ...

 

[reveal]

The infusion - metamagic item - has a 1 round "casting time." Did the artificer spend a hero point to cast this infusion as a standard action?

Could someone with the ECS at-hand post the text of the Wand Mastery feat? Does it have any cost associated with it? I can't recall ...

She took the one round to "cast" it. The next round is when she used the wand.

Wand Mastery - When you use a wand, the DC of saving throws against the wand's effect is increased by 2 and the wand's effective caster level is increased by 2.

 

[Tzarevitch]

Ok. I asked the player the process for the wand. Here is what I got. I obviously missed some details at the table (considering I was keeping track of 17 bad guys against 6 good guys, I'm allowed that one ). I will quote where possible to make sure I don't get it wrong.

1. There was only one Wand of Empower Scorching Ray. The other wand was a wand of fireballs she didn't use at the time.

2. "It was a 9th level caster (bumped to 11th due to wand mastery) wand of empowered scorching ray."

3. "Total cost was 27000gp and each charge came out to be 540gp."

4. "She got the twined on it by casting a 3rd level artificer spell named something like Metamagic Item that lasted 12 rounds and applied a metamagic feat (Twin Spell) she knew to the wand for the durration [sic] with no extra charge cost."

So she used a combination of a fully purchased wand, a spell from the Eberron book and a known Metmagic feat to get the Twinned Scorching Rays. How much XP should this cost her per use of wand?

No offense intended, but I don't understand how you are planning to ban something the player did when you don't even really understand what it was that she did. Shouldn't you read up on the rules she was using first and make sure she did whatever she did correctly before you allege that there is a problem with the rules?

I agree with some of the other posters that the equivalent of an empowered, twinned scorching ray at the equivalent of 11th level comes out to 36d6. That seems like a lot, but remember that it actually does damage in several single target rays, all of which must hit for maxium effect. This apparently also takes a round to set up (and another infusion), and it is consuming an expensive and non-renewable resource (@27,000gp total cost for the full wand).

Compare this to an 11th sorcerer with a lesser quicken rod casting empowered scorching rays. The rod costs @35,000gp or so and it is a 1x cost. The artificer really doesn't seem that out of line to me but you really should get the whole story on what your player actually did before you try to ban it.

Tzarevitch

 

[reveal]

No offense intended, but I don't understand how you are planning to ban something the player did when you don't even really understand what it was that she did. Shouldn't you read up on the rules she was using first and make sure she did whatever she did correctly before you allege that there is a problem with the rules?

I agree with some of the other posters that the equivalent of an empowered, twinned scorching ray at the equivalent of 11th level comes out to 36d6. That seems like a lot, but remember that it actually does damage in several single target rays, all of which must hit for maxium effect. This apparently also takes a round to set up (and another infusion), and it is consuming an expensive and non-renewable resource (@27,000gp total cost for the full wand).

Compare this to an 11th sorcerer with a lesser quicken rod casting empowered scorching rays. The rod costs @35,000gp or so and it is a 1x cost. The artificer really doesn't seem that out of line to me but you really should get the whole story on what your player actually did before you try to ban it.

Tzarevitch

No offense taken and I think you're right that I should've known the rules better.

I banned it because I was assuming she was following the rules, which she was. My initial description was wrong and I clarified it with the quote from the player who helped her create the character (He's the one who got the math right ).

I still think it's overpowered though. True, she bought the wand initially, but only because she didn't want to spend the 800+ XP to build it. Since she will have a lot more XP now, and in the future, the potential for abuse is just too great. She can build the same wand for a fraction of the cost, cast a spell, and then get 36d6 damage out of each one for [insert caster level] rounds. True, she has to roll to hit for 6 rays, but touch ACs are usually a LOT lower and, being level 13 and going forward, it will be highly unlikely she will miss unless she rolls a 1.

And, yes, spellcasters get a lot of powerful things too, but, IMHO, I believe they are not as potentialy abusive as the Artificer.

 

[Mystery Man]

No offense taken and I think you're right that I should've known the rules better.

I banned it because I was assuming she was following the rules, which she was. My initial description was wrong and I clarified it with the quote from the player who helped her create the character (He's the one who got the math right ).

I still think it's overpowered though. True, she bought the wand initially, but only because she didn't want to spend the 800+ XP to build it. Since she will have a lot more XP now, and in the future, the potential for abuse is just too great. She can build the same wand for a fraction of the cost, cast a spell, and then get 36d6 damage out of each one for [insert caster level] rounds. True, she has to roll to hit for 6 rays, but touch ACs are usually a LOT lower and, being level 13 and going forward, it will be highly unlikely she will miss unless she rolls a 1.

And, yes, spellcasters get a lot of powerful things too, but, IMHO, I believe they are not as potentialy abusive as the Artificer.

Of course in the case of your hill giant encounter you have to ask yourself why weren't they lobbing rocks at 120 feet (or in your case why where they not at max range with their bow and arrows) instead of well within her range of scorching ray? There seems to be a lot of things you could have done in the encounter to offset or balance out her ablilities. Higher level spell casters, no matter what class can throw around massive amounts of damage. A sorcerer just simply quickening, empowering and maximizing a scorching ray, then casting it again during the standard action can do 144 points of damage. A 13th level sorcerer can do this many, many times during a standard combat.

 

[reveal]

Of course in the case of your hill giant encounter you have to ask yourself why weren't they lobbing rocks at 120 feet (or in your case why where they not at max range with their bow and arrows) instead of well within her range of scorching ray? There seems to be a lot of things you could have done in the encounter to offset or balance out her ablilities. Higher level spell casters, no matter what class can throw around massive amounts of damage. A sorcerer just simply quickening, empowering and maximizing a scorching ray, then casting it again during the standard action can do 144 points of damage. A 13th level sorcerer can do this many, many times during a standard combat.

A) It was in an abandoned fort and there were giants throwing rocks at her. But after 6 rounds of missing her, I was rolling poorly, they decided to take it to the ground.

B) A 13th level sorcerer cannot use the combination you proposed because that would make it an 11th level spell. They could either Quicken it (6th) 4 times a day, Empower it (4th) 6 times a day or Maximize it (5th) 6 times a day. A 13th level Artificer, on the other hand, could take an Empowered wand, cast the spell in question, and apply Quickened to it. With that combination, they could do a 24d6 damage per round for 13 rounds. All of this would cost them 1 charge of the wand every time they use it. Throw in the Dual Wand Wielder feat (which I know is not a normal Artificer ability but a feat from another book) and they could do an additional 24d6 damage per round with the other wand, costing them a total of 2 charges from it.

And because the Artificer gets the Craft Pool with extra XP speficially to create things, as well as almost every single Craft feat by 13th level, it won't cost them as much as a normal spellcaster to create the items needed.

 

[Obscure]

4. "She got the twined on it by casting a 3rd level artificer spell named something like Metamagic Item that lasted 12 rounds and applied a metamagic feat (Twin Spell) she knew to the wand for the durration [sic] with no extra charge cost."

The infusion "Metamagic Item" does NOT allow you to bypass the extra charge cost for applying metamagic to a wand. It says nothing about that in the description. The point of "Metamagic Item" is much like the point of most infusions -- to aid the artificer's comrades. It allows others to use the wand with the artificer's metamagic feat imbued within it for a short time.

So, if all the rays successfully hit, you're looking at 36d6 points of damage and 5 charges expended. If she expended those charges normally, one at a time over 5 rounds, she could do 60d6 damage (again, assuming all rays hit). So she does much less damage per charge, but is able to do a whole bunch of damage all at once.

If you think this is still overpowered, I would ban Twin Spell rather than the Artificer, or at least not allow it to stack with other metamagic feats, etc.

 

[Mystery Man]

A) It was in an abandoned fort and there were giants throwing rocks at her. But after 6 rounds of missing her, I was rolling poorly, they decided to take it to the ground.

B) A 13th level sorcerer cannot use the combination you proposed because that would make it an 11th level spell.

Sorry remove the empowered and, my bad I meant to include the sorcerer level of the guy in my party not yours. And actually to keep this out of the rules forum it was meant as a foreshadowing of things to come to illustrate a point really. After a certain level the type of encounter you describe, unless you just need a quick one to soak up a few resources, is no longer any kind of real challenge. Those days are looong gone. A hill giant out of the box and I assume you didn't advance them, is outclassed even by a 13th level sorcerer (not even an artificer) who could if she knew what she was doing probably take down a couple by herself wands or no.