Goodbye Haste! Hello New Mandatory Spell!

[sithramir]

I like melfs still. Anything at higher levels has resistances or SR. Melfs will go right through spell resistance now. And it still does decent damage over a couple rounds. Scorching ray shines at 3-4 and at 11+ but in between melfs can be useful and at 11+ can beat SR.

I use it though like most people because its up front damage instead of a few rounds.

My druid is liking produce flame a LOT and the eldridch knight likes scorching ray a lot. Course he likes alter self to trogolodyte for +6 nat AC better .

 

[mooby]

Just don't forget Point Blank and Precise Shot kiddies!

 

[Enkhidu]

See, when I saw Scorching Ray, the first thing I said was, "Why is this 3rd level spell mislabeled as a 2nd level spell? It must be a typo..."

Scorching Ray, with its damage cap of 12d6, breaks the damage cap guidelines for created spells (because 1st and 2nd level spells were supposed to be capped at 5 dice).

 

[Wippit Guud]

Goodbye haste?

Just shapechange into a choker, they get a 3.0 haste ability, and shapechane allows you to take supernatural powers.

Quickness (Su): Although not particularly dexterous, a choker is supernaturally quick. It can take an extra standard action or move action during its turn each round.

 

[reapersaurus]

So noone sees a problem with an 11th level wizard doing over 40% of a fighter's HP's in damage as a free action, with no save?
(Quickened Scorching Ray, with an easy to-hit and assuming the fighter's CON is 18)

 

[Jhyrryl]

So noone sees a problem with an 11th level wizard doing over 40% of a fighter's HP's in damage as a free action, with no save?
(Quickened Scorching Ray, with an easy to-hit and assuming the fighter's CON is 18)

Considering that an equivelently leveled spell (disintegrate) is going to do 74.4% of the fighter's hp with a failed save, if not kill the fighter outright with a good roll on 22d6 damage? Not really.

 

[Darkness]

Hm. Disintegrate has a Fortitude save.

And an 11th-level Fighter, assuming Con 16 (14 + 2 item) and a +1 cloak of resistance, has a Fortitude save of +11. (Or +13 if he has Con 18 and a +2 cloak.)

The save DC for disintegrate is 16 + IntMod (and Spell Focus: Transmutation, if any).
Assuming a Wizard with Int 21 and without the Spell Focus feat, this equals a DC of 21. (Or DC 23 for a wizard with Int 23 who has the feat.)

If both characters have stats and gear of roughly equal power, the Fighter will make his save on a 10 or more - i.e., 55% of the time.
Assuming the Fighter is a human, half-elf, elf or orc, anyway.
If dwarf: 7+ or 70%; if gnome or halfling: 9+ or 60%; if elf: 11+ or 50%.

In case the Fighter saves, he takes only 5d6 damage.
If we go with the aforementioned 55% save chance, this means that the Fighter takes 5d6 55% of the time and 22d6 45% of the time. So on the average, the Fighter will take a bit less than 13d6, or 44 points on the average.
Average hp for a Ftr11: 98 (@ Con 16) or 109 (@ Con 18).
44 hp equals 45% (or 27% @ Con 18) of the Fighter's hp.

Hm. I'd say that the scorching ray is the more damaging spell, assuming the target is a tough one (good Fort save, high Con, big HD).
For mopping up Rogues (and Bards) or Wizards/Sorcerers, though, disintegrate is deadlier.

Disintegrate also has the advantage of being a higher-level spell. A scorching ray is still 2nd level even if Quickened - so even a minor globe of invulnerability defeats it. Also, fire damage is easier to protect against than disintegrate effects and disintegrate requires only a single attack roll while scorching ray requires one per ray.
And it kills everything it reduces to 0 (not -10) hp - and reduces them to dust (not a good thing if you wanna be raised).

But on the other tentacle, the scorching ray we're talking about here has the distinct advantage of being Quickened!

So what's the more powerful spell - a plain old disintegrate or a Quickened scorching ray? Heh. That, y'all have to decide for yourself.


edit - One more thing... I have to say I'm glad that disintegrate was nerfed (from instakill to huge damage) in 3.5.

 

[Jhyrryl]

I'm just annoyed that I have to buy yet more dice to deal with sneak attacking with my shiny new wand of empowered scorching ray (11th caster level). Gotta be able to distinguish the dice that get multiplied from the dice that don't, ya know.

(1.5 * (4d6 + 4d6 + 4d6)) + 6d6 == "Mmmm, mmmm, good!"

 

[DM_Matt]

This is particularly good now that Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight are core. the former gets sneak attack dmg if they do this right, and the latter almost never misses with these sorts of attacks and can get Improved Crit at a reasonable level.

 

[Jhyrryl]

{lots of disintegrate vs. quickened scorching ray comparisons}

Another benefit of disintegrate over the quickened scorching ray, is that even if the disintegrate doesn't kill the fighter outright with damage, if he fails the save and the damage roll was on the positive side, it's likely to force a death by massive damage roll. The quickened scorching ray will never do that. Again, the fighter is very likely to make that DC 15 fortitude save, but there's always that chance...