Horrid Wilting

[Nail]

...in any case I trust my players well enough .....

Good. Mine too, frankly.

 

[Saeviomagy]

3. Personally I'm a RBDM at least to an extent. One thing I do that's anathema on Rules Forum is nerf any spell I think is overpowered - eg IMC Horrid Wilting centres on the caster and affects at most 1 creature per caster level. Even with that it' still overpowered compared to Meteor Swarm IMO.

You realise, right, that meteor swarm does 24d6 area damage to horrid wilting's maximum possible 20d6, and further can do 32d6 to a single target with no save, in addition to the area effect?

I don't really see how it can be flatly ruled to be an inferior spell...

 

[Elephant]

This is all basic grade school science.

No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO! Do NOT start down that path; mixing D&D and physics leads only to pain.

 

[James Heard]

No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO! Do NOT start down that path; mixing D&D and physics leads only to pain.

And more importantly it leads to bad physics and bad D&D, because good game design arbitrarily scoffs at physics and physics wasn't discovered for the benefit of gamers. Though, I admit, that would be cool.

"And after we cleared it with Gygax, we decided that the Earth did indeed revolve around the Sun."

 

[Oryan77]

No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO! Do NOT start down that path; mixing D&D and physics leads only to pain.

I find that it mixes just fine when I'm DM'ing my games. The time it never seems to mix is when I'm in an online discussion about D&D with random gamers. Go figure

 

[S'mon]

You realise, right, that meteor swarm does 24d6 area damage to horrid wilting's maximum possible 20d6, and further can do 32d6 to a single target with no save, in addition to the area effect?

I don't really see how it can be flatly ruled to be an inferior spell...

Horrid Wilting lets you choose your targets, which is a huge benefit in a melee - you can repeatedly HW the bad guys & leave your fighters unaffected. If HW were just a burst/spread like fireball that could hurt friends it maybe wouldn't be overpowered, although not being an energy damage spell makes it far far better than a equivalent fire or other energy spell in high level play. Given these 2 advantages and how I've seen both spells work in play, I say HW is more powerful in a typical scenario.

 

[S'mon]

I find that it mixes just fine when I'm DM'ing my games. The time it never seems to mix is when I'm in an online discussion about D&D with random gamers. Go figure

I think it's just the Rules Forum. It's full of freaks.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I think it's just the Rules Forum. It's full of freaks.

Hey, who you're calling a freak, buddy? You don't wanna make me assemble my death elven killer squad and pay a visit to your cave, you goblin!


;-)

No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO! Do NOT start down that path; mixing D&D and physics leads only to pain.

Physics leads to Inconsistency.
Inconsistency leads to Anger.
Anger leads to suffering.


I have to concur. Physics have no place in D&D. Either you slow down the game so much that even a fight between level 1 characters takes an hour real time for one round of game time (and I haven't spoken of high-level magic just yet) or it gets inconsistent to the point of bein ridiculous.

We'll have stuff like fireball spells that use up all their space, and then you either have to calculate the exact dimensions of that thing (taking into account all obstacles and all that crap) or you make a half-hearted attempt and get situations where a ceiling will mean that the wave of fire comes back from a ceiling but not from the floor.

We'll have to consider what happens when you have a fire elemental in a closed room (it would use up all the air pretty quickly)

We'd have to figure out the actual reach and speed factor of all weapons, and modifiers for arm length and stuff like that.

You'd have to get rid of hit points and introduce hit zones and stuff like that. "Let's see: we rolled a 27 and a 68 and a 44 on your hit location. He's 5'5" and you're 6'2", that means that you have hit his colon."

 

[glass]

I think it's just the Rules Forum. It's full of freaks.

Some of us freaks visit all the main forums.


glass.

 

[werk]

As written it says it drains moisture. So what happens if the living creature target has no moisture? As written I would have to say no damage.

So the DM must make a judgment call on whether fire elementals have moisture in their bodies. No rules cover this judgment call. Either way seems a valid call. So allowing it or not, either is a valid choice.

No, the DM can play it as written, which means it would work on fire elementals as well as orcs.

The judgement call is whether or not to make a judgement call. Don't you see how you are confounding yourself by calling into question the relative moisture content of creatures?