How to counteract a Disintegrate-happy PC?

[Elder-Basilisk]

Spell Turning?

Has no effect on ray spells. It only works on targeted spells like magic missile or finger of death. Anything that requires a touch attack can't be spell turned.

Enforce the rule that if an NPC fails a save, all their items have to save. How long will he keep doing it when he can't strip the bodies afterwards, because that nice magic sword and armour is now a pile of dust?

Banshee

Except that it isn't a rule in 3.x Maybe it was in 1e or 2e, but in 3.x, the rule is that equipment is only effected if you roll a natural 1 on your saving throw and then it's only one piece of equipment determined by applying the result of a d4 to a chart in the DMG.

 

[Grog]

As old as him casting Disintegrate over and over again?

Does the fighter swinging his greatsword over and over again get old? If not, why is this different?

 

[Grog]

What's the problem? Disintegrate (since 3.5e) is a pretty sub-optimal 6th level spell to use anyway, isn't it?

Agreed. 2d6 points of damage per level sounds like a lot, but at 11th level, that's only an average of 77 points of damage to a single target. That's not even enough to take down a hill giant, which is a CR 7 monster. It's not even that much more than even a moderately well-built 11th level fighter could do with a full attack, and the spell allows a Fort save, which is the highest average save in the MM.

It's not even that great against many of the opponents with poor Fort saves. Enemy arcane casters can give themselves concealment, and enemy rogues will probably have fairly good touch ACs. I think it's best used against undead, which is fine with me since an arcane caster doesn't have as many options against them since they're immune to so many spell effects.

 

[Votan]

As everyone else has said, between the touch AC, fort save (always has been and always will be the most common "good" save), AND SR (my g-d, this spell is starting to seem really crappy) there's many unique and varied ways to make it fail.

The touch AC can be really annoying as well. If your party members are blocking (soft cover gives -4 penalty to hit) and in melee with the critter (another -4 to hit) then a touch AC of 12 becomes 20. You can improve it with 2 feats to being -4. It's very hard to get improved precise shot as a wizard to remove the third penalty.

Ray spells require the the wizard to have have (at least a little bit) have invested feats in as well to be effective. If you allow the Greatsword Warrior to be using power attack and cleave then he is probably pretty good at his major trick too but this is just not a broken spell. For that, try the pre-errata version of Miasma (Complete Divine) or the first published version of Quills (also in Complete Divine).

 

[Nail]

Agreed. 2d6 points of damage per level sounds like a lot, but at 11th level, that's only an average of 77 points of damage to a single target. That's not even enough to take down a hill giant, which is a CR 7 monster.

Exactly.

If a player casting Disintegrate is taking down boatloads of bad guys in your campaign, there's definately a problem with your bad guys.

CR 11 monsters in the MM have an average of 165 hp.

That's right: AVERAGE of 165 hp. MMII, MMIII, MMIV all have higher averages.

 

[Nail]

FWIW, average hit points for a CR 7 monster in the MM is 89. So a Disintegrate from a Wiz 11 would often not kill even a CR 7.

...and MMII, MMIII, and MMIV monsters tend to have even higher average hp.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Put me in the chorus of "Where's the beef?"

 

[Nail]

Meanwhile the Ftr 11 (non-optimized) is doing 55.4 hp of damage per full attack against AC 20 (average AC of CR 7 monsters in MM).

Disintegrate is no big deal.

 

[lukelightning]

Why counteract it? Let him cast his powerful 7th level spells! Does the universe need to alter itself just because this wizard can cast a few disintegation spells? Why do people feel the need to stop players from doing the things that players like to do?

If players aren't allowed to metagame, then neither should DMs. Why would Joe Schmoe just happen to have a ring of counterspells vs. disintegration (assuming he doesn't have info on the PCs)? Why would the players suddenly start enountering small, agile monsters for no apparent reason?

It's not like this is something he can do an unlimited number of times a day. And if it is, well then let me know how 'cuz I want some of that!

 

[Gort]

Meanwhile the Ftr 11 (non-optimized) is doing 55.4 hp of damage per full attack against AC 20 (average AC of CR 7 monsters in MM).

Disintegrate is no big deal.

Why are you comparing an 11th level fighter to a CR 7 enemy? I don't get it. Wouldn't a CR 11 enemy be a more useful comparison?