If Harm is broken, what's the best house rule for it?

[Spatzimaus]

Well, it'd make evil Clerics offensive badasses, but they're already there; I mean currently, evil Clerics can cast both Harm and Heal, along with their lesser brethren. The question is, which of the two would you rather sacrifice? If these Clerics can't cast Heal or Mass Heal, they'll be having other problems. Against the solitary enemy it may not make much difference, but in those party vs. party fights it's the key. Giving them back the low heals isn't really that damaging, although for style reasons what I did instead was change the Inflict line.

Currently, Inflict spells are a touch attack with a Will save for half. Overall, inferior to the Cure line since even low-level cures are useful for between-battle recovery, while Inflict Minor Wounds won't be used in battle once you reach third level. Besides, Touch range is a negative for an attack spell, but isn't for a heal since they won't dodge.
To make them stronger, what I said was, the Inflict spells give the caster temporary HP equal to half the damage done, and those HP last one round per level. Sort of like an inferior Vampiric Touch.

If you do this sort of thing, then you can make the Cure spells [Good] and Inflict [Evil] to limit them, because now Clerics will have other ways of getting HP (and I reintroduced the Blood Bridge line of spells to go with this). The thing I've had to do was say that even Neutral clerics are limited, as if they were Good or Evil based on how they spontaneously cast/turn undead (which is based on your deity's alignment, not yours).
Otherwise you'd see everyone taking a neutral Cleric to cast both Harm and Heal.

 

[S'mon]

I think restricting Harm (and Heal?) to a 5hp/level cap makes them a bit weak for a standard-magic campaign, it means in the _typical_ fight the Cleric will be coming up against the cap, since most enemies & friendly meat shields will have more hp than that, ie it does significantly change the power of the spell. At 10 hp/level they retain their traditional function & power vs the meat-shields and enemy NPCs, but we avoid the (IMO) big problem of the 655-hp Great Wyrm or similar being taken down by a no-save ranged touch attack in 1 action. Also, in Epic Level & deity combat it's likely that opponents will have a LOT of Heal spells to call on, if they automatically heal all damage, given how high hp are & multiple actions/round with Haste, Quickening etc, the fights get a bit arbitrary - 1e avoided this in that hp totals at high levels were low compared to damage-dealing, and Heal was a full-round (1 minute action), so anyone who tried to cast it in combat would likely be hit before they finished.

Ergo, I think having an Epic Level deity character with, say, 20 cleric levels & a vast number of Fighter etc levels, with say 2000 hp total, reduced down to 100 hp from damage, get back 200hp/Heal, is a lot better than getting 1900 hp back from this 6th level spell! YMMV.

 

[demiurgeastaroth]

I think restricting Harm (and Heal?) to a 5hp/level cap makes them a bit weak for a standard-magic campaign, it means in the _typical_ fight the Cleric will be coming up against the cap, since most enemies & friendly meat shields will have more hp than that, ie it does significantly change the power of the spell.

Which is exactly my intention, since I believe the damage the spell does is overpowered.

At 10 hp/level they retain their traditional function & power vs the meat-shields and enemy NPCs, but we avoid the (IMO) big problem of the 655-hp Great Wyrm or similar being taken down by a no-save ranged touch attack in 1 action.

While the Great dragon example I agree is a problem, it's not the problem I wanted to tackle. The other solutions I've seen all seem to address the dragon problem - but ignore the fact that 90% or more of the targets of Harm will not be dragons. What about PCs with 100-200 hit points, Titans, Solars, and lesser creatures - ALL of these creatures are effected by a 10Hp/level cap pretty much the same as if the standard rule were used - they drop to a tiny amount of hp.

The save for half option avoids this but I don't like the idea of a save - it then can be compared to save-or-die spells unfavourably but is still a massively over-powered damage-dealing spell: it should be one or the other, and I opted for a damage-dealing approach.
The other thing with Save for half: what happens if it is affected a second time and saves?

Also, in Epic Level & deity combat it's likely that opponents will have a LOT of Heal spells to call on, if they automatically heal all damage, given how high hp are & multiple actions/round with Haste, Quickening etc, the fights get a bit arbitrary - 1e avoided this in that hp totals at high levels were low compared to damage-dealing, and Heal was a full-round (1 minute action), so anyone who tried to cast it in combat would likely be hit before they finished.

Ergo, I think having an Epic Level deity character with, say, 20 cleric levels & a vast number of Fighter etc levels, with say 2000 hp total, reduced down to 100 hp from damage, get back 200hp/Heal, is a lot better than getting 1900 hp back from this 6th level spell! YMMV.

I agree - and 100hp (my approach) is a lot closer to 200hp than 19000hp, so we are pretty close to agreement on that point.
I was considering a Greater Heal spell gained at the same level as Mass Heal - this would do 10hp per level. So characters could heal once character a lot, or heal a group for less.
There would probably [/] be no Greater Harm, just as there is no Mass Harm, since inflicting 200hp at 20th level is just as damaging to non-dragon opponents as the official Harm spell.

 

[S'mon]

Which is exactly my intention, since I believe the damage the spell does is overpowered.

I think your approach is perfectly reasonable - the PCs IMC are a few levels away from getting Harm just yet (Cleric is 8th) so we'll see what happens when they get it and I apply the 10/level cap; if it's causing major problems I'll lower the cap, but without metamagicing the Harm into a ranged touch there's probably not a major problem - I Rule 0 that you can't cast a touch spell, ,move, and deliver the spell in 1 round, and also touch attacks provoke an AoO (which, frankly, is only logical), so going into melee to deliver the Harm is less likely IMC unless you have the Improved Unarmed Attack feat.

-Simon

 

[Happy Monkey]

My players have agreed to the save for 1/2 editted version of harm.

I am really pleased as I no longer need to not use it on their characters for a cheap kill.

The encounter coming up will be a nice challenge with an enemy with a couple of scrolls of Harm (and Slay living).

In regard to the 1/2 save, yes, there is a diminishing returns factor for multiple Harms. Cause critical is there for that.