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

[Magic Rub]

IceBear...
LOL

We Canadians are so polite

 

[IceBear]

No, I was just being honest

I guess I perfer Will Save for 1/2 damage as it prevents the spell from being insta-kill, it keeps it in line with the inflict spells, is simplier to use (no, I don't normally use a calculator during games - we don't tend to stop to look up charts, etc either so anything that forces a pause we don't like) while keeping harm from being nerfed too much (My group and I have played a lot of the old editions too, so we like things to still be in line with the old too - I know that it's a new edition but some habits are hard to break).

It's what my group and I used since the beginning and we've had no problems with it. Also, my players generally have no idea how many hitpoints a dragon, or any other creature has (could be a runt or it could be a weaker larger one), and in all honesty I doubt there will ever be an encounter with a monster with more than 200hp in my campaigns before we retire and start over (none of us a big fans of levels 15+) so we would run into a lot of creatures with fewer hitpoints than you designed your version for.

Anyway, I apologize - I'm not in the best of moods today and I let it get the better of me.

IceBear

 

[ruleslawyer]

Will partial (half target's current hit points) is what I use IMC.

Anubis: The problem might be that you have "Will negates" written in the "Save" row of the spell description for your house-ruled harm. AFAICT, that means that the target takes a lot of damage if the save fails, and NONE if it succeeds. That's a lot worse than slay living, which deals out death (a slightly better result than loss of all but 1d4 of the target's hp) on a failed save, still does decent damage on a successful save, AND is a level lower.

 

[IceBear]

No, he's changed that to Save causes 1% hp damage per caster level.

BTW - 15% of 300hp is fine without resorting to a calculator, but I wouldn't want to be trying 17% of 257hp without one often

IceBear

 

[Anubis]

No, I was just being honest

I guess I perfer Will Save for 1/2 damage as it prevents the spell from being insta-kill, it keeps it in line with the inflict spells, is simplier to use (no, I don't normally use a calculator during games - we don't tend to stop to look up charts, etc either so anything that forces a pause we don't like) while keeping harm from being nerfed too much (My group and I have played a lot of the old editions too, so we like things to still be in line with the old too - I know that it's a new edition but some habits are hard to break).

It's what my group and I used since the beginning and we've had no problems with it. Also, my players generally have no idea how many hitpoints a dragon, or any other creature has (could be a runt or it could be a weaker larger one), and in all honesty I doubt there will ever be an encounter with a monster with more than 200hp in my campaigns before we retire and start over (none of us a big fans of levels 15+) so we would run into a lot of creatures with fewer hitpoints than you designed your version for.

Anyway, I apologize - I'm not in the best of moods today and I let it get the better of me.

IceBear

It's okay. I would like it better if no one disliked me, but . . .

Anyway, if you ain't ever gonna play into Epic levels, save for half works just fine. I designed the fix for Harm taking into consideration ALL possible levels of play, including and ESPECIALLY Epic levels. (There's nothing worse than seeing a 2,000 hp Prismatic Dragon reduced to 1,000 AFTER a save, heh . . .)

If that ain't your game, though, you don't need my fix, true enough. I love EPIC games, so that's why I need to consider such balancing factors.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Anubis: If your concern is simply the massive damage that harm causes, why not get rid of the save and instead slap a damage cap on it? 15 hp/caster level should do it; I've seen this houserule in several campaigns.

 

[Stalker0]

I think that harm should do more damage on a successful save than either destruction or slay living. My reasoning is, that while I totally agree that harm is virtually an instakill, it does take something more than casting the spell to make that happen.

You still have to cast another spell, or make an attack, ready an action, whatever. That forces you to do a little bit more to that opponent than you would have to with slay living or destruction, a little bit that could have been spent on the next opponent.

So I say the counterbalance is that harm should do a SET amount on a successful save, an amount which should be a bit higher than the amounts for slay living and destruction.

If I didn't hate to calculate percents, I'd probably go with anubis' idea, but I like a number I can roll or figure in my head better.

 

[IceBear]

It's okay. I would like it better if no one disliked me, but . . .

Anyway, if you ain't ever gonna play into Epic levels, save for half works just fine. I designed the fix for Harm taking into consideration ALL possible levels of play, including and ESPECIALLY Epic levels. (There's nothing worse than seeing a 2,000 hp Prismatic Dragon reduced to 1,000 AFTER a save, heh . . .)

If that ain't your game, though, you don't need my fix, true enough. I love EPIC games, so that's why I need to consider such balancing factors.

Anubis, I don't *dislike* you. I don't *agree* with you normally, and since I was having a bitch of a day I turned that into anger, which was why I said what I said.

I don't typically go back and edit out things that I said because, well, I said them so they should be a matter of public record but in my subsequent post I did apologize.

When I said I was being honest, I meant about just disagreeing with you for no good reason

Anyway - as it seems we're discussing opposite ends of the game here so that's a lot of the reason why we disagree on the solution. I personally don't have a problem with the dragon reduced to 1000hp rather than say 1600 (-400hp from a 20th level caster by your rule) as it still gives the dragon some breathing room to escape if nothing else. It's the reduced to 1-4 hitpoints without a save that I didn't like.

IceBear

 

[shilsen]

Yeah, I might introduce a cap as well if it still ends up being overpowered. In my campaigns, no one tends to have a lot of hitpoints so a cap isn't needed right now. I'm taking a wait and see approach.

I think the main reason many people don't use a cap is because of trying to keep the new harm symmetrical with heal. If there is a cap on the amount of damage you can inflict, there should be a cap on the amount you can heal.

IceBear

Whoops! I forgot to mention that I'm putting the same cap on Heal. So a 15th lvl cleric IMC casting Harm does a max of 150 hp damage with Harm and cures a max of 150 hp with Heal. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but I think it'll work out well.

 

[maddman75]

Slay Living is what does a laughable amount of damage, being about 10.5 + caster level in damage. By the time you can cast the spells regularly, Harm is always doing more damage! (After Level 20, few enemies have LESS than 300 hit points.)

Harm thus beats Slay Living in every aspect. Yeah, against vreatures with few hit points, Slay Living will do more. Why, however, would you cast Harm on something with fewer hit points? YOU WOULDN'T. Characters know what have loads of hit points and what don't, it ain't rocket science.

Sorry, but most groups never get to epic levels. There's not a few of us that don't want to play the type of game that ELH describes. So balancing it against what you might face after level 20 is not a good idea for a general rule. If you normally play at this level, it might be a good house rule for you.

At more reasonable levels, 1% of an enemy's hit points might as well be a save negates damage. A *tough* creature in most games might have 200 hit points. This would do 2 points of damage, about the same if the cleric had slapped the monster instead of casting a sixth level spell on it.