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

[Xarlen]

Nothing. Cure critical wounds is the final healing spell a cleric can spontaneously cast. Take a look at your PHB, under the description of Spontaneous Casting in the Cleric writeup:

This means that a cleric cannot spontaneously cast heal or healing circle. They have to prepare it normally.

Thank you.

Though, no need to be snippy.

 

[bret]

The DMs I play under have all House-ruled harm to allow a saving throw, citing what many here have cited: that the cure line allows it, so why shouldn't harm? Well, you can't spontaneously cast a heal spell, can you? You have to mem it. This suggests to me that heal/harm are not in the cure line and don't follow the same rules.

IMC, harm stays as written until I am convinced, through play, that it is broken. I think that people who have house-ruled it without experiencing it firsthand are being a bunch of Chicken Littles.

Our GM did try it out for a while as written. We had a cleric that really liked it during that time. After about the third time a fight was ended by this one spell, the GM admitted it needed to be changed.

It isn't just NPCs that can cast Harm.

The case that decided it for the GM was when the cleric took out an uninjured Huge water elemental we were fighting underwater.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

In a game that combat is the main focus? Where all classes will be coming up against one another? Where they all should equally be effective?

You don't?

No, I do not.

There is a difference between being effective and being balanced.

Each class plays a role in combat, but one thing you left out is that this is a group oriented game.

This game is not designed to be a deathmatch sport where you drop a 20th lvl bard and a 20th lvl sorcerer into an arena and see who comes out alive.

Each class does not need a counter for each other class- it just needs to fill a role in the group.

The wizard fills quite a few roles; the ability to insta-kill something is not a role desired imc.

FD

 

[Anubis]

IMC, harm stays as written until I am convinced, through play, that it is broken. I think that people who have house-ruled it without experiencing it firsthand are being a bunch of Chicken Littles.

I have a Fireball handy for trolls like you.

I have played with the Harm spell MANY MANY MANY times, and I have used it AS-IS MANY MANY MANY times, and I KNOW for a FACT that it's BROKEN! That said, drop your holier-than-thou "experience it yourself" attitude, 'cause I've been there!

You wanna see how broken Harm is? How about I tell you what happened in a game I was a player in.

We went down into the Dragon's Den underneath a huge metropolis, and this mammoth cavern had dragons of all types. Our goal was to clean out all of the evil dragons from the cave. The number was something around 20 or 30, if memory serves me correctly. We had everything from Great Wyrm Red Dragons to Chaotic Evil Great Wyrm Gold Dragons to Great Wyrm Shadow Dragons.

The party was comprised of, starting out, four Level 15 characters. One was my Level 14 Wizard Xun Huo, the second was my Level 14 Cleric Gregory Belmont, the third was Level 14 Sorcerer Leiza Dunvegan, and the fourth was Level 14 Figher/Weapon Master Daggen Whisperwind. All three spellcasters had Spell Penetration at this point.

The top level of this cave had, I believe, seven Old dragons, five of them Chromatic, two of them Metallic, six of them Evil. The CR range was 14-19, the SR range was 22-26. Xun Huo and Leiza both had Disintegrate and other naty spells, and Gregory memorized nothing but Harm for his 6th-level spell slots. Our tactics were simple: Leiza fired first with Disintegrate, and if that failed, Gregory would use Harm and Daggen would whack the thing, and if that failed, Xun Huo would try Disintegrate. In the end, we EASILY won, using barely 30% of our resources, killed six of the seven dragons. We left the Good one alive, of course.

1: Disintegrate
2: Harm and Hack
3: Harm and Hack
4: Harm and Hack
5: Disintegrate
6: Harm and Hack

Why is it that the Cleric is not only offensively keeping up with the Wizards using the SAME LEVEL OF SPELLS, but actually doing more? After this level, all four characters were Level 15, and the spellcasters all gained Greater Spell Penetration. Let's move on.

First we rested, then we continued. The second level had like eight Very Old and Ancient dragons, four of them Chromatic, three of them Metallic, one of them from Faerun, six of them Evil. The CR range was 18-23, the SR range was 25-30. We used the same tactics, and got the same results. Interesting, eh?

1: Disintegrate
2: Harm and Hack
3: Disintegrate
4: Harm and Hack
5: Harm and Hack
6: Harm and Hack

Cleric is still keeping up, actually doing better because Disintegrate gets a save. Now the party was Level 18.

We rested and continued. The third level had ten Wyrm and Great Wyrm dragons, one Chromatic, three Metallic, six from Faerun, nine of them Evil. The CR range was 21-26, the SR range was 28-34. We rolled over all of them with ease.

1: Disintegrate
2: Harm and Hack
3: Harm and Hack
4: Harm and Hack
5: Harm and Hack
6: Disintegrate
7: Harm and Hack
8: Disintegrate
9: Harm and Hack

Cleric is now doing much better than Wizard, because Disintegrate has a save and Harm does not, and their both, basically, instant death in ALL cases!

This is proof, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Harm needs a save. Clerics are not supposed to be primarily offensive, but with Harm, they are. We took out almost 30 dragons that should have been able to crush us all thanks to Harm! Do you understand now? Try actually playing with it, and you'll experience the same thing.

 

[Anubis]

The only change I would suggest to this is to specify that on a successful save the target is reduced to half its current hit points to a minimum of 1d4. That is the version I use.

Why would that wording be needed? It only comes into play against a creature of 7 or less hit points, and by then, it doesn't really matter at this level. I would let it stand as is, or make it half hit points plus one per hit die/level to actually make it MEAN something.

 

[Xarlen]

So I guess the only way a wizard Villain in your campaign can be 'Effective' is if he stays in the background and never is seen, and therefore never gets into combat.

Or he buffs people and then teleports away.

Doesn't seem very 'Climactic' to me, either, which is what everyone seems to be After.

That's right, it's a 'group' oriented game, which really hurts a group if they don't have a melee bruiser, because the other classes can't cut it.

So, since it's a group oriented thing, I Guess that a wizard has to have an NPC big fighting guy, because his combat spells don't do squat against big HP people. So it's then just a big HP race.

Maybe in Your campaign, but not mine.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I just upped it to a 9th level spell. Which is nice on my part I think because most broken spells I just remove,and make the players invent a non-broken version if they want it in.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

So I guess the only way a wizard Villain in your campaign can be 'Effective' is if he stays in the background and never is seen, and therefore never gets into combat.

My wizard villians are not morons who typically get into melee by themselves with a group of adventures.

Doesn't seem very 'Climactic' to me, either, which is what everyone seems to be After.

If that is the limit of your tactics with a wizard, then so be it.

Maybe in Your campaign, but not mine.

You got that right- though I have been pretty clear about that.

FD

 

[Xarlen]

My wizard villians are not morons who typically get into melee by themselves with a group of adventures.

Neither do mine. That's because they would Kill the meleers before they got close. Boom spells take several rounds to do that, which they don't have.

As for tactics, there are a lot I've used. But I see no difference between casting Sleep and wiping out the fighters, then casting Blindness on a wizard, cleric, or whatever spellcaster.

 

[shadracht]

<snip>
First we rested, then we continued. The second level...
<snip>

Here's where the discription falls apart for me. Everyone keeps talking about dragons, super baddies, etc. falling to the harm/ready combo. Where are all the minions? Where are the magical protections? What are the super-baddies doing when the PC's are blithely destroying them? Dragons are, or should be, smarter than anything other than gods.

While you were resting, the rest of the dragons should have descended with great fire and fury upon you, or at the very least, if they were lazy dragons, used some of the MASSIVE spells at their disposal to remove/liquify/etc you.

Yes, as the letter of the law, harm is somewhat overpowered. But I can also tell you that should the cleric in my game decide to take harm instead of heal, the rest of the party would kill him. If you give PC's limitless resources, they can easily best anything that isn't a deathtrap. However, you have to factor in rapidly depleting resources.