Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="demiurgeastaroth" data-source="post: 393775" data-attributes="member: 7532">Note this is my third attempt to reply here, thanks to the current enworld funny business.Yes, my bad - Flame Strike does affect 12 5' squares. It's just that I rarely see it get more than one or two villains, due to the difficulty of using area effect attacks once players and villains are engaged. The main point, though, is that flame strike is easy to defend against - the damage an entire enemy side takes from a  single flamestrike (even empowered) might not compare to the damage a single unmodified Harm does. (Once you take into account saves, fire resistance against half the damage, and so forth.)In a recent battle my players fought three advanced giants each with around 210 hit points - a firestorm caught all three, doing 78 points to each. A Harm spell would have had a greater effect, doing roughly the same damage but all concentrated on a single target - making it easy to remove that foe from the battlefield whereas all 3 giants were still able to soak up a fair bit of damage after the Firestorm.Except that Blade Barrier has a Reflex save in the first round. After that, it's a matter of choice whether you suffer the damage - either you choose top pass through it or you don't. There may be compelling reasons to do so, but even then it's only going to be done by those who can comfortably soak it (and that assumes a spellcaster doesn't just dispel it).Harm doesn't have that drawback - it's a surgical precision killing tool, and far more lethal than a spell with the name "Harm" suggest. My version (CLx5, no save) is close enough to the suggested damage cap for spells of that level (if they are to be ignored, why are they there?), and removes it from the save-or-die camp - it is simply a damaging spell. It gaves the players tactical options - should I use Blade Barrier, Harm, Empowered Falme Strike, or Finger of Death? There's no clear choice of which is better. If you want to hurt someone, doing a very reliable amount of damage, you'll use, this Harm is very handy spell. It's not the be all and end all, and for Clerics who aren't supposed to be the firepower machines that Wizards are, it seems to emphasise their support role. They can weaken opponents (but not so much that the rest of the fight is a foregone conclusion).</blockquote>

Verification