Is Scorching Ray Too Good?

[Liquidsabre]

Praise to the gods you are still alive, by 10th level you should be hitting all sorts of SR nasties. For the love of pete, you GOTTA have acid arrow man! For the sake of your party man! Think of the hafling, think of the halfling!!!! *runs off screaming*

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Oh, a second thought: the primary thing that makes scorching ray look good is the generally pathetic nature of nearly all the other second level attack spells.

Acid Arrow: Yuck! If I'm going to do damage, I want to do it NOW. Battles are generally finished in two to four rounds and are often over at the end of the first round. If the bad guy would be dead five times over instead of one time over in six rounds, it doesn't much matter. (Anyway, the earlier in combat you deal the damage, the more significant it is--2d4 points of damage in round 10 just isn't as significant as 2d4 points of damage in round 2). After level four or so, I'd rather have magic missile in the second level slot than Acid Arrow. (And I'd definitely rather have an Empowered Magic Missile than an extended acid arrow). Lesser Energy Orb would do too.

Flaming Sphere: pretty good from levels two through five. Acceptable at level six, and after that, I'd rather have Magic Missile in the slot than Flaming Sphere.

Scorching Ray is about the only 2nd level damage spell left. . . and as I said, first level damage spells often look good in comparison to the others.

 

[Victim]

Acid Arrow is good when using special hit and run strategies designed to exploit its decent damage potential over time (especially when extended), or when fighting enemies that require SR: NO!! like Golems and such.

Scorching Ray damage is immediate so it's more useful in normal battles. The spell runs pretty close to the DMG damage guides for a single target spell - the total damage is higher, but it requires success on multiple rolls for full effect.

 

[Pax]

Scorching Ray is not subject to being dispelled in the next round to eliminate 80% or more of it's damage potential.

Acid Arrow is.

 

[The Souljourner]

You can't compare Acid Arrow and Scorching Ray. Why? Because Acid Arrow is a very narrowly focused spell. When it's good, it'll be great, but most of the time, it sucks. In fact, I'd say 95% of the time, it sucks. Why? Because damage over time is not nearly as useful as damage *now*. When you start a battle... every round you *don't* cast your AA, you're losing 2d4 damage. If you hit a guy with only 8 hitpoints left and he dies in the first hit, you've wasted many many rounds of damage.... it's just not that great. Saying Scorching Ray is better than Acid Arrow is like saying Fireball is better than Secret Page. Of course it is, it's made to be.

Scorching Ray is made to be the main 2nd level damage spell, like magic missile and fireball.

Now that being said, I've seen scorching ray miss far too often to think it's broken. And 4d6 damage just isn't that much at 5th level. 14 damage. Woo hoo. My fighter does more than that in just a couple hits, and has a much better chance of hitting.

The extreme short range mean that if you're out in the open, you're often out of range, and have to wander into the middle of melee to use the spell. If you're in close quarters, you're almost always firing into melee with cover, which means a -8 to hit. Wizards do not like -8 to hit.

I've played with it, in many games, and it just never does as well as people expect.

-The Souljourner

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Scorching Ray potentially does approximately twice as much damage as MM, but it requires a roll(s) to hit and your wizard will have a -8 penalty the majority of the time he could use it because the target is engaged in melee with an ally.

The bottom line is this spell fits nicely between MM and Fireball/Lightning Bolt. I agree with Elder-Basilisk: it only attracts our attention because traditionally there were no good damage dealing 2nd level spells (although 2nd level spells are wonderfully effective for other purposes)

 

[Darklone]

Can't Acid Arrow still be countered, e.g. by hopping into water?

Another "problem" with scorching ray: At 4th level, when the sorcerer first gets it, Shocking Grasp does the same damage. And with both spells you're in melee range.

 

[Kyrail]

Scorching ray can be too much depending on who uses it.

A party of level 2 PC's can take out a level 4 Sor/Wiz pretty easily. But 1 sorching ray can kill just about any PC of 2nd level in one shot, so I had to forgo it for one of my combats.

 

[Scion]

?

4d6 avg 14 damage.. even a 2nd level mage with no con bonus has 6hp.. so if the ray hits it probably wont kill this walking dead man anyway Plus it has to hit, not exactly a incredible chance there either, probably near 50/50. Any combatant at this point will have at least 14hp (d8 hd, 14 con = 16 hp avg)

Doesnt seem horribly out of line.. at low levels someone 2 levels above you can kill you rapidly at these levels, but they are pretty extreme examples where it occurs easily.

 

[Darklone]

Right Scion. Comparing that to the change that a raging charging level 4 barbarian with Power Attack will hit the same mage... with 2d6+17 damage ...