No spell resistance vs. Orb spells? Why?

[Rystil Arden]

The reason isn't a good one though. The complaint about orbs vs. dragons as an example is that orbs are tailor made to fight dragons due t the SR, touch AC, and energy weakness. Going from "in this extremely unbalanced situation orbs roxxorz" to "in this still unbalanced situation AoEs win, but only by a little" is not a proper mirror. If you want to compare orbs as "fairly" as the dragon example, you have to use creatures with no SR and weak saves. If you really wanted to be fair you'd have to pick a creature with average SR and average saves for its CR.

Actually, I believe dragons have below-average SR for their CR and they have Reflex saves that are not that much above average (Good Ref on the Dragon HD but terrible Dex--this puts them in between the totally bad Ref things and the things with Good Ref and good Dex).

And the reason to ignore the no-SR guys is plenty good enough--creatures with no SR at all are irrelevant because if you make my proposed nerf (and the one referenced in the thread title), Orbs do not change in strength against critters with no SR.

 

[DungeonMaester]

Has the point of a spell caster actually choosing his spells for the day as balance been brought up?

In my honest opinion, when players actually choose spells for the day even the most blammy spells such as the Orbs only are prepared once or twice, preparing them more means almost certain death for the party.

---Rusty

 

[James McMurray]

Rhystil, we're almost 600 posts into this thread. It's expanded well beyond the OP.

 

[Felix]

<disregard>

 

[Wish]

It's surely easy to make the orb spells look very strong when you hand pick the examples. Let's go with a slightly different example. (Also EL 16, just like the Cornugon that's got everybody so worked up.)

In this case, our intrepid wizards run into a pack of six elder water elementals (CR 11).

Our orb wizard lets fly with a maximized orb of cold. Touch AC 14 means a 4 or better to hit.

Damage will be (90*0.85) = 76.5. Not bad.

Our AoE wizard lets go an empowered cone of cold. Save on a 5 or better with a +16 Reflex bonus and DC 21.

Damage per elemental will be 52.5*1.5*(0.2+0.5*0.8) = 47.25.

Damage for the whole pack of elementals will be 283.5.

Wow, those orb spells sure do suck.

 

[James McMurray]

You claimed that Devils were stacked in favor of the Orb-caster without having checked the stats?

Because their SR (as stated by another poster) is higher than the average for their CR. The energy resistance was just icing on the cake.

Meaning that you have found a reason to dismiss every number that has been offered you?

What numbers should I think you would accept?

It'll be hard. They have to be fair enough to matter, general enough to matter across the course of a wizard's career, and extreme enough in their differences between orbs and AoEs to show the imbalance clearly. For the reconrd, I don't believe the 4 earth elementals to be fair enough to matter, because they're weighted too strongly in favor of the AoE spell.

Personally, I'd prefer play reports from people running campaigns to numbers, because I'm not sure my criteria for numbers in this case is meetable. I'm afraid that encounters in a campaign are too disparate to generate enough sets of data to account for a large enough percentage of them that one can say "see, orbs are unbalanced." Icould be wrong though, so please feel free to try.

In my experience, running campaign games and arena games, the orbs are not unbalanced. They're a lot stronger in the arena games because the fights are almost always one on one, but I havn't seen them be demonstrably overpowered in enough situations to warrant a change. There are others who have posted that in their experiences the orbs also aren't broken. It's about as useful as firsthand experiences usually are (i.e. hardly at all without a sizeable sampling) but it's better to me that a few specific situations set up specifically to prove or disprove a point.

 

[Felix]

It's surely easy to make the orb spells look very strong when you hand pick the examples. Let's go with a slightly different example.

<snip>

Wow, those orb spells sure do suck.

The reasoning behind pitting foes with SR against an Evoker and a Conjurer is that foes without SR will not show why Orbs should remain "SR: no".

In this instance of 6 elementals, changing the spell to "SR: yes" will not make the Orbs any less effective.

So to see if there is a good balance reason to keep the Orbs "SR: no" or change them to "SR: yes", look at three things: 1) how Evocations compare vs Orbs opposing critters with SR, 2) the frequency of critters with SR appearing as opponents, and 3) the frequencey of small-numbers-of-opponent fights. The better Orbs do against SR relative to Evocations, the closer to broken; the more frequent SR opponents are, the closer to broken; the more often you fight few foes, the closer to broken.

Either way, showing how 6 water elementals fare does nothing to inform us of any of these three things. The same point can be made by pitting 60 stirges against an Orb tosser and a Fireballer.

 

[Felix]

It'll be hard. They have to be fair enough to matter, general enough to matter across the course of a wizard's career, and extreme enough in their differences between orbs and AoEs to show the imbalance clearly. For the reconrd, I don't believe the 4 earth elementals to be fair enough to matter, because they're weighted too strongly in favor of the AoE spell.

So then what are the factors that will lead to a conclusion of game imbalance if you don't buy into the flavor and conjuration (creation) rules arguments against Orbs?

Orbs will be imbalanced if:

Fights involve fewer opponents.
Fights involve enemies with SR.
Fights begin at short range.
Touch ACs are lower.
Saving throw bonuses for enemies are higher.​

The reverse of those things will weaken Orbs.

Are there others?

 

[IanB]

I suppose we're past the cornugon example already, but it should be pointed out that a cornugon's touch AC is actually likely to be 20, not 16, as it has both dispel chaos and dispel good as SLAs.

 

[James McMurray]

So then what are the factors that will lead to a conclusion of game imbalance if you don't buy into the flavor and conjuration (creation) rules arguments against Orbs?

Orbs will be imbalanced if:

Fights involve fewer opponents.
Fights involve enemies with SR.
Fights begin at short range.
Touch ACs are lower.
Saving throw bonuses for enemies are higher.​

The reverse of those things will weaken Orbs.

Are there others?

Fights involve a lot of antimagic areas.
Fights involve few incorporeal creatures.
Fights involve situations where area spells cannot be used to reliably target three or more enemies.​

It would require a combination of those effects to make them broken. For instance, if every fight is against a single opponent they're broken. If every fight is against a single incorporeal opponent they're hideously ineffective. OR everyone having a touch AC of -15 and a reflex save bonus of +0 is a wash.