No spell resistance vs. Orb spells? Why?
- Thread starter Matrix Sorcica
- Start date
Nail
First Post
I see the problem. I'll bet it doesn't change much, but it is an error.KarinsDad said:
MonsterForge (the spreadsheet I'm extracting the data from) has 336 monsters from the MM 3.5e in it. Dragons are excluded - because of the difficulty in stat-ing them, I assume. Creatures that advance by class level are not there (elves, dwarves, hobgoblins, harpies, ogres, etc). Templates are removed.
Everything else is there. All vermin, of all sizes, for example. All animals. All elementals of all sizes. Etc.
Keep in mind MonsterForge wasn't built to do what I'm doing to it. It was built to advance monsters. And monsters that can have class levels can have equipment...and can have higher touch ACs.
Given those limitations, the average touch AC for the MM 3.5e from this data set is AC ~12.
I have another data set that includes much of what MonsterForge excludes. I'll combine the datasets, and see what I get.
FWIW.
I still suspect the average touch AC is around 12, and that touch AC doesn't change noticibly with CR.But I could be wrong. <shrug>
Hypersmurf said:
But that rule only applies to objects and creatures.
It is inapplicable to the discussion at hand.
Who is changing RAW now?
Hypersmurf said:
And creates an even worse inconsistency. Orbs are both magical and non-magical when they hit their target.
Compared to the lack of conjuration creation energy rules, that is a pretty big inconsistency (in fact, I do not really see an inconsistency with Conjuration Creation and its spells as much as I see a missing rule).
Not only that, but replacing "objects and creatures" with "objects and effects" drops creatures from the Conjuration Creation school completely. You are adding a new inconsistency for Phantom Steed to resolve your (supposed) inconsistencies for non-object conjuration creations (which can be easily resolved by just realizing that there are no conjuration creation non-objects non-creature explicit rules).
And even if one changes the general conjuration creation rules to objects, creatures, or effects (by cumulatively adding the Conjuration School rule with the Conjuration Creation Subschool rules), it still does not imply that one should change the instantaneous conjuration creation rule to objects, creatures, or effects.
So, even doing it for the non-instantaneous cases (31 out of 33 of the rest of the spells in the PHB) does not mean that one should do it for the instantaneous cases.
In fact, the easiest way to resolve your inconsistency is to just claim that the Conjuration Creation spells in the book are Conjuration Creation spells. Period. End of story. No need for the instantaneous energy one in the PHB to match the object and creature rule. That's a rules change.
It's pretty obvious that WotC never considered allowing Orbs to bust through AMFs, or they would have mentioned it somewhere. Hence, I consider your position on this to not match RAW nor match designer intent. It appears to just be your preference and has nothing to do with rules at all.
When we add the fact that Conjuration Creation Instantaneous spells just flat out should not create (more potent than Evocation) Energy Effects (and many people agree that WotC foobared on this), it just seems nonsensical to change yet another literal RAW rule to make Orbs even more potent.
Brother MacLaren
Explorer
It should change quite a bit for monsters with class levels and equipment. As you go up CRs, I'd expect touch ACs to increase with levels due to Dex-boosting items -- more or less cancelled out by mages' Dex-boosting items -- and deflection items. The bonus from deflection items isn't generally going to keep pace with the mages' base attack bonus.Nail said:
The NPC wizard in the DMG has these touch ACs:
Levels 1-6: 12
Levels 7-12: 13
Level 13: 14
Levels 14-20: 15
The NPC fighter tops out at a 15, the cleric at an 11, and the rogue at a 20.
Nail said:
It changes a lot. There are 120 Dragon low touch ACs in the MM.
Nail said:
336 touch AC 12 monsters plus 120 touch AC 8.2 dragons yields an average touch AC of 11.
336 * 12 + 120 * 8.2 = 5016 / 456 = 11
Considering that there are still 73 other missing creatures from your data, ...
Nail said:
That seems like a pretty big change too. Adding those back in would probably take a whole lot of time though.
For the thread in general though I do not know if orbs are overpowered or not, they might be or they might not be but it seems possible that the orbs could be overpowered and normal evocation could be underpowered. If the comparison is based off of normal evocation while normal evocation is underpowered I certainly would not want to move the orbs down to the same level as something underpowered.
Nail said:
When talking averages over 500 creatures, sure, I think there is a difference between 11 and 12.
Game-wise, it means a level or two (items and magic depending) before an arcane caster gets most creatures at his 95% level.
But, it's not a huge difference. Now, which creatures were not in the other books you calculated?
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