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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rystil Arden" data-source="post: 3449497" data-attributes="member: 29014">charlesatan, I'm wondering--do you play at higher levels?  If so, do you fight against by-the-book monsters?  If so again and you use the Orb spells as written in their gloriously-broken no-SR splendour, do you honestly see people using Polar Ray?  Because I'm here from experience with play in that level, and I can tell you that SR is a major factor and the orb spells (metamagicked up to snuff) break the game at high levels if the SR isn't changed.  All the other stuff?  KarinsDad is 100% right that the touch attack roll is *much* better than Reflex half for the caster (enemies tend to have excellent Ref saves compared to touch AC.  Look at any dragon), but it doesn't break the game at that point--it is just a black eye for the Evoker.  The ignores-SR-and-SR-equivalents thing is massive--it is 95% of the issue here, a gravity to which Karinsdad making 6 points, all valid but less important, doesn't quite do justice without that emphasis.  Heck, look at the name of this thread <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  At low levels, the brokenness of the Orb spells is much less apparent because SR is rarer.  Let's look at high levels though: Level 20 Wizard in a party VS Wyrm Red Dragon BBEG:So we have Connie the Conjurer and Evan the Evoker.  All things about them are equal except specialty school (heck, they could be the same character--Evan the Evoker is better off using the Orbs too).Evan has a few choices.  With his caster level of 20, he could Empower an Cold-Subbed Delayed-Blast Fireball for 30d6 (*1.5 due to weakness - the dragon's inevitable ice-related defenses).  Evan's DC is likely going to be 29 or lower, which the dragon makes on a 9 (or lower), so the dragon is probably taking half damage as well, so more like 22.5d6 - cold defenses.  Let's say the dragon only has up Resist Energy--that's 48.75 damage on average if it saves, or 127.5 if not.  Sounds good, right?  That's 80 Damage average.  But the dragon also has SR!  Suddenly, average damage decreases to 44, and a lot of that is due to a hefty chance to do 0. Alright, let's try a Meteor Swarm.  We have a problem--each of the meteors is separate, so Cold Resistance applies to each one.  This will destroy our only hope, so let's assume we got lucky and picked an element the dragon was dumb enough not to resist (Acid or Electricity, your favourite--of course it would have protected from cold, and it probably protects from Acid because too many things with Acid cut through SR, so let's pick electric) Despite doing only 24d6 Electric and 8d6 bludgeoning (not multiplied), the meteors can't miss except on a 1, so no save is allowed.  That's 106 Damage again.  But SR applies again!  Damage is reduced to 58.52.  This is better than Polar Ray would do, so we'll ignore Polar Ray.Evan probably cleans up with a Quickened Cone of Cold (subbed to Electric because we're pretending we know the Dragon didn't protect against Electric again) for another  18.7825 damage.  So total?  77 Damage average.Okay, so what about these orbs we hear so much about?  Connie tosses an Orb of Electricity just for kicks (because we let Evan pretend that Electricity was not resisted at all by the dragon--if the dragon actually resists electricity, Evan is boned, but Connie can just use Orb of Force), I prefer Twinned because this only uses an 8th-level slot, but Evan used two 9th-level slots, so I'll use the underwhelming Empower + Maximise so that Connie can at least use a 9th and an 8th (her 8th will be a Quickened Orb of Electricity).  These both hit except on a 1, like the little meteors, so average damage from the first is 116.25 and from the Quickened one is 52.5 (counting criticals on a 20 to nearly cancel out missing on a 1).  This total is 168.75.  If it allowed SR, the total would be down to 93 (though using slightly lower spell slots to do so).This analysis gets MUCH worse if the two casters are lower level or the enemy is stronger.  In fact, without Meteor Swarm as an option for the Evoker, if we go down to level 15 and she has to use Polar Ray and Quickened Fireball against Twinned Orb and Quickened Orb, the Conjurer kicks so much ass it isn't even funny (assuming no resistance to electricity and subbing everything to that, the damage is 21.525 for the Evoker and 157.5 for the Conjurer!)</blockquote>

Verification