Opinions on Earth Reaver from Spell Compendium

[zepherus]

Hello, all!

I'm looking for opinions on the Earth Reaver spell from Spell Compendium. Do you think it's overpowered or broken?

Here's my dilemma - last nights game, I had a Level 7 Cleric of WeeJas and 3 Level 7 Rog/Asn NPC's which had just dug up a body and were casting a "Speak With Dead". So, they were all grouped together, trying to learn something from the corpse.

The party ( 4 Level 10's ) walks up, and wins initiative. One player casts "Earth Reaver", get's the entire group of 4 in the 20 foot radius, and drops all 3 Asn's to negative hit points, and nearly the Cleric ( who then get's wiped while trying to get some HP back ).

It's not the poor initiative that bothers me, it's the fact that the spell as written gives rogues no evasion against the damage...poor guys never had a chance!

So, I applaud the party for pulling off a very easy kill, but I'm still troubled with the fact that a rogue can dodge flames ( Flame Strike ), but not clumps of dirt and stones ( Earth Reaver ).

Opinions, please!

Zepherus

 

[jasin]

Hello, all!

I'm looking for opinions on the Earth Reaver spell from Spell Compendium. Do you think it's overpowered or broken?

Not really.

Here's my dilemma - last nights game, I had a Level 7 Cleric of WeeJas and 3 Level 7 Rog/Asn NPC's which had just dug up a body and were casting a "Speak With Dead". So, they were all grouped together, trying to learn something from the corpse.

The party ( 4 Level 10's ) walks up, and wins initiative. One player casts "Earth Reaver", get's the entire group of 4 in the 20 foot radius, and drops all 3 Asn's to negative hit points, and nearly the Cleric ( who then get's wiped while trying to get some HP back ).

Earth reaver does 7d6 damage. 7th-level Rog/Asns have 7d6+7xCon hp. Either the PC rolled very well for damage, or the assassins were very fragile, or both.

Also, it's a 5th level spell. An Empowered fireball is 5th level, and does damage comparable to earth reaver if you make the save and twice that if you fail. Of course, considering Evasion, the assassins would probably have preferred the double of nothing of fireball... but they are exactly the kind of targets earth reaver is for. Earth reaver vs. rogues is like suggestion vs. fighters.

So, I applaud the party for pulling off a very easy kill, but I'm still troubled with the fact that a rogue can dodge flames ( Flame Strike ), but not clumps of dirt and stones ( Earth Reaver ).

Maybe it would make more sense if earth reaver lasted for a full round, like ice storm (another area damage spell rogues can't dodge with Evasion)?

But ultimately, does it really make sense that rogues can dodge explosions but not punches? Just handwave and roll with it unless it's a problem in play, and I think earth reaver isn't. It's great against high Ref types with Evasion, but deciding it's overpowered because of that is like deciding that scorching ray is overpowered because it's a 2nd-level spell which can kill a frost giant in two shots.

 

[the_mighty_agrippa]

Man, it really used to be broken back in Savage Species.

Really, it's only 2d6 more damage than Ice Storm (Drd4, Wiz4), which also affects a larger area at greater range and inflict almost the same affect as putting people prone (slowing movement by half) but without any kind of save.