Orbs vs. Evocations II- with level by level data

[kinem]

Another factor that should be considered is that the school of Evocation's main schtick is damage dealing spells, while Conjuration has a lot of other useful things and in Core Rules doesn't have or need the Orbs, so Evocation should be better at this one thing than Conjuration, not merely on par with the Orbs, and certainly not worse which in fact it is.

 

[James McMurray]

Evocation is better at one thing: dealing damage in an area.

 

[Henry]

Evocation is better at one thing: dealing damage in an area.

Dealing low amounts of damage in an area. Evocation was originally posited as the "blasting" school, conjuration as the "summoning" school. Currently, Conjurers have the advantage over the thing the Evokers are supposed to be good at. To me, at least, the figures back it up.

 

[KarinsDad]

Evocation is better at one thing: dealing damage in an area.

And even this is not necessarily true when metamagic is introduced into the equation.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Evocation is better at one thing: dealing damage in an area.

The same book that gave us the orbs also gave us Blast of Flame, Arc of Lightning, and Vitrolic Sphere -- area-effect energy-damage SR-ignoring Conjuration effects.

Just using PHB spells, the conjurer had some good options for dealing damage in an area, but they often require a bit of strategy. Casting Acid Fog and either Evard's Black Tentacles or celestial bears to keep your enemies trapped in the fog; using Planar Binding to command outsiders with a huge variety of spells and/or SLA; or throwing a freestanding Wall of Iron in the middle of your foes.

 

[James McMurray]

Cool. Different opinions is what makes the world go round.

 

[Felix]

Round 2 indeed.

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Frankly, I think these numbers do a good job at indicating the mechanical imbalance of the Orbs: at higher levels, a wizard will want to metamagic a 4th level spell instead of cast his shiny and newly acquired 7th or 8th level spell. As levels go up, monsters get larger and AoE spells lose the touch they had when fighting kobolds. So you knock out one foe quickly instead of slowly hamper as many bigger-sized enemies as you can, while penetrating their SR and Reflex saves.

Even then, I don't think it's the most convincing argument.



Conjurer: "Your Anti-magic Field won't protect you from my Orb of Cold!"

Evil Abjurer: "Of course it will, it's not like 'Cold' is a thing: it's elemental damage that must be sustained by magi---* Owwww!"

Conjurer: "Bua-ha-ha! Defend yourself how you like, but not even incorporeality can protect you from my purely non-magical Baseball of Force I summon to hurl at you, which will remain forever thanks to the Laws of Instantaneous Conjuration! Bua-HA!"

Evil Abjurer: "Stupid useless 20,000gp Ring of Evasion! Arrrrrgh-----*"

 

[IanB]

YIKES. Thanks.

3 above 11 gives 3.0. That is pretty ridiculous. No way in the history of the world that you are gonna get 3 bad guys in every fireball at those levels.

One think I also just remembered.

It's better to do a lot of damage to one creature (likely killing it, and stopping it from attacking next round) vs. less damage spread across 2-3 creatures. This is so obvious I honestly didn't consider it as a major plus for the orbs.

DUH!

I would argue that the ratio doesn't really matter that much at +3. Of *course* you're going to pick the orbs, because if you're talking about a monster with a CR of party level +3, you're only going to be fighting one thing anyway! Anything else is likely to lead to a TPK.

 

[shmoo2]

I would argue that the ratio doesn't really matter that much at +3. Of *course* you're going to pick the orbs, because if you're talking about a monster with a CR of party level +3, you're only going to be fighting one thing anyway! Anything else is likely to lead to a TPK.

Yes, exactly what was meant by the comment that orbs are used to fight the important battles, evocations are for the mook hordes.

In battles vs. one BIG opponent then, the ratio is simply how much more damage you can do with an orb over evocations. And it is a LOT more at high levels.

 

[two]

I would argue that the ratio doesn't really matter that much at +3. Of *course* you're going to pick the orbs, because if you're talking about a monster with a CR of party level +3, you're only going to be fighting one thing anyway! Anything else is likely to lead to a TPK.

Another way to say that the evocation specialist does best when there are a lot of low CR opponents, i.e. when the party is not in a lot of immediate danger.

It is a niche, granted. Not a niche I think is that important, but...