Please let me know what you think of these spells and magic weapons.

[herald]

I'm thinking of adding these spells and magic weapon types to my game.
Please give them a review to let me know what you think.

Energetic Strike
Evocation
Level: Sor/Wiz 1
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Targets: Creature or creatures touched (up to one/level)
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude partial
Spell Resistance: Yes

A touch from the character's hand, which glows with yellow energy, disrupts the life force of creatures. Each touch channels positive energy that deals 1d6 points of damage and possibly also 1 point of temporary Constitution damage. (A successful Fortitude saving throw negates the Constitution damage.) The character can use this melee touch attack up to one time per level.

The spell has a special effect on undead creatures. Undead are affected as above, but immune to the Constitution loss (as they don't have Constitution scores). If hit they must make an addtional successful Will saving throw or act as if knocked back 5 feet as if Bull Rushed.


Positive Energy Ball
Evocation [Positive Energy]
Level: Sor/Wiz 4
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area: 20-ft.-radius spread
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Reflex half
Spell Resistance: Yes
A Positive Energy Ball spell is a burst of positive energy that detonates silently and deals 1d6 points of positive energy damage per caster level (maximum 10d6) to all creatures within the area. The explosion creates almost no pressure.
The character points a finger and determine the range (distance and height) at which the positive energy ball is to burst. A glowing, pea-sized bead streaks from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the positive energy ball at that point (an early impact results in an early detonation). If the character attempts to send the bead through a narrow passage, such as through an arrow slit, the character must "hit" the opening with a ranged touch attack, or else the bead strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely.
Undead creatures struck by this spell take 1d10 points of damage (maximum 10d10) to all creatures within area.


Striking
A striking weapon always looks like it’s in motion, even lying still. Striking weapons deal +1d6 points of damage on a successful hit. Bows, crossbows, and slings so enchanted bestow the bonus damage upon their ammunition.

Caster Level: 8th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, energetic strike or positive energy ball; Market Price: +1


Superior Striking
A superior striking weapon functions as a striking weapon that profoundly wounds upon striking a critical hit. Superior striking weapons deal +1d10 points of positive energy damage on a successful critical hit. If the weapon’s critical multiplier is x3, add +2d10 points of bonus damage instead, and if the multiplier is x4, add +3d10 points of bonus damage. Bows, crossbows, and slings so enchanted bestow the bonus damage upon their ammunition.

Caster Level: 12th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms and Armor, energetic strike or positive energy ball; Market Price: +2

 

[Al]

Well, one thing you may have overlooked.

Positive Energy and the unnamed damage type from Striking weapons are better than their existing counterparts. This is because there are no defenses against them.

A Flaming weapon is subject to fire resistance, an Icy weapon subject to cold resistance etc. Similarly with a Fireball, Cone of Cold and such like.

The power of these spells is that there is no 'standard' way to resist them. Thus, they should be weaker than the nearest current equivalents.

Although PES is 4th level, its level is probably bumped one anyway due to its very superior impact on undead. In order to account for the 'irresistability' of it, perhaps tone down the basic damage to d4. Similarly, Striking could be notched down to d4 and Superior Striking to d8.

 

[herald]

Good points on the irresistabliity of the damage. I hesitate to change the weapons damage capabilities since it would be out of wack with other standard weapon capabilities.

Perhaps when I enter these spells into the campaign, I will add positive and negative to the list of energies that can be resisted.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Striking is easy to tweak. Just say that the 1d6 damage is piercing, bludgeoning, or slashing, or whatever. That way it's subject to the usual DR, immunities, etc.

Basically, all damage types can go into two categories:

EASY: +1 = 1d6 damage
Fire, Cold, Electrical, Slashing, Bludgeoning, Piercing

HARD: +1 = 1d4 damage
Acid, Sonic, Psionic, Holy/Unholy/Chaotic/Lawful

For reference, "Psionic" is a new type I've implemented for all those PsiHB damage enhancements. It bypasses DR like elements do, can't be stopped with a Protection from anything spell, but is reduced by Mental Hardness (and defense modes can be used). Nonpsionics are given a hardness of 1 for free.
Holy/Unholy/Chaotic/Lawful are stopped entirely by the appropriate Protection From Evil/Good/etc. spell, and are usually set up to only work against the opposite alignment.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Energetic Strike seems a bit too good. It's based on Chill Touch, but cold damage is easier to stop than energy damage, and losing Con is usually worse than losing Str.

Likewise for Positive Energy Ball, the damage type is harder to stop.

Same with the weapon enhancements. There are similar enhancements in the Psionics Handbook but have lower damage dice due to the lack of energy resistance defences.

Drop Striking to 1d4, Superior Striking to d8's, reduce PEB to 1d4 per level (1d8 vs undead), and I'm not sure about Energetic Strike.

Geoff.

 

[herald]

I like Spatzimus idea the best. The reason I don't want to change the damage types comes from somthing that I read about from Monte Cook. Most spless are designed to work with a d6 for damage. I like the conventionality. So swaping positive energy for Bludgeoning could very well work for me.

Energetic strike in my opinion is weaker than Chill Touch. Chill Touch affects strength, and in 3e most game designers feel that Strength trumps Constitution. Granted that by affecting Constitution affect further saving throws against Fortitude, it would still be foolish for a Wizard to try and take down a fighter of the same level.

Granted I did allow the spell to damage undead, after all, but I stripped away the flee in panic and put in the much more toned down knock back. So there is a trade off.

And chill touch is not a cold spell, it's negative energy. Here is the info from the SRD.

Chill Touch

Necromancy
Level: Sor/Wiz 1
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Targets: Creature or creatures touched (up to one/level)
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude partial
Spell Resistance: Yes

A touch from the character's hand, which glows with blue energy, disrupts the life force of living creatures. Each touch channels negative energy that deals 1d6 points of damage and possibly also 1 point of temporary Strength damage. (A successful Fortitude saving throw negates the Strength damage.) The character can use this melee touch attack up to one time per level.

The spell has a special effect on undead creatures. Undead touched by the character suffer no damage or Strength loss, but they must make successful Will saving throws or flee as if panicked for 1d4 rounds +1 round per caster level.

So resistance from cold doesn't block its damage as it's writen. It would need to have the descriptor (Cold) added to make it so.

So the question I should ask, is Chill Touch too powerful?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Chill Touch affects strength, and in 3e most game designers feel that Strength trumps Constitution.

Slight modification here: a bonus to STR is better than a bonus to CON, but when talking about ability drain remember that CON is the only stat that kills you when it reaches zero; the others just leave you incapacitated. CON poisons are much more dangerous (and expensive) than STR ones as a result. Also, look at the effect of a partial drain: a Wizard who has half of his STR drained isn't really hurt. Any character who loses any CON loses HP in the process, in a way that can't be healed with Cure spells or regeneration, so it's always a damaging thing.
As for the whole damage type thing, I'm going to have to mention a house rule we use.
"All positive-energy spells get the [Good] modifier, and all negative-energy spells get the [Evil] modifier." This ties in with the PHB section on Turning, where it explains that using positive energy to turn undead is inherently good.
This means in my world good clerics can't cast Harm or Inflict spells, and evil ones can't cast healing spells. (We've made some other spells to get around this)

So, in this situation, you could say that as a negative-energy attack, Chill Touch has Unholy damage type, and your positive-energy attack does Holy damage. So, 1d6 of this is better than 1d6 of a more mundane damage type. By the ratio I mentioned above, it's like 1.5 dice of a normal type.
Now, that's okay for your Chill Touch variant, but the ball? Let's compare to Fireball.
> PEB has Long range, the same damage (of a better type), and does improved damage to Undead.
> The only downside is that it is one level higher; there are metamagic Feats that let you change damage types already, but you can't change to a non-Elemental type, so this is better than a metamagicked Fireball even at the higher level.

Possible balance options: Bludgeoning damage. Use d4 for non-Undead and d8 for Undead. Shorten the range and/or shrink the burst.

(Also note that you list PEB as using a material component but never say what it is)

In general, though, I'd change your basic concept. You've assumed that positive energy disrupts life, when the basic concept in the books is that positive energy is a good thing for the living. It just doesn't fit. If you decide to switch to Bludgeoning type, don't make it a Positive-Energy effect; just make it a force effect.

 

[Al]

Incidentally, the PsiHB has Charged Weapons, which deal d4 psionic damage, so reducing Striking to d4 for be in line with that. It also has Impact weapons, which do unnamed damage and drop to a mere +2 points of damage.

However, it then totally confuses the issue by having Psychokinetic Burst weapons with d10s. Tsk. Tsk.

 

[herald]

Thanks Spatzimaus

>>>Possible balance options:


>>>Bludgeoning damage.

This would strip the true characterazation of the spell away.

>>>Use d4 for non-Undead and d8 for Undead.

These dice are not supposed to be used for Arcane Spells. D6 is what is perfered. d8 is for Divine.(I'm not sure what d4's are used for.)

>>>Shorten the range and/or shrink the burst.

Shorten the range actually works very well. I could convert it to a mid-ranged spell and I think it would work nicely.

I don't totally agree with your point about energetic burst, but I do understand it.

 

[Spatzimaus]

The d6 isn't an Arcane thing, and the d8 isn't a Divine thing. d6s are just a lot easier to roll (and everyone has a pile of them), so most spells requiring many dice use them, and as the designers said, they were assumed to be the baseline. If the damage type is fairly common, do (level)d6 damage.

There are plenty of spells and powers that don't use d6s. Magic Missile (d4), Delayed Blast Fireball (d8), Breath of the Dragon (d4), and so on. Look through the PHB and PsiHB, you'll find a lot of them (especially in the PsiHB, since most Psion powers do one die per power point and just vary the size of the die). d10s are very rarely used; even stuff aimed at specific monster types (Sever the Tie for Undead, Shatter for crystallines, etc.) tend to use d8s.

Incidentally, when someone suggests to use Nd4s for a roll, substitute (N/2)d8, it's a lot easier.

So, let's look at the specifics of your positive energy ball, based on Fireball as a baseline. A hard-to-resist damage type is about 50% more expensive than an easy-to-resist type. (See the item enchantments for things like Sonic, for example; in the case of things like Holy/Unholy this increase is balanced out by the fact that it only affects a certain alignment). That's like using Empower (+2 levels) to add 50% to the damage. So, in its original form this'd be a level 5 spell even without the fact that it does 50% more damage to Undead.

If you shorten the range to Medium, that'd probably knock it down a level. Shrinking it to a 10' or 15' burst helps balance out the Undead damage, and there I'd say it's okay for a level 4 spell. But, the better option in my opinion would be to make it d4 (or 1/2d8) for normal creatures and d8 for Undead.

Of course, I still wouldn't allow it in general, since as I said before, nothing in the books says that positive energy is harmful to life. Besides, it now makes Wizards and Sorcerers better at fighting Undead than Clerics are.