Please rate Delay Spell

[Gaiden]

Two words:

Divination School

Think about it.

 

[Marshall]

Saeviomagy:

Excuse me but no. Any character built around this concept would have taken that into account. If I'm casting 8th level spells then I can hit a target with a medium range spell from 250 ft (Cloudkill, Confusion, Glitterdust, Hold Person, Evard's Black Tentacles, Dispel Magic, Dominate Person, Stinking Cloud, Web, Wall of Ice, Wall of Iron, Wall of Stone, etc.). I can hit them with a long range spell from 1000 ft (Fireball, Pyrotechnics, Silent Image, Telekinesis). Both are more than sufficiently far away to conceal myself in some fashion and make it more than difficult to hear my verbal components. Under the (broken) spot/listen check rules, I dare say that even an epic level character is going to have a hard time noticing me from long range - but any reasonable rules are going to make someone 300+ yards away with 75% cover or better a tough thing to spot. And unless it is perfectly quiet in the environment, even if they did hear my distant verbal components it would be an extraordinary feat to hear and distinguish the sounds of spell casting over other normal sounds of the city or any other noisy environment. I doubt any ordinary character could make the combined listen and spellcraft checks necessary to do it, and that's assuming you didn't force a wisdom check to notice the sound as unusual in the first place.

This tactic has nothing to do with delay, and actually makes delay even less valuable. Why should I bother to raise my spell levels by +3 when they cant see me casting them anyway?

 

[Sir Whiskers]

I agree that I've yet to hear anyone suggest a use for this feat that justifies a +3 level adjustment. One use that I'd consider (as a GM, of course) is this:

Pit trap with glyph at the bottom. Area spell is tied to the glyph. The spell is delayed by two or three rounds. Depending on the spell's area effect, you might nail not just the character who fell in, but one or two others helping him out. Also, the party is unlikely to correlate the two events, instead assuming they're being attacked by someone/something.

 

[zorlag]

-

This feat is not worth +3 levels of adjustment. +2 is too much too and even +1 makes me think twice before taking it. Sure it can create massive onslaught of spells if timed JUST right but that is not going to happen very often and the cost is extraordinarily high...

Z.

 

[Brista]

Firstly thank you very much Hypersmurf for pointing out the limitations - I had missed those

I will however try again, I still think this is an awesome feat


Round 1

I teleport home

Take 13 Cone of Colds (11 doing 15 d6, 2 maximised for 90 cold damage each) DC 30

Your move


(achieved using Haste to get two spells per round, quicken in the final round and contingency to trigger the teleport. There are many spells or situations that would allow you to cast for 6 rounds without being observed, especially on targets who are rulers and need to sit through long court or public appearances)

Now in addition to the mistakes that Hypersmurf mentioned I also made a mistake about the metamagic rod. There is no Delay Spell metamagic rod.

Now you might be able to persuade a GM of a high level campaign to allow you to craft one. If you can make a rod for Quicken Spell, a +4 feat, then why not?

If he does so then 10 DC 34 Mordenkainen's Disjunctions would be a brutal way to start a fight against a group of high level adventurers

For pure NPC evil bad guy style how about this:

Round 1

Bad guy teleports away cackling maniacally

13 Circle of Deaths go off for 260 HD damage to the PCs army

Round 2

Battle starts

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

While the perfect ambush with Delay spell is theorectically possible, the downside is you have invested all those high levels slots in spells that can't help you if you are detected before the trap is sprung. Bummer if someone throws a Dimensional Anchor on you, huh?

This is really no different than putting all your eggs into one basket -- it is just another smackdown variant. Because of the very high spell level cost, you can't pull this off until high levels.

There are plenty of other nasty ambushes that work just as well with zero feats spent, e.g. Hasted Animal Growthed Invisible Summoned huge boa constritors. And those spells are still useful in a non-ambush scenario.

I can see this would be a cute trick for an Arcane Trickster, but you will be limited to playing with low level spells only. Fun, but hardly devastating.

 

[Brista]

Dimensional anchor is a great spell for this sort of high level game. There is Spell Immunity though, and Refuge

My point is that you can set up a perfect ambush, much better than invisible monsters. It starts with you getting home safely, it next instakills your opponent. They don't get an action to defend themselves, nor likely will contingencies etc help them

To think of it another way which would trouble you more if you and your group were playing a high level party - invisible buffed monster ambush or the Cone of Cold ambush I described?

It is a feat very much for the munchkin end of the game - I am describing a level 20 wizard with multiple level 9 pearls of power or similar. And then only in the sort of campaign where exchanges are sudden incredibly dangerous fights between long periods of being holed up in your fortress, as opposed to conventional campaigns where you trek through a hostile area blasting things as you meet them