Please rate Sacred Spell

[smetzger]

Sacred Spell [Metamagic]
Your damaging spells are imbued with divine power.
Benefit: Half of the damage dealt by a sacred spell results directly from divine power, and is therefore not subject to being reduced by protection from elements or similar magic. The other half of the damage dealt by the spell is as normal for the spell. A sacred spell uses
up a spell slot two levels higher than the spell's actual level. Only divine spells can be cast as sacred spells.

 

[Marshall]

Darn near completely useless.

Compare to Energy Sub. +0 Levels for the same effect.
Sacred has no particular extra effect, Why the heck would I pay 2 levels for it? And why restrict it to Divine spells?

 

[AuraSeer]

Energy Substitution isn't equivalent. For it, you need to know what energy type will affect a particular monster-- and if it has resistance to all elemental types, you're stuck.

That being said, Sacred Spell still is not 2 level more powerful. If its price were lowered to +1 level, I'd consider it about average.

 

[Celebrim]

If a cleric wants to do a damaging spell, he generally has good access to spells which do sacred damage anyway. For instance, the clerics best and most readily available direct damage spell (flamestrike) already has this benifit.

Moreoever, clerics aren't intended to be major producers of direct damage anyway. There aren't that many spells that qualify, and those that do generally don't do a whole lot of damage, and/or produce sonic damage which is hard to resist anyway, and/or are 8th or 9th level anyway. Given the fact that what you are trying to do is overcome a flat ammount of damage resistance, the fact that half the damage remains energy specific means that you are paying two extra levels for single digit improvements in the ammount of damage done. For instance, imagine a 10d6 die spell (save for half damage) against a 20 energy resistance creature. Normally with no save you do 15 damage, and with a save none. For two extra spell levels you do 18 damage with no save, and 9 damage if the save is made. This just isn't worth it.

Moreoever, given the increase in hitpoints in 3rd. edition, using a spell for direct damage is a somewhat questionable tactic much of the time anyway.

In short, no one should ever take this feat. The feat would be suboptimal even if it added no extra levels to the cost of the spell, and might not be unbroken if it added one level to the cost of the spell and made _all_ the damage sacred.

 

[Destil]

Handy for a druid or a cleric with the right domains (water, for instance), but one level too high.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

2- barely ever useful. The problem is that, unless you're up against a foe who's immune to the element you're using, you will almost always get more milage out of Empower Spell. Empower is useful for more than just damage spells (high level spontaneous healing, buffs) however.

Who in their right mind is going to prepare a Sacred Flame strike instead of an empowered Flamestrike or a Firestorm?

Who in their right mind is going to prepare an empowered Sacred Searing light instead of Destruction?

It just doesn't have much of anything going for it.

 

[melkoriii]

Scratch a vote for 6.

:/

I thought it was Scribe Scroll. Im tired. Long day.

 

[Burne]

Smetzger, have you collected any of these results online somewhere yet? If so could ya slap a link down, I would love to see them.

 

[shilsen]

2 - The +2 bump in level is just not worth it under almost any circumstances.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I gave it a '1'.

The price is too high. It compares extremely poorly with the Empower Spell feat in most cases.

Direct damage spells aren't particularly effective in 3e so I think using this feat is a losing proposition even in favorable conditions. The cleric's strong suit is in spells with interesting temporary side effects, e.g. Sound Burst.

If...
a wizard or sorceror could use this feat
or sacred damage did double damage to outsiders
or it converted 100% of the energy into sacred
...I would give it a '4'

It really should only be a +1 spell level cost. Maybe then it would rate a '5'.