Quest

[marune]

One of my player is playing a cleric and last session he got enough Xp to get to level 12.

I was looking at 6th level spells to be carefull about (like Find the path) and Quest seems to me a little bit overpowered with no saving throws and hard to get (limited wish, wish, miracle) spells to stop it..

You cannot ask for direct death behavior, but in the hands of an evil cleric/wizards wanting to have some good peoples doing horribles things, it seems to me very powerfull..

Anyone got problems with it ?

 

[Jack Simth]

Well, with a 10 minute casting time, it's only going to happen once the evil character has gotten the good one at Evil's mercy anyway.... and while there is no saving throw, it can be resisted... 3d6/day + sickened for 1 day/level (inherits max duration from the lesser version) at 11th-12th level can be dealt with by just about any half-healer, even if they don't happen to have a Dispel Magic or one of the listed methods for eliminating it.

11 days of 3d6 damage/day (average 10.5/day) won't actually kill most characters at that level if they can get a standard allotment of rest every day (unless they are particularly unlucky; average rolls average 1/2 of one point of HP gain per day of normal rest...). The sickened condition is a serious drawback, but it's not particularly fatal. Even Maximized, the afflicted character really only needs to have a healer or half-healer buddy available to fix up the damage.

 

[Percivellian]

The usefulness of Geas/Quest was negated by a change to the effects of the sickened condition from 3.0 to 3.5. The spell was not updated accordingly. If I remember correctly, in 3.0 if you were sickened, you could not be healed, magically or otherwise, and so the damage from the spell was actually a problem, instead of a minor annoyance. With the 3.5 changes, lesser geas is more of a hindrance, but easier to get rid of.

As a houserule in my games, the damage from Geas/Quest is not curable until 24 hours after the subject has resumed the quest.

 

[Jack Simth]

That... would make it considerably more devastating - but still only to someone who doesn't have the rest of the Iconic Four to help. Let's see... an average 10.5 damage/day would take out... let's see.. A barbarian with average rolls on all HD + max 1st would have 77+11*Con bonus at 11th... 11 days of 10.5 damage would deal 115.5 points of damage... needs a Con bonus of 4 or better to survive... assuming his Wizard friend either isn't available or doesn't have Dispel Magic (11th level caster casting Dispel Magic on a Quest inflicted by an 11th level caster has a 45% chance per casting of killing the Quest (50% for Greater Dispel Magic), 40% at 12th vs. 12th (50% with Greater Dispel Magic) - two or three castings and it's gone, even with a minor caster level difference), or one of the listed methods for killing the effects of Quest.