Scorching Ray- Overpowered?

[Unseelie]

Indeed. Now that he's a conjurer and calls an extra creature whenever he casts a Summon Monster, he's become rather partial to herds of celestial bison.

1d4+2 bison per round. Quite excellent for flanking opportunities.

Otherwise known in my roommate's old D&D game as 'Wall of Beef'.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Not having access to evocation (and the superior-in-every-way fireball) is the only reason I can imagine casting flame arrow. It was a lame spell in comparison to fireball or lightning bolt.

Daniel

Except that the old flame arrow evaded damage caps... you got one bolt per 4 levels, each doing 4d6... so at 20th level you could get 5 bolts for a potential of 20d6 damage, more if one of them got a critical. Maximised or empowered quite nicely too. Especially if you got a critical on one of your ranged touch attacks.

Back in 3e energy resistances were per round rather than per attack, so the low damage per bolt wasn't a problem; the only big downer on it was that it allowed a reflex ST to targets that you'd hit, allowing rogues and monks to avoid all the damage after you'd hit them. I always thought that was a bad thing. The only other ranged touch attack with a ST was Disintegrate, and that was a Fort ST!

I had a villaness in my campaign use flame arrow to huge effect; it was much better for her than fireball would have been.

Cheers

 

[psionotic]

Energy Resistance

While I agree that Scorching Ray is more adept at breaking through energy resistance than Melf's is, I would say that this is more than made up for by the fact that many more creatures have fire resistance than have acid. Of those that cast resistance spells, it is more likely that they will have fire resistance up to cope with bigger spells such as fireball, and to counteract the much more common environmental damage due to high heat.

I would say that this factor ends up pretty even for the two spells. Scorching Ray can burn through resistances more easily than Melf's, but its also much more likely to already be defended against than acid damage is.

 

[Nightfall]

bah, scorching ray has nothing on Shocking Missile! Or Stone Missiles for that matter.

 

[Perun]

Indeed. Now that he's a conjurer and calls an extra creature whenever he casts a Summon Monster, he's become rather partial to herds of celestial bison.

1d4+2 bison per round. Quite excellent for flanking opportunities.

Is this a house rule or an actual rule from the core books? I don't remember ever reading the abit about conjurers summoning extra critters. Is thins one of the changes in v. 3.5? I don't have my PH with me, so I can't check it out for myself-

If it's in the core books, then I'm certainly happy about it, since it makes the specialist wizards a bit more different form each other. Lovely!

Regards.

 

[shilsen]

Is this a house rule or an actual rule from the core books? I don't remember ever reading the abit about conjurers summoning extra critters. Is thins one of the changes in v. 3.5? I don't have my PH with me, so I can't check it out for myself-

If it's in the core books, then I'm certainly happy about it, since it makes the specialist wizards a bit more different form each other. Lovely!

Regards.

House rule. It's not in the 3.5 books.

 

[The Forsaken One]

Use your

TWIN SPELL metamagic feat on it

Use your

ENERGY ADMIXTURE metamagic feat on it

Use your

ENERGY SUBSTITUTION metamagic feat on it,

This is a 9th level spell iirc... BUT it does when the energy is involved and all rays (6) hit. 48d6 Sonic damage no save. (Now use that rod of maximize on it...)

 

[Darklone]

House rule. It's not in the 3.5 books.

Can´t you use higher level Summon Monster spells anymore to summon more of the lower level Summon Monster monster lists?

 

[Pielorinho]

Darklone, that trick gets you 1d4+1, not 1d4+2. The extra critter is where the houserule presumably comes into play.

Daniel