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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 1289364" data-attributes="member: 259">The spell's description: Compare to the archetypal 2nd-level damage spell, Acid Arrow:  First, let's compare various features of the two:School: Evocation vs. Conjuration. Both are high-damage schools, but evocation is the highest-damage school. This is a very minor disadvantage, since it's from a less-flexible school; a specialist in this school can't do as much as a conjuration specialist can do. Very minor advantage to Melf's.Descriptor: More things are resistant to fire than to acid, I think; minor advantage to Melf's. OTOH, more things are especially vulnerable to fire than to acid (i.e., all cold creatures); minor advantage to Scorch. Equal out.Level: sameComponents: Scorch has no material or focus component, meaning it can be cast by prisoners or other casters stripped of their possessions. Minor advantage to Scorch.Casting Time: SameRange: Short for Scorch, Long for Melf's. Significant advantage for Melf's: can be used profitably in outdoor encounters or other encounters with large initial distances.Effect and Duration: see belowSave: none for eitherSR: Yes for Scorch, no for Melf's. Significant advantage for Melf's. Setting aside what the spell actually does, Melf's has two big advantages over Scorch: it can shoot further, and it's not affected by SR.  Scorch has one big advantage:  it can be cast without any material components or foci. As for what they do, they've each got their own advantages. Melf's does less damage at most levels, and can only affect one target; on the other hand, its constant damage can force concentration checks much more easily than Scorch can, especially when an opponent is under the effect of multiple Melf's. Let's look at damage for the spell at several levels. We'll assume that all attacks hit -- although Melf's is more likely to do no damage (since you roll to hit once only), it's also more likely to do full damage. In the end, I think that'll average out. At third level, Scorch is the clear damage winner, at 4d6 points (avg 14) compared to Melf's 4d4 (avg 10). At sixth level, Melf's is ahead, at 6d4 (avg 15) compared to Scorch's 4d6 (avg 14). At seventh level, Scorch goes back into the lead, at 8d6 (avg 28) compared to Melf's 6d4 (avg 15). At ninth, Melf's comes back into the running but still can't quite catch up, doing only 8d4 (avg 20) to Scorch's 28. At eleventh level, Scorch goes even further ahead, doing 42 points on average, compared to Melf's 20. Scorch maxes out at this point.Melf's, like a tortoise, plods on ahead. At twelfth, Melf's does 25 points of damage; at fifteenth, 30 points of damage; and at eighteenth, 35 points of damage. It never reaches the average damage of Scorch after sixth level. So what've we got? We've got Scorch, from the archetypal blow-things-up school of magic, doing about 40%-80% more damage on average. It's most effective for up-close-and-personal wizards, and against SR creatures, it'll fail about half the time (I think; I think SR is designed to make appropriate CR creatures immune to about half of the SR-vulnerable spells cast at them), knocking its daamge in half. It's more flexible than Melf's and does its damage faster, but lacks the range and the ongoing damage benefits of the latter spell. And IMC it's been cast only once so far, compared to the ubiquitous Melf's spells. Even then, it's cast nowhere near as often as Web or Glitterdust, the true powerhouses of second-level wizard spells. Balance looks fine to me. Daniel[edit:  balance might look good, but the colors were awful; now they're just ugly, but hopefully readable <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ]</blockquote>

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