Spell balance question: Lethal vs. non-lethal

[RUMBLETiGER]

Are You Familiar With The Nonlethal Substitution Metamagic Feat?

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

And I use healing all the time for NPCs when I DM. Heck, I managed to stretch one battle against a small group of evil clerics into a 15 round grind fest by keeping them all constantly getting healed by each other and rendering focus fire tactics basically pointless. It was a lot of fun...for me.

Go, Team Cleric!

 

[shadyizok]

The Whelm spells are enchantments, which imposes certain limitations, but so do illusions. Looks to me like the designers put a premium on nonlethal damage by spell, which makes sense IMHO. Briefly:

Whelm: 1st level sor/wiz and beguiler; close range, one target; 1d6 + 1d6/2 levels above 1st nonlethal damage (max 5d6). Will negates, SR yes.

Whelming Blast: 2nd level; 30' cone; 1d6 + 1d6/2 levels above 1st nonlethal damage (max 5d6). Will negates, SR yes.

Mass Whelm: 4th level; close; 1 target/level; 1d6 nonlethal/level (max 10d6). Will negates, SR yes.

Overwhelm: 6th level; touch; one target; Will negates, SR applies; deal nonlethal damage equal to the target's current hps.

I subscribe to these spells as they seem to be exactly what you're looking for.

Are You Familiar With The Nonlethal Substitution Metamagic Feat?

Or this feat as it enables you to change all your spells into non-lethal spells, but I wouldn't take it if you're only to use it with fireball.

Not even a quasi-real, illusory version of a fireball? (Or, perhaps a phantasmal one, since it's doing non-lethal damage.)

Funny you mention this, I have a sorcerer in a pathfinder game right now that has a homebrewn spell called phantasmal firebal. It's basicly an fireball version of phantasmal killer, that is it's an illusion instead of evocation and it allows a will negates before the reflex half. It is a second lvl spell for my character.
Since you are an illusionist perhaps it's worth researching (using the dmg rules for original spell research). Depends on your DM though...

 

[Dandu]

The Whelm spells are



Underwhelming

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

The Whelm spells are



Underwhelming

I agree. They're the only damaging spells on the Beguiler's spell list. Coincidentally, I hav never seen anyone but a beguiler ever cast them. I think they're were nerfed in order to exploit a captive audience (beguilers looking for something to do damage wth), and not because of dealing nonlethal being "so good."

 

[Empirate]

I'd say fire and nonlethal are about comparable damage types in usefulness: lots of stuff is resistant/immune to fire, but quite a few creatures take additional damage from it, as well, or have their regeneration overcome by fire or something. And you can still go the "if in doubt, set something on fire" route with a Fireball, so there's a certain utility built into the spell. Nonlethal damage has lots of immune creatures to face, as well (Undead, Constructs...), doesn't do additional damage to anything, but has the utility aspect of leaving the targets alive.

I once included a tag team of bounty hunters in my game as NPCs. The PCs were wanted for various crimes, so the two NPCs set to work with nonlethal damage only. When one of the PCs had to face an equal-level Paladin with a Merciful sword and took nonlethal damage for the first time, the player was much more worried than if he'd taken lethal damage instead! Then, the invisible witch with Nonlethal Substitution cast two sets of nonlethal Ball Lightning (3.0 Haste...) to add to the fun. Capture ensued quickly after that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is definitely a specialized character -- we tend to need to bring folks back alive, for interrogation purposes, if nothing else, in this police campaign. (We're not at the level yet where we have ready access to Speak with the Dead.)