SR Question

[Pax]

The debate is as to whether someone can elect to fail their caster level check to penetrate SR.

-Hyp.

I would be inclined to say "sure, go for it" -- but you'd have to fail for ALL SRs in the area, you couldn't do it selectively.

This would give TWO good reasons to get those low-SR magic items and magic armor abilities: your party wizard could drop fireballs into the middle of the party, voluntarily fail all SR checks, and not hurt allies.

The items would, simultaneously, protect against enemy spellcasters doing likewise.

IOW, those otherwise-fairly-pointless items would suddenly gain some element of value commensurate with their costs.

BEsides, I've always viewed SR as something akin to AC, but focussed solely on magic; if a fighter can CHOOSE to miss with their sword, why can the wizard (etc) not choose to do likewise with their spell?

 

[DreamChaser]

BEsides, I've always viewed SR as something akin to AC, but focussed solely on magic; if a fighter can CHOOSE to miss with their sword, why can the wizard (etc) not choose to do likewise with their spell?

They can. They just lob the fireball into the wrong area of the battle field.

I would allow a caster to set their penetration roll at 1 (lowest possible d20 roll) + the level at which they cast the spell.

Take fireball cast by a wizard. The default penetration roll would be 6 (1 + 5th level) but then it would only do 5d6. If they wanted 10d6, it the default would be 11 (provided the range increment were only increased by 10 levels).

Meteor swarm would automatically have 18 (or 19 for a sorc).

So depending upon how much SR the allies have, this might help but then the shortage of damage could hurt too.

This is if I were feeling generous. I don't consider spell penetration something that a person could take 10 or 20 on so I don't know that I would allow them to take "1" on it either.

DC

 

[Wolf72]

in the case of the drow I don't think they'd try to lower their SR for offensive spells ... after all you have to weed out the weak ... and unlucky!