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How much help would removing the damage caps be?It would help a bit, but increasing the damage to d8 and taking the caps off would be better To account for the serious hit point inflation, easier saves and stuff like evasion in d20.
I doubt that bigger dice would really be the answer, so much as flat bonuses (extra damage equal to CL, for instance).
Specialist Evokers would need an even better modifier (with the suggestion upthread, of bonus / die equal to Int mod being crazygood-sounding, but still coming nowhere near making up for the hit point inflation that led to a 1e Red Dragon having 88 hit points and a 3.5 Red Dragon having 660 hit points).
Abjuration is another School that is strong with the suck. Dispel Magic, Greater Dispel Magic, and the Disjunction spell that everybody prays nobody will ever use. That's pretty much the entire School and if I had a quarter for every specialist guide that says, 'Don't take Abjuration as a forbidden school because of Dispel Magic!' as if that was the only darn spell in the entire school, I'd have, uh, well, some quarters.
It's funny, long ago D&D's principal drawback was that the game didn't scale.....fighters were bodyguards for low level wizards who later turned into defacto sidekicks when the wizard hit level 10. Fireball was the weapon of choice for the wizardy types as it dished out fantastic damage in an AoE. Fighters just did weapon damage with maybe a buff or two. (keep in mind a STR of 19 was amazing back then with RAW)
I won't argue the crazy math cited...but isn't the problem with the archtypes of spellcasters.
Blasters are supposed to deal out damage to multiple targets at range, this sort of requires the presence of mooks. i.e. the 4 ogres mentioned above.
Snipers are supposed to deal kill shots to a single target at range. i.e. the empowered maximised scorching ray mentioned above.
I understand wanting to one shot a Dragon or a Giant, but with a 3rd level spell? Fireball is not supposed to be the signature spell of the Evoker (Magic Missle) it is the spell for slaughtering mooks though.
It seems that all of this in a vacume is kinda vague as well, Fireball is a bad spell for Dungeon Crawls due to the constricted space (once Lightning Bolt was much better since it could ricochet off walls). But let's be honest, spellcasters are a weak choice as offense in a game where wildly different monsters occupy adjacent rooms in some odd, cramped dungeon complex where characters go from room to room assasinating every thing they meet.
On the other end of the spectrum where the game is more of an episodic event where only one or two main encounters occur a day, the Blaster can unleash his or her full output and lay waste to opponents before the Martial types even get in melee range.
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It's funny, long ago D&D's principal drawback was that the game didn't scale.....fighters were bodyguards for low level wizards who later turned into defacto sidekicks when the wizard hit level 10. Fireball was the weapon of choice for the wizardy types as it dished out fantastic damage in an AoE. Fighters just did weapon damage with maybe a buff or two. (keep in mind a STR of 19 was amazing back then with RAW)
I won't argue the crazy math cited...but isn't the problem with the archtypes of spellcasters.
Blasters are supposed to deal out damage to multiple targets at range, this sort of requires the presence of mooks. i.e. the 4 ogres mentioned above.
Snipers are supposed to deal kill shots to a single target at range. i.e. the empowered maximised scorching ray mentioned above.
I understand wanting to one shot a Dragon or a Giant, but with a 3rd level spell? Fireball is not supposed to be the signature spell of the Evoker (Magic Missle) it is the spell for slaughtering mooks though.
It seems that all of this in a vacume is kinda vague as well, Fireball is a bad spell for Dungeon Crawls due to the constricted space (once Lightning Bolt was much better since it could ricochet off walls). But let's be honest, spellcasters are a weak choice as offense in a game where wildly different monsters occupy adjacent rooms in some odd, cramped dungeon complex where characters go from room to room assasinating every thing they meet.
On the other end of the spectrum where the game is more of an episodic event where only one or two main encounters occur a day, the Blaster can unleash his or her full output and lay waste to opponents before the Martial types even get in melee range.
Actually, fireball was the signature spell of magic users in 1e. It was completely iconic, and you never, ever heard a story about that time the magic user went to cast Power word: Kill and the entire party screamed: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Heard that all the time about fireball, though. That was THE spell that figured into the most stories in 1e.
On second thought I could see moving the damage dice up to d8's for the evocations and removing the caps. But still in a 4 player party (the default) the arcane caster is going to be better off preping things like teleport, trueseeing, invis., fly, charms, tounges and control spells and leaving his offensive output at MM and scorching ray.
And Abjuration IS a strong school it's just not great against a horde of mooks, against a Naga or Lich though the Abjurer shines.
Actually, fireball was the signature spell of magic users in 1e. It was completely iconic, and you never, ever heard a story about that time the magic user went to cast Power word: Kill and the entire party screamed: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Heard that all the time about...
In 1e fireball was the sig spell, but even then it was a bad choice (hence the NOOOOOOO!). It's a bad spell off of the battle field. It was always a spell for killing lotsa bad guys while it still retained some utility against a dragon; 1e dragons were sissies plain and simple (you could subdue one in ritual combat with the FLAT of your blade).
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Because some people don't like the role pigeonholing d20 based games try to force on us? I loved playing an evoker in 1e. They were the most feared wizards out there. In 3.x/Pf, they're a punchline.
Fireballs used to be feared. Now they're shrugged off like they are nothing.
And blowing s!&& up is more fun than battlefield control.
Blowing stuff up is fun, it's why I like the alchemist.
The days of it being dangerous to be a wizard are gone so he loses some of his bad-assedness. I think a reasonable compromise.
From what I recall you guys play with a modified ruleset where it's a little tougher to get spells off so getting some awesome blasting spells is a good compensation. In PF the wizard is already pretty crazy powerful and doesn't need to be the best guy at one more thing.
What's good for your highly house ruled system isn't necessarily great for every PF table though.
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Because some people don't like the role pigeonholing d20 based games try to force on us? I loved playing an evoker in 1e. They were the most feared wizards out there. In 3.x/Pf, they're a punchline.
Fireballs used to be feared. Now they're shrugged off like they are nothing.
And blowing s!&& up is more fun than battlefield control.
Blowing stuff up is fun, it's why I like the alchemist.
The days of it being dangerous to be a wizard are gone so he loses some of his bad-assedness. I think a reasonable compromise.
From what I recall you guys play with a modified ruleset where it's a little tougher to get spells off so getting some awesome blasting spells is a good compensation.
What's good for your highly house ruled system isn't necessarily great for every PF table though.
True enough. But part of our constant griping is to attempt to sway (probably unsuccessfully) Paizo to correct the more glaring mistakes 3.x introduced to the game.
*shrug*
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True enough. But part of our constant griping is to attempt to sway (probably unsuccessfully) Paizo to correct the more glaring mistakes 3.x introduced to the game.
*shrug*
Fair enough.
I am of split minds about 3.5/ PF, in many ways its better than 1e but in some ways they just went the wrong way.
Paizo lost out on any real chance to 'fix' 3.5 when they promised to retain reverse compatibility with it.
Edit: Because I have to edit every post... its a compulsion
I still think there is a simpler answer
6th level spell
Fireball, Greater
Area of Effect: 40 foot radius
Effect: Same as Fireball except increased Area of effect, and Caps out at 15d6 damage (max).
9th level spell
Fireball, Mega-blast
Area of Effect: 60 foot radius
Effect: Same as Fireball except increased Area of effect, and Caps out at 25d6 damage (max).
.
After all the idea behind the cap was to make lower level spells less useful, but the problem is that they did not add higher level spells to take there place.
Simple answer, is just add 2 more upgrade spells. This way we use up Higher level spell slots, to get a little more bang for our buck.
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Simple answer, is just add 2 more upgrade spells. This way we use up Higher level spell slots, to get a little more bang for our buck.
Or go the Arcana Unearthed route of literally using higher level spell slots to cast the same spell with a greater effect. Fireball from a 4th level slot? Use d8s. From a 6th level slot? d12s. Etc.
You could even use the weapon size upgrade chart, for a scarier progression. 1d6 -> 1d8 -> 2d6.
I was going through my math and came to the conclusion that the flat +int bonus probably had too many issues with scaling. However I really liked the idea of a fixed modifier to the dice.
Then I thought maybe the spell level would be a better substitute. It scales slowly and has a lower cap. It also would limit the discrepancy between two casters with different caster stats (which is already accounted for in the Save DC).
Iconic Blast Spells
Burning Hands
1st level d4+1 avg 3.5
2nd level 2(d4+1) avg 7
3rd level 3(d4+1) avg 10.5
4th level 4(d4+1) avg 14
5th level 5(d4+1) avg 17.5
Magic Missile
1st level d4+2 avg 4.5
3rd level 2(d4+2) avg 9
5th level 3(d4+2) avg 13.5
7th level 4(d4+2) avg 18
9th level 5(d4+2) avg 22.5
Shocking Grasp
1st avg 4.5
2nd avg 9
3rd avg 13.5
4th avg 18
5th avg 22.5
Scorching Ray
3rd level 4(d6+2) avg 18
7th level 2x4(d6+2) avg 36
11th level 3x4(d6+2) avg 54
Fireball + Lightning Bolt
5th level 5(d6+3) avg 32.5
6th avg 39
7th avg 45.5
8th avg 52
9th avg 58.5
10th avg 65
Ice Storm
3(d6+4) Bludgeon + 2 (d6+4) Cold avg 37.5
Cone of Cold
9th level 9(d6+5) avg 76.5
10th avg 85
11th avg 93.5
12th avg 102
13th avg 110.5
14th avg 119
15th avg 127.5
Chain Lightning
11th 11(d6+6) avg 104.5
12th avg 114
...
20th avg 190
DBF
13th 13(d6+7) avg 136.5
...
20th avg 210
Polar Ray (not really iconic but slim pickings up here)
15th level 15(d6+8) avg 172.5
20th level avg 230
Meteor Swarm
17th level 4 x 6(d6+9) avg 300 in 4 meteor overlap
Looking at the average Hit Points per CR I think these damage averages definitely stack up pretty well.
I'd be tempted to make it so that metamagic that increases the spell's level also increases the bonus damage but I haven't really run the numbers yet to see if it models the effect I'm aiming for.
If you compare an optimized fighter/archer to an unoptimized spellcasting damage dealer, of course the fighter is going to win the DPR contest!
Now, if you had a properly optimized blaster, the gap between he and the optimized fighter/archer not only disappears, but he even takes the lead!
An optimized fighter archer at 15th-level can dish out, what, ~150 damage to a single target each round with his bow?
Well, my half-orc sorcerer/dragon disciple can dish out ~220 damage, with only two 4th level spell slots, in one round. Said damage is applied to potentially dozens of targets who, I might add, are farther away than the archer can shoot reliably. He could ramp that damage much, much higher if he was willing to expend higher level slots. Two 6th-level slots, for example, net him ~287 damage to multiple targets in a single round.
Blaster wins.
It's no wonder there are so many resistances against spells at high levels! The blaster would kill everything automatically otherwise!
A wizard could get similar damage as well. Since the blaster is using such low level spell slots, he might even be able to beat the archer in an endurance run if they didn't think to bring enough arrows. They fire, what, no less than 5 arrows each round at that level?
Point being, anyone can be made to look like they can beat anyone else when you build one right and the other wrong. Blasters rock just as much as anyone else.
Stuff*
+1
*Grabs popcorn*
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Some good ideas
I like those numbers
Any suggestions on how to scale/improve Ice Storm?
I was thinking +1d6 cold and 1d6 rocks per 2 levels over 7th (cap at 15th level caster).
9th +1d6/+1d6 (4d6 bludgeoning/3d6 cold = 7d6)
11th +2d6/+2d6 (5d6 bludgeoning/4d6 cold = 9d6)
13th +3d6/+3d6 (6d6 bludgeoning/5d6 cold = 11d6)
15th +4d6/+4d6 (7d6 bludgeoning/5d6 cold = 12d6)
Barring any other number additions or modifications
This or something else, I don't know what to do with this lame spell.
I was just talking about adding 2 more spells to the game. One at 6th level, and one at 9th level.
The damage cape for spells is based on the Spell level of spells.
6th level damage cap is 15d6 = example Freezing Sphere
9th level damage cape is 25d6 = example Polar Ray (8th level spell).
Also, am an old player... use to remember 36 level wizards tossing around 36d6 fireball. Now those were the olden day, when we had to walk 20 miles up hill, in the snow storm, to the brick tower to fight Ice Dragons.
Other examples:
6th level spell = Chain Lightning 1 target per level all in a 30 foot radius of main target, damage is 1d6 per level with max damage at 20d6.
6th level spell = Freezing Sphere = 40 foot radius burst, 1d6 damage per level with max damage at 15d6.
8th [level spell = Hrrid Wilting = 30 foot radius burst, 1d6 damage per level with max damage at 20d6.
8th level Cleric spell = Fire storm = 2 10foot cubes per level (30 foot cube sphere at 15th level) for 1d6 per level with 20d6 max
Sorry for not having better examples, but there really is a shortage of Area of Effect damage spells for 9th level, that follow the 1d6 progression. Anyway hopefully this give the jest.
It would help a bit, but increasing the damage to d8 and taking the caps off would be better To account for the serious hit point inflation, easier saves and stuff like evasion in d20.
On that note, making blasting better also has the interesting side effect of making evasion, and therefore the classes that have it (and mostly could use the help) better.
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It would help a bit, but increasing the damage to d8 and taking the caps off would be better To account for the serious hit point inflation, easier saves and stuff like evasion in d20.On that note, making blasting better also has the interesting side effect of making evasion, and therefore the classes that have it (and mostly could use the help) better.
Yeah. I don't mind that at all, actually. Having rogues and whatnot being blaster killers gives them another niche to fill, never a bad thing for mundane classes.
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But Oliver, Fly doesn't have a cap. Or Haste, or the vast majority of other spells.
Why is Evocation the only school that gets screwed by level caps?
I disagree, fly and haste definitely have caps, in fact they are largely capped from go.
Haste only allows you one extra attack per round. The duration and creatures per level scaling are largely pointless after 8th level when you are able to buff everyone in the party for the duration of most combats.
Fly likewise doesn't let you fly faster, You almost never notices whether the duration is 10 minutes or 15. In order to fly longer you have to take overland flight or air walk.
Maybe one reason why blasting doesn't seem powerful to me is how all my players pick up evasion first chance they get...
I saw a run on that in 3.0, but it largely died out in 3.5.
It's probably because of possibly-the-worst-idea-in-all-of-3.0-core 3.0 haste. So you'd see something like: 10th level party fights 13th level wizard, who starts the fight with haste and opens with (haste action) maximized fireball, (standard) maximized fireball, quickened fireball in the first round.
Which, yeah, that angle made blasting viable for enemies but it didn't work out quite as well for PCs.
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Why does blasting need to be good?
Let the wizards do the controller thing and if you want to blast come over to the alchemists size of things. Problem fixed.
Wizards are already pretty awesome with what they are good at.
Exactly so. Why bother having any other PC's like fighters around, if a wizard cleans out all foes in one round? There's nothing wrong with evocation as it stands. Merely a desire to be Superman in a pointed hat...
You know to be honest i had forgotten about = Delayed Fire Ball
1d6 damage = 20d6 max = 7th level spell.
Nevermind, with that plus Meter Strike, my Sorcerer should be good.
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Haste though? Haste always goes up with level. As long as Falchion Fred, or your Greatsword melee guy, etc are there and getting more powerful, the extra attack from haste is getting more powerful as well.
Look at it this way, Falchion Fred doesn't care if it's an 8th level wizard casting haste or a 20th level wizard. For 95% of groups 8th level gets you everything you will ever need out of haste and any increase in caster level isn't making the spell more effective. Heck most groups won't notice if it's being cast by the rogue using UMD with a wand.
So it sounds like the issue people have with evocation is that they want to build a caster who can keep up with a fighter in ability to do damage to a single target yes? I think that's a reasonable goal and while I certainly haven't done the math perhaps you're all correct and it's not possible, but my question becomes if that's the goal then why is everone talking about making AOE spells like fireball better? Those serve a different purpose. That being dealing damage to multiple enemies.
I think perhaps the problem isn't so much that the AOE spells aren't good enough and more that there are very few options for dealing damage directed at a single target after magic missile and scorching ray.
- Torger
Stuff*+1
+2. And even if blasting remains "suboptimal".. metamagic feats to add effect like daze exist to inflict blast + control effects.
Finally, a lot of people say that casters are already "zomgpowerful". In that case, why improve something they are lacking. I really fail to understand this.
Stuff*+1+2. And even if blasting remains "suboptimal".. metamagic feats to add effect like daze exist to inflict blast + control effects.
Finally, a lot of people say that casters are already "zomgpowerful". In that case, why improve something they are lacking. I really fail to understand this.
Because if you like playing melee = Then casters are Overpowered.
If you like playing casters = Then melee are Overpowered.
Each can do something, that the other can not.
Or, at least in my case...You like playing Melee, you like playing Casters, and you like GMing.
You strongly perceive an imbalance in the rules for casters in general, and wish to boost Melee's to effectively compete with them in terms of overall effectiveness, but at the same time you see how pathetically worthless evocation/blasty spells usually are, and want those to be worthwhile as well. (I would love, LOVE to see a player play an Evoker and actually do well, rather than end up getting ignored freely by the monsters/bad guys.)
Dunno. I challenge my players with a stong enemy supported by a bunch of mooks and few sidekicks for the most relevant fights - a well placed chain lighting CAN do a lot of things.
Moreover, I often play with a lot of players - up to 12 (but generally 6). In that case, blast them with a chain lighting can deal a crapload of damage.
IMHO, this is another thing showing the game can be played in very, very different ways.
Attacks can be combined. I tend to have the other monsters focus attacks on the players missed the reflex save if possible.
Healing in combat is not always possible an not always for every PC, so spread damage and then focus attacks can be useful to deceive defense.
Please note that this is not the only thing we do in our combats, or that casters only blast - quite the opposite. But happens, and one of the sorcerers, specializing in metemagic and stuff became a quite good nuker.
he has, too, a good "eye" to see what monsters suffered more from melee attacks and use single targeted spells to finish them off. As Ravingdork said above, direct damage can be a way - you just have to know ho do it.
On Topic:
Transmute Metal to Wood - sounds cool but the mechanic are actually crappy for such a high level spell.
Off Topic:
How does the plea to up evo damage go with the whine that Wizards have-it-all and martial PCs suck in comparison?
A really dedicacted Wizard could up his blasting damage via Prestige Classes just fine while suffering next to no disadvantages...
Well this thread is nowhere near topic.
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There are a whole lot of spells that I wouldn't call underpowered, exactly, so much as I'd call them excessively specific. Some examples: interposing hand (though it's also kind of weak--1 round/level of cover from one creature? this is a 5th level spell?), sequester, and arguably most of the mid- to high-level AoE blast spells. The latter are highly effective in the situation where you're facing a lot of mooks, but not so much against a boss or a few tough targets. I could see a wizard having them in a spellbook and maybe carrying around a scroll or two, but not memorizing any of them for general use.
For me it's philosophical, each class should have a bunch of options and those options should be roughly balanced against each other and the options of others.
Currently I don't think anyone would argue that blast is balanced vs SoL casting at any level of the game. Blast simply has a low base damage in comparison to CR appropriate monsters, is largely vulnerable to saves and evasion, and is generally elemental in nature which means that creatures with resistances and immunities tend to laugh at the blaster.
Low Base Damage - Saves - Evasion - Resistances < A group buff, a debuff, etc.
Yes you can improve blast by spamming minions so that AoE spells do a significant amount of damage to all the minions (hopefully clearing them from the board) but that's not really a good game design unless that's explicitly called for in the rules. 4e decided to go to this style of play with minions designed to explicitly die in great numbers vs AoE effects.
3.5 doesn't really go with that construct and even relatively marginal foes (CR -3 or CR -4) often tend to have HPs and defenses that render blast spells a bad choice. At lower levels of play it's less noticeable but about the middle levels evocation is really suboptimal and a blast wizard is often not pulling his weight.
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I think all these problems might be in your collective heads. Continue to wallow in your theorycraft, the rest of us are going to go out and play the game.
It's awfully arrogant to assume that anyone who's reached different conclusions than you have isn't playing the game.
Ditto. It is awfully arrogant to assume that anyone who plays a blaster is a soft-headed fool that doesn't know how to win at Pathfinder.
Another spell that sucks: Erase
Ditto. It is awfully arrogant to assume that anyone who plays a blaster is a soft-headed fool that doesn't know how to win at Pathfinder.
It is mechanically a poor option, except in cases that don't occur in most people's campaigns. (e.g., the 6th level party is fighting a small army of 1 HD orcs instead of one or a few more CR-appropriate foes.)
I rarely make a character that's intended to be even remotely mechanically optimal, but that doesn't change what's mechanically good and what isn't.
In other words, playing a blaster doesn't make you a soft-headed fool who doesn't know how to win at Pathfinder, but it does make you a person who's choosing to play a character that, mechanically, does not win at Pathfinder, to whatever extent combat effectiveness can be said to align with victory.