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Evocation's linear damage cannot deal with quadratic hit points. Further hampered by creatures needing higher HD to get attack bonuses and HP totals to not be a joke.
Solution: Rework monster stats to HD = CR. Most equal level opponents still won't be taken out except by lucky rolls, but lesser enemies that appear in groups can be fireballed to death like they used to.
Add most death magic to the pile. Because most of it now does hp damage, even with the hefty 10 points/level some of it gets, still not that great. Especially if a save negates the damage.
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Evocation's linear damage cannot deal with quadratic hit points. Further hampered by creatures needing higher HD to get attack bonuses and HP totals to not be a joke.
Solution: Rework monster stats to HD = CR. Most equal level opponents still won't be taken out except by lucky rolls, but lesser enemies that appear in groups can be fireballed to death like they used to.
+1. Most Evocation spells could be removed from the book
without causing too much loss to the game other than death of a bit of cool imagery. My fix would be divide everyone's hp's by a factor of 3 or 4.S.
Some of my "favourites":
Freezing Sphere
Eyebite
Instant Summons
Screen
I think evocations in general are pretty much trap options anymore.
If the AoE spells like Fireball did (level)x (d6+ capped caster stat) I think that would be more balanced.
If for instance an level 10 wizard had a capped casting stat of +5 then his fireball would do 10 x (d6 + 5) or 85 points of damage in a 20' spread (save for half). It's not an awesome spell especially against single targets but is a definite improvement over the standard fireball. I'd probably change the evoker damage bonus to a flat +level. An level evoker would be doing 95 damage on average.
I'd probably cap level 1-3 spells at a max casting stat of +5, level 4-6 at +7, and 7-9 at +10. If that's not lethal enough just go with the uncapped casting stat.
With an uncapped casting stat a level 10 wizard would be throwing around a 115 damage fireball (assuming a casting stat of +8) and a level 20 wizard could presumably throw around a 330 damage Polar Ray (assuming a casting stat of +13). Both would be doing the average HPs of a CR-1 foe.
Evocation's linear damage cannot deal with quadratic hit points. Further hampered by creatures needing higher HD to get attack bonuses and HP totals to not be a joke.
Solution: Rework monster stats to HD = CR. Most equal level opponents still won't be taken out except by lucky rolls, but lesser enemies that appear in groups can be fireballed to death like they used to.
I don't have too much time on my hands right now. Could you rework the critters from Bestiary 1 & 2? I need them for next Saturday, should not be a big problem, no? :P
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I don't have too much time on my hands right now. Could you rework the critters from Bestiary 1 & 2? I need them for next Saturday, should not be a big problem, no? :P
Sure thing, just send the payment to my Paypal account! Otherwise you'll have to wait for me and kyrt to finish it in our own time. :)
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Or damage per level spells (d6/level) could scale like weapon sizes do.
1st level spells: 1d6/level
2nd level spells: 1d8/level
3rd level spells: 1d10/leve
4th and 5th level spells: 2d6/level
6th and 7th level spells: 2d8/level
8th and 9th level spells: 2d10/levelmaybe scale it back one step for area of effects up one step for touch range.
That fits for elemental damage spells at first level, at least--burning hands is 1d4/level AoE for L1, and shocking grasp is 1d8/level touch. Force and sonic effects would have to be handled differently.
Why do I even bother to click on these threads?
Successful Troll believes it to be a lack of will.
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I go back and forth on upping evo damage, lowering overall hp and so on.
I would say that evo in general should have addition effects to hinder enemies. Since evo casting is the closest you are going to get in support of hp damage track it should stand that as evo damage is dealt out additional effects should be added to help the overall combat for the team.
ex- concussive spell attacks have a minor stun ability which helps the hp track non-casters out in the fight as their opponents get negs, lose initiative, etc.
Again, not as good as a straight de-buff, but damage + some 1 -2 round effects can make the evo caster help out on a strong support side with the rest of the melee types in his group.
Just a thought...
Why not allow evocation spells like fireball to target multiple opponents. That way a fireball could still deal 1d6/level, but be capable of doing that damage to several creatures. In the right circumstances ("A nice, tight bomb pattern") it could be an amazing spell.
On a more serious note, casters are great at damaging several opponents, but not that great (still very good) at damaging a single one. But archers and melee types are great at damaging single opponents.
What is the problem again? That casters haven't stolen the role of archers and melee characters? Why do casters need to be better at direct damage then the full BAB classes?
I wizard (or caster) that specializes in dealing damage should be able to atleast match the damage put out by an Archer or Melee Fighter for a short period until he burns through his spells.
Are you considering the area of effect in the equation?
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Are you considering the area of effect in the equation?
I wizard (or caster) that specializes in dealing damage should be able to atleast match the damage put out by an Archer or Melee Fighter for a short period until he burns through his spells.
Should he? The archer can deal his damage to any target a round, and in enough rounds, all targets. The wizard has a chance to get all targets in one round, as well as a chance to get any number of targets between the max and one. The difference being who chooses which targets.
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Just a thought...
Why not allow evocation spells like fireball to target multiple opponents. That way a fireball could still deal 1d6/level, but be capable of doing that damage to several creatures. In the right circumstances ("A nice, tight bomb pattern") it could be an amazing spell.
On a more serious note, casters are great at damaging several opponents, but not that great (still very good) at damaging a single one. But archers and melee types are great at damaging single opponents.
What is the problem again? That casters haven't stolen the role of archers and melee characters? Why do casters need to be better at direct damage then the full BAB classes?
Because D&D does not use Critical Existence Failure style HP... oh wait...
This isn't about buffing casters, you should know better than that. What this is about is there are some people who just want to blow things up. And the system tells them to bugger off for wanting that. Making Evocation not suck allows them to play such a character and not suck for doing so.
No real martial character is in any danger of having their damage outstripped by blasting even if all blasting damage was tripled.
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.
Back to the OP, spells that I consider to have permanent residence in Suckville are those that have a very specific use (remove disease, remove curse, and remove deafness/blindness, I'm looking at you) or those buffs that don't stuack well with other buff spells (i.e., Bless and Aid because they don't stack with bard buffs).
Agreed.
Blasting just cant be sustain as long as Martial damage output can. Also the blaster should get something for having a crappy AC and fewer hitpoints.
Something like blur, or displacement, mirror image..
:D
Funny thread. I wonder how many posts we need to understand that fighters should be nerfed because they can "blast" all the day.
Fireball:
Standard action to cast
Long range (600ft. min.)
Everyone within 40ft. dia sphere gets 1d6/level.
Reflex for half
All it costs is a handful of bat-shit. (and a hanky for clean up...)
That is a great 3rd level spell, you just have to realize that a howitzer is not a sniper rifle, and use it accordingly. Evocation doesn't suck if you use it with good tactics.
Spells that do suck are the ones that are super limited, and even against their very specific target, not that great. Blight. Now that is a bad spell!
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Fireball:
Standard action to cast
Long range (600ft. min.)
Everyone within 40ft. dia sphere gets 1d6/level.
Reflex for half
All it costs is a handful of bat-s!*&. (and a hanky for clean up...)That is a great 3rd level spell, you just have to realize that a howitzer is not a sniper rifle, and use it accordingly. Evocation doesn't suck if you use it with good tactics.
Spells that do suck are the ones that are super limited, and even against their very specific target, not that great. Blight. Now that is a bad spell!
Diminish Plants
Are you considering the area of effect in the equation?
I wizard (or caster) that specializes in dealing damage should be able to atleast match the damage put out by an Archer or Melee Fighter for a short period until he burns through his spells.
At tenth level, with a couple good party buffs (haste, prayer, inspire courage) a dedicated Archer can dish out about 100 DPR. Specifically in a situation where there are lets say 8 CR 3 creatures. A fireballing wizard that does 10d6 (35/17), assuming a DC 20 save and let's say a +4 to their save that's a 75% failure rate, will do 35 to 6 creatures and 17 to 2 or 244 damage. This is also assuming it is something that doesn't have SR (like drow) or evasion, or fire resistance (elementals) and that the enemies are packed in the most favorable way.
In my experience, even fights against multiple opponents, the paradigm is 3-5 APL-2 creatures and 1-2 APL creatures, and with the same favorable assumptions (positioning, sr, resistances) the fireballer barely competes with a dedicated martial character, who of course is also caught in the blast.
I dunno it's just extremely situational. I'd rather count on Falchion Fred with Great Cleave and Combat Reflexes to deal "AoE" damage. Or horrid wilting that doesn't have friendly fire.
"If I only have 3 shots with my Scorching ray then it should do more damage than the Archer who has 40-60 shots with his Flaming Bow."
No. No it should not.
First of all, a flaming longbow is what 8,000 gp?
A scorching ray wand is a measly 4,500gp, or half that if you craft it yourself. So you can get your 50 shots very cheaply. If you craft it yourself and spend 8,250, you get 12d8 as a standard action.
The archer has to worry about full AC, DR from half a dozen different types, and getting shut down by wind, deflect arrows, etc. All you have to do is make touch AC, beat SR if the creature even has it, and maybe deal with some resistance. In very rare cases, the creature will be immune, but in equally rare cases, it will be Vulnerable! When was the last time a monster was Vulnerable to weapon damage?
Finally, if you do meet a monster that is immune to fire, or even all elemental damage, you just cast any of dozens of spells that you have memorized, on scrolls or in wands, staffs, etc. No sweat. You still kick ass. The archer can't just swap out half his feats if his bow isn't effective. He can't rearrange his stats and jump into melee. He is at a significant disadvantage.
Melee has all of those basic disadvantages, but must also stand next to a monster to get his damage on.
If you do what to whack a stone giant with all your arcane might, there are several spells that can deal good damage - disintegrate for example, or an empowered scorching ray from an 11th level caster is good for 12d6+(50%) not including any benefits from being an evoker or fire bloodline or whatever.
Diminish Plants
Ohhh, good one!
Any spell whose sole function is 1d6 damage/level or is otherwise HP damage only.
There are several solutions you can apply, but if not drastic you're wasting your time, as the problems are drastic.
I don't think the problem is with the damaging spells themselves, but with the mechanics used to buff them.
In any comparison between caster and non-caster damage, the non-caster will be using either power attack or deadly aim. Casters have nothing to compare. Because any use of meta-magic feats results in a higher level spell slot being used, and your typically better off using those slots for higher level spells anyway.
So here is a simple idea for a solution. Basically, a power attack for damage spells. (and no, I havn't fully thought out the ramifications, this is off the cuff.)
Reckless Spell Feat
When casting a spell that does damage, the caster may choose to make the spell a reckless spell. The spell takes a -1 to hit, to spell penetration and to save DC (where appropriate). In exchange, the spell does +1 point of damage for each die of damage done by the spell. The additional damage is of the same type as that done by the spell. For every 6 caster levels, both the penalties and the benefits increase by 1. This feat does not change the level of the spell being cast.
Surkin
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.
Quite frankly, my personal problem with evocation is that it narratively doesn't really apply to how magic works in most works of fiction or mythology.
Evocation exists because the archtype of the wizard in D&D started as an artillery character in Chainmail.
When you read about Merlin or Odin or middle eastern sorcerers or chinese alchemists, none of them are throwing around fireballs. Even in actual Vancian magic from Dying Earth, magic was more or less just all save-or-dies, but without the actual saving throw.
It's awfully arrogant to assume that anyone who's reached different conclusions than you have isn't playing the game.
I wish this board had signatures, I think I would use that line.
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Evocation (Blast) simply doesn't scale rapidly enough for it to be relevant past a certain level unless the DM spams low CR mooks like crazy.
Fireball is the iconic evocation spell. It starts at 5d6 in a 20' spread at 5th level.
A 5d6 fireball averages 17.5 damage which is 31% of the expected HP total of a CR 5 foe. However it's got a save associated with it so there is still probably a 30%-40% chance that it will only do 8.75 damage to a foe which is roughly 16% of the expected hit point total.
Considering the 5th level caster is blowing a pretty big percentage of his 3rd level spells that's really not a good use of a spell slot.
Go to 10th level and the wizard has access to cone of cold also an iconic spell.
A 10d6 cone of cold averages 35 damage in a 60' cone. This is 26% of the hit point totals of a level appropriate foe or 13% on a save.
Factor in stuff like elemental resistances and immunities, SR, etc and it's not very wise to specialize in throwing blast spells.
Fundamentally it's all about opportunity costs, outside of low CR mooks an evocation blast is almost always a worse action choice than another spell of the same level.
If you want the iconic blast wizard to be a fun thing for people to play instead of a newbie trap you need to enhance the damage significantly.
Personally I think instead of boosting the damage dice or throwing more dice at the problem there should be static bonuses to damage that scale much like strength bonuses scale for martial classes.
The classes are imbalanced but evokers are not the problem, indeed they actually lag behind almost everyone (except maybe healbot clerics).
Evocation (Blast) simply doesn't scale rapidly enough for it to be relevant past a certain level unless the DM spams low CR mooks like crazy.
A 5d6 fireball averages 17.5 damage which is 31% of the expected HP total of a CR 5 foe. However it's got a save associated with it so there is still probably a 30%-40% chance that it will only do 8.75 damage to a foe which is roughly 16% of the expected hit point total.
Considering the 5th level caster is blowing a pretty big percentage of his 3rd level spells that's really not a good use of a spell slot.
I would say that either you did it at 600ft. away, in which case it isn't bad at effecting something that probably won't be able to reach you for another few rounds, or you wasted an area spell on a single opponent. If the encounter was 4 ogres, and you caught them all in the blast, they would have a difficult time making the save (+0 Reflex) and average damage is over half the creatures HP. This puts them well into the territory of getting 1 shot'ed by the party fighter or sneak attacker. Since even an ogre doesn't want to flush his life away, he probably won't even bother closing, since next round he is likely to die if another fireball goes off.
Polar Ray, yeah, not a good spell. Fireball, a fine 3rd level spell.
Maximized, Empowered scorching ray (7th level spell slot)= 108 damage. 1-3 opponents. No saves involved.
Entangle isn't a bad spell. Unless you happen to be in the myriad of places adventures take place where there are no plants what so ever.
Soften Earth and Stone. For all the places you visit that aren't man made.
Pyrotechnics...
Uhh quick question guys... why are we trying to make standard action spells do as much damage as a full round attack? (barring maybe a well built fighters, or uber archer)
I would say that either you did it at 600ft. away, in which case it isn't bad at effecting something that probably won't be able to reach you for another few rounds, or you wasted an area spell on a single opponent. If the encounter was 4 ogres, and you caught them all in the blast, they would have a difficult time making the save (+0 Reflex) and average damage is over half the creatures HP. This puts them well into the territory of getting 1 shot'ed by the party fighter or sneak attacker. Since even an ogre doesn't want to flush his life away, he probably won't even bother closing, since next round he is likely to die if another fireball goes off.Polar Ray, yeah, not a good spell. Fireball, a fine 3rd level spell.
Maximized, Empowered scorching ray (7th level spell slot)= 108 damage.
I'm assuming that the standard encounter design is in a dungeon against at least some CR appropriate foes.
If the PCs routinely can fight at range vs mooks then fireball is an okay spell but if you are level 5 wizard and you have three 3rd level spell slots are you really going to spend one memorizing fireball? When haste or slow would be a much more effective use of your spell slot?
The problem with blast is that it's almost always inferior to the other options available to a spellcaster. If you need to fry a ton of orcs on a battlefield then evocation or specifically a evocation wand is probably a decent investment. For most dungeon crawling action? Unless the DM is custom tailoring encounters to maximize the evoker's AoE potential then it's not a particularly great trick.
The problem gets really bad when you combine the blast newbie trap with the easy play sorcerer because the sorcerer can now spam crappy blast but doesn't have anything particularly good vs solo targets.
I think it depends on the table. At ours we tend to get a lot of mooks along with the big bad. Crowd controlling them isn't always efficient.. they're still in the way. So a nice fireball to singe the big bad and clear a path to him for the fighter & rogue can come in handy.
A draconic sorcerer or other fire booster can be lethal to single targets with scorching ray (picking up point blank and precise shot isn't that bad, especially for a human, since there's not a lot thats good for casters at first level that can't wait)
Its very consistent. Doing damage you almost always do damage. SOD's you might get 1 2 3 times the bad guy saves in a row.
It also works WITH the party. If i'm trying to turn the big bad into a statue its sort of me vs him with the party in between. If i'm doing HP damage to him I'm working WITH the party to bring him down.
Its also fun to roll your own weight in dice.
Blasting is fun!! That's it!!
When ever i get to read threads like this i start to belive that most people over optimize thair characters. A blaster can't competent in raw damge per round out put against a optimized material class .. right!
But for me PF and other rpgs have two different aspects 1. a strategic game and 2. roleplay. The best rounds i have played in do not overextend on one of this aspects!! Blasting is a cool effect on the roleplay side of the game and still not so bad strategic game part of the game.
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Just a thought...
Why not allow evocation spells like fireball to target multiple opponents. That way a fireball could still deal 1d6/level, but be capable of doing that damage to several creatures. In the right circumstances ("A nice, tight bomb pattern") it could be an amazing spell.
On a more serious note, casters are great at damaging several opponents, but not that great (still very good) at damaging a single one. But archers and melee types are great at damaging single opponents.
What is the problem again? That casters haven't stolen the role of archers and melee characters? Why do casters need to be better at direct damage then the full BAB classes?
Because D&D does not use Critical Existence Failure style HP... oh wait...
This isn't about buffing casters, you should know better than that. What this is about is there are some people who just want to blow things up. And the system tells them to bugger off for wanting that. Making Evocation not suck allows them to play such a character and not suck for doing so.
No real martial character is in any danger of having their damage outstripped by blasting even if all blasting damage was tripled.
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.
Back to the OP, spells that I consider to have permanent residence in Suckville are those that have a very specific use (remove disease, remove curse, and remove deafness/blindness, I'm looking at you) or those buffs that don't stuack well with other buff spells (i.e., Bless and Aid because they don't stack with bard buffs).
How is this "in our heads"? Ancient White Dragon, 1e: 56 H.P. According to the DMG, appropriate for seventh to ninth level characters: Magic user average damage with fireball: 24.5 at 7th, 28 at 8th, 31.5 at 9th.
Ancient White Dragon: Pathfinder: 283 hp. appropriate for 12th and up level characters: Wizard average damage fireball: 35. Add 17 hp for vulnerability, and perhaps some from feats.
An ancient white dragon has five times as many hit points as its 1e counterpart, yet the magic user does the same per level as his or her 1e counterpart with a fireball. Adding insult to injury, there was zero level cap on damage in 1e, so a 17th level magic user was throwing seventeen dice fireballs.
Evocation/direct damage blaster wizard is not a wise choice in Pathfinder.
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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.
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 shit up is more fun than battlefield control.