How does decapitate spell works?

[leandro redondo]

wrote:

If the target fails the saving throw and has a discernible head, the attack deals an extra 4d6 points of damage and the critical multiplier of the critical hit increases by 1. If the critical hit then brings the target to 0 hit points or fewer, the target is instantly decapitated and dies unless it can survive decapitation.

Does that mean that you add 4d6 to your base damage ( and thus multiply it accordingly)? Or you should add them up AFTER calculating the bonuses? In the latter case, the spell is in my opinion wildly overpriced ( It's at the very least a 5th level spell, dependant on a relatively rare condition - to score a critical hit-, with an insignificant increase of damage implied, and a secondary efect very spectacular but not so useful, in the end : They are already dead or dying, so unless you are a vampire, losing their heads it no big deal)

[Plausible Pseudonym]

I see it as the former, the extra damage does get multiplied by at least 3.

[SlimGauge]

What source does this spell come from ?

[Rysky]

Horror Adventures.

[Diego Rossi]

1) Generally extra dice are never multiplied.
2) If the target fail its save it increase your critical multiplier and that can be a lot of extra damage.
3) Magus 6, immediate action, cast after you confirm the critical. About 30% of my magus attacks are a potential critical. I confirm most of them, so calling it "a rare occurrence" is misleading, it is reasonably common, With a full attack I get a critical at least every other round.
4) if the target save the spell do little, as most spells. Normal.

"losing their heads it no big deal"
1) You don't die until you get as many negative hp as you have constitution, so it can be a big deal;
2) breath of life. Even if you go under constitution it can revive you, but it will not reattach your head.

Spell level: turning a spell into a swift action cost 4 spell levels. Immediate actin is even better than that. So we are speaking of the power level of a level 2 standard action spell.

[leandro redondo]

Diego Rossi wrote:

1) Generally extra dice are never multiplied.

2) If the target fail its save it increase your critical multiplier and that can be a lot of extra damage.
3) Magus 6, immediate action, cast after you confirm the critical. About 30% of my magus attacks are a potential critical. I confirm most of them, so calling it "a rare occurrence" is misleading, it is reasonably common, With a full attack I get a critical at least every other round.
4) if the target save the spell do little, as most spells. Normal.

"losing their heads it no big deal"
1) You don't die until you get as many negative hp as you have constitution, so it can be a big deal;
2) breath of life. Even if you go under constitution it can revive you, but it will not reattach your head.

Spell level: turning a spell into a swift action cost 4 spell levels. Immediate actin is even better than that. So we are speaking of the power level of a level 2 standard action spell.

• I'm afraid I cannot agree with such an optimistic point of view, at least with the magus. Even for a Magus hellbent on making as much crits as possible, the benefits of this spell pale before the usually accepted touchstone on single-target damage-dealing spells: disintegrate. That's a spell you can use via the Close range Arcana for your spellstrikes. Assuming you are the lowest possible magus level ( 16) to cast it , you are giving up an inmediate action ( this is, a quick spell with its normal melee damage -via spellstrike-) and 32d6 (112 points on average)/5d6 (17.5 ) and the absolute destruction of the target in case he fell to zero or less hit points no matter the S.T roll( so no breath of life either). On the other hand, according to your opinion, Decapitate gives you plus one time your normal melee damage and 4d6 (plus beheading if the target's reduced to 0 or less hp) on a Failed save, or 4d6 (and no beheading at all, no matter target's hp). All things considered, I'm still losing 28d6/1d6 and the advantage of he enemy being turned to dustif he falls below 0 hp, plus another posibility of inflicting other effects via another attack ( let's say another posibility of poisoning), all made every round ( as long as you have 6th level spells, same with Decapitate) instead of once every two at most.

  From my point of view,It's only interesting in case you are an Inquisitor ( mainly due to the scarcity of damaging spells on their spell lists). They don't have anything comparable to finger of death or slay living ( which , by the way, also have the advantage of being death efects, with all that it implies)

• I'm not so sure we should measure the fact that It is an inmmediate action so literally as you suggest. After all, feather fall is also an inmediate action, and following that line of reasoning would put it at lower than a zero level spell!!!. Joking aside, In this case I think it's because there's no other option, since "as part of an attack" it's not a standard Casting time line.

[Diego Rossi]

For the level cost of it being a immediate action, compare it with true strike, you have to cast it the previous round to benefit from it (unless you are a magus) or memorize it as a 5th level spell to cast it as a swift action.

Disintegrate: sure, if you have taken Close Range. AFIK a magus hasn't so many nice ray spell to make that a mandatory choice unless you build your character around it. Sure, you can take Spell Blending and add enervation to the list or some other option, but you are creating a character around the use of Close range.
On the other hand decapitate only require you to:
know the spell
select keen as one of your weapon abilities
use a scimitar as your weapon (and a lot of maguses use it)
Note that all 3 requirements are requirements for your use of disintegrate, too.

Note that decapitate can be cast in addition to disintegrate, you cast disintegrate as part of spell combat, decapitation as a reaction after scoring a critical.
BTW, on a critical disintegrate is a minimum of 64d6. If I am fighting a magus and have access to greater spell immunity I will select it as one of the warded spells.

It is all about circumstances. Generally disintegrate is better, but depending on your build and goals sometime Decapitate can be a valid choice.

"Finger of death or slay living" are standard action casting time spells. Comparing them to a immediate action spell is comparing two widely different things.

[Turin the Mad]

How high is that save DC at that point? Fort tends to be the beefiest of the monsters' save bonuses at that CR range, so how often is a failed save against disintegrate getting through?

[Diego Rossi]

Turin the Mad wrote:

How high is that save DC at that point? Fort tends to be the beefiest of the monsters' save bonuses at that CR range, so how often is a failed save against disintegrate getting through?

Decapitate has a ST: fortitude, partial, so they are in the same boat.

You cast them against monsters with weak fortitude saves.
Both are subject to SR, too.

[leandro redondo]

You have a point on some aspects, Diego, but I'm afraid I'm still not sold on the proper adjutication of this spell's level. Especially on the magus case. Let me explain it as a general case first and then in the case of the magus ( and somewhat less, the Inquisitor's). As a generic case, comparing it between both spells (a touch, quickened spell in a 6th level spell slot - to balance out spell slots and kind of action- Vs decapitate) you have to consider:

Our generic spell requires the following rolls to fully work: any succesful hit roll and a saving throw. On the other hand, Decapitate requires an specific subset of the possible "succesful hit rolls" results and and another succesful hit roll ( the critical confirmation roll) plus the same kind of saving throw ( Vs fort, same dc, so no difference to consider here). That implies that in the second case, unless crits are somehow automatically succesful, your chances of using decapitate any one round are less than those of our generic one. As you said yourself, you can achieve to make, more or less, one crit every other round as an impresively good rate, and I'm sure you're character is build for them. Meanwhile, a magus without that spell would have cast one generic spell each round: that implies any two succesful hit rolls ( still, these are better chances than one succesful and one critical), posibly critical hits by themselves. That means two spell effects plus twicenormal combat damage for the attack ( while decapitate only would add one time) plus twice the possible special effects as poison, flaming/frost/shock... Even if you cast one generic spell the first round, and make a crit the second one to cast Decapitate, you have less chances to acomplish both (the crit confirmation roll again), losing some things along the way. On the long run, a couple of 6th level spell slots spent on Decapitate spells are less useful than a couple of quickened frigid touchs, for example .

Diego Rossi wrote:

Disintegrate: sure, if you have taken Close Range. AFIK a magus hasn't so many nice ray spell to make that a mandatory choice unless you build your character around it.

I concur that there is no so many ray spells to make close range an enticing option at low and middle levels, per se. But once you get the disintegrate spell, well, let's say you and almost every magus in the world would be very happy to take "close range" as your next Magus arcana.

Diego Rossi wrote:

Note that decapitate can be cast in addition to disintegrate, you cast disintegrate as part of spell combat, decapitation as a reaction after scoring a critical.

At first I thought that this might be the one and only reason for me to agree on setting decapitate as a 6th level spell: both competing for the top level spell slots to avoid such a combo. But since spellstrike clearly says that spell crit is always x2, disintegrate makes you dust no matter if you saved or not when you have zero or less hps left... I still can't see the need to spend high level spell in such conditions ( the extra 4d6 not as base, multipliable-on-a-crit, damage).

Diego Rossi wrote:

BTW, on a critical disintegrate is a minimum of 64d6. If I am fighting a magus and have access to greater spell immunity I will select it as one of the warded spells.

Ups, sorry, I miscalculated that. And at these levels, it's a very sensible thing to do to ward yourself against disintegrate, in any case.

Diego Rossi wrote:

"Finger of death or slay living" are standard action casting time spells. Comparing them to a immediate action spell is comparing two widely different things.

No, no, no... I'm afraid that you might have misunderstood me. What I was trying to say is that Decapitate , as a 5th level spell is quite more interesting to them than to magus ( and, obviously, wizards ), specially since they don't have spells of the likings of slay living or finger of death: deadly and dramatic. Again, my bad, sorry.

[Plausible Pseudonym]

Sorry to necro this, but I was taking another look at this spell and wondering what the consensus was last time.

I'm still going to argue that the 4d6 damage is multiplied by the crit multiplier, the standard one if they make the save, crit multiplier +1 if they fail.

(1) First, that's because "the attack" does extra damage, and that's what was probably intended to get multiplied. It also lists the crit increase after it mentions the extra damage.

Critical Hit wrote:

A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together. Unless otherwise specified, the threat range for a critical hit on an attack roll is 20, and the multiplier is ×2.

Exception: Precision damage (such as from a rogue’s sneak attack class feature) and additional damage dice from special weapon qualities (such as flaming) are not multiplied when you score a critical hit.

This is neither precision damage nor a rider attached to your weapon. It's directly enhancing weapon damage, like a strength or enhancement bonus, presumably through some sort of telekinetic effect.

(2) Second, this spell seems balanced around it working like that. If they make their Fort save (not hard for tough front line monsters to do) it makes more sense to spend a 6th level spell slot and immediate action for 8d6 (or more) guaranteed single target damage rather than a flat 4d6. The above conversation about Disintegrate isn't wrong, Disintegrate is a better bet in almost all cases. This spell is worse, but closes the gap through the immediate action, while losing some because it's contingent on you or an ally making a crit.

(3) Finally, something not emphasized in the above discussion focusing on the Magus is that this is a close range immediate action spell. You can spend this on an ally's critical hit, not just your own. Your Magus's Sorcerer buddy should take this spell, not your Magus himself.

(4) For maximal hilarity combine this with Named Bullet cast on a throwing weapon that does slashing damage for the auto threaten and touch attack. Your GM might rule that a P or S weapon like a dagger does P when thrown , but the throwing axe and chakram are S only, so they can't shut this down even if they bend the "wielder gets to choose" rule for two types of damage weapons. The best option for this is the hulrbat, which has a x3 multiplier and P and S damage types.

Also note that Named Bullet, which is also neither precision damage nor a rider effect, specifically calls out that its bonus damage is not multiplied on a critical hit. This further suggests that the 4d6 from Decapitate should be.