Evoker specialist ability....

[Brett Blackwell]

Personally, I think the Evoker's specialist ability is too weak, so here is how I would like to see it modified.

Specialist Bonus: Whenever you cast an evocation spell that deals damage, it deals +1 damage. This bonus applies once for area effect spells or once per missile or ray. This damage is of the same type as teh spell. This bonus increase by +1 for every 5 casters levels you possess, to a maximum of +5 at 20th level.

I know some people would like to see the bonus damage applied to each dice of damage, but that seems to be too much to me, especially for spells like Fireball.

At the same time, limiting the bonus damage to one missle or ray seems a little weak, not to mention requiring more work (though not much) in determining which target would take the extra damage. If they were subject to an area-of-effect spell they would all suffer the extra damage, so why not if they were just a second (or third) target hit by a ray or missile attack?

Of course, I'm sure there are some that think this would be too powerful (for situations like Magic Missile with 5 missiles at 10th level dealing an additional 15 points of damage). As an alternative the damage could just apply once per target. If a 10th level Evoker targets 2 opponents with Magic Missile (5 missiles), one would take two missiles and the other 3, with both opponnents taking a total of 3 additional points of damage due to the speicalist ability. This would be the same as if they were both subject of a fireball spell.

What are other people's thoughts on this?

[Squirrelloid]

Brett Blackwell wrote:

Personally, I think the Evoker's specialist ability is too weak, so here is how I would like to see it modified.

Specialist Bonus: Whenever you cast an evocation spell that deals damage, it deals +1 damage. This bonus applies once for area effect spells or once per missile or ray. This damage is of the same type as teh spell. This bonus increase by +1 for every 5 casters levels you possess, to a maximum of +5 at 20th level.

I know some people would like to see the bonus damage applied to each dice of damage, but that seems to be too much to me, especially for spells like Fireball.

At the same time, limiting the bonus damage to one missle or ray seems a little weak, not to mention requiring more work (though not much) in determining which target would take the extra damage. If they were subject to an area-of-effect spell they would all suffer the extra damage, so why not if they were just a second (or third) target hit by a ray or missile attack?

Of course, I'm sure there are some that think this would be too powerful (for situations like Magic Missile with 5 missiles at 10th level dealing an additional 15 points of damage). As an alternative the damage could just apply once per target. If a 10th level Evoker targets 2 opponents with Magic Missile (5 missiles), one would take two missiles and the other 3, with both opponnents taking a total of 3 additional points of damage due to the speicalist ability. This would be the same as if they were both subject of a fireball spell.

What are other people's thoughts on this?

Dealing damage is a weak option for mages. Honestly, I don't think +1/die of damage, with an additional +1/5 levels is that powerful.

A 10 die fireball at 10th level gets an additional +30 damage for an expected damage of 65 vs. 35 for a normal mage. This is only fair when you remember the Evoker sacrificed two good schools for evocation (which is the single worst school of magic). 65 damage is about on par with what you expect a melee character to do in two hits - yes, they get to hit an area, but those affected get a saving throw, and they get to do it a limited number of times per day.

The ultimate 20th level evoker dumps a meteor swarm with +120 damage for expected damage of 204, more than double what other mages expect at 20th level, which is nothing when they could have cast Timestop. Or Weird/Wail of the Banshee and just killed everything around them. Or Gate. Or really virtually any other spell off the 9th level list with a combat application. Meteor Swarm, and damage in general, is weak sauce for wizards.

Of course, it doesn't have to ramp up that fast either. +1 and +1/10 levels to each die of damage gives you a +2/die at 10th and +3/die at 20th, which is an almost doubling of expected damage by 20th level.

But lets face it, evocation magic needs serious help, and without rewriting all the evocation spells, a substantial damage boost might at least make it not as lame. (Its still not as good as putting your enemies to sleep, paralyzing them, stunning them, or outright killing them, but hey, its not damage lower than the barbarian dishes out in one attack either).

[toyrobots]

What about just adding your caster level in damage to each target of the spell?

At 20th level, for all the above reasons, it's not such a great bonus. But it will be good/not great for most of the adventuring career. You get 3rd Level spells (a great level for any evoker) and you get +3 damage on each target in the area. That's good, but not insane.

Additionally, it's just more parsimonious than some function of caster level.

If it seems too weak at the upper levels, one of the later specialist abilities could make it 150% or 200% of caster level. After all, to a 17th level wizard, even tacking an extra 34 damage onto a Meteor Swarm is not that big a deal.

I don't really care for the number of special abilities that seem to replace otherwise prepared spells of your chosen school— it seems to restrict the spells you can prepare while eliminating the need to prepare those same spells... So I wouldn't mind jacking up the damage bonus as a School ability instead. That leaves the incentive to prepare your school spells.

[Jason C Scott]

One thing to consider is that if an evoker loads all evocation spells on a given day he has a good chance of making every spell count in every combat encounter. The same thing can not be said for all the other schools.