Save or 'Hurt' Spells underpowered?

[deathstroke50]

When I looked at the new rules for SoD spells, my first reaction was "aww, now it'll be harder to kill the PCs in one shot" quickly followed by "Wait a second... Why is this a good spell?"
Quite a few of the new SoDs do 10 dmg/level with a Fort save for no or less damage. If I were playing a cleric I would probably just prep Harm instead of them. Admittedly it has a damage cap and can't deal the final blow, but a Will half is a lot better than Fort negates. Less targets are resiliant to it - Fighters have poor Wills, while casters still have issues soaking the half damage. I would suggest upping the dmg/level on the new SoDs to make them more attractive than Harm.

As for the 'they add range' portion - upping a 6th level spell to 7th would let you Ray the target, and most clerics won't miss a ranged touch attack.

[Wrath]

My players were'nt too impressed with the watered down versions either. However they're playing evil characters who readily use death magic at a much higher rate than they have it used against them

We were thinking of changing it to a dual round action. Death effect drops you to -9 instantly on a fail (out of the fight), next round if you fail again then you die. Gives the players one extra shot as a group of keeping you alive and still has the massive effect in that combat that the old spells used to have.

We're still playing around with this idea though.
Cheers