Death spells revisited

[WalkerInShadows]

I've been looking over the death spells, seeing how I can change them to not be so "save or suck".

Now, one thing I've done is to change the death/dying rules so that a) you die when you hit negative Con score, not -10; and b) each round, you make a Con check to stabilize; if the check succeeds by 0-5, there's no change; if it's 6+, you go to 0 hp, and if it fails, you lose 1 hp. 3 failures and you die.

So, with death spells, what I did is instead of "save or die", it's "save or be reduced to dying, but you automatically fail the stabilize rolls". Which means there's still a good chance of dying if your friends don't get to you in time.

One other idea I'm toying with (and the reason I'm posting this) is putting a HD cap on what can be affected by a given spell level (like the damage caps). For instance, circle of death is L6; it affects 1d4 HD/level (20d4 max), with a 9 HD cap. So what I suggest is:

L6 single-target: 12 HD; multi-target: 9 HD

L7 single-target: 15 HD; multi-target: 12 HD

L8 single target: 18 HD; multi-target: 15 HD

L9 single target: 21 HD; multi-target: 18 HD.

These caps are for arcane and divine - there's no difference.

Thus, a spell like wail of the banshee could kill up to 1 creature/level that has no more than 18 HD.

[Jassin]

The dying rules you sugest sound a lot like the 4ed rules, but never the less I like them.
The SoD cap sound great but I would go even further with the cap.
For example Single-taget So: max HD = caster level, multi target SOD = casterlevel / 2. The way they work now they are kind of boring because they add to the list of "just damage" spells and at the same time are still SoD spells when you factor in the massive damage rules.

Jassin

[Zaister]

WalkerInShadows wrote:

Now, one thing I've done is to change the death/dying rules so that a) you die when you hit negative Con score, not -10

Actually that is just as it is supposed to work in Pathfinder (see Alpha 3 page 155).

[WalkerInShadows]

Jassin wrote:

The dying rules you sugest sound a lot like the 4ed rules, but never the less I like them.

Parallel development - I came up with my version about 6 months ago.

Quote:

The SoD cap sound great but I would go even further with the cap.

For example Single-taget So: max HD = caster level, multi target SOD = casterlevel / 2.

The single target caps for L6-7 spells are already HD = CL; L8 is CL = HD+2, and L9 is CL = HD+3. Multiple targets just build off an already-existing progression. Circle of death works exactly as I stated above, and cloudkill (L5) also acts as a SoD for anything up to 6 HD (up to 3 HD is no save).

Quote:

The way they work now they are kind of boring because they add to the list of "just damage" spells and at the same time are still SoD spells when you factor in the massive damage rules.

Yeah, I don't like that either.

Quote:

Actually that is just as it is supposed to work in Pathfinder (see Alpha 3 page 155).

That's a pretty common house rule.