The Abjurer and Evoker 20th level school powers may be the worst capstones in the game. Immunity to one element? On top of being passive, the ability has to be overly specific in terms of when it's useful? Why not let the abjurer choose immunity to any one element at a time at will? That would be a worthy capstone. A 20th level draconic sorcerer gets immunity to a single element plus blindsense and immunity to paralysis and sleep.
The evoker's capstone is only useful against creatures with energy resistance. Why not instead make their spells generally more damaging? Doesn't a 20th level evoker have access to spells with a variety of energy types? Why does he need an ability to pierce energy resistance? Why negate a fire giant's fire resistance if you can cast cone of cold? It just feels wrong negating a fire giant's resistance anyway. Immunities should be respected. For example, no one should design a sleep spell that ignores elven immunity.
Finally, why should the evoker's capstone trump the abjurer's capstone? It should be the other way around, to balance the fact that the abjurer's ability is passive.
|
The Abjurer and Evoker 20th level school powers may be the worst capstones in the game. Immunity to one element? On top of being passive, the ability has to be overly specific in terms of when it's useful? Why not let the abjurer choose immunity to any one element at a time at will? That would be a worthy capstone. A 20th level draconic sorcerer gets immunity to a single element plus blindsense and immunity to paralysis and sleep.
The evoker's capstone is only useful against creatures with energy resistance. Why not instead make their spells generally more damaging? Doesn't a 20th level evoker have access to spells with a variety of energy types? Why does he need an ability to pierce energy resistance? Why negate a fire giant's fire resistance if you can cast cone of cold? It just feels wrong negating a fire giant's resistance anyway. Immunities should be respected. For example, no one should design a sleep spell that ignores elven immunity.
Finally, why should the evoker's capstone trump the abjurer's capstone? It should be the other way around, to balance the fact that the abjurer's ability is passive.
Just to make the evoker's plight more evident there is a number of feats that let you change the energy type of energy typed spells. I think they are energy substitution, and master of elements (the first lets you memorize as a different type, and the later allows on the fly changes.)
Any evoker worth his balls (fireballs that is) has at least the first and probably the later.
|
|
Just to make the evoker's plight more evident there is a number of feats that let you change the energy type of energy typed spells. I think they are energy substitution, and master of elements (the first lets you memorize as a different type, and the later allows on the fly changes.)
Any evoker worth his balls (fireballs that is) has at least the first and probably the later.
I could be wrong as I am away form book, but energy mastery was not a feat but a special ability available to ArchMages.
As for the feat, it allowed you to pick one of the energy forms which you could substitute to. To be able to substitute when preparing spells to cover the 4 elements and sonic (this did not allow force as a substitution) would thus require 5 feats.
Now I am not saying the evoker's capstone power is fine just correcting a couple minor glitches.
The arch mage's version was an uber version of the feat pair. The Sub/Mastery feats only allow for one energy type, so you could take a energy-sub [sonic] and then the mastery [sonic] and convert any [] type spell to sonic on the fly. The Arch mage let you do any [] spell into another type. So for an evoker, these 2 feats out do the capstone because 90% of stuff isn't resistant to sonic.