I'm new to Pathfinder and table to gaming in general, (Was introduced to it through Shadowrun 3rd Ed last December by my housemates) so please go a little easy on me.
So start out with a 15th level Disintegrate spell.. doing 30D6 then it's empowered to 45D6.. now it's Elemental (for the sake of this example let's go with fire) and it's target is something like a White Dragon so that makes it 90D6 damage.. and if cast by a a red/brass/gold dragon bloodline sorcerer that's 90D6 + 90 fire damage. If it is a critical hit.. that makes 180D6 + 180 (or is it 90?). An ancient white dragon has an average HP of 283. Assume all this spell still does 360 damage to it. Assuming an average of 3.. this spell does 720 HP of damage to it. White dragons have a touch AC of 8..
With out a critical this still does an average of 360 points of damage to a creature immune to cold. Is this ridiculous or am I missing something?
Then it makes its fort save and takes 3d6 damage?
Then it makes its fort save and takes 3d6 damage?
I think it might be 5d6, but yeah...disintegrate really isn't worth it anymore, imo. It's like a save-or-die, only the target does not necessarily die even if he fails the save. And if he makes the save, he feels marginally tickled.
Main use of disintegrate imo is to get rid of walls and various force effects. As a combat-spell...take flesh-to-stone.
Then it makes its fort save and takes 3d6 damage?I think it might be 5d6, but yeah...disintegrate really isn't worth it anymore, imo. It's like a save-or-die, only the target does not necessarily die even if he fails the save. And if he makes the save, he feels marginally tickled.
Main use of disintegrate imo is to get rid of walls and various force effects. As a combat-spell...take flesh-to-stone.
Okay that seems slightly more reasonable since the spell DC would be what somewhere between 22-26? Even with Spell Perfection and Spell Focus Evocation?
Add in Elemental Focus and Greater Elemental Focus, that way your save DC will go up by 4 ^^. That might actually make Disintegrate worth using.
The maths in your example is slightly wrong. Being vulnerable to a certain damage type makes that damage type inflict 50% more damage, not 100% more damage (i.e. it does not double it). Therefore the damage in your example should be 67d6+67 against a white dragon.
Vulnerabilties (Ex or Su) A creature with vulnerabilities takes half again as much damage (+50%) from a specific energy type, regardless of whether a saving throw is allowed or if the save is a success or failure.
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I'm new to Pathfinder and table to gaming in general, (Was introduced to it through Shadowrun 3rd Ed last December by my housemates) so please go a little easy on me.
So start out with a 15th level Disintegrate spell.. doing 30D6 then it's empowered to 45D6.. now it's Elemental (for the sake of this example let's go with fire) and it's target is something like a White Dragon so that makes it 90D6 damage.. and if cast by a a red/brass/gold dragon bloodline sorcerer that's 90D6 + 90 fire damage. If it is a critical hit.. that makes 180D6 + 180 (or is it 90?). An ancient white dragon has an average HP of 283. Assume all this spell still does 360 damage to it. Assuming an average of 3.. this spell does 720 HP of damage to it. White dragons have a touch AC of 8..
With out a critical this still does an average of 360 points of damage to a creature immune to cold. Is this ridiculous or am I missing something?
#1 Spell perfection only allows 1 meta feat to be applied
#2 The total modified level of the spell can't be above 9th level.I'm not even sure you could do this with a metamagic rod of elemental spell since you could argue that the the metamagic rod raises the total modified level to 10th level... *shrug* Who cares, we'll assume the rod works (I think most people would).
There is at least a 5% miss chance (we'll ignore the possibility it has a chance to get spells up). An ancient white has SR 26 which means your 15th level caster only has a 50% change to affect the dragon at all. Add in a +19 fort save versus a save DC of... 25? So a 75% chance to make the save.
45% * 25% * 95% = 11.8% chance...
So your 'perfect setup' best case you have ~12% chance to one shot a white dragon, do you feel lucky?
Using a 'best case' like a creature with vulnerability to the exact sort of damage you are tuned to dish out is a terrible way to show how amazing a spell or ability is. It's classic one trick ponyism.
#1 Spell perfection only allows 1 meta feat to be applied
#2 The total modified level of the spell can't be above 9th level.I'm not even sure you could do this with a metamagic rod of elemental spell since you could argue that the the metamagic rod raises the total modified level to 10th level... *shrug* Who cares, we'll assume the rod works (I think most people would).
There is at least a 5% miss chance (we'll ignore the possibility it has a chance to get spells up). An ancient white has SR 26 which means your 15th level caster only has a 50% change to affect the dragon at all. Add in a +19 fort save versus a save DC of... 25? So a 75% chance to make the save.
45% * 25% * 95% = 11.8% chance...So your 'perfect setup' best case you have ~12% chance to one shot a white dragon, do you feel lucky?
Using a 'best case' like a creature with vulnerability to the exact sort of damage you are tuned to dish out is a terrible way to show how amazing a spell or ability is. It's classic one trick ponyism.
Even with out spell protection, it's only a 9th level spell, 6th +2 for empowered + 1 for elemental even without a rod. Unless I missed something, however; I'm trying to say it's broken I was merely curious as to how it broke down.
It seems I missed a few things, thank you Lord Zordran.Orge, thank you providing the crunchy answer to why this actually working was improbable. Try not to come off so condescending in the future. It was neither a perfect set up nor trying to state something was overpowered, merely asking if these was in fact possible is all.
I think I'd need a lot more experience playing Pathfinder before making that sort of judgment call.
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For some reason I thought empower was +3 levels. Regardless, it doesn't really matter with Spell Perfection.
*sigh*... not trying to be condescending, I am horrible with 'tone'.
I'm not sure what you mean by perfect setup, but by your choice of example is definitely skewing the odds in favor of the caster and not really representing a typical encounter.