Ultimate Magic: Terrible Remorse

[FarmerBob]

Gignere wrote:

Unless the BBEG have spellcraft or Knowledge (arcana) how would it know to intentionally fail the save?

That's up to the GM on how smart he wants the BBEG to be, and if they learn enough after being affected by the spell once, know of the spell prior to the encounter, or know enough about magic to know that failing is sometimes a useful option. If the GM doesn't want his BBEG to stand there helpless for a dozen rounds, they'll figure it out. :-).

Gignere wrote:

With feats that increases the chance of a spell to go through SR, it is merely a speed bump.

Doesn't help with wands though, and even being elven + all feats doesn't make it automatic.

[Kain Darkwind]

You know what else besides SR penetration isn't automatic? Spell resistance.

[Gignere]

FarmerBob wrote:

Gignere wrote:

Unless the BBEG have spellcraft or Knowledge (arcana) how would it know to intentionally fail the save?

That's up to the GM on how smart he wants the BBEG to be, and if they learn enough after being affected by the spell once, know of the spell prior to the encounter, or know enough about magic to know that failing is sometimes a useful option. If the GM doesn't want his BBEG to stand there helpless for a dozen rounds, they'll figure it out. :-).

Gignere wrote:

With feats that increases the chance of a spell to go through SR, it is merely a speed bump.

Doesn't help with wands though, and even being elven + all feats doesn't make it automatic.

If you get all the penetrating feats and the piercing metamagic. It can be as good as automatic. CR appropriate creature SRs are set at about 50% chance of cutting thorugh. In other words you need to roll an 11 to get through SR without feats.

With both the penetrating feats and the piercing metamagic you are at an effective +9 to your roll. So for CR appropriate encounters you will succeed on a roll of 2 or higher. This doesn't even count if you are an elf.

So against CR + 3 which is pretty typical of BBEG's you'll still succeed very easily unless you roll terribly.

[FarmerBob]

Kain Darkwind wrote:

You know what else besides SR penetration isn't automatic? Spell resistance.

Gignere wrote:

So against CR + 3 which is pretty typical of BBEG's you'll still succeed very easily unless you roll terribly.

All I said before is SR might help, which remains true.

The spell may not function due to SR (especially vs the fleet of wand wielders), or the target may choose to fail the saving throw, based on the whim of the GM or the resourcefulness of the player. Those are two ways for a target to avoid losing all of its actions due to repeated castings without any special abilities/equipment/spells/etc.

[killersquirrel59]

This makes no sense as errata'd. The effect being more devastating on a successful save than a failed one is silly. The errata making the sitting around and moping effect only last that turn and then end the spell helps a lot, but it then got silly again with the ruling that it doesn't take an action for them to damage themselves. That is a minuscule amount of damage. Without something else on there on the failed save that is a terrible effect. I ruled that it was a standard action for them to damage themselves. This makes the spell quite powerful for 4th level (compare to hold monster). I was considering making it an attack action instead of standard, requiring it to be the first attack of the round. But making it no action just makes no sense to me.

[Merck]

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