Empower + Dragon Bloodline

[hallowsinder]

Say a red dragon sorcerer casts an empowered scorching hands for 5d4+5. Do I multiply the result by 1.5 before or after adding the +5?

[Jason Beardsley]

hallowsinder wrote:

Say a red dragon sorcerer casts an empowered scorching hands for 5d4+5. Do I multiply the result by 1.5 before or after adding the +5?

One of the developers (can't remember which) has said that only dice are multiplied, not modifiers, when empowering a spell.

So your example would be (5d4*1.5)+5.

[Kalyth]

hallowsinder wrote:

Say a red dragon sorcerer casts an empowered scorching hands for 5d4+5. Do I multiply the result by 1.5 before or after adding the +5?

Assuming you mean Burning Hands. You would add the +5 at the end after multiplying the 5d4 by 1.5. The bloodline ability adds +1 damage per die. Since Empower doesnt actually add dice to the amount is just multiplies the total the total dice rolled doesnt change and remains at 5d4 so only gets +5 (1 per die rolled). Some people actually increase the dice rolled when empower is applied. For example 10d6 empowered fire ball they roll 15d6 while this basically has the same result as multiplying by 1.5 its not a big deal but remember that you would still only add +10 to the total for the bloodline ability as really you should only be rolling 10 dice.

[hallowsinder]

Alright, thanks, my question's answered.

[Rockhopper]

Intensified Spell, however, would add the extra damage, I believe?

[james maissen]

hallowsinder wrote:

Say a red dragon sorcerer casts an empowered scorching hands for 5d4+5. Do I multiply the result by 1.5 before or after adding the +5?

The variable damage from the spell is 5d4+5 so you'd multiply all of it.

The 3x PhB spelled this out in an example (using magic missile), but the SRD doesn't include examples so this didn't make it into the Pathfinder rules directly.

That said there's nothing that's changed, so it should still apply.

Now this game grows organically and people learn the rules at the game table. This has created regional variations, one of which encompasses some of the current Pathfinder game designers.

They confuse 'variable' with 'dice' when the two are not synonymous. A variable damage could be say from 2-5, even though that's represented by rolling a d4 and adding 1.

If one wishes to argue what's 'always there' then that would be a 2 and not a 1 leaving the variable to be 0-3... or you could pick 3 and have the 'variable' be from -1 to 2...

Simply put the variable in this case is all of 2-5, or in your case is 10-25.

-James
PS: an argument can be made for the bonus not being part of the spell itself, but that's not really what you're getting here so I didn't address it until now so as not to muddy things.

[DarkKnight27]

Per the feat it should be (5d4*1.5)+5 since the +5 is separate from the spell. The feat also says "Savings throws and opposed rolls are not affected, nor are spells without random variables." This implies that the +5 would not be affected by this feat since it's a static number.