The Arcane Cannon spell creates a magical cannon that can be used by the caster without any assistance. The cannon has the conductive property, which allow the caster to channel any spell-like or supernatural ability that the caster has through the cannon.
2 problems:
1- The property allows only melee and ranged touch abilities, so count cones, bursts and lines out.
2- The remaining eligible abilities are weak, mostly dealing 1d6 + modifiers.
The cannon itself deals 4d10 points of damage and gets a critical hit at x4. What's the usefulness of the conductive property if it can only channel weak abilities ?
You know, it would have made sense if the spell was available as a 6th-level spell for the Magus and that Spellstrike could be used with the cannon, or if the cannon could channel any spell-like or supernatural ability without the range requirement... but right now, the spell has a rather useless ability for wizards and sorcerers.
Does anyone have an idea on how to exploit this spell's feature ?
The Arcane Cannon spell creates a magical cannon that can be used by the caster without any assistance. The cannon has the conductive property, which allow the caster to channel any spell-like or supernatural ability that the caster has through the cannon.
2 problems:
1- The property allows only melee and ranged touch abilities, so count cones, bursts and lines out.
2- The remaining eligible abilities are weak, mostly dealing 1d6 + modifiers.The cannon itself deals 4d10 points of damage and gets a critical hit at x4. What's the usefulness of the conductive property if it can only channel weak abilities ?
You know, it would have made sense if the spell was available as a 6th-level spell for the Magus and that Spellstrike could be used with the cannon, or if the cannon could channel any spell-like or supernatural ability without the range requirement... but right now, the spell has a rather useless ability for wizards and sorcerers.
Does anyone have an idea on how to exploit this spell's feature ?
1) *Thwaps with rolled up newspaper* Stop looking for exploits! Bad!
2) You don't want a cannon which fires Disintegrate at the walls of the enemy castle which will both blow through the physical wall and the Wall of Force they have erected INSIDE the wall to prevent earth elementals, mages, ninjas, monks, and anything else with ethereal movement from going through it.
3) A lich with this spell, Paralyzing Cannon. Not everything in the books has to be good for PCs, I personally love the fact HALF of the Witch abilities are horrible for players to use.
List of abilities from glancing through Core:
Bestow Curse (that spell contains so much dickery it's not funny)
Breath of Life (for killing Liches!)
Darkness (useful if you have stealth based characters on your side)
Disintegrate
Enervation
Light (useful if they try to stealth)
Inflict/Cure spells
Daylight (shoot a vampire, he will NOT be having a good day)
Heal/Harm (extra 150 damage? Yes please!)
Imprisonment
Polar Ray (25d6 damage and 1d4 dex drain)
Ray of Enfeeblement
Ray of Exhaustion
Rusting Grasp
Searing Light (Another way to run a Liches day)
Metamagiced Shocking Grasp (Cheap extra damage, no save)
Slay Living
Statue (Turn them into a rock then shoot them again)
Stoneshape (For turning Statues into comical things, or hurting golems)
Temporal Status (Another way to remove things from fights)
Now before you point out that a chunk of these are not on the wizard list remember that this is a wizard capable of casting a 7th level spell, he has scrolls, or it's a sorcerer and I never make sorcerers without ranking UMD.
1) *Thwaps with rolled up newspaper* Stop looking for exploits! Bad!
2) You don't want a cannon which fires Disintegrate at the walls of the enemy castle which will both blow through the physical wall and the Wall of Force they have erected INSIDE the wall to prevent earth elementals, mages, ninjas, monks, and anything else with ethereal movement from going through it.
3) A lich with this spell, Paralyzing Cannon. Not everything in the books has to be good for PCs, I personally love the fact HALF of the Witch abilities are horrible for players to use.
List of abilities from glancing through Core:
1) Exploits, combos, call it whatever you want...
2) Why not ?
3) When it comes to spells, yes, it must be appealing to PCs as well. We already have Monster Feats, we don't need Monster Spells...
Finally, your list doesn't work... at all... at least for normal PCs. Why ? Because the conductive property works only with spell-like and supernatural abilities, not actual spells. True, any spell that requires a melee or ranged touch attack could be used with the cannon if they are used as spell-like or supernatural abilities. However, I don't see any option to convert such spells into such abilities for a regular wizard or sorcerer; only monsters such outsiders could use the cannon's property.
1) *Thwaps with rolled up newspaper* Stop looking for exploits! Bad!
2) You don't want a cannon which fires Disintegrate at the walls of the enemy castle which will both blow through the physical wall and the Wall of Force they have erected INSIDE the wall to prevent earth elementals, mages, ninjas, monks, and anything else with ethereal movement from going through it.
3) A lich with this spell, Paralyzing Cannon. Not everything in the books has to be good for PCs, I personally love the fact HALF of the Witch abilities are horrible for players to use.
List of abilities from glancing through Core:
1) Exploits, combos, call it whatever you want...
2) Why not ?
3) When it comes to spells, yes, it must be appealing to PCs as well. We already have Monster Feats, we don't need Monster Spells...
Finally, your list doesn't work... at all... at least for normal PCs. Why ? Because the conductive property works only with spell-like and supernatural abilities, not actual spells. True, any spell that requires a melee or ranged touch attack could be used with the cannon if they are used as spell-like or supernatural abilities. However, I don't see any option to convert such spells into such abilities for a regular wizard or sorcerer; only monsters such outsiders could use the cannon's property.
Ah, so your right, I misread that and confused it with the thing Spellslingers get.
I will have to disagree with you that the game doesn't need things utilizable by both PCs and NPCs to varying degree of effect. I like having tricks as a GM that the players can do, just not nearly as well.
So yeah, it has limited usefulness for delivering effects other then damage. You can however use Greater Energy Siege Shot on it and I think there are a couple other spells for effecting siege weapons. Additionally it doesn't state what kind of action firing the cannon is so I assume it fires on it's own and you cans till take standard actions.
Glancing at Sorcerer abilities I saw the Protean Bloodline 'tanglefoot' thing and the one water one does that dehydration thing, both of those are useful.
EDIT: I think the problem here isn't Arcane Cannon but the Conductive ability which weapons can posses.
EDIT: I think the problem here isn't Arcane Cannon but the Conductive ability which weapons can posses.
Indeed, it does look like it... however, since the spell is only available for sorcerers and wizards, the spell is also part of the problem just like the conductive property... because both classes don't have much access to proper abilities to use in conjunction. Furthermore, using the conductive property costs two uses of the eligible ability.
Hence why I'm asking for ways to use the spell's unique feature...
Although... thanks for the advice that any spell that can affect siege engines can work on the arcane cannon.