| Godwyn |
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I have been thinking about the subject for awhile, but finally sat down and worked out some statistics for persistent spell effectiveness. Failed horribly, and pulled up a dice roller to do the math for me :). A lot of which is still by hand, and I am feeling too lazy too transfer it to a post right now.
For applying a status effect to a target. Where the target makes a save on 3+, but a spell 2 levels higher they make on 5+ because of the increased DC, is the break even point for a higher level spell being as effective. Even there, persistent is slightly more effective by 1%.
From succeeding on 4+ onward, persistent spell is ALWAYS more effective at causing a saving throw failure, and thereby inflicting an effect. If they succeed on 2+ against a spell 2 levels higher also, persistent spell is again more effective.
What is worse is that as the required save to succeed increases, persistent spell becomes increasingly MORE effective. In the utmost extreme of saving only on a 20 going from a 1/20 chance, to a 1/400.
Forcing 2 saves for a single spell slot 2 higher is more efficient by far than using quicken spell to force 2 saves from 2 spells, 1 at 4 levels higher. (Yes I am aware you can add persistent into that combination enhancing it even further).
smallroller for the program I used for the math, its free, and pretty good.