Isn't dying (of old age) a penalty from aging?The Arcane Discovery is called Immortality, but the benefit "says nothing about immortality. It says the penalties from aging are removed. It never says you maximum life span is increased".
/If something is too good to be true it probably is.
Exactly. With either the alchemist or wizard's level 20 ability, you don't die from age. You can die from any of the thousands of ways an adventurer can die, but not from growing old or reaching some "maximum" life-span.
The arcane master searching for a means to cheat death from age is a classic trope. This enables it. It's not as good as lich-hood or godhood but it is a lot easier to achieve (commensurable with its lesser protection from death).
There's no race for immortality at level 20, no more so than the race to 20 itself. Every adventurer should want to advance as much as possible. Along the way, the alchemist/wizard has been studying on means to cheat death. It's the exact same concept as why they get 2 new spells free each level: they study.
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100% of hit point dmg is not a viable option in Pathfinder. There aren't enough stacking metamagic damage feats to accomplish it. You're either going to be using Quickened spells as finishers or going to secondary effects.
If Arcane Thesis and Twin Spell were allowed, it would probably work.
==Aelryinth
Two things, perhaps having little to do with this selected quote, but I've been following what you have been saying on this thread.
1) The metamagic feat, Born of the Three Thunders in 3.5's Complete Arcane does not double the damage, it takes the damage of the spell and converts half to electricity and the other half to sonic, and it must already be either a sonic or electricity spell to begin with (moot when talking about subbing or admixing energy types).
You have learned to marry the power of lightning and thunder in your electricity and sonic spells.
Prerequisites: Knowledge (nature) 4 ranks, Energy Substitution (electricity).
Benefit: When you cast a spell with either the electricity descriptor or the sonic descriptor that deals hit point damage, you can declare that spell to be a spell of the three thunders, with half its damage dealt as electricity damage and half dealt as sonic damage. In addition, the spell concludes with a mighty thunderclap that stuns all creatures that take damage from the spell for 1 round unless they succeed on a Fortitude save, then knocks stunned creatures prone unless they succeed on a Reflex save (both saves at the same DC as the base spell). Channeling the three thunders is costly, though, and you are automatically dazed for 1 round after doing so. A three thunders spell uses a spell slot of the spell’s normal level. In addition, its descriptor changes to include both energy types—for example, a lightning bolt of the three thunders is an evocation [electricity, sonic] spell.
If this has been errata'd please point out where that can be found. Still a great feat though...
2) Where can Energize Spell be found? I've looked in every Pathfinder product I have and it's just not there. I think I have everything that contains feats, spells, or other crunch. Is it 3rd Party? I found a 3.5 version in a Forgotten Realms splat book, which makes the spell into positive energy, but in one of your posts, you speak of it in Pathfinder.
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At any level after 6, the fireball. The Cloudkill is going to do negligible Con damage in comparison, and it moves away. The fireball is probably going to do 50 pts +, against the weak save of most characters.
Not if you enclose that cloudkill in a wall of stone, the cloudkill will have no where to go. Add persistent and dazing to that and that's one hosed victim...
from a players point of view, perhaps no, but from a DM's point it ruins the game. This would mean as fast as any wizard reaches level 20 they are immortal. This would mean the world would be crowded with immortal wizards. It would mess with the game world.wonder about these late night/early morning threads sometimes.
immortality or increase in lifespan is not a too good to be true ability for the game. it is a non game affecting flavor only fluff thing that you can take if you want your high level caster to have found the secret to everlasting youth without having to become a lich, or vampire, or reincarnate via limited wish or whatever. it has no affect on the game. really how many of your characters have ever died of old age? they just gave it a name. Immortality. sheesh.
Perhaps you haven't heard of the Runelords. Besides, how many NPC wizards do you know of that reach level 20? And this type of feat should be supported by RP anyways, a long long sidequest (or even main party quest).
Ah, three thunders. That feat pretty much singlehandedly derailed the first campaign I ever played in. That wizard got so powerful and ruthlessly friendly-fired so many party members he had a giant pile of gear and was virtually unstoppable. He went from lightning mage to "herald of the apocalypse" and was so powerful the campaign essentially revolved around him. He eventually toned down his dickery and we had a great time of it, though we never saw it through.
But yeah, that, a rod of empower and the old "Channeled Pyroburst" spell (energy subbed) was absolutely obscene. THEN there was the 3.5 era polymorph that had him turning into a Rhemoraz every other encounter.
... now, more to the point, the reasons why there aren't many immortal wizards around is that they keep killing each other, obviously.
One thing that struck me the other day, is that control casters are more difficult to GM. Blasters are fairly straightforward: h.p. damage vs. resistance/immunity + h.p. total. DMs can adjust for this, damage is a given, and the monster keeps trucking as per DM's expectation until dead.
Control casters might throw most any type of disability at you.
Grapple? Check.
Blindness? Check.
Domination? Check.
Slippery terrain? Check.
Insanity? Stun? Paralysis? Webs? Winds? Walls? Nausea? etc., etc...
Check, check, check, and...so on.
Most monsters will have some weakness that a control caster can exploit, but for blasters, it's a bit dicier (IMO).
While I still advocate that a caster should have some blasting up their sleeve for contingencies, the sheer variety of disruptive spells leans in favor of control casters, if only because they can befuddle many a GM's straightforward plan and challenge his/her ability to improvise new tactics for something (likely) only running in one battle
You did WHAT to my beautiful battlefield/critter's eyes/etc.?
At this point I'd like to thank Paizo for some of the high CR critters they've released that directly counteract many of the standard control tactics (more senses/more mobility/more attacks that bypass resistances/etc.). Yay, for XPed GMs running the show.
Funnily enough, when I had a veteran group of players start a game with me as DM for our first time together, the Cleric asked, "What should I prepare for?"
I said, "Everything in the glossary of conditions." (and meant it)
Just saying, it goes both ways...
Maybe I should start a new thread:
"Why every monster should be a controller"
Slighlty necroing this thread, but I have something to say.
Disclaimer: no, I haven't read the full 256 pages of it.
I see a lot of discussion about how blasters are or aren't viable. One of the most common points being argued is that blasting does to little damage, and therefore you can't contribute to party. I hear often that damage is not significant compared to your average CR.
I wonder if I play a different game. Currently I'm playing Kingmaker as a Draconic Sorcerer (red dragon). Level 10. Just by devoting a couple spells to blasting (namely, scorching ray and fireball), I can do more than my share of damage regularly, and often finish the whole combat in just a shot.
First encounter in our current AP was a fight against a bunch of advanced trolls. They have 75 hp. Got Initiative, casted empowered fireball, that's (10d6x1,5)+10 damage, for an average of 65 hp for those failing his save (which is most of them) I got 5 in the first fireball, rolled high, killed 3 of them and damaged 2. Next round I empowered fireball them again, killing those 2 and wounding (with around 80% of their hp) everyone else. Party mop up and kill the rest. I did like 85% of party damage that encounter.
Slightly after that in our game, fighting a barbarian lord and his retinue of improved skellies. There were 10 of them. Empowered fireball, plus the cleric burst of positive damage, and there you go. All the minions get burned, and the BBEG loses 67 hp in a single round. That's more than my share of damage to the BBEG for the entire combat, plus efectivelly removing all of the minions, in just one single hit. Plus I can, of course, do more things in the next rounds as well. Sure, I could had casted some battlecontrol spell, or a summon monster, or some disabling Save or Suck against those skelletons. I could had slowed them, or grapled or blinded them. But what's the point, if you can kill them all instead? There's no monster I could summon (improved or not) that could kill all those skelletons in a single round. Period.
Pure Blasting is a bad idea. I have fly, haste, slow and fireball as my 4 lvl 3 spells. I also have utilities such as dimensional door, debuffs like enervation, crowd control spells like confusion, defensive stuff like mirror image, and out of combat goodies like charm person. There's no reason to have blasting spells in each slot every level. Specially when you can use metamagic feats to cover whatever slot you might not be using. But blasting IS good. It does more than it's share of party contribution given the right situation. And I'm talking about real life, party table situations in real Adventure Paths, not some kind of stupid mathematical approach that make no sense.
At lvl 10, Lesser Rod of Maximize, Empower Spell feat, and a fireball, and you have 5d6+70 damage as a human draconic sorcerer. That's 85-90 damage per target in a 20' radious. At Lvl 10, that completelly destroy most groups of creatures, and can do about half the damage needed to kill a tough BBEG. So I fail to see how doing half the damage needed to kill the BBEG _AND_ destroy all his minions with a single spell in one round is not contributing to your party. You only need the rest of your group do the other half of BBEEG damage. They are 4 guys. It's not that hard, isn't it? You can even help them to do so, either buffing them with haste and other spells, or just blasting the other half of the BBEG hp in the next round.
Yeah, some guys have Fire Resistance. Some other guys have Damage Resistance, others are inmune to mind affecting spells, and others have some freedom of movement spell or effect, inmune to death effects, or can just teleport and ignore your battlefield control spells. Those can ignore summoned creatures, black tentacles, wall of force, confusion or enervate as well. And that do not stop those spells from being good, does it? It's a lucky event that you did not select ALL your spells as blasting spells.
Kingmaker is not a good test of any build because you can nova, like you did, and you fought creatures exactly in the situations where a blaster can shine.
It's no wonder you had a positive view of them.
@shadowcat:
1 Advanced Troll is CR 6, yes. 6 of them, which was the encounter, are EL 10. The EL against Armag is actually an EL 14, I think.
Beyond that, Fireball does upgrade up to lvl 15, thanks to intensify spell, and Scorching burst is a very nice spell too. There are at the very least 3 other good fire spells:
Fire Snake (can target only enemies, up to 15d6, 20 with intensify)
Contagious Flame (repeating damage, can hit twice a single creature, does up to 16d6 per round)
Magma Wall (can do 10d6 as a move action plus 5d6 during 1d3 rounds, blocks corridors, does 20d6 as you move through)
Even more important than that, is the fact that you don't really need that much spells. Just take scorching burst, fireball, and maybe contagious flame. You can convert lvl 4 spells to empowered scorching burst, lvl 5 spells to empowered fireballs (or empowered intensified fireballs with magic lineage:fireball), you can use lvl 6 spells with Contagious flame, etc.
Sure, at lvl 16+, hp start to increase quite a lot, and it's harder to keep the pace. Adventure path are already finished by that time, however, even then, at lvl 16 or so you can cast in a single turn:
a maximized empowered intensified fireball PLUS a quickened intensified fireball with perfect spell, and do 105 + 22,5d6, for an average of 180+ hp in a 20' radious. Sure, it's not the end of the world... but it's not shabby either. Or you can use a contagious flame plus the move action of a (rod empowered previously cast) wall of magma and a quickened intensified perfected fireball. That's 46d6 +46 on the first round, and 51d6+51 on second round, without casting any spell in the second round, using 2 move actions for the wall of lava. Without using nothing out of reach, and staying true to the character concept, you can do 97d6+97 damage in two rounds, at lvl 16, most of it without saving throw (with ranged touch attack, though). That's about 400+ hp in two rounds.
However, I'm not a big fan of DPR theorycrafting. What I like, it's to play. And in REAL Adventure paths, the blasters can keep track with monsters hp. Properly built (even without an excess, just a couple feats and 1 rod), then can sometimes 1shot the entire encounter, at the proper level, in some Adventure Parts. Even when they don't, they are FAR from "not contributing"
Fine, kingmaker is easy. I've checked lvl 10 encounters in those APF I have DM, CotCT and RoR.
First encounter in RoR 4 is a EL 11 against 3 Stone Giants. A maximized (rod) empowered fireball does 70 + 5d6 to them, to an average of 85 hp on a failing save, which they probably will fail, Ref sux for Stone Giants. That's a wonderful 90 hp average for all of them (to be fair, 90 hp to 2 of them and 45 hp to one of them). they have 119 hp. I think it's a fair "share" of damage. You can singlehandedly kill them in 2 rounds, at 400 feet+ I'd say it's not that bad, and I would considere myself "contributing" to the party if I did 225 hp in the first round, in a +1 EL encounter that has 357 hp in total. Other EL 11 in that AP include a bunch of 75 hp ogre cattlers (that die to a single blast), a pack of 74 hp night wyverns (that also die to a single blast), a Mummy (that will burn against an empowered scorching ray), a Taiga Giant with 2 ettins (both ettins die in a single blast, that can do 80% of damage to the giant), a Frost Giant (same fate than the mummy). Other encounters that can be blasted away in a single blast is the headless zombie and his retinue, for example. You will have to resort to other spells against a pair of red dragons (which you can exploint their cold vulnerability if you want), and the BBEG itself, which has Fire Resist. However, he also has mind affecting inmunities, and that do not render mind-affecting spells as "bad", does it? You can fight Momurian with your lovely Enervate, making good use of your ray-specialist feats, such as precise shot and point black shot.
First encounter in CotCT 4 is a group of 50 hp Red Mantis leaded by a 75 hp leader. Those have high Ref, and about 50% chance to avoid thanks to evasion, but for them, it's a 50% Save or Die spell, and you also have about 50% to hit with ranged touch attack. Alternativelly, you can use empowered maximized Magic Missile, which will cut through half of the leader hp in a single turn, instantly. Just hope the other 4 members in your group can be as good as you, all of them combined, and she died in one turn. Beyond that, other encounters include 70~hp clerics of zon kuthon, 66 hp tentacles from a Havero, more 50hp red mantis, 64 hp maidens, 6x 94 hp bulettes (that are not really that hard to one shot with a lucky maximized empowered fireball, need to roll 24 in 5d6. If you have intensify spell, (you will be lvl 11 this far into the AP), then you can oneshot all of them (or the ones that fail the save, crippling the rest to be mopped up by the group)
So it seems it will be equally effective against other similar EL in other Adventure Paths.
It's simple, really.
When you're a blaster, you get to throw dices. When you're a controller, you don't (and the DM has to throw them when there's a save, or doesn't even get to throw them sometimes).
No dice = less fun for a lot of people.
It's that simple.