New spells

[Bladeace]

Hi guys, this is something I'm planning on using for a campaign I'm DMing. These spells make a lot of sense for the particular background I'm using, but I thought others might like to take a look. Interested in any feedback.

Force spears
A branch of offensive magic spells developed to be used by low level magic users to combat targets with magic resistance or immunity. The caster creates a dense spear of air and throws it at the target, releasing all magic from the spear before it hits its target but leaving the spear with penetrating force.

Force spear 1
School: evocation (force); level 1 sorcerer/wizard
Casting time: 1 standard action
Components: V, S
Range: Medium, 100ft +10/level
Target: 1 creature
Duration: Instantaneous.
Saving throw: none; Spell resistance: No (can affect creatures immune to spells).
Make a ranged touch attack against one enemy within this spells range. If you hit this spell deals 1d4 piecing and force damage per caster level to a maximum of 5d4.

Force spear 2
School: evocation (force); level 2 sorcerer/wizard
Casting time: 1 standard action
Components: V, S
Range: Medium, 100ft +10/level
Target: 1 creature
Duration: Instantaneous.
Saving throw: none; Spell resistance: No (can affect creatures immune to spells).
Make a ranged touch attack against one enemy within this spells range. If you hit this spell deals 1d4 piecing and force damage per caster level to a maximum of 10d4.

Force spear 3
School: evocation (force); level 3 sorcerer/wizard
Casting time: 1 standard action
Components: V, S
Range: Medium, 100ft +10/level
Target: 1 creature
Duration: Instantaneous.
Saving throw: none; Spell resistance: No (can affect creatures immune to spells).
Make a ranged touch attack against one enemy within this spells range. If you hit this spell deals 1d4 piecing and force damage per caster level to a maximum of 15d4.

Force spear 4
School: evocation (force); level 4 sorcerer/wizard
Casting time: 1 standard action
Components: V, S
Range: Medium, 100ft +10/level
Target: 1 creature
Duration: Instantaneous.
Saving throw: none; Spell resistance: No (can affect creatures immune to spells).
Make a ranged touch attack against one enemy within this spells range. If you hit this spell deals 1d4 piecing and force damage per caster level to a maximum of 20d4.

[Drejk]

First thing: evocation force spells should not ignore Spell Resistance. They should not avoid magic immunity. Evocation spells generaly project magic that mimics specific energy type. Conjuration can avoid SR because they create/conjure actual energy instead of blasting opponent with magic.

Second thing: Poor scalling - there is no reason to cast force spear 2 until 6th level when it starts to inflict damage greater than force spear 1. Until then it is useless as it does exactly the same thing as force spear 1 but uses slot one level higher. The same applies to force spear 3 and 4, the only difference between them is the dice cap. (ok, foce spear 4 has a use when encountering opponents protected by minor globe of invulnrability)

Third thing: You described it as dense air. Either it is dense air and thus [air] spell or it projects [force].

And a small suggestion - if you really-really prefer numbers to lesser/greater/minor/major then consider using roman numerals, they look better on spell names than arabic (force spear I, force spear II, etc) ;)

[Lathiira]

One additional note. These spells do piercing and force damage? What happens when you fight a creature with DR/bludgeoning or slashing?

Spells do not often mix in piercing, bludgeoning, or slashing damage types. When they do, the damage is clearly delineated (such as the case with ice storm).

A note on force missile 1: I'd probably take the time to compare it to good ol' magic missile, then ask yourself which spell you want most often. Your spell requires a touch attack, but has more range, scales faster, bypass SR...I think it's pretty obvious which one people would prefer. I agree with Drejk on all points.

If you're looking to build up the list of low level force spells, I sympathize, but this series of spells isn't going to work out well for many GMs for the reasons noted above.

[Bladeace]

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

I’m not really sure where to go with that advice though, not that I don’t appreciate it because the comments seemed concise and intelligent.

As I mentioned in my post these spells are for my background – so abandoning them simply isn’t an option and I didn’t get the impression from your posts that you thought they were so dysfunctional that I had to do so…but I did get the impression that I needed to do some work on them.

I’m fine with force spear II, III and IV (I like the roman numerals, thanks) not being very usable when you first get access to them (just use the lower level ones!). Having a spell as underpowered simply doesn’t bother me – overpowered or mechanically queer is a problem but underpowered isn’t. Also, I’m introducing feats that apply to these spells and I can make these favour the levels of the spell that are otherwise not desirable.
However, it is not required that I have the higher level versions at all.

Should I change the spell to Conjuration and drop the piercing element of the damage? It is important that the spell continue to ignore spell resistance and damage reductions. Should the amount of damage change? However the damage changes it is important that it continue to scale up every level.

I was contrasting its damage to shocking grasp, shocking grasp did D6xCL and had +2 to hit against metal wearing targets. The force spear has D4xCL but is a range attack (still touch though) with medium range. I considered the medium range worth losing this +2 to hit vs metal and a reduction to a D4 die size.

I’m aware that this leaves the ‘ignore spell resistance/DR’ aspect of the spell unaccounted for and this could be a problem. What should I change to counter this? Have it scale to a maximum of 4 dice instead of 5? How much do I even need to be worrying about this, it’s hardly going to be game breaking when the casters will all be buffing/debuffing instead most of the time – it is mostly a ‘flavour’ spell…

Hmm, help me out here guys. You two that have replied so far seem pretty ‘onto it’ and this spell has become important to my setting, could you help me to develop it into a more usable format?

[Cheapy]

My suggestions.

Keep Evocation.

SR: yes.

Keep the caps, as are.

Deals 2d4 damage per caster level. Half of it is piercing, half is force damage.

Force spear 2 has the cap of 10d4, but adds +1 damage per 3 caster levels. The piercing damage counts as if it came from a cold iron weapon.

Force Spear 3 has the same extra as FS2, but with a bull-rush attempt. Bonus for this is CL + casting modifier. The piercing damage counts as if it came from a cold iron or silver weapon.

Force Spear 4 has same extra, but the extra static damage is +1 per 2 caster levels. The piercing damage counts as if it came from a cold iron, silver, or adamantine weapon.

[Bladeace]

Cheapy that's a nice spell you've made up there - perhaps too high on damge for its level?

However, I do like the idea of having two versions of this spell - one that does less damage but gets through spell resistence and one that does more damage (half peircing half force) but ignores spell resistence. Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

[Cheapy]

Bladeace wrote:

Cheapy that's a nice spell you've made up there - perhaps too high on damge for its level?

However, I do like the idea of having two versions of this spell - one that does less damage but gets through spell resistence and one that does more damage (half peircing half force) but ignores spell resistence. Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

At 20th level, the 4th level spell will be doing 60 points of damage, on average. A spell that does 20d6 will be doing 70 points of damage on average.

I'm not too worried about the damage, due to that.

If you want to make it bypass SR, just make it conjuration, drop the extra force damage, and then summon rocks to throw at people. Or daggers. I don't see how you could make this scale damage wise, without resorting to magic. Which would mean it wouldn't bypass SR. Summon bigger rocks?

Or use a crossbow.

[Muspellsheimr]

As mentioned by previous posters, the damage scaling on your spells is to high. While using d4's helps a little bit, the first level version should probably scale at half caster level, and the damage caps on the third and fourth level versions are 5 dice higher than they should be.

Additionally, having four separate spells all doing essentially the same thing, all within one level of each other, feels sloppy at best as there is little do distinguish them from each other, and little reason to use the higher-level ones until you have already passed the damage cap of the previous level (something that does not happen the level you gain access to them).

I have something similar I have been playing around with for an upcoming game you may be interested in using instead. The conjuration Orb variants I outline below are probably the best suited for what you are looking for, and changing the name from 'Orb' to 'Spear' is inconsequential.

Force Bolt, Lesser
School: Evocation [Force]; Level: Sorcerer/Wizard 1
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Components: V, S
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target: 1 creature or object
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None; Spell Resistance: Yes

Lesser force bolt deals 1d6 force damage, plus 1d6 per two caster levels above 1st to a maximum of 5d6 at level 9.

Force Bolt
School: Evocation [Force]; Level: Sorcerer/Wizard 4
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Components: V, S
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target: 1 creature or object
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None; Spell Resistance: Yes

Force bolt deals 1d6 force damage per caster level to a maximum of 15d6 at level 15.

Force Bolt, Lesser Analysis:
Most direct comparison is against Magic Missile. First, lets look at damage values. Lesser force bolt will deal 1 to 6 damage with an average of 3.5 at level 1, compared to 2 to 5 with an average of 3.5 of Magic Missile. At level 9 (the damage cap for both spells), it will deal 5-30 damage with an average of 17.5, compared to 10-25 with an average of 17.5. The spell trades a slightly higher possible damage output in exchange for a lower minimum, while overall basically being the same.

This spell trades the ability of Magic Missile to divide its damage between multiple targets in exchange for the ability to damage items. Because the spell automatically hits, this is a possible concern for sunder attempts, but because it still has to deal with Hardness, this strategy is impractical at best against most weapons until nearing the damage cap at level 7. Even then damage would be relatively low, particularly against magic weapons.

Other than that, the two spells are essentially identical. As a side benefit, it is not blocked by effects such as Shield - something that always felt like a random and poor design choice of Magic Missile to begin with.

Force Bolt Analysis:
As a 4th level single-target spell, the damage is not particularly impressive. This spell stands out in that it is force damage and automatically hits, as well as being one of the few decent damage based spells of its level. Because of its damage value, using it for sundering attempts becomes a valid option and possible area of concern. If this does turn out to be problematic, one possible solution would be to have the spell (and the lesser version by extension) deal half damage to objects. That, combined with Hardness, would make this a possible strategy, but probably not particularly effective.

Variants:
I have considered Force Orb as a possible Conjuration alternative to these. The only changes would be that spell resistance does not apply, but the spells require a touch attack to hit. This nicely solves the possible sundering issues I outlined by removing the automatic-hit aspect, while also creating a stronger distinction between the lesser version and Magic Missile. In exchange for not automatically hitting, they can now affect creatures with spell resistance/immunity freely.

[stringburka]

I think it's okay to break a few stigmas. It's fine with evocation and SR:No (though the spells feel more transmutation in what they do, closer to telekinesis than anything else).

Damage type shouldn't be force when it's non-magical. It just makes no sense. Just piercing is better.

Other than that, Force Spear I is fine, compared to magic missile. It has a little higher damage some levels (noticeable on level 2 and 4 mostly) and ignores SR, while magic missile auto-hits, does higher damage on most levels, and can target several people. Magic missile is better most of the time, but it's not a big difference.

The other force spears should be different than the first though. There's no reason to use force spear II until level 6, and it's basically just a free intensified spell.

I suggest making the 3rd level version a multi-target version, or penetrate targets and work a bit like a line.

Cheapys suggestion of carrying rider effects is also good.

EDIT: And thank GOD you didn't make them conjurations. We don't need more good conjurations.