Intensified spell Q


Rules Questions


I have looked around and seen some debate on this and I am still unsure.

What happens when you put intensified spell onto a spell with a fixed damage threshold, like scorching ray? Magic missile? Acid Arrow? Other spells like this?


Nothing. Intensified Spell is for increasing spells like Fireball that have a max damage die limit. No other variables or effects are increased as the feat says. The spells you mentioned do not have a maximum number of damage dice as the feat specifies. They do a flat amount based on number or rays, bolts, or rounds. These are all other variables.


Scorching ray has fixed damage, Caster Level only increases the number or rays. Same with Magic missile. Caster level has nothing to do with the damage Acid arrow does, just how long the acid lasts. Intensified Spell is useless on spells such as those.

Intensified Spell only works on spells that do X dice of damage per caster level.


Thanks - that is what I thought but I saw other threads where people were trying to make the feat apply "since it has to do SOMETHING."

So, for a blaster build, intensified spell really isn't the highest priority feat since scorching rays are going to be one of the most used spells at lower to mid-levels.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Intensified Spell is useful for a blaster starting around 5th/6th level in conjunction with Reach Spell. For instance, at 5th level a Reach shocking grasp (2nd-level spell slot) does 5d6 electricity damage vs. 4d6 fire damage for shocking grasp. An Intensified Reach shocking grasp (3rd-level spell slot) does the same amount of damage as a fireball or lightning bolt but as a ranged touch attack (no save for half-damage) against a single target instead of an area effect. Intensified Spell and Reach Spell are IMO pretty much must haves for an arcane trickster (one of the best blasters).

If using the Words of Power alternate system from Ultimate Magic, then Intensified Spell is especially useful with the burning flash, corrosive bolt, frost fingers, force bolt, and shock arc effect words.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

To a dedicated blaster Intensified Spell is one of the best choices at high levels when you have the caster levels to support it. Mostly because when playing with metamagic it's pretty much always better to use low level spells as the base.

One nice trick I have been thinking about was using Battering blastwith it. The idea being that you get more out of it when it's not d6/CL but d6/2CL. Because with Intensified spell the spell will get more powerfull all the way to 20CL, well it does normally too but the invidual damage for each orb caps at 5d6 at CL 10. So damage is 310 or using quickened in a round 520 on average. Intensified amount to half of that damage, so I would not call it not high priority. True it starts to come to it's own at mid levels before that it's not much use.


We play with a house rule that Intensified Spell also works on spells with effects containing "<some fixed number of dice> + 1 per caster level (max x)", such as false life, fire trap, fire shield, etc. This is only occasionally useful (e.g. maybe for druids casting cure spells), but doesn't seem too out of line, given the small number of spells helped by this feat.


Bigger Club wrote:


One nice trick I have been thinking about was using Battering blastwith it. The idea being that you get more out of it when it's not d6/CL but d6/2CL. Because with Intensified spell the spell will get more powerfull all the way to 20CL...

Intensified Spell increases the max dice by 5 levels not 5 dice. So Battering Blast will max out at 7d6 at CL 15 instead of 5d6 at CL 10.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / Intensified spell Q All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.