So... Aboleth's Lung (from ARG):
"The targets are able to breathe water, freely. However, they can no longer breathe air. Divide the duration evenly among all the creatures you touch. This spell has no effect on creatures that can already breathe water."
"they can no loner breathe air" -- so, when cast on, say, a bunch of Orcs in a forest, its a touch attack, will save, SR yes suffocation attack? Targets is "living" creature touched (not "willing"), and you can divide it among multiple targets, with a duration in the hours.
Sounds like a really awesome save-or-die for a second level spell....
Yes, it's an awesome save-or-die for a second level spell--for gillmen.
Yeah, I'm running a campaign where a cleric is trying to kill dungeon bosses with Aboleth's Lung. The boss only lived because I happened to say that there was a well near by. Completely ruined the boss fight.
Thankfully the spell is low enough level that the Save shouldn't be too hard to make, or at least reasonably fake.
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Not that I'm defending this spell (it should have "Target: willing creatures touched" and perhaps be a Fort save, IMO), but compare:
sleep: level 1, ranged, affects multiple creatures, they're helpless, easy kill
ghoul touch: level 2, touch, creature is paralyzed/helpless and sickens nearby creatures, easy kill
aboleth's lung: level 2, touch, creature starts holding its breath but otherwise has no combat penalties and can attack you normally for 10 rounds on average before it has to find a bucket of water to breathe in. After 10 rounds, the PCs are dead or the target is dead.
So how is aboleth's lung the killer spell?
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Note that you can't touch multiple opponents in the round in which you cast the spell and that the spell don't give you multiple touches.
So you can touch multiple friends or 1 enemy.
Then it is a "save or die after a few rounds if you can't find water" spell.
A creature can hold his breath for a fairly long time:
Any character can hold her breath for a number of rounds equal to twice her Constitution score. If a character takes a standard or full-round action, the remaining duration that the character can hold her breath is reduced by 1 round. After this period of time, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution check every round in order to continue holding her breath. Each round, the DC increases by 1.
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Sean, I am not defending the spell, but I think the idea was to copy the aboleth mucous cloud ability:
Mucus Cloud (Ex) While underwater, an aboleth exudes a cloud of transparent slime. All creatures adjacent to an aboleth must succeed on a DC 20 Fortitude save each round or lose the ability to breathe air (but gain the ability to breathe water) for 3 hours. Renewed contact with an aboleth's mucus cloud and failing another save extends the effect for another 3 hours. The save DC is Constitution-based.
As a lot of stuff in the ARG (and other racial books) is low level/low cost for the effects.
It can be reasonable is limited to a specific race, fairly broken if the players take this from here and that from there and mash them together without any regard for the item or spell background.Examples discussed to death are the wyrooot and recently the mask of stony demeanor.
An example from another book is the Limp lash spell. A second level spells, 3 rounds and you have paralyzed any dragon.
Make it empowered to paralyze it in 2 rounds.
The only possible problem is overcoming the dragon SR and surviving 2 rounds staying within 20' of a dragon, but both problem cam be resolved with reasonable ease.
A character can hold his breath yes, but when the spell is cast on him he will presumably have air in his lungs wich in this instance is like a lung full of water for an airbreathing creature.
So shouldn't he begin suffocating immediately?
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A character can hold his breath yes, but when the spell is cast on him he will presumably have air in his lungs wich in this instance is like a lung full of water for an airbreathing creature.
So shouldn't he begin suffocating immediately?
AFAIK, no.
rule wise taking a god breath before diving underwater or being pushed in the water by surprise has exactly the same effect.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm sure it is supposed to be related to the aboleth's ability.
But that's a general topic, and I'm trying to address this specific spell.
Likewise, talking in general about spells in this book is a general topic, and I'm trying to address this specific spell.
As for Sleet Storm's question, let point out that the rules for suffocation don't say, "a character whose lungs are filled with water can..." they say "a character who has no air to breathe can..." The rules don't care if you're holding your breath because you're in a cloud of poison gas, or underwater, or because someone cast a weird spell that immediately fills your lungs with water. Note that the water breathing spell doesn't have any rules about what becoming fatigued from breathing water because it's harder work than breathing air, or rules on what happens when you have lungs full of water and the duration runs out just as you're crawling back on land and need to expel all that water from your lungs so you can breathe.
Magical effects work exactly the way they say they do. Applying real-world physics to it just complicates things and leads to rulings based on information that isn't actually in the rules (like the idea that a grease spell can be lit on fire, even though the spell doesn't say you can do that). Likewise, a creature with a bleed effect doesn't automatically become frightened or panicked because it realizes it's bleeding to death, it just loses hp each round. Likewise, the rules don't give movement penalties for someone who's taken Str or Dex damage or drain, even though it makes sense that someone who is weak or wobbly shouldn't be able to move as fast as someone who is unharmed.
The rules tell you how to handle drowning. You don't need to extrapolate additional effects based on your knowledge about lungs and respiration, especially as the rules don't make variations or exceptions based on whether a creature's lungs were expanded or contracted when an attack occurred.
Wow...talk about chiming in late....
This spell TRULY makes Witches dangerous.
First Hex with Slumber, then hit them with Aboleth's lung (touch spell delivered by the familiar), then either hit them with Levitate or when you're 5th level, fly over to them and take them airborne.
If they don't suffocate on the way up, they'll burn up during re-entry.
Not bad for a 3rd - 5th level Witch.
My witch may have a duel with a melee brute who I'm pretty sure can one shot her, and I just recently acquired this spell. Looking at the drowning rules, I don't think it will be effective in my case. Melee brutes have high con scores, and as noted above con score x 2 = a long time.
Offensively, this isn't the instant killer, but it's a substantial debuff used on a spell caster. They get a spell failure chance when they can't breathe, probably have lower con scores, and every attempt to cast will eat their breath holding rounds. Unfortunately it's a low level spell with a will save. Casters will make that on a regular basis. Brutes aren't as likely to make the save, but have more time to kill you without any special penalty. The spell may kill them, but you're already squashed.
True enough, and that's the way I was thinking.
I tend to group with people that are on the "chunky salsa" side of things and since a Witch is by far the ultimate "fire and forget," single target weapon out there...I figured that I needed to be creative with taking down whoever is in charge of the other side.
There's another spell...Undine's Curse...that will give the same effect. Lasts 1/hour per level and has short range, which arguably makes it better than Aboleth's lung for the whole "choke on it" effect.
Ultimately, "Fly" would be the optimum launch spell/hex but...at 4th, we get to cast Levitate. I'll have to get a DM's ruling on whether a sleeping (ie: paralyzed, helpless) target can be considered an object as far as the spell is concerned, but it lasts a minute per level (4 minutes) and can lift the target 20' per round. My math may be off, but it looks like 80d6 of fall damage to me.
And if you wait to cast Aboleth's Lung or Undine's Curse until right as you release them into the gentle embrace of gravity...it makes it hard for them to cast feather fall (which, by the way, won't last long enough to make enough of a difference to matter).
Not bad for a 4th level build. At 5th level, you can almost put them into low orbit.
If you've got your target asleep, I think a coup de gras is more straight forward...unless you intend to leave a survivor with a message about your innate cruelty & brutality.
I do that a lot. We don't have a cleric to object to the criminal abuse of a corpse.