Sioul thats a quick way to lose your spellcasters in your game. Why play a Mage if I can't oneshot something? Almost every damage or control spell over 4th level can be a "miss or die" save against NPCs OR PLAYERS. Intensified maximized fireball, piercing/dazing suffocation, dazing anything really.
Your homerules are wierd. So, if one of the players in your game dies elsewhere, they trundle him back to town, and a Resurrection spell isnt going to work in the Church of Holyness because its simply too much a drain on the citys magic reserves? Do we need to have a vote? But out in a dark cave, that same spell works GREAT. Ridonkulous.
I believe you guys mistaken how I make spell fail in my game. If you casting a spell normally, there is no chance of failing. However, if you pull of a massive combo a stacking explosive runes or having tons of metamagic feat apply to one spell, that's when spell would fail. And I only do that when casters keep pull those tricks again and again. How is that going to lose my spell caster in my game? I have no once lose any player in my game because they are still having fun, just that caster can't steal spot light from other player all the time, in certain area, those tricks just doesn't work. All my players understood how it works both in game and out game, so I'm not sure what you guys on about. It's a way to keep caster over kill everything with low level spells and have to rely on teamwork once in awhile. Most of my martial and expert PCs loves it and most of my caster players doesn't mind, of course you can't cast so many wish spell in one place within such a short time without some sort of powerful being stable the material plane, it makes sense. And you can't resurrect so many times again and again in a technological advanced place, but it will allow rogue to use their skill searching for technology that does similar things.
As you say, most spell beyond level 4 is miss or die, so I see no problem of restricting those OP tricks that players pull of in such way. I'm already nicer than most GM as I'm not going to just say no. I merely putting a restriction when they are within Material plane. Material plan is not a place for dense magic, it's a plane for balance of all force.
Oh ok, so how many metamagic feats cause a spell to fail? Two? three? How many explosive runes is too many? Is it random or what?
As you say, most spell beyond level 4 is miss or die, so I see no problem of restricting those OP tricks that...
It will depends on many factor such as how many casters in the team, how many times the caster repeat the trick and the region there are in.
Yes, it may seems random to some people, however, it's better than no way of control your own campaign and have to either saying no to player for no reason or just let it out of control with some of your players get no fun at all. It works for all my groups and some of my players even use it for their own campaign. At least intelligent players would understand that material plane is a balance plane for all things so it make sense to have the game under control this way rather than not allowing anything at all.
Anyway, it's getting of topic. What was trying to say is, the spell is not too OP as long as the GM have ways to control it.
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This is a cool combo. It reminds me of Harry Potter-esque magic in that it's an application of critical thinking to magic.
As a GM I'd have to treat it on a case by case basis in determining how many actions you need to accomplish this, and as a Jerk move try to trick you into not saying you apply the spell to yourself, but of course it's all a ruse to watch the blood drain from your face as you come to grips with the death of your character by Feather fall.
Also as a GM on the second insinstance of this massive Earth shattering damage you may just unleash the Terrasque from prison.
Edit: I wouldn't actually kill the PC
Seems like a legit combo.
There is a legitimate FAQ about whether you can apply the metamagic, but the full quoted text is "Metamagic feats cannot be used with all spells. See the specific feat descriptions for the spells that a particular feat can't modify." If the feat descriptions does not say you cannot apply it, then you can. Take dazing spell for example. It says "Spells that do not inflict damage do not benefit from this feat." Note, it does not say you cannot apply this metamagic to non-damaging spells, it just says that non-damaging spells receive no benefit. Nothing in the descriptions of empower or maximize say you cannot apply them to a spell without variable effects.
The damage is specifically listed as a burst of force, so the damage should be force damage ala magic missle. This is to address an earlier comment about the damage being bludgeoning.
Houseruling follows
The damage is specifically listed as per caster level which seems at odds with the wording "absorbs the targets velocity" I would personally add another limit on damage to 1d6 per 10 feet fallen up to a maximum of your caster level or 5(whichever is lower).
Limiting the damage based on the size of the objects dropped would be another wise move. 1d6 for medium, 1d4 for small, etc.
So with those 2 changes, you could fall 50 feet for 5x damage, the caster would do 5d6(if medium), and each pebble would do 1 damage. The damage from the pebbles is non-variable and thus unaffected by maximize or empower. Further, the damage would be limited in places with low ceilings, and required the caster to set things up using a dimension door or tactics.
Even better -
Step 1: Fly high up into the air
Step 2: Drop a whole bag of coins
Step 3: Turn off flight
Step 4: Cast Feather Fall on coins each round until you hit the ground
Step 5: All of the damage
Additionally -
Step 6: Quickened Teleport at the last second so you don't die too
Even better -
Step 1: Fly high up into the air
Step 2: Drop a whole bag of coins
Step 3: Turn off flight
Step 4: Cast Feather Fall on coins each round until you hit the ground
Step 5: All of the damageAdditionally -
Step 6: Quickened Teleport at the last second so you don't die too
Step 6 is unneeded because you make yourself one of the featherfall targets, and you become immune to the damage.
Last session my Mythic Viking was asking to have Feather Fall cast on him so he could be shot out of a catapult into the middle of an enemy army. It sounds like Mythic Feather Fall would make that more fun and effective though I'd probably suggest some house rules like not allowing the damage from multiple bursts to overlap.
As gm I would simply rule the blast don't stack. It would be a single 20d6 blast. maximized to 120 damage reflex for half.
This is a cool combo. It reminds me of Harry Potter-esque magic in that it's an application of critical thinking to magic.
As a GM I'd have to treat it on a case by case basis in determining how many actions you need to accomplish this, and as a Jerk move try to trick you into not saying you apply the spell to yourself, but of course it's all a ruse to watch the blood drain from your face as you come to grips with the death of your character by Feather fall.
Also as a GM on the second insinstance of this massive Earth shattering damage you may just unleash the Terrasque from prison.
Edit: I wouldn't actually kill the PC
Fun fact is that the only occasion when I used this combo was to kill the Tarrasque on our way to the final boss of the campaign. :D
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There is, as far as I can tell, only one reasonable argument that could be made against this:
Swarm traits. Now, here's the thing: You're dropping a bunch of fine-sized (or maybe smaller) whatevers from your hand, and typically objects of that small a size don't count as individual entities. You're not dropping 20 rocks in quick succession (abusing free actions, which you could totally do but are limited on by the DM), you're dropping a handful of rocks, and a handful could be reasonably argued as being a single object for most intents and purposes. Once you get above fine, you start being limited by how many of said object you can reasonably hold in a single hand when you cast the spell.
That being said, I'd still allow this little rules abuse to work once. :P
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Yeah, falling objects are nice and all...
...or I could just cast wall of sound next to the enemy and then hurl a handful of pebbles at the wall, causing it to essentially disintegrate anyone standing next to it with ungodly amounts of sonic damage--all without the need for mythic rules.
Just for kicks, I like to conjure an ice storm spell atop the wall and let it get continually barraged by the hail. Makes for a nice insta-kill effect as well as battlefield control.
This is a cool combo. It reminds me of Harry Potter-esque magic in that it's an application of critical thinking to magic.
As a GM I'd have to treat it on a case by case basis in determining how many actions you need to accomplish this, and as a Jerk move try to trick you into not saying you apply the spell to yourself, but of course it's all a ruse to watch the blood drain from your face as you come to grips with the death of your character by Feather fall.
Also as a GM on the second insinstance of this massive Earth shattering damage you may just unleash the Terrasque from prison.
Edit: I wouldn't actually kill the PC
Fun fact is that the only occasion when I used this combo was to kill the Tarrasque on our way to the final boss of the campaign. :D
I believe you do realise, THIS MEANS WAR!!! :P
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As gm I would simply rule the blast don't stack. It would be a single 20d6 blast. maximized to 120 damage reflex for half.
Good point. Just like how people can only be damaged by one magic missile per casting, right?
<sarcasm>The better way to handle this, instead of changing the world mid-combat and invalidating their tactics up to that point, is to allow it to work once. The player did something cool... but game breaking.
So you talk to him afterwards, explain why you will need to not allow it to happen again and either allow them to make character changes if they took metamagic feats specifically for this or come up with a more limited version of the tactic the player can be happy with.
Though funny, I don't believe there's any rules for throwing multiple weapons at once. And a wizard doesn't have a BAB that alloes for many ittirative attacks.
did this really need the thread necromancy?
Featherfall only targets free-falling objects/creatures, so you can't just stand there and drop the stones without blowing yourself to bits, you need to be free-falling as well to be immune to the concussive blasts.
Featherfall is unaffected by Empowered/Maximized/Intensified feats (Em and Max because it has no random Numeric variables, and Int because it does not deal damage). Casting the mythic version (or even the augmented version) does not change this fact, so the 5d6 damage from the augmented version is never modified by those feats.
While dropping the stones may be a free action, withdrawing them from your pouch/pocket/wherever is a move/standard action, and it's completely upto DM fiat as to how many free actions you get in 1 round (I typically allow 3) & how many stones you can drop in 1 free action (to me 1d4 sound reasonable).
I salute the OP's creative thinking in conjuring up this combo, and hope he finds a like-minded DM that allows it as written. But for me as a DM, I would never allow the 9000 points of damage claimed by the OP, because I don't believe it works the way he believes it works...However, I would allow it to deal a more reasonable 30-35d6 damage (depending on number of stones dropped), as it is a pretty cool combo.