I agree with Aelryinth on the issue of magic missile and concentration checks. If someone pegs you with missiles, you roll one check vs. the total damage.
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Magic Missile is also discriminated against.
If you have a method of doing extra damage with a spell (say, +Int to damage from a spell), magic missile only gets it on ONE missile, according to the dev team. Whereas if you're using an AoE, every single person in the area takes the extra damage.
I always rule that the bonus damage applies per target. So, if you're using a Banespell Magic missile that does +2d6 against orcs, each separate orc hit by a MM takes +2d6...exactly as if you had fireballed them. If you direct all the missiles against one orc, he also takes +2d6...exactly as if you had rayed him.
As for boosting up the power of magic missile, there's several viable 3.5 upgrades to the spell, but the best is simply using the FOrce Missile Mage PrC.
==Aelryinth
The combats I run usually last a minimum of 5+ rounds but I also try to play intelligent creatures...intelligently. Soften up the PCs first before getting into it with them. Once the PCs actually start to land a few blows it is often over from that point in a couple rounds.
I have really resourceful players that usually have 1-2 people that are prepared to negate most common delaying tactics that creatures have. Combine that with a dedicated support character that delivers fully buffed melee brutes for full attack actions regularly and all but the toughest of brute type enemies fall in a single round.
And while I do allow for players to use most source material as long as its paizo (if its legal in PFS Its allowed, if its banned I'll look at it and probably allow it as well). The PCs still get hurt badly, use up resources, and even die (which is a temporary problem once they get going, reach breath of life fixes lots of problems).
Its not really rocket tag either, rocket tag is more "I go first and didn't miss, you die instead of me". First round is setup and buffs. Second round is initial assaults (unless its a short range ambush, then that happens round 1). Round 3 is full attacks and clean up. Occasionally combats get to round 4-5 if the enemy is running out the clock using hit and run, but the players know how to stop that tactic cold.
And yes, MM is mostly used to finish off enemies in the clean up round.
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This is a actual thread right. I'm not imagining it.
I'm asking because I'm on strong meds at the moment. For a second I thought I was hallucinating.
One gets the spell at first level. It's a force effect and many npcs, pcs and creatures don't have resistance to force. Only a Brooch of Shielding, Shield spell, or SR defend against it. It can hit multiple targets or only one. Pretty good range considering it's a first level spell. While also being enhanced by metamagic feats.
So its' not useless. Not in the least.
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This is a actual thread right. I'm not imagining it.
I'm asking because I'm on strong meds at the moment. For a second I thought I was hallucinating.
One gets the spell at first level. It's a force effect and many npcs, pcs and creatures don't have resistance to force. Only a Brooch of Shielding, Shield spell, or SR defend against it. It can hit multiple targets or only one. Pretty good range considering it's a first level spell. While also being enhanced by metamagic feats.
So its' not useless. Not in the least.
But each missile doesn't even KO a goblin, a kobold, a dog or a dire rat.
Even with 5 missiles focused on one person, at level 9, you can't KO an imp or most other CR 2 monsters. Yes, you read it right : CR-7 ennemies.That's the main problem : it's not that its useless, it's that the damage is so low that ennemies won't even notice the difference.
Slots should be used for spells that can actually change the situation.
1st level spells like Ear piercing scream CAN change the situation, by dazing your ennemy.
Silent image CAN change the situation, in addition to the extreme versatility of use.
Mage armor is underwhelming, but will last the whole day and can prevent some hit from the weakest ennemies.
Enlarge person will make your fighter much better, with reach and improved damage.
Protection from Evil can protect against Charm and compulsion spells cast by evil casters.
Vanish is an invisibility spell that last for an entire encounter (at 5th level and above) for a 1st level slot.
Grease has a lot of uses.
Magic missile is a damage spell with very low damage. It doesn't do anything else. Just plain ridiculous damage.
But at low levels, your school ability or your crossbow do damage very close to MM spell (after factoring AC), so it's not that good an idea to have it prepared.
At higher level, the damage it does is insignificant, and you can use your 1st level slots for much better use than doing 15 damage to a CR 10 ennemy.
It's not useless, but even compared to other 1st level spells, it's VERY underwhelming.
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But each missile doesn't even KO a goblin, a kobold, a dog or a dire rat.
"Does it instakill a CR-relevant enemy from full health without an attack roll or saving throw?" is not a great metric for a spell. If it did that, I'd consider it a bit overpowered.
Magic missile is a damage spell with very low damage. It doesn't do anything else. Just plain ridiculous damage.
Incorrect. Magic missile is an opportunistic spell that happens to use damage as its means of changing the situation.
Some things I've used magic missile for:
1. One-size-fits-all counterspell. It's much cheaper than dispel magic.
2. Picking off a wounded, retreating enemy before he can warn his buddies.
3. Metamagic rider effects such as dazing spell.
4. Convincing an approaching opponent in a one-on-one battle that the fight simply isn't worth it. (This works well on lone animals, muggers, and the like unless your GM plays all enemies as rabid berserkbeasts.)
"Does it instakill a CR-relevant enemy from full health without an attack roll or saving throw?" is not a great metric for a spell. If it did that, I'd consider it a bit overpowered.But each missile doesn't even KO a goblin, a kobold, a dog or a dire rat.
I'm not talking of CR relevant enemy. Kobold is CR 1/4, and the other examples I gave are CR 1/3.
They're supposed to be jokes for level 1 character, at least individually. You need 2 level 1 spell to maybe KO one (it's not even granted), and not even kill it.A level 1 fighter with a dagger KO one at each round, without spending any slots to do it. A level 1 fighter with a bow KO 2 each round, without spending any slots.
Magic missile is a damage spell with very low damage. It doesn't do anything else. Just plain ridiculous damage.Incorrect. Magic missile is an opportunistic spell that happens to use damage as its means of changing the situation.
Some things I've used magic missile for:
1. One-size-fits-all counterspell. It's much cheaper than dispel magic.
Point taken. But it's more because counterspelling is awful in DnD 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder than because MM is good. You can do the same with pretty much any damage spell, including Ear piercing scream if you want to stay 1st level.
2. Picking off a wounded, retreating enemy before he can warn his buddies.
Only if he is already dying (with very low HP), and none of your group could already do it without a slot.
Silent image, Grease and Ear piercing scream does the same job much better (staying with 1st level spells).
A bow or a javelin have actually a chance of KO your enemy far greater than MM, all without spending your slot.
And that's not accounting for 2nd and better spell slots.
3. Metamagic rider effects such as dazing spell.
I'd rather prepare any 2nd level spell or higher than a metamagic magic missile.
I'd rather prepare any 4th level spell or higher than a dazing Magic missile.
4. Convincing an approaching opponent in a one-on-one battle that the fight simply isn't worth it. (This works well on lone animals, muggers, and the like unless your GM plays all enemies as rabid berserkbeasts.)
No, you can't do it with MM (because MM is not threatening or frightening, it just tickles a little bit). You can do it with silent image or many many other 1st level spell though.
if your wild animals aren't threathened or frightened by being hit with a high level magic missile, there's something seriously wrong with the way your DM plays them.
It just tickles a bit. If you were a wolf, would you fear a rat that bites you ? No, you would just devour it.
Magic missile is the same : a rat bite when you're fighting wolves.Compare it to an illusion of a colossal dragon that appeared in a blinding light from nowhere.
If you still don't understand that Magic Missile is a decent and versatile spell, don't use it. Stop flooding the thread with bs though.
What is the versatility of MM ? Damage. Nothing more, nothing less.
ear pitching scream is a useless spell, it allows a save.
Ear piercing scream is Dazing magic missile as a first level spell.
If it is so useless, then Magic missile is far worse than that.silent image is a useless spell, it allows a save
Only if you interact with it. Good luck with that. And you're only limited by your imagination for the effects, granting it TRUE versatility.
grease is a useless spell, it allows a save
It's way more versatile than MM. And saves doesn't cancel the whole spell, far from it.
a bow and a javelin are useless, they can miss
and they ALL do less damage.
True, they can miss. But if they hit, they do much more damage than your Magic missile, at least at low levels. And at higher levels, you can do so many attacks that killing someone who flee is very easy.
Silent image, Grease and Ear piercing scream does the same job much better (staying with 1st level spells)..
Silent Image does nothing to stop a fleeing wounded foe. Grease might- or might not. But in any case, he's still alive. Ear Piercing scream is a Close spell.
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A wolf has a lousy 13 hp. A level 1 magic missile does an average of 3.5 damage. It's way more than a rat bite. Unless you think a wolf should fall unconscious when a rat bites it 4 times.
(For comparison, a rat does 1 point of nonlethal damage, maximum, on a successful hit. And that's already a little stronger than is believable.)
It's also great for thinning out mirror images.This keeps coming up like a whack-a-mole. Mirror images require you to roll an attack roll to have any effect on them. Magic Missile does not have an attack roll and ignores the images.
But that ignoring the images thing is a very useful benefit.
Honestly, if you don't have the creativity and imagination to figure out how MM is a useful spell, you are probably not the best person to ask for things like this...
For instance, lets say you are a Crossblooded Sorcerer 1/Admixture Wizard X with the Elemental Spell Feat, the Toppling Spell Feat, and a Dazing Rod and with Wayang Spellhunter and Magical Lineage traits. You can now permanently treat MM with elemental and Toppling for free. You can then abuse Admixture to change the type to match your dragonic arcana damage (since the spell was PREPARED as a force spell it has toppling but was changed to an... say acid... spell at the moment of casting). So now your MM is dealing 5d4+10 (+15 if damage type is fire and you have a goblin wardrum)+Trip+Daze. With a level 1 spell slot. Oh, and you can have real fun having it act as a counterspell with the combo.
But that ignoring the images thing is a very useful benefit.But that's not what he said, was it?
No, and I did not imply that he did. It's just another benefit of MM that many don;t seem to mention. MI is such a great spell, that any way to get around it is super.
Honestly, if you don't have the creativity and imagination to figure out how MM is a useful spell, you are probably not the best person to ask for things like this...
For instance, lets say you are a Crossblooded Sorcerer 1/Admixture Wizard X with the Elemental Spell Feat, the Toppling Spell Feat, and a Dazing Rod and with Wayang Spellhunter and Magical Lineage traits. You can now permanently treat MM with elemental and Toppling for free. You can then abuse Admixture to change the type to match your dragonic arcana damage (since the spell was PREPARED as a force spell it has toppling but was changed to an... say acid... spell at the moment of casting). So now your MM is dealing 5d4+10 (+15 if damage type is fire and you have a goblin wardrum)+Trip+Daze. With a level 1 spell slot. Oh, and you can have real fun having it act as a counterspell with the combo.
So your argument is that it takes seven (7) specific career choices to turn a 1st level spell into a good option?
Seems like overkill. Also seems like you've demonstrated the power of those feats and/or class abilities, not the power of the spell.
a standard wolf has 13 hp. a lvl 1 magic missile does between 2 and 5 damage. at lvl 9 (what we were talking about this entire thread) it KILLS HIM DEAD. If you're going to argue, atleast make sense man.if your wild animals aren't threathened or frightened by being hit with a high level magic missile, there's something seriously wrong with the way your DM plays them.It just tickles a bit. If you were a wolf, would you fear a rat that bites you ? No, you would just devour it.
Magic missile is the same : a rat bite when you're fighting wolves.
If your level 9 encounter is a single lone wolf, why are you wasting spell slots on it in the first place?
I think we're talking about several to many wolves, which require you to either ignore all but one at a time, or spread your missiles out so that they all do pathetic damage to several targets. Neither option seems like a "win."
Honestly, if you don't have the creativity and imagination to figure out how MM is a useful spell, you are probably not the best person to ask for things like this...
For instance, lets say you are a Crossblooded Sorcerer 1/Admixture Wizard X with the Elemental Spell Feat, the Toppling Spell Feat, and a Dazing Rod and with Wayang Spellhunter and Magical Lineage traits. You can now permanently treat MM with elemental and Toppling for free. You can then abuse Admixture to change the type to match your dragonic arcana damage (since the spell was PREPARED as a force spell it has toppling but was changed to an... say acid... spell at the moment of casting). So now your MM is dealing 5d4+10 (+15 if damage type is fire and you have a goblin wardrum)+Trip+Daze. With a level 1 spell slot. Oh, and you can have real fun having it act as a counterspell with the combo.
So your argument is that it takes seven (7) specific career choices to turn a 1st level spell into a good option?
Seems like overkill. Also seems like you've demonstrated the power of those feats, not the power of the spell.
Not necessarily. Any blaster worth a damn will already be a Crossblooded Sorcerer 1/Admixture Wizard X (this is the best way to crank our the damage). Additionally, nearly every blaster grabs Elemental Spell because You have to be able to adjust incase you know you are about to go into a volcano and you are focused on fireball. Dazing Spell is pretty much a must-have for all blasters since it gives them the ability to control the battlefield while blasting. The only things that were specific to MM was Toppling (which is a pretty common feat/Rod as well) and the traits (which you can easily get the feat Extra traits (which grants 2 traits)).
So honestly, for a blaster caster, is is not that hard to make MM useful. Besides, what the hell else are you gonna use your 1st level slots for?
•Wayang and Lineage both require you to pick a specific spell (and honestly, what blaster picks MM? - Even your example is picking Fireball like a smart blaster).
•Admixture Wizard and Elemental Spell together are redundant. (And Elemental Spell is expensive - There's a reason it was a +0 cost in 3.5: It doesn't do enough to warrant a level increase.)
•Metamagic Rods are amazing regardless of what spell you use (I'd rather save that Dazing Rod for a real blast... Again, like Fireball).
•I'd argue that Toppling Spell is a waste of a feat, considering the dearth of offensive Force spells you have available to you throughout the length of the game.
1) Yes, but you don't NEED to pick MM, You can easily make MM a second level spell and just Meta on toppling.
2) That shows how little you know. You know WHY Elemental and Admixture are combined together? Elemental changes they descriptor IN ADDITION to the damage, but elemental only changes the damage type. This allows you to have a Fireball that deals cold damage but has the [FIRE] Descriptor, allowing you to gain the benefits of Both Orc and Dragonic bloodline arcanas.
3) Regardless, With MM being such a low level spell, you can do a lot with it when it comes to Meta-Magic.
4) Force hand spells... They are a thing you know...
I just kept face palming while skimming this thread.
As others have pointed out, magic missle has several pluses, but they are all very situational.
Force damage bypasses DR? Well in general all spells that don't do a specific damage bypass DR anyway. And the ones that do, well, you just dont use it against creatures resistant to that particular DR.
Not to mention the damage is so low that who cares if it bypasses DR? It's still going to tickle the enemy.
Yes of course if the BBEG has 5 hp left and is going to slap down the fighter next round and you are the last party member left who can act, then sure magic missle is great.
But chances are that perfect scenario never happens, not to mention rpetty much any character could have stepped in and saved the party at that point. Even if you did nothing, your party would likely survive the next round to act and kill the BBEG anyway.
At 9th level, action economy is king, not spell slots. And we all know that using spells to do damage is a very poor choice anyway. You have so many spell slots with save or lose spells at your disposal, why would you be using magic missle...at every level you have choices like sleep, color spray, glitter dust, web, that are all vastly superior choices to magic missle. No they dont do damage, but the entire point is that the fighter should be doing the damage anyway. Doing the equivalent of stabbing someone with a few daggers really does not help.
You would be way better off filling the level 1 spell slots with utility spells (that remain useful as you go higher up in level).
Only time i saw magic missle be effective was in baldur's gate where the devs thought a level 5 mage vs your level 2 fighter and a level 2 thief was a balanced fight.
1) Resistance... Not DR...
2) Using Toppling MM to control the battlefield is not that hard... And since you wanna bring up action economy, How does a Toppling MM with a Lesser Quickened Rod sound to you? You can take out the enemy wizard via trip (who has a stupid low CMD most likely) AND attempt to trip a couple other guys while your at it. Oh, and after you have tripped them, use black tentales on top of it to make them entangled+grappled+ tripped. BAM that is how you wizard.
2) Blasting is actually fairly useful as well. While not the STRONGEST, it is the easiest to min-max without having to do some harcore cheese and the least likely to have the GM just say "Um.. how about no?" to. To top it off, with Dazing spell you can actually act as a BFC while blowing everything to smitherens. Oh! And, contrary to popular belief, a blaster can actually do quite a large amount of damage...
I assume you have Quick Draw and lots of weapon cords to be swapping between so many Rods? ;)
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Only time i saw magic missle be effective was in baldur's gate where the devs thought a level 5 mage vs your level 2 fighter and a level 2 thief was a balanced fight.
Oh, @!#$ that fight. @!#$ it right to &%^@.
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How many other Force spells are there? It seems like Toppling Spell only exists to make Magic Missile worth using after level 2 or 3. Most of the Force Hand spells are a high enough level that Toppling would put them over level 9, aren't they?
EDIT: Never mind, for some reason I thought Toppling was a +4 level adjustment. I'm still wondering if there are enough Force spells to make Toppling more than a one-trick feat until level 10 or so.
•Wayang and Lineage both require you to pick a specific spell (and honestly, what blaster picks MM? - Even your example is picking Fireball like a smart blaster).
Somebody that plays from level one.
However, we now have retraining (added back in to the game). So if at higher level you want to retrain some feats or traits (same trait, different spell) then that should be fine. Though to be honest, I haven't really looked at retraining. I figure it works about like it did in 3.5 (...and I really like psychic reformation as well).
•Admixture Wizard and Elemental Spell together are redundant. (And Elemental Spell is expensive - There's a reason it was a +0 cost in 3.5: It doesn't do enough to warrant a level increase.)
Fair enough. It does seem redundant. I imagine K177Y C47 may have thinking that you could run out of versatile evocation uses, which is possible, but improbable. Or maybe the difference of "When you cast an evocation spell that does acid, cold, electricity, or fire damage" for versatile evocation vs. ". . . You may replace a spell’s normal damage with that energy type or split the spell’s damage, so that half is of that energy type and half is of its normal type. . . " of elemental spell working when you memorize the spell, or even to split the types to add different effects, like rime spell and concussive spell could lead to some interesting uses of both abilities. I'm not sure what C47 meant it for, and I don't know how efficient they are, but I can see different possible uses. If admixture was still on the table, I'd look at some numbers...
•Metamagic Rods are amazing regardless of what spell you use (I'd rather save that Dazing Rod for a real blast... Again, like Fireball).
•I'd argue that Toppling Spell is a waste of a feat, considering the dearth of offensive Force spells you have available to you throughout the length of the game.
Metamagic rods get more expensive as you go. A +1 adjustment rod is a lot cheaper than a +3 adjustment rod. Yeah, I'd prefer dazing in a heartbeat, but it's not as cost effective early on in a career. (And when I think of different benchmarks for an adventuring career, I'm thinking 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, and 16-20.)
And just to be clear, toppling spell isn't bad early in a game with a few metamagic shenanigans. But it is a trip, which has its own problems as you level. You won't be using a toppling spell well after around sixth level, I think. But if you actually play those levels, it could see use.
a standard wolf has 13 hp. a lvl 1 magic missile does between 2 and 5 damage. at lvl 9 (what we were talking about this entire thread) it KILLS HIM DEAD. If you're going to argue, atleast make sense man.if your wild animals aren't threathened or frightened by being hit with a high level magic missile, there's something seriously wrong with the way your DM plays them.It just tickles a bit. If you were a wolf, would you fear a rat that bites you ? No, you would just devour it.
Magic missile is the same : a rat bite when you're fighting wolves.
Most CR 1 creatures have 13 to 15hp. A standard THS fighter will kill him in 1-2 hits.
You will have to use 4 to 5 magic missile to do the same, using your precious slots. Slots you could have used to do much better things than doing damage.Most CR 9 creatures have 100 or more hp. You need something like 6-7 magic missile spells (around 33 magic missiles) to KO it.
A standard fighter will kill it in 1 or 2 rounds, without spending slots. Enlarge person would be a much better spell to prepare than MM, allowing to much better damage AND a better reach allowing to more battlefield control.
Yes, magic missile have perks, but the fact that it doesn't do any reliable damage makes it less useful than any other spell from level 1 onward.
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Is not much that I don't like magic missle for the damage it does, but rather I feel blaster spells are really a waste of action.
I would rather make sure to buff my party, debuff my enemies or completely disable them than doing a small amount of damage.
Color spray at lower levels is simply THE spell
Once you get over those levels it's ray of enfeeblement, enlarge person, ray of sickening, reduce person if the enemy is humanoid. Things that makes easier for the big guys with the big swords to deal the same damage you would have dealt with magic missle, constantly reliably and more than once per turn while reducing the enemy ability to do the same.
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Many GMs leak information like a sieve. They'll often let slip that an enemy is at critically low HP.
However, an enemy at 1 HP still does the same amount of damage as he does at full HP. But he's also likely to flee, heal and bring back reinforcements.
If an enemy flees at its top speed, and that's higher than yours, you basically have 1-2 rounds to kill him with ranged spells, because the fighter isn't going to catch up with him in melee.
That's when the good range and auto-hit aspect becomes so very important.
Blaster magic works fine if you are specifically set up to use it.
it does NOT do well if you just want to whip out a fireball and blam something.
That is the difference between a blaster caster and pretty much every other wizard build. They get their power from their spells. The blaster gets his from his build. He can do a God Mage simply by changing his spells, but no God Mage is an effective Blaster...you really, really do have to design a build to it to be effective.
But once you are...well, making everything dead fast is the absolute best form of battlefield control, right?
==Aelryinth
The best damage from a 1st level spell comes from the Frostbite spell, which keeps scaling indefinitely and improves exponentially. It can also take the Rime spell feat.
However, the fact is that Magic Missile is an opportunity spell rather than a staple offensive at higher levels. It's effective at targeting foes who're otherwise impervious or resistant to damage, it reliably hits spellcasting foes and thus is an excellent counterspell weapon as there's no chance of it failing to effect the target, and of course there's the fact that little says 'arcane caster' than magic missile. This is important, as most people don't want to piss off a wizard.
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Magic Missile is a wizard's best friend against incorporeal things. I know of at least 2 intro modules with Shadows, exactly at the one point where you can't count on your martials having magic weapons. At higher levels, a greater shadow can instant kill an arcane caster with dumped strength with one touch (he can even get a 5 strength one on an average roll).
Please, get close enough to blast him with your Burning Hands.
Incorporeal monsters are not exactly rare threats either, especially in PFS. My level 6.33 magus has fought incorporeal things in roughly half the scenarios/modules he's played. Incorporeal is right up there with ghouls, swarms, darkness, invisibility, and alchemists as the standard adventure fare.
One day, someone will manage to write a scenario with an invisible incorporeal ghoul swarm with alchemist levels, see in darkness, and deeper darkness at will.
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In PFS if you play a Wizard or Sorceror you should invest in 3 2 prestige wand purchases:
Infernal Healing
Mage Armor
Magic Missile
At low levels MM is the best - Sure a martial class does alot more damage but keep in mind, they have to actually roll to hit, which at lower levels can take the fighter up to 3 rounds to hit something - whereas the sorceror keeps blasting away for the last three rounds with his guaranteed 2-5 damage and kills the baddie.
There are times in Society play where the dice go cold and no one can hit - and in those moments, Magic Missile holds sway over all in it's path. It sees it's enemies driven before it, and hears the lamentations of the women...
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It just tickles a bit. If you were a wolf, would you fear a rat that bites you ? No, you would just devour it.
Magic missile is the same : a rat bite when you're fighting wolves.
Imagine hunting in a forest at night, approaching your prey. You get close enough to hear it mumbling some giberish, see it point its finger at you, and suddenly it sends flashes of light out from nowhere that hurt you when they touch you and you are incapable of evading. If I were you, I'd start running like hell personally. Add that to the fact that you are an animal who is both Intelligent enough to realize this is a rather unfortunate thing and fast enough to rocket through the forest you are hunting in, and not smart enough to comprehend the concept of Magic without hard training, and yeah, Magic Missile might be enough to scare you off. The raging beserker with a massive sword might scare you off after you see it swing, but at least you can understand that somewhat.
Its not the best spell ever, but it is a useful spell to have around once or twice a day. Especially with Pearls of Power.
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Oh! And not to mention MM makes for a really funny way to screw with your DM's "flavour" of his campaign.
1) Buy a level 1 wand of magic missile
2) Buy a hand crossbow
3) remove the bow assembly from hand crossbow, leaving only the stock.
4) Attack wand to hand crossbow stock (this can be achieved in many ways. Can be as simple as tying it down or as elaborate at using Wood Shape to mold the wood around the wand, creating a socket for it).
5) Profit from your new Phaser Pistol! Forget boring old crossbows, you can now blast away at your enemies with your new patented phaser pistol. I guarentee that it will be so accurate, not even a storm trooper can miss with it.
(I love doing this when my GM bans gunslingers due to "flavour reasons")
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The combats I run usually last a minimum of 5+ rounds but I also try to play intelligent creatures...intelligently. Soften up the PCs first before getting into it with them. Once the PCs actually start to land a few blows it is often over from that point in a couple rounds.
I suspect that at least some of the people saying "combat last at most 2 rounds" aren't considering buffing time or the rounds in which the character are closing in.
Yes, after the big hitters have entered melee range or the archer can fire at the main enemy without problems or the defensive spell or effects on the BEEG have been cancelled the fight will end with a couple of hits. But getting at that point take time.And the BEEGs I run or encounter generally have several ways to retreat once or twice to save their skin, rebuff and return in a few rounds. For me that often is a single combat. The characters are still running it in rounds and following initiative.
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if your wild animals aren't threathened or frightened by being hit with a high level magic missile, there's something seriously wrong with the way your DM plays them.It just tickles a bit. If you were a wolf, would you fear a rat that bites you ? No, you would just devour it.
Magic missile is the same : a rat bite when you're fighting wolves.
Check the rat bite damage and a single magic missile damage. They are a bit different.
And normal predators don't want to be wounded at all. Getting damaged every time you try to take down a prey is a great way to be a dead predator.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A paladin with a wand of magic missile automatically hits and adds their smite damage to each missile (As Smite Evil specifies every damage roll made against the target)
With Litany of Righteousness up and a CL9 wand of Magic Missile, a mid-level Paladin can one round most evil outsiders, dragons or undead.
MM is still pretty good at level 9, for the reasons I mentioned before. If you want to suppress a spellcaster, you really REALLY want your readied spell to hit. Otherwise you wasted your action, AND got hit with his spell. 5d4+5 is enough to screw up someone's Concentration check.I don't agree with you here. Shield is pretty much guaranteed to be up for any spell caster who had time to buff because he heard you cracking skulls in the next room.
Eh, if I'm a wizard, I generally prepare mage armor. Better duration, and at what cost? It's not like the majority of my foes are gonna be throwing a level one spell at me all the time.
"Not the best spell for its level" =/= "useless"