Shadow Spells and Dazing Metamagic


Advice


How exactly do these two interact? A player of mine is curious.
Do you avoid the daze by saving against the Shadow Spell, the spell it's emulating, or both? And if you cast Shadow Weapon, does it daze the target every time you attack with it if they failed their initial save? Or do they get a save every time since it only allows a save on the initial attack?


Suppose you're casting shadow evocation, emulating a dazing burning hands. In this case the targets make the initial will save. If successful then they make a reflex save vs. the burning hands, taking 20% damage and a round of dazed if they fail, 10% and no dazed if successful. If the initial will save failed then a failed reflex save means full damage and 1 round dazed, successful means half damage and no dazed. If the target resists all the damage (energy resistance, whatever) then they aren't dazed regardless of the save results.

Next let's imagine you're casting dazing shadow evocation, emulating fireball. The targets make the initial will save, then a reflex save. In this case the initial will save determines whether the target is dazed and the reflex save just modifies the damage. Again, resisting all the damage means no daze.

Shadow weapon causes some disputes. If you hit someone with a weapon created by a spell, are you damaging them with the spell or with an attack enabled by the spell? If the former then dazing spell works, if the latter then not. I don't believe that's settled. If it does work, then the way it operates with other spells which damage over time (e.g. acid arrow) suggests that there's a save on each damaging hit.


It took me a bit to understand, but I think I get it. In your first example, can you apply any metamagic you know to the emulated spell as long as it doesn't exceed the max spell level of the Shadow spell?


Fafnoir wrote:
It took me a bit to understand, but I think I get it. In your first example, can you apply any metamagic you know to the emulated spell as long as it doesn't exceed the max spell level of the Shadow spell?

The metamagic is modifying the Shadow spell, not the emulated spell. If you're a 13th level caster (with 7th level spell slots) you can add a +2 metamagic to Shadow Evocation (boosting it from a 5th to a 7th level slot). It doesn't matter at all the level of the evocation spell you choose to emulate when you actually cast the spell.

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I dont think you can use Shadow evocation to emulate a spell altered with metamagic without actually having the metamagic and applying it to the parent spell.

If I don't have dazing spell, I cannot use shadow evocation to emulate Dazing burning hands. I would have to cast Dazing shadow evocation as an 8th level spell, and emulate burning hands with it.

The spell states....

"You tap energy from the Plane of Shadow to cast a quasi-real, illusory version of a sorcerer or wizard evocation spell of 4th level or lower."

So my reasoning is "Dazing Burning Hands" is not a wizard evocation spell of 4th level or lower, "burning hands" is, dazing is a metamagic feat added after the fact. If "dazing burning hands" was on the wizard spell list, then more power to you, but it's not.

As for shadow magic with Dazing, Dazing states..

"When a creature takes damage from this spell, they become dazed for a number of rounds equal to the original level of the spell. If the spell allows a saving throw, a successful save negates the daze effect."

That means the first save the person takes, in the case of Shadow magic, is the will save to disbelieve, is the one tied to the dazing effect. So fail the will, get dazed.

As for Shadow weapon and Dazing, this is my two cents. The weapon is creating a spell, just like say, spiritual weapon. The spell IS the weapon. Now, a spell like ancestral weapon wouldnt work for this, due to the fact that it creates a physical, normal, magical weapon in your hand. With shadow weapon, the the weapon itself is made of pure magic (just like the force weapon from spiritual weapon, which I would argue can have dazing applied to it). So you'd take a will save EACH TIME you get hit by it. Due to the fact that dazing states any time you take damage from it, you make a save to avoid the dazing.

Just my thoughts.


Fafnoir wrote:
It took me a bit to understand, but I think I get it. In your first example, can you apply any metamagic you know to the emulated spell as long as it doesn't exceed the max spell level of the Shadow spell?

Yes. It probably wouldn't usually be useful - the sheet lightning spell exists and would be better than dazing burning hands - but I was trying to show that the save to avoid daze was tied to the spell that dazing spell was applied to.

Re the objections to this, it's the same reasoning that lets you cast an empowered shocking grasp into a spell storing weapon. An empowered shocking grasp is effectively a 3rd level spell. Dazing burning hands is effectively a 4th level spell, and if you have dazing spell it is effectively on the sorc/wiz list.


It doesn't work that way (applying metamagic to the emulated spell rather than the Shadow spell) because you determine the emulated spell at the time of the casting. So a Wizard can't prepare a dazing burning hands inside of a Shadow Evocation ahead of time. A Sorcerer has to extend the spell casting time and increase the spell level based on the spell they are actually casting, Shadow Evocation, so you can't modify the emulated spell on the fly.


The problem with this argument, PP, is 'So a Wizard can't prepare a dazing burning hands inside of a Shadow Evocation ahead of time.' It doesn't follow that a wizard has to prepare a dazing burning hands, just that they have to be able to - because you determine the emulated spell at the time of casting.


Not sure if this is helpful, but here are my 2 cents on Shadow Weapons

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2s5ns?Shadow-Weapon#1


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Note that you technically already get the benefit of the Heighten Spell metamagic feat on Shadow Evocation and the like.

The saving throw for Shadow Evocation is equal to that of a 5th level spell, even when emulating a 1st level spell such as Burning Hands. This is identical to the benefit of applying Heighten Spell to prepare Burning Hands in a 5th level slot.

Thus if you wanted to apply additional metamagic feats to the spell, it would increase the spell slot required for Shadow Evocation by a further amount equal to the metamagic feat's requirement.


I think shadow evocation would clearly work with a dazing rod. So I don't see why it wouldn't work with the feat. However, if a wizard prepared dazing shadow evocation, and attempt to cast an evocation spell that does no damage it would not daze.

As for the save, I think I would rule the target needs to fail both saves, but this is a real grey area. A shadow if you will.


avr wrote:
The problem with this argument, PP, is 'So a Wizard can't prepare a dazing burning hands inside of a Shadow Evocation ahead of time.' It doesn't follow that a wizard has to prepare a dazing burning hands, just that they have to be able to - because you determine the emulated spell at the time of casting.

It's in the metamagic rules that they have to apply the metamagic feat when preparing the spell. The spell actually prepared is Shadow Evocation, so that's what you apply it to.

"Wizards and Divine Spellcasters: Wizards and divine spellcasters must prepare their spells in advance. During preparation, the character chooses which spells to prepare with metamagic feats (and thus which ones take up higher-level spell slots than normal)."

JDLPF's point is also correct, you're already getting a Heighten effect to 5th level, you're not actually casting a 1st level spell with space for metamagic.

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