Hey everybody!
I wanted to ask what you think about those two spells and which of them you consider stronger in the long run.
The main difference seems to be:
Ice Spear
- no SR
- no attack roll
- more attacks
Battering Blast
- slightely more and force damage
- easier to stack
- bullrush
This makes Ice Spear far a to land while battering blast brings more hurt...
Which spell would you prefer when playing a wizard who wants one of those spells as his damage options?
Definitely Battering Blast for damage.
SR is easily bypassed by a blasting specialist, through boosted CL and the spell pen feats, and eventually perfect spell. It actually ends up being close to an auto success.
More importantly though this line in ice spear
creatures that take up more than one square can be hit by multiple spears if the caster is high enough leve
implies that you couldn't target anything medium or smaller with more than one spike at a time. Putting a crippling cap on the amount of damages the spell can do.
It is however incredible for tripping colossal creatures.
|
Depends on your level, your specialisation, your class, who you are facing..
Ice spear is a little higher damage at lower levels.
But against incorporeal... force damage wins
Against high SR - Ice spear is probably safer
If you have spell focus in either evocation or conjuration that would skew you.
A evocation wizard who gets bonus damage on evocations would probably prefer battering.
Immune to cold - battering
Vulnerable to cold - ice spear.
Against high touch AC creatures - ice spear
Against medium or smaller creatures with lots of hp - battering blast (once you hit 10th level).
Over all they look to be pretty fairly balanced against each other. If you were neither evocation or conjuration focused, I'd probably slightly favour battering blast. As being able to hurt incorporeal creatures is nice. But of course that is what magic missile is for. If you are a sorcerer who already knows magic missile, then ice spear would be perhaps a better choice.
I am going to play a diviner and considered to pick one of those as my spell for spell perfection later. I'm really having a hard time finding a combat spell to use with that feat...
Once you get to spell perfection any bonuses like spell penetration or piercing spell are doubled. This should make SR a minor issue at that point.
As a diviner looking for a perfect spell option I might suggest something more AoE type deal and using dazing spell, like ice storm for example.
Of the two options you're considering SR is a trifling issue with spell perfection so I'd suggest Battering Blast will end up more reliable and more damaging.
I am not sure on dazing spell yet as I am afraid it might be too powerful. I hoped to dominate the game a little more subtile.... haha.
Well as there are no sufficient divination spells to fill all the additional slots each level I wanted to pick preferred spell in order to use those slots to cast some kind of "always helpful spell". And I felt like those two I mentioned have great potential there... on the other hand I'm open to other suggestions of course.
One thing to consider is
A) bulls rushing people away can really really annoy your allies if they're melee and really help them if they're using a bow
B) tripping them can really annoy people using a bow and really help people in melee
C) with ranged touch attacks your allies can give opponents soft cover.
One this with Battering Blast is you often see it feature on heavy focused blasting builds who don't care that they're pushing enemies out of effective melee range because the enemy is more than likely dead.
Once you get to spell perfection any bonuses like spell penetration or piercing spell are doubled. This should make SR a minor issue at that point.
Piercing Spell is actually not affected by Spell Perfection, because it reduces the targets SR by 5, whereas Spell Perfection requires that the relevant feat "apply a set numerical bonus to any aspect of this spell." The target's SR is an aspect of the target, not the spell. There is a similar issue with Ambuscading Spell, which reduces the targets saves rather than increasing the DC. Mechanically they are the same, but the way it is framed makes Spell Perfection inapplicable.
Ice Spears can't hit anything flying more than 10 feet off the ground.
Oooo an interesting wrinkle
Ice Spears can't hit anything flying more than 10 feet off the ground.
This is actually a really, really good point - thanks!
Oooo an interesting wrinkle
Could be more than just a wrinkle if your GM is strict about it only being usable from ground or some snowy/icy surface. You wouldn't even be able to use it against targets on the deck of a ship, or the second floor of a building.