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So, I've looked up a few threads about flame blade, and not found any that directly address some of my questions. I'm looking at playing a Green Scourge archetype druid, with a couple of other archetypes that do cool stuff I want, but mainly this is the focus: How does flame blade work with a few things?
1) Furious Spell Metamagic. As written, I believe that Furious Spell would cause the base Flame Blade spell's damage to increase by 4(x2 Spell Level). However, the Green Scourge's "Nature's Armaments" ability says this:
When adding weapon special abilities or increasing the enhancement bonus, the final level of the spell expended is 1 higher than the base spell level (2nd for shillelagh and 3rd for flame blade), increased by the additional special abilities’ total base price modifier (see Table 15–9 on page 469 of the Core Rulebook). For example, creating an aberration-bane vicious flame blade requires spending a 5th-level spell slot, which also counts as a 5th-level spell for purposes of dispelling.
It's the "...counts as a 5th-level spell for the purposes of dispelling," that gets me. It seems to indicate that Flame Blade, cast with those improvements using a 5th level spell slot, becomes a 5th level spell. Would it, then, gain a +10 damage bonus from the Furious Spell metamagic? I think so, but I'm not much of a spellcaster, so my rules-fu is a bit rusty.
2) Divine Fighting Technique: Sarenrae's Mercy Does a flame blade count as a Scimitar for the purposes of this feat? According to the spell, you wield it as a scimitar, which means you could, theoretically, deal nonlethal fire/cold/lightning/etc. damage, while healing you once you qualify for the advanced version. Again, given that you wield the flame blade "as a scimitar", I think it should work, but I understand that might not be accurate. Thanks!
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1) I would say no on the Furious Spell metamagic, mostly because the SPELL doesn't deal any damage. It creates a blade and you attack with that blade and the blade deals the damage. The spell itself actually doesn't deal damage.
2) While I agree with you, I've brought up a similar point with our Venture Captain. He was quite adamant that flame blade is a "spell not a weapon" and therefor doesn't qualify for using things that says you can do it with a weapon.
Of course, those two begin to contradict one another. If it's a spell, then furious spell should work on it. If it's a weapon, then Divine Fighting Technique should with it.
It's a stupidly gray area, and while I originally wanted to abuse the s&~~ out of this spell, it's turned me off of every wanting to use/see it.
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1) I would say no on the Furious Spell metamagic, mostly because the SPELL doesn't deal any damage. It creates a blade and you attack with that blade and the blade deals the damage. The spell itself actually doesn't deal damage.
Everything else you guys have said is understandable, but I don't get this argument. You could equally argue that a Touch Spell (say, Shocking Grasp) doesn't deal damage, it just gives you a touch attack charge that you can expend as a free action when you cast the spell and hit with it, and the charge deals the damage, so Furious Spell wouldn't work with Touch attacks, or an ability like Spellstrike.
1) I would say no on the Furious Spell metamagic, mostly because the SPELL doesn't deal any damage. It creates a blade and you attack with that blade and the blade deals the damage. The spell itself actually doesn't deal damage.Everything else you guys have said is understandable, but I don't get this argument. You could equally argue that a Touch Spell (say, Shocking Grasp) doesn't deal damage, it just gives you a touch attack charge that you can expend as a free action when you cast the spell and hit with it, and the charge deals the damage, so Furious Spell wouldn't work with Touch attacks, or an ability like Spellstrike.
The difference is the flame blade spell itself. The effect is: sword-like beam. It's quite clear that casting the spell itself does NOT deal damage, it creates a sword-like beam. That is why I say the spell doesn't deal damage, while shocking grasp itself does actually deal damage.
1) Unsure. Does maximized flame blade cause your attacks to always deal maximal damage? How about smacking enemies with an guitar conjured by maximized summon instrument? The answer is likely the same as those.
2) Definitely. It's treated "as a scimitar", so it works with all scimitar-based abilities.
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1) I would say no on the Furious Spell metamagic, mostly because the SPELL doesn't deal any damage. It creates a blade and you attack with that blade and the blade deals the damage. The spell itself actually doesn't deal damage.
2) While I agree with you, I've brought up a similar point with our Venture Captain. He was quite adamant that flame blade is a "spell not a weapon" and therefor doesn't qualify for using things that says you can do it with a weapon.
Of course, those two begin to contradict one another. If it's a spell, then furious spell should work on it. If it's a weapon, then Divine Fighting Technique should with it.
It's a stupidly gray area, and while I originally wanted to abuse the s!@# out of this spell, it's turned me off of every wanting to use/see it.
About reply n. 2:
Ray: Do rays count as weapons for the purpose of spells and effects that affect weapons?
Yes. (See also this FAQ item for a similar question about rays and weapon feats.)
For example, a bard's inspire courage says it affects "weapon damage rolls," which is worded that way so don't try to add the bonus to a spell like fireball. However, rays are treated as weapons, whether they're from spells, a monster ability, a class ability, or some other source, so the inspire courage bonus applies to ray attack rolls and ray damage rolls.
The same rule applies to weapon-like spells such as flame blade, mage's sword, and spiritual weapon--effects that affect weapons work on these spells.
posted July 2011 | back to top
How far that go is open to debate.
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So, I've looked up a few threads about flame blade, and not found any that directly address some of my questions. I'm looking at playing a Green Scourge archetype druid, with a couple of other archetypes that do cool stuff I want, but mainly this is the focus: How does flame blade work with a few things?
1) Furious Spell Metamagic. As written, I believe that Furious Spell would cause the base Flame Blade spell's damage to increase by 4(x2 Spell Level). However, the Green Scourge's "Nature's Armaments" ability says this:
When adding weapon special abilities or increasing the enhancement bonus, the final level of the spell expended is 1 higher than the base spell level (2nd for shillelagh and 3rd for flame blade), increased by the additional special abilities’ total base price modifier (see Table 15–9 on page 469 of the Core Rulebook). For example, creating an aberration-bane vicious flame blade requires spending a 5th-level spell slot, which also counts as a 5th-level spell for purposes of dispelling.It's the "...counts as a 5th-level spell for the purposes of dispelling," that gets me. It seems to indicate that Flame Blade, cast with those improvements using a 5th level spell slot, becomes a 5th level spell. Would it, then, gain a +10 damage bonus from the Furious Spell metamagic? I think so, but I'm not much of a spellcaster, so my rules-fu is a bit rusty.
With Nature's Armanents You aren't casting a metamagiched spell. You are burning up a spell slot of 2 level to cast a Flame blade spell. You can spend a higher level slot to get extra effects, but none of those include the Furious spell metamagic and the metamagic of the spell in the used slot have no effect.
Let's put it in another way: if I am a druid and have a extended Summon natural ally I memorized in a 2nd level spell slot and use that spell slot to spontaneously casting a Summon natural ally II, that metamagic has any effect? No, I am using the slot to cast a different spell.
What matter is the spell slot used, not the metamagic on the spell in that slot.
With a normal, memorized spell with the metamagic applied, the extra damage will be applied once for each target but you can't use the other special features of nature's armaments.
Note that the spell level of a spell matter only when you are the target of a Greater Dispel Magic spell and you lose the spells starting with the highest level spells first.
Pretty strange specification. I would be more interested in knowing if the flame blade count as a 5th level spell for bypassing effects like Minor globe of invulnerability (RAI, I think it does).
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Your spontaneously casting that SNA, so you can follow the metamagic rules for spontaneous casting. The same can be done with natures armaments. It just takes a full round instead of a standard action
^this
I hadn't thought about the damage from metamagic only being applied once per spell, or to a single target. if that were the case, Furious would either be a total waste (only dealing +4 damage once) or mostly a waste (only +10 once if it works in a strange corner case). That would likely make the feat, and investment into making it essentially free, pointless. Still, it may be worth it to grab Weapon Evoker Mastery. That plus some Deliquescent gloves could help strengthen the Shillelagh side of the archetype.
There's a question: Does Weapon Evoker Mastery work with Flame Blade if I use an archetype ability to give it Frost or Shock, or something like Deliquescent gloves? It is, techically, a "magic weapon", even though it doesn't have an enhancement bonus (though it does if you have Aberrant-Bane on it...).
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As the ability say "A green scourge can lose a prepared 1st- or 2nd-level spell in order to cast shillelagh or flame blade, respectively." and "She can instead choose to lose a higher-level spell in order to increase the enhancement bonus of her shillelagh, or to add any of the following weapon special abilities to her shillelagh or flame blade:", I am not convinced that the druid can chose to loose an higher level spell to cast a metamagiched version of shillelag or flame blade.
The text clearly say that you can use a higher level spell only for specific purposes.
The writer could have thought that it can be tacitly understood that you can cast metamagiched versions or that you can't, currently it is a gray area. GM territory.
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Your spontaneously casting that SNA, so you can follow the metamagic rules for spontaneous casting. The same can be done with natures armaments. It just takes a full round instead of a standard action^this
I hadn't thought about the damage from metamagic only being applied once per spell, or to a single target. if that were the case, Furious would either be a total waste (only dealing +4 damage once) or mostly a waste (only +10 once if it works in a strange corner case). That would likely make the feat, and investment into making it essentially free, pointless. Still, it may be worth it to grab Weapon Evoker Mastery. That plus some Deliquescent gloves could help strengthen the Shillelagh side of the archetype.
There's a question: Does Weapon Evoker Mastery work with Flame Blade if I use an archetype ability to give it Frost or Shock, or something like Deliquescent gloves? It is, techically, a "magic weapon", even though it doesn't have an enhancement bonus (though it does if you have Aberrant-Bane on it...).
It seem it is primarily meant for area spells.
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As the ability say "A green scourge can lose a prepared 1st- or 2nd-level spell in order to cast shillelagh or flame blade, respectively." and "She can instead choose to lose a higher-level spell in order to increase the enhancement bonus of her shillelagh, or to add any of the following weapon special abilities to her shillelagh or flame blade:", I am not convinced that the druid can chose to loose an higher level spell to cast a metamagiched version of shillelag or flame blade.
The text clearly say that you can use a higher level spell only for specific purposes.
The writer could have thought that it can be tacitly understood that you can cast metamagiched versions or that you can't, currently it is a gray area. GM territory.
Regardless of the meaning of the text, you are spontaneously casting a spell, and casting a spell spontaneously follows all the normal rules for spontaneous spellcasting. There are lots of little things that I find a bit confusing, but this one seems pretty cut and dry.
The "this spell creates a weapon" argument is part of the toe-tapping that goes into avoiding some really OP exploits. For example, the spell Force Sword creates "a +1 longsword of pure force". If you take that to mean that the spell is dealing force damage, then all of a sudden you have a level 2 spell that creates a weapon that not only deals full damage to incorporeal creatures, but also bypasses all forms of damage reduction including DR/epic, because nothing really protects against force damage. And because it's not a personal range spell, your wizard can hand it to the party fighter who can then power attack the bejeesus out of everything.*
If, however, you interpret that to mean that the sword is made of force but deals damage just because the shape it's in happens to be sharp, then what you have is exactly like any other +1 longsword, and it's a lot more reasonable.
Anyway! If you're playing in PFS all this may be an issue. But if it's for a home game, just sit down with your GM and hash out how it works at your table. Your GM has the final say on weird rules corner cases like this.
* Note: if you are fighting something with DR/epic at level 3, you are in big, big trouble even if your GM allows your force sword to work on it. Just sayin'.
It is subject to a target's SR on the 1st strike, so regardless of interpretation, it does have some limits.
I think most people are saying:
Home game: Talk to your GM.
PFS: Then expect a different interpretation for each GM you play with. I would highly recommend talking to the GM ahead of time on what you plan on doing with the character. And then be prepared to not be able to do what you wanted/had done previously with the character.