None of which changes the fact that its far above the curve for spells of its level, or even multiple levels higher than it.
Its badly designed for player use.
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No, divine casters shouldn't get access to blasting spells that rival the efficiency of arcane caster damage. They definitely shouldn't get it at the same level as the arcane caster.
... Why not?
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Not really. People just REAAAAAAALLY want access to a spell designed far beyond the standard power curve.
Seriously, dude, statements like that are not cool. You just accused everyone arguing against you of having a disingenuous ulterior motive and not really believing their own arguments. This verges on outright trolling, and is incredibly insulting. If you want to be taken seriously, don't do s#!! like that.
I'm not arguing against you because I somehow want to preserve my "super secret special OP spell". No, I've never seen Hellfire Ray used in actual play, and I have no intention of ever using it for the precise reason that it's a bad spell at the level ranges I typically play at. Hellfire Ray is legitimately scary CL 19, and with some feat or class feature support it could be good at CL 15, but prior to that it's just plain unimpressive.
Intensified Empowered, nothing quite like 90d6+180 from a crossblooded sorceror
Doesn't work; Hellfire Ray doesn't have the fire descriptor, and as such doesn't benefit from bloodline arcana. Blood Havoc would still work, though, so you could get it to 1.5 * (60d6+60)
This gets about the same amount of damage as an optimized Battering Blast will achieve at those levels. It lacks all the secondary properties of Battering Blast, but requires less investment to achieve. So yes, it's comparable to the most powerful blasting spells in the game at 20th level play.
Meteor Swarm only does 32d6 to a single target too, It only does 24d6 as an AOE. It outperforms a spell 3 levels higher by nearly 50%
Yes, Meteor Swarm is an underwhelming spell. It's usable in some circumstances, but in most cases will be inferior to lower-level spells with metamagic. This isn't particularly unusual, and every blast spell worth its salt is better than Meteor Swarm.
... Why not?
Clerics are one of the few classes that automatically know every spell on their class spell list. This does mean designers need to be mindful when expanding the cleric spell list as they gain access to any new spell automatically with no effort. Having a more restrictive spell list is supposed to be one of the counter-balancing factors there.
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Ok I feel like there have been a few incorrect assumptions about this spell.
Levels 11-14, 1d6/level damage - exactly half of disintegrate.
Level 15, 2d6/level (30d6) - exactly the same as disintegrate.
Levels 16-18, still 30d6 - slowly losing to disintegrate.
Levels 19-20, 45d6 - Finally better than disintegrate.
Disintegrate requires a touch attack and allows a Fort Save (which reduces the damage to 5d6).
Hellfire Ray requires 3 range touch attacks (each doing 1/3 of the total damage), allows no Save, and splits the damage 50/50 Fire/Unholy.
As far as I can see they're not too different, at level 20 you have 40d6 vs 45d6.
Disintegrate requires 1 touch attack while Hellfire Ray requres 3.
Let's assume you only need a natural 2 to hit:
Disintegrate - 95% chance 40d6 damage, 5% chance 0 damage.
Hellfire Ray - 85.7375% chance for 45d6 damage, 13.5375% for chance 30d6 damage, 0.7125% chance for 15d6, 0.0125% chance for 0 damage.
Disintegrate allows a Fort save to reduce it to 5d6 (at Level 20 this is an 87.5% reduction in power).
Hellfire ray doesn't allow a save.
Disintegrate is ... Transmutation damage? (It works against Force effects but isn't Force damage?)
Hellfire ray is half Fire damage half Hellfire damage. This means that creature with Fire immunity/resistance take as little as 50% damage. At level 20 that's ~22.5d6 damage with 3 successful touch attacks (~86% likely), 15d6 damage with 2 successful touch attacks (~14% likely), ~7.5d6 damage with 1 successful touch attack (~1% likely).
Also I'll weigh in on the "Intensified+Empowered Hellfire Ray" thing - Intensified and Empowered don't stack the way you think. Empowered doesn't add +50% to the dice that were added by Intensified, so the final equation looks like this: (45d6 X 1.5) + 15d6 = ~288.75 damage (I'm unfamiliar with how crossblooded/etc would stack so I'll let you add that yourselves). Assuming my calculations are correct (and you hit on a natural 2) that means there's an ~86% chance you'll do ~289 damage (~144 if halved), a ~14% chane you'll do ~193 damage (~96 if halved) and a ~1% chance you'll do ~96 damage (~48 damage if halved).
Comparing that to an Empowered Disintegrate: 95% chance to do ~210 damage (one spell level lower).
Finally worth noting that it's possible to critical hit with rays (for double damage).
Disintegrate has a 4.75% chance (assuming a natural 2 hits) to do 80d6 (~280 damage), a 90.25% chance to do 40d6 (140 damage) and a 5% chance to miss (0 damage).
Hellfire Ray ... I'm way too tired to work this one out, anyone want in?
This last part will of course change the odds as well, but I don't have the energy to work it out right now =P
*Obviously changing the chance to hit will change all these numbers significantly, but hopefully that gives people a bit more to work with.
EDIT: I corrected the chance of hitting with only one ray from ~0% to ~1% in the 3rd last paragraph and added some numbers to go with that 1% in the 2nd last paragraph.
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Ok now that I've done that huge post, here's my opinion of this spell:
I like it.
As a -playing game (as opposed to a -playing game) I think this spell has a lot of flavour. I LOVE the fact that all clerics get access to this (well, all evil clerics), it perfectly encapsulates the power that an evil god-powered villain should possess. The damage numbers can be terrifying, and the thought that a character's soul will be dragged straight to hell should give your characters more of a reason to think before walking into this fight. Also remember that at level 19 (when this spell gets good) PC's are able to plane shift into hell if they need to, so as a "you'll never come back" threat it's a pretty small one (Clerics get Plane Shift at level **9, Resurrection at level 13 and True Resurrection at level 17, soooo ...).
*That's right, I went there!
**I'll note that even though clerics can Plane Shift at level 9, going straight to the lower planes probably isn't a good idea then. By 19 it should be doable though.
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Not really. People just REAAAAAAALLY want access to a spell designed far beyond the standard power curve.Seriously, dude, statements like that are not cool. You just accused everyone arguing against you of having a disingenuous ulterior motive and not really believing their own arguments.If the shoe fits....
Both of the quoted spells are above the curve and break the spell design rules put forth. The principle is "Core is king" This spell and the one you mention as being about as good are examples of power creep. They're both above the curve as the curve is set with core.
Completely disagree. I VERY rarely play 9th level casters, and rarely get to high enough levels that a Magus would be able to use this spell. I'm not looking to use this spell myself as a player, but I love the concept as an NPC villain spell.
Intensified Empowered [Hellfire Ray], nothing quite like 90d6+180 from a crossblooded sorceror
90d6 + 180 = ~495 damage. It SHOULD look more like (45d6+90 X 1.5) + 15d6 + 30 = ~454 damage assuming it's +2 per die from crossblooded (and assuming those numbers get multiplied by empowered, if they don't it's ~409 damage)
Also do you consider the Advanced Players Guide and Ultimate Magic to be "Power Creep"? Because a lot of the damage you were complaining about was coming from those - 165 points of it to be precise (or 120 if I did empowered wrong).
No, divine casters shouldn't get access to blasting spells that rival the efficiency of arcane caster damage. They definitely shouldn't get it at the same level as the arcane caster.
I feel like a lot of what you're arguing is about this. In a lot of ways I agree with you, but as I showed in my first post here you don't get it at the same level as a wizard does, you get it 8 levels later when you get your 3rd ray at level 19 (and I guess briefly at level 15).
Also, look up FLAME STRIKE
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Not really. People just REAAAAAAALLY want access to a spell designed far beyond the standard power curve.
I feel like "It's an Evil Spell that's clearly super evil" is there to clue everyone in on "this is for NPC antagonists, not for players in a heroic campaign."
It's generally okay, I think, to give antagonists abilities that would be unreasonable in the hands of players, since the GM is not actually trying to win these fights (just to pose enough challenge that they're fun).
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As another note, as the spell is half Unholy damage, which deals no damage to evil creatures, but double damage to Good. So really, it’s only even remotely competitive in a campaign where you’re facing a lot of neutral enemies. Going against Evil enemies. It’s borderline worthless. In an Evil campaign... well, it’s hardly the most broken thing you can do with a 6th-level Evil spell (looking at you, planar binding and the ability to pay with souls)
No, divine casters shouldn't get access to blasting spells that rival the efficiency of arcane caster damage. They definitely shouldn't get it at the same level as the arcane caster.Harm says hi? Srsly, clerics and druids do plenty of spell damage, they're only 'bad' at it at low levels. As soon as you hit mid to high they're just as terrifying as any wizard.
Harm is a touch spell, that caps at 150, and has a save for half.
Because there are no dice rolled you can't maximize or empower it to increase is output, its a fixed amount. Harm also has an entire large class of enemies that it not only doesn't work on, it actually heals.
Think a little harder about examples.
As another note, as the spell is half Unholy damage, which deals no damage to evil creatures, but double damage to GoodWhere are you getting this info from? I can't find a rule saying that anywhere.
Some sources provide this rule, like hellfire (naturally occurring in Hell). Others don’t.
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As another note, as the spell is half Unholy damage, which deals no damage to evil creatures, but double damage to Good.
You're making that up, right?
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As another note, as the spell is half Unholy damage, which deals no damage to evil creatures, but double damage to GoodWhere are you getting this info from? I can't find a rule saying that anywhere.
I think it's from Book of the Damned? I know I read it somewhere, but I don't know where.... (it was Paizo, though. I know that much.)
EDIT:
Hellfire takes many forms, most stinking of sulfur and flickering with a furious crimson or nauseating green cast. As it requires no fuel, any land, air, or water might burn with this deadly flame. Damage dealt by hellfire is known as hellfire damage; it is treated as normal fire but deals half fire damage and half damage from unholy energy. Evil-aligned creatures and creatures with the evil subtype take no damage from the unholy energy, but good-aligned beings and those with the good subtype take double the normal damage from
it. Creatures under the effects of spells such as protection from evil are unaffected by this unholy energy, though they may still take fire damage.
Okay, so the spell doesn't say it deals Hellfire damage. My bad. I guess I drew a line between them that wasn't explicitly called out. It seems like a reasonable houserule, but it's not RAW. My bad.
Given that this discussion is about PFS and we're debating the spell's performance at 15th level and up, just how relevant is it? ISTR there's not a lot of PFS above 12th level (has that changed?).
Given that this discussion is about PFS and we're debating the spell's performance at 15th level and up, just how relevant is it? ISTR there's not a lot of PFS above 12th level (has that changed?).
Actually the OP said "Pathfinder Legal", not "Pathfinder Society Legal".
Given that this discussion is about PFS
Is it? I would figure the PFS question would be answered by some combination of:
- Per Additional Resources it is not legal for Society play- No one in Pathfinder General can give an authoritative answer for PFS; there are PFS forums for that.
- the Pathfinder Society does not cotton to "really evil stuff" and this is that, so diagetically it should be forbidden.
I mostly thought this was a "should GMs allow this spell in their own games" question.