I love the Merciful Spell metamagic feat, but I've always felt it should work with Save-or-Die spells and spells that cause, say, ability damage instead of hitpoint damage. The idea of having a knockout spell is, I think, too awesome to pass up, but I can understand why Paizo limited the feat to just hitpoint spells: you can't have a feat description that is several paragraphs long with complicated rules.
What you can do, however, is look at individual spells and modify their text so that they have a "merciful" variant. And that's what I've done. For your consideration:
House Rules for Merciful Spell: applying the metamagic feat to high level SoD and ability damaging spells.
Comments are welcome!
Hi ! As a new over-user of the merciful mechanics (and screaming at the GM who doesn't want to understand that there is a slight difference between non-lethal and lethal), I think this is a rea~lly good idea, and welcome it. I wouldn't have the skills to do it all by myself, so I'm all the more grateful !
Blasphemy : the point of "saving gets you damaged" was that, if you succeed your save, there's still a chance that you'll nonetheless die. I would rather make it "If the save is successful, the creature instead takes 3d6 points of nonlethal damage + 1 point per caster level (maximum +25). If this damage would kill the creature, it is instead unconscious/comatose/left with the one unkillable point that, if killed, would kill it". Or something like that.
Cloudkill : except that casting a "Merciful Cloudkill" sounds like mercifully ending people's lives so they won't ever feel pain again... well designed, but I imagine so well the archimages' elucubrations while designing this nonlethal version being overheard and the inquisition charging them x)
Destruction : I'm backing you up on that one, it was always annoying to destroy people's corpses when you want to have them get (more or less) alive out of it.
Dictum : same as Blasphemy.
Disintegrate, aka Avada Kadavra (for the green light) : same as Destruction. (I'm making a comment because of the Avada Kadavra cinematic, in fact.)
Holy Word : you're missing a few lines, I think. Otherwise, same as Blasphemy.
Fantasmal Killer : paralyzed sounds really weak compared to killed. In one case, he can pretty quickly come back at you if you manage to let him be or are incredibly unlucky ; in the other, it seems pretty improbable. I would at the very least render target unconscious, if not comatose. For the nonlethal damage, see blasphemy. You don't want your guy to die from too much nonlethal when being paralyzed certainly wouldn't be enough to put his life in danger (though, in combat, it can quickly turn lethal not to be able to move), do you ? (Also, its "deadly fear attack" is not-so-literally deadly, in the merciful version.)
Poison : nice.
Oh, since I'm at the bottom already. My experience tells me that Constitution damage can turn much more dangerous that Strength, and while I know the point is to make it less life-threatening, it stills end the fight more rapidly to go with Constitution damage than Strength damage. And you have to consider that creatures that don't rely on Strength (such as spellcasters or rogues, especially unchained rogues) won't care for Strength damage, or not as much. And you would have to deal a lot of Strength damage before ending the fight with it, and ways to do that are less numerous than ways to deplete hit points.
Because of this, you might want to change those Strength damage so something else, or maybe change the die size, and probably notice that even poison do more and more easily Constitution damage that Strength damage (there's no poison dealing 1d6 Strength damage canon, I think, while there is that deals 1d6 Dexterity or Constitution damage).
Thanks for the feedback, Lusinian!
Cloudkill was my primary motivation for this because it's one of the best offensive spells in the game.
I admit I was/am also concerned that targeting Str with the poison is not enough for the spell level, but I'm not sure what the right answer is. I suppose it could hit both Str and Dex—there are poisons in the game that do this, so there's precedent—as that would reduce combat effectiveness for both melee and Dex-based builds. And, it would lower a saving throw, too, which is also a side effect of hitting Con. (Note that by hitting Str, you can really ruin an archer's day if they use a composite longbow.)
It still doesn't end the fight as fast as hitting Con, though. I thought about layering a condition over it, e.g. nauseated, but then that would make it better than the "original" since it would impact action economy. In the end, though, I think it comes down to this: the choice to do a merciful variant comes with consequences, and one of those is that the spells are not as good as the original. I think that's fair given that it's a +0 level adjustment and the metamagic rods are pretty cheap.
Good point on Phantasmal Killer. It's kind of a sucky spell, anyway, but maybe this version sucks too much. Though, to be fair, paralyzed in the middle of combat is a coup de grace waiting to happen. Paralysis that lasts more than two or three rounds is bordering on certain death.
Another concern I have is that the comatose condition is too hard to correct. Maybe it should allow spells, tech, and healing that repair ability damage instead of drain. That makes it easier and less expensive to revive the creature, and the point of merciful is to leave the creature alive at the end. If it costs you 1,000 gp or a 6th level spell to restore them, you'd have to be really motivated to do that.
Thanks for the thanks !
Thinking of it, hitting Str and/or Dex weakens AC and DMD, which does the job well too. Making the target easier to be hit, grappled, pinned or whatever might balance the Con depleting hit points. Also, it serves more the purpose of capturing the enemy, so it is within the goals of a merciful spell. If a group is dedicated enough to bother with reading and manipulating those additional rules, they can probably bother with enhancing their combat maneuvers. (Not that your rules are hard, on the contrary ; but they are not on the wiki, so one has to look for them.) Using that would make it a match with Con damage, and it's all down to playing in the end anyway.
Hitting both Str and Dex is a good idea, yes, in my opinion. If test shows it is too much, maybe reducing the dice would be enough, but hitting both still is better than hitting only one of them, since from a third to half of melee opponents (at least in my game, maybe it's a DM thing) relies on Dex more than Str.
Uhm, the problem with paralyzed is that it is still short. If against only one enemy, sure, in one round he received a bunch of coups de grace or was tied up. But the opponent has allies, they will protect him, and a good strategy or luck will pull him through. Especially as one is typically not going to cast it at an expandable minion who may be abandoned by his peers.
Making comatose easier to overcome is not necessarily good. If the characters do not wish to use a powerful spell to revive their opponent, maybe they should think about less radical effects than SoD, even merciful SoC. The chances of awakening is a good idea.
This is a crazy idea I didn't take time to explore, and it could be useless, but maybe twice the margin could be a vegetative state or such (I'm no English speaker, maybe the word isn't what I am looking for), in which case the creature may awaken after some time on its own, though less easily and less rapidly as if it was unconscious. For example, in your example, it could be on 1-7 awakening, on 8-14 promotes to vegetative, and as vegetative may at least recover on its own (1 hp per level and day), and could wake up with some successful Save ?
I just had a thought on Cloudkill. Let's say I do have it hit both Str and Dex. I think the wording should change, then, to:
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These vapors automatically knock unconscious any living creature with 3 or fewer HD (no save) for as long as they are in the cloud, plus 1d10 minutes afterwards. In addition, they take 1d4 Strength and Dexterity damage on your turn while in the cloud. Note that ability damage may keep them unconscious if it drops either score to zero.
A living creature with 4 to 6 HD is similarly knocked unconscious unless it succeeds on a Fortitude save (in which case it takes 1d4 points of Strength and Dexterity damage on your turn each round while in the cloud).
A living creature with 6 or more HD takes 1d4 points of Strength and Dexterity damage on your turn each round while in the cloud (a successful Fortitude save halves this damage).
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This feels better to me, and doesn't have any special "your ability score goes to zero" fiats.
I certainly do not see anything wrong on that. Clear, simple and effective. And still less than dying, without being worth a bow of sand, which is the whole point.
EDIT : Changed a wrong typo that changed the sentence meaning ><
Lusinian wrote: Uhm, the problem with paralyzed is that it is still short. If against only one enemy, sure, in one round he received a bunch of coups de grace or was tied up. Hmm. OK. I'll think this over. There is a point to be made here that the spell is a SoD spell, just with two saves. So...SSoD? :)
Quote: Making comatose easier to overcome is not necessarily good. If the characters do not wish to use a powerful spell to revive their opponent, maybe they should think about less radical effects than SoD, even merciful SoC. Hmm. It's a fair point, but if it's too expensive to reverse then will the rules be used at all? That's my concern.
Quote: This is a crazy idea I didn't take time to explore, and it could be useless, but maybe twice the margin could be a vegetative state or such I considered it initially, but it's not functionally different from comatose. I also thought about catatonic, but that's not functionally much different from paralysis. I felt it wouldn't be adding a lot to the game in exchange for the complexity.
John Mechalas wrote: So...SSoD? :) Why not?
John Mechalas wrote: Quote: Making comatose easier to overcome is not necessarily good. If the characters do not wish to use a powerful spell to revive their opponent, maybe they should think about less radical effects than SoD, even merciful SoC. Hmm. It's a fair point, but if it's too expensive to reverse then will the rules be used at all? That's my concern.
I don't really know, but I am using quite often restoration starting level 10~12, so it isn't exactly the cost of a castle either. People do what they want with their money... If they want to give away 1000 gp to 2000 gp to the local orphanage any time they come in town, what's to stop them? If they want to cast unlethal lethal spells and then pay the high price to have to target very much chatterboxized, what's to stop them?
If reversing it is too easy, it will happen right on the battlefield. Which is not the researched result. But maybe multiplying the Heal check result by something before calculating the awakening rate will do?
Quote: I considered it initially, but it's not functionally different from comatose. I also thought about catatonic, but that's not functionally much different from paralysis. I felt it wouldn't be adding a lot to the game in exchange for the complexity. You're right. I did indeed not think it through before blurting it out.
OK. I think this final rev is in a good place. I've come up with a standard set of rules that can be applied to a generic spell (and adjusted the spell descriptions in the document accordingly):
- Per RAW, lethal damage becomes non-lethal, and retains the energy type.
- If the non-lethal damage is sufficient to kill the target, the corpse is never destroyed (this applies to spells like Destruction and Disintegrate which destroy the body)
- Save-or-Die becomes Save-or-Comatose.
- Spells that damage Con instead damage both Str and Dex (alternate rule: reduce the damage dice by one step, so 1d4 Con becomes 1d3 Str and Dex).
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