Is Dominate person really a 5th level spell?


Advice

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Douglas Muir 406 wrote:
Check the math. Say your DC is 21. Against a fighter with +3 will, you'll double-save dominate him 90% x 80% = 72% of the time. Pretty good! But against his colleague the party wizard, with his +9 Will, you only win 60% x 40% = 24% of the time. One-third as much! Bad odds! Don't try this unless you're desperate. The doubled save dramatically compounds the difference between bad Wills and good ones, you see? That's actually good design IMO -- it's both thematic and balanced. You Dominate big stupid weak-willed things like giants and fighters, but you hesitate to throw it at Will monsters like wizards, clerics, dragons or outsiders. That aspect, I got no problem with.

Basically this. At 9th level, you can have a 26-27 DC on it fairly easily (20 starting Cha, two level points, +2 headband for a 24 or a +4 headband if you want to push it for a 26; 5th level spell; Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus; +2 from Fey bloodline). That Wizard with the +9 Will save, even, would still have a 63.75% chance of failure of both checks, and the Fighter would be sitting at a 90.25% chance of failure of both checks. I would say that's pretty good odds in your favor.

Also, even though the spell is limited to humanoids only, that still covers a huge swath of enemies. Giants, trolls, orcs, the vast majority of enemies with class levels. It's not at all an uncommon enemy type to be fighting.


Oh, a character who optimizes can drive DCs up really, really high. My DC 21 was for Joe Average Wizard. He's not Fey bloodline or kitsune, he doesn't have Spell Focus... he's just got a 20 Int and a +2 headband.

As I said upthread, if you do optimize for it, you can get Dominate DCs so high as to be somewhat unbalancing. A kitsune using the awful kitsune favored class -- really, who let that one slip through the design process? -- can get DCs around 31-33 at 12th level. That gives better than even odds of double-save dominating pretty much anything that's level appropriate.

Doug M.


Renvale987 wrote:

I would also like to note that Dominate person only works on ONE subset of creatures; humanoids. It does not work on:

One thing to note is that Giants now fall into the Humanoid category, have generally terrible will saves and make great meat shield friends to bring along on adventures.


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Kimera757 wrote:
Tim Statler wrote:
"If a party member is down, The dominating caster,"Go help you fallen comrade regain consciousness.."
IMO, that's a waste of Dominate. PCs should be doing that anyway.

However, if you tell him to lay atop his comrade to protect him from harm then you have two enemies prone and pretty much out of the fight.


Ross Byers wrote:
Slay living is a fifth level spell that removes a foe.

Well, it used to be.

Given the fact that all it does now is inflicting hp damage (12d6 plus level, if I recall correctly, for an average of 42 plus level), with the greatly increased number of hp pretty much everyone has in PF, the 'remove from combat' result has become... quite rare.


Douglas Muir 406 wrote:

Oh, a character who optimizes can drive DCs up really, really high. My DC 21 was for Joe Average Wizard. He's not Fey bloodline or kitsune, he doesn't have Spell Focus... he's just got a 20 Int and a +2 headband.

As I said upthread, if you do optimize for it, you can get Dominate DCs so high as to be somewhat unbalancing. A kitsune using the awful kitsune favored class -- really, who let that one slip through the design process? -- can get DCs around 31-33 at 12th level. That gives better than even odds of double-save dominating pretty much anything that's level appropriate.

Doug M.

I was mentioning a more moderate level of optimization because the OP mentioned in one of his posts that he was playing an enchanter in this case. I figured that meant pushing DCs of enchantment spells at least a bit. Even without the bloodline bonus or being kitsune, you can still have a 24-25 DC with the basic optimization of Spell Focus and Greater, and a headband by 9th level. That's still enough to make the Fighter fail (now assuming a +4 Will with a cloak or something; reasonable to have by 9th level) 81% of the time, and the Wizard fail 49% of the time. I think, though, that we're in agreement it's a good spell.

The most basic amount of optimizing for enchantment spells I can think of gives the low-Will enemy a horrible chance of success, and the high-Will enemy the flip of a coin. Compare to a Fighter full-attacking, where they don't even normally have that good of a chance (high AC targets are difficult to hit with all your attacks, and low AC targets have other defenses like a miss chance or mirror image). Dominate person is hugely powerful.

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