So i'm considering some of the issues I've seen at my own gaming table. One of which was a player who argued that as an Mage Specialist: Evoker his evocation magic should be much better than the average caster, and thus much harder to resist. This is an argument that I tend to agree with.
One idea he came up with was allowing Fireball to be cast as a Ranged Touch attack which could be used to target a specific creature, thus preventing the use of Evasion for resisting its damage. The argument is simple: if I HIT you, you should not be able to avoid it, because I had to actually roll to hit. Your ability to avoid the "targeted effect" of this ability then is based off your AC not your Saves.
Should the ranged touch attack miss, the spell is cast normally and evasion would be applied as per normal. The ranged touch attack is rolled as a part of the casting of the spell, thus the spell can not be cancelled (without loosing the spell) once the roll is made. In short, this prevents the mage from attempting the spell over several rounds until he finally hits the target and then finally releasing the spell.
This ability is only usable by the Mage Specialist: Evoker.
The Fireball spell is unchanged in all other ways, and other creatures within its blast radius must still make their saves normally to avoid it's effects.
Question: Should the actual targeted creature be allowed a save under this condition? Keep in mind, the caster has to actually hit the target.
Are you going to give all other specialists a similar ability? If not you are throwing off the balance of the game.
Another thing to remind the player is that this will also be used against them. How will the rouge in the party feel when their class ability is nullified?
Also your solution is probably not going to work as well as you think. Most classes that have evasion tend to rely on DEX for AC therefore have a high touch AC. Combine this with the low BAB of the wizard and you will still have difficulty in affecting those characters.
Their evocations spells already do more damage than other spell casters, so are already better. If the player wants to increase the chance of affecting those with evasion pump up the DC of the saving throw for his spells. Spell Focus and possibly elemental spell can both increase the save. As far as I know they should also stack with each other. Since both of them have a greater version that is a +4 increase to the DC of the save.
This seems less like a class's special feature and more like a question of the game's logistics.
The spell's description cleary indicates that the spell's the fact is a point of energy that you aim and shoot, and that it detonates at the point of your choosing (or when it comes into contact with a solid barrier along the way).
Your argument isn't about how an evoker somehow taps into the school of magic at a level that others cannot. You're saying that you can't avoid an area of effect when the effect begins after it is already made contact with you. It's just a matter of physics and common sense and where the rules fail to meet them.
I've allowed the very same thing in similar situations, although the wizard was an illusionist. The targets never happened to have Evasion, though. Since that represents a level of agility beyond a Dexterity score, I'd be hesitant to negate it completely. I'd probably rule that succeeding on a ranged touch attack prohibits a saving tgrow (or at least increases the DC by 2 or 4), and that a target with Evasion gets to save for half.
Your argument isn't about how an evoker somehow taps into the school of magic at a level that others cannot. You're saying that you can't avoid an area of effect when the effect begins after it is already made contact with you. It's just a matter of physics and common sense and where the rules fail to meet them.
I've allowed the very same thing in similar situations, although the wizard was an illusionist. The targets never happened to have Evasion, though. Since that represents a level of agility beyond a Dexterity score, I'd be hesitant to negate it completely. I'd probably rule that succeeding on a ranged touch attack prohibits a saving tgrow (or at least increases the DC by 2 or 4), and that a target with Evasion gets to save for half.
You are very much on point with the direction of this. Exactly right. If I have to roll to hit your AC, then WHY are you still getting Saves + Evasion? The very purpose of Saves & Evasion is the assumption that the spell has to whatever extent simply missed. But what if you know for a fact that they DID NOT miss? How do you know this? Because you had to roll to hit the guy to start with.
Bare in mind that this only changes the nature of the spell against the one targeted character, and really only to the extent to denying the use of Evasion (and possibly denying a Save).
NOTE: before we slide too far off the rails with this discussion, allow me to state that in my campaign I simply have heavy damage casters like the Evoker learn spells that use Fort saves along side of their more traditional Ref saves. The Ref Save spells get tossed at other casters, the Fort saves get thrown at Rogues, Ninja and other Evasion types. The martial types usually get summoned monsters with movement impairing abilities like grapple dropped on them.
The point of this is that I DO know how to get around the limitations of the system, yet when world building and campaign balancing our troupe wanted something that was different from the cannon setting and started asking questions like these to see where they would lead us.
This is one such question.
3.5 had the Spellwarp Sniper prestige class that did pretty much exactly what you describe: change AoEs into ray attacks to get around Reflex saves.
I just looked it up, and it seems like a pretty straight forward conversion* if you didn't want to give the ability totally for free. Or you could just use it as a rules text template.
*I'd remove the Concentration skill from prereqs, and adjust the Spellcraft prereq down by 3. Get rid of Sudden Strike and just use Sneak Attack, because it's needlessly confusing to have two abilities that are so similar and adjust the class skills to add Stealth and Perception instead of Hide, Move Silenttly, and Spot
No, they were hit with the ranged touch and then resolved the spell normally. The ranged touch attack basically being used in place of their save as it is an active attack vs a passive resistance.
We played around with only denying Evasion vs denying both Evasion and the Ref Save based on the same argument.
How would you adjudicate improved evasion? Half damage or full?
The campaign has a level cap of 10th level, meaning that 99% of NPC foes would simply not have such an ability as it is only accessible as a 10th level Rogue: Advanced Talent it would rarely show up anyway. Playing Devil's Advocate here for a second however I'd still point out that the ability to target these spells ONLY applies to a Mage Specialist: Evoker to begin with as they are arguably one of the weakest caster options. Secondly by 10th level a rogue is likely to have a very solid touch AC so even if the Evoker were allowed a targeted touch AOE vs Imp Evasion it is still not a game changer.
That said however I'd have to give this one some thought. Frankly it never came up in our home campaign. I lean towards the same arguement that I've always had... if I have to roll to hit, by default it means I hit you! On the other hand, it is still a level 10 cap stone ability and some recognition should be allowed for that.
I may simply change how Evasion and Imp Evasion work in my campaign, such as allowing for a flat Ref Save bonus with Imp Evasion granting the 1/2 damage.... hmmm....
It sounds like a variant spell as much or more than like a power. I'd have no problem with them researching that spell.
isnt this what scorching ray is for?
Not a good idea. Run the spells as written to avoid disaster. Magic Missle doesn't miss. Scorching Ray is ranged touch. Fireball has a chance for evasion. That's the way it works.
isnt this what scorching ray is for?Scorching ray sucks and shouldn't be used unless you are like level 3-6.
???
I mean, what do you want from a 2nd level wizard spell, though? It's 4d6 (average of 14) points of fiery ranged touch goodness at 3rd level, no save. Most things aren't fire resistant at that level. It makes for a decent counterspell option and a pretty reliable blast.
Again, I'll say that the logic behind the idea is sound, but that it makes no sense to apply it only as an option for Evokers. It should just be an attribute of the spell itself.
Maybe I'm forgetting one, but I can't think of any ray that has a reflex save. I think that's the entire point. You either have to roll to hit, or the targets get to roll to mitigate/negate damage. Also, I believe in 3.5e they had metamagic feats that allowed players to change an AoE to a ray without a level increase. You're effectively creating another spell of equivalent power. I don't see a reason not to allow it. If my DM didn't, I'd just "research" my Fire Ray anyway.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If my DM didn't, I'd just "research" my Fire Ray anyway.
DM - "Fire ray"? You mean "Scorching Ray"?
You - "No. I studied Fire Ray because you said I couldn't just change spells into completely different effects on a whim. Fire Ray is a better Scorching Ray."
DM - ..? So because you don't like the spell that literally does exactly what you want already; you want a new spell called Fire Ray that's just buffed?
You - "Yeh. I roll 10d6; 42!"
DM - *rolls some dice behind the screen* "That's super weird, it seems you only did 16. Better luck on the next one"
___________
I really can't imagine how you see subverting your DM, the guy who does 100% of the work to run the game for you, is going to turn out.
DM - "What's that spell? Oh you made it up after I said Fireball isn't a ray? No you still can't have Fireball as a ray."
I'd point out that this idea of the ranged touch attack vs Evasion is specific not just to one spell, but is targeted at AOE attacks which frequently get snubbed by anyone with Evasion (which seems to be virtually everyone these days).
As for the question of if the other specialists got similar abilities, honestly I've not looked at them closely enough, however yes I'd have no issues with similar considerations. Actually there were some interesting Specialist Mage Variant classes (mostly homebrewed 3PP stuff) for 3.5 which really went down the rat hole with this sort of thing and might offer some good ideas from which to draw.