What are people's thoughts on Agitate (Occult list). Would it make the cut in your repertoire?
AGITATE SPELL 1
ENCHANTMENT MENTAL NONLETHAL
Traditions arcane, occult
Cast [two-actions] somatic, verbal
Range 30 feet; Targets 1 creature
Saving Throw Will; Duration varies
You send the target’s mind and body into overdrive,
forcing it to become restless and hyperactive.
During the duration, the target must Stride
at least once each turn or take 2d8 mental
damage that turn. The duration of this
effect depends on the target’s Will save.
Critical Success The spell has no effect.
Success The duration is 1 round.
Failure The duration is 2 rounds.
Critical Failure The duration is 4 rounds.
Heightened (+1) The damage increases by 2d8.
Or would you rather go with spells like Magic Missile, Phantom Pain, Grim Tendrils over this new one?
Rather go with another spell, the duration for success and failure seems too short when other spells can give similar conditions and last longer.
Interesting, Which spells do you speak of?
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Attack of Opportunity
This is the determining factor IMO. In the right group and vs a low will save target you're doing pretty good.
Or would you rather go with spells like Magic Missile, Phantom Pain, Grim Tendrils over this new one?
Magic Missile: Hard to go wrong with this. Sometimes it more important to deal some damage vs trying for greater damage. The option to vary damage just adds to it's usefulness.
Phantom Pain: Damage and a debuff, not bad. Mental so useless vs mindless but nonlethal so can knock someone out [just hope persistent damage doesn't kill them].
Grim Tendrils: line attack, so multiple creatures could be hit. Only targets living creatures, so depending on game might not be too useful or could even heal undead. Crit fail doubles damage.
PS: Also thought of something interesting. Use the spell on something that can't stride. For example, Living Whirlwind and Great White Shark can't Stride, they have to Fly or Swim so they don't have the option to avoid the damage.
It's one of the highest damage dealing spell in the game: nearly 4.275 DPA per spell level (if I count only one round duration)
Fully buffed Harm is a bit over that with roughly 5 DPA. But it's a melee spell so harder to land.
True Striked Disintegrate is around 2.5 DPA, so nearly half damage.
Clearly, against a creature who can't move and if you're sure the creature will live up to the end of its turn, it's the most brutal spell of the game.
As a side note, I dislike the concept of the spell :D
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I kinda like the concept of the spell, but I think the implementation is very open to cheese;
* The chance that if you have this spell, you'll also have an AoO heavy party is extremely high. I mean, if you have this spell, it'll encourage your martial party members to pick up AoO. And you were more likely to pick this spell if you had AoO heavy party members. So I think its power should be evaluated in that context.
* If you do have an AoO-heavy party, the expected damage from AoOs could mount up quickly. So the enemy would often have to choose not to Stride. At that point, it deals rather a lot of damage, scaling up rather fast with heightening.
* It gets really cheesy if you combine it with anything that reduces enemy mobility. For example, if you also trip the enemy, they have to spent two actions to avoid this spell, and at that point they'll usually not be able to use any special abilities anymore because those tend to cost 1-2 actions.
* It combos too well with other action-reducing spells like Slow and effects like Stunning Fist.
Altogether I think it's too inviting to abuse. You could mitigate it a bit by for example saying:
If the enemy starts the turn with less than 3 actions (perhaps due to a Slowed condition), or unable to Stride (due to being Prone or Grabbed perhaps), then the spell immediately ends.
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* The chance that if you have this spell, you'll also have an AoO heavy party is extremely high. I mean, if you have this spell, it'll encourage your martial party members to pick up AoO. And you were more likely to pick this spell if you had AoO heavy party members. So I think its power should be evaluated in that context.
Unlike you, I quite like that. I like the concept of building the party in synergy. If the whole party gets very powerful due to non overpowered synergistic abilities, I find that pretty awesome. Far more interesting than building and playing your character independantly from the party.
Altogether I think it's too inviting to abuse.
Even if you consider that the enemy can't avoid the damage, this spell stays in line. It makes pretty high damage, but not crazy high damage. It won't trivialize fights on its own.
Also, against multiple enemies, it gets overshadowed by AoE spells, so you will not use it all the time anyway.| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I really like the way this spell asks you to play tactically with your allies to set up opportunities where your spell's victims are "damned if they do, damned if they don't". The tactical barrier is low, but you still only really want to use it when enemies are in melee range of your AoO-ers, or are otherwise restrained. Its not a spell that's always going to be good, and that seems fun to me.
The correct decision from the enemy will *usually* be to move and eat an AoO from one ally. To get the full damage from the spell, you really need to get multiple people with AoOs next to your target, or you need to one-two combo with an immobilizing ability.
That's a cool design.
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PS: Also thought of something interesting. Use the spell on something that can't stride. For example, Living Whirlwind and Great White Shark can't Stride, they have to Fly or Swim so they don't have the option to avoid the damage.
Stride:
You move up to your Speed.
Speed:
Most characters and monsters have a speed statistic—also called land Speed—which indicates how quickly they can move across the ground. When you use the Stride action, you move a number of feet equal to your Speed. Numerous other abilities also allow you to move, from Crawling to Leaping, and most of them are based on your Speed in some way. Whenever a rule mentions your Speed without specifying a type, it’s referring to your land Speed.
Movement Types:
Each of these special movement types has its own Speed value. Many creatures have these Speeds naturally. The various types of movement are listed below. Since the Stride action can be used only with your normal Speed, moving using one of these movement types requires using a special action, and you can’t Step while using one of these movement types. Since Speed by itself refers to your land Speed, rules text concerning these special movement types specifies the movement types to which it applies.
This is kind of funky. I would assume a "Move up to your Speed" for a Shark's swim would fall under the category of "creatures [that] have these Speeds naturally." "Since the Stride action can be used only with your normal Speed," and the Shark's only Speed is "swim 40 feet," I'd say that the Shark's swimming 40 feet is its Stride and not a special movement type.
I think the intent is that the creature has to somehow physically move itself to avoid taking damage, and if the only way for the creature to physically move itself (i.e. not magically move itself or whatever) is to fly or swim or burrow then that would count as a Stride.
Could be wrong though.
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I think the intent is that the creature has to somehow physically move itself to avoid taking damage, and if the only way for the creature to physically move itself (i.e. not magically move itself or whatever) is to fly or swim or burrow then that would count as a Stride.
Could be wrong though.
Oh, I agree that might be the intent but they did go WAY out of their way to make sure each speed type requires it's own action. It's a situation where the game can't have it both ways: we have NO way to know if it's an oversight [the creator didn't take into account creatures without speed] or when it's an intentional use of the different speed types.
As written, Crawl and Jump are movement actions too that aren't allowed as is Step. Would "intent" cover these alternate movement actions too? Where and when do we ignore then rules and allow swapping of stride for Swim, Climb, Burrow and Fly? Do we allow Wall Run with Swim? Look at the note under Spring Attack/Sudden Charge: "You can use Spring Attack while Burrowing, Climbing, Flying, or Swimming instead of Striding if you have the corresponding movement type." There is also "You can use Nimble Roll while Flying or Swimming instead of Striding if you have the corresponding movement type."With explicit wording like that in some places, it makes it seem even MORE likely when such statements aren't there it's intentional.
The issue could be solved by instead stating a move action. As the current wording doesn't specify striding up to speed, even a step-worth of striding should currently trigger it anyway.
Damage feels a bit high for me currently, but that's purely a gut feeling. I haven't done any calculation.
Surely this should go in the homebrew section?
Can you stride for 0 ("up to your speed")? Though this would not saveguard vs AoO because move action at least you could still use your -10 MAP 3rd action for it and would not have to move?
The issue could be solved by instead stating a move action. As the current wording doesn't specify striding up to speed, even a step-worth of striding should currently trigger it anyway.
Damage feels a bit high for me currently, but that's purely a gut feeling. I haven't done any calculation.
Surely this should go in the homebrew section?
To be more in line with other abilities it should be more like: 'the target may take a fly, climb or swim action instead of a stride action if it has the corresponding movement type.'
The issue could be solved by instead stating a move action.
IMO, people are worried people would use a Step, an action that doesn't provoke AoO.
Can you stride for 0 ("up to your speed")?
Move trait: "An action with this trait involves moving from one space to another." Stride has that trait.
Can you stride for 0 ("up to your speed")?Move trait: "An action with this trait involves moving from one space to another." Stride has that trait.
So you have to move from one space to another when standing up and dropping prone? Because the respective actions themselves do not interfere with this general trait rule.
Also...
"If you use a move action but don’t move out of a square, the trigger instead happens at the end of that action or ability."
The question is if this is just the exception for the above mentioned standing up and dropping prone actions, or can you deliberately choose to use move but not to move.
I am open for input.
"If you use a move action but don’t move out of a square, the trigger instead happens at the end of that action or ability."The question is if this is just the exception for the above mentioned standing up and dropping prone actions, or can you deliberately choose to use move but not to move.
I initially assumed it was for something like Tumble Through where you can Stride and try to move through others square but could fail: for instance if you try to tumble through the creature adjacent to you and fail the roll, your movement could end before you actually leave your square [so you intended to leave the square]. I guess it could be for Drop Prone/Stand Up as I'm inclined to think they are exceptions to moving a square vs forcing those actions to include moving a square.
Surely this should go in the homebrew section?
Am dumb. This is an actual spell.
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I kinda like the concept of the spell, but I think the implementation is very open to cheese;
* The chance that if you have this spell, you'll also have an AoO heavy party is extremely high. I mean, if you have this spell, it'll encourage your martial party members to pick up AoO. And you were more likely to pick this spell if you had AoO heavy party members. So I think its power should be evaluated in that context.
* If you do have an AoO-heavy party, the expected damage from AoOs could mount up quickly. So the enemy would often have to choose not to Stride. At that point, it deals rather a lot of damage, scaling up rather fast with heightening.
* It gets really cheesy if you combine it with anything that reduces enemy mobility. For example, if you also trip the enemy, they have to spent two actions to avoid this spell, and at that point they'll usually not be able to use any special abilities anymore because those tend to cost 1-2 actions.
* It combos too well with other action-reducing spells like Slow and effects like Stunning Fist.
Altogether I think it's too inviting to abuse. You could mitigate it a bit by for example saying:
If the enemy starts the turn with less than 3 actions (perhaps due to a Slowed condition), or unable to Stride (due to being Prone or Grabbed perhaps), then the spell immediately ends.
It also needs to be heightened to the heighest level or second heighest level in order to be relevant otherwise monsters will just choose to take the damage everytime. You mention if you combine it with a trip, the enemy will need to spend an action to get up and then an action to stride to get away in order to avoid the damage, that is true but Command can do the exact same thing and is a level 1 spell.