Orb Of Light Identifying if creature is undead.

[Gale.Rysoro]

Orb Of Light

Quote:

An orb of pure light the size of your hand shoots from your fingertips at a target. If you succeed on a ranged touch attack, the orb causes 1d6 hp damage per caster level (maximum 15d6). Undead suffer 1d8 hp damage per caster level (maximum 15d8). A creature struck by the orb is also blinded for 1 round. A successful Fortitude save prevents the blinding effect but not the damage.

This is pretty easy to understand, but my question is. Does the DM need to tell us if its undead or not when we use this spell, or should we roll both versions of damage everytime if the answer is unknown to the party?

[Aratorin]

Having to roll both versions every time would be very tiresome. I'd just reveal that the target is undead, unless there is a very important plot reason not to, in which case I'd just use the D6s to avoid revealing it.

[Gale.Rysoro]

Aratorin wrote:

Having to roll both versions every time would be very tiresome. I'd just reveal that the target is undead, unless there is a very important plot reason not to, in which case I'd just use the D6s to avoid revealing it.

DM agrees to this logic. Thanks a lot for the information.

[Quandary]

Pretty sure this is wrong forum, this isn't Pathfinder 2nd Edition spell, it's 3rd party spell for 1st Edition. Flagged.

On it's own merit,
Another alternative is just using 1d6+1/level which is on average equivalent of 1d8/level, i.e. GM secretly adding the +1/level.
Or just have the GM always roll the damage for this spell behind the screen. No reason players really need to, right?

If everybody is cool with it "identifying" Undead, "fluffing" it as "extra bright flare of light" (that reveals undead target), go for that.
But I don't see compelling reason why it necessarily is noticeable, it's same damage type and not a huge increase. /shrug

[Samurai]

Wouldn't it just be easier to cast a Heal on a suspected Undead? If they take damage, they are Undead or something else that takes damage from Good energy.

[Quandary]

Heal isn't even ranged in 1E, but that concept (or equivalent with with CLW, Channel, etc) only applies if SOLELY interested in damaging/identifying undead and absolutely wanting to avoid damaging them if they are living. If you are hostile to them regardless, Orb of Light lets you do almost the same amount of damage with same blind effect to living targets, any bonus damage or "identification" (if people want to rule that way) is frosting VS undead, although the potential "identification" aspect could be strong reason to use spell VS other damage/blinding spells if confirming they are undead might be especially important.

I'm not even sure if the OP is aware the content is for 1E not 2E... d20pfsrd (which hosts this 3rd party spell) doesn't actually make overtly clear that their 1E site is for 1E specifically (which wasn't originally necessary when there only was one edition of Pathfinder). Seems like good idea to change website address and page design to explicitly state it is "1st edition" so new players don't get confused.

I already flagged thread as wrong sub-forum so mods should move it to correct sub-forum (no need to repost it),
but for future posts on 1E topics, this is the correct, separate 1E sub-forum: https://paizo.com/community/forums/pathfinder/firstEdition