Magic Trick (Fireball)

[JuliusCromwell]

Couple of questions Concerning The Feat Magic Trick Fire ball.

I am Missing the point of Cluster Bomb
How dose it help me?

And can I Combine Two Tricks such as Concentrated fire and Cluster Bombs and if so what is the result?

[avr]

Cluster bomb alone is like free, unlimited intensified spell. Add concentrated fire and you can also effectively empower (1.5x) the damage of fireball at the cost of making it a 5' radius effect, without increasing the spell level and which multiplies the effect of actual empower spell.

[Meirril]

By itself, Cluster Bomb lets you alter the shape (and output) of a Fireball. If you want to make a smaller fireball, you just pile up all of the 10' areas on top of each other and its becomes a full power small fireball.

If you want more area...you actually don't get more area. But you can control the shape of the fireball to go around things you want to avoid. You lose some damage, but considering you can do this without changing the level of the spell it is good for something you don't have to alter the base spell for.

The interesting thing about Cluster Bomb is that it isn't limited by caster level. So a CL 20 fireball would normally be 10d6 without metamagic to change that. But if that caster used Cluster Bomb he would get 10 2d6 areas, which could become a single 20d6 fireball because it works off of the CL and avoids the restrictions placed on the original spell. These changes from Cluster Bomb also ignore Intensify and Empowered.

Quite a few people want to combine Concentrated Fire and Cluster Bomb. There is no official ruling on this. If you are allowed to do both, it basically means you'll do 3d6 damage for every 2 caster levels, in a single 5' fireball if you stack every bit of Cluster Bomb on a single intersection. Considering that you can get an extra 3d6 from a normal fireball, doing both tricks together is way more efficient. To the point that I question the validity of allowing both tricks to stack.

[Diego Rossi]

Quote:

Cluster Bomb (Spellcraft 6 ranks): You are able to throw multiple small explosions with a single spell instead of the normal effect. For every 2 caster levels, you toss a miniature fireball with a 10-foot radius that deals 2d6 points of fire damage. The grid intersection of all blasts must be within 30 feet of each other. If a creature is in the area of multiple blasts, it attempts a single Reflex save against the combined damage.

Quote:

Concentrated Fire (Selective Spell or Widen Spell, Spellcraft 6 ranks): You can reduce the radius of your fireball by increments of 5 feet, to a minimum of a 5-foot radius. For each 5-foot increment you reduce the spell, you increase the spell’s damage by 1d6. This additional damage can exceed the spell’s maximum damage.

While you roll as single save for the combined damage the cluster bombs are several small fireballs each doing 2d6 damage. So Energy resistance: fire would be applied to each of them separately. Still very efficient.

The note at the end of Concentrated Fire seems to show that Cluster Bomb is still limited to the maximum damage of a standard fireball, as it hasn't the text allowing it to exceed maximum damage. Reasonable but not well written if that was the intention.

[Meirril]

Diego Rossi wrote:

The note at the end of Concentrated Fire seems to show that Cluster Bomb is still limited to the maximum damage of a standard fireball, as it hasn't the text allowing it to exceed maximum damage. Reasonable but not well written if that was the intention.

That definitely applies to Concentrated Fire. I don't feel it applies to Cluster Bomb because it is in the wrong section to apply to the previous ability.

Cluster Bomb should have a provision where it says (maximum of 5 cluster bombs), but it doesn't. That oversite gives permission for higher CL casters to get more than 10d6 of damage from a vanilla Fireball.

[JuliusCromwell]

avr wrote:

Cluster bomb alone is like free, unlimited intensified spell. Add concentrated fire and you can also effectively empower (1.5x) the damage of fireball at the cost of making it a 5' radius effect, without increasing the spell level and which multiplies the effect of actual empower spell.

So how much damage would I do at CL 7. Sorry I'm kinda bad at math

[avr]

CL 7 gets you 3 cluster bombs at a base 2d6 each, 10' radius. Concentrated fire makes each of them 3d6, 5' radius. Pile them all covering the same little area and the total is 9d6.