Am I reading this spell right?
It seems like the intent is that half of the electrical damage you take, minus resistances to electricity and saves for half damage, doesn't actually subtract from your hit points but is instead stored to make a touch attack later.
Or do you take all the damage you would normally take and then just get to deliver half of it back as a touch attack?
If it is the 2nd way, it seems it less useful than Shocking Grasp of the same level, which makes no sense.
You take every point of damage you would without it. It's a purely offensive spell.
And yes, the spell is crap.
Question; Does damage resisted still count as damage taken? If it does, this spell could be potentially useful. I haven't checked extensively, in either the forums or the FAQs, but the core rulebook seems to suggest some damage is merely ignored by resistance, not that it isn't taken. It's only immunity or damage resisted completely that negates any side effects of an attack.
The numerical part of a creature's damage reduction (or DR) is the amount of damage the creature ignores from normal attacks.
...
Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as
...
Energy Immunity and Vulnerability
A creature with energy immunity never takes damage from that energy type....
Energy Resistance
A creature with resistance to energy has the ability (usually extraordinary) to ignore some damage of a certain type per attack, but it does not have total immunity.
But, that's stretching it, and probably has been debated to death or FAQ'd elsewhere.
Nah, the only benefit of this spell is that it doesn't have an upper limit, and hence can be used situationally when you both have the health to tank a lightning strike, and wish to hold a touch attack until an opportune moment.
It's from the ACG, which introduced the bloodrager. I imagine that a bloodrager might be able to take a lot of electrical damage. The setup would be weird and I don't expect it'd be worth the spell slot & standard action in most games.
Sounds like it would be useful if it was either an immediate action or soaked up some damage before it could affect you and lets you return it but not as it was written or intended. Weird.