Please help develop and critique my wound spell.
(Spell 1)
Necromancy, Nonlethal, Uncommon
Traditions arcane, divine, occult, primal
Cast Single Action to Three Actions (somatic, verbal)
Range 60 feet; Targets 1 corporeal living creature, see text
You use necromantic magic to rend the flesh of a creature that you can see, opening superficial but painfully jagged tears in their body. This automatically deals 1d6 nonlethal negative damage to the target. For each additional action you use when Casting the Spell, increase the damage dice you roll by one, to a maximum of 3d6 for 3 actions. For each damage die rolled, you cause one jagged flesh wound to appear on your target. You choose the target for each wound individually. If you open more than one wound upon the same target, combine the damage before applying bonuses or penalties to damage, resistances, weaknesses, and so forth.
Heightened (+2) You open one additional wound with each action you spend, dealing additional damage dice as appropriate.
If I am reading this correctly, it is essentially a magic missile open to all 4 disciplines of magic, with half the range, that does nonlethal negative damage instead of force damage, and does 1d6 instead of 1d4+1?
I don't see it breaking the game in any way that is problematic, other than making magic missile a little less special of a spell. Also you might want to consider how it can be stopped as a tactic as magic missile has spells and items that interact specifically with it.
You also probably want to make sure you adjust the language of second sentence to include the phrase "automatically hits, instead of automatically deals damage, to make sure that you are not bypassing a step in the order of operations of attacks. "Automatically does damage" might sound to some like it could bypass resistances or other parts of determining what happens if it never interacts with the process of determining if it hits (which it does automatically) before moving on to determine damage.
I agree that it makes magic missile a little less special and that could be of potential concern. As magic missile has items and spells that specifically have additional functions that interfere with it, it seems like this spell should have some interactions with some other items/magics.
You don't specify what type of damage it does, just that it needs to tear open the flesh. You also specify that the target needs to be a living creature, that was a good choice. It gives an interaction with a common trait, right out of the gate. I'm going to suggest that you start out with it producing piercing damage, and allow as part of the +2 heightening allow it to gain the Versatile Slashing trait.
For flavor I might also suggest an idea to give it more interaction than only affecting living creatures. The spell is less effective within areas of divine protection. When within the area of a Bless spell or effect, any targets reduce the damage done by any wound by 1 HP per wound, before Appling weakness or resistance.
Also I would suggest that you specify, despite doing physical damage, the spell automatically hits if you can see the target, and it cannot be blocked by shields (physical or the shield spell).
Also of note is that the Daze spell is an example of a spell doing only nonlethal damage (and an effect on crit) and it does way less damage than most other spells. It is also worth noting that it does mental damage, which is one of the rarer ones, so that may also be playing into it, but it might lead one to consider that perhaps having it do the same average damage as magic missile might not be the right damage range. I'm not positive either way. I'm going to lean towards the fact that physical resistances are relatively common that it may be fine as it is at the moment, but I did want to at least make mention of it.
Another question, or detail to ask yourself... would creatures immune to bleed, also be immune from wound? From flavor I'd certainly contemplate if it might be intended.
Another interesting option for additional flavor, since it is producing otherwise supernatural wounds on the target to cause its non-lethal damage, it is not causing lethal damage, but is causing direct wounds. I'd suggest you could consider having a target taken to 0 HP with this spell, makes a Fortitude saving throw or acquires the Wounded 1 condition, if it does not already have a wounded condition. It doesn't increase the wounded condition if it already had it. This would make someone taken down by this less capable to taking the fight back up when they get revived... which seems completely in line with its flavor. I also think it helps it from getting the flavor of, 'this is a spell I can throw around all I want since it only does non-lethal damage, so everyone should be happy with it' sort of flavor. The idea of wounds popping up on people seems kind of sickening, and I think it should. Certainly, divine forces of good, hoping to either bring someone in for public justice, or potentially even redemption would want to use it, but it still would obviously be viewed as a harmful attack.
I love the idea of a new variable length spell however! Also I'm going to also suggest considering having the one action version of the spell only utilize Somatic components, with the 2 and 3 action ones being Somatic, Verbal. Sort of a cross between Heal and Magic Missile, in terms of component progression.
That's my thoughts and feedback, If you change things, I'd be curious to know what you come up with, since it sounds really promising!
Thanks for the advice everyone!
Loreguard, I did state that it does negative damage. That's also why I limited the target to living corporeal creatures; because I didn't want it to be used as a healing battery for undead or it working on creatures without flesh or flesh equivalents. I toyed with the idea of it never reducing a target to less than one hit point, but ultimately opted to make it nonlethal instead.
I should probably also add a line clarifying that creatures with Negative Healing are immune to this spell (I believe the rules already support this, as this is clearly not an undead healing spell, but it never hurts to be clear).
Unicore, I don't think I'm going to add any conditional immunities or anything like what appear in magic missile. It's already strictly weaker than magic missile in nearly every way (a deliberate decision on my part as it lands on other spell lists). It does lower minimum damage, has lower range, can't kill anything, is a more commonly resisted energy type, and is useless against incorporeal, undead, or undead-like creatures. I think it has more than enough drawbacks to make up for being on more lists and not having an equivalent to a brooch of shielding.
Sorry, I don't know how I missed the negative damage bit, knowing I even looked again at I, I must have zoned out on it, expecting a physical damage, by the description.
Note, having it interact with something, the target being in the area of a bless spell dropping the damage by 1 each wound is simple.
It is sort of like a reverse of the Disrupt Undead cantrip. But comparing that one, while its damage scales twice as fast, it always takes two actions to cast, and only targets one foe.
That means your version does twice the damage of an inverted disrupt undead at first level. When done as a two action casting for comparison. Cast as a 3rd level spell, it would to do the same damage, save it can spread the damage out to multiple targets.
They would have to get to a 4th level inverted Disrupt undead spell (if one existed) to perhaps pass up damage for your spell. It also has a save, which could be critically failed, or they might save vs. it. But I almost forgot that Disrupt undead is a cantrip, so that has to play a part.
Note that with magic missile, you don't know if someone is wearing a brooch of shielding, or I suppose you might know if they have a shield spell up, but you might not know if a particular opponent knows the shield spell until they cast it. I guess the point being that the drawbacks are more obvious on what the spell will be 100% effective on. Even though there is a reasonable set of things it would not be effective on, the creatures it is effective on, have less options to resist it. (does that make sense?)
I was going to say that it was seeming too powerful, but reminding myself of the cantrip status of disrupt undead, I think I may have convinced myself it may be ok. I still think something should be able to reduce the damage, since it is an automatic it, other than just resistance negative.
Actually, you bring up an interesting idea of what about a cantrip:
Disrupt Life [cantrip, necromancy, negative, uncommon]: d4 + spellcasting modifier nonlethal negative damage to one target; 30' range; 2 action; Save Fortitude; (+1 heighten) +1d4 damage. (if the target struck is already unconscious and stable, it gets or increases the wounded condition by one step if it fails its fort save; if dying, the target raises its dying condition by 1 if it fails the fort save; critical fails still only change condition by 1 level} Targets 1 living creature; Schools Occult, Primal
I reduced damage since I feel targeting undead is more narrow focus than targeting living, so adjusted damage some for that. I liked your idea of weaker negative necromantic energy not being lethal. It does more damage in general compared to Daze, scaling a little faster, but as you mentioned, resist negative is likely more common than resist mental, and it doesn't have the bonus of stunned on a critical. Shorter range than daze, similar to disrupt undead.