Dazing spell + ongoing damage [PF1]


Rules Questions

The Concordance

We are playing AP: Kingmaker with PFS rules.
One of my PC use Dazing Metamagic Rod to cast Aqueous Orb, so every round he can move the Orb to make multiple targets to make saving throw to avoid dazed. Is it too much?

Taking Furious Spell as a reference, it can "deal the extra damage once to each target, regardless of whether the spell deals its damage all at once or in multiple hits (in the latter case, add the extra damage to the first hit against each target) ". Can I deal with Dazing spell by analogy?

The Exchange

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Is it too much? Yes.
Does it work the way your player wants it to? By rule, yes.
Can you use Furious Spell as a limiter? By rule, no. Dazing Spell happens “when a creature takes damage from a spell,” which can happen on multiple rounds. As the GM, though, you can decide to limit anything however you want if you are playing in campaign mode. If you’re playing just the PFS sanctioned parts of an AP with regular PFS characters that’s not an option.

You can (and should) talk to your player about being a “good gaming citizen.” If you’re able to make every encounter a cakewalk, you shouldn’t. Ask him to let others shine and only pull out his “big gun” when the PCs are in real trouble.

P.S. Dazing Spell is widely regarded to be one of the most overpowered options in the game.
P.P.S. Wait until your player discovers adding Persistent Spell to the orb. Particularly with magical lineage and Wayang spellhunter traits.


Wouldn't ongoing damage simply reset the duration of Dazing Spell?

Dark Archive

There's a similar question with toppling spell and magic missile (does the target get 5 chances to fall down if you hit it with 5 missiles).

If I were the GM in your situation, I'd let it affect every target once, when they first roll the save (There's nothing in the description saying anything about multiple instances of damage proccing multiple saves or not), and even then it's extremely good.

I'd point out that whether the orb is supposed to give you a daze attempt against multiple opponents each round when combined with dazing spell is, at best, questionable.

Quote:

"As a Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild GM, you have

the right and responsibility to make whatever judgments,
within the rules, that you feel are necessary at your table to
ensure everyone has a fair and fun experience. This does
not mean you can contradict rules or restrictions outlined
in this document, a published Pathfinder RPG source,
errata document, or official FAQ on paizo.com. What it
does mean is that only you can judge what is right for your
table during cases not covered in these sources."

Making the judgement that the dazing only applies once per target seems fair and, in my experience, within expected table variation.

(I used to run a similar sorcerer that used toppling magic missiles, which seemed cheesy as well. Decided I would only apply to one target per casting, not to all targets, and certainly not multiple times to the same target.)

Liberty's Edge

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This is not a Society Specific question so I have flagged the posted to be moved to the 1e Rules area.

Grand Archive

UnArcaneElection wrote:

Wouldn't ongoing damage simply reset the duration of Dazing Spell?

Not if you target a different creature each round...

It also works with flaming sphere...


^That seems reasonable -- if you kept hitting different creatures with a Flaming Sphere each round, each one that failed to Save would be Dazed for 2 rounds (2nd level spell), whereas if you kept it on 1 creature that failed its Save, that creature would be Dazed for that duration + 1 additional round.

The Concordance

Belafon wrote:

Is it too much? Yes.

Does it work the way your player wants it to? By rule, yes.
Can you use Furious Spell as a limiter? By rule, no. Dazing Spell happens “when a creature takes damage from a spell,” which can happen on multiple rounds. As the GM, though, you can decide to limit anything however you want if you are playing in campaign mode. If you’re playing just the PFS sanctioned parts of an AP with regular PFS characters that’s not an option.

You can (and should) talk to your player about being a “good gaming citizen.” If you’re able to make every encounter a cakewalk, you shouldn’t. Ask him to let others shine and only pull out his “big gun” when the PCs are in real trouble.

P.S. Dazing Spell is widely regarded to be one of the most overpowered options in the game.
P.P.S. Wait until your player discovers adding Persistent Spell to the orb. Particularly with magical lineage and Wayang spellhunter traits.

Very clear. Thanks. Looks like the only way is to talk to my player.

About the P.P.S, I convinced my player(the same player) not to use the magical lineage + Wayang spellhunter according to the response of designer Mark Seifter. Is there any designer's comment on Dazing spell?

The Exchange

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I haven't seen any messageboard designer comments around "should dazing spell exist" like the spellhunter/lineage comment from Mark. I did have an in-person conversation with a designer at PaizoCon a couple of years ago where he mentioned deliberately putting in anti-dazing protections for NPCs in a scenario because it was too easy for players to use daze to shut down what was supposed to be an epic fight. I don't think he explicitly said it this way but the subtext was "I'm sick of dazing."

By the way here is a link to a blog-post villain from about 5 years ago who uses dazing aqueous orb. It's a pretty well-known (and pretty potent) combo.

APG is probably the book with the most out-of-scale options. Mainly because it was the first hardcover expansion and no one was really sure what the scale was going to be. So I don't think you'll see designers saying "dazing spell shouldn't work like that" though you can probably find several comments like "If we knew then what we know now, we would have written some things differently."

The Concordance

I see. According to the link, dazing aqueous orb is a legal combo. I will talk to my PC not to use it everywhere.


Seems that Metamagic shouldn't have a one size fits all cost. For instance, Dazing Spell should cost more on a spell that has a duration greater than Instantaneous (including a normally Instantaneous spell given a longer duration by other Metamagic).

The Concordance

Fair enough.

Customer Service Representative

Thread moved to First Edition Rules.


It generally won't change things too much, but as a GM I recommend that you make anything that is both immune to stuns and immune to mind-affecting effects to also be immune to dazed condition. You could potentially even reduce it to just one of the immunities, such as mind-affecting.

(most plants, constructs, oozes, and undead, for example, but also more powerful special monsters)


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It will probably just work itself out... I have played with Dazing Channel (Rulership Varient Channel)... had a monster Charisma, the Sacred Conduit trait to boost DC's, Improved Channel (obviously)... for all that investment, I used it maybe 8 times in just as many levels. Honestly, it was clutch when I used it, but I was mainly there for support. Aid Another and Bodyguard was my priority with that build... emergency condition removal.

Point is, it's not seat of the pants fun fighting statues. Nobody wants their "thing" to be freaking Dazing Water Ball... remember that Kingmaker campaign we aced like it was nothing and all you used was dazing aqueous orb?

Nobody wants that... it will work itself out.

If all else fails, have someone Sunder the rod, or Steal it...


Joesi wrote:
It generally won't change things too much, but as a GM I recommend that you make anything that is both immune to stuns and immune to mind-affecting effects to also be immune to dazed condition. You could potentially even reduce it to just one of the immunities, such as mind-affecting.

Given that both the daze spell and the daze monster spell are mind-affecting, it's not much of a stretch assuming the condition is mind-affecting in general.


the whole thing is negated by a reflex save... should be plenty of characters who can pass it.

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