Finally got around to this. I haven't seen much play at these upper levels, as always these are my opinions only. Looking forward to hear yours.
Frigid Flurry do 18 dice damage in a line and move there, clears a path of used reactions. Very unique.
Inexhaustible Cynicism just lots of fun, how much fun is going to depend on how good your GM is.
Maze of Locked Doors a Maze spell. Takes them out for a round even if they make their save.
Tempest of Shades a really huge ally friendly area drain and scare.
Burning Blossoms finally an ability that uses fascinate that doesn't suck. Your enemies are going to lose a lot of actions walking towards this tree. A rare primal area will save.
Prismatic Shield a good defense against spells and ranged attacks
Cosmic Form a nice flying battle form for divine and primal casters
Canticle of Everlasting Grief a good single target debuff against someone who is already buffed up.
Divine Armageddon huge negative or positive damage in a big area.
Voracious Gestalt this spell is going to kill parties if the GM plays it right. All I have to do is sacrifice a minion each round. Bwa ha ha ha!
Clone Companion a second companion. Really good if your animal companion is still competitive offensively at this level. control it for freee with your other one.
Summon Kaiju a good range of strong effects.
Summon Deific Herald gives everyone in the party the Champion reaction until the end of your next turn and the neutral good one even heal everyone in the party.
Gortle,
I have really enjoyed seeing your opinions on the spell lists, especially for the fact that it attacks the issue from a sorcerer's POV.
You have been pretty exhaustive in your coverage, though there are a few that I think you overlooked. Most of these seem to be spells that aren't on the Arcane list (eg. Whirlwind, Moonburst, Gray Shadow, Repelling Pulse, etc).
There are also a few from the Arcane list, like Chromatic Image, Rewinding Step, Blink Charge...(there seem to be a few at Level 5).
I have the entire list if you are interested.
Again, I think this is a great resource and have referenced it extensively when paring down my character spell lists.
Thanks.
Prismatic Shield feels like a spell for bosses subject to a barrage from a party of PCs, not something a PC should pop off w/ its one round, unless suffering so many attacks they shouldn't be there (as HumbleGamer noted).
Inexhaustible Cynicism does look like a lot of fun. My only concern with it is that its damage doesn't scale. At all. So at level 13 creatures might choose the slowed 1 effect. But a level 18 creature will probably just take the damage. Not sure if that was intended or not.
Voracious Gestalt: this spell is going to kill parties if the GM plays it right. All I have to do is sacrifice a minion each round. Bwa ha ha ha!
Mmmmmm... I don't think that will work.
It is quite a bit of cheese to allow it to power up by killing your allies. If I was GM, I would shut that down.
But even if that was allowed, it still wouldn't work very well since those allies would have to be equivalent level to you. And they will take a while to kill using this AOE damage. And then it will likely kill all of them at the same time - which will only power up the spell once. You would have to micro-manage your minion characters to get them to stagger the amount of damage that they have taken and coordinate what round they will end up dying on. So that is pretty much all you are going to be doing on your rounds. And since it is going to take several rounds of damage to kill any of the minions, you are going to be a sitting duck. And once you are knocked out, the spell will end shortly after.
I think Voracious Gestalt might work fine when the underlings are getting whittled down naturally by the party's efforts...but then the caster would have to choose to target them! That significant damage to your allies doesn't seem worth the paltry (at those levels) 1d6 extra damage per round, at least if they're decent combatants (which the spell stipulates they have to be in order to power up the spell). At most I'd think targeting only one wounded ally on its last legs would be a viable tactic (unless one had allies that explode when dying or something, which changes the dynamic). That one boost would be a huge increase in area though!
So yeah, that's an odd spell, and I'd think it'd favor PC use where one's enemies are expected to die and you might be facing a large amount of them. Even in that scenario, I'd lean toward Horrid Wilting or Wail of the Banshee instead.
Hmm, might make for a good trap effect. Even if a trap mindlessly chose all targets, some undead or construct guardians could exploit that.
Gortle,
I have really enjoyed seeing your opinions on the spell lists, especially for the fact that it attacks the issue from a sorcerer's POV.
You have been pretty exhaustive in your coverage, though there are a few that I think you overlooked. Most of these seem to be spells that aren't on the Arcane list (eg. Whirlwind, Moonburst, Gray Shadow, Repelling Pulse, etc).
There are also a few from the Arcane list, like Chromatic Image, Rewinding Step, Blink Charge...(there seem to be a few at Level 5).
I have the entire list if you are interested.
Again, I think this is a great resource and have referenced it extensively when paring down my character spell lists.
Thanks.
Thankyou. It is clear I've missed a few around level 5. I will go back and check again. In a few days though. Too much real work to do.
I think Voracious Gestalt might work fine when the underlings are getting whittled down naturally by the party's efforts...but then the caster would have to choose to target them! That significant damage to your allies doesn't seem worth the paltry (at those levels) 1d6 extra damage per round, at least if they're decent combatants (which the spell stipulates they have to be in order to power up the spell). At most I'd think targeting only one wounded ally on its last legs would be a viable tactic (unless one had allies that explode when dying or something, which changes the dynamic). That one boost would be a huge increase in area though!
So yeah, that's an odd spell, and I'd think it'd favor PC use where one's enemies are expected to die and you might be facing a large amount of them. Even in that scenario, I'd lean toward Horrid Wilting or Wail of the Banshee instead.
Hmm, might make for a good trap effect. Even if a trap mindlessly chose all targets, some undead or construct guardians could exploit that.
Yes when you read it they have fairly arbitrarily closed off a lot of the cheese by level gates. Something I find a distasteful metagame. I prefer to let these things run wild. Of course an ungated spell at a certain point would just swallow everything in the world once it got going.
My BBEG is still not going to run short of victims for the purposes of my game though.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Finally got around to this. I haven't seen much play at these upper levels, as always these are my opinions only. Looking forward to hear yours.
Frigid Flurry do 18 dice damage in a line and move there, clears a path of used reactions. Very unique.
Frigid Flurry is also a party-friendly spell too.
Love this topic.
Shadow Army - Really cool visual on this spell and I think it's pretty decent AOE spell since the effect only targets enemies. The defensive benefit here is pretty nice, too, when it works.
Boil Blood - Okay, it's a Fort save spell, but man the theme of this spell is really cool. Because of the drained effect essentially reducing HP, you will do some serious "damage" if they do fail their save. Against the right creature, this could really be impactful. Since it does reduce Fort saves also, if you land this once you can follow up with another one to finish them off, or your allies will be able to pile on.
Love this topic.
It is great the Paizo releases new content and provides new spells. It really adds to game play to have new challenges and new options.
Shadow Army - Really cool visual on this spell and I think it's pretty decent AOE spell since the effect only targets enemies. The defensive benefit here is pretty nice, too, when it works.
Yeah any of the Shadow themed casters or any caster with a stealth roll will like this.