Approximate Frequency of Elemental AoE Against the Party?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


How often is the party attacked with a cold/fire/acid/electricity aoe spell/effect?

In your experience would a feat to avoid them be beneficial (obviously it wouldn't hurt) vs a different feat?

Or would a different, more commonly beneficial feat be better as it would "work" more frequently?


I'd guess that 90%+ of elemental AoE has a reflex save, so any feat for defense against them should be stronger than lightning reflexes (or whatever other general reflex boosters you can find.)

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In my experience, elemental AOE is pretty common at mid level. But as far as I'm aware, the only feats against it that are actually useful are Lightning Reflexes and Steel Soul.

That said, the Evasion ability is certainly worth having (and available on a ring, albeit a pretty expensive one).


In my opinion the most common form of enemy AoE is in the form of alchemist bombs.

But it can vary so much from campaign to campaign.


Caveat, we play adventure paths which affects the answer. AoE's of any sort are relatively infrequent, and in general most party members can typically pass the save. I generally think that a feat that is more commonly applicable is more beneficial than one which is situationally dependent.


Dragon breath, fireball-using liches / vampires / wizards... It seems fairly common to me.


TxSam88 wrote:
Caveat, we play adventure paths which affects the answer. AoE's of any sort are relatively infrequent, and in general most party members can typically pass the save. I generally think that a feat that is more commonly applicable is more beneficial than one which is situationally dependent.

Yeah, this is exactly what I'm trying to figure out. Something less good that works more often ends up being more useful if you never get AoE'd.

I just wanted some 'actual play' feedback vs 'theory' number crunching.

I suppose it does depend on the campaign but "on the average" is what I was hoping to figure out.


Honestly I don't use AoE in my homebrews a lot. When I do I optimize for it. A kobold Adept 5 for example is only considered a CR 2 threat but has 3 feats. If 2 of those are Spell Focus/Greater Spell Focus Evocation and the last one is Toughness, it could be riding around on a flying mauler familiar lobbing DC 16 Burning Hands spells that deal 5d4 damage. 12 Fire damage with a DC 16 Ref save is rough on a L2 PC.

Still, until you get to Breath Weapons I don't see tons of monsters by default with AoE damage. There's occasional ones that might have a Cone of Cold SLA or something, but this kind of attack occurs in less than half of all Bestiary entries I'd say.

Liberty's Edge

A relatively large number of monsters have elemental AoE attacks. The problem is knowing how often they appear when playing. And that is extremely campaign-dependent.
Then there is the matter of how many attacks they make and how powerful are those attacks. In the last AP I played we did meet 5 dragons. I think only three of them had the time to use their breath weapon, and only once for each of them, but one of those did enough damage to bring my druid from above 120 hp to utterly dead.
All the above makes the feat extremely situational, it can save the life of your character more than once in a campaign or it can make no difference.
I doubt there is a significant average, as every campaign is different and APs are fast-paced. You would need a slower campaign, maybe one using the slow experience track, to see the effect of the feat.

BTW, consider that there is a spell that reduces elemental damage: Resist Energy. Your feat would be better than a wand of Resist Energy with a CL of 7?
If it isn't better than a 10,500 gp wand that would last for most of an AP, it is not worth it. If it is noticeably better, probably it is too powerful.


*Thelith wrote:
TxSam88 wrote:
Caveat, we play adventure paths which affects the answer. AoE's of any sort are relatively infrequent, and in general most party members can typically pass the save. I generally think that a feat that is more commonly applicable is more beneficial than one which is situationally dependent.

Yeah, this is exactly what I'm trying to figure out. Something less good that works more often ends up being more useful if you never get AoE'd.

I just wanted some 'actual play' feedback vs 'theory' number crunching.

I suppose it does depend on the campaign but "on the average" is what I was hoping to figure out.

I'll put it this way. in our games, we have to make saves against the fireballs coming from the friendly PC mage FAR FAR more often than we have to make saves against enemy AoE's.

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Diego Rossi wrote:
BTW, consider that there is a spell that reduces elemental damage: Resist Energy. Your feat would be better than a wand of Resist Energy with a CL of 7?

Sure, but a feat that is always active is generally better than a spell that you need to spend an action on. In the case of dragons or elementals, it is fairly obvious what you need to protect against; but if you're facing an enemy spellcaster, you generally don't know what element you should protect against until they hit you with it.


Looking at the Advanced Race Guide.

Energy Resistance 5 for one element costs 1 RP.

Static Bonus Feat costs 2 RP.

So a feat is basically equivalent to energy resistance 5 for two different elements.


Thinking about it some more I would probably work it so that there is a feat Energy Resistance Lesser that gives you 2 versus all elements and Energy Resistance Greater that upgrades that number to 5.


Any time the party is up against a group of semi-intelligent/semi-prepared NPC's, the chances are pretty high. I try to build halfway functional teams of NPC's that include an archer, a reach weapon, and some sort of caster or an Alchemist-type... even just using NPC classes, the chances of the party being "softened up" with a AoE spell/splash weapon are pretty high.

At later levels, to get around common resistances, I like to convert elemental damage to Sonic damage via Choral Support.

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