Infectious Ennui


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion


This spell got released with the Kingmaker Companion guide. Haven't had the opportunity to test it yet in a game, but isn't it a bit too much on paper?

On a success, it is better Slow strictly speaking. Double the range and targets will for the same effect.

On a failure, in exchange for needing sustain, the spell adds permanent frightened 1 as long as you sustain it and every turn it can cause other creature to gain slowed 1 for a turn. I think I would take the trade-off every time.

To put it differently, I don't see the sustain as a sustain, but as the spell giving you single target cast of Dirge of Doom that can cause slowed on top to creatures other than your target. If you see it like that it sounds a bit concerning, isn't it? The immediate effect os stacking slowed + frightened is also big.

The level 5 version effect seems pretty good as well, but it is not as easy to compare to Slow 6 as the non-heightened version is with Slow 3.

I just want to know other people opinion on this. Slow already is one of the strongest spells in the game and this seems like setting the bar even higher than that.


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AP spells tend to be poorly balanced unfortunately.

That said... IDK. It's a bit better than slow in exchange for being something you have to sustain and having worse tags (emotion and mental traits mostly just give more ways to resist it). The extra actions add up a lot more than I think you give them credit for.

That said, it could easily be a weaker spell and still be worth casting and the debuff potential is pretty brutal if you can land it on someone important and then spread it onto mooks too.

...IMO the most interesting and potent thing about the spell is that it's Divine, which is the one spell list that doesn't natively get Slow.

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To put it differently, I don't see the sustain as a sustain, but as the spell giving you single target cast of Dirge of Doom that can cause slowed on top to creatures other than your target. If you see it like that it sounds a bit concerning, isn't it?

Couldn't you flip that around and say that instead of sustaining Ennui, you could just cast Dirge and apply the same fear effect but in an AoE?


Yeah, I'm with Squiggit on all points. An Occult caster would probably prefer Infectious Ennui instead of Slow in most cases. The success save result is the same, and the fail save result is a lot better - though at the cost of being sustained.

It is tagged as Rare - but that isn't supposed to be for power boosted spells.

It at least won't break games. It is not better than casting Slow and Dirge of Doom. It just opens up that option to non-Bard characters.


I'm not convinced it's better than slow (though slow is arguably the best spell in the game).

Sustained vs duration is a clear weakness, more enemies are immune to it and its upgrade is worse than slows.

It's still a great spell but if I was bard I would pick slow over it because its more universal and there are other sustained spell that I like more (hideous laughter for one).


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It's competitive at baseline considering all the restrictions(mental, emotion) but it solidly loses to slow when heightened.

ALso let Divine enjoy some good stuff man, being a tradition which is designed with having the ability to poach from other tradition is already a bummer.


Squiggit wrote:
The extra actions add up a lot more than I think you give them credit for.

And I don't think you are giving enough credit to the spell forcing a Will save. It is a level 3 spell, yo get it at level 5. Chances are that most enemies at that level have a Fort save beteeen 2 to 4 points higher than Will. The main point of using Slow is disabling the most problematic enemy even if you just get a success. This spell is better when the enemy succeeds, and it is more likely to get to the failure effect, even if it requires a sustain to get slowed going. The sustain action is bad, but I think the frightened and spread effect compensate for it.

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...IMO the most interesting and potent thing about the spell is that it's Divine, which is the one spell list that doesn't natively get Slow.

Yes, that's big as well.

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Couldn't you flip that around and say that instead of sustaining Ennui, you could just cast Dirge and apply the same fear effect but in an AoE?

Thing is that not all classes are Bard. I wouldn't pick this as a Bard for obvious reasons. But sorcerers, Witches, Wizards, Oracles, Clerics... I think they would be way more interested in this.

The point I was trying to make is that if you remove the sustain with the fear and the spread effect, you would get better slow strictly speaking (yes, mental trait is a bummer, but creatures that are going to be immune to it are easy to figure out, since it is mostly mindless), and the other effect is super worth using for 1 action on its own.

siegfriedliner wrote:
and its upgrade is worse than slows.

I also think it's worse, but I also think slow 6 is arguably the strongest spell of the game in relation to its level (either Slow 6 or Magic Weapon), so no surprise in that regard.

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