TloniousMonk |
I just ran into this issue in a game last night and was curious what the opinion of the rules board might be. Ice golems have a weakness to the spell "Endure elements" that, when casted on them, nullfies many of it's cold-related abilities for 1 round. The problem is Endure Elements has a 10 minute casting time. I would imagine this is intended to be used against the Ice Golem in combat, but this long of a casting time makes that impractical. I switched it to a 2-action casting time for the purposes of deactivating the golem's abilities.
Is this an oversight or am I missing something?
Baarogue |
I just ran into this issue in a game last night and was curious what the opinion of the rules board might be. Ice golems have a weakness to the spell "Endure elements" that, when casted on them, nullfies many of it's cold-related abilities for 1 round. The problem is Endure Elements has a 10 minute casting time. I would imagine this is intended to be used against the Ice Golem in combat, but this long of a casting time makes that impractical. I switched it to a 2-action casting time for the purposes of deactivating the golem's abilities.
Is this an oversight or am I missing something?
Its components are verbal and somatic. Most spells with two components require two actions to cast. And the effect on the golem only lasts one round, compared to the entire day the spell usually lasts when cast for 10 minutes. Solid call IMO
breithauptclan |
Yeah, a 10 minute cast time wouldn't be very useful. I would expect the ability to trigger off of Resist Energy instead. So a very similar change - Resist Energy has a 2 action cast time.
I wouldn't change the cast time of Endure Elements. At least not permanently for all purposes. Endure Elements is meant for exploration mode. A 10 minute cast time makes perfect sense.
breithauptclan |
It is possible that the choice to use Endure Elements is because Endure Elements is a much less commonly prepared spell. People generally only grab that one if they know that there is some reason for it. Resist Energy is a good spell to have on hand generally.
But the effect only lasts one round on the golem rather than the entire duration of the spell. So even if Resist Energy is more general purpose, there is still the decision to be made of casting Resist Energy (cold) on one of the characters in the party and have it last 10 minutes but only protect that character, or cast it on the golem and have it protect everyone in the party, but only for one round.
Baarogue |
Great! Glad to hear it was a reasonable switch, and yes I don't plan to make it permanently a 2-action spell. That is an interesting point about Resist Energy being a better fit, and it makes me wonder if the author was thinking about that spell when they wrote it.
Who knows. There are a few ways I could imagine them getting the spells mixed up between concept and page. Both spells are level 2, are similarly themed, and have "10 minutes" in their entries. Easy for a writer to mistake the 10 minute casting time for its duration. But Endure Elements targets "1 willing creature" while Resist Energy targets "1 creature." Considered with this line in the Ice Golem entry
>An ice golem can be targeted with endure elements even if it's not willingEndure Elements is the spell that needs such a line. So run it your way or switch it to Resist Energy. Either way works