Good morning,
I just wanted to check my math on this, seems high:
6th Level Psychic, INT +4 mod
Has the Subconscious Mind ability, Silent Whisper. All cantrips heightened.
Given: Daze cantrip ability.
You can daze from a great distance. The range increases to 120 feet. Your daze also gains the following amp.
Amp Your spell cracks the target's mental defenses, leaving it susceptible to further psychic attack. The spell's damage changes to 1d10. If the target fails its Will save, until the end of its next turn, it gains weakness 1 to mental damage and takes a –1 status penalty to Will saves. On a critical failure, the weakness is 3 (in addition to the target being stunned 1). The weakness applies before daze deals damage.
Amp Heightened (+2) The spell's damage increases by 2d10, and the weakness on a failure or critical failure increases by 1.
Math check on damage output:
Daze Cantrip normally does mental damage of 4.
Heightened, it becomes 1d6+4.
Amped, it gets the damage changed to 1d10. So it now becomes 1d10+4.
However, Amping it up gets 2d10 each, so this now becomes 6d10+4?
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No.
Amped changes it to 1d10 base at level 1. Not to 1d10+spellcasting ability modifier.
At 6th level, you're casting it at level 3. So it is heightened +2. Each +2 levels of heightening adds 2d10.
The correct amped damage is 3d10, not 6d10+4
That doesn't sound right to me HammerJack. I think we're saying the same thing but initially misunderstood your post.
The unheightened version of Daze says it deals damage equal to your spellcasting ability modifier.
The heightened (+2 version) says it will increase the damage by 1d6. Heightening (IIRC) works that ithe spells level is half your level rounded down. So a 6th level caster, would castt Daze as a 3rd level spell, and deal 1d6+4 damage. If instead the spell was Amped, you replace the 1d6 with 1d10, getting 1d10+4 damage.
Otherwise going from 1d6+4 (which is obviously correct because other the word increase doesn't mean anything) to 1d10 would be pretty terrible until you get to level 10 and the spell would deal 2d10 (avg 11 damage) vs 2d6+4 (11 avg damage).
Edit: Although now I am seeing that the OP does seem to have a misunderstanding about the rate at which the spell scales for gaining damage dice.
It only gains additional damage dice every 2 spell levels. The none amped version only gains 1d6 per 2 spell levels, while the amped version increases by 2d10 per 2 spell levels. Remember you have to spend a focus point to do this, so it should be pretty good (although not all focus spells are good).
Level 1 (SAM = spell casting ability modifier) - 1st level spell
SAM (1d10 Amped)
Level 6 - 3rd level spell
1d6+SAM (2d10+SAM Amped)
Level 10 - 5th level spell
2d6+SAM (4d10+SAM Amped)
Level 14 - 7th level spell
3d6+SAM (6d10+SAM Amped)
Edit: I think the confusion here is whether or not you should reference the base damage of the spell as SAM when doing the amped heightened, or as 1d10 for the amped version. I think you reference the SAM progression. As amped heightened specifies you increase by 2d10 instead of increasing by 1d6. But I can see where the confusion lies, because I'm not confidant I've got it right either.
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Otherwise going from 1d6+4 (which is obviously correct because other the word increase doesn't mean anything) to 1d10 would be pretty terrible until you get to level 10 and the spell would deal 2d10 (avg 11 damage) vs 2d6+4 (11 avg damage).
What is any of this? You don't go from heightened damage in the unamped spell to unheightened damage on the amped one. And you don't heightened the unamped spell, then replace dice, then heighten again with the amp
This is simply:
Level 1-2
Unamped: Modifier
Amped: 1d10
Level 3-4
Unamped: 1d6+Modifier
Amped: 3d10
Level 5-6
Unamped: 2d6+Modifier
Amped: 5d10
Level 7-8
Unamped: 3d6+Modifier
Amped: 7d10
Level 9-10
Unamped: 4d6+Modifier
Amped: 9d10
Maybe, but it's not clear to me that it's actually correct.
Losing out on your SAM at least at low levels is extremely painful and sounds to bad to be true. You could easily have situation were 3d10 is worse than 1d6+SAM.
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This isn't the only amped cantrip that goes from (small dice plus SAM) to (much bigger dice plus nothing).
Daze is the least ambiguous of them, though. At level 1, the damage is just SAM and it says "change the damage to 1d10". Nothing says "change the damage to 1d10+SAM" and you can't just change the die when there is no die.
This isn't the only amped cantrip that goes from (small dice plus SAM) to (much bigger dice plus nothing).
Daze is the least ambiguous of them, though. At level 1, the damage is just SAM and it says "change the damage to 1d10". Nothing says "change the damage to 1d10+SAM" and you can't just change the die when there is no die.
I agree at level 1. What's less clear is what should happen afterwards.
I mean maybe the designers just wrote it to be terrible, but I hope not.
3d10 has about a 4% chance of rolling lower than 7 - the approximate average of 1d6+4. And only a 12% chance of rolling lower than 10 - the max damage of 1d6+4.
Spell level 1 and 2 (character level up to 4) have it the worst where 1d10 has a 30% chance of rolling less than 4.
And in all cases, the amped version has a reasonable chance of adding weakness to mental damage and penalty to Will saves.
This isn't the only amped cantrip that goes from (small dice plus SAM) to (much bigger dice plus nothing).
Daze is the least ambiguous of them, though. At level 1, the damage is just SAM and it says "change the damage to 1d10". Nothing says "change the damage to 1d10+SAM" and you can't just change the die when there is no die.
I agree at level 1. What's less clear is what should happen afterwards.
I mean maybe the designers just wrote it to be terrible, but I hope not.
How is "Amp Heightened (+2) The spell's damage increases by 2d10, and the weakness on a failure or critical failure increases by 1." unclear? That says 2d10, and nothing to suggest that adding SAM could possibly be part of it.
I'll add the expected value calculations to this table from Hammerjack.
Level 1-2
Unamped: Modifier -> 4
Amped: 1d10 -> 5.5
Level 3-4
Unamped: 1d6+Modifier -> 7.5
Amped: 3d10 -> 16.5
Level 5-6
Unamped: 2d6+Modifier -> 12
Amped: 5d10 -> 27.5
Level 7-8
Unamped: 3d6+Modifier -> 15.5
Amped: 7d10 -> 38.5
Level 9-10
Unamped: 4d6+Modifier -> 19
Amped: 9d10 -> 49.5
How is "Amp Heightened (+2) The spell's damage increases by 2d10, and the weakness on a failure or critical failure increases by 1." unclear? That says 2d10, and nothing to suggest that adding SAM could possibly be part of it.This isn't the only amped cantrip that goes from (small dice plus SAM) to (much bigger dice plus nothing).
Daze is the least ambiguous of them, though. At level 1, the damage is just SAM and it says "change the damage to 1d10". Nothing says "change the damage to 1d10+SAM" and you can't just change the die when there is no die.
I agree at level 1. What's less clear is what should happen afterwards.
I mean maybe the designers just wrote it to be terrible, but I hope not.
Because base spell damage is SAM. The amp affect is replace with 1d10.
The amp heightened effect, which is a different entry line, says "increase the damage by 2d10". It depends on which thing you consider to be the damage you're modifying. In my mind the base being 1d10 that the heightened amped reference made the spell potentially bad at low levels (not incredibly likely, but enough) that I'd rather have 2d10+SAM over 3d10.
In my view, you ignore the amped line because you aren't just amping, you are amping and heightening. So you read that affecting instead. So in my mind when you reference damage, you are looking at the base damage of the spell.
In my view, you ignore the amped line because you aren't just amping, you are amping and heightening. So you read that affecting instead. So in my mind when you reference damage, you are looking at the base damage of the spell.
You ignore the amp line... when you amp and heighten...
Why?
Not including the Amp entry? Even when the Amp Heightened entry couldn't work without the weakness effect described in the Amp entry?
That kind of feels like deciding you want SAM to be part of the damage and looking for a way to read the spell to get there, instead of reading what the spell says and seeing where you end up.
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Nevertheless, SAM is 4 and 1d10 is 5.5. It's more! It's Amped! It's Awesome! That's the logic.Maybe, but it's not clear to me that it's actually correct.
Losing out on your SAM at least at low levels is extremely painful and sounds to bad to be true. You could easily have situation were 3d10 is worse than 1d6+SAM.
And that logic is correct. But it also has a range increase and inflicts weakness, so it'll be 6.5-ish (not exactly, because weakness and the basic save interact differently).
But it doesn't matter, Because 1d10 > ability modifier except for very high levels, and they're only close at levels 1-4. Yes, sometimes you'll roll lower. That's the nature of dice. You can roll higher on 1d4 than 3d20, too. But sometimes you'll roll much higher, and that's why the average is a better measure.
No ambiguity. You don't use the base entry for one spell and the heightened entry for a different one, even if it is better--which it is not.