Spiritual Weapon of Laudinmio (aka, my god is the bomb)

[Nitro~Nina]

Um. Well. I think you'll know where this is going. Spiritual weapon lets you use your Deity's Weapon's damage type; for instance, a Cleric of Tlehar would be able to use Bludgeoning or Piercing damage for attacks with a Spiritual Morningstar. Laudinmio's divine weapon is, because they're just incredibly cool, the "Alchemical Bomb". Obviously, there's no splash or anything because it's just the damage that's relevant and the spell's pretty clear about nothing else applying, but would you really be able to use Spiritual Alchemist's Fire to do fire damage? Or Spiritual Bottled Lightning to shock your foes?

The RAW answer seems, to me, a little potent, and I'd suspect that the RAI might be "ah, shoot, missed one", but I'm also interested in how GMs would rule this balance-wise. Is it fair enough to let a player have a spell this damage-diverse that can apply Strike triggers? Should a player decide which bomb Laudinmio allows them to use for this spell, and they can retrain it in downtime?

(For reference: "The weapon's Strikes are melee spell attacks. [...] You can deal damage of the type normally dealt by the weapon instead of force damage (or any of the available damage types for a versatile weapon). [...] Despite making a spell attack, the spiritual weapon is a weapon for purposes of triggers, resistances, and so forth.")

[breithauptclan]

Nitro~Nina wrote:

The RAW answer seems, to me, a little potent, and I'd suspect that the RAI might be "ah, shoot, missed one",

I would agree with that. Getting pretty much every damage type available on one spell - and one that has a sustained duration at that - just seems way too good to be even close to balanced.

The most obvious way that it should be run is to let it use any of the physical damage types that the weapon could do. And bombs can do all of piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning damage. So even that is better than pretty much any other deity's favored weapon.

Another way to run it is that the character has to pick one particular bomb. Then they can use force damage or the damage type of that bomb specifically.

[Pixel Popper]

Quote:

The weapon's Strikes are melee spell attacks.

Emphasis added.

I don't think the developers adequately cross-referenced this spell w/ the available deities' favored weapons (re: Longbow for Erastil, Alchemical Bomb for Laudinmio, etcetera).

[Captain Morgan]

Given the god's close association with metal, I'd probably make it slashing and flavor it after a junk bomb. If Lubaiko, the spark in the dust, had bombs as her favored weapon I would probably make it deal fire.

[Captain Morgan]

Pixel Popper wrote:

Quote:

The weapon's Strikes are melee spell attacks.

Emphasis added.

I don't think the developers adequately cross-referenced this spell w/ the available deities' favored weapons (re: Alchemical Bomb for Laudinmio).

I think it would be more accurate to say they didn't reference the spell when they made the god, since the god came 4 years later. ;) It is also likely the spell will be revamped given it is a D&D classic, and perhaps the new ORC version accounts for corner cases like this.

[SuperBidi]

Nitro~Nina wrote:

The RAW answer seems, to me, a little potent, and I'd suspect that the RAI might be "ah, shoot, missed one", but I'm also interested in how GMs would rule this balance-wise.

I would not really care. First, because Spiritual Weapon can deal Force damage so it already goes through nearly all resistances and immunities, choosing the damage type would only be useful against a few Weaknesses. Second because Spiritual Weapon is not a spell close to overpowered so the game would not end up imbalanced. Third because Spiritual Weapon is a spell that doesn't age well: past level 6 you tend to stop using it, so the potential balance issue has a time limit. And fourth because gods are not balanced and Laudinmio is otherwise a rather average god.