Spells at the Wrong Spell Levels

[Dr_Noface]

Why is Regenerate a 7th level spell? It seems to me its not two levels more impressive than raising the dead or shifting to another plane of existence. Did DMs of old enjoy chopping off a character's limbs and then flip their players the bird?

What other spells do you feel are placed at the wrong spell level? Animate Objects is another cool spell that seems to be wasted as a sixth level spell. I'd say it was worthy of a fourth slot.

Of course, a lot of the damage spells spells should have decreased level or at least be uncapped.

Your thoughts?

[Maxus]

Polar Ray shouldn't be 8th level. If it was long range, it'd be worth the 3rd-level slot, along with Fireball and Lightning bolt. Or at least not be much worse than them.

[TheFlatline]

Of course, a lot of the damage spells spells should have decreased level or at least be uncapped.

Wait, what?

You're honestly telling me that the one thing a mage needs is to deal *more* damage?

[Dean]

Refuge. A 9th level spell that literally no commoner in the world would give a copper penny to know. If you gave a 1st level commoner access to at will magic missile he could rule the countryside, if he had access to at will Refuge he could.... go fuck himself

[LR]

You're honestly telling me that the one thing a mage needs is to deal *more* damage?

Yes.

Damage spells are competing with spells that automatically defeat enemies on failed saves, so they better deal a lot of damage. D&D needs its magic artillery pieces back.

[Maxus]

Of course, a lot of the damage spells spells should have decreased level or at least be uncapped.

Wait, what?

You're honestly telling me that the one thing a mage needs is to deal *more* damage?

Well, sort of.

Okay, fireball caps out at 15d6 for no good reason. Same with lower-level spells like burning hands or Searing Light. They really are unimpressive compared to stuff like...Entangle.

So, taking the damage caps off some spells would help make blasting a viable choice.

[shirak]

Paizo seems to have taken down Frank's rant on Evocation levels so here it is:

Polar Ray is an insult to god and man. It's not a long legacy, it was introduced in 3.5 and before that it was merely one of several options for the much lower level Otiluke's Freezing Sphere. And of course, in Pathfinder, that would have to be called Freezing Sphere for copyright reasons, but that is neither here nor there.

The point however, is that in the conversion from AD&D to 3e D&D, the amount of hit points and energy resistance that creatures have has increased literally exponentially. And damage output from Evocations has not kept up in the slightest. And while we could plausibly attempt to push the envelope and pump up damage output to match, that would only be an arms race that no one would win.

Evocations in 3rd edition rules are primarily spells which serve to devastate low level opposition or to slowly but surely chip away at the defenses of opponents that pose reasonable threats. These are sometimes valid tactics, but they are not valid tactics to use one's highest level spells to accomplish. It takes a lot of magic missiles to bring down a Shadow, meaning that there is frankly no way that any Wizard is going to have enough spell slots to dedicate to doing that to make it a viable way to eventually beat such an opponent.

So here's the solution: reduce the spell level of these underperforming evocation spells. Since they scale in damage to your level, nothing actually bad happens if you get these spells early. Even a dozen or more levels early is perfectly fine because the damage scales to something level appropriate at low level. A polar ray cast by a 1st level character does just 1d6 of damage - half the damage that the same character could achieve by purchasing a vial of alchemist frost and throwing it at a target (same to-hit roll as well at any kind of close range).

So here's what the Evocation list should look like:

Evocation Cantrips

* Burning Hands
* Dancing Lights
* Light
* Magic Missile
* Shocking Grasp


Evocation 1st Level Spells

* Fireball
* Floating Disk
* Gust of Wind
* Lightning Bolt
* Polar Ray
* Sending


Evocation 2nd Level Spells

* Chain Lightning
* Cone of Cold
* Continual Flame
* Darkness
* Daylight
* Flaming Sphere (this spell badly needs to be better than it is, but that's another subject)
* Scorching Ray
* Shatter


Evocation 3rd Level Spells

* Delayed Blast Fireball
* Ice Storm
* Shout
* Tiny Hut
* Wall of Fire
* Wind Wall


Evocation 4th Level Spells

* Fire Shield
* Interposing Hand
* Resilient Sphere
* Wall of Ice

Evocation 5th Level Spells

* Forceful Hand
* Freezing Sphere
* Mage Sword
* Sunburst
* Wall of Force


Evocation 6th Level Spells

* Contingency
* Grasping Hand
* Shout, Greater


Evocation 7th Level Spells

* Clenched Fist
* Force Cage
* Prismatic Spray



Evocation 8th Level Spells

* Crushing Hand
* Meteor Swarm
* Telekinetic Sphere


Evocation 9th Level Spells

* 9th level Spells must be written for this discipline. Seriously, timestop? Shapechange? Wail of the Banshee? Astral Projection? Shades? Weird? Most disciplines have two game defining, god-fighting spells to choose from at 9th level. Evocation hasn't been given anything remotely decent for their top tier, so new, mountain leveling spells must be written for Evokers to have.

There. It's pretty much completely backwards compatible, but nonetheless puts Evokers in at being able to do something legitimately valuable - Killing Fools.

And no, having unlimited magic missiles or shocking grasps is not ungamebalanced at 1st level, or any level. Magic Missile tops out in damage at level 9, when it does 17.5 damage against any opponent who doesn't have concealment, cover, or spell resistance. But at level 9, a Rogue is literally inflicting 17.5 points of sneak attack damage with every single attack. And that's not total damage for the round, that's just the extra damage from a sneak attack. He still gets to do his weapon damage, and make his other attacks for that round. Shocking Grasp is very likely to hit, and it does a d8+1 damage. A Longsword in the hands of a Fighter is also very likely to hit and does a d8+4. While the shocking grasp is quite likely to have a better chance of hitting an orc warrior than the longsword is, it is also much more likely to do insufficient damage to drop the orc. Indeed, the Orc Warrior out of the SRD is more likely to drop in one attack from the 1st level Fighter than he from the 1st level Wizard - even factoring in the discrepancy in hit chances.

And no, casting fireballs at 1st level isn't unbalanced either. At 1st level it only does a d6 of fire damage, it's barely worth doing against many opponents. It certainly isn't putting color spray out of a job.

[Roy]

Of course, a lot of the damage spells spells should have decreased level or at least be uncapped.

Wait, what?

You're honestly telling me that the one thing a mage needs is to deal *more* damage?

Well, sort of.

Okay, fireball caps out at 15d6 for no good reason. Same with lower-level spells like burning hands or Searing Light. They really are unimpressive compared to stuff like...Entangle.

So, taking the damage caps off some spells would help make blasting a viable choice.

No, no it would not.

See the problem isn't that you hit the damage ceiling and you stop caring about what they do. The problem is you skip straight to the part about not caring what they do.

1d6/level is not viable at any level. And it doesn't matter if you stop getting more dice at level 5, 10, 15, or 20, if the dice you have are never good enough.

Make it 3d6 a level and remove the cap and we can talk. Even then it would still not be great, just not as terrible.

1d6 a level was only a valid life choice when mother fucking GODs had HP expressed as a two digit number.

[MfA]

The Paizo boards can get pretty bad, but they usually just lock the threads about things they don't want to hear about ... Frank's post is still there.

[Maxus]

Yeah, I forgot that bit, Roy. Thank you.

But I maintain that removing damage caps would be part of making evocation worth it. Flat damage rates would help speed up gameplay, too.

[Thymos]

The larger problem are spells that shouldn't exist at all. There is no appropriate spell level for Blasphemy for example.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That thread is making me angry just reading it.

You know, that's kind of what gets me about people who whine about optimized characters who can take on challenges. It's not their characters that have the problems, it other people. They would seriously rather have to rewrite monsters AND several classes rather than just agreeing that it is their archetype that is the problem.

Pathfinder should've been a fucking slam dunk that could've been taken care of after a month's worth of work even if they completely ignored the Tome material. It would have just required rewriting the core classes to boost their power level rather than having to overhaul the spell and monster system aside from a couple of outliers.

Fucking narrow-minded crybabies, preening their own egos at the cost of ease, credibility, and profit. God I hate TTRPGs sometimes.

[Kaelik]

The larger problem are spells that shouldn't exist at all. There is no appropriate spell level for Blasphemy for example.

Or more precisely, if CL was confined to a narrow band, Blasphemy would be appropriate from level 1.

A minor debuff to people your own level, nothing to anyone higher than you, and progressively stronger beatdowns till auto death to all mooks.

[Roy]

Yeah, I forgot that bit, Roy. Thank you.

But I maintain that removing damage caps would be part of making evocation worth it. Flat damage rates would help speed up gameplay, too.

Only if you were able to reach what would otherwise be the cap sooner. Which means a higher damage rate.

As for flat damage, while I could care less one way or the other if a level 10 Fireball does 105 damage (52 on a save) or does 30d6 damage (half on a save) as both would actually make it something you might actually care about. But there's people out there that basically just do it to roll fuckloads of dice. Speaking of which, actually rolling the number of dice required for evocation to be relevant would be a pain in the ass.

[Maxus]

Speaking of which, actually rolling the number of dice required for evocation to be relevant would be a pain in the ass.

It's entirely my rationale for flat damage. Then you can just have it written down for your level, with any modifiers that might come up, and not have to roll and add up 30d6 damage.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I guess you could do it half-flat, half-rolled.

For example, rather than rolling 15d6 for a cone of cold, you roll 8d6+21.

[Josh_Kablack]

For example, rather than rolling 15d6 for a cone of cold, you roll 8d6+21.

I think you mean 8d6+ 24.5.

Or more reasonably, roll the odd die and average the even dice to make it come out to a non-decimal result: 7d6+28

[hogarth]

Ridiculous spell levels:
Otiluke's Freezing Sphere
Eyebite
Drawmij's Instant Summons
Screen

[fbmf]

Evocation 9th Level Spells

* 9th level Spells must be written for this discipline. Seriously, timestop? Shapechange? Wail of the Banshee? Astral Projection? Shades? Weird? Most disciplines have two game defining, god-fighting spells to choose from at 9th level. Evocation hasn't been given anything remotely decent for their top tier, so new, mountain leveling spells must be written for Evokers to have.

Any ideas on what these would look like?

Game On,
fbmf

[JonSetanta]

Dragon Slave

I find the spell Rope Trick far too low for what it does. Easily, at least SL 6, but hopefully higher.

I mean seriously... SL2! 2!!!

[Koumei]

Level 9 would be like the BoVD spell that affects miles/level radius, but with level appropriate damage. Or maybe a boring old "Make an RTA to deal 1 metric shit-tonne of damage per CL".

And I'll add that Eyebite is a shitty spell at its level. We're talking Spell Level 2 or 3. It'd be nice for 2 where the Comatose option will ever actually show up, though (it's single target, and at SL 2 you're level 3 or 4, meaning it lasts all of 1 round and you're still probably using Colour Spray instead).

[Doom]

I think the old Hackmaster had "atomic fireball", with a radius of 1 mile or something ridiculous....that might be a good level 9 evocation spell.

Maybe "Acid Hurricane", or "Freezing Tsunami" (areas of effect comparable to actual hurricanes or tsunamis).

"Moonbringer"...brings the freakin' Moon down, with variable area of effect (minimum 30' radius crater), then it floats back to normal orbit, leaving a meteor swarm effect behind.

Damage should be on the order of 100-1000 points, I suppose, damage scaling doesn't strike me as so important at this level.

[fectin]

Level 1-2 DnD is a ghetto of pain and sadness. The best thing about it is that you often get out alive, and then it's over.
It is also the time when a small horde of skeletons or kobolds or whatever are a level appropriate challenge. Fireball doesn't do 1d6 per level: it does 1d6 per level per target, and does it at long range, and does half of it automatically (so AC doesn't help), and only vaguely needs line of sight.
So, pretend fireball is first level. At 2nd level, 8 kobolds is the level appropriate encounter. Maybe they're smart and spread out, so you only get half of them, but that's still an expected 2.4 kills and 22.5 damage (assuming a very modest 16 Int). That's significantly better than anyone else.
It's less good in other situations, but that's why you don't use it then. Saying it's not good against single targets is like saying arbitrary artifact swords aren't good against flying targets, or grease isn't good against swimming targets: it doesn't matter. You can't balance a power by having it win half the time and lose sometimes.
You're right later on, but early access is not okay.

[JonSetanta]

A 10' radius Close range Fireball that has Reflex save: Negates works.
Agreed with fectin, and I mentioned this a long time ago in one of the Tome threads, what Frank pushes for with the Fireball spell as-is rocks the shit out of swarms far better than anything, anything, else.

[Username17]

Evocation 9th Level Spells

* 9th level Spells must be written for this discipline. Seriously, timestop? Shapechange? Wail of the Banshee? Astral Projection? Shades? Weird? Most disciplines have two game defining, god-fighting spells to choose from at 9th level. Evocation hasn't been given anything remotely decent for their top tier, so new, mountain leveling spells must be written for Evokers to have.

Any ideas on what these would look like?

Game On,
fbmf

Basically it's what you're preparing to cast instead of Shapechange, Wail of the Banshee, Timestop, or Gate. So basically you have three choices:

• Murder some target so hard that the fact that you don't get a free Save or Die against 16 other targets is still considered a fair trade. Like, 300 damage or more on a save type shit.
• Do moderate damage over an area so large that you can take out opposition that Wail and Gate would not be sufficient for. So, raining acid on armies and cities sort of thing.
• Have some sort of medium area tremendous damage compromise, where it's directly comparable to Wail of the Banshee by doing enough damage to make 17th level monsters care and still does damage on a made save.

So you'd have shit like Lavawell, where you had a geyser of lava come up from the earth right into someone. They take 20 dice of damage and are entangled. Then they take 20 dice of damage at the beginning of every turn they stay in the Lava Well, and they have to make a Reflex Save or be unable to move like they were bound in a Web that happened to be made of flaming stone. And you know what? That's not even that good (it's just 140 damage in two resistance chunks on a successful save). It should probably create a growing pool of lava for some long period of time.

Or you'd have shit like Corrosive Cyclone, where you have a class 4 Cyclone that is also made of Acid. So it's like a mile across, it has the kind of wind that knocks everyone over, and it does 1d6/level of Acid damage.

Fireball doesn't do 1d6 per level: it does 1d6 per level per target, and does it at long range, and does half of it automatically (so AC doesn't help), and only vaguely needs line of sight.
So, pretend fireball is first level. At 2nd level, 8 kobolds is the level appropriate encounter. Maybe they're smart and spread out, so you only get half of them, but that's still an expected 2.4 kills and 22.5 damage (assuming a very modest 16 Int). That's significantly better than anyone else.

First off, that's not better than anyone else. Your own color spray gets about 2.4 kills in that situation. And damaging kobolds doesn't even matter because none of your compatriots use attacks small enough to fail to one-shot a Kobold.

Your doomsday scenario actually shows it to be a totally level appropriate action to use a spell slot on at 2nd level.

-Username17