FrankTrollman wrote: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.
Now, all in all, I like the idea, but there's still a lot of unfinished work there. He specifically mentions that one or two good 9th level Evocations need to be created and certain spells (like Flaming Sphere) need to be reworked to be worth while.
Another issue is these are just core spells, but there are plenty of blasting staples from other sources (such as Spell Compendium), and I'm curious where you all think they should go. Some of the ones that jump out are the Lesser Orb spells and regular Orb spells. I know these are Conjuration and not Evocation, but they really get left in the dust by changes like these. It seems the Lesser Orb spells would fall at about 0.5 level, and the regular Orb spells are maybe 1.5 or so maybe just above 2. What are your thoughts on this?
What about Maw Of Chaos? It's better than other 9th level blast spells, but I'm still kind of iffy about it (yes, I know it's Abjuration).
What other blasting spells do you like that you think should be reduced?
