Can Blasters Have Nice Things? Critique This Class Feature!

[wayfare]

All:

I'm making an Evocation-Focused mage class for my 10 level project (each class only goes up to level 10). The following abilities are class features I intend to include:

Spell Cleave: Whenever a 5th level Battlemage reduces an opponent to 0 hp with a damaging spell, that opponent explodes in a torrent of force energy, inflicting 5d4 force damage to all opponents within 5 feet,.

Reaving Spell: Whenever a 10th level Battlemage inflicts damage upon an opponent exceeding its Constitution score, that opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + 1/2 level + Charisma Modifier) or be reduced to 0 hp.

All critiques are welcome -- I think these powers may be well into OP territory.

[eftexar]

I think Spell Cleave is fair. It is sort of like a spell version of the coup de grace. I think that unless you change it from at 0 hp to 'if it kills the opponent' it might warrant a save though.
Reaving Spell is a little powerful. You can conceivably deal 20d6 damage (though I'm not that familiar with warmage spells) with some spells at level 20, with the highest constitution probably always being below 25 (even with optimization). Depending on how powerful your other class features are this might be fine. I would suggest that you make it a function like a metamagic feat with a level increase, if it is a lower level ability or if your other class features are pretty powerful. You might even want to give it a small recharge time so it can't be spammed or some other limiting factor.

[BladeofOblivion]

All:

I'm making an Evocation-Focused mage class for my 10 level project (each class only goes up to level 10). The following abilities are class features I intend to include:

Spell Cleave: Whenever a 5th level Battlemage reduces an opponent to 0 hp with a damaging spell, that opponent explodes in a torrent of force energy, inflicting 5d4 force damage to all opponents within 5 feet,.

Reaving Spell: Whenever a 10th level Battlemage inflicts damage upon an opponent exceeding its Constitution score, that opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + 1/2 level + Charisma Modifier) or be reduced to 0 hp.

All critiques are welcome -- I think these powers may be well into OP territory.

Spell Cleave is a nice damage boost on clustered enemies, but not gamebreaking

Reaving Spell, however, is just brutal. Let's put the average constitution of a character at 20, for instance. A 10th level fireball, the minimum here, deals a minimum of 10 damage and a maximum of 60. This means that, although it has a conditional AND a fort save, it's still basically a Save-or-Die in a level 3 slot.

Yeah...

[NeoSeraphi]

You should probably add that "with a damaging spell" limitation to Reaving Spell, as it's entirely possible to deal more than someone's Constitution score with a weapon.

[Admiral Squish]

I would suggest that, instead of making it force damage for cleaving spell, just make it 50% or 25% of the spell's damage. Like, a dude dies from a fireball, he explodes in flames, a dude dies from cone of cold, he explodes in shards of ice, and so on.

[Silva Stormrage]

For spell cleave there is a problem with bags of rats.... if you surround the opponent with a TON of low hd zombies/charmed creatures, you could deal massive no save damage. Not sure how to fix that but I just wanted to point that out.

[eftexar]

I don't know if I would worry about instantly killing large numbers of weak foes though. They would have been easy to defeat anyways. I think that it is no more powerful than using the great cleave in that aspect. Although I suppose scaling it with spell level might be a good idea (as I can imagine a 0 level spell doing this).

[Silva Stormrage]

I don't know if I would worry about instantly killing large numbers of weak foes though. They would have been easy to defeat anyways. I think that it is no more powerful than using the great cleave in that aspect. Although I suppose scaling it with spell level might be a good idea (as I can imagine a 0 level spell doing this).


No you are missing the point, the blaster would have an ally, lets say dread necro. Who sends in around 20 zombie ravens around the guy. Blaster casts fireball killing all the ravens and dealing massive damage.

[HalfDragonCube]

How would Spell Cleave interact with say, swarms? One decent AoE spell and you have popcorn.

[eftexar]

You're right about that silva (and sorry for misreading). You could change it so that you can decide if you use the ability or not when the situation presents itself.

I don't know if there would be a problem with swarms or not. I would think though that the swarm would be counted as a single creature for this effect. I mean they do have shared hit points. Even if that isn't the case, no sane dm would allow that.

[Bovine Colonel]

I'd recommend changing Spell Cleave to deal damage equal to, say, half the amount of damage it took to reduce the target creature to 0.

Reaving Spell is quite broken. Maybe change it to 2x or 3x the target's CON?

[wayfare]

Thanks for the input!

Would altering Spell Cleave such that it could only be used once per round effectively limit it?

[HalfDragonCube]

Thanks for the input!

Would altering Spell Cleave such that it could only be used once per round effectively limit it?

Make it scale with caster level, maybe, and having it on AoE spells is also slightly broken so that needs to be dealt with.

[Silva Stormrage]

Thanks for the input!

Would altering Spell Cleave such that it could only be used once per round effectively limit it?

Make it so each 5d4 damage blast can only affect a target once. If you kill two people one the opposite edges of a fireball they would both explode and everyone around them would take damage. If you killed them next to each other though everyone around them would just take 5d4.

[only1doug]

All:

I'm making an Evocation-Focused mage class for my 10 level project (each class only goes up to level 10). The following abilities are class features I intend to include:

Spell Cleave: Whenever a 5th level Battlemage reduces an opponent to 0 hp with a damaging spell, that opponent explodes in a torrent of force energy, inflicting 5d4 force damage to all opponents within 5 feet,.

Reaving Spell: Whenever a 10th level Battlemage inflicts damage upon an opponent exceeding its Constitution score, that opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + 1/2 level + Charisma Modifier) or be reduced to 0 hp.

All critiques are welcome -- I think these powers may be well into OP territory.

As others have said, these both have potential to break the game, how about this:

Spell Cleave: Whenever a 5th level Battlemage kills an opponent (or destroys an undead or construct opponent) with a damaging spell, that opponent explodes in a torrent of force energy, inflicting 5d4 damage (of the same type as the original spell) to all opponents within 5 feet. An opponent can only be affected by this ability once for each spell that the Battlemage casts.


Reaving Spell: Whenever a 10th level Battlemage inflicts damage upon an opponent exceeding twice its Constitution score, that opponent must make a Fortitude Save (DC 10 + 1/2 level + Charisma Modifier) or be reduced to 1 hp.

[wayfare]

Great stuff so far!

My goal with Reaving Spell was to give a blaster mage a better way to eliminate enemies. That said, a 10th level caster could use spells like Magic Missile to insta kill enemies. It doesn't solve the problem of SoD spellcasters, really. It just gives blasters a way to turn all spells into potential SoDs. I've decided that this probably isn't the way to go for a "balanced, tier 3 evocator."

So...

Basically, I'm looking for a capstone ability that will make a blaster something to be feared, but wont veer into insta-win territory. Any suggestions?

Some ideas:

1) Ability that adds continual damage to spells (after being hit by a damaging spell, each round mack a Fortitude save or take X damage)

2) Add ability damage to damaging spells

3) A series of abilities like eldritich essence invocations that allow the blaster to change the shape and qualities of his damaging spells.

Any other thoughts are welcome!

[Girshtop]

So...

Basically, I'm looking for a capstone ability that will make a blaster something to be feared, but wont veer into insta-win territory. Any suggestions?


I really don't know how broken this could potentially be, simply because I don't personally optimize and I don't know the spells so well, but what if you gave him the ability to cast 1 spell per hand?

It'll make him more on par with the other wizards I've seen on these forums, but still keep with his blasting theme. Give him the ability to do it 3/day or something, and maybe cap the level of the spells being cast (i.e. can only cast 3rd level or lower). Plus only allow Evocation spells.

Just limit it to two hands only!