[PF] Vague damage notation - Acidic Ray

[Volkspanzer]

I was messing about making npcs for a campaign I'm creating, and I came across this ability within the Sorceror's aberrant bloodline abilities and powers.


Acidic Ray (Sp): Starting at 1st level, you can fire an acidic ray as a standard action, targeting any foe within 30 feet as a ranged touch attack. The acidic ray deals 1d6 points of acid damage + 1 for every two sorcerer levels you possess. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier.

As you can see by the bold text, I'm not quite sure if the scaling of the damage applies to the d6 AND the +1, or just the +1. For example, would a lvl 8 sorceror with Acidic Ray deal 4d6+4 acid damage, or 1d6+4.

For the sake of argument, is there a spell that scales by number of die AND bonus damage, and how would it be notated, according to pathfinder rules?

[Shpadoinkle]

It's supposed to be read as "This spell deals 1d6 base damage, plus another point of damage for every 2 sorcerer levels." A level 8 sorcerer casting it would deal 1d6+4 damage.

[Drelua]

I always thought those powers were far too weak. Maybe this should be in the homebrew section, but would it be unfair if it was just d6 per 2 levels? at level 6, say, that would be 3d6 when you can cast fireball for twice that. d6+3 seems utterly useless at that point, considerably worse than a first level spell, except for the higher DC I guess.

[Larpus]

Don't think it would be completely unfair, certainly would make them a bit more desirable on later levels, but still, chances are you'll prefer to cast away spells instead of using that ray thing.

For a personal experience I had once, it was 3.5, with a Wizard and I had one of those reserve feats from Complete Mage, the fire one to be exact, it's pretty much 1d6 per 2 levels, since I just had to prepare and not cast a fire spell and gain its level as the number of d6s (which with Wizard progression is the same as 1d6 per 2 levels).

At first it was pretty cool, I felt "cool, I'm being helpful even without spending all my spells, this is much better than xbowing", however, at level 3 I started to notice that I was usually better off Color Spraying a single target than scorching it for 2d6 damage and by level 5, not only I had plenty spells to deal with most problems, but also I felt pretty useless to cause 3d6 when instead I could take an enemy out of battle for 5 rounds or more with an actual spell.

[TurtleKing]

Yea those reserve feats that deal damage are a bit meh. The other ones can actually be pretty nice. I do not have any experience with those other that Touch of Healing.

[Blisstake]

It's actually supposed to be a pretty crappy ability. The whole point of it is that you have a backup when you completely run out of spells at early levels.