Explosive Spell

[Gotterdammerung]

I was tinkering around with the metamagic feat "explosive spell". I know it isn't super strong, I was just trying to see how far I could optimize it.

I noticed you can put it on entangle. Which is wierd. Because if they fail there save they are both bound by the entangle and ejected from the entangle...

Size wise the biggest area spell I could find was Sunburst with 80 ft radius. War wizard of cormyr would be able to turn that into 200 foot radius. So on a failed save targets would be ejected 200 feet which is pretty cool. Would be really funny to watch in a war setting. A whole army goes flying and piles up 200 feet away. That would be half of 6d6 on a passed save and 6d6 + blindness + 1d6/10feet moved (possible 20d6) on a failed save.




I know Storm of Vengeance has a 360 foot radius meaning after war wizard it would be a 900 foot radius spell. But i am not sure If you can apply explosive spell to SoV, because it requires the spell have a reflex save and SoV only has a reflex for part of the spell and the reflex save is for 6 bolts of lightning that hit specific targets.

If it does work that is 10d6 electricity plus a potential 90d6 extra damage to anyone who fails their save against those lightning bolts.


Are there any huge radius spells I am missing out there that can make this go farther?

[Eriaur]

Using Snowcasting, Flash Frost, Energy Substitution (electricity), Born Of Three Thunders, and Explosive Spell you can apply Explosive spell to Locate City, which has a range of 80 miles. However it is debatable whether this trick works or not because of Locate City's unusual area.

[Eurus]

Well, there's Control Weather... a druid casting it affects a three-mile radius. It would require the Snowcasting>Flash Frost>Energy Substitution>Born of the Three Thunders combo, but it'd be more than big enough. However, Explosive Spell seems to clarify that it only allows Cone, Cylinder, Line, or Burst effects, not Spread, Emanation, or nondescript areas... this also shuts down the Locate City thing regardless of whether you interpret it as pushing you up/down or sideways, so I have no clue if it's been settled on whether it matters.

[Gotterdammerung]

I knew about snowcasting already, I use it occasionally to get freaky vampiric touches. But flash frost was a new way to turn a non damaging spell into a damaging one.

I also knew about born of three thunders but I wasn't sure if the reflex counted enough for it to qualify as a explosivable spell.


If it does I think Shifting Paths would be the biggest range I have found.

1 mile + 1mile/ cl becomes 2.5 miles + 2.5 miles/ CL after war wizard. 55 miles for a caster lvl 21 at character lvl 20.

320,100 feet radius. They would have to fail both the fort and the reflex to be affected. But if anyone inside the radius does fail they would take some serious potential damage.

32,010 d6 at the most.



Thanks for the responses. Let us see if we can get bigger than 55 mile radius.
And maybe come up with a cleaner way than snowcasting>flashfrost>energy sub> Born of three thunders> explosive. That is a lot of metamagic feats and isn't as DM proof as I would like. Plus it requires 2 failed saves to activate the explosive aspect because explosive doesn't go off until the target fails a reflex save from the spell.

So far great comments, thank you.

[ericgrau]

The locate city nuke is an old trick. It's more for wiping out entire towns than fights, and DMs won't allow it anyway. Something more practical is to take a large area damage spell like cone of cold.

But if you want a bigger locate city nuke try widen spell. Plus enlarge spell if the range isn't big enough, I don't remember.

[Amphetryon]

Explosive Spell + Snowcasting/Flash Frost/Energy Substitution/Bo3T + Fimbulwinter = nuclear winter.

[Gotterdammerung]

Explosive Spell + Snowcasting/Flash Frost/Energy Substitution/Bo3T + Fimbulwinter = nuclear winter.

oooh fimbulwinter. It has a 2.5 mile less radius than Shifting Paths, but 4d12 weeks is a lot longer than hours/lvl. And has a cooler general feel.

Can you imagine being thrown 305,550 feet by 1 point of electrical damage and 1 point of sonic damage... lol. Splat. 30,555 d6. As your soul floats away you notice your body is lying in a mountainous pile of dead bodies that encircles the land.

[Lateral]

That version of the locate city bomb doesn't work, though, mostly because the Energy Substitution (Electricity) makes it no longer a [Cold] spell, so Flash Frost no longer applies and because Locate City's area is a circle and not a spread or burst or something. (Circles are two-dimensional, so the closest edge is up 0 feet.) The second point's debatable, and the first one can be fixed with Energy Admixture, but Energy Admixture is a high-cost metamagic and the second point's reasoning is solid.

The Fimbulwinter thing only works with Admixture, again, because Energy Substitution makes it no longer a [Cold] spell. It's pretty damn high-level with Admixture. You can actually do the same thing with a Wightbomb setup, though.