Blasting spells with hp cost

[soveliss24]

Hey Playgrounders, I'm looking for a spell that costs a little bit of the caster's hp (or has a similar 'life-drain' effect) to power a ranged attack of some sort. A ray or line type spell would fit the concept I'm after best, but it's not set in stone. This is more for flavor than power reasons, so don't worry about trying to optimize it. I'm just looking for options.

The reason I'm looking for a spell is because they're easy to put on a magic item. But assuming there are no fitting spells, the Hellfire Warlock's Hellfire Blast seems to be an ok substitute. Are there rules for giving magic items Invocation effects, or would I have to houserule that up?

Thanks in advance :smallsmile:

[AWiz_Abroad]

Other than the aforementioned Hellfire Warlock, you could stat up whatever type of spell completion item you like, but require a blood component ala Blood Magus's Blood Component from Complete Arcane

Blood Component (Su): A blood magus can substitute a drop of his own blood for a spell’s material components, if any, and in so doing increase the spell’s power. The pinprick or minor knife cut to draw the requisite blood is a free action (just like using material components) that becomes a normal part of casting the spell. Using this ability deals 1 point of damage to the blood magus but raises the spell’s caster level by 1.

[Flickerdart]

Check out Sanctified and Vile spells in the BoED and BoVD respectively - they have ability score damage costs, and some of them damage Constitution.

[soveliss24]

Sanctified spells could work well, I had forgotten about those. Is there any sort of restriction on making magic items of those spells? Or do they use the standard item creation rules? (Exalted part isn't a problem, the character who will be using the item is LG and roleplayed as pretty much an exalted character anyway.)

Blood Magus could also work if the player doesn't like the Con damage. So if I understand that correctly, the item could have a 3d6 fireball ability, and the character could sacrifice e.g. 2 hp to cast a 5d6 one? Is there any cap on the caster level that can be achieved, besides the max allowed for the spell in question?

[Flickerdart]

It doesn't seem like the Blood Magus ability can be used multiple times per spell, since bonuses from the same source don't stack.

[soveliss24]

Good point. That would make a very mild sacrifice/benefit per attack, but that might be best since apparently the player wants this to be his backup ranged weapon instead of a bow (primarily melee character). Con damage would cripple that idea.

[JusticeZero]

The only one that comes to mind is the psionic feat that lets you boost ML by one at the cost of 1d8 damage.

[soveliss24]

The only one that comes to mind is the psionic feat that lets you boost ML by one at the cost of 1d8 damage.

Not a big fan of Psionics, and the Blood Magus option sounds a bit stronger anyway. Thanks for the suggestion though :smallsmile:

[Flickerdart]

The advantages of Overchannel (the psionic feat) over the blood mage ability are several: you can take more damage for more ML, up to +3 for 5d8, you can mitigate the damage altogether on low-level powers with Talented, and ML in general is better than CL (because it lets you augment low-level powers into the equivalent of high-level spells - for instance, Psionic Time Stop (Temporal Acceleration) starts as a 6th level power that gives you 1 bonus round, and augmentation is what extends its duration.

[soveliss24]

However, the character isn't a manifester or caster himself. He's just going to be getting a custom magic item that can fire this modified spell/power. Since I already have to figure out how to price a class ability or feat augmenting a spell, I'd rather not learn the Psionics system and then work out the cost of that Overchannel combo.

[Slipperychicken]

The Blood Money (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/blood-money) spell from Pathfinder (the spell, like many other things, is backwards-compatible to 3.5) allows you to power any spell with your own blood, dealing 1d6 points of damage to yourself, and some Strength damage if the component is costly.

I had an idea awhile back for a sacrificial knife which allows the user to cast Blood Money at will. Feel free to fluff it as you wish.

[soveliss24]

The Blood Money (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/blood-money) spell from Pathfinder (the spell, like many other things, is backwards-compatible to 3.5) allows you to power any spell with your own blood, dealing 1d6 points of damage to yourself, and some Strength damage if the component is costly.

I had an idea awhile back for a sacrificial knife which allows the user to cast Blood Money at will. Feel free to fluff it as you wish.

Since Blood Money doesn't add damage, only replaces material components, it's not useful on its own. Might help provide a pricing guideline for adding Blood Component to an item though. Thanks!

[Slipperychicken]

Since Blood Money doesn't add damage, only replaces material components, it's not useful on its own. Might help provide a pricing guideline for adding Blood Component to an item though. Thanks!

Well the Blade of Blood spell from PHB2 lets you sacrifice hp to increase weapon damage by 1-3d6, and Fire in the Blood from Heroes of Horror lets you shoot your blood at people when they hit you.

EDIT: You can also take inspiration from the... anarchic property? It's a +1 weapon property in MIC and adds 2d6 damage, while dealing 1d6 to the wielder with each hit.

[Flickerdart]

EDIT: You can also take inspiration from the... anarchic property? It's a +1 weapon property in MIC and adds 2d6 damage, while dealing 1d6 to the wielder with each hit.
Vicious. Anarchic is the Chaotic counterpart of Holy, Unholy, and Axiomatic.

[soveliss24]

That seems like a good starting point for me to homebrew an item together. I'm thinking an at-will item of <ranged touch spell the player wants>, and then allowing him to make it a 'magic weapon' as well for normal cost. It'll only shoot once per turn as a standard action, so it's better than a magic crossbow but likely worse than a bow, and it can have Vicious despite being 'ranged'... Need to make it so Vicious can't be turned off, and probably just not allow other non-enhancement bonus abilities. Don't want Splitting Force Seeking Polar Rays or whatever :smalltongue:

[Frosty]

Blood Money looks awesome. A Witch has Raise Dead on her spell list. If she is willing to sacrifice enough strength, she can cast Raise Dead without the 5000gp diamond!

[Slipperychicken]

Blood Money looks awesome. A Witch has Raise Dead on her spell list. If she is willing to sacrifice enough strength, she can cast Raise Dead without the 5000gp diamond!

11 points of recoverable Strength damage in exchange for a free Raise Dead.


True Resurrection would be (25,000/500)+1 = 51 Strength damage. If a Cleric cast Blood Money from a scroll, and had someone else ready an action to cast Greater Restoration on him immediately after, he would wake up and can still cast the True Res using the summoned component. He would still have to pay for the Greater Restoration (5000gp) and the scroll (12.5gp), but that's much less than the 25,000gp for True Res. One could use the same technique for Wish too...

...

...

A 1st level spell and a readied action cut the cost of a True Res by ~80%. but if the Restoration-caster also used a scroll of Blood Money and had at least a Strength of 12, the grand total cost would be 25gp, 1d6 damage to two people, and 11 strength damage: a pittance compared to the 25,000 material component for True Res.

Guys, help me out I think I just broke death.

[rot42]

Bands of the Blood Rage (MIC, gives bonus damage but damages you for the next five rounds) and Suffer the Flesh (Magic of Eberron, spend Con for bonus to caster level) come to mind, but it sounds like neither will really fit your concept. A bit of an odd approach would be the Empathic Transfer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/empathicTransfer.htm) psionic power (sorry, no similar spell is coming to mind) that lets you heal another while taking damage yourself; the scaling would probably work about right if you rejigger it as an offensive effect.

[Frosty]

11 points of recoverable Strength damage in exchange for a free Raise Dead.


True Resurrection would be (25,000/500)+1 = 51 Strength damage. If a Cleric cast Blood Money from a scroll, and had someone else ready an action to cast Greater Restoration on him immediately after, he would wake up and can still cast the True Res using the summoned component. He would still have to pay for the Greater Restoration (5000gp) and the scroll (12.5gp), but that's much less than the 25,000gp for True Res. One could use the same technique for Wish too...

...

...

A 1st level spell and a readied action cut the cost of a True Res by ~80%. but if the Restoration-caster also used a scroll of Blood Money and had at least a Strength of 12, the grand total cost would be 25gp, 1d6 damage to two people, and 11 strength damage: a pittance compared to the 25,000 material component for True Res.

Guys, help me out I think I just broke death.
your calculations are correct, but to be honest, THIS FEAT (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/ultimate-mercy) broke death first :smallbiggrin:

You can't beat 0 GP cost.

[avr]

There's a PrC for this in Faiths of Eberron - hp for metamagic. Can't remember the name, but it's in the section on the Dark Six.

[BWR]

If you don't mind really broken third party stuff there is "Bloodspeakers", a semi-official supplement for d20 Oriental Adventures/Rokugan.
Much maligned by fans, it has some nifty, nasty spells. And being blood magic, they require sacrifice of blood (hp) or even ability damage. They are also evil with capital E V I and L.
E.g. Bloodstrike, a third level spell which allows you to take Con damage (any amount) and create 1 ray/level which deals an equal amount of Con damage. Fort. neg.
It's not a true blasting spell, but it is amusing.