[3.5] Power of Stone

[A.A.King]

I was looking through Races of Stone and got kind of interested into the Dwarf Sorcerer Racial Substitution levels. Mostly because in my head I got the idea of a Dwarf Earth Bender...
Anyway I was having a few questions. Power of Stone (Su) allows you to channel spells through the earth and it increases the range by 50%, but I was wondering if it affected touch spells. It doesn't mention them but Arcane Earthbound sort of makes the earth your familiar and familiars allow you to deliver touch spells, so I was kinda hoping you could just touch the earth and affect someone you otherwise normally couldn't with a touch spell. Does it?

And, while I'm talking about the Dwarf Sorcerer, could someone explain the "damage reduction 1/adamantine" from Arcane Earthbond (Su). I'm just not quite grasping that.

[Diarmuid]

Unfortunately, Power of Stone doesnt impact Range: Touch spells as there's no way to determine what 1.5 * (Touch) is.

As for the DR 1\Adamantine, I'll just quote the SRD rather than trying to type is all out:



DAMAGE REDUCTION
Some magic creatures have the supernatural ability to instantly heal damage from weapons or to ignore blows altogether as though they were invulnerable.
The numerical part of a creature's damage reduction is the amount of hit points the creature ignores from normal attacks. Usually, a certain type of weapon can overcome this reduction. This information is separated from the damage reduction number by a slash. Damage reduction may be overcome by special materials, by magic weapons (any weapon with a +1 or higher enhancement bonus, not counting the enhancement from masterwork quality), certain types of weapons (such as slashing or bludgeoning), and weapons imbued with an alignment. If a dash follows the slash then the damage reduction is effective against any attack that does not ignore damage reduction.
Ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an enhancement bonus of +1 or higher is treated as a magic weapon for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Similarly, ammunition fired from a projectile weapon with an alignment gains the alignment of that projectile weapon (in addition to any alignment it may already have).
Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury type poison, a monk's stunning, and injury type disease. Damage reduction does not negate touch attacks, energy damage dealt along with an attack, or energy drains. Nor does it affect poisons or diseases delivered by inhalation, ingestion, or contact.
Attacks that deal no damage because of the target's damage reduction do not disrupt spells.
Spells, spell-like abilities, and energy attacks (even nonmagical fire) ignore damage reduction.
Sometimes damage reduction is instant healing. Sometimes damage reduction represents the creature's tough hide or body,. In either case, characters can see that conventional attacks don't work.
If a creature has damage reduction from more than one source, the two forms of damage reduction do not stack. Instead, the creature gets the benefit of the best damage reduction in a given situation.


The most basic translation is that if you get hit by a weapon that isnt Admantine, you take 1 less damage than you normally would, per attack.

[ArcturusV]

Well, the DR means that you take 1 less damage from any source unless it's done with adamantium, in which case you take full damage.

The touch spell thing wouldn't work out. While it make the earth a "Familiar" in a lot of senses, gaining Alterness and a small benefit, it isn't actually a familiar and lacks all the other abilities, like Sharing spells.

Also a Touch spell doesn't have a range to increase by 50%, so you wouldn't gain a benefit for that.

Possible exception: I seem to recall there was a feat or something that let you turn a Touch Spell into something like a 25' fixed range ray. That could work, and you could end up with 35' range "touch" spell.

[A.A.King]

Thank you, the basic translation was kinda what I was missing

But, if it doesn't affect touch spells, which was kinda the thing I was hoping it could "abuse" to compensate for everyone saying that dwarfs are the worst race for sorcerer, is it still worth it. Can you build an effective Earth Bender-like sorcerer, or for that matter, an effective Dwarf Sorcerer using the racial substitution levels or would you be better off just using the standard rules or some other alternative class features?

[ArcturusV]

Well, I don't know if I'd say they're the "Worst". Yeah, they take a ding to Charisma. So what? Long as you start with like... 13 at least in your Charisma you'll be fine. You don't NEED an 18 or 20 at level 1 to be effective with it.

They just don't get anything that particularly helps sorcerers.

[A.A.King]

It's not my opinion but that's basically what I read in guides, haven't much game experience yet, so most of my knowledge and opinions comes from guides and source books.

[Flickerdart]

Dwarves are okay sorcerers. They have an ACF that adds their Constitution modifier to their Charisma score for the purposes of determining spells per day, which is quite shiny since you'll want a high Constitution anyway. You can also be a Dwarf that doesn't penalize Charisma, such as a Gold Dwarf (they lose Dexterity instead).

It is possible to turn touch spells into ranged spells, though. Ocular Spell and Reach Spell (or the Archmage's Arcane Reach ability) are the most common ways of doing this.

An "earthbender" spellcaster is a pretty effective setup, because that thematically fits with Hail of Stones, a great blasting spell in the late levels because it deals untyped damage. You just need to break the damage cap with Reserves of Strength or something and then stack metamagic until everything is dead!

[Saintheart]

Unfortunately, Power of Stone doesnt impact Range: Touch spells as there's no way to determine what 1.5 * (Touch) is.

If, on the other hand, you use Reach Spell, Power of Stone should affect it since it gives the spell a range of 30 feet. Of course, you then have to get around the +1 metamagic and the fact you're now casting as full-round actions, but still...

EDIT: Argh, ninja'd. Or not really ninja'd because I didn't read the previous post properly. :smallredface:

[Vaz]

Ocular has the nice little benefit of being making any spell fixed range and thus persistable (requires a bit of Metamagic reduction, though).