Segev
2013-07-26, 02:40 PM
I know this is hardly an original idea, but having heard about it, I couldn't help but play with the concept to see what I could come up with. For those who are unfamiliar, Launch Bolt is a 3.5e Sor/Wiz 0 spell that allows you to fire a bolt "in your possession" as if you fired it from a light crossbow. It spells out the range increment of 80 ft., names the target of the spell as a crossbow bolt "in your possession," is touch range, and lists a material component as "the crossbow bolt (1 sp)."
First, a little discussion on what this all means.
Argument: Eschew Materials allows you to create bolts from thin air, because it provides the material component.
Unfortunately, that's inaccurate: Eschew Materials obviates the need for a material component that costs less than 1 gp (which this one does), but it doesn't provide a target for a spell where one doesn't exist. You still need a bolt to touch as the target.
Argument: The spell actually doesn't work at all as written. It names the bolt that's being fired as the material component, and material components are consumed, so there's no bolt left to fire!
This one's closer; the bolt is, in fact, consumed, since it's a material component of the spell. However, the spell is of Instant duration, so the bolt very well can be fired and do the damage it says it does; it's just consumed in the process. This leads to the odd situation that, after firing the bolt, there's no bolt left. So the wounds or damage done by it are devoid of evidence of what caused them. Probably a murder mystery or something one could pull off with this, if one were so inclined.
This does raise an interesting point, though: Eschew Materials, in obviating the need for the material component, means that the bolt being targeted is not used as the material component. Therefore, it is not consumed. So using Launch Bolt with Eschew Materials causes the bolt to be left behind after it's fired, while it's just plain gone if the feat is not applied.
Now, this leads me to the first trick - and possibly one that's somewhat original, as I've not seen it elsewhere:
"Bolts from Nowhere"
This is, in some ways, similar to the attempted trick above that said that Eschew Materials would manufacture bolts from nothing. However, it's actually easier to do, ironically.
Spell Component Pouches are mundane items that just about every spellcaster buys. They explicitly have in them any material component the spellcaster needs for his spells, so long as they're less than 1 gp in value. They never need refreshing or replacement unless they're lost, stolen, or destroyed. This is actually a rules abstraction; they're not magic items, and don't magically have infinite supply. They just are treated as if they do.
However, by the RAW, this means that any spellcaster who casts Launch Bolt can pull the material component - the bolt in question - from his spell component pouch. This is an actual bolt, and is therefore a valid target for the spell! Sure, it's still consumed by the spell, but it means there's a reason for even the 0th level Launch Bolt: you don't have to actually mark off a bolt from your inventory when you fire it! You happened to have the one you needed in your spell component pouch.
Note that this doesn't mean you can just pull out bolt after bolt and eventually sell them or something like that; the spell component pouch provides material components for spells. It doesn't provide spell components that don't get used for them.
This isn't even all that unreasonable; you ARE spending a 0th level slot, and it's not giving you a ranged touch attack the way your other 0th level spells do. Additionally, it DOES require a material component and a target, so if you're divested of your pouch, it's still a useless spell. However, it can be expanded to stupid-silly levels that work by the RAW, but for which your DM is likely to hit you.
For example...
"Broomsticks in Your Belt Pouch"
Your spell component pouch (usually worn on your belt, hence the title) contains any material component you need for your spell, so long as it is less than 1 gp. Crossbow bolts up to Gargantuan size are less than 1 gp. (Large: 2 sp; Huge: 4 sp; Gargantuan: 8 sp; Colossal: 16 sp)
That's right: by the rules, your spell component pouch contains Gargantuan crossbow bolts if that's what you decide you want to use as the material component for this spell!
Go ahead and snicker at the mental image. I know I was seeing Bugs Bunny the wizard pulling small tree trunks out of his belt pouch.
Done laughing? At least enough to continue on? Okay. Don't get too excited by the monstrous damage this suddenly might let you do. Remember, the spell says it fires the bolt "as if you fired it." This means that if you're firing bolts bigger than intended for your size category (or smaller, for that matter), you suffer the "improper size" penalties for wielding such. I don't recall off hand what the penalties for a Medium creature wielding a Gargantuan weapon are, and can't find them in my ~5 min. search, but I imagine they're sufficient that you're not liable to hit anything you'd want to. (Heck, it might be that the RAW say you can't wield weapons more than 1-2 size categories bigger than you, but I am not positive.)
So, then, what good is this, if you're going to fire the bolt and not hit anything?
Well, check out the name of this trick, again. Gargantuan bolts are likely big enough that you could sit astraddle them, and have your party lined up in front or behind you. Provided the rules aren't "you can't wield weapons that much bigger than you," the hefty penalties might still make you fail the DC 5 attack roll to hit a target square, but even so, you can launch yourself 80 feet! Up to 800 feet if you're willing to be at -10 for range increment penalties in your efforts to hit that target square.
If you're okay with bringing out the grenade chart to see where you land (likely within 20 feet of your target square), you just traveled a marvelous distance in one standard action! I would expect the DM to tell you to roll falling damage, though, at the very least. So be prepared to mitigate that somehow.
(Obviously, many DMs will quite rationally say that the abstraction of the spell component pouch containing any material component under 1 gp in value is not carte blanche to have it hold impossibly huge things, nor to justify you carrying around so many as all that. The RAW do support it, but it's not at all unreasonable to rule 0 when the abstractions of the rules start flying completely in the face of common sense. The DM may even have some leeway, here, as he is probably in his rights to tell you at some point, if you've had NO chance to replenish it, that your spell component pouch is running out of your favorite material components.
However, it doesn't stop you from actually buying them specifically, assuming you can figure out a way to carry them with you on your adventures!)
Interestingly, if you can manage to withstand the discomfort (and probable falling-damage-danger) of this means of transport, you could commission or craft a gargantuan masterwork crossbow bolt enchanted to cast Launch Bolt on command. Command-word activation of a 0th level spell on a no-body-slot magic item is 1800 gp market value. This is being enchanted as a wondrous item to avoid the "ammunition" rules (including being consumed and making 50 of them a pop). So as a weapon, it's strictly Masterwork. It has the property of casting Launch Bolt on a touched bolt at its user's command.
Use it as a very large "light crossbow" to fire regular-sized bolts once per standard action, or use it as a highly unorthodox mount to launch yourself on its "back" repeatedly up to 800 ft. per standard action! Again, be ready to provide a means of surviving the arguable falling damage.
For a more "standard" trick for which I cannot take original credit...
Chain-gunning Crossbow Bolts
This one is probably not broken, though it is heavy in optimization. I could see a reasonable build designed around it, though getting up to 6th level would be less than thematic. It involves using metamagic on our 0th level spell and building an Arcane Thesis around it.
Reach Spell makes it a ray, but doesn't change the "in your possession" part of the targeting requirement), +2 to spell level
Chain Spell (lets a ranged targeted spell chain to your CL additional valid targets), +3 to spell level.
Split Ray (lets you fire two rays with one casting of the parent spell, targeting up to two (one with each ray) targets), +2 to spell level.
Arcane Thesis Reach Chain Launch Bolt is a 3rd level spell slot, due to Arcane Thesis reducing each metamagic cost by 1 spell level. Minimum level is 6th, because that's the earliest you can meet Arcane Thesis's skill prereq. Casting as an 8th level caster (+2 CL for Launch Bolt from Arcane Thesis), you fire a ray at one bolt and it chains to 8 more. Nothing says you must fire them all at the same target. I am not sure whether you would roll 8 to-hit rolls, or roll one to-hit roll and apply it to all the bolts.
Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages, and probably balance out, so it's up to you and your DM how you want to handle it for a balance purpose. If somebody has a parsing of the rules that clarify which is more accurate by the RAW, it would be appreciated. I will say that "roll once for them all" is a lot faster at the table, as long as all 8 bolts are identical wrt their enhancement bonuses to hit.
When you level up to 7 and open up 4th level slots, you can (because of Arcane Thesis) apply Split Ray for a net +1 more to the spell slot it takes. Now you fire two rays at two distinct bolts, and each ray chains from those bolts to 9 more bolts. That's a total of 20 bolts fired for a 4th level spell slot!
(Interestingly, the material component is still 1 crossbow bolt, and that is still technically provided by your spell component pouch. So you only need to provide 19 of these, as your pouch provides the last. Still, for simplicity's sake, I'd go ahead and provide them all. That way, you can hit them with Greater Magic Weapon for a +1 to hit and damage on all of them, and don't have to worry about one of them lacking it.)
And yes, at level 8, your GMW adds +2 enhancement, so you can take your (now 22) bolts and make all of them +2. Things get even more fun if you start buying magic bolts to use with it.
If you can scrape together a Lesser Metamagic Rod of Chain Spell for 14,000 gp (not cheap at the levels we're talking!), you can lower the spell slot requirements to 1 and 2, which IS a significant boost in power (as they have the same net effect as the 3 and 4 versions). This might be getting up there due to repeatability, at this point, though still the damage is only a little high on the optimization chart for this level. You're CERTAINLY not affording much in the way of enchanted bolts if you've done this.
So far, while this is powerful, I don't think it's particularly beyond the pale; in a game with other skilled optimizers, this should fit right in. Recall that the build required will look something like this:
L1: Wiz 1 - Scribe Scroll; point blank shot
L3: Wiz 3 - Reach Spell (which you can't even really USE yet)
L5: Wis 5 - Split Ray
L6: Wiz 6 (or PrC 1, if you have the reqs) - Arcane Thesis (Launch Bolt)
You need the metamagic rod to make the trick work at all with that build. Alternatively, you could put Chain Spell in at 5th level and either go for a metamgic rod of split ray (only 9,000 gp), or you could take all three (making your 1st level feat as useless as your third at the time you take it!), and not be able to use everything youv'e invested in properly until 7th level.
If you don't take PBS yourself, the spell Heroics out of the Spell Compendium (sor/wiz 2) can give it to you, but still, it'd probably be nice to be able to take a level 1 feat that isn't wholly useless to you for multiple levels.
Negative-Level Metamagic
There are builds that stack on +0 spell level metamagic and let Arcane Thesis make them into -1. It works by the RAW, but that is entering into "exploiting bad writing" territory, since there's no way that an Arcane Thesis is supposed to make adding metamagic reduce the final level of the spell. Stack a ton of +1s on for no net increase? Sure. Stack a bunch of +2s on, then an equal number of +0s, for no net increase, but have more increase the fewer +0s lying around? Definitely violating the spirit, and moving into cheese territory (rather than merely high optimization). At least, that's where I draw the line. Your mileage and DM may vary.
Other Feats to Stack On?
Launch Bolt's targeting (the crossbow bolt) enables the trick above for chain-gunning them, but it does present some interesting issues for finding other useful metamagic feats to apply. It'd be great to find a +1 spell level feat or two, particularly if that'd let us use it at low level (despite the stringent feat requirements we find ourselves facing for this build).
I've found one, Coercive Spell, from Drow of the Underdark, which adds only one to it. It specifically specifies that "any living creature dealt damage by the spell takes a —2 penalty on Will saves for 3 rounds." That wording is very important; it says NOTHING about the target of the spell, and it is undeniable that the beings hit by the crossbow bolt(s) are "dealt damage by the spell." The crossbow bolts' launching as weapons IS part of the spell effect, so the spell caused the damage.
I don't think it likely that the -2 penalty stacks, so chain-gunning the bolts into one target wouldn't work all that well (but man, the multi-target will debuffing!). However, at lower levels, it can make the Launch Bolt not only a "free" crossbow bolt that doesn't take a move action to reload, but give you a 1st level spell slot use that can make the target also more vulnerable to mind-influencing magics. And, once you have Arcane Thesis...? It's a +0 adjustment. No reason NOT to use it, if you know it!
So, any other metamagic feats people can think of that would apply interestingly to this spell, given its unique targeting and characteristics?
First, a little discussion on what this all means.
Argument: Eschew Materials allows you to create bolts from thin air, because it provides the material component.
Unfortunately, that's inaccurate: Eschew Materials obviates the need for a material component that costs less than 1 gp (which this one does), but it doesn't provide a target for a spell where one doesn't exist. You still need a bolt to touch as the target.
Argument: The spell actually doesn't work at all as written. It names the bolt that's being fired as the material component, and material components are consumed, so there's no bolt left to fire!
This one's closer; the bolt is, in fact, consumed, since it's a material component of the spell. However, the spell is of Instant duration, so the bolt very well can be fired and do the damage it says it does; it's just consumed in the process. This leads to the odd situation that, after firing the bolt, there's no bolt left. So the wounds or damage done by it are devoid of evidence of what caused them. Probably a murder mystery or something one could pull off with this, if one were so inclined.
This does raise an interesting point, though: Eschew Materials, in obviating the need for the material component, means that the bolt being targeted is not used as the material component. Therefore, it is not consumed. So using Launch Bolt with Eschew Materials causes the bolt to be left behind after it's fired, while it's just plain gone if the feat is not applied.
Now, this leads me to the first trick - and possibly one that's somewhat original, as I've not seen it elsewhere:
"Bolts from Nowhere"
This is, in some ways, similar to the attempted trick above that said that Eschew Materials would manufacture bolts from nothing. However, it's actually easier to do, ironically.
Spell Component Pouches are mundane items that just about every spellcaster buys. They explicitly have in them any material component the spellcaster needs for his spells, so long as they're less than 1 gp in value. They never need refreshing or replacement unless they're lost, stolen, or destroyed. This is actually a rules abstraction; they're not magic items, and don't magically have infinite supply. They just are treated as if they do.
However, by the RAW, this means that any spellcaster who casts Launch Bolt can pull the material component - the bolt in question - from his spell component pouch. This is an actual bolt, and is therefore a valid target for the spell! Sure, it's still consumed by the spell, but it means there's a reason for even the 0th level Launch Bolt: you don't have to actually mark off a bolt from your inventory when you fire it! You happened to have the one you needed in your spell component pouch.
Note that this doesn't mean you can just pull out bolt after bolt and eventually sell them or something like that; the spell component pouch provides material components for spells. It doesn't provide spell components that don't get used for them.
This isn't even all that unreasonable; you ARE spending a 0th level slot, and it's not giving you a ranged touch attack the way your other 0th level spells do. Additionally, it DOES require a material component and a target, so if you're divested of your pouch, it's still a useless spell. However, it can be expanded to stupid-silly levels that work by the RAW, but for which your DM is likely to hit you.
For example...
"Broomsticks in Your Belt Pouch"
Your spell component pouch (usually worn on your belt, hence the title) contains any material component you need for your spell, so long as it is less than 1 gp. Crossbow bolts up to Gargantuan size are less than 1 gp. (Large: 2 sp; Huge: 4 sp; Gargantuan: 8 sp; Colossal: 16 sp)
That's right: by the rules, your spell component pouch contains Gargantuan crossbow bolts if that's what you decide you want to use as the material component for this spell!
Go ahead and snicker at the mental image. I know I was seeing Bugs Bunny the wizard pulling small tree trunks out of his belt pouch.
Done laughing? At least enough to continue on? Okay. Don't get too excited by the monstrous damage this suddenly might let you do. Remember, the spell says it fires the bolt "as if you fired it." This means that if you're firing bolts bigger than intended for your size category (or smaller, for that matter), you suffer the "improper size" penalties for wielding such. I don't recall off hand what the penalties for a Medium creature wielding a Gargantuan weapon are, and can't find them in my ~5 min. search, but I imagine they're sufficient that you're not liable to hit anything you'd want to. (Heck, it might be that the RAW say you can't wield weapons more than 1-2 size categories bigger than you, but I am not positive.)
So, then, what good is this, if you're going to fire the bolt and not hit anything?
Well, check out the name of this trick, again. Gargantuan bolts are likely big enough that you could sit astraddle them, and have your party lined up in front or behind you. Provided the rules aren't "you can't wield weapons that much bigger than you," the hefty penalties might still make you fail the DC 5 attack roll to hit a target square, but even so, you can launch yourself 80 feet! Up to 800 feet if you're willing to be at -10 for range increment penalties in your efforts to hit that target square.
If you're okay with bringing out the grenade chart to see where you land (likely within 20 feet of your target square), you just traveled a marvelous distance in one standard action! I would expect the DM to tell you to roll falling damage, though, at the very least. So be prepared to mitigate that somehow.
(Obviously, many DMs will quite rationally say that the abstraction of the spell component pouch containing any material component under 1 gp in value is not carte blanche to have it hold impossibly huge things, nor to justify you carrying around so many as all that. The RAW do support it, but it's not at all unreasonable to rule 0 when the abstractions of the rules start flying completely in the face of common sense. The DM may even have some leeway, here, as he is probably in his rights to tell you at some point, if you've had NO chance to replenish it, that your spell component pouch is running out of your favorite material components.
However, it doesn't stop you from actually buying them specifically, assuming you can figure out a way to carry them with you on your adventures!)
Interestingly, if you can manage to withstand the discomfort (and probable falling-damage-danger) of this means of transport, you could commission or craft a gargantuan masterwork crossbow bolt enchanted to cast Launch Bolt on command. Command-word activation of a 0th level spell on a no-body-slot magic item is 1800 gp market value. This is being enchanted as a wondrous item to avoid the "ammunition" rules (including being consumed and making 50 of them a pop). So as a weapon, it's strictly Masterwork. It has the property of casting Launch Bolt on a touched bolt at its user's command.
Use it as a very large "light crossbow" to fire regular-sized bolts once per standard action, or use it as a highly unorthodox mount to launch yourself on its "back" repeatedly up to 800 ft. per standard action! Again, be ready to provide a means of surviving the arguable falling damage.
For a more "standard" trick for which I cannot take original credit...
Chain-gunning Crossbow Bolts
This one is probably not broken, though it is heavy in optimization. I could see a reasonable build designed around it, though getting up to 6th level would be less than thematic. It involves using metamagic on our 0th level spell and building an Arcane Thesis around it.
Reach Spell makes it a ray, but doesn't change the "in your possession" part of the targeting requirement), +2 to spell level
Chain Spell (lets a ranged targeted spell chain to your CL additional valid targets), +3 to spell level.
Split Ray (lets you fire two rays with one casting of the parent spell, targeting up to two (one with each ray) targets), +2 to spell level.
Arcane Thesis Reach Chain Launch Bolt is a 3rd level spell slot, due to Arcane Thesis reducing each metamagic cost by 1 spell level. Minimum level is 6th, because that's the earliest you can meet Arcane Thesis's skill prereq. Casting as an 8th level caster (+2 CL for Launch Bolt from Arcane Thesis), you fire a ray at one bolt and it chains to 8 more. Nothing says you must fire them all at the same target. I am not sure whether you would roll 8 to-hit rolls, or roll one to-hit roll and apply it to all the bolts.
Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages, and probably balance out, so it's up to you and your DM how you want to handle it for a balance purpose. If somebody has a parsing of the rules that clarify which is more accurate by the RAW, it would be appreciated. I will say that "roll once for them all" is a lot faster at the table, as long as all 8 bolts are identical wrt their enhancement bonuses to hit.
When you level up to 7 and open up 4th level slots, you can (because of Arcane Thesis) apply Split Ray for a net +1 more to the spell slot it takes. Now you fire two rays at two distinct bolts, and each ray chains from those bolts to 9 more bolts. That's a total of 20 bolts fired for a 4th level spell slot!
(Interestingly, the material component is still 1 crossbow bolt, and that is still technically provided by your spell component pouch. So you only need to provide 19 of these, as your pouch provides the last. Still, for simplicity's sake, I'd go ahead and provide them all. That way, you can hit them with Greater Magic Weapon for a +1 to hit and damage on all of them, and don't have to worry about one of them lacking it.)
And yes, at level 8, your GMW adds +2 enhancement, so you can take your (now 22) bolts and make all of them +2. Things get even more fun if you start buying magic bolts to use with it.
If you can scrape together a Lesser Metamagic Rod of Chain Spell for 14,000 gp (not cheap at the levels we're talking!), you can lower the spell slot requirements to 1 and 2, which IS a significant boost in power (as they have the same net effect as the 3 and 4 versions). This might be getting up there due to repeatability, at this point, though still the damage is only a little high on the optimization chart for this level. You're CERTAINLY not affording much in the way of enchanted bolts if you've done this.
So far, while this is powerful, I don't think it's particularly beyond the pale; in a game with other skilled optimizers, this should fit right in. Recall that the build required will look something like this:
L1: Wiz 1 - Scribe Scroll; point blank shot
L3: Wiz 3 - Reach Spell (which you can't even really USE yet)
L5: Wis 5 - Split Ray
L6: Wiz 6 (or PrC 1, if you have the reqs) - Arcane Thesis (Launch Bolt)
You need the metamagic rod to make the trick work at all with that build. Alternatively, you could put Chain Spell in at 5th level and either go for a metamgic rod of split ray (only 9,000 gp), or you could take all three (making your 1st level feat as useless as your third at the time you take it!), and not be able to use everything youv'e invested in properly until 7th level.
If you don't take PBS yourself, the spell Heroics out of the Spell Compendium (sor/wiz 2) can give it to you, but still, it'd probably be nice to be able to take a level 1 feat that isn't wholly useless to you for multiple levels.
Negative-Level Metamagic
There are builds that stack on +0 spell level metamagic and let Arcane Thesis make them into -1. It works by the RAW, but that is entering into "exploiting bad writing" territory, since there's no way that an Arcane Thesis is supposed to make adding metamagic reduce the final level of the spell. Stack a ton of +1s on for no net increase? Sure. Stack a bunch of +2s on, then an equal number of +0s, for no net increase, but have more increase the fewer +0s lying around? Definitely violating the spirit, and moving into cheese territory (rather than merely high optimization). At least, that's where I draw the line. Your mileage and DM may vary.
Other Feats to Stack On?
Launch Bolt's targeting (the crossbow bolt) enables the trick above for chain-gunning them, but it does present some interesting issues for finding other useful metamagic feats to apply. It'd be great to find a +1 spell level feat or two, particularly if that'd let us use it at low level (despite the stringent feat requirements we find ourselves facing for this build).
I've found one, Coercive Spell, from Drow of the Underdark, which adds only one to it. It specifically specifies that "any living creature dealt damage by the spell takes a —2 penalty on Will saves for 3 rounds." That wording is very important; it says NOTHING about the target of the spell, and it is undeniable that the beings hit by the crossbow bolt(s) are "dealt damage by the spell." The crossbow bolts' launching as weapons IS part of the spell effect, so the spell caused the damage.
I don't think it likely that the -2 penalty stacks, so chain-gunning the bolts into one target wouldn't work all that well (but man, the multi-target will debuffing!). However, at lower levels, it can make the Launch Bolt not only a "free" crossbow bolt that doesn't take a move action to reload, but give you a 1st level spell slot use that can make the target also more vulnerable to mind-influencing magics. And, once you have Arcane Thesis...? It's a +0 adjustment. No reason NOT to use it, if you know it!
So, any other metamagic feats people can think of that would apply interestingly to this spell, given its unique targeting and characteristics?