Small Mechanics Question

[BroomGuys]

I was re-reading the strip a bit (as I expect is a common habit 'round these parts) and had a particular question about the fight between Durkon and Malack:

When Durkon cast Mass Death Ward, could he have also targeted Malack with it? After Durkon managed to hit him with a Heal, it seemed like a crucial benefit to dominating Belkar was in buying himself time to cast Harm on himself. Could Mass Death Ward have blocked this?

(As per usual: apologies if this has been brought up before)

[TaiLiu]

He could have, though Malack gets a Will save to negate the spell. Considering that Clerics have good Will saves, and that Malack has a high Wisdom, it probably wouldn't have worked anyway.

[Douglas]

The normal Death Ward spell is specifically restricted to living creatures only. The Mass version in Spell Compendium does not have that restriction, but the one in the comic was homebrewed without awareness of the Spell Compendium one (this came up in response to comments about the spell's level - SC has it at level 8, but Rich's assessment was level 7). Because of that, it is likely the in-comic Mass Death Ward still has Death Ward's living-only restriction which would prevent casting it on Malack.

Separately, Death Ward technically offers a will save by the subject to negate it, and even the Spell Compendium version does not change that detail, so Malack would have a high chance of resisting that usage of the spell.

Finally, that is not an immediately obvious or standard usage of any version of Death Ward, so it could easily have simply not occurred to Durkon - or Rich Burlew.

[prism6691]

That would have been both a clever and unorthodox usage. Considering Durkon had just mastered the spell though, it may not have occurred to him to do that.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I don't think Durkon is particularly smart.

[BroomGuys]

Thanks for the replies! I was just really curious about it because it could conceivably have been the difference in that battle, but it never bothered me; Malack even checked to see if Durkon remembered to cast it on himself, so even if it were a viable strategy to cast it on Malack as well, it'd certainly make sense that he just never thought of it. The reason I thought of it comes from my experience with the SNES and PSX Final Fantasy games, wherein fights against the undead usually have some kind of game-breaking strategy for the sufficiently savvy (Nale discovered a pretty effective one, methinks :smallwink:) and so blocking him from healing himself with negative spells sort of came up naturally.

From what y'all've said, though, it would've been very unlikely to work anyway. Still, would it have been worth a try if Durkon had thought of it?

[rodneyAnonymous]

Still, would it have been worth a try if Durkon had thought of it?

Sure: it probably wouldn't work, but it doesn't cost anything to try, and he is casting the spell anyway. Thinking of that kind of strategy in the middle of a fight would be uncharacteristic for Durkon though, it is an unusual use of the spell and would mostly only be effective against undead clerics. That's a very-high-INT kind of thing to come up with under pressure, and I agree, Durkon doesn't seem very smart.

It wouldn't have made a difference in the battle, though, I don't think: even assuming he failed his save, Malack would just have dismissed the MDW sooner. He burned a spell to test whether Durkon was affected by it, but he would know (without wasting a harm) if he himself was targeted.

In general, yeah, you can often use spells that usually target friendlies against an enemy, but unwilling participants get a save. Vaarsuvius apparently failed his Will save against Zz'dtri's plane shift, for example.