How Powerful/useful is at will Telekinesis

[CyberThread]

How Powerful/useful is at will Telekinesis sla?

[Phelix-Mu]

As per the spell? It can be pretty useful. No touching stuff. Carry around big rocks to beat the floors to check for traps. Toss enemies into each other. Very popular with the ladies....

Key bits:

1.) Does the CL scale? If not, much less useful, but still lots of utility.

2.) Concentrating on it...I think the normal spell has a mechanism for this. AFB. I assume it would follow the normal rules.... I guess that doesn't have as much effect as I first thought.

3.) What are you asking this in regards to?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Power-wise, it varies with caster level. It never makes it to impressively powerful though.

Usefulness though, is very impressive. Any time you need to manipulate something that's out of reach you can. You can carry an impressive amount of weight, even without a proper container. You can machine-gun mundane daggers or other thrown weapons/ objects. You can hurl yourself away from your current position if you don't mind a rough landing.

It's a really useful ability if you have unlimited uses.

[Phelix-Mu]

If you can get into that Master of the Unseen Hand PrC with the SLA, then that would be awesomesauce. Not remembering the pre-reqs off the top of my head, but I seem to recall being able to cast telekinesis being the hard one to meet (5th level spell). The benefits are pretty nice though, and add some nice combat versatility to a one-trick pony telekineticist.

Honestly, how does D&D even exist without a good telekineticist? They are like pure awesome. *sadface*

[ericgrau]

During combat at-will means almost nothing unless you get the ability before you would normally get 5th level spells. You usually don't run out of abilities in combat anyway. Between combat is when you can abuse at-will abilities. You could use it to do some major construction work, to effectively fly at low speed past obstacles, overcome puzzles and traps, set up barricades, etc.

Doing that all day long I'd say is about as good as a level 8 spell and shouldn't be available before level 15 unless you are greatly limited in your other abilities. Ya ghosts can get it at ECL 6, but 5 LA hurts a lot. Practically speaking I wouldn't want to be less than an ECL 9 ghost and even then it's costly to get a limited set of abilities, so it's not crazy powerful to have telekinesis that way. And ghosts don't quite have it at will but for between combat purposes they almost are. They do lose a tiny bit of combat ability that way but they have other abilities to use in the mean time, besides class features.

[Pluto!]

If you can keep a reasonable BA and mental stats, you can scrounge some oversized weapons to make a pretty heavy blasting effect. Especially if this is for something like the Ghost template class you brought up in the other thread, which can get the effect way below the appropriate level.

[TuggyNE]

How Powerful/useful is at will Telekinesis sla?

Ask your avatar, it's probably his second-best eye beam for general bumming around. (Disintegrate is better, but probably nothing else.)

Mostly, it's great because there's a lot of utility stuff you can do with it when it's at-will, and you even get some combat value.

[Sir_Thaddeus]

Powerful? Somewhat. Useful? Definitely. Fun? Oh yeah.

I've often wanted at-will telekinesis for my characters, just for the sheer fun factor. Throw stuff around like you're playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Attack enemies without being in their threatened squares. Never have to touch anything again.

It's one of the main reasons I might actually spring for the +4 LA of a ghost, or the 75000 gp cost of a Ring of Telekinesis. And it makes Master of the Unseen Hand a cool concept despite not progressing caster levels.

For actual in-game uses, I think the other commenters have covered most of the good stuff - lift heavy things out-of-combat, etc. But I think the fun is the most important part.

[icefractal]

It's pretty handy in-combat too. Throw one weapon/level, which can be up to 25 lbs. If you pick the right weapon, that can be a decent amount of damage. Or throw nets for a really hard to break entangle.

If you're got the money, you can throw all kinds of stuff - acid flasks, green slime, poisoned arrows, ... there's a ton of options.

[Devronq]

It seems like it has a huge amount of utility use as others have already mentioned. Someone mentioned you can throw yourself that can be pretty useful. Can you also use it to make yourself fly? I know thats on the list of must have abilities

[Tar Palantir]

It's pretty handy in-combat too. Throw one weapon/level, which can be up to 25 lbs. If you pick the right weapon, that can be a decent amount of damage. Or throw nets for a really hard to break entangle.

If you're got the money, you can throw all kinds of stuff - acid flasks, green slime, poisoned arrows, ... there's a ton of options.

Yeah, one Large greatsword per CL is 3d6/CL damage. Even only hitting on half of your attacks puts you above the curve on spell damage. Not half bad.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It seems like it has a huge amount of utility use as others have already mentioned. Someone mentioned you can throw yourself that can be pretty useful. Can you also use it to make yourself fly? I know thats on the list of must have abilities

Flight is a no-no, unfortunately. The PrC, Master of the Unseen Hand, in (I believe) Complete Warrior explicitly grants flight via telekenesis, however.

[ericgrau]

Not flight that's useful for combat, but between combat you can move yourself at a speed of 20' by blowing your standard every round. And allies too. So yeup utility and more utility. In general I don't mean that it's not good in combat, I mean you can do far more with ideas like this and that's the upper mark on how powerful it is.

[Beardbarian]

If you can get into that Master of the Unseen Hand PrC with the SLA, then that would be awesomesauce. Not remembering the pre-reqs off the top of my head, but I seem to recall being able to cast telekinesis being the hard one to meet (5th level spell). The benefits are pretty nice though, and add some nice combat versatility to a one-trick pony telekineticist.

Honestly, how does D&D even exist without a good telekineticist? They are like pure awesome. *sadface*

Skills: Concentration 8 ranks
Spells: Able to cast the telekinesis spell, or access to telekinesis as a spell-like or supernatural ability

Pretty dumb pre-req

He can lift himself plus any willing creature

[Brookshw]

Ask your avatar, it's probably his second-best eye beam for general bumming around. (Disintegrate is better, but probably nothing else.)

Mostly, it's great because there's a lot of utility stuff you can do with it when it's at-will, and you even get some combat value.

Well played!

Definitely a good ability, not game breaking (usually) but still really good.

[Tvtyrant]

If you throw gargantuan or colossal greatswords at people it is fantastic. Otherwise it is just okay.

[CyberThread]

my avatar uses its magical powers, to raise the star on the Christmas tree, bringing joy far and wide, in the underdark.

[Curmudgeon]

If you throw gargantuan or colossal greatswords at people it is fantastic..
Since those aren't hurled weapons, I don't think the result is anywhere approaching "fantastic".
Weapons cause standard damage (with no Strength bonus; note that arrows or bolts deal damage as daggers of their size when used in this manner). Other objects cause damage ranging from 1 point per 25 pounds (for less dangerous objects) to 1d6 points of damage per 25 pounds (for hard, dense objects). There is no standard damage for a hurled greatsword, so you get the damage by weight.

[Phelix-Mu]

Since those aren't hurled weapons, I don't think the result is anywhere approaching "fantastic". There is no standard damage for a hurled greatsword, so you get the damage by weight.

Am I correct in thinking that you can, however, hurl an oversized javelin or thrown weapon and get the weapon damage, though?

[Curmudgeon]

Am I correct in thinking that you can, however, hurl an oversized javelin or thrown weapon and get the weapon damage, though?
Yes, you can. Telekinesis won't give you any proficiencies with such weapons or alter their range increments; your attacks will still have all the relevant penalties.

[The Trickster]

While it is not very optimized, a Blue Slaad can cast Telekinesis at will. Ghost would be better, but *shrug*

[icefractal]

A hurled greatsword is still a weapon, hence weapon damage. And for that matter, you can throw melee weapons, telekinesis not required. They only have a 5' range increment, and you take a penalty, but the damage is the same as normal.

Also, it's kind of irrelevant, because the best weapons to throw are either Chakrams (1 lb, 1d8 damage, so you can throw Colossal ones for 6d6 each) if you can only scale to Colossal, or arrows (0.15 lbs, d4 damage, so 8d6 at Colossal+++) if you can go beyond that.

As for range, it specifically says that the objects can be hurled 10' per caster level. :smallconfused:


Proficiency-wise - it is, admittedly, a little ambiguous. Every game that I've been in, it's been treated as auto-proficient, given that it can throw random objects that aren't even weapons. But it doesn't actually state that, and so the argument for non-proficency penalties could be made.

On the other hand, to get pedantic about it, it doesn't say that the attack roll for this spell is calculated in any kind of standard way. It could equally be argued that the attack bonus is exactly BAB + Int, with no other bonuses or penalties whatsoever.

[Curmudgeon]

A hurled greatsword is still a weapon, hence weapon damage.
OK, then, what's the standard hurled damage of a greatsword? Answer: there isn't any. Any weapon with a range increment of "—" is a melee-only weapon. Now, if you hurled a greatsword yourself you would use the improvised weapon rules, and your DM would determine the damage for such a use. However, Telekinesis specifies formulas (based on weight) for things which have no standard hurled damage, so you follow that part of the spell description.

[bekeleven]

OK, then, what's the standard hurled damage of a greatsword? Answer: there isn't any. Any weapon with a range increment of "—" is a melee-only weapon. Now, if you hurled a greatsword yourself you would use the improvised weapon rules, and your DM would determine the damage for such a use. However, Telekinesis specifies formulas (based on weight) for things which have no standard hurled damage, so you follow that part of the spell description.

If there's no standard damage for a thrown greatsword, then the feat Throw Anything doesn't work, as it doesn't specify how much damage the weapon deals.

I think there's a necessary assumption you're missing.

[Curmudgeon]

If there's no standard damage for a thrown greatsword, then the feat Throw Anything doesn't work, as it doesn't specify how much damage the weapon deals.

Benefit: You can throw a melee weapon you are proficient with as if it were a ranged weapon. A melee/ranged weapon (example: dagger) already has a listed damage for both melee and ranged use. Throw Anything lets you treat a melee-only weapon as if it had "10 ft." rather than "—" in the Range Increment column of the Weapons table (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#tableWeapons). That works just fine (well, except for the name of the feat being misleading).

Telekinesis, however, doesn't specify anything like that. Instead, it has two options:

use the standard damage of a hurled weapon; or
if it's not a hurled weapon, use a weight-based formula for damage.

[Karnith]

OK, then, what's the standard hurled damage of a greatsword? Answer: there isn't any. Any weapon with a range increment of "—" is a melee-only weapon. Now, if you hurled a greatsword yourself you would use the improvised weapon rules, and your DM would determine the damage for such a use.
I feel that I am missing something; would you mind pointing me to where this is stated? The SRD rules for thrown weapons (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#thrownWeapons) (which correspond to those in the PHB, p. 113) seem to indicate to me that you can use a Greatsword as a thrown weapon if you want, albeit with a -4 penalty to the attack roll, and I don't see why it would default to improvised weaponry. The rules are similar to those of using an improvised weapon, but it doesn't seem to say that you'd use improvised weapon rules.

Not trying to be rude or anything, I'm just curious.

[Curmudgeon]

I feel that I am missing something; would you mind pointing me to where this is stated? The SRD rules for thrown weapons (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#thrownWeapons) (which correspond to those in the PHB, p. 113) seem to indicate to me that you can use a Greatsword as a thrown weapon if you want, albeit with a -4 penalty to the attack roll, and I don't see why it would default to improvised weaponry.
That's my error for not properly explaining the context limitation, which is within the time frame of Telekinesis, a standard action spell.
Throwing a light or one-handed weapon is a standard action, while throwing a two-handed weapon is a full-round action. You cannot use a full-round action in a standard action, which means this proviso for throwing a melee weapon is off the table. By process of exclusion, all that's left for a standard action ranged attack is the improvised weapon option.

[Morphie]

Just watched X-Men and then I see this thread. No Magneto refference. Now I'm sad.

Telekinesis at will is really useful. And boy it is cool.
Once I was DM'ing The Standing Stone adventure and one of the players tried to block the path of the headless horseman. It was so cool to watch him fly out of the way while he kept on riding into the darkness until he disappeared back to awesome-town.

[icefractal]

A melee/ranged weapon (example: dagger) already has a listed damage for both melee and ranged use.What document, exactly, are you looking at? Because I'm looking at the SRD right now, and "having a listed damage for ranged use" is not even a thing. There is one damage column (for medium sized, another for small), and a separate column for range increment. Weapons that can be thrown or melee (ex: Dagger), do not have anything special listed in the damage column.

I feel like this entire argument is on odd grounds. If anything, the case you could make is that throwing a greatsword normally requires a full-round action, therefore Telekinesis can't do it - at all. Which would be pretty damn strange, given what it can throw, but still more of a logical sequence.


Also:

You cannot use a full-round action in a standard action, which means this proviso for throwing a melee weapon is off the table.You cannot (normally) throw 15 things at all as a standard action, much less if those 15 things are 1000' away from you. There are really two options here:
A) Telekinesis ignores the normal rules for number of objects thrown and such.
B) The spell does not actually work at all as described in the text.