Desril
2015-02-05, 08:14 PM
Short version is, I quit 3.5 years ago and moved on to Pathfinder. A friend invited me to a 3.5 game though, and I'm playing a Shadowcraft Mage.
Thing is, my system mastery and knowledge of all the rules minutiae has....slipped, over the last few years. The wording on Earth Spell is confusing me.
Specifically, I want to know what the bolded parts mean:
"If you cast a spell using a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level, the spell is treated as a spell of two levels higher and your effective caster level is increased by one. If you use a spell slot two levels higher, the spell is treated as three levels higher and your effective caster level is increased by two, and so on."
Now, you can't use Earth Spell on Fireball because of the Fire Descriptor, but let's ignore that for now and focus on just the quoted part.
Let's say you are a 7th level wizard, so you've got 4th level spell slots, and a fireball does 7d6 points of damage. If you Heighten the Fireball to a 4th level spell slot, normally, that just increases the save DC by +1, and that's all. But with Earth Spell, it increases it by another effective spell level, so it makes it a 5th level spell for a net gain of +2 DC. This is all fine, I get that, works as expected. But this is where the bolded portions above are throwing me off; Does that mean that, in addition to increasing the DC, by Heightening the spell by 1 (with Earth Spell making that a 2) your caster level is also increased by 1, resulting in the Fireball doing 8d6 damage?
Similarly, if, somehow, you had a 5th level spell slot but were still level 7, and you Heightened Fireball to 5th level (Earth Spell for 6th) that it would do 9d6?
Or does "effective caster level" not mean what I think it means?
Thing is, my system mastery and knowledge of all the rules minutiae has....slipped, over the last few years. The wording on Earth Spell is confusing me.
Specifically, I want to know what the bolded parts mean:
"If you cast a spell using a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level, the spell is treated as a spell of two levels higher and your effective caster level is increased by one. If you use a spell slot two levels higher, the spell is treated as three levels higher and your effective caster level is increased by two, and so on."
Now, you can't use Earth Spell on Fireball because of the Fire Descriptor, but let's ignore that for now and focus on just the quoted part.
Let's say you are a 7th level wizard, so you've got 4th level spell slots, and a fireball does 7d6 points of damage. If you Heighten the Fireball to a 4th level spell slot, normally, that just increases the save DC by +1, and that's all. But with Earth Spell, it increases it by another effective spell level, so it makes it a 5th level spell for a net gain of +2 DC. This is all fine, I get that, works as expected. But this is where the bolded portions above are throwing me off; Does that mean that, in addition to increasing the DC, by Heightening the spell by 1 (with Earth Spell making that a 2) your caster level is also increased by 1, resulting in the Fireball doing 8d6 damage?
Similarly, if, somehow, you had a 5th level spell slot but were still level 7, and you Heightened Fireball to 5th level (Earth Spell for 6th) that it would do 9d6?
Or does "effective caster level" not mean what I think it means?