Meteor Swarm: Could it be made cooler and actually useful?

[Erik the Green]

I know, direct damage and fire too, wargle, blargle, flargle...but it has always bugged me that M.Swarm doesn't even stand up next to spells like Frostfell and Maw of Chaos, even though it seems like it should be cinematically awesome, the sort of spell a sorcerer uses to hold a mountain pass against an entire army.
So, some thoughts for consideration and comment:
1) it has a duration = caster level. Every round after the first you can send a quad downrange to the same grid square(s) as a move action OR target a creature as a standard, or shift target area as a standard.
2) Concentration, or should it maybe even surround the caster with a halo of fire analogous to the 5d6 lightning zappy thing from Lightning Ring and if you don't choose to use it in a given round the duration just ticks down?
3) Each meteor does at least 10d6 fire (like a 3rd level spell !!!) + 2d6 bludgeoning...maybe even 20d6 each?
4) OR, maybe it gets changed to Conjuration and SR: No, because it is actually bringing some honking great globs (globes?) of highly unstable lava from the Elemental Plane of Magma and hurling them at your highly flammable enemies?
Some combination of these would, I think, add up to a spell that properly says "Run away, or I _will_ turn your entire tribe into orc nuggets (cajun style)."
EtG

[noob]

None of them would make it useful.
You can not make it useful without changing entirely the philosophy of that spell:damage spells have no real use.
However those changes would give a reason to use this spell rather than the generally better(but still not useful) firestorm(incredible area of effect:selectively choose the trees to kill without killing your allies(honestly in my team it is mostly used to kill trees when we know there is druids))

[Jormengand]

damage spells have no real use.

I strongly disagree. In terms of stopping people doing anything in response, there are a load of conditions you can throw on them to stop them, but the most effective status condition is dead.

If you dealt 20d6 of each (suggestion 3), then you'd stand a chance of taking out a wizard of the same level (does he have 7 or more HP/HD? Does he have 20 or more CON?). Throwing all of them at the same wizard would annihilate him even if he had CON 30 and fire immunity. Dealing 80d6 damage of a type that's hard to resist and 80d6 of a type that isn't is devastating. In fact, dealing just 2d6*1.5/level damage of a type that's hard to resist is why people had to ban empowered Isaac's greater missile storm (out of an 8th-level slot) on certain NWN2 servers. I cannot think of a good way to be immune or even resistant to magical bludgeoning damage (as in bludgeoning damage from a spell, which ignores DR) off the top of my head.

Duration concentration or 1 round/level would be hilarious for destroying anything from fleets to metropolises. From, like, a quarter of a mile away, especially with the damage boost (I'm assuming no more than one meteor/round at that point, though if you really want to make it 4 meteors/round with duration concentration and each one does 4 times as much damage as fireball and half of it is bludgeoning, which is roughly equivalent to maximised widened energy admixture (like probably sonic or something) fireball which is a 13th-level spell, but now you get four of them, so it's like twinned twinned maximised widened energy admixture fireball, which is a 21st-level spell. Every round. Then you can do that.) It's not exactly irrelevant; it's actually really powerful by this point.


firestorm(incredible area of effect:selectively choose the trees to kill without killing your allies(honestly in my team it is mostly used to kill trees when we know there is druids))

Tangent, perhaps, but firestorm specifically doesn't harm trees.

[ben-zayb]

If you just want it to be unparalleled as a blasting spell, maybe just do one or more of the following:

Each Sphere deals 1d6/CL
Four Spheres of radius 5ft/2CL
No Save for those within 5ft/4CL
SR: No
Ignore Fire Immunity and Fire Resistance
May deal damage to objects, ignoring Hardness and reduction of damage on objects

[noob]

I strongly disagree. In terms of stopping people doing anything in response, there are a load of conditions you can throw on them to stop them, but the most effective status condition is dead.

If you dealt 20d6 of each (suggestion 3), then you'd stand a chance of taking out a wizard of the same level (does he have 7 or more HP/HD? Does he have 20 or more CON?). Throwing all of them at the same wizard would annihilate him even if he had CON 30 and fire immunity. Dealing 80d6 damage of a type that's hard to resist and 80d6 of a type that isn't is devastating. In fact, dealing just 2d6*1.5/level damage of a type that's hard to resist is why people had to ban empowered Isaac's greater missile storm (out of an 8th-level slot) on certain NWN2 servers. I cannot think of a good way to be immune or even resistant to magical bludgeoning damage (as in bludgeoning damage from a spell, which ignores DR) off the top of my head.

Duration concentration or 1 round/level would be hilarious for destroying anything from fleets to metropolises. From, like, a quarter of a mile away, especially with the damage boost (I'm assuming no more than one meteor/round at that point, though if you really want to make it 4 meteors/round with duration concentration and each one does 4 times as much damage as fireball and half of it is bludgeoning, which is roughly equivalent to maximised widened energy admixture (like probably sonic or something) fireball which is a 13th-level spell, but now you get four of them, so it's like twinned twinned maximised widened energy admixture fireball, which is a 21st-level spell. Every round. Then you can do that.) It's not exactly irrelevant; it's actually really powerful by this point.

Tangent, perhaps, but firestorm specifically doesn't harm trees.

Well damage does not works well against T1 because they can cast shape-change(or other things like those immunity to elements spells and so on) and be immune to it(in a general way wizard duels does ends up with tons of shenanigans and if the wizard is in a state where damage could kill him he probably did already lost).
So it is useful only in situations where the opponent is weak(It can be killed instantly by your invisible teleporting pouncing ubercharger instantly since he can deal 4365 tons of damage to all the opponents in a radius of 1 kilometer) and in those situations you probably want the noncaster people to be happy and thus you will probably avoid stealing their fight by insta ending it with damage


The raging flames do not harm natural vegetation, ground cover, and any plant creatures in the area that you wish to exclude from damage
Firestorm works for killing trees(you simply need to not wish to exclude them from damage) and it is one the best use I found for it.

[Jormengand]

Firestorm works for killing trees(you simply need to not wish to exclude them from damage) and it is one the best use I found for it.

No, only plant creatures can be damaged with it; noncreature plants can't even if you want to.

Anyway, if you're playing a game where wizards are all immune to damage, you're playing a different kind of game from most of the games most people will play.

[Erik the Green]

I strongly disagree. In terms of stopping people doing anything in response, there are a load of conditions you can throw on them to stop them, but the most effective status condition is dead.


Exactly. Such as throwing down with a great wyrm white dragon, so Shivering Touch won't work, and its' banned, and you're a fey sorcerer so you can't learn necromancy anyway...Or, Cold Miser has turned loose his dancing legion of doom to freeze the whole world, and you need something to melt a lot of targets at once...

[/QUOTE]
If you dealt 20d6 of each (suggestion 3), then you'd stand a chance of taking out a wizard of the same level (does he have 7 or more HP/HD? Does he have 20 or more CON?). Throwing all of them at the same wizard would annihilate him even if he had CON 30 and fire immunity. Dealing 80d6 damage of a type that's hard to resist and 80d6 of a type that isn't is devastating. In fact, dealing just 2d6*1.5/level damage of a type that's hard to resist is why people had to ban empowered Isaac's greater missile storm (out of an 8th-level slot) on certain NWN2 servers. I cannot think of a good way to be immune or even resistant to magical bludgeoning damage (as in bludgeoning damage from a spell, which ignores DR) off the top of my head.[/QUOTE]


Sorry, I meant to just boost the fire damage to 20d6 to match Delayed Blast Fireball. 20d6 bludgeoning probably would require the spheres to be supersonic &/or weight a ton, literally. I would note that (I think) Ray Deflection would mean that you couldn't hit a proper high level wizard with the spheres directly anyway.

[/QUOTE]
Duration concentration or 1 round/level would be hilarious for destroying anything from fleets to metropolises. From, like, a quarter of a mile away, especially with the damage boost (I'm assuming no more than one meteor/round at that point, though if you really want to make it 4 meteors/round with duration concentration and each one does 4 times as much damage as fireball and half of it is bludgeoning, which is roughly equivalent to maximised widened energy admixture (like probably sonic or something) fireball which is a 13th-level spell, but now you get four of them, so it's like twinned twinned maximised widened energy admixture fireball, which is a 21st-level spell. Every round. Then you can do that.) It's not exactly irrelevant; it's actually really powerful by this point.[/QUOTE]


I take your point. That would be more powerful than, say, Frostfell because it keeps going (and not just an environmental change). OTOH, Maw of Chaos keeps going for 20+ rounds; on the gripping hand, Maw can't be moved or retargeted. What would your opinion be of duration = Concentration, up to 1/2 CL? That would allow a caster who really needed it to have a Mad Minute that could wreck an army, but not overthrow the walls and citadel of Byzantium or Neverwinter itself.



[/QUOTE]
Tangent, perhaps, but firestorm specifically doesn't harm trees.[/QUOTE]

On a side note, are there any past posts out there about benchmarking spells? I thought I was dialing Mr. Swarm up to a level of fire would be a fair return for a L9 slot, not "this is a Fireball plus boatloads of metamagic. "

Thanks in advance-EtG