Spell descriptors... what for? optimization wise

[pilvento]

Hi! quick question here...

Im about to hit lvl 11 as a fire theologian cleric in way of the wicked campaign. I want to go for the Diabolist PrC and one of its features gives my fire spells the evil descriptor, does that have any kind of advantage fighting angels paladins and all the like? or its just free saves bonuses for them?

[Hunter Noventa]

Someone more knowledgeable than me could probably clarify, but in truth the answer would be not much. there are undoubtedly some effects that could boost the effectiveness of [Evil] spells and vice versa, but for the most part it wouldn't have much of an effect.

[pilvento]

I do now some feats or items from 3.5 but I could not find them for pathfinder. The thing is that I was wondering if it had any inmediate impact on the board, since its a class feature that has limited uses per day.

At first I wondered if it was something like the "holy" fire damage from a flame strike. But it is not.

[Psyren]

What it does is turn your energy spells into hellfire. The evil descriptor doesn't do anything (other than, well, keep you evil) but the big benefit here is that half of hellfire damage is untyped and so bypasses fire resistance/immunity. At least, that's how it works in Hellfire Ray (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/h/hellfire-ray), but you'd need the AP this thing comes from to verify whether that applies generally.