How does the spell Giant's Wrath work?

[Nebuul]

I am confused by Giant's Wrath. How exactly does this spell work?

Let's say you take it at level 5. It appears you enchant a single pebble and now have 5 rounds to toss it to do a whopping 2d6+5 damage.

Am I missing something? At level 6, you get 2 pebbles, up to a max of 6 pebbles by level 18. It just seems . . . really really bad. I know there are some spells that just aren't very good, but this seems so bad that I'm about 90% sure that I'm missing something. What's the missing element that makes this spell shine?


Thanks!

[MesiDoomstalker]

No, it's just bad. Its a souped up Magic Stone but that's also a bad spell so its no surprise. I guess a Gish could use it as a decent ranged option? Though there are better ranged spells

[Nebuul]

No, it's just bad. Its a souped up Magic Stone but that's also a bad spell so its no surprise. I guess a Gish could use it as a decent ranged option? Though there are better ranged spells

When I read it, I wonder if it is supposed to be you enchant endless stones, and then you can toss 1 stone/3 levels per round for N rounds. This spell hurts my head it sucks so badly

[Fizban]

First, a reminder that linking to illegal websites is against the rules.*

Second, not every sor/wiz spell is meant for wizards, some are just on there because "wizards get everything that isn't healing," and not every spell is actually good at the level you get it. For someone with an actual strength score and some BAB, like a Druid -or even a sor/wiz polymorphed into a giant of some sort, it's rather a bit more powerful. For a swift action you suddenly get a weapon with the range of a bow, more base damage, an "enhancement" bonus equal to your level, and you can apply any other generic attack/damage buffs that might be in effect on you (such as Inspire Courage, Good Hope, Wrath of the Righteous, or Fell the Greatest Foe). As an attack it also doesn't care about pesky things like spell resistance (and I'm fairly sure it originated from a book or article written before the great Orbocalypse). Yeah it only has one attack at the absolute minimum caster level, so you cast it at 6th+. If you don't have the BAB for multiple attacks, you will eventually, or there's all sorts of ways to get extra attacks.

*It doesn't appear to be a full dump of books, I can't even figure out how one would get to the spell normally, but even if one was just quoting a spell or two for use in a homebrew domain it'd need attribution.

[Eldariel]

It's not bad at all. Look at this:
"...you can hurl one pebble as an attack action..."

This means you can full attack with them and you get massive insight bonuses on them too. Thus you basically get a 2d6+Str base damage ranged weapon (compares favorably to all ranged weapons) with 120' range increments, and up to +10 on each. Divine Power, Haste, pump caster level, Polymorph if desired and go to town. You'll run out of stones real quick but at level 11, being able to make like 4 attacks at BAB + 10 + Str (with Brutal Throw), each doing up to 2d6 + Str + 10 damage plus any enhancement and such that you might have access to (no reason you couldn't Greater Magic Weapon them - enhancement and insight stack) is nice. It's naturally a swift action so you basically just Giant's Wrath and full attack with those stones at your massive to hit and damage. Say you have 40 Strength (Draconic Polymorph + Divine Power gets there pretty easily), you're looking at 8d6+60+40 damage with some caster level buffing on level 11 on a Gish chassis at 600' reach (the -10 from range increments is made up for by the innate +10 so this is your base level) before looking at Greater Magic Weapon shenanigans. And theoretically you could probably metamagic it for higher damage stones for instance. The Far Corners of the World version is much stronger but even the Spell Compendium version is perfectly respectable.

[Ramza00]

It is a badly done spell. The authors was trying to balance something that did not need help balancing.

Aka they took the produce flame / darkfire / Snilloc's Snowball line of spells and give this spell some additional abilities and they thought these additional abilities were a fair trade but I would argue they were not. And thus they sought to limit it / balance it by giving the demerrit of 1 pebble per 3 caster levels.


Produce Flame / Darkfire / Snowball / etc are standard actions to cast and they last rounds per level. Giant's Wrath has the added benefit of being a swift action to cast. Now both of types of spells require a standard or full attack action to actually "do the thing", so Giant's Wrath is you can "do the thing" in the same 1st round as you cast.

Now Giant Wrath also gives a bonus to attack of up to +10 based off your caster level. But you lose the melee ranged touch of darkfire, produce flame, etc. So in the end it is a wash more or less.

Replacing the amount to pebbles to caster level divided by 2, with a rounds per level duration makes the spell usable and similar to other 3rd level spells.

[Eldariel]

It is a badly done spell. The authors was trying to balance something that did not need help balancing.

Aka they took the produce flame / darkfire / Snilloc's Snowball line of spells and give this spell some additional abilities and they thought these additional abilities were a fair trade but I would argue they were not. And thus they sought to limit it / balance it by giving the demerrit of 1 pebble per 3 caster levels.


Produce Flame / Darkfire / Snowball / etc are standard actions to cast and they last rounds per level. Giant's Wrath has the added benefit of being a swift action to cast. Now both of types of spells require a standard or full attack action to actually "do the thing", so Giant's Wrath is you can "do the thing" in the same 1st round as you cast.

Now Giant Wrath also gives a bonus to attack of up to +10 based off your caster level. But you lose the melee ranged touch of darkfire, produce flame, etc. So in the end it is a wash more or less.

Replacing the amount to pebbles to caster level divided by 2, with a rounds per level duration makes the spell usable and similar to other 3rd level spells.

Full attack is the massive difference between most of those spells and Giant's Wrath though. Haste + iteratives work with Giant's Wrath but not with e.g. Darkfire, where you can just make one ranged touch attack per turn.

[Bronk]

I am confused by Giant's Wrath. How exactly does this spell work?

Let's say you take it at level 5. It appears you enchant a single pebble and now have 5 rounds to toss it to do a whopping 2d6+5 damage.

Am I missing something? At level 6, you get 2 pebbles, up to a max of 6 pebbles by level 18. It just seems . . . really really bad. I know there are some spells that just aren't very good, but this seems so bad that I'm about 90% sure that I'm missing something. What's the missing element that makes this spell shine?


Thanks!

I think there are a few things missing here.

First, as others have mentioned, the spell has that insight bonus to attack and damage, and it already does more damage if you have a strength bonus.

Second, it's a swift action to cast, so you can cast and throw in one combat round. At your level 5 example, it's not like you can normally make more than one attack in one round anyway, so just cast it again next round if you want. At level 6, you've already got two pebbles, so if you do have haste you're all set.

Third, there's no actual maximum on this spell, so if you can boost your caster level somehow (ioun stone, bloodline levels, etc.) you can get more, although you'd pretty quickly have more than you could use in a round anyway.


So what exactly is the difference that doesn't allow Darkfire to be used multiple times per round?

I don't think there's any reason you can't, since the spell specifies that it reappears instantly every time it's discharged. The rules for holding the charge calls out using a standard action, but that's only for touching friends.

Edit: Although, Darkfire does have a difference from a spell like chill touch, which specifies that it deals a number of attacks per caster level. That means that chill touch got a boost from the Rules Compendium (p136, in the attack section), which states that that weaponlike spells cast with a standard action make all attacks in that same standard action. (This came up in a recent thread about optimizing touch attacks.)

My guess is that they were thinking about clarifying spells that work like scorching ray, but as written, a tenth level caster would immediately make 10 attacks at their highest attack bonus. Does this work for Darkfire? I would say no, because it has a round per level duration instead of stating a number of attacks, and otherwise you'd be able to make infinite attacks every round.

[Fizban]

I googled up the original source of the spell, a Far Corners of the World (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040416a) article. Changes of note: it was originally Cleric and Sor/Wiz, rather than Druid, the boulders used to get bigger with level in addition to the insight bonus (which also makes it clear that your size doesn't matter, the spell doesn't care and upgrades to huge rock), and the original spell was Effect rather than Target. Which means it worked correctly before, and the SpC screwed it up- the only thing they did right was make it a swift action, and they probably removed the extra effects (up to 2d8 base, 2d6 fire, and then a range a crit boost) to compensate because the extra damage was too much for 3rd.

[Anthrowhale]

So what exactly is the difference that doesn't allow Darkfire to be used multiple times per round?

I'm curious about this as well. I always assumed "ranged touch attack" was an attack and "No sooner do you hurl the flames than a new set appears in your hand." implies full attacks are valid.

[Eldariel]

My own reading is that Darkfire allows a ranged touch attack with no specified action so I'd default it to standard action.

[Bronk]

My own reading is that Darkfire allows a ranged touch attack with no specified action so I'd default it to standard action.

I guess that makes sense, for round one anyway.

[Anthrowhale]

My own reading is that Darkfire allows a ranged touch attack with no specified action so I'd default it to standard action.

I'm still skeptical about this, but I haven't found anything more specific than general attack rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatStatistics.htm#attackBonus)
A second attack is gained when a base attack bonus reaches +6 used on full attack (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#fullAttack). These rules should apply by default to any weapon-like attacks whether they are melee, ranged, touch, flat-footed, or any other variation on an attack unless there is specific wording otherwise. There are many examples of "wording otherwise" but I don't see anything specifically carving out an exception here.