martixy
2019-02-21, 08:29 AM
I've been sitting here thinking on how to make an effective Kamehameha so that I can explode things in the most spectacular manner possible.
There's two schools of thought here: Navigating around obstacles or going through them.
On the first one, surprisingly to me, I have been able to find only 1 spell with an area of spread, as opposed to the usual burst for such blasty spells - none other than our humble Fireball. Thankfully, we have a way around that - Sculpt spell transforms any area spell into a spread.
Which means we can employ some spells devoid of Fireball's glaring deficiencies - at the very least, Blast of Flame (Sor/Wiz 4) is SR: No(Acid Storm too, but it's higher level). Other, more interesting options are Doom Scarabs, which is SR: (Effectively) No and Will half, and Hail of Stone which is SR: No, Save: None (but casting time 1 round, oddly).
Now, the spread approach has the obvious problem that total cover stops it in its tracks. And even if you destroy the cover, it has done it's job in protecting what's behind it.
We need a better way.
The ideal approach is to go THROUGH things.
The good news is that we are not without recourse.
There is a spell, exactly one spell I have found. It is called Cyclonic Blast, and it penetrates barriers, continuing unimpeded provided you deal enough damage to them.
The bad new is, it has problems, many problems, some fixable, some not so much.
1. Its area is 120 ft. line. This can be fixed with sculpt spell.
2. Objects bigger than large take half damage. Fixed by bumping the spell's damage.
3. Reflex Half. Or... technically, I suppose, if we, maybe, kinda, sorta allow that Kingdoms of Kalamar feat.
4. SR: Yes.
Now, if we give that spell the TO treatment - Reserves of Strength to break the cap, Arcane thesis, Incantatrix and, CL and metamagic shenanigans galore - twin, maximize, empower, ocular, split ray, energy admixture, we can bump damage up the wazoo - easily in the hundreds of damage dice.
(Of special note is energy admixture. The spell has the air descriptor, which isn't an energy type. We have a couple of options: 1. Elven Spell Lore feat from PHB2, to change the type, or Snowcasting from Frostburn to add the Cold descriptor -> Energy substitution -> Admixture. We probably wanna deal Acid or Sonic damage, since objects don't reduce it.)
If we do our job well nothing, likely not even a solid 5 foot cube of adamantium will have more hitpoints than our spell deals. Which means that we can target a volume of space and vaporize everything inside it.
(5 ft is 60 inches x 40 hp/inch = 2400 hp, we'd need 400d6. 400/2(admixture)/1.5(empower) = CL134 or thereabouts? Twin works more ablatively, since they count as separate instances of damage, but could still prove useful. Ocular and split ray and chain might be useful too. Realistically, you're unlikely to encounter solid barriers of adamantine this thick.)
The 2 glaring problems, of course, are creatures with evasion and/or spell resistance, and anti-magic fields, which break line of effect for our spell.
For the Reflex save, there is one thing that might prove useful: The Spell Barrage teamwork benefit form DMG2. If you can somehow get a bunch of other Reflex-half saves in the same area, you can penalize its inhabitant's reflex saves enough to get something done. At the very least twinned gets you a -2 right on your turn.
I'm open to suggestions and alternative approaches/spells.
There's two schools of thought here: Navigating around obstacles or going through them.
On the first one, surprisingly to me, I have been able to find only 1 spell with an area of spread, as opposed to the usual burst for such blasty spells - none other than our humble Fireball. Thankfully, we have a way around that - Sculpt spell transforms any area spell into a spread.
Which means we can employ some spells devoid of Fireball's glaring deficiencies - at the very least, Blast of Flame (Sor/Wiz 4) is SR: No(Acid Storm too, but it's higher level). Other, more interesting options are Doom Scarabs, which is SR: (Effectively) No and Will half, and Hail of Stone which is SR: No, Save: None (but casting time 1 round, oddly).
Now, the spread approach has the obvious problem that total cover stops it in its tracks. And even if you destroy the cover, it has done it's job in protecting what's behind it.
We need a better way.
The ideal approach is to go THROUGH things.
The good news is that we are not without recourse.
There is a spell, exactly one spell I have found. It is called Cyclonic Blast, and it penetrates barriers, continuing unimpeded provided you deal enough damage to them.
The bad new is, it has problems, many problems, some fixable, some not so much.
1. Its area is 120 ft. line. This can be fixed with sculpt spell.
2. Objects bigger than large take half damage. Fixed by bumping the spell's damage.
3. Reflex Half. Or... technically, I suppose, if we, maybe, kinda, sorta allow that Kingdoms of Kalamar feat.
4. SR: Yes.
Now, if we give that spell the TO treatment - Reserves of Strength to break the cap, Arcane thesis, Incantatrix and, CL and metamagic shenanigans galore - twin, maximize, empower, ocular, split ray, energy admixture, we can bump damage up the wazoo - easily in the hundreds of damage dice.
(Of special note is energy admixture. The spell has the air descriptor, which isn't an energy type. We have a couple of options: 1. Elven Spell Lore feat from PHB2, to change the type, or Snowcasting from Frostburn to add the Cold descriptor -> Energy substitution -> Admixture. We probably wanna deal Acid or Sonic damage, since objects don't reduce it.)
If we do our job well nothing, likely not even a solid 5 foot cube of adamantium will have more hitpoints than our spell deals. Which means that we can target a volume of space and vaporize everything inside it.
(5 ft is 60 inches x 40 hp/inch = 2400 hp, we'd need 400d6. 400/2(admixture)/1.5(empower) = CL134 or thereabouts? Twin works more ablatively, since they count as separate instances of damage, but could still prove useful. Ocular and split ray and chain might be useful too. Realistically, you're unlikely to encounter solid barriers of adamantine this thick.)
The 2 glaring problems, of course, are creatures with evasion and/or spell resistance, and anti-magic fields, which break line of effect for our spell.
For the Reflex save, there is one thing that might prove useful: The Spell Barrage teamwork benefit form DMG2. If you can somehow get a bunch of other Reflex-half saves in the same area, you can penalize its inhabitant's reflex saves enough to get something done. At the very least twinned gets you a -2 right on your turn.
I'm open to suggestions and alternative approaches/spells.