[3.5 Spells] New Evocation Spells (PEACH)

[motionmatrix]

Good premise, well implemented. Strikes me as a transmutation effect, actually, since it's modifying your ability to cast spells. (Divination?)

Yeah, I really could not peg the school. Adding the rift part fluff allowed me to cement it in conjuration.

It kind of sucks that while every effect you create is Stilled and Silenced, the spell itself is not. Also, what is it with everyone in this thread and not giving these new awesome spells to warmages? Why the warmage hate?

No hate for the warmage! I just didn't think of him. I figured anyone who will play a class that should have this spell should be able to add it, assuming the DM agrees that evocation is weak.

Two reasons for not being Still and Silent: Its a 9th level spell. You will probably already have some types of buffs up. It is thematically proper for a wizard to spend a full round summoning the primeval energies he is about to unleash. And you more than make up for it in the next few rounds, as far as action economy is concerned.

I was considering adding Polar ray and scorching ray to the list of replicable spells. what do you think? anything else that should be there?

The spell itself is good though. Flavorful, lasts an entire encounter, which is rare for an evocation, and yet still feels instantaneous. The only real problem is that it devalues one of the very few boons a sorcerer gets (the ability to spam low level spells regardless of the number of encounters per day) by giving wizards the ability to simply blast out low level effects every round for free (while they spend the actual round gating or summoning or painting their nails, whatever.)

As a 9th level spell, it should have the capacity to dwarf others (including other wizards) when it is cast. And there is no reason a sorcerer can't have the spell as well. Doing the same as the wizard, or throwing even more low level spells around than normal.

See, here's the problem with this spell, and it's not what you think it is. The problem isn't how much damage it deals. As a single-target 9th level spell, 120d6 of elemental damage is pretty reasonable. The problem is that sheer amount of dice rolling. Seriously. No one will want to roll 120d6, and that's the problem, because you miss out on the ability to roll a huge fistful of dice simply because the huge fistful stepped over the line between awesome and ridiculous/tedious. That's why you just need to use a higher dice damage instead, find that sweet spot!

Know what I'd suggest? 2d20 points of damage per caster level, maximum 40d20. That's both highly damaging, insanely awesome for the player, and not quite broken. (You can't mess with its spell slot pre-epic anyway, so an average of 400 energy damage at a single target with a save for half at 20th level is about as good as a save-or-die)

I kept it d6s since I just read an argument earlier (maybe on this thread, not sure) that made sense to use d6's if you are using large numbers of dice, just because everyone is likely to have more d6s than anything else.

I know the spell uses a lot of dice, and is totally counterproductive to what I state earlier in the thread, but I wasn't sure how you guys would react to the multiplier idea, but this can be tweaked.

Perhaps change it to (1d6 + Int mod) X (CL X 4), for the single target. And the following would drop to 1d6 + int x cl x3, then 1d6 + int x cl x 2, finally the largest area being 1d6 + int x cl. But I am not sure that will fly.

Assuming a 30 int (+10) 20th level wizard is casting this would mean the single target gets 11-16 x 20 = 220-320 x 4 = 880-1280 damage on a failed fortitude save, no SR. Everyone in a 40 ft. radius would take 660-960, or 440-640 in a 80 ft. radius, or 220-320 in a 300 ft. radius. On failed reflex saves, which allow SR. Is that too broken with the new evocation caps we are aiming at? If you go by ratio, a 5th level wizard with a well aimed fireball can deal about 50% damage to a reasonable amount of targets of a proper CR, so I figure this should up the ante, maybe dealing 75% damage (although reflex save/evasion, resistances, and SR still apply, which will decrease that number dramatically). I mean most non-evokers have had several save or die options, assuming you are only using core. By this point they have aoe save or die.

If the main target of the spell has evasion and a reasonable reflex save (and if he has evasion, chances are he does) he negates the secondary damage altogether (which bothers me a bit, since it is "exploding" from his body). perhaps a clause there of some type.