A quick and dirty evocation Fix.

[ngilop]

Hello everybody! One of the things that I have noticed that to me in terms of offenders of whatw ent wrong from 1st/2nd to 3rd ed is how terrible spell damage had become

Oh for sure, the actual damage really didn't go down ( well except for polar ray.. who ever thought that a 6th level spell ootion in previous editions needed to be an 8th level spells needs to be kicked in the gonads..twice) It is really resistance and more so HP that weakened direct damage via spells as a worthwhile option.

while there is much better fix(es) on GiTP than the one im about to do, this is meant to be realtively simple an easy for other DM who feel the same way as I do about this to take some relatively minor corrective actions.

well first off Lets change some base damage

spells from level 1-3 are decent so.. lets leave them as is (with one exception)

no need to fear fireball still does d6/level and burning hands does 1d4/level.
what has changed. Flamingh sphere is now a 1st level spell.

Now we hit a breaking point
from 7th level on Hit points are exponetially higher while poor old evocation stays static only gaining more energy types and shapes to do d6/level for pretty bad when your 8th level spell is only doing 15d6...

so for 4th and 5th level spells the damage is increased by 50%, so instead of doing 10d6 for your cone of cold with this fix you are doing 10d6(1.5), a little more oomph if you will for you spells

for 6th and 7th base damage is doulbed so instead of doing 12d6 dmg with your delayed blast fireball you are now doing 12d6(2), pretty hefty and somewhat scary, no?

ok now for 8th and 9th level spells triple that base damage, or as I like to call it bring the pain for poor old meteor swarm.

so now instead of doing 4 (6d6) damage you are now doing 4 (6d6 X3)

now we add the following spells to the evocation list
All the power word spells, becasue you are invoking the powers of the word of creation.

also those sweet little nuggets of damage.. you know the orb of X's yeah

they get moved to Evocation as well

why becuase Orb of force conjures a non magical orb of magical energy..

so in short

Flaming SPhere is now level 1. the orb of X spells are now evocation, as are the power word spells

4th and 5th evocation spells do 1.5 damage

6th and 7th evocation spells do X2 damage

8th and 9th evocation spells do X3 damage

[Deepbluediver]

Part of the issue is that the vast majority of spells are standard actions, and are balanced to be (somewhat) equivalent to a standard action by a melee class. As classes get higher level, melee has the option of taking a full-round action to deal extra damage, and take a bigger chunk out of that boosted HP.

I don't have a problem with boosting upper-level evocation damage, but I think more high-level spells should also be full-round actions to match up with what sort of action they are trying to be equivalent too. For example, Meteor Swarm shoots 6 flaming spheres instead of 4, and they deal damage in d12 instead of d6, but it's not a full round action (meaning it should deal about 3 times as much damage as it did previously).

[ngilop]

Im not trying to balance 3rd ed spells againt 3rd ed mundane, as anybody can just glance at the books and realy that there is now way those 2 are ever going to be equal.

what this fix is meant to do is provide a more attractive evocation school as opposed to the others.

right now why would anywya ever lear metoer swarm when the can learn gate, or shapechange.. or for that matter wail of the banshee for actualy Hp damages.

Im trying with this fix is to have a player with his 12th level wizard look at his lets say.. 6th level spells and go 'Hmm i could learn and use disintegrate it does pretty good damage and has some utility if i need to get through a wall quickly, or ic ould planar bind stuff and laugh a my awesomeness.. oh wait.. theres my chain lightning.. oh yeah i cannot pass up that much damage.. "

much the same way that metoer swarm is starting to look decent against energy drain and shapechange or polar ray is now actually feasible against ploy morph any object.

[genericwit]

Do caster's really need more love?