strength damage

[clockwork warrior]

i recently made a sorcerer/palemaster who specializes in dealing str damage and dealing out negative levels, and im wondering if my strategy is legal cause i end up killing a lot of stuff before the party does it (which doesnt sit happly with them) so im questioning if its all legal

basicly, starts with empowered ray of enfeeblement for at least 9 str damage, and at most 16

round two is quickened spectral hand and fell weakening chilling touch, which deals another 4 str damage, plus 1 for each failed save

round three is ray of exhaustion for either 2 or 6 str damage
thats pretty much what i do to stuff, plus 3 touch attacks that dealstr, damage, and probably other stuff i cant thing of

so is it legal? and does it all stack together?

[Douglas]

Yes, it's all legal and it all stacks. Two major points, though:

1) Chill Touch does not let you bypass the normal limits on attacks per round. If you want to spend all your 1/level touches, you have to make that many attacks. You get one of them free as part of casting the spell. For the rest you have to attack during later rounds, but you can use full attacks because you're not casting any more.

2) You can't drop strength all the way to 0 unless you can do it without the Ray of Enfeeblement penalty. RoE will help get it down to 1, but you have to stack up enough damage or penalties from other sources to make RoE superfluous if you want to bring it all the way to 0 and make the target helpless. Even if you succeed in doing so, the target is still alive and can take purely mental actions such as casting a Still Silent spell with no material component or manifesting a psionic power.

[Emperor Tippy]

2) You can't drop strength all the way to 0 unless you can do it without the Ray of Enfeeblement penalty. RoE will help get it down to 1, but you have to stack up enough damage or penalties from other sources to make RoE superfluous if you want to bring it all the way to 0 and make the target helpless. Even if you succeed in doing so, the target is still alive and can take purely mental actions such as casting a Still Silent spell with no material component or manifesting a psionic power.

So long as RoE is used first your fine. It can't drop you below 1 but it doesn't stop stuff that stacks with it from dropping you below 1.

[Indon]

2) You can't drop strength all the way to 0 unless you can do it without the Ray of Enfeeblement penalty. RoE will help get it down to 1, but you have to stack up enough damage or penalties from other sources to make RoE superfluous if you want to bring it all the way to 0 and make the target helpless. Even if you succeed in doing so, the target is still alive and can take purely mental actions such as casting a Still Silent spell with no material component or manifesting a psionic power.

You can drop it to zero with Ray of Enfeeblement in conjunction with an exaustion effect (which is a penalty which stacks and can go to 0).

But, yeah, someone at strength 0 is still alive. In fact, killing someone at that point is an evil act, if I recall.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

i recently made a sorcerer/palemaster who specializes in dealing str damage and dealing out negative levels, and im wondering if my strategy is legal cause i end up killing a lot of stuff before the party does it (which doesnt sit happly with them) so im questioning if its all legal

basicly, starts with empowered ray of enfeeblement for at least 9 str damage, and at most 16

round two is quickened spectral hand and fell weakening chilling touch, which deals another 4 str damage, plus 1 for each failed save

round three is ray of exhaustion for either 2 or 6 str damage
thats pretty much what i do to stuff, plus 3 touch attacks that dealstr, damage, and probably other stuff i cant thing of

so is it legal? and does it all stack together?

Ray of Enfeeblement is a strength PENALTY, not strength DAMAGE. However, since you're not trying to get it to stack with itself, it seems to be playing fair.

Ray of Exhaustion also doesn't do strength damage, it makes them exhausted, which gives them a penalty to strength. Not sure if this stacks with Ray of Enfeeblement penalty, but I think it does.

So you haven't killed him, you've simply applied a bunch of strength penalties to him.

And you're really not going to get this combo off very often, and only against a single target.

You'd honestly do better with using area effect stuff like Stinking Cloud to shut down hordes of mooks.

Enervation is crack good, however. Empower, Twin Ray, and Quicken True Strike to make sure it lands. 2d4* 1.5 negative levels. That's anywhere from 3 to 12 negative levels. Smack down city.

[AtomicKitKat]

The combo would be useless against Constructs, Undead, possibly Ooze/Plant(these latter 2 are iffy), maybe Elementals.

[Armads]

It might be more effective to buy a wandgrip, load it up with a wand of ray of enfeeblement, and then fire a maximized empowered quickened ray of enfeeblement (CL 10th). Followed up with a ray of exhaustion, and thats -18 to strength. Which is crippling, if not paralyzing.

[nerulean]

Most parties get cheesed off with one person and their single, infallible strategy killing off every opponent that's presented as a challenge for the whole group, especially if that one character is the only one to have been optimised to such an extent. It's fairly understandable that sitting there as the fighter and chipping off, say, 1/8 of the opponent's HP every round feels frustrating and pointless when strength-blaster-caster quickly kills the enemy off with entirely unrelated damage.

As a result, the DM will have to start throwing in stuff to counter you specifically. He has a couple of options, such as upping the number of opponents per encounter so your strategy becomes inefficient, but he'll know you'll always go for the most powerful person anyway. Depending on how frustrated he or anyone else has become with you, he may just include a lot of stuff that's impervious to your tactic, with the end result of making you feel as pointless as Fighter Fred does now.

One thing you could do to head off this situation is not use your tactic to render the enemies completely immobile: instead, knock them down to as close to useless as makes no difference and then let the rest mop them up. True, someone else may claim the actual kill, but you were still instrumental in bringing it about, and it might ultimately make the atmosphere of your gaming table a little more companionable.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

It might be more effective to buy a wandgrip, load it up with a wand of ray of enfeeblement, and then fire a maximized empowered quickened ray of enfeeblement (CL 10th). Followed up with a ray of exhaustion, and thats -18 to strength. Which is crippling, if not paralyzing.

Unfortunately, using a wand is a standard action, which makes Quickened pointless... even if you could apply metamagic to wands, which you can't. And it doesn't change the fact that they are all strength penalties, not strength damage.

[Dragonmuncher]

One thing you could do to head off this situation is not use your tactic to render the enemies completely immobile: instead, knock them down to as close to useless as makes no difference and then let the rest mop them up. True, someone else may claim the actual kill, but you were still instrumental in bringing it about, and it might ultimately make the atmosphere of your gaming table a little more companionable.

It would also probably make you more effective- If you save two rounds by merely heavily crippling an ogre, instead of killing it, those two rounds can be spent by going after a SECOND ogre.

[Armads]

Unfortunately, using a wand is a standard action, which makes Quickened pointless... even if you could apply metamagic to wands, which you can't. And it doesn't change the fact that they are all strength penalties, not strength damage.

Buy a wandgrip. It lets you use metamagic with wands, at the cost of charges, for 6000 gp. You've got a point with the fatigue, so it's just 16 strength.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Buy a wandgrip. It lets you use metamagic with wands, at the cost of charges, for 6000 gp. You've got a point with the fatigue, so it's just 16 strength.

However using a wand is still a standard action, which makes Quicken pointless, even if you find a way to apply metamagic to wands.

Activation
Wands use the spell trigger activation method, so casting a spell from a wand is usually a standard action that doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity. (If the spell being cast, however, has a longer casting time than 1 standard action, it takes that long to cast the spell from a wand.) To activate a wand, a character must hold it in hand (or whatever passes for a hand, for nonhumanoid creatures) and point it in the general direction of the target or area. A wand may be used while grappling or while swallowed whole.

Also Ray of Enfeeblement will not drop the strength to 0, no matter how much penalty you apply, and it will not stack with itself.

[Corolinth]

If a character has a 12 strength, you'll have to do 12 points of actual strength damage. Ray of Enfeeblement is a penalty that can't bring the target below 1. If the aforementioned 12 strength character has taken 8 points of strength damage, and has a -6 penalty from Ray of Enfeeblement, he still has a strength of 1. The strength damage brings him down to 4, and the -6 penalty from Ray of Enfeeblement can not bring him below 1, as specified in the PH.

Ray of Exhaustion will depend on how your DM wants to adjudicate.

[goat]

Still, 1 str means they'll be probably be staggering around at 5ft per round under the weight of their gear, unable to fight.

A caster wouldn't be too affected unless they had their pack on (Even then they could get away with a handy haversack). But any magical clothing, bracers, cloaks etc all adds to their weight so it could bring them down if they're wearing a lot or use any type of armour.

If it's a non-caster, even if they take off their armour, they'll be encumbered with almost anything but a light weapon, and unable to use a lot of 2 handed ones. With little dex defence, and no armour defence they'll be pretty easy to bring down. So it's not like getting them down to 0 strength would make that much difference.

[Dervag]

Yes, it's all legal and it all stacks. Two major points, though:

1) Chill Touch does not let you bypass the normal limits on attacks per round. If you want to spend all your 1/level touches, you have to make that many attacks. You get one of them free as part of casting the spell. For the rest you have to attack during later rounds, but you can use full attacks because you're not casting any more.

2) You can't drop strength all the way to 0 unless you can do it without the Ray of Enfeeblement penalty. RoE will help get it down to 1, but you have to stack up enough damage or penalties from other sources to make RoE superfluous if you want to bring it all the way to 0 and make the target helpless. Even if you succeed in doing so, the target is still alive and can take purely mental actions such as casting a Still Silent spell with no material component or manifesting a psionic power.

My response is similar to that of goat:

On the other hand, if the enemy's strength is reduced to one, they have almost certainly lost, because they can't carry any armor or weapons or equipment, and will probably collapse under the burden of their own equipment. If they do not so collapse, have someone more muscular than you are tackle them; the crippling strength penalty makes it very unlikely that they can survive close combat.

[Curmudgeon]

1) Chill Touch does not let you bypass the normal limits on attacks per round. If you want to spend all your 1/level touches, you have to make that many attacks. You get one of them free as part of casting the spell. For the rest you have to attack during later rounds, but you can use full attacks because you're not casting any more.

One important correction here: touch attack spells do not allow an attack "as part of casting the spell". The rules very explicitly allow a move action between casting the spell and making the attack, for one thing. It's a bonus attack allowed in the same round, limited to an attack form that can deliver the touch spell -- nothing more. So an attack (immediate action or AoO) that would force you to make a Concentration check or lose the spell while casting, if it occurs after you cast but before you touch, does not endanger the charge in your hand. The spell is successfully completed already. Your bonus attack most definitely isn't "part of the casting" -- just an extra bit of action permitted by the rules.

[Skjaldbakka]

If you want to spend all your 1/level touches, you have to make that many attacks.

Does this apply to spells that give you multiple rays, such as scorching ray?

[AtomicKitKat]

Does this apply to spells that give you multiple rays, such as scorching ray?

No, I believe you make multiple rolls, but it's more along the lines of Manyshot(?), where you can only apply criticals, precision damage, etc. to one of the rays.

[Corolinth]

Does this apply to spells that give you multiple rays, such as scorching ray?

That depends on the wording of the spell. Some allow you to fire one per round, some allow you to fire all at once.

[Damionte]

what's a palemaster?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

what's a palemaster?

PrC that eventually turns you into undead. Get some cool ASF free armor... but only 1/2 spell progression. Not generally considered an optimized PrC as a result of poor spell progression.

[AtomicKitKat]

PrC that eventually turns you into undead. Get some cool ASF free armor... but only 1/2 spell progression. Not generally considered an optimized PrC as a result of poor spell progression.

Well, to be fair, it's not so much specifically because of the poor spell progression, but that the abilities(practically all are "Touch") require you to mix it up(or expend lots of slots on Spectral Hand, I guess), are very limited in use(contrast to the Lich, who turns practically everybody into squishy statues if he shakes their hands), and generally suggest Gishness, which clashes with the craptastic HD and BAB(both as a Wizard, no less!), and then, to add insult to injury, you're not even a very good caster, so you can't even fall back on that as Plan B.