Are Scrolls Overpowered?

[bbugg]

Do you think scrolls are overpowered?

This came up in out last session. I'm a level 2 cleric and I bought some level 2 cleric scrolls. According to RAW, I have to make a caster level check (d20 +2) against a DC of 4 (caster level of scroll +1). That's a 90% success rate - seemed like a good purchase.

If I had a level 8 scroll, I'd make the same check against a DC of 16. With the +2, that's a 30% success rate. It's 20% for a 9th level spell. Pretty dang high.

The penalty for failing to cast the scroll (besides wasting the scroll) is to make a DC5 wisdom check. Any cleric worth the title has a decent mod Wis, so that should be a breeze anyway.

The 90% success rater was too high for my DM. He ruled it to be DC 13 (CL scroll +10, not 1), which is frankly too high (over 50% chance failure) and makes scrolls of a higher level than you can normally cast not worth using at all.

Any thoughts on this? Do you have any house rules for scrolls?

[The Glyphstone]

The thing that makes scrolls balanced is that they are one-use only. Once cast, they're worthless. Using scrolls all the time burns up your available cash extremely fast.

[Onryou]

What if its dark, or you're struck blind and can't see the scroll to read it? Makes the spells in your head much more important.

I do like some of the variant scrolls from complete arcane though.

[bbugg]

But you don't think it's odd that a 2nd level character has a 20% chance of casting a 9th level spell successfully? Surely a little creativity and a lucky roll could go a very long way in that case!

[The Glyphstone]

Where in the world is a 2nd level character getting 4,000 GP to spend on a scroll in the first place?

[Drider]

He was mining gold?
in his nose, the way they dig, you KNOW there's gold there

[MrNexx]

But you don't think it's odd that a 2nd level character has a 20% chance of casting a 9th level spell successfully? Surely a little creativity and a lucky roll could go a very long way in that case!

Ignoring the money issue (They're wealth by level GUIDELINES, not rules), I would say that it's not too unreasonable. Remember, the character has to have sufficient stats to cast the spell in the first place, and it has to be of the right kind of magic, and on his spell list. Presumably, whoever has sufficient stats to cast the spell, can understand it enough to use it reliably, but they don't have the power to channel it themselves, yet.

[bbugg]

I'll buy that MeNexx.

[ArmorArmadillo]

Most players think that it's a given that any caster starts with an 18 in his primary, stat; when 16 is more reasonable.

The capability of casting 8th or 9th level spell is probably unrealistic until about 6th-8th level.

Also: Even if a character does scrape up the gold for a level 7 scroll, there's no obligation for the DM to sell it to him; it's powerful magic and requires a level 13 caster to create, so it isn't something you just pop into the general store and buy.

Scrolls don't grow on tree; unless an Epic Artificer forges a Tree of Scrolls; with Ioun Stones for fruit.

[RandomNPC]

if my player can cast the spell i don't even require a check, its relatively easy, and if they wanted to they could cast it some other way anywho.

if the spell is beyond them i give them an additional +2 to the DC, to retroactively show the difficulty. like a computer programer fresh from school trying to rewrite windows, it's possible, but it's probbably not going to happen untill they get a little practice under their belt.

potato?

it makes things more usefull and less usefull, depending on if you should even be trying to do whatever it is.

honnestly if you plan on relying on scrolls and wands daily try maxing out use magic device with a good skill monkey.

[SurlySeraph]

The cost of scrolls makes them balanced.

[PinkysBrain]

A lot of single use items are win buttons for encounters, scrolls included ... which on average will return you more money than you put into the items.

Lets say you are a level 16 party and you have to overcome a Balor ... if you fight him there is a very real chance of party deaths, which will be costly to reverse. On the other hand you can just buy a candle of invocation (or a scroll of gate) and kill him with little to no real risk. The average cost of straight up combat (resurrections) would be far higher than simply going for the win button ... nevermind the risk of TPK.

I guess you could see the win button as the smart way to end an encounter, but I see it as the cheap and boring way.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, that's a problem with Gate and the Candle respectively, not one-use items in general. If you've got one, you might as well just summon infinite Titans and obliterate the campaign instantly.

Other one-use things...I dunno...a Gem of Elemental Summoning, or a Scroll of Meteor Swarm, are balanced by their cost vs. the help they give in a battle.

[Proven_Paradox]

There's also the fact that you have to have the right scroll for the job. It's more of a problem for healing than offense, though; fireball is usually at least a little helpful, and there are utility spells that can do a lot of stuff for you. Healing, however, often requires something rather specific. Going up against a mummy? Have some Remove Curse and Remove Disease scrolls handy. Going to have to deal with a monster that likes to blind its victims? Remove Blindness scrolls. Poison? Neutralize Poison or Restoration. It builds up quickly, and not having that spell available leads to characters being useless or (blind barbarian = phale) or dead (mummy rot).

I think scrolls are rather balanced, myself. They get expensive fast, and there's only so much one can do with the scrolls one can afford.

Not so much on the Candle of Invocation though... That's an item I plan to never allow the PCs to SEE, much less HAVE.

[Citizen Joe]

A titan usually reserves its gate and etherealness abilities to escape a fight that is not going well.

That means he's going to use the gate to leave, not summon another titan. Thus no infinite titan cheese.

A controlled creature can be commanded to perform a service for you. Such services fall into two categories: immediate tasks and contractual service. Fighting for you in a single battle or taking any other actions that can be accomplished within 1 round per caster level counts as an immediate task; you need not make any agreement or pay any reward for the creature’s help. The creature departs at the end of the spell.

In this case, you could force the titan to gate in another (unlikely) but then he leaves, and the summoned titan is in control of the first (who is gone).

If you choose to exact a longer or more involved form of service from a called creature, you must offer some fair trade in return for that service. The service exacted must be reasonable with respect to the promised favor or reward; see the lesser planar ally spell for appropriate rewards. (Some creatures may want their payment in “livestock” rather than in coin, which could involve complications.) Immediately upon completion of the service, the being is transported to your vicinity, and you must then and there turn over the promised reward. After this is done, the creature is instantly freed to return to its own plane.

Failure to fulfill the promise to the letter results in your being subjected to service by the creature or by its liege and master, at the very least. At worst, the creature or its kin may attack you.

In this case, you don't get extra gates, you just get the one titan trying to fight the battle for you. And then you have to pay a considerable fee.

I suppose you could promise the world and send the titan on a suicide mission, hoping it dies. If it DOES survive, it gets transported back to you in a weak condition. At that point you can hopefully kill it. More likely, it will use its gate to go home, recooperate and then gate YOU to its home with its buddies.

In addition, burning a candle also allows the owner to cast a gate spell, the respondent being of the same alignment as the candle

This indicates that the user cannot specify any creature. At best it means they can specify within the bounds of alignment. More likely, as most single use items, the specifics are dictated by the creator of the item.

I don't know where this infinite titan cheese started but it clearly doesn't work.

[PlatinumJester]

The best use for a scroll is to give it to some idiot as toliet paper and watch it go off

[The Glyphstone]

That means he's going to use the gate to leave, not summon another titan. Thus no infinite titan cheese.

Those are the tactics for a "wild" Titan. A Titan called via Gate must use its SLA if commanded to, as it is a controlled creature. See below.

In this case, you could force the titan to gate in another (unlikely) but then he leaves, and the summoned titan is in control of the first (who is gone).

Gate is only 1 standard action to cast. At minimum caster level, you now have 16 more rounds to do whatever you want with the first Titan..and it's still round 1, with another Titan who has an unused Gate.

In this case, you don't get extra gates, you just get the one titan trying to fight the battle for you. And then you have to pay a considerable fee.

I suppose you could promise the world and send the titan on a suicide mission, hoping it dies. If it DOES survive, it gets transported back to you in a weak condition. At that point you can hopefully kill it. More likely, it will use its gate to go home, recooperate and then gate YOU to its home with its buddies.

Using a SLA can be accomplished in the time frame for an Immediate Task. There's no fee, and the Titan can't do anything to stop you.

This indicates that the user cannot specify any creature. At best it means they can specify within the bounds of alignment. More likely, as most single use items, the specifics are dictated by the creator of the item.

How does it indicate that? It says they can cast Gate, with the restriction that it must be of a certain alignment. Gate itself lets you select "a creature or type of creature", Titan is one of them.

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Here's how the Infinite Titan Cheese works, and why most people consider it to work, in theory. All emphasis is mine.

Calling a titan falls under Calling Creatures, simple.

A controlled creature can be commanded to perform a service for you. Such services fall into two categories: immediate tasks and contractual service. Fighting for you in a single battle or taking any other actions that can be accomplished within 1 round per caster level counts as an immediate task; you need not make any agreement or pay any reward for the creature’s help. The creature departs at the end of the spell.

It says a "controlled creature" can be "commanded" - which implies that the creature is like a summoned monster in that for the duration of the spell, it cannot disobey you. It's your helpless mind slave.

Casting its Gate SLA to summon another Titan is a task that unquestionably can be accomplished within 1 round per caster level, as it's only a standard action. For that matter, the Gate spell also lasts 1 round/caster level, so it works out.

The "infinite" part of the Infinite Titan Loop is on the principle that while you don't control any titans except the one you summoned, that Titan controls its Titan, who can summon and control another Titan, and so on until there are infinite Titans indirectly at your disposal. And since Speaking Is A Free Action, you can supposedly transmit orders down to all your Titans in a single round, even if it's just "Destroy The World, and tell your Titan to do the same, and pass these orders on to its Titan".

[Citizen Joe]

A controlled creature can be commanded to perform a service for you.

A service... as in one... singular service. If you ask it to gate in another titan, THAT is the ONE singular service it will do.

If you ask it to fight for you, it will do so to its best ability. But it uses it's own judgement for that. Maybe it will summon some aid, but not likely.

[RandomNPC]

on the titan cheese, what if only three titans exist in the multiverse, one of them is the god of titans, the second is protected by the divine titan, and the third is sad because it doesn't know about the other two?

on the scroll thing, they aren't going to break the game unless the DM allows it.

[PinkysBrain]

Gate is hardly the only broken spell in this regard, holy word and it's ilk are just as broken in many cases especially against NPCs (who tend to have low HD and high treasure for their CR ... making them supreme targets for the spell).

Lets take something more mundane though ... a maximized cone of cold spell. For 3000 K gp you can bring a juvenile red dragon down to 35 hitpoints, after which he shouldn't be much trouble to bring down. He will then give you in the neighborhood of 10K gp in reward (after selling some stuff for half price).

If you know what you will be fighting then high level scrolls stack the odds.

[The Glyphstone]

A service... as in one... singular service. If you ask it to gate in another titan, THAT is the ONE singular service it will do.

If you ask it to fight for you, it will do so to its best ability. But it uses it's own judgement for that. Maybe it will summon some aid, but not likely.

The singular service if will perform for you is either A) an Immediate Task, or B) A Contractural Service.

Fighting for you in a single battle or taking any other actions that can be accomplished within 1 round per caster level counts as an immediate task;

Note that it is "Actions", plural here, not "action" singular. Thus, implying that it can do more than one thing as long as they don't require more time than the duration of the spell.


But for the sake of argument, assuming we take that limitation that it can only do 1 thing, it just becomes a matter of wordtwisting, a la Wish ruleslawyering.

"Destroy the World by means of your own power and those of another Titan you will gate in to perform the exact same task I have just set for you, including the act of summoning another Titan."

That's only one service..."destroy the world"..with a very, very specific method of carrying out the service. And since you control it, it can't decide to try and destroy the world some other way without disobeying your orders, something it cannot do.

[ArmorArmadillo]

The singular service if will perform for you is either A) an Immediate Task, or B) A Contractural Service.


Note that it is "Actions", plural here, not "action" singular. Thus, implying that it can do more than one thing as long as they don't require more time than the duration of the spell.


But for the sake of argument, assuming we take that limitation that it can only do 1 thing, it just becomes a matter of wordtwisting, a la Wish ruleslawyering.

"Destroy the World by means of your own power and those of another Titan you will gate in to perform the exact same task I have just set for you, including the act of summoning another Titan."

That's only one service..."destroy the world"..with a very, very specific method of carrying out the service. And since you control it, it can't decide to try and destroy the world some other way without disobeying your orders, something it cannot do.

This is not a thread about Gate being overpowered.

As for the Cone of Cold Maximized; first you have to find an NPC selling 8th level spells; then you have to waste 3000 gp on halfway killing Juvie before he flies away. How often can you keep this up?

Plus even though you're getting his 10k horde; that's 3k less profit when you were going to get otherwise (The fact you're fighting him assumes a party of your level could have beaten him without the MCoC scroll)

[PinkysBrain]

Halfway? Down to 20% ... your party members are there too, he won't get the chance to fly away.

As for the cost, as I said before ... resurrection magic tends to be pricey too. It's just a question of playing the odds, if you are facing a very tough BBEG or something which by right you shouldn't even be attacking then it becomes interesting.

[Dausuul]

Yes, you could have a 3,825 gp magic item that gave you a 25% chance (not 20%) of casting a specific 9th-level spell, once. In other words, you'd have to shell out, on average, 15,300 gp for that 9th-level spell.

Three reasons why this is not unbalanced:

#1. If your DM is handing out 15K worth of items to 2nd-level characters, he should expect stupid results. WBL exists for a reason.
#2. What exactly are you going to do with your uber-spell, assuming you get lucky and manage to cast it? It's basically a one-shot win button for one single encounter. The only spells with potential to cause real long-term havoc with the campaign are those that are themselves broken, like gate and shapechange; and that's a problem with the spell, not the scroll. Should your campaign ever reach 17th level, those spells will cause just as much trouble then.
#3. Let's say you plan to use the scroll as others here have suggested--a win button for one encounter that will, if it succeeds, net you more gold than you paid for the scroll. Off you march with your 4 scrolls of Win, to fight a creature whose CR is way, way out of your league. Assuming you win initiative, which is not guaranteed, you cast your first scroll. There is a 25% chance that your win button wins... and a 75% chance that it fails, whereupon the critter you're fighting unleashes a blast of fiery death and wipes out your entire party. It's highly unlikely you'll ever get to use the other three.

As DM, I would also limit the characters in what they can buy; a 9th-level scroll can only be made by a 17th-level caster, and those aren't exactly common. I didn't list this in the reasons above because it's not RAW, but it's an obvious way to limit the impact of 9th-level spell scrolls on the campaign, and much more reasonable than jacking the casting DC.

As for a 2nd-level character using a scroll of a 2nd-level spell--who cares? In one level, you'll be able to cast that spell daily anyhow. It's a one-shot item which provides a handy edge, at a cost of 150 gp.

[ArmorArmadillo]

Halfway? Down to 20% ... your party members are there too, he won't get the chance to fly away.

As for the cost, as I said before ... resurrection magic tends to be pricey too. It's just a question of playing the odds, if you are facing a very tough BBEG or something which by right you shouldn't even be attacking then it becomes interesting.

Dragons fly at 150 ft. per level, and have really high ACs, all they need is one turn and they're gone. Odds are very good that the dragon will get a chance to run away before you down it. And, if you take it to 20% in one hit any smart dragon will beat feat immediately.

Also; you don't need a 3000 gp magic item to beat the dragon; your party should just be able to take the dragon on on their own.


Yes, the scroll is useful, but my point is that there isn't an amazing efficiency involved here. I mean, you're spending about 1/3 of the treasure for the dragon to kill it, and dragon's are triple treasure monsters.

I think it isn't a great idea to buy scrolls to be heavy artillery; it's best for casters who don't have a lot of flexibility, like sorcerers, for getting essential spells they're only going to use once or twice (dismissal, dimensional anchor)

[Citizen Joe]

You don't use the scroll to take out the FIRST 80%, you use it to take out the last 80%.

Whittle it down a bit so it decides to attack, then POW out of nowhere hit it with the big guns.

[factotum]

And if you fail your caster check on your secret weapon, what then? Seems to me you just wasted 3000gp for nothing, unless you're expecting the dragon to die laughing.

[Matthew]

Most players think that it's a given that any caster starts with an 18 in his primary, stat; when 16 is more reasonable.

Indeed. I would go even further and suggest that, given the example Characters provided by Wizards, 15 is actually the average expected.

[ArmorArmadillo]

And if you fail your caster check on your secret weapon, what then? Seems to me you just wasted 3000gp for nothing, unless you're expecting the dragon to die laughing.

Not exactly, you don't lose the scroll unless you have a mishap.

(By The Way, it's actually more like 40% of the dragon, because they ALWAYS make their saves)

[bbugg]

So, ArmorArmadillo, if you fail to activate a scroll you don't lose it?
That makes them even more powered - you get to keep trying until you succeed. Unless, of course, you get a mishap. Mishaps, however, are generally less likely than getting the casting off.