Touch spells

[Ardanis]

This is based on a dialogue Demi and I had some time ago.

 

In technical terms, touch spells are those that create a single expendable magic weapon:

 

Chilling Touch

Shocking Grasp

Ghoul's Touch

Cause Serious Wounds

Cause Critical Wounds

Slay Living

Harm

Sol Searing Orb

 

They're generally not very useful, because they're blocked by weapon immunities and require a successful attack roll - something that a wizard can't rely upon.

 

The initial concept was to make them either a long-lasting enhanced attack (like Phantom Blade or BBoD), and turn Cause Wounds family into spell projectile, like beholder version.

 

 

All well and fine, until recently I've managed to remember about True Strike and ponder on it's effectiveness for touch attacks. This gave a birth to a whole new concept.

 

As it's known, a creature under Improved Insivibility can't be targeted with a spell-like ability. And often enough, a wizard is also under SI:Divination, PFMW, Spell Deflection. Assuming for a moment that, as more or less decided already for v4, True Sight grants see-invisible effect and Spell Deflection also turns away AoE spells, we'll have three possible ways to deal efficiently with such an opponent:

1) bombard with AoE, hoping that will eat away SD quickly (still no way to bypass ProEnergy)

2) cast TS and target normally

3) dish out half a dozen of antimagic attacks (atm), or just Spell Thrust / Spell Strike (v4, unless I lost the track), Dispel Magic also goes here

 

Now, touch attacks do bypass SD, and they also iirc do not count as weapons, so that may potentially open up the 4th possibility - hit them from a safe distance (Fireshields), ignoring II, SD and PFMW. The only counter to this strategy would be to cast ProEnergy (but then such a wizard is indeed deserving a couple of rounds of total invulnerability).

 

Drawbacks are:

1) an obvious lack of good range touch attack spells (Disintegrate can be converted, and perhaps Polar Ray added)

2) the AC issue - touch attacks ignore natural or armor AC, and I think it's difficult to transfer onto IE

[amanasleep]

This is based on a dialogue Demi and I had some time ago.

 

In technical terms, touch spells are those that create a single expendable magic weapon:

 

Chilling Touch

Shocking Grasp

Ghoul's Touch

Cause Serious Wounds

Cause Critical Wounds

Slay Living

Harm

Sol Searing Orb

 

They're generally not very useful, because they're blocked by weapon immunities and require a successful attack roll - something that a wizard can't rely upon.

 

The initial concept was to make them either a long-lasting enhanced attack (like Phantom Blade or BBoD), and turn Cause Wounds family into spell projectile, like beholder version.

 

 

All well and fine, until recently I've managed to remember about True Strike and ponder on it's effectiveness for touch attacks. This gave a birth to a whole new concept.

 

As it's known, a creature under Improved Insivibility can't be targeted with a spell-like ability. And often enough, a wizard is also under SI:Divination, PFMW, Spell Deflection. Assuming for a moment that, as more or less decided already for v4, True Sight grants see-invisible effect and Spell Deflection also turns away AoE spells, we'll have three possible ways to deal efficiently with such an opponent:

1) bombard with AoE, hoping that will eat away SD quickly (still no way to bypass ProEnergy)

2) cast TS and target normally

3) dish out half a dozen of antimagic attacks (atm), or just Spell Thrust / Spell Strike (v4, unless I lost the track), Dispel Magic also goes here

 

Now, touch attacks do bypass SD, and they also iirc do not count as weapons, so that may potentially open up the 4th possibility - hit them from a safe distance (Fireshields), ignoring II, SD and PFMW. The only counter to this strategy would be to cast ProEnergy (but then such a wizard is indeed deserving a couple of rounds of total invulnerability).

 

Drawbacks are:

1) an obvious lack of good range touch attack spells (Disintegrate can be converted, and perhaps Polar Ray added)

2) the AC issue - touch attacks ignore natural or armor AC, and I think it's difficult to transfer onto IE

 

Chill Touch and Goul Touch are enhanced attacks rather than single use like the rest of your list. They each last a full turn. In addition, they do not count as enchanted attacks in vanilla, and so already have some of the effects you describe. Chill Touch will allow you to attack a wizard protected by stoneskins and PfMW at +4.

 

Searing Orb creates a single expendable weapon, but is ranged so I don't think it belongs on the list either.

 

IMO the best way to fix the cause wounds spells is to make them enhanced attacks with long duration. Slay Living and Harm are already OK, Shocking Grasp should be changed to touch instead of melee touch (like Vampiric), and Searing Orb should be ranged, but give more projectiles like MMM.

[Demivrgvs]

Mmm, I'm not sure I fully understand the suggestion, but my first thought is that touch spells should either work as "weapons" (Chill Touch, Ghoul Touch, etc.) or as spells (a la Vampiric Touch). Having them bypass both Spell Deflection and ProWeapons spells is kinda strange for me.

 

I though about making Chill Touch or similar attacks work as spells and bypass ProWeapon spells by tweaking all of them: PfMW grants immunity to magical weapons up to +6 enchntment (due to non-IR +6 weapons), touch attacks count as +7. Problem is that such tweak would suddenly make other spells like Flame Blade or Spiritual Hammer rather pathetic.

 

Chill Touch and Goul Touch are enhanced attacks rather than single use like the rest of your list. They each last a full turn. In addition, they do not count as enchanted attacks in vanilla, and so already have some of the effects you describe. Chill Touch will allow you to attack a wizard protected by stoneskins and PfMW at +4.

Yep they counted as non-magical in vanilla, which is kinda absurd as a concept imo, and doesn't really guarantee you to bypass ProWeapon spell (only PfMW, and not even against it when facing non-human mages like liches or rakshasas), if that was the point.

 

IMO the best way to fix the cause wounds spells is to make them enhanced attacks with long duration.

That was my first idea, but I started to like a lot more the one mentioned by Ardanis here: making them work a la Vampiric Touch. This post kinda sums most of what I can say regarding this topic.

 

Slay Living and Harm are already OK, Shocking Grasp should be changed to touch instead of melee touch (like Vampiric), and Searing Orb should be ranged, but give more projectiles like MMM.

Slay Living: I thought about making it add a "kill on hit" effect to caster's weapon of choice, but it may be fine as it is. I don't particulary like it, because it kinda overlaps with Harm imo, there should have been Mass Cause Wounds instead of this imo.

 

Harm: in theory I'd like it more as a non-ranged but more damaging equivalent of Disintegration, but it may cause it to become overkill. I can live with its current state.

 

Shocking Grasp: it should either work as a multi-hit touch attack a la Chill Touch, or work a la Vampiric Touch. I'd go for the latter as amanasleep, which will drasticallly improve the appeal of this spell imo (I could even start taking it over MM sometime).

 

Searing Orb: considering Fire Seeds is at the same lvl, and it works exactly as MMM on steroids, I'd say Searing Orb should remain 1 hit as per PnP. Again, I'd prefer it to not require a hit roll, but the latetst version of SCS started using it when SR is detected, and I don't want to bother David messing with it again.

[Ardanis]

Mmm, I'm not sure I fully understand the suggestion, but my first thought is that touch spells should either work as "weapons" (Chill Touch, Ghoul Touch, etc.) or as spells (a la Vampiric Touch). Having them bypass both Spell Deflection and ProWeapons spells is kinda strange for me.

PnP Spell Turning doesn't affect area or touch spells. Now, assuming the former is removed, the latter might as well be, but at least the suggestion was based on existing rules.

 

My bigger point is that there're not only "enhanced weapon" and "spell" types, but also "ranged touch (aka ray)". The latter is known to be not much appealing due to the attack roll requirement, thus we thought to remove it completely.

But, rather than diminish the amount of opportunities, why not instead try to work in the opposite direction and make range touch spells useful outside of FC's "Critical Strike + Harm" combo?

 

Such a spell is difficult to use - has only a single charge, requires to-hit roll, - but it ignores II (the usual bane of spellcasters) and PFMW (same for fighters). If AoE are also stopped by SD, range touch spells may also get another boost and ignore SD, thus only be stoppable by specific protections.

 

For Flame Blade and Spiritual Hammer becoming pathetic, they imo are not. They belong to "magic weapon" group, which has it's own uses, like the unlimited (short of spell's duration) quantity of attacks. Chill/Ghoul Touch and Shocking Grasp imo belong here as well - they don't create a blade-shaped substance, but turn caster's very hand into natural weapon.

 

 

So, I basically see three types of spells here:

1) "weapon" - magical weapon remains in caster's hand for a set duration, behaves as any other melee weapon would in regards of PFMW

2) "missile" - creates a number of expendable missiles, stoppable by PFMW

3) "ranged touch" - creates a single expendable charge that is used like a weapon but counts as spell when interacting with PFMW

 

So the first two are more like a true weapon, pick between melee or ranged. The third is closer to spell, but a) not stopped by II and b) needs a to-hit roll.

[phordicus]

were you ever close to just categorizing how the engine would allow hostile effects (damage, stun, slow, etc) and then just spreading them out regardless of existing rules? i ask because every time a discussion comes up about how two or more spells are similar, i wonder why we don't just eliminate it altogether and come up with a more original spell from scratch. there's a limited number of spells (until ToBEx gets to it) per level, so wracking our brains to make 6 spells that are essentially the same seem different really seems like a waste of resources and ideas.

[Guest guest]

there's a limited number of spells (until ToBEx gets to it) per level

 

Doesn't tob_hacks (Taimon's one) have scrollable spellbooks that allows this though? Or did you mean something else?

[Galactygon]

Mmm, I'm not sure I fully understand the suggestion, but my first thought is that touch spells should either work as "weapons" (Chill Touch, Ghoul Touch, etc.) or as spells (a la Vampiric Touch). Having them bypass both Spell Deflection and ProWeapons spells is kinda strange for me.

Bypassing spell deflection without changing the power level of the spell is impossible. But if you change the power level, you'd have to worry about making sure the appropriate level-protecting spells protect from those individual spells.

 

I though about making Chill Touch or similar attacks work as spells and bypass ProWeapon spells by tweaking all of them: PfMW grants immunity to magical weapons up to +6 enchntment (due to non-IR +6 weapons), touch attacks count as +7. Problem is that such tweak would suddenly make other spells like Flame Blade or Spiritual Hammer rather pathetic.

 

I've played around with this, and unfortunately there is no way you could protect your character from less than +7 AND magical weapons. Your PfMW will either protect the character against all magical weapons (regardless of plusses) OR against all weapons (magical or non-magical) less than some plus value. You can't make your touch attack.

 

Now if ToBEx would introduce some improvements to opcode 120 to allow for more control (the use of ANDs) and/or an .itm extended header flag that allows the weapon to bypass opcode 120 and/or a new stat that does the same thing, that would be nice. I'd personally vouch for a new .spl flag that calculates the caster's THAC0 (the unusued fields are there) to see if the extended headers affect the target or not. Basically it'd find a use for those unused fields in the .spl ext header that were carried over from the .itm ext header.

 

Right now in SpellPack, I have given all touch spells a custom sectype and a set melee effect that fires a shell spell that dispels that sectype. I'd like to keep the uniqueness of range and THAC0 calculation of touch spells though. There are plenty of ranged automatic-hit spells already.

 

-Galactygon