mr-frog@sdamos.UUCP (Dave Pare) (01/18/85)
: It was never clear to me just how fire shield manages to do its damage. Does it do fire damage? If so, would fire resistance reduce the damage -- and would immunity to fire damage negate it completely? Could a demon's magic resistance negate the damage? Brian brands my 7th or 8th level fire shield spell as "silly". I didn't just come up with that example...there are precedents for such things. Take a look at "mass invisibility", for example. It duplicates the second level spell "invisibility", but has the minor additional effect of doing this to some 300 individual targets. The spell, "invisibility, 10' radius" affects all people within ten feet of the caster -- and that's only one level higher than the second level invisibility spell. Another example: a meteor swarm is the combination of four fireball spells...encompassing an area four times larger than the fireball (and having no saving throw under the right condition). Like him, I agree that no DM "worth his salt" would allow such a fire shield spell -- since a fourth level version is a "silly" (too powerful) spell to begin with. Brian had no response to the fact that a 4th level spell does damage without giving the target a save (without requiring a "to hit" roll AND lasting for many rounds). All he could do was insult the victim's intelligence. Considering the quality of the rest of his letter, I think that's most unfortunate: > No problem - your saving throw in this case is determined by > your intelligence - are YOU dumb enough to attack a Fire-Shielded > individual. Hmm. Dumb enough to attack a fire-shielded individual. Gee, what happens when that individual is attacking YOU? I guess you chose to ignore such a possibility. > Fire Shield, by any reasonable interpretation of the rules, should > only cause damage for actual physical damage inflicted, not magical > or critical damage. What do you want to do, behead the poor guy > with a burst of flame??? To quote the author, "this is silly". Does a vorpal blade do "actual physical damage" when it lops your head off? You bet it does! It may be a magical effect -- but so is the +3 to damage on your favorite +3,+3 mace. Does this "only physical" damage apply to the +3 to damage on weapons too? Hmm...how interesting. I try and keep a nice balance between the fighter and the magic user; I think that fire shield upsets the balance tremendously. Instead of removing the spell (which would be a really unimaginitive thing to do), I think a better approach might be to increase the level of the spell to ... oh, say 7th or 8th. In fact, that's what I think I'll do! Dave Pare