An Unballancing Pound of Flesh

this is exactly the problem with “oh but it was on the old boards”, is that people remember things differently and we cant verify things however.

the discussion about fixing pound of flesh in any way was part of the larger discussion on Advanced spells (thats how i remember it) and the thoughts we had on advanced spells were addressed on these boards by pedro

advanced spells discussion

So all of those things that were decided about pound of flesh aren’t valid… you can pound of flesh elemental bolt(AOE), there is nothing stopping you from doing that, its considered one spell so it avoids the question in this thread. but however is subject the judge variation, who from what I hear will nerf your spell most of the time.( A poll conducted by me in person asking judges I knew, a bit back)

so like all other advanced spells and maneuvers, you are required to let the GM know before hand about it?

I agree that it is a powerful combination, but would disagree that it rates a nerf and would vehemently disagree with any judge that decided to disallow it – and I don’t even have a caster character, so no skin in the game. It is by no means an easy spell to pull off – as no character I’ve ever seen can auto-make the CTN.

Both base spells have CTNs of 18, so the advanced spell has a base CTN of 21. That’s not bad; generally an auto-cast

Then add 6 to the CTN to make it AoE for a total of 27; means a roll is necessary

Rolling 3d10 has an average of 16.5; highest Arcanum at the end of Tier 1 is +8 (4 ranks @ creation, 3 skill ups, 1 for Prodigy); so 24.5, short of the CTN

Caster must roll at least 19 on the dice; probability (ignoring explosions) is: 35.20%
Obviously more if you were to factor in the 10% chance of the attribute die exploding; 57.5% if the PC bumps the roll by a fate score of 3

Then the caster has to roll to hit each target; okay, that’s probably easy-ish

And the combined speeds push it into being an interruptible spell (total speed is 9)

That means there’s one roll that can FUBAR the spell at the outset, 1 roll per target that can miss, and Illir help the caster that gets charged while trying to pull off this spell. That’s a whole lot of opportunity for the dice to hose the caster. There are much better options to use against minions (just AoE Elemental Bolt, for one) since, at best, you could get 1 healing per target and non-minions don’t often cluster up into a 10′ radius.

I also believe that the combo is hideously powerful and should be fixed, but following the rules as written, completely legal.
Except for the healing part not really. Although that extra prowess die does ignore AR.

I was actually referring to combining the two spells together, not the martial technique. Also, given the requirements to cast it may still be balanced, I’d want to take another look.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Yes. I think that’s right.

Thanks Henry for the input.

I was actually talking about Unballancing Strike and the basic Pound of Flesh spell. Although I think at one point the thread strayed into a discussion about a the advanced area of effect spell you describe.

While I have gotten off interuptible spells before, a speed 9 is just crazy slow….