Archetype: Arcane (Primal Magic Source)
Race: val'Mordane or human
Background: Shaman Initiate
1 more rank from Skill selection during character creation.

Primary Casting Stat 8 (either through character creation or a 7 with a single stat increase somewhere in Tier 1)
Taking Elemental Bolt and A Pound of Flesh as 2 spells of 5.
Taking Spell Affinity (Elemental Bolt) at Tier one
Taking all 3 Skill increases during Tier 1
= Passive Arcanum 23

Taking Spell Affinity (A Pound of Flesh) at Tier 2 (along with Arcane Spell Casting)
Selecting the 3 Skill increases anywhere in Tier 2
Selecting Sabbatical as a Talent for one more Skill increase.
=Passive Arcanum 27
Being a val'Mordane you can take few bloodlines talents and the Shaman (Tier 1 and 3) path to have a couple mobs of zombies (from Graveblight: Zombie) that follow instructions (from Death is Not and Ending talent[Tier 4])

Mith,

3 ranks per tier is standard for the primary focus for any character. That's 3 ranks in Arcanum, 3 ranks in Melee, 3 ranks in Ranged. None of that is close to power gaming mode. The two extra Talents are easily covered by waiting until Tier 3 to get the same benefit. I am talking about people who are building to type. Arcane Archtype: Primal Caster, with 3 ranks to start. That's not challenging for a normal build. Neither is 3 ranks in a skill even for an Expert. I'm not talking about rare cases here, this is normal. Add 2 Talents across a total of 2 Tiers and you can autocast it at Tier 2.4 without jumping through hoops etc. I expect an Arcane Archetype will make use of the Select 2 Arcane Talents per tier option. With minimal additional investment for a primary caster it's an autocast. No roll. I could get there with 4 starting ranks and Sabatical instead but that's a more specialized build which I was looking to avoid. It is easily achievable in early Tier 3 without the extra Talent investment.



In order to make this effective you have to make a bit of an up front investment to do this in Tier 2 and not take significant damage during 8 ticks. That's not a lot of little things going in the caster's favor. If you do take damage and fail your resolve roll you're delayed ticks. Unless you take wound damage you don't lose the spell. Again, casting this spell becomes easy once you hit Tier 3. If you'd like to provide effective counter arguments about the strength of this spell I would recommend showing other advanced spells at a CTN 27 or less that have roughly the same total impact on a combat.



Ok, explain the emphatic No. You're getting 96 points of effect on average in 8 ticks. In 8 ticks you can take a vanquished hero and bring them up to roughly 2/3rds or more of starting Stamina while doing an equal amount of damage which is a huge swing in a battle. No where in any of my posts have I said this needs to be nerfed. I've said that there's a big gap between it and martial damage and even then I clarified that it's probably apples and oranges. I think with the gap it should be evaluated. I have not clamored for nerfing.

Combats are designed to be balanced. If there is a 40 point smackdown then it's expected that's already factored in.

At this point I will step out of this debate as it seems to be moving away from the very "objective" measures you requested and more into heated opinions. If we can't agree on basic definitions for objective measures then we'll never reach any conclusions.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Coming at it from another way, wouldn't the Stacking rules apply?

The spell is a single Source (Spell), so even if it affects multiple targets, you could only receive the best damage roll as healing.

Eg. You make an advanced spell that hits three targets (area or multiple targets). Target A takes 8, Target B takes 6 and Target C takes 4. Ally D could only receive the highest healing, which is the damage from Target A; the rest is wasted due to stacking rules.

1) You're just randomly adding 9 points of "effect". Targets having AR or not does not change the dice roll or the sum produced. If anything, it doesn't get *reduced* by 9 points.

2) You're assuming all targets are non-minions and not injured enough that the attack will vanquish them. If one of them is a minion the "points of effect" drops to 60. If two of them are minions, that's 33. If all three are minions, a massive 6 points of effect.

3) The total damage done to a single target is, on average, 14.5 (as you said). That's not even into "impressive" waters. That the same damage also heals an ally is what makes that impressive

4) I agree that said spell can swing the momentum by doing quite a bit of healing to a single target, but you've still only done 14.5 damage to each individual target. The healing aspect is great, the damage factor is pretty 'meh'.

1. Most targets will have at least 2-3 points of armor so the effect as presented by Hat is correct (or close).
2. Nobody would ever cast this unless they will hit at least 1 non-minion (it's usually obvious which are minions).
3. It may not be impressive but it is on-par with most other spells (which don't heal).

At this point, I'm bowing out of this discussion as well. I've made my points and you give the impression of not even considering the possibility that this spell combination (with your interpretation of the combination rules) is broken (and I strongly disagree with you).

If you want to compare effect to other spells the fact that this one ignores AR must be accounted for. If you'd prefer limiting it to 87 now and then adjusting against another spell later that's fine. I was comparing against a melee attack which certainly didn't get to ignore AR.



I also limited my example to 3 targets as opposed to the 16 someone else mentioned. If it's late enough in the combat that an opponent is down enough you're not getting 14.5 points worth of effect then either the minions have been identified or they're already down. If they're minions then the martial equivalent just did 3 points to your 6 and you're still double.



Agreed. 29 points of impact is impressive. Multiplied by multiple targets is what's brought it into question. Realize that 3 is the *minimum* you're ever going to cast that spell on. You can cast the base or adapt for a second target. The likely bang is bigger. As you go up in tiers and can adapt for additional damage, larger range etc, the impact also grows.



It's still not 'meh' compared to equivalent attacks. The sweeping mighty swing attack averaged 17 points of damage. Against AR 3 it's a half point behind your 'meh' attack. If that's meh then so is the closest martial equivalent. If it's AR 5 or higher it's more of a significant swing.

In my original example I forgot to add the 1 extra attack while strain burned off taking the total martial damage to 63 over 8 ticks. I've edited my original post to show this. Again, you have to take AR into account. Plus all of the movement etc. It's also far easier for the spell to hit multiple targets than it is likely that a bunch of opponents are going to stand in such a way for a mighty swing to hit 3 targets.

If this spell is one of many of equivalent power that should be considered to put this in context, then I respectfully ask for you to provide additional examples to support your claim that this is in line.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Let me say that this is an invaluable thread, and I thank everyone for participating, particularly the people that disagree with my viewpoints. thank you.

Things that are going to be discussed in the coming weeks regarding the upcoming errata, are going to be Advanced spells and Vampiric spells (cant you tell by this thread they are hot buttons?)

here are some requests, lets get some "apples to apples" type of comparisons going, i think Paul Hat was on the right track with busting out the Actual stats for the resulted AOE pound of flesh ball, can someone come up with a good comparison spell (I like explosive decompression myself but the CTN is a bit high for comparison)

one of the biggst gripes is that this spell does too much healing. yet no one has compared it to any healing spells, how does this compare to similar CTN healing spells?

You're right, you cannot ignore AR as it applies to calculating damage. That still doesn't bump the total from 87 to 96, rather it would take a 78 (if AR were applied) to the 87 (with AR ignored).

Your comparison of a simple Sweeping Strike is not a like comparison. The mage "blew is wad" casting the combined spell, so too must the melee fighter in order for it to be a valid comparison. If one is to compare 'the best' a mage can do, then you must also use 'the best' the melee can do. That is specifically why I tacked so much on to my example melee attack. I agree that comparing melee to magic is not apples to apples.

Looks like the closest you're going to get is the Tier 3 Revitalize with multiple adaptations. For a CTN of 26 you could heal everyone in a 10' radius for 1d10(Primary); CTN of 30 for 1d12(Primary). Now, note there's no need to roll to hit anything here, unlike the combined spell. Additionally, the combined spell still has a chance the caster can't make the CTN roll. If there's a healer that can't auto-make a CTN of 26 by Tier 3, that's just sad and pathetic...

I believe I showed that it is very easy for a caster to auto cast "A Pound of Fleshball" in Tier 2. And there is plenty of room for variation in the build to show it is more than a "one trick pony." Many Primal caster could have access to it in Tier 2, and the rest would have it in Tier 3.