User talk:Luigifan18/Agebreaker (3.5e Spell)

Ratings

Sulacu opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.

Yeah, I'm afraid I must also jump on the 'hating the shit out of this' bandwagon. There's a reason why the only spells in core D&D that do no save death without a HD cap only affect creatures of a specific alignment range that are at least 10 levels/HD below you, and those spells are 7th level and up. That and a lot of organic creatures have an indeterminate lifespan, such as elementals and outsiders. So depending on your interpretation of monster ages, this thing is capable of killing pretty much any of the strongest monsters in D&D in a single blow. More than, I think, even a 9th level should be capable of doing.

Eiji-kun opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.

Basing it on actual years is a terrible idea, and generates silly numbers all while being mixed in with a no-save touch. No. What you should have done, if you want this idea... base it on age categories. And perhaps a second list for dragon's unique age categories. That way you can have a clear idea how much damage one is outputting (10d6 for middle age, 20d6 for vulnerable, 40d6 for ancient wyrms, whatever...) without having to ask the DM "so the immortal creature from the beginning of time is 13.7 or 14 billion years old?"

Ganteka Future dislikes this article and rated it 1 of 4.

It's an interesting idea, it just doesn't meet a goal of functionality very well. As Foxwarrior pointed out, it relies on the DM having to keep track or come up with ages for monsters (even things like outsiders, which don't die of old age). Because of the disparity of how it skews challenges, the DM simply can't or won't want to introduce whole slews of monsters because of how this spell affects them and alters the status quo of a persistent game world. I cannot recommend the usage of this spell in anything but a joke-style one-off beer & pretzels game. Oddly enough, this spell simply does nothing but cause players to make choices that they can use to exploit the game (that is, kill things far too easily simply because they are old), despite the intention of the author that it do the opposite. Side Note: It amuses me that for once, yearlings don't get screwed over by an effect related to age.

	Foxwarrior dislikes this article and rated it 1 of 4.
	This is a save or die that is too strong for its level, assuming Very High balance.

Ghostwheel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.

This is dumb for aforementioned discussion and was created for even dumber reasons. If you don't want people starting at venerable, disallow people from starting at venerable. If you don't want people to start at venerable for power reasons, remove the benefits of being venerable. But having an instakill button specifically made for them to punish them for choices that the system supports is stupiddumb.

Humans Are Short-Lived

Even taking away the range doesn't really justify making a no-save disintegrate two levels lower. --Foxwarrior (talk) 20:14, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

It's still a touch attack. And it doesn't actually disintegrate anything. --Luigifan18 (talk) 21:07, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

It matches disintegrate in terms of damage/level at age 35. Which is much lower than the ages of most young adults. --Foxwarrior (talk) 22:02, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

But this spell doesn't scale with level. It's really just there so the DM has an excuse to smite the insufferable munchkin playing an 800-year-old wizard for +3 Intelligence - and to specifically make it so that his own powergaming blew up in his face. (The fact that it can drop dragons and liches with a single blow, thus making hilarity ensue, yet proves to be an insignificant scratch to a human fighter and literally will not harm an infant is a nice touch.)

Yeah, I don't like munchkins all that much. Brings back memories of the very first game I DM'ed, where one of the players sent the whole thing off the rails by trying to murder the rest of the party. --Luigifan18 (talk) 22:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Ugh ugh ugh. That entire chain of thought is disgusting. The thought that a game designer should punish people for making the choices that the game is clearly written to reward is gross, the idea that you would patch a game by sneaking in a counter when DM monster choice rock-paper-scissors strategy is barely part of the game in the first place is gross, that you're very mad about a player sending things off the rails is a bit unsettling, and that you associate munchkinery with slaughtering party members seems farfetched.

And I didn't mean to imply that agebreaker scaled with level; I meant that at caster level 5, when you get it, the average damage of a 2d6/level spell is 35, which means that agebreaker matches that damage against characters who are 35 years old. --Foxwarrior (talk) 23:01, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Making choices that the game rewards is one thing. Making choices that exploit the game, on the other hand...

To me, the defining quality of the munchkin is that he abuses the rules and that he pisses off everyone else at the game table, DM included. That sort of behavior should definitely be punished. For that matter, trying to kill off the rest of the party simply because you don't want to play the game anymore is also heavily frowned upon. (I really should have made that clear in the first place - the turncoat did that because, as far as I can tell, he got bored and wanted to shake things up or go out in a blaze of glory. "Blaze of dumbassery" is more like it... there were five other people in the party!)

Anyways, I went and upped the spell's level (for sorcerers and wizards, anyways - the others were left as is because one's a prestige class (blighter), one has a slow spellcasting progression (grim), and one is both of those (assassin)), and also halved the effect. So it should be less problematic now. --Luigifan18 (talk) 00:06, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

It is very marginally less problematic now. It's still a touch attack kill spell against the creatures you would choose to cast it on. Sure, it doesn't work on every possible creature, but neither do [mind-affecting] spells or [death] effects.

Also, your mechanism for punishment seems even more effective as a mechanism for helping misunderstandings make players hate each other. --Foxwarrior (talk) 00:34, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Scaling according to a statistic that is often omitted from a monster's stat block entirely and is never free from arbitrary DM decisions isn't all that great either. --Foxwarrior (talk) 00:57, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandbox?

I think this one's time is up. --Ghostwheel (talk) 21:36, 6 May 2013 (UTC)