Talk:Annihilating Spell (3.5e Feat)
Remove Balancing Factors: The FeatEdit
Man oh man this feat. Every time I read it, I worry about it just a little more. For starters, being able to destroy a creature's soul is not High balance (at least for me), especially when that can be pulled off with a cantrip boosted to a 1st level spell (pick a damage-dealing cantrip of your choice). Turning a 6th level spell like disintegrate into a 7th level spell that requires a 7th level (regular ol' resurrection) and a 9th level spell to counter isn't balanced (to be fair, death is a tough thing to balance/deal with anyhow, but it does happen). To cap everything off, you'd never want to give this to an NPC to use against the PCs because they'd just get disappointed and frustrated by it (what with the needing a 9th level spell they probably don't have access to as a lower-level High-balance party just to bring their character back... or that the antagonist can just burrow through an abjurated hardened super-adamantine castle with ease). What were your thoughts on the effects of this, as I'm rather curious. --Ganteka Future (talk) 00:36, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
- You can't destroy a soul with a cantrip, you need to be able to reduce a body to ash before applying the metamagic feat to destroy the soul. Unless there a cantrip that destroy body like disintegrate that is (in which case the problem is on the spell). An annihilating fireball killing a PC will simply destroy the body, which make him harder to resurrect but not particularly so.
- As for dealing with a super castle, destroying with damage spell is not efficient even with this feat (unless used on a seriously blasting spell like meteoric mortar, molten tornado or nine acre fire. You could simply tunnel through it with disintegrate (hardness already don't apply) or simply passwall (or any teleportation spell).
- Finally as for destroying souls, it something that a DM must decide to include in his campaign or not. If a PC was destroyed by an annihilating disintegrate or a annhilating fire spell modified by incinerate and had it soul destroyed that is indeed bad, but not the end. It could lead to an adventure to the city of brass in order to get a wish from an efreeti or perhaps a journey through time, only vaguely more difficult than typical resurrection quests. With that said, a group that is uncomfortable with such feats and concept should not include it in their game. However the feat itself is not at fault, rather the concept of soul destruction (like through the elder evil feat harvest soul, a thinuan weapon and a lot of other way) is simply problematic with how some groups play.
- In closure, it is perhaps impossible to really balance permanent death. Although in this case it is not truly permanent, at best what I could do is to make it so that raise dead is not effective but resurrection is. I will play with some ideas. --Leziad (talk) 01:09, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
- Man, that was a quick response... or I just got distracted for longer than I thought. Anyways copy/paste example time!:
- "This metamagic feat may only apply to spell with the [death] descriptor or that deal damage."
- That sounds like I can totally apply this to ray of frost, since it deals damage. At first level, dealing 3 damage very well could be enough to slay a creature, especially if they were wounded (or heck, used purposely for a killing blow). Anyways, the point I was really getting at with the whole thing is that counters aren't available for it at the same level for a High balance game at +1 spell level. My super castle example wasn't very good, I know (though an adamantine castle would be pretty cool if totally impractical) and was mostly about being able to cheaply destroy expensive, generally robust things (but yeah disintegrate can already do that, this just makes it so you can fireball it and do it to lots of things, at a lower level). As for soul killing in general, I've never really liked it because of how problematic it would be to plan around something like that for being a DM when the PCs aren't all casters. I guess what I'm saying is, bumping it up to at least +2 and keeping it High or moving it to Very High at +1 is probably more in line, but heck, I might just be underestimating what a High blaster mages should be doing at any given level. Also, Happy Solstice! --Ganteka Future (talk) 02:47, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
Soul Destruction not steep enough?Edit
I personally like Eiji's shorthand for soul destruction: Only a Wish/Miracle can restore the soul. From there, the soul is treated normally, and can be resurrected as normal. This is a touch too forgiving for "erased from reality." -SecondDeath777 23:46, 6 March 2018
