Talk:Bonesplinter (3.5e Spell)

Ratings

	Foxwarrior likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	Putting a bit of combo-dependency in your SoDs is nice.

Article Balance

How is this High-level? Show me a level 7 maneuver in Tome of Battle that does anything near to this. It's a save or die that requires a tiny bit more effort--even a ray of frost afterwards finishes the job. --Ghostwheel (talk) 16:52, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that the maneuver vs spell comparisons is off, as those are multiple use and spells are one-shot. I wouldn't expect any ToB maneuver to do this since they can be used all day long and that's crazy for this sort of effect, but a "once per day, you can drop a guy to 1 hp" spell isn't so bad. Any comparison between the two needs to take the use amounts into account, else you're going to hose the per day guys inappropriately (note: you're welcome to decry that as terrible because it encourages people to put all of their effort into one punch and causes workday problems, but thems the system breaks and failing to address that fundamental difference seems more like a hate-on for spells and per day uses than for an attempt to balance very limited big punch characters with unlimited small punch characters.). It's probably better if you do spell comparisons for that reason.

That said, yes, this is probably VH as is. It's got better range than finger of death at the same level, and just trades doing more damage on a save for killing them utterly. The recovery mechanism does seem a bit harsh though. You basically need two level 4 spells or 1 level 6 spell (heal) to get yourself back up, and if you need heal anyway you may as well just set their hp to 1 and not worry about the weird tracking. If you do want the tracking, I'd consider dropping the heal requirement to 2 x CL or 1.5 x CL so that it could be dealt with by a spell that wouldn't obviate the tracking entirely. If you wanted to keep it an H, I'd consider setting them to <character level> hit points on a failed save and reducing the healing burden. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 19:04, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

The "four encounters per day" rule by which daily abilities are supposed to be balanced is implemented rarely enough in real play that I'm not sure you can give daily big punches much for their trouble. Maybe two encounters, but most casters can prepare more than one spell of their highest level.

The problem I see with the recovery mechanism is that it's too Delay Action-vulnerable. You can arrange to go immediately before an ally who has attacks that are pretty good at hitting, and voila, death without the [death] tag ahoy. It's a 7th level spell, so acquiring a dozen pet Skeletal/Expendable Longbowmen for this purpose is easy and essentially free. Reducing to <character level> hit points would slightly protect against the Longbowmen, but at H it still doesn't protect at all against the Other Player Character Who Deals Damage.

I like this as a VH spell; perhaps with a smaller penalty to Fortitude for being big. --Foxwarrior (talk) 05:47, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I corrected the rating to VH, on reflection I agree with your reasoning on that score. The delay-action vulnerability is intentional, though I did change the damage to CL HP on a failed save to give PCs hit by the spell a sliver's worth of hope at surviving. I don't want the removal to be easy, however, so I'd like to keep the healing requirement as-is. Not as sold on the size penalty though. Do you think a -1 would be more reasonable? Spanambula (talk) 07:42, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

With a little bit of investigation, it looks like the big creatures generally have much better Fortitude saves than other saves, so I guess even the -2 is not totally overboard. --Foxwarrior (talk) 08:34, 9 March 2013 (UTC)