Talk:Overbite (3.5e Spell)

Ratings

Eiji-kun dislikes this article and rated it 1 of 4.

I want to like this. It's a clever idea and I want to see it happen, but it very much comes off as one of those "no fun allowed" abilities which if used on a player is certain to make them scream "bullshit". It's because the idea of a mouth that eats you and puts you out of combat until you escape makes sense. And it also deals massive damage a round. A lot of it actually, I'd argue excessively so. Meanwhile the caster is healing from this, rough. But at least you can escape, right? But you have to hit a decently high AC. And then do damage. A lot of damage. And you're grappled, so it's bad news for you. Hey, maybe the wizards who are very boned by this can still spell out of thi... No, no can't do that either. Antimagic field. Hope you have a buttload of damage and a buttload of hp, because you need to consistently hit AC and do high damage with a light weapon, otherwise you are dead from the sheer amount of damage. As if battlefield control wasn't enough, it's also a save or die, and a heal. Too much. The antimagic field in particular really comes off as a DM who is doing his best to deny options out. All non-strength based characters beware.

Comments

Having to deal full damage in one turn (65 at level 13) with a light slashing weapon is somewhat hard to achieve, unless I'm missing something. Characters with those sorts of weapons tend to have bonus dice that don't apply here, and are looking at base weapon + property damage. If escape is supposed to happen, you might want ease up a bit (boost the hit points but make them not recover each round, keep the hit points but only recover some portion each round, cut the hit points in half). And if it's not supposed to happen all that often, you could probably get away with just removing it.

The spell starts off dealing 169d6 damage if it goes to term, on top of removing a foe from the fight for 13 rounds. It's a bit excessive, since they probably can't heal themselves and they can't leave short of a really impressive turn of damage. You could drop it to 1 round per 2 levels without losing much utility or lethality (78d6 and 6 rounds), and put it into line with other spells at that level. This could also be mitigated by tweaking the escape clause, so that they were generally stuck inside for fewer rounds.

Also, is ignoring evasion and the like intentional? - Tarkisflux ^Talk 18:36, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

5 hp per caster level is probably excessive, I agree. Even in my own work I have some inconsistencies in that regard (the tarrasque's stomach, for example, has 50 hit points. So may two hp per CL would be more manageable. That brings that 65 all the way down to 26, which may be a little easy to overcome even but not necessarily a total pushover given the weapon restriction and the AMF. - TG Cid 21:06, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Forgot they won't have properties either, because AMF. So it's base weapon plus base attribute bonus, plus feats maybe. And they won't have to-hit bonuses other than BAB, so 10 + CL is going to be near or worse than 50/50 for a med BAB class (because they add their attrib bonus on top), and better than for a full BAB class with their good attack. Excluding crits and assuming shortsword and +4 damage from whatever (low for some, high for others), it takes an average of 4 hits to get out. Asking them to make that happen in the same turn is going to be pretty rare I think. Maybe not too rare for the full BAB class that is even carrying a light slashing weapon, but still pretty rare. Think I need to advocate for a different escape clause in general at this point, probably the set hp + fast healing method, as well as something for people without a light slashing weapon to do other than die. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 23:37, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Another thing could be doing what was also done with the tarrasque, which is making it an automatic hit (but not a critical, and it also brings up the question of interactions with Power Attack and such) to make it so that medium and poor BAB characters aren't so penalized and only have issues with dealing less damage.

I missed the bit about evasion and such initially, but yes, the ignorance of evasion was intentional. The reduced effect is still significantly inferior than the one for the failed save, and for a level 7 spell 1d6 damage per level for a single target is acceptable in my mind. - TG Cid 00:06, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I have suggestions for a change. I love the Big Portal Mouth putting people in it to kill them if they fail a save. I don't even think the damage needs to change. But I think it's way too hard to get outside, and also adding an AMF field means you have to recalculate the stat block of anything that goes inside before you figure out if it can get out. My suggestions come out to: 1) It doesn't heal the stomach HP every round (or at all), 2) The AMF is replaced with text saying it's another demi plane so you can't teleport out, but you can still planeshift out or cast spells to damage the stomach. 3) The stomach can be attacked by anything, instead of just light slashing weapons. - Kaelik March 9 2023