Talk:Sans' Karmic Bone Barrage (3.5e Spell)

It just...

Not working, never mind most non-pacifist creatures and adventurer at level 17 killed thousand upon thousand of creatures. Very very very few people actually keep track of their kill count. Also this turn a single bone against pretty much anything into a slow death. This... is not working. --Leziad (talk) 23:13, 26 November 2017 (MST)

Ditto. Recommendation for doing Sans Spam: This spell hits X many times dealing 1 divine damage each time (to breach DR/resistances for most) per hit. Each round after you take the same damage again for the next 5 rounds. Make the spell Concentration. The threat then becomes that you have, say, 20 damage in the first round, 20 + 20 in the second, 20 + 20 + 20 in the third, etc. You can make it save negates to keep it from going insane, or save or half so it's basically a choice between "die slow, or die faster than slow".

This covers the example of being spammed by weak but difficult to resist and persistent attacks from "poisoned" bones. Poisoned in the Undertale sense, not the D&D sense. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 03:44, 27 November 2017 (MST)

Your idea is sound, and I have tentatively implemented something along those lines. However, I would like to stay true to the flavor of the original by somehow making the spell's power proportional to how much of an asshole the target is (so a mass-murderer would be slaughtered next to instantly, while a pacifist would hardly be scratched). --Luigifan18 (talk) 08:24, 27 November 2017 (MST)

Firstly, Sans only dealt one damage per frame of contact. The target being an asshole simply made them lose their DEF and invisibility frame I believe. Which is nowhere near 200+d6 seventeen times. --Leziad (talk) 08:38, 27 November 2017 (MST)

Right... how many frames per second does Undertale run at again? Multiply that value by 6, and... well, that gets scary real fast. --Luigifan18 (talk) 10:28, 28 November 2017 (MST)

But that aside, I really want this spell to have strong elements of karma — its strength needs to be proportional to the target's level of violence. And I'm not fully sure how to do that. I could make it do low damage to Good-aligned creatures, moderate damage to Neutral creatures, and heavy damage to Evil creatures, but that's something that's already been done dozens of times and is somewhat clichéd, plus it's entirely possible for someone to be evil without being violent (or at least not being “murder everything that so much as looks at me funny” violent), and I really want this spell to punish murder and blood-shedding mayhem most specifically — general evil, maybe not so much. I could make the effect proportional to the target's XP or level (and I do say effect, as I want to stay true to Sans and have the immediate damage of each bone be very low), but the Player's Handbook makes a point to notify you that XP doesn't have to be obtained violently — XP is gained simply by overcoming a challenge, and it doesn’t matter how you do it. To use the Player's Handbook's example, if the challenge is getting past a minotaur to claim its treasure, the challenge can be overcome by killing the minotaur, knocking the minotaur unconscious, sneaking past the minotaur, drugging the minotaur, convincing the minotaur to give you the treasure, or any of a myriad of other solutions, and all of the possible solutions are equally valid and earn you the same XP. So, since XP doesn't have to be earned violently in Dungeons & Dragons, it's a poor measure of how murderous a character is, and it doesn't make sense (or sound fair from a mechanical standpoint) to tie this spell's power to its victim's XP or level. Kill count is the measure that makes the most sense, but, as has already been mentioned, it's not something that's actively tracked by most players or Dungeon Masters, and many high-level creatures would have a kill count in the hundreds or thousands, so... um... look, I would really like suggestions for how to make this earn the name of “Karmic Retribution”. --Luigifan18 (talk) 16:05, 28 November 2017 (MST)

You cannot. Except making it alignment-based there very little ways to do that. The simplest way is that this spell deal no damage to non-evil creatures. --Leziad (talk) 16:20, 28 November 2017 (MST)