Essential Fireball

[Anders]

So how would a fireball made of Essential Fire work? Well, the basic rule is that essential stuff is three times as awesome as normal stuff. You could triple damage, but at some point that hits diminishing return. So I suggest:

Essential Fireball

Missile

Throw a ball of essential fire from one hand. This has ½D 25, Max 50, Acc 1. When it strikes something, it vanishes in a puff of flame. This spell is likely to ignite flammable targets.

Cost: Any amount up three times your Magery level per second, for three seconds. The fireball does 1d (3) burning damage per three energy points.
Time to cast: 1 to 3 seconds.
Prerequisites. Magery 2, Create Fire, Shape Fire, and Essential Fire.

[Ejidoth]

Maybe base it on Explosive Fireball instead of Fireball, and then change the explosion from 'divide damage by three times distance in yards (round down)' to 'divide damage by distance in yards (round down)' and up the damage from 1d per Magery to 1d+1 per Magery to match Essential Flame's +1 damage bonus.

3 energy per 1d+1 probably still works?

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Anders

So how would a fireball made of Essential Fire work? Well, the basic rule is that essential stuff is three times as awesome as normal stuff. You could triple damage, but at some point that hits diminishing return.

MA75 says Essential Flame does +1 damage (or +2 to watery) where does x3 damage come from?

Even if we don't invent a new spell you could combine Throw Spell with this, I guess?

This would prevent ignoring intervening barriers (as Area spells are able to do, similar to Regular spells) though since you have to physically throw a spell orb (or whatever Throw Spell is supposed to look like) through intervening space, but really helps cut down on penalties when you can use the long-range modifiers instead of -1/yard

Personally one thing I don't like about area spell penalty calculation is how it's yards to the outer border. I'd prefer yards to center (ie how Area Effect works with Innate Attack) because it should be easier to enchant a 2-yard radius centered around you than a 2-yard radius where you're just on the perimeter.

Another option (if you want the lower penalties of Throw Spell while retaining the malediction-like ignoring of barriers like Regular/Area spells) would be to spend energy to get enhancements and get "Long Range" enhancements for the spells.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

MA75 says Essential Flame does +1 damage (or +2 to watery) where does x3 damage come from?

"Essential" things typically use a x3 multiplier. Essential Metal gives 3x the DR per pound of comparable mundane metal, Essential Fuel lasts 3x as long, Essential Food is 3 meals in one, etc. Now, for damage, there's often some sort of square or cube root involved, which would imply something like x1.5 to damage (using cube root, which is typical for energy). I don't have Magic to check the entry for Essential Flame, but if it's generally taking a typical 1d-1 burn fire and making it 1d, that would actually follow the x1.5 from using the cube root. However, I think Anders' suggestion of giving it 3x the armor penetration, rather than 3x the energy (and thus 1.5x the damage), is more interesting, and also has the advantage of making it so that Essential Metal armor protects from Essential Fireball exactly as well as bronze armor of equal weight protects against a comparable Fireball.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Varyon

However, I think Anders' suggestion of giving it 3x the armor penetration, rather than 3x the energy (and thus 1.5x the damage), is more interesting, and also has the advantage of making it so that Essential Metal armor protects from Essential Fireball exactly as well as bronze armor of equal weight protects against a comparable Fireball.

I wish I could say this was the idea, but it was more of an unforeseen bonus. But yes, the general idea of "three times more awesome" comes from the other Essential spells.

[Rupert]

Three times the penetration is great, but for many applications it's not 'three times more awesome', because it's doing the same damage as a fireball. However, 1d+2(2) also has about three times the penetration, and gives extra damage as well.

Being 'essential', it could also be tight-beam burning but set fires like normal flame.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

making it so that Essential Metal armor protects from Essential Fireball exactly as well as bronze armor of equal weight protects against a comparable Fireball.

Did we ever get rules somewhere on how metal armor heats up from exposure to fire over time even if the Burning Attack doesn't surpass DR?

I think I recall somewhere there was a ruling that normal fireballs explode too quickly for that to happen, but you'd think there's be SOME small limited transfer so that someone getting pelted with dozens of fireballs per second by a cult of mages would eventually begin to heat up.

Another thing is how Burning Attack w/ AE would naturally find unarmored areas or chinks where flames could get in and hurt your skin, per B400's "Against a true area effect, all locations are exposed." and you'd get "average of your torso DR and the DR of the least protected hit location exposed" so an exposed unrpotected place is DR 0 meaning you'd get half torso DR against the flames.

That weirdly would mean if you're walking through a 1d-1 fire (max damage 5) that you could wear torso DR 10 and be uncovered everywhere else, and be immune to the fire...

I think maybe "half damage to torso, half damage to least armored" might work better, then high torso DR couldn't sub for total lack of DR elsewhere.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

Did we ever get rules somewhere on how metal armor heats up from exposure to fire over time even if the Burning Attack doesn't surpass DR?

Not that I'm aware of, and in general not that I would consider a good idea. A bunch of mages pelting you with fire would heat up the local area, making you tire more rapidly (heat exhaustion) and eventually getting hot enough to burn you on its own, but how long that would take is reliant on so many factors it's best to just say "if the GM thinks the area/the character's armor would become problematically-hot, he can rule that it does so."

[edk926]

Sounds a bit like the fire spells from the Epic Magic Pyramid issue. The requirements are Magery 4, and the fatigue costs are high.