[Magic] Concussion Spell OP?

[Refplace]

I always considered the spell undervalued but that area does limit it in situtions like Dungeon crawls.
But its great for messing with oncoming foes outdoors.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

Myself and several other players in a low tech fantasy game recently held a free for all tournament while our GM was away to fill our weekly time slot. During the fight between the 5 of us, one of the wizards began slinging 2FP (1 after skill reduction) concussion spells every other round, and we realised how powerful this spell is.

For two points (or 1, if the DM allows it to do no damage), everyone in a 10 yard area must make a HT-3 roll or be stunned. For an average 10 HT character (we are all low points, so HT is rarely higher than 10 or 11) this is a fail 87% of the time. Every round after also requires another HT-3 roll to recover from stunning, resulting in ~8 rounds on average of being stunned on the ground. Once you recover, the wizard charges another concussion spell, you have one round to do something (like recover the weapon you dropped, or stand up), and then they throw it at you again.

Is there anything I am missing with this spell, or does it need to be changed to bring it in line with other damage & disable spells such as lightning bolt?

That's another Grimoire spell. You need to keep an eye on those.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

That's another Grimoire spell. You need to keep an eye on those.

Meaning what? that it came from a specific book of 'extra good' spells before it came to 4e?

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Meaning what? that it came from a specific book of 'extra good' spells before it came to 4e?

GURPS Grimoire. It added a lot of spells to 3e, many of them for specific genres or concepts (tech magic for example), some more colorful than the spells from Magic. Some of the spells in it are considered by a lot of folks to be particularly unbalanced.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Meaning what? that it came from a specific book of 'extra good' spells before it came to 4e?

Not necessarily extra good. In 3e, you had GURPS Magic, which was designed as a pretty cohesive system. They worked well together, and they were pretty generic. Then lots of setting books came out, each with their own spells that were meant to add to the core magic system in such a way that they enhanced their particular setting. Their balance was also... alright, but only in the context of that particular world. They were never really designed to work outside of that context.

That said, some could, and wouldn't be nice if they were all gathered into one place? And so they were in GURPS Grimoire. But everyone who had GURPS Grimoire knew what it was: A pile of spells from various books, none of which had been explicitly designed to work with one another. And so it was sort of a grab-bag of extra spells, options you could add to your world, if they fit, all in one convenient location.

One of the problems with Magic 4e is that it just grabbed these Grimoire spells, and without thinking about the consequences, pushed them into the canonical structures and made them part of the core structure, but they're not really the same. But you wouldn't know that without the history lesson.

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Not necessarily extra good. In 3e, you had GURPS Magic, which was designed as a pretty cohesive system. They worked well together, and they were pretty generic. Then lots of setting books came out, each with their own spells that were meant to add to the core magic system in such a way that they enhanced their particular setting. Their balance was also... alright, but only in the context of that particular world. They were never really designed to work outside of that context.

That said, some could, and wouldn't be nice if they were all gathered into one place? And so they were in GURPS Grimoire. But everyone who had GURPS Grimoire knew what it was: A pile of spells from various books, none of which had been explicitly designed to work with one another. And so it was sort of a grab-bag of extra spells, options you could add to your world, if they fit, all in one convenient location.

One of the problems with Magic 4e is that it just grabbed these Grimoire spells, and without thinking about the consequences, pushed them into the canonical structures and made them part of the core structure, but they're not really the same. But you wouldn't know that without the history lesson.

Yeah, that's what I meant. ;)

[T.K.]

I don't see this spell as unbalanced as people make it seem...at least from our games, it has its niche where its good, but many times it won't be useful.

Sure, the mage is area stunning at HT-3 every (at least) 2 turns, but its situational to use (gotta throw it 11yds away to not be caught at the blast), which at best case will allow the mage to do it at (+4 targetting ground -5 distance) -1 AT LEAST.

Get vision modifiers, more distance and other modifiers and this caster that should be around 13-14 Innate at best (considering the OP said they're all low point characters wiht HT-10/11) will be throwing with effective skill around 10-11.

Spending that low FP, he's basically not doing any damage most of the time with an average damage of 3.5 Crushing AND that's ONLY at the impact point, not the 10yd sound blast, so in my example above where he's targetting ground, he's not even damaging anyone!

At least in our games, casters got a lot more mileage from Lightning Bolt (Ignore plate)and Acid spells (for RD corrosion) than Concussion, Terror, Mass Sleep...

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by T.K.

Sure, the mage is area stunning at HT-3 every (at least) 2 turns, but its situational to use (gotta throw it 11yds away to not be caught at the blast), which at best case will allow the mage to do it at (+4 targetting ground -5 distance) -1 AT LEAST.

Make it an AoA and he's rolling at full skill. And with the Psychic Guidance Perk, that readily becomes rolling against a 15 or 16.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Make it an AoA and he's rolling at full skill. And with the Psychic Guidance Perk, that readily becomes rolling against a 15 or 16.

Speaking of OP ---

No really. I understand the fluff, but that perk is nasty.

[VariousRen]

I just realised that I have been confusing stunning with knockdown, which is part of the problem we were encountering. Without falling down and dropping things you are holding the effects become less punishing by far.

As for hitting yourself or missing the target, it is very easy to position the spell to only hit the opponent, even if they are closer than 10 yards. At 5 yards, throw the spell 5 yards behind at the ground (-1 to hit). If you miss, it scatters in a random directly by the margin of failure. Even with a modified skill of 9 you will hit within 5 yards of the original target ~80% of the time, which catches your opponent but not yourself.

The point of hitting allies is a valid one, but I could see a very dangerous (against stunnable opponents, of course) set up with concussion being used to stun people while the archer of the group takes vital shots at the stunned, and the melee people stand in front of the group and smack down the 20% of people who are not stunned. This seems powerful, but no more so than some other spells used properly. We'll use the spell as written right now and make any changes we deem necessary in the future if it is still easily abusable.