Making sense of jet and jet-like spells

[cvannrederode]

Originally Posted by Calvin

Acid Jet at first seems like a copy of Flame Jet, so much that I was going to ignore it. But then I noticed that it does 1 less damage than it's comparable missie spell, Acid Ball. Flame Jet and Fireball do the same amount of damage, so why should Acid Jet do less? Yes, it mentions that face hits might blind due to the acid effects on B428, but surely Acid Ball should do the exact same thing?

Acid Jet does have the knockback effects from Snow Jet, but that hardly seems to justify a -1 per die penalty in damage. Particularly since that reduced damage is only going to make that knockback less useful. With that damage profile you need to put 4FP into the spell to get enough average damage to push even an ST 10 character back a single space.

-

Although it's not clear in the spell, page 184 of Magic indicates that "Acid" spells do corrosive damage (effectively), and treat all DR as semi-ablative. Thus the slightly reduced damage is probably a balance against that (similar to how Ice Dagger and other spells that do imp damage also get less damage than the "standard" 1d per point of energy)