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Author Topic: Flame strike damage  (Read 408 times)

Frendh

Flame strike damage
« on: September 02, 2011, 12:08:14 pm »
Flame strike seems to do noticably less damage than the spell description says. While I would love for the spell to be as good as or maybe even better than a fireball spell, it is not what I am asking for. I would like the description to match the damage if there actually is something wrong there.

http://i54.tinypic.com/ixgke9.png Flame strike 9 caster levels
http://i53.tinypic.com/qyffgh.png Call Lightning 9 caster levels

This is not a one time occurence for me. A two or three other players have complained about the low damage too.
 
The following users thanked this post: davidhoff, willhoff

Chongo

Re: Flame strike damage
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2011, 12:42:47 pm »
Looking at the picture a couple things come to mind:

- According to LORE, you should be getting 9d6 damage, half of which is divine and the other half fire.  So... on average, you should be striking for 13ish fire damage and 13ish divine damage.
- From this picture, either the LORE specifics are incorrect on A) the % damage coming from fire vs. divine, or B) the overall damage (9d6) as the kobolds are perhaps fire vulnerable
- Orrrrr.... it's B, the kobolds are fire vulnerable, and you are having substandard damage roles.

I'd say try it on ogres to rule out the fire vulnerability possibility.   If it's consistently below 27 total damage, then there might be something wrong.  Then it gets into whether the 9d6 is incorrect or the divine vs. fire percentages are incorrect.
 

Dorganath

Re: Flame strike damage
« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2011, 12:50:20 pm »
I'm assuming that you posted the Call Lightning pic for comparison, and are not reporting some kind of trouble with that, too?

I don't have the code handy, but I do want to draw your attention to this sentence in the spell description:

Quote
Half of the damage caused by the spell is divine and the other half is fire-based.

This alone makes it very difficult to compare one to the other, since the 9d6 of damage (at level 9) would be divided between the two types, not 9d6 of Fire + 9d6 of divine.  Add to that, each damage type apparently gets its own Reflex save, further reducing the damage done by half again, potentially.  I noticed about half of the targets made their saves vs. divine where they all failed vs. fire.

I'll make sure that the dice are being rolled correctly when I get a chance, but just looking at your screen shot, the fire numbers seem reasonable.  The divine numbers do seem a little low, but there may be some creature properties that account for that.

Because of how it splits damage, however, you should not see similar numbers as you do for Chain Lightning unless you add them up and account for potential halving due to saves.  Even then, it could be the (bad) luck of the dice.  9d6 can produce anywhere from 9-54 points of damage.  Worst case, with saves, it could do as low as 2-4 total damage (depending how NWN rounds) and as much as 27 points each for fire and divine. Median numbers will be more like 13-15 per damage type, which you're definitely seeing in the screen shots you posted.

Like I said, I'll look into the divine numbers to make sure there wasn't something goofy introduced by accident.
 

Frendh

Re: Flame strike damage
« Reply #3 on: September 02, 2011, 01:35:50 pm »
Yes, call lightning was for comparison. I was thinking that flame strike should be good for 4d6 fire and 4d6 divine. But the divine looks like half that. I mean, divine does 3 damage at one time. It should not be possible on 4d6. Note that the saving throw failed.

On another note, the AoE for it is really small. Or rather, the AoE difference between call lightning and flame strike is huge. But maybe the difference between large AoE and medium AoE is that big.
 

Dorganath

Re: Flame strike damage
« Reply #4 on: September 08, 2011, 08:52:14 pm »
OK, there is some oddness here, whereby the divine damage can be halved twice under certain conditions.  Fire damage seems to be right on though.