Paralyzation, Poison, and Death Magic or be stunned for 1 round.įor that matter, I've already scaled Larloch's Minor Drain to scale every other level like magic missile for a maximum of 5d4 damage. I was thinking if I went the damage route for chill touch, I should also modify Shocking Grasp so that the target needs to also save vs. Why not make chill touch be able to compete with blindness, charm person, chromatic orb, and spook? Especially when blindness has to compete against it.īlindness often takes a ranged attacker out of the fight until you try to melee them.
Not as good as ghoul touch since it still has a 5% chance to hit you and can use anything that doesn't require an attack roll against you, but you can't expect a 1st level spell to be as good as a second like ghoul touch. Hit the enemy's tank with chill touch, and he ceases to be a threat and you can concentrate on other baddies. I was thinking that by increasing the THAC0 penalty, it would change from a damage dealing spell to a disabler.
CHILL TOUCH HOW TO
I'll have to look into how to do this, copying another spell like warding whip or phantom blade. Perhaps a +1/lvl to THAC0 until it detonates? That's about on par with a fighter or Tenser's Transformation.Īlternately or concurrently, as was suggested, give the mage as many chances to hit as the duration of the spell allows. Oh, the idea of a THAC0 benefit could work. Added 0 hours, 5 minutes and 51 seconds later. This can be combined with the scaling THAC0 reduction, as even with the STR & CON addition (or would that be subtraction?) I still don't see the base spell being that useful.Ībout the only time I can see it being useful is a new player who just picked up Monteron and Xar running into the ogre before revising Xar's spellbook, where hitting it with -2 THAC0 and -1 to STR & CON might help turn that certain defeat into a victory, if Xar can connect and survive, and that is in BG1. To that, what about also giving a temporary -1 penalty to STR & CON in addition to the THAC0 reduction for the duration of the spell? Robs fighters of some bonuses, doesn't have much effect on other classes that have average strength and constitution. Obviously the fighter would still have an edge since he probably has bonuses from weapon proficiencies and exceptional strength, not to mention superior armor and HP, so it wouldn't let an equal level mage go toe-to-toe with a fighter. Having slept on it, I agree the first one going down to -19 is too extreme, but how about if instead I scale it so that a fighter of equal level to the mage that gets hit with it would have a THAC0 equal to a mage, all other bonuses being equal (same STR, same weapon, single pip in weapon proficiency, etc)?Īs was pointed out, it's only a first level spell, but everyone knows how hard a time higher level mages have hitting targets. I don't see this spell being useful in any other situation since all the really dangerous stuff will be immune to touch attacks anyway. A 22 THAC0 penalty would cripple a lot of things even in ToB, which is really something only at least a level 5+ spell should be able to do.
I think a 22 THAC0 penalty is extreme, considering you'll probably be only using this spell on the occasional dangerous warrior-type monster (bears? giant trolls? ogres? fire giants? maybe dangerous humanoids like Mencar?). I think to make Chill Touch useful the THAC0 penalty should scale by +1 every 3 to 4 levels (total 7 to 8 THAC0 penalty), or the caster should be able to make an unlimited number of attacks (limited by attacks per round) that apply a stacking 2 THAC0 penalty, with the spell duration reduced to like 2 rounds (the THAC0 penalty should last a bit longer though). Shocking Grasp is nice for a little burst damage assuming the caster has decent THAC0 (actual damage is 1d8+1 per level iirc), and Ghoul Touch (the other touch spell) is basically a save or die spell that works on a lot of living monsters.