Cormyr and the Dalelands

Quick question about scaling spell damage:

Is it based on your wizard/sorcerer/etc level, or on your Caster Level?

For Example: Wizard 5/War Wizard 5/Eldritch Knight 10 would have the same Fireball damage as a Wizard 20?

Any PrC that increases your caster level should increase the scaling of spell damage, though there's always a chance that some spell out there might not be configured for it.

Besides that some spells, like Fireball, have a cap on their scaling. In Fireball's case it is a max of 10d6.

What he said.

What Remmy  said, though there are also some scalings that you might not notice.

For example: Note that Shadow Adept loses a caster level in all schools except Necromancy, Illusion, and Enchantment. They gain a level in those. So at 16 your Transmutation (Read, things like GMW) would be that of a 15th level caster, while your FoD or enchantment spells would be that of a 17th level caster.

This is important if you see that your GMWs and things with the Shadow Weave feat will scale slightly differently (+5 at 17 instead of 16), etc.

Also caster level +/- does NOT equate to spells per day. Only the difficulty in dispelling, the damage scaling, and other (caster level) effects.

~BR

In addition, there is also an additional damage scalar that I implemented some time ago.   This applies to most damage spells, but not all of them.  The missile storms are excluded due to how they divide damage into multiple hits, and I don't think it does much, if anything to the persistent AoE spells.  In addition, both Avasculate and Darkbolt have specific caps in place to limit their single target damage potential that is not bypassed by this damage scalar.

Specifically, Avasculate cannot do more than 200 damage, and cannot bring any target under 50% hp.  Darkbolt cannot hit a single target for more than 75 damage.

Otherwise, damage is added outside of and beyond the damage cap of the spell.  It scales up based on the caster's Caster Level as follows:

Level  5: 2d6
Level 10: 4d6
Level 15: 6d6
Level 20: 8d6
Level 25: 10d6
Level 30: 12d6



A further note on spell damage caps:

It is my intention to increase the damage caps on all Evocation spells based on the Evocation focus feats possessed by the spell caster. (Regular/Greater/Epic).  At present, most Evocations stop at 10d6, though some get up to 15 or 20d6, entirely neglecting any epic caster levels, and generally leaving Evocation spell damage as a poor substitute for buffing yourself and swinging a sword around.   Personally, I think a Fireball from a level 30 mage, or say... a Lich, should be more cause for concern, and thus when I have time to go alter every Evocation spell script, it will be.

So a level 10's fireball, for instance, would do 10d6+4d6?

Yes.

*bows down to Vincent* I hope to see this oh so hard.

Good to see there are plans to make 'blast casters' more viable in the epic environment - They're pretty weak compared to every other school (except Diviners who don't actually have combat spells).  Right now you're generally better off casting Gate and buffing the summon than you are chucking out fireballs.

Also, note that the damage boost from being a high CL mage does not apply to spells that deal damage from multiple sources at once, like IGMS or Ball Lightning.  With one big Happy Fun Ball of an exception.

It makes the cantrips do like 20 plus damage now. It is great.

Aelie's Ray of Frost does 42-45 damage.  It makes cantrips respectably dangerous again.  If we had infinite cantrips a la Pathfinder or 5th Ed I'd totally spam it in combat.

That is awesome. That is with my level 12 Theurge.

Yep. My level-12 Sorc can two- or three-shot the basic trolls with Acid Splashes.

This is what I meant to ask about in my OP, though people seem to be under the impression I meant the default max spell levels. I was curious if this script you implemented took in to account all caster levels, all character levels, or just wizard/sorcerer/etc levels. But now I know it is based on CL and my question is answered.