Bigsby's Disrupting hand is broken twice

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Luingar
Posts: 25
Joined: Fri Feb 25, 2022 5:49 am

Bigsby's Disrupting hand is broken twice

Post by Luingar » Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:33 am

Bigsby's disrupting hand is a spell that, on paper, is terrible, but, fascinatingly enough, in practice it's worse!
First, the obvious bug: NPCs do not roll concentration checks while under the effects of the spell. At all. This means they're literally immune to it, which is notably a Bad Thing.
This was tested and confirmed with the aid of DM Rainbow. During testing we checked whether it worked with players, and it turns out it does, but that was REALLY hard to test because even when it does work
It's Terrible!
Bigsby's disrupting hand is a spell that forces a concentration check. The issue is that it forces a VERY EASY concentration check. How easy? Well, It's a third level spell, or fourth for some classes. This means that with a casting stat of THIRTY, the dc of the concentration check is TWELVE. Not Twelve plus spell level, not twelve plus anything, It's: Roll a concentration check. Did you get twelve or higher on the die? then you don't even need to look at your character sheet.
Considering you don't get the spell until level five at the earliest, and that any caster invests heavily in concentration because why not, it's no surprise no one realized the spell is bugged.

Luckily, I think I've found an easy solution to both problems: Make the spell do damage. Not much, just caster level + caster stat magic damage, reduced by the shield spell as magic missile, every time the victim attempts to cast a spell while the effect is active. This means that equal casters with max concentration skill and the spell cast on each other both take small amounts of chip damage when they cast, and have a 35% spell failure chance on cantrips, but 80% failure chance on 9th level spells, and that stronger mages can use this spell to suppress weaker ones, without the spell having any real impact on many types of warrior. Aaand it still keeps it balanced so that top level characters will become immune to it by having equipment with +concentration or esf concentration, or various other methods, which is probably desirable.


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