Bombardment Underpowered

[WanderingPoet]

Originally put this in the wrong thread, I think - so new spot, more details.

Bombardment
Spell Level(s): Cleric(Earth) 8, Druid 8, Shaman 8
Innate Level: 8
School: Conjuration
Descriptor(s): None
Component(s): Verbal, Somatic
Range: Long (40 meters)
Area of Effect / Target: Colossal (10 meters radius)
Duration: Instantaneous
Additional Counter Spells: None
Save(s): Reflex 1/2
Spell Resistance: Yes

Description: Rocks fall from the sky, causing 1d8 points of bludgeoning damage per caster level (to a maximum of 10d8) to all enemies in the area. Added reflex save against Daze (1 round). Party-friendly.

Compared to:

Hammer of the Gods
Spell Level(s): Cleric 4, Cleric(Forge) 3, Favored Soul 4
Innate Level: 4
School: Evocation
Descriptor(s): Divine
Component(s): Verbal, Somatic
Range: Medium (20 meters)
Area of Effect / Target: Huge (6.67 meters radius)
Duration: Instantaneous
Additional Counter Spells: None
Save(s): Will partial
Spell Resistance: Yes

Description: The caster smites a group of enemies with divine light for 1d8 points of damage for every two caster levels, to a maximum of 10d8. Enemies that make a will save take half damage and avoid being dazed for 1 to 6 rounds.

Both are 10d8 party friendly damage abilities that daze enemies.

However, Hammer of the Gods can daze up to five rounds longer on a will save, while Bombardment has a reflex save and save for half and thus can be entirely evaded.

Bombardment /does/ have better range/radius that Hammer of the gods, but same radius as word of faith.

For a spell that is 4 spell levels higher than Hammer of the Gods, while it's visually cool it is severely underwhelming.

A couple separate ideas to bring it up to snuff (only one, not all three):
1. No save; this means it'll always do the damage (on par with Hammer), also guarenteed daze (much as WoF is guarenteed blind); would need a cooldown
2. 20d8 damage so the save for half is at least the same
3. Make it a fort save instead, since evasion counters it otherwise; and you are taking rocks to the head. No save for half

[Sincra]

The DC of bombardment will be 4 (5 compared to forge) higher due to levels they can be taken at.

Will is also arguably the easiest to counter for and daze does not stop the use of items like potions (clarity).
The only bits that needs adjusting are possibly making the daze durations consistent and at most 5 dice more damage so if the reflex is passed on non-evasion havers it does 7d8.

Edit:
That size and range increase should also not be under estimated.

[WanderingPoet]

Wouldn't reflex be the easiest to counter given the current meta of dex builds? Since it's not a mind affecting spell, I'd not expect (and could be wrong) that mind blank would have an effect on stopping the damage, meaning that clarity/mindblank will protect equally from HotG and Bombardment.

Since mindblank protects against the daze, this'd make Word of Faith stronger at a lower level spell (for earth clerics), given that it -always- does a saveless blind, while Bombardment maybe dazes for a round if they fail the reflex save, and maybe does damage if they lack evasion.

It would help if the daze was increased in rounds for parity, though, as it's not even worth using a clarity potion since it only lasts a round.

Changing it to fort would at least guarentee that it always does damage, at least.

[Sincra]

Dex has not been meta for months, and everyone is good against fort so I'm not sure how putting it there helps beyond further punishing dex for dodging falling rocks, something they are commonly good against.

The saveless blind, while guaranteed, does NOT slow your movement or restrict actual actions beyond visual range and flat foot. It also has a very easy counter of remove blindness and deafness which is an AoE and comes in potion and wand form, even having a tincture item with 25 charges, if I'm remembering right, available in the loot system.

As I said, the DC is higher due to book levels and is good vs mages and non-evasion havers, which frustratingly is slipped into quite a few builds and is probably the actual issue of it being so early in rogue.
Even then it's less prevalent than it once was due to div dex nerfs and the rise of 25/5 fighter/wm over 20/7/3 fighter/wm/rogue.

I do agree about the daze duration needing a solid look though. It should match or be an improvement.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

This spell does seem particularly bad. It's a 1 round daze with a save on it, with maximum 80 damage. I think a lot of spells really ought to be reviewed and made more useful. Either have better scaling damage, or better CC. 1 round of daze should be saveless.

Power creep has led to everyone having more HP and higher saves. Caster spells really ought to be rebalanced along with it. Either that or nerf the everloving heck out of melee, but I doubt they'll enjoy that.

These spells are use once and the slot's burnt up. There's only so many 8th circle slots. Imagine if melee could only hit something 5 times and then their sword broke.

[Paint]

Couple of things to understand about Bombardment is that it's a pretty large AOE and it's conjuration. The reason that matters is that, at least as a shaman with conjuration foci, you can pump that DC up pretty high. It's great for stunning large crowds of enemies long enough to give you some breathing room. It works in PVE pretty well, but you probably won't catch anyone in PVP with it unless they aren't fully geared yet. Since it ignores your party, it's more or less perfectly safe to use, and you can drop it on top of yourself multiple times.

That being said, it might could use a little bit of love. When I see high-level spells that do as much damage as spells half their level, I'm always disappointed. And with PVE enemies nearing the end of content having hundreds and hundreds of HP on average, all of the classes that have bombardment will probably feel reluctant to use it if they can use that spell slot for a buff instead.

At the end of the day, you gotta ask which has more economy: A spell like Mass Heal, which has a potential effect in the thousands of HP, or Bombardment, which, on a good day, will do an average of 45 damage to each enemy in a group of seven or eight enemies when deployed correctly. The 8th circle of spells for Shaman is a fight between that and spells like spell mantle, premonition and greater sanctuary, too.

It's just a really hard ask to get me to pick up bombardment right now when most of the 8th level spells available to me are objectively more useful.

[Eyeliner]

I haven't used the spell but it seems like you'd be only be buying a moment of breathing room while also drawing aggro from every single enemy in a colossal area. Aren't they all going to skip your summons or party members to come right for you the next round?

[-XXX-]

We could probably compile a 130+ page compendium of underwhelming or straight up ineffective NWN spells if we wanted to.
Is bombardment underwhelming? Yes. Would I say that it's the one spell that desperately and most urgently needs fixing? Not really.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

At some point I'm going to do that, because a lot of spells are bad and it would be nice if they were rebalanced.

[WanderingPoet]

We could probably compile a 130+ page compendium of underwhelming or straight up ineffective NWN spells if we wanted to.
Is bombardment underwhelming? Yes. Would I say that it's the one spell that desperately and most urgently needs fixing? Not really.

I mean, I don't think any 'urgently' need fixing. So that's a weird statement? You're welcome to open your own thread for spells you feel need fixing too.

I think this spell has a more glaring issue for Earth Clerics because it directly competes with Word of Faith (instant saveless blind, which while easily curable is unblockable, vs a a daze that is easy to block but a little harder to cure) and hammer of the gods (more damage, better daze, lower save).

It is a very good point that Conj means you can pump it up easier as most clerics will have that while not all clerics will have evo. This means arguably for many builds it has a 10 higher DC which is massive. But it lasts 1 round which you can still use items, including clarity to become immune, or a mind blank scroll to mass immune your allies, and once mind blank is up then the spell is pretty much useless compared to WoF and HotG.

Which is just strange, for a spell that is higher level than both.

Also it is a strange mage that doesn't have mind blank up before PVP (excluding surprises).

[chris a gogo]

It's a druid spell iirc and clerics already get better combat spells so if you want to stick to flavor of being an nature cleric with earth domain and use it then all good it's a suboptimal choice, well done for using it and staying in character.

On a druid I can honesty say I have never used it mostly because I favor sunburst for my level 8 evocations.
It's not the damage that makes it bad it's the reflex save making it bad against any high level content.