Arelith

So I've been playing a necro-focused wizard and been absolutely loving the new necromancy spells by and large; Curse Storm in particular is a favorite of mine. However, the blood arcana surges are ruthless and absolutely overtly punishing in my opinion. There's a random chance that, when casting any blood arcana spell, you will be hit with death ward bypassing save or die, with DCs numbering 46+.

This also applies to Vampiric Feast, something you have to spend an epic feat on in the first place, and it feels really, really bad. I do not really see the reason these spells need to have such a risk attached to using them; they are solid spells, but not so strong that they warrant this drawback. Vampiric Feast in particular is weaker than any other epic spell with the possible exception of EDK. It seems wild that, in addition to that, you must risk a high DC save or die in order to play with it.

Thanks for your time! Just wanted to share my thoughts since I've been playing with these.

The DC is 46?

Maybe like 36? But 46? Good lord.

Are there any notes on these surges, or is it FOIG?

I haven't explored the mechanics as much as I'd prefer but I want to be a bit vague anyway in case my hunch is right and other people want to try the same. I would strongly encourage reading your combat log when you fall victim to one of the blood magic surges, specifically which surge is noted, and where other examples of a similarly named effect could be found as what mitigates them is probably the same I suspect. I doubt anyone could carry a full suite of counters but I doubt everyone necessarily cares about every single effect equally. Not that this addresses the concern about whether the risk is proportional the the reward for effects that might either be impossible or impractical to work in mitigations for.

This is the kind of thing that I'd expect to be open information TBH.

It would seem there's a random chance of triggering one of the curses from the curse storm table.
The DC seems to be arbitrarily increased with a variable for unknown reason.

Look for items with disease immunity to cope.

Can this happen on all 'Blood Arcana'? For some reason I expected this was only Hemomancer, and not just anyone casting the spell.

Looks that way, I just surged a DC 43 curse of exhaustion off the Predator spell (lvl 4) on a non-hemomancer spellcaster.

-XXX- wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 4:43 pm Looks that way, I just surged a DC 43 curse of exhaustion off the Predator spell (lvl 4) on a non-hemomancer spellcaster.

Huh. I thought the surges were a trade off for hemomancer, since they're infinite casters.
Not sure how I feel about that.

Hazard wrote: Wed Jan 11, 2023 5:55 pm

-XXX- wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 4:43 pm Looks that way, I just surged a DC 43 curse of exhaustion off the Predator spell (lvl 4) on a non-hemomancer spellcaster.

Huh. I thought the surges were a trade off for hemomancer, since they're infinite casters.
Not sure how I feel about that.

The curse is a trade off for using Blood Magic. You've probably noticed as a Hemomancer you've yet to surge.

DM Poppy wrote: Wed Jan 11, 2023 9:45 pm

Hazard wrote: Wed Jan 11, 2023 5:55 pm

-XXX- wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 4:43 pm Looks that way, I just surged a DC 43 curse of exhaustion off the Predator spell (lvl 4) on a non-hemomancer spellcaster.

Huh. I thought the surges were a trade off for hemomancer, since they're infinite casters.
Not sure how I feel about that.

The curse is a trade off for using Blood Magic. You've probably noticed as a Hemomancer you've yet to surge.

Hemomancers don't surge? I really had this backwards. I thought the surges would happen only to hemomancers, to balance out the fact they have infinite spells, and did not expect them to happen to non-hemomancers, since the spell already cost a spellslot.

Glad I've found out! I've been treating them as just 'new necromancy' spells on my cleric, but I had no idea I could just randomly die or breach myself.

I've got mixed feelings about the surges. On the one hand, I think they're way, way too strong for what the actual spells do. I don't really see any of the blood spells aside from *maybe* predator (but even then, not really) being so strong that they need a chance of death tagged onto them.

On the other hand, there are ways around it, which is very cool and thematic, and hemomancers get it automatically, which makes them feel like they're better at blood magic than, say, a wizard.

So from my perspective it's kind of a balance vs thematic situation, and I think since the way around it isn't totally insane to get, I lean towards leaving them more or less how they are.

I do, however, think there should be an item added to the crafting pool that protects you from these surges. Casters lack a reason to gear, and this kind of stuff to protect against magic backlash is a very cool way to encourage doing more than just using dweomer +1 int +1 con gear.

Vangrave wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 9:37 am I've got mixed feelings about the surges. On the one hand, I think they're way, way too strong for what the actual spells do. I don't really see any of the blood spells aside from *maybe* predator (but even then, not really) being so strong that they need a chance of death tagged onto them.

On the other hand, there are ways around it, which is very cool and thematic, and hemomancers get it automatically, which makes them feel like they're better at blood magic than, say, a wizard.

So from my perspective it's kind of a balance vs thematic situation, and I think since the way around it isn't totally insane to get, I lean towards leaving them more or less how they are.

I do, however, think there should be an item added to the crafting pool that protects you from these surges. Casters lack a reason to gear, and this kind of stuff to protect against magic backlash is a very cool way to encourage doing more than just using dweomer +1 int +1 con gear.

Since we're talking about the mechanics plainly now I'd point out that you can buy rings w/ disease immunity from < snip >. They're not on par with a blank ring in terms of enchantability but I don't necessarily think they should be considering that they're providing a clear benefit that is otherwise very hard to come by outside of Boots of the West.

DM Spark edit to remove information that should remain FOIG. (Find out in game) Please don't share IC details via OOC message boards.

Irony here is curse storm doesn't actually work on hemo. Actually eats a spell slot and does nothing

The surges are off, and why do I say that?

Because, from what others are reporting, they are stronger than any spell a PC can cast.

If they could cast said surges on their enemies, they'd quickly get nerfed for being OP.

Seems pretty fair it's a spell for hemomancers if your casting it as a wizard your playing with magic you can't fully control so have to take a risk to do so.

chris a gogo wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:05 pm Seems pretty fair it's a spell for hemomancers if your casting it as a wizard your playing with magic you can't fully control so have to take a risk to do so.

Yeah but from a game standpoint instant death you can’t protect against is no fun. Reasonable DC or a means of protecting yourself is better and then it’s your own damn fault if you get lazy and die instead of a random event you have no control over.

If death ward doesn’t protect you I would argue it should. Keeping that up on a wizard is annoying enough since it has to come from wands or items or friends.

Spriggan Bride wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 8:32 pm

chris a gogo wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:05 pm Seems pretty fair it's a spell for hemomancers if your casting it as a wizard your playing with magic you can't fully control so have to take a risk to do so.

Yeah but from a game standpoint instant death you can’t protect against is no fun. Reasonable DC or a means of protecting yourself is better and then it’s your own damn fault if you get lazy and die instead of a random event you have no control over.

If death ward doesn’t protect you I would argue it should. Keeping that up on a wizard is annoying enough since it has to come from wands or items or friends.

In fairness. It's very easy not to surge. You simply avoid using Blood magic unless you've the class imunity to do so.