Focused surge

[Gwain]

This feat allows you to bind one area of effect spell per day to a focused surge. Instead of the spell affecting all potential targets in the imediate area it will be sent out against a single target delivering the full extent of power and damage in the spell. The requirement is that the feat is bound to a single spell for one day so that this cannot be used over and over and abused for all spells. This makes sense because of the massive stress and power required to bind a spell to this feat.

[Lorion]

How would this work? Let me choose a random example, without knowing actual values here. A fireball would cause 6d6 damage to every being within the radius. If you bind the fireball spell and cast it on one target, would that target get 6d6 damage then? or 12d6? or 60d6? Or would it mean that if x persons stand in the room while you cast it, that the damage will be (x*6)d6?

[Dugald]

X would be the potential targets. So, those outside of your group, but I get where you're going with that.

[Bugoron]

I believe what Gwain is getting at is that the spell will only affect one target, but that one target will take the maximum amount of damage that it could normally take from the spell. So, in the fireball example, the one target would take a full 6d6 points of damage, so 36 damage, effectively.

[Zach]

but with the case of fireball it does "splash" damage (don't know anyother way to say it) would they get the normal roll? and just the target get the full 6d6 dmg?

[Gregal]

But not if it had the feat in question, it would just "splash" in that target. And not even affect the other people....kinda like a sponge.

[Dugald]

There is already a feat that forces full damage - so I'd imagine the variable of the spell would be 6d6 y times...y being those who would have been hit if the feat wasn't used.

[Isolrem]

except that would be drastically overpowered... in fact any kind of bonus placed on damage would make the feat very good, seeing as there are a lot of high level AOE spells and they are often used against one enemy

[Lorion]

well..if it counts the number of enemies in a room to calculate the effect it wouldn't be overpowered if you use it usually only against 1 enemy(since if you use an AoE spell to hit one enemy that means he is alone..otherwise the others would still get affected. Besides that, you can only use this feat once a day, that means i think, once every two hours. It wouldn't be that imbalanced I think.

[Sean]

I picture the effects being thus, for an example, fireball.

Normally, as per DnD, you cast the spell, and a little bead shoots out, flies to the target, and detonates. A fireball envlopes most everything in the blast radius (sometimes great than, with certain situations [Never, never cast a fireball while in a long, 5 ft wide corridor.]).

I see the feat changing the spell. Instead of doing a fire 'ball', instead you focus all the energies of the spell into a very narrow cone, crackling with the force of a full strength fireball.

Now, I've read a few theories about how the damage should be worked. One of them being, "do the Damage, and multiply it by the number of 'would have been' affected targets in the room.". While this sounds like it wouldn't be very balanced, normally if you're in a room with more than 2 mobs, you're getting hit enough to make the spell difficult to pull of. And if there are, say, 8 mobs and you're targeting one, sure you've just BBQed one with so much damage he probably hit -40, you still have 7 more to deal with. Which I guess wouldn't be a big deal if they were cannon-fodder to begin with.

My issue with that is, how do you justify the 'power' of a spell changing by the number of people around? A fireball doesn't care who is in the room. It explodes in a set volume of fire, be there 10, one, or zero targets in it's radius. The damage should be adjusted, in my opinion, by a fixed amount. Say, times two or times three if you want to push it.

My question to those who like this idea, how does it effect area spells that have a less direct effect? Sure, Damage is easy to adjust, but what about other effects? (Not sure what spells have area effects on FK... But DnD has a lot. Web, for example.)

[Raona]

I like this idea, though I do fear it may upset the balance. Perhaps this feat could be simply implemented as follows:

George the Baker casts fireball, invoking the Focused Surge Feat
> cast fireball bread focused
There is an increased % chance the spell fails completely because he is using the feat (+10%?)
He passes that check and the fireball flies toward the bread. There is now another check, perhaps against his skill with the spell, or his constitution, at any rate, his ability to focus the surge. If he fails, the fireball operates normally. If he succeeds, the fireball hits, explodes, and with the might of his mental energy he focuses the explosion back in on the bread, as if it were hit with a *second* fireball. In short, best case, two fireballs for the price of one. At worst, you fire a blank. Some of the time, you get a normal fireball. I expect the stamina cost for the concentration needed to focus a fireball back in on itself to be substantial. Hopefully with these tweakable parameters, the feat could be made useful yet not unbalancing, a tool in the box of the seasoned mage, and a step up for the struggling novice who invests in the feat.

[Zach]

I say wizards have become powerful enough as is... Perhapse only allow this for envokers?

[Kregor]

IMO the feat would be moot, because by the time you could calculate a sufficient level adjustment for the feat, it would only be applicable to 1st, maybe 2nd level spells.

Considering that one of the main effects is to yield the max damage of the blast against a single target, that includes the maximize spell benefit (+6 levels), then the benefit of condensing a blast into a single target would be worth at least +2 levels, IMO. That's +8 levels, and we only have up to level 9 slots. Even if we said it was +7 (it would have to cost more than just maximize alone), that's only level 1 and 2 spells. And there are very few blast spells at those levels.

Herein is where the balance is kept in D20, in the limitations of feats' level adjustments versus the spell slots you can memorize. The same reason you can no longer cast a maximized + empowered + twinned Flame Strike spell (Thank god, also IMO).

[Gwain]

How about if it does not yeild a power increase but allows you to use an aoe spell on a single target instead of multiple targets at the regular level of the spell. I've noticed that on certain spells like magic circle, that they can be focused on a single target if specified, that way you do not have to worry about power levels and such.

[Isolrem]

I think this feat would be very useful and usable even if it did not increase damage

If you shoot a fireball, but use your energy to control its radius, it should not increase the damage it would normally inflict.

In this case, the feat may be called Contain Spell

[Lorion]

I don't know..I think this feat would be very usable if it had an unlimited amount of uses. For a once-a-day-to-use-feat however, i think the "just reduce the targets from "area" to "single person" isnt that good.