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13th Sage: Too Forceful a Salvo?

Rob Heinsoo | December 15, 2015 | 6 Comments | 13th age, 13th Sage

When many people give you the same feedback about your game for years,
it’s got to have some truth in it. Today’s probable truth: “The combination of the wizard’s
Evocation talent and the force salvo spell is broken.”

Some GMs even report that the combo skews their thinking as they set up battles, since
they know the wizard is capable of using the combo and dealing an ungodly amount of
damage. That’s unfortunate, since there isn’t a problem with the rest of the wizard’s
spells or Evocation as it applies to those other spells.

Rob’s Solution to Salvos
Here’s how I handle force salvo when it’s combined with Evocation in my game. I’m not
calling this errata. Yet. It’s advice. If you personally haven’t had a problem with the spell
and the combo, you don’t have to think about it. But if you want to adjust the spell’s
power level in your game, two changes should suffice.

1. Replace force salvo’s adventurer-tier feat.

The first thing you can do to make an Evoked force salvo less terrifying is to remove the
spell’s original adventurer-tier feat, and replace it with this one:

Adventurer Feat: When you miss all targets with the spell, it gains recharge 11+
after battle.

Force salvo becomes a much more balanced spell when it can only target each enemy
once. It can still take out or severely damage a number of middling enemies, but it can’t
be used to demolish a single powerful foe. If your attack roll against a specific enemy
misses, you’re out of luck.

The champion-tier feat provides some consolation by letting you deal damage equal to
your level, but each attack roll now matters; so you’re a lot more likely to save force
salvo until the escalation die has risen, which makes the spell’s use much more
interesting.

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2. Strictly limit force salvo’s use to once every four battles.

Yes, it’s already a daily spell—but the rules give GMs some room to interpret
what “daily” means, and this daily spell is a bit more powerful than others. I run a lot of
double-strength and even triple-strength battles in my game, but that doesn’t mean I
want to see this spell used every two or three battles.

For this one spell, turn the rule that “daily” averages out to once every four battles into a
strict limitation: Once a wizard casts force salvo, make them wait another three battles
before they can cast it again—even if the PCs get a long rest, or otherwise restore their
daily powers. (Don’t let the wizard recharge force salvo using any of the various
“recharge a daily spell” options scattered through the game.) Make the wizard choose a
different spell until the last battle is completed, then let them switch to force salvo if
they wish once the new “day” begins.

Break This Rule For Dramatic

Awesomeness
Limiting force salvo in this way gives GMs an obvious icon relationship advantage to
grant wizard PCs. In a situation where the PCs face certain doom, a 5 or 6 roll result
could grant the wizard the ability to cast force salvo using the original adventurer tier
feat—the way the mighty wizards of earlier ages cast the spell! Or perhaps the icon’s
benefit enables the wizard to recover the spell just before the campaign’s climactic
battle. If the icon roll result is a 5, there’s a price to be paid for such power…

Using icon relationships to give a wizard PC access to the unfettered version of force
salvo as a once-or-twice-in-a-campaign event can turn the combo of force salvo and
Evocation into a dramatic story moment, instead of a nettling reminder that game
mechanics don’t always play out the way they should!

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6 Responses to “13th Sage: Too Forceful a Salvo?”

1. Dave says:
December 15, 2015 at 8:55 pm

I read the feat as letting you hit each target at most once, just that you could keep
rolling against a given target until you hit (or ran out of shots).

Reply
Brian says:
February 23, 2016 at 7:32 pm

That’s exactly how I read it as well. The first feat from the book lets you target
as many bolts at one monster as you want (and have available), but once you’ve
actually hit that monster, you have to move on to another monster. It’s just a
way of ensuring that you’re very likely to actually hit the monster you’re really
aiming at.

Reply
2. Zanthr (a.k.a. Bizshnips) says:
December 16, 2015 at 4:52 am

Heh… I guess I should be glad I managed to get away with this before the patch.
The original force salvo’ll definitely be missed, but I’ll admit it makes more sense
this way.

Reply
3. Flying Code Monkey says:
December 30, 2015 at 3:57 am

With respect to Evocation, apply the Talent to only one bolt. Decide locally whether
that means (1) select one bolt to Evoke before rolling to hit; (2) always Evoke only
the first bolt; (3) Evoke only the first bolt that hits; etc.

With respect to the Feat, I guess it does stack the deck in favor of hitting the target;
i.e., yielding its full potential for damage against multiple targets for a much-more-
certain chance to hit the most important target(s). The replacement Feat seems
pretty reasonable.

Reply
4. Scott Anderson says:
January 11, 2016 at 12:33 am

I just saw this in action today. An evocated Force Bolt wiped out a standard
encounter, round 1, when it hit a single large monster and accompanied by a group
of mooks. I’m not concerned with it being broken, so much as it really complicates
encounter design and what I have to do with deployment of monsters and how maps
are set up. The PCs got initiative on the encounter and it was wiped. Similarly,
another encounter, at double strength, wasn’t wiped out, but it was cut in half with

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that single attack. At that point, it was just a mop up job. It is incredibly powerful
against mooks as the damage spill over to each other creature. Again, I do not care
that it is this powerful, but if every encounter I design is just nuked, the game will
no longer be fun or challenging, and that is the real tragedy.

Reply
5. Villadelfia says:
January 17, 2016 at 8:25 pm

I worry that this ruling nerfs the Force Salvo spell more for non-evokers than for
evokers.

What I would do instead is to clarify that the adventurer feat allows you to reroll
until you deal damage instead of rerolling until you hit. This way it won’t stack with
evocation because it still deals damage on a miss.

Reply

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