Drown question

[Jabronius_ns3]

Hi, all:
Got another somewhat offbeat question here. I was contemplating building a spellcasting-oriented druid (what? no shifter?!) and wondered how the Drown spell worked in NS. According to the Grimoire, it's in the transmutation school, so it wouldn't appear to be affected by death magic immunity, although a fortitude save negates its effects. Would it work similarly to the NS version of Harm, or would it still do 90% HP damage to living targets who fail their saves? If so, it would appear quite potent.
Please let me know when you have a chance.

Thanks!

[Nicho_ns3]

Tried it on giants ounce and it actually did 90% of the *max* hp both time I cast it on him... ie, did 400 pts of damage twice.

Harm ALWAYS do damage, even on a sucessful fort save it does half damage, while drown does nothing on a sucessful fort save, so Harm is still better imo. Besides, since drown is a 6th lvl spell, it means DC are relatively low, so most of the time it wont do any damage. I have a caster druid and they aren't very good, I'd think twice before doing one if I was you, they basically have no usefull buff on NS, except for Spell Resistance, clerics are far better in this aspect. Also, if you try to use harm with your druid, you'll find it hard to actually hit the target since you have no efficient ab buff, while clerics have a lot of those. Only plus side I have found for druids vs clerics so far is Earthquake and Creeping Doom, two spells that are unaffected by Spell Resistance BUT clerics can cast Earthquake as a lvl 8 spell (while druids cast it as a lvl 9 spell) and creeping doom is also available to clerics with the plant domain... druids dont have much going for them.

[Jabronius_ns3]

Thanks for the information. However, Harm is also a sixth level spell for clerics, so the save DC wouldn't be any different for them. Lots of beasties are immune to Harm as well, so it's a bit of a crap shoot. Of course, adding spell focus feats increases the difficulty of saving throws.

Thanks again

[Nicho_ns3]

yep same save dc as harm, except Harm does damage even if the monster succeed his save (half damage in that case), while Drown doesn't. So save is not as much an issue with harm as it is with drown...