Bigbies Spells

[JesterOI]

Questioning the balance of these spells...
Seems a little harsh when a cr17 dwarf mage shoots out a bigbies of some sort and drops a character with 35str faster than a hot potatoe...

Just wondering because 35str is a higher str for a 24th lvl character, though it could be higher around 45 I guess...
Still 35str is higher than what the vast majority of characters have at level 24, 35 it's not exactly commonplace, but it seems like this rarely ever has an effect on the bigbies spells, might win 20% of the time against a bigbies spell...

[trent]

I still have no idea what the save is for that spel ..... Artemis is a dex char and for some reason seems to shug off bigbies mpre than half the time and he has like maybe a 20 str ....

[JesterOI]

Yeh, I guess it's more not knowing how the spell works, but still 35str just doesn't seem to be enough but it's a pretty high amount of str at level 24.

Could we get any info on how these spells work?

[Lokey]

Hands are like summons, there's no adjustment on them from who casts them yet though. SR and mantles apply (they shouldn't...maybe, need rules lawyer--they're force something or others lol) Banish and the other spell that nukes summons will take them out like in PnP though. They have other uses and one hand spell can be used to cast any of the others that you know...more stuff that's not possible without a hak and a ton of specific scripting really.

Bigby 5 is a compromise, -10 ab to target I think (it's supposed to provide 10 cover ac to the caster against 1 target).

Bigby 6 is a punchout--d20 + str modifier + size mod (hand is large so medium is at -4...) v. d20 + 7 (charge + something) for the hand--see the trip rules in the SRD: http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd.html

Bigby 7 is +10, 8 is +13, 9 is +16 on the hands (their size + str mods).

[Zhorn]

The best place for balanced PvP that I've seen is on the Bastions of War server.

One of the more interesting changes is that they've modified the bigbies spells to be discipline checks. They've also made the DC related to the casters level and taken into account spell focus Evocation.

Just means that high discipline chars are less mage-fodder /ROFL.

If people want balanced pvp they should go play on an Arena server like BoW. If they want RP they need to find a nice, safe carebear server where they can use words like "Verily" and "Forsooth".

[TheBestDeception]

LVL 9 Bigbys then, with its +16 bonus, vs a 35 str character would have the following then:

1d20 + 16 vs 1d20 + (@35 str = +12) - 4 (medium size)

With possible rolls of: 17-36 (avg 26) for caster vs 9-28 (avg 18) for victim.

Is this correct?

[Lokey]

Zhorn: I hate the discipline skill, that's a last resort if we can't come up with a better representation of what they do in PnP.

TBD: I hope so

Remember, level 9 Bigby's makes a kd attack every round to knock the target down plus 2d12 or so damage...don't know how well that comes out in the wash though. Like I said, they're not something that Bio should have tried to put into the game imo. Kinda like Black Blade o Disaster (which probably also needs rework...along with most of the spells, sigh).