The new edition of Dragon Warriors give a powerful “blast” ability to all elemenatlists – for every 1 MP spent, they got to do a blast which does 2d6 points of damage. Checking the stats of an average PCs as given in the book, a 12th rank Knight has 24 Hit Points. A 3-MP blast from an elementalist does 6d6 points of damage. Clearly the damage is off the charts!
What this article proposes is a re-balancing of the raw elemental blast power for the Elementalist.
Under the new system, Elementalists will get to roll d6, d10, d12 and d20 for their blast powers. The basics work like this:
- The basic damage dice the Elementalist roll is 1d4. To increase the base dice, you spend additional MP as below
- Increase to D6: +2 MP
- Increase to D8: +4 MP
- Increase to D10: +6 MP
- Increase to D12: +8 MP
- Increase to D20: +16MP (see the trend here?)
- You also do a base damage equal to the amount of MP spent. Hence if you spend 1 MP for a blast, it is actually a 1d4+1 point of damage
- You cannot spend more MP than your rank.
- Range is 5m * MP spent
- Speed is 10 + (MP spent)
Hence, using this revised formula, let see how the various blasts look like:
1 MP Blast = Damage: 1d4+1 (2 – 5) , Speed: 11, Range: 5m
3 MP Blast = Damage: 1d6+3 (4 – 9), Speed: 13, Range: 15m
5 MP Blast = Damage: 1d8+5 (6 – 13), Speed: 15, Range: 25m
7 MP Blast = Damage: 1d10+7 (8 – 17), Speed: 17, Range: 35m
9 MP Blast = Damage: 1d12+9 (10 – 21), Speed: 19, Range: 45m
12 MP Blast (12th rank elementalist) = Damage: 1d12+12 (13 – 24), Speed: 22, Range: 60m
17 MP Blast (17th rank elementalist!?) = Damage: 1d20+17 (18 – 37), Speed: 27, Range: 85m
As you can see, whereas in the original rules a 3rd rank elementalist can throw a 6d6 blast, in the revised rules, he at most can spend 4MP for 1d6+4 points of blast, which is weaker than the Sorcerer’s spells but just as effective. A 12-MP blast from a 12th rank Elementalist is pretty much death unless the target is warded against magic.
Comparing with Sorcerers
As a comparision, the 9th level spell Firestorm inflicts 4d10 + 4 damage, which is a range of 8 to 44 points of damage. A 9-MP blast from the Elementalist does 1d12+9, which is just 13 to 24 points of damage, which is half the damage potential but has a higher base damage. Firestorm has a speed of 18; the 9-MP blast has 19 speed, a slight advantage. However, Firestorm is an area-of-effect spell.
We can also consider the level 4 Shadowbolt spell (Speed 14, 2d6+10 damage) against a 4-MP blast, which has too has a Speed of 14 and does 1d6+4 points of damage. Shadowbolt has a potential of 12 to 22 points of damage while the 4-MP blast has a potential of 5 to 10 points of damage. Clearly at lower levels the revised elemental blast cannot hold a candle to the Sorcerer’s spells, but this is the point in the first place, if Sorcerers are supposed to be the artillery (or ‘nuker’) mage.
Deathlight, a level 7 spell, does 3d6+10 damage (13 to 28 points of damage) while a 7-MP blast is 1d10 + 7, which yields 8 to 17 points of damage with an advantage in 1 point in speed. Clearly the Sorcerer is still the best damage dealer here.
What if we just double the power cost?
One other solution is that for the base damage for a 1-MP blast is 1d6. For every 2 MP, you increase that by a further 1d6. Hence a 3rd rank elementalist, who can spend 3 MP for a blast, does 3d6 points of damage. That is comparable to Sorcerers, but this time round it is the Sorcerer who has a much stable damage output while the Elementalist has a chance for a higher damage output but if poor roll prevails, he just going to do 3 points of damage. This puts Elementalist’s maximum potential damage output on par with the Sorcerer’s, with an element of risk thrown in, which gives it a different style.
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Singapore License.
