AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

So, Black Blade of Disaster has become, for lack of a better phrase, ludicrously powerful. It has had it's concentration check removed entirely, is nearly unkillable, and it has the highest attack bonus and damage I have ever seen on any summon ever.

The Amnizu is a good summon but the Black Blade is broken.

I am going to recommend something personally because it's a compromise in a direction I think isn't entirely terrible:

Proposed Nerfs

Halve it's duration
Bring the concentration check back
Lower it's AB by 5

This will put it at a decent attack bonus with high damage but it's duration will be so low it almost wouldn't matter.

Alternatively you could nerf it with this

Nerf #2 Electric Boogaloo

-5 AB
Halve Duration
Remove the Enchantment bonus

This way on summoning it would have a 40 ab instead of a 45, but the casterwould be able to choose to buff it and lose an entire spell for a cast that would be at most 15 rounds with 30 caster levels.

I think this is reasonable in a desperate situation.

My proposition suggest that it is 1 round per every 2 levels no matter what though, because I think the spell should be powerful. I think it's okay to be kind of strong. But this would make it so that if some jerk tried to cast it from a scroll it would be gone in a number of rounds you could get almost no benefit out of it.

Otherwise some jerk (me) will just carry 1000000000 scrolls and read one whenever he gets in trouble and have a flanking buddy who is like ten times stronger than him for 17 rounds. I would even go so far as to lower the innate caster level of the spell to 10 on scrolls if you can, so that way players who scribe it will have it for 5 rounds at most.

Or make this scroll as many others unusable for usage besides learning the spell.

I kind of like the idea of a holdout personally, but even without being able to use the scroll I still stand by my halving the duration.

Sadly, I think I was outvoted for a reversal back to bioware default. In any event, it's being tweaked atm , and should already be far less ludicrous. We'll finalize it with an announcement when something sticks.

I'd love to see how the development team feels about my proposal though, since the bioware default is a joke and both the original version amia was using and current one are to over the top.

Well, first time trying it and I gotta admit this thing is AWSOME! ... therefore it needs nerfed. I'd just say bring back the concentration check and the AB drop, dropping it to a 90 second summon might just deter people enough not to use it at all. (assuming your 30 pure CL)

edit: the thing has 50 AB according to my wizard. So maybe drop it by 10.

Please don't nerf things because people can use scrolls. If anything, adjust it to be based more on CL.

For example, if the AB is to high, perhaps change it to something like 20+CL. Now a lvl 30 still has a great summon, while the scroll guy has likely -10AB.

I've only tested it a bit here and there in PvE and i found it to be lackluster compared to the longer lasting, higher survivable epic summons. Why blow a 9th lvl slot on that, when you can call in EMD/EDK that uses no spell slot? That does not apply to scroll users? Again.. don't nerf stuff for everyone because someone can in theory spam scrolls. Make it dependent more on CL, or simply make it not usable at all from scroll if changing the math is too much work. Yes, in theory the BBoD, while fully buffed, can be amazing. But that is a lot of spells invested into something that lasts for X rounds. You can't sustain that kind of casting long.

Want to fix breach spells? (Lesser/Greater/Mords) Make it breach one spell per X CL up to a cap for each tier. So now a wand/scroll might only breach 1/2/3 spells, where as a cast spell will breach the full amount.

Want to fix Mantles? Instead of +6/8/10 make it based on CL. So say the scroll of Greater Spell Mantle is CL 19, set it up in such a way that at that CL you only get +5, but an extra +1 per CL after that tell the max of +10. Or attack the D roll instead, making it d4 instead of d12.

TheCortroy wrote:

I'd just say bring back the concentration check and the AB drop-
edit: the thing has 50 AB according to my wizard. So maybe drop it by 10.

Would you even use a 40 AB summon that only lasts for 20-30 rounds?

Looking at the stats it has;

50 str
18 dex
10 con
13 int
10 wis
3 cha

AC 45
HP 200(!)
50 AB
+2d6 Neg/Pos/Piercing
+5 enchant
25 fort/will/reflex

Now dropping this in via scroll i could see being pretty amazing in pvp or perhaps a boss fight. But for general PvE? It does not last long enough to use the spell slot, compared to other options. Buuut my thoughts are biased on the matter, and i apparently don't know how to mage, as i always long to see spell verity potential improved, not nerfing more spells out of the book.

Xenos wrote:

...

^ all of that!

It's already been fixed.

A caster was never meant to be able to drop a 52 AB summon with incredible durability and crits rivalling a 2h WM, with 1 buff (Haste).

What are the stats now?

AirPhforce wrote:

What are the stats now?

By Grabthars hammer what a nerfing!

Xenos wrote:

TheCortroy wrote:

I'd just say bring back the concentration check and the AB drop-
edit: the thing has 50 AB according to my wizard. So maybe drop it by 10.

Would you even use a 40 AB summon that only lasts for 20-30 rounds?

edit - my EDK and EMD don't go above 41 while power attack is running on them, EMD is even less. I made a more constructive post but I don't want to give away summon info.

You do still have a valid point on the 20-30 round part although.

I'm pretty okay with this nerft myself. It's a 41 AB summon which is frankly higher than the Amnizu. If you're really desperate you can give it a maximized bull's and raise it's ab by 3 and it's average damage by 5. It still has all the insane elemental damage which I hadn't even realized were there when I first posted my nerf suggestion. It's still a good spell but it's no longer completely broken, and in a pinch it is pretty useful, especially for builds that don't take an epic summon feat, or literally anyone who gets it on a scroll.

Great for PvE panic moments and no longer an instant win in pvp. I say this is a good nerf.

Edit: And frankly the scroll duration isn't even that much shorter than my casting of it at 21st level, so it's totally still worth it to scroll cast. I just used it and saw it crit for 151. I'd probably suggest lowering the innate caster level of it if it hadn't lost 9 ab. I'm gonna see how this thing performs in dungeons and play with it some more but right now I'm pretty okay with it. My only serious concern is that it has 41 ab no matter what level it's cast at, and unlike gate has no progression. This spell totally out classes gate, but frankly gate wasn't very good.

Xenos wrote:

Would you even use a 40 AB summon that only lasts for 20-30 rounds?

I though I'd address this one directly: BBoD lasts 102 or something around it seconds when cast from a scroll. In a desperate fight that can be all the time you need. This thing has a higher ab than literally any other summon in amia currently, even the Amnizu before you give it bull's strength (and that's after stacking BG bulls and normal bulls). And even more so, this thing is nearly unkillable. Even after the nerf it still hits like Frugdar with all it's elemental damage, and you can give the scrolls to anyone with UMD. Then in a bad situation your entire party can literally call one of these badass blades any time they want. It's crazy.

So yes. I would totally use this summon.

But that's just it, i feel like the spell should not be that good, from the scroll. It should never be said that a spell is more useful when cast from a scroll, then a caster. Thats disgusting. But sadly it is the case that there are a number of spells that are just as good if cast from a scroll, if not better when you consider doing so frees up spell slots.

Someone said to me that it's fine that the summons are not that great, they're lvl 9 spells, not epic. My reply was if this is the case, then why are any of my lvl 9 spells that great? Why do i not need to Greater Ruin ever Balor i see? Because a 9th lvl summon does not, or should not be a creature ONLY able to fight things lvl 17-21. If we gated the spell more, like Gate has, so that it improved with higher CL it would mean it could be useful against higher level things, while not being crazy when cast from a scroll. Now if that means nerfing it further, so it can maintain its current power at CL 27+ then yes, do that!

I would state again that i have not tested it outside of the Gnolls and Gnomes around the Nexus, where it had a good time slaughtering things. I'm not trying to argue that it is too powerful or too weak, just that it should scale, as should many other things.

AirPhforce wrote:

By Grabthars hammer what a nerfing!

But still quite strong in the right hands

To strong if you ask me. It ought to have the weapon master feats removed. I saw it crit for a maximum of 180 when I was testing it after the update

I never got to use the un-nerfed BBD QQ

BTW - the concentration checks were always exploitable if you knew how to do it, which is why those were flat out removed.

It no longer has instant death (even if it was a matter of fishing for 1's) and it's no longer completely immune to everything (even if it does take a lot to destroy it).

I still use BBoD to wipe the floor with the phane as is, I think it needs its damage drastically reduced. Right now it can crit so hard that the phane removes itself from time because it's detecting damage in the manner of an epic spell.

Black Blade of Disaster

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