EZG reviews Feats of Evocation

Feats of Evocation

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This installment of Abandoned Art’s more feats-series is 3 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 1 page of content, so let’s take a look!

 

-Brilliant Light: Deal nonlethal damage to light sensitive/blindness creatures that enter the area of your spells with the light descriptor, but only once per cast. Very cool!

 

-Disruptive Evocation: Increase the concentration DC of those damaged by your spells.

 

-Elemental Evocation: When using an elemental spell metamagic-enhanced evocation with a duration of concentration, switch element each round. Interesting, though very specific.

 

-Evocator: Apply improved critical and weapon focus to evocation spells.

 

-Evoker’s Wand: Use 1 charge from the wand to unleash a ray at 1d6 per spell-level of the spell contained. Interesting mechanic, though it could use a cap.

 

-Evoker’s Staff: As Evoker’s Wand, but for staves, with increased range – and weirdly, it damage caps at 4d6, whereas the wand-feat has no cap.

 

-Force Missile Font: Sacrifice up to wizard level spell levels when preparing spells for an equal amount of additional force missiles.

 

-Improved Elemental Evocation: As its lesser form, but applicable to any non-instantaneous, non-permanent evocation and usable as a move action. Opens some rather interesting tactical options.

 

-Shimmering Force: Radiate light with force spells.

 

-Viscid Force Spell (Metamagic): Grant non-instantaneous force ffects regenerative capabilities à la fast healing 10. +1 level. A bit weak for my tastes.

 

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I didn’t notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to a no-frills landscape two-column standard. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.

 

I did not look forward to reviewing this one. In fact, I expected it to at best bore me – the opposite was the fact – for the most part. There are several feats herein that open up some rather interesting tactical options for evocation specialists. That being said, the feats also vary rather  in their power – between weak and on the upper end of the power-scale, there is some diversity in here, and in the details…some feel a bit off. The lack of e.g. a cap n the wand-feat, the rather weak light-shedding of force effects… there just are some examples herein that could have used some balancing in one direction or the other. Hence, in spite of really liking several concepts, their respective executions did not always win more and thus will result in a final verdict of 3 stars: Some gems, some duds and some rough edges.

You can get this pdf here on OBS!

Endzeitgeist out.

Comments

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5 Responses

  1. Stipe says:

    Evoker’s Wand has the same cap as Evoker’s Staff, 4d6, but probably they didn’t think it needed spelling out, because wands go up to 4th level of spells.

  2. Thilo Graf says:

    First of all: Thank you very much for commenting! 😀

    Yes, I’m aware of the level-cap of wand-spells, but stil consider a spelled out cap here in order – since the staves caps at 4d6, I would have assumed a lower cap on the wand or a higher cap for the staves. Just to let you know – the lack of a cap was not the deciding factor that made me settle for my verdict, but rather the feats that are on the lower range of the power-scale.

    All the best!

  3. Stipe says:

    Nah, I’m not questioning your verdict, feats as you describe them are underwhelming, just thought you missed that bit.

    Thank you, for really good reviews (I better not tell how much money I spent on pdfs because of your recommendations).

  4. Daron Woodson says:

    About Evoker’s Wand and Evoker’s Staff:

    For exactly the reasons that Stipe points out, Evoker’s Wand doesn’t have a cap, and Evoker’s Staff does. The staff feat is a better feat not because it does more damage, but because it allows the possessor to work the “turning charges into damage” trick while holding a staff (which is a better option than holding a wand). It also has an increased range and a better chance at overcoming spell resistance.

    Indicating that Evoker’s Wand can only deal up to 4d6 points of damage would be like specifying that a metamagic feat can only be applied to spells of up to 9th level – there’s just no reason to spell it out. A desire to provide only non-damaging improvements over Evoker’s Wand is the only reason that Evoker’s Staff lists a cap.

    Would you find the wording of the staff feat more palatable if it simply dealt 4d6 points of damage, period? (Since almost any staff will contain 4th-level spells or higher.)

  5. Thilo Graf says:

    @Stipe:

    Sorry if I came off as defensive – wasn’t my intention! I just wanted to clear up why I complained about this particular feat. 🙂

    @Daron: In fact, yes, I think having no cap on the staff-feat would (rather surprisingly) make the wand clearer. It’s weird, I know, but the 4d6-cap _implies_ that the “little sister”-feat should have a cap as well. If damage on the staff is fixed instead, this implication is lost. I understand (and actually like) the design-philosophy behin the wand+ staff feats!

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