I know it's been talked about a bunch but I just had to voice my thoughts. So the ability is not great, that's fine. There are plenty of mediocre abilities, and it's hard to be angry about free damage even if it's insignificant.
But why do they rub it in your face by allowing you to use the equivalent of 3 power surges per turn when attacked at level 14. You could end up using dozens of deflecting shrouds while only being able to actually fire 2 or 3 power surges in a day.
It just seems to me that late game class abilities shouldn't make early game ones seem completely obsolete.
All that said I'm looking forward to trying my mountain dwarf war mage.
power surge should be compared and used more like empowered metamagic. Power surges can be generated more effectively by piling ongoing individual spells on an onject/creature by using cantrips/rituals, and the casting dispel magic on that target with a 3rd level slot. The damage potential gained isn’t worth it until around level 10 if you look at the levels and intelligence modifiers at various character levels.
the damage roughly scales up equivalently to empowered metamagic, but it increases minimum and maximum damage instead of just average damage.
building up power surges by sacrificing spell slots also lets you use up pieces of your slot when your unable to actually cast spells because of arcane deflection.
so when your spell slots are off limits, you can funnel your surges by using a cantrip or an already ongoing spell effect. Cantrip Examples would include firebolt, shocking grasp, or till the dead. Leveled spell examples could be something like dragons breath, flaming sphere, or wall of fire. Wall of fire being the high ceiling due to the ability for your party to being able to work together to cause wall of fires damage multiple times in a round on different turns.
a really easy way to funnel surges would be to buff a party member with a spell like magic weapon. After you buff the martial, you can use a cantrip to deal a bit of damage due to your bonus action casting limiting your action. On hit use the surge. Then on your martial friends turn when they hit and deal bonus damage with magic weapon, pile a surge on that hit since it’s a different turn.
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I know it's been talked about a bunch but I just had to voice my thoughts. So the ability is not great, that's fine. There are plenty of mediocre abilities, and it's hard to be angry about free damage even if it's insignificant.
But why do they rub it in your face by allowing you to use the equivalent of 3 power surges per turn when attacked at level 14. You could end up using dozens of deflecting shrouds while only being able to actually fire 2 or 3 power surges in a day.
It just seems to me that late game class abilities shouldn't make early game ones seem completely obsolete.
All that said I'm looking forward to trying my mountain dwarf war mage.
*brings thread back to life*
power surge should be compared and used more like empowered metamagic. Power surges can be generated more effectively by piling ongoing individual spells on an onject/creature by using cantrips/rituals, and the casting dispel magic on that target with a 3rd level slot. The damage potential gained isn’t worth it until around level 10 if you look at the levels and intelligence modifiers at various character levels.
the damage roughly scales up equivalently to empowered metamagic, but it increases minimum and maximum damage instead of just average damage.
building up power surges by sacrificing spell slots also lets you use up pieces of your slot when your unable to actually cast spells because of arcane deflection.
so when your spell slots are off limits, you can funnel your surges by using a cantrip or an already ongoing spell effect. Cantrip Examples would include firebolt, shocking grasp, or till the dead. Leveled spell examples could be something like dragons breath, flaming sphere, or wall of fire. Wall of fire being the high ceiling due to the ability for your party to being able to work together to cause wall of fires damage multiple times in a round on different turns.
a really easy way to funnel surges would be to buff a party member with a spell like magic weapon. After you buff the martial, you can use a cantrip to deal a bit of damage due to your bonus action casting limiting your action. On hit use the surge. Then on your martial friends turn when they hit and deal bonus damage with magic weapon, pile a surge on that hit since it’s a different turn.