Blade Barrier question

[Sethasoigh]

Hey everyone,

I have a quick question, in regards to feats would Spell Focus: Evoction & Greater Spell Focus: Evoction make your BB hit more often or would Spell Penetration & Greater Spell Penetration. I don't want to go with maximize/empower as i'm really tight on feats/spellpoints for this build and need to make sure that my BB will hit.

Thanks.

[Aerniel]

BB is not like firewall, you gotta run em in and out of the blades. If they just sit there they will probably only get hit once so the amount that they get his is completely up to your laziness.

[Visty]

spellpen does nothing for bladebarrier, spellfocus raises its DC

[Kintro]

Blade Barrier isn't effected by Spell Resistance so don't worry about those feats. The Evocation focus feats will help but someone ran the numbers in another thread and found each feat only adds about 5% dps.

[Sirea]

If you want your Blade Barriers to hit for more damage, then you'll have to take Empower and/or Maximize (but preferably both). All the Spell Focus does in increase the save, which I guess would be somewhat useful for monsters like Trogs with evasion, but not useful enough to warrant 2 feat slots.

I'm more baffled by the fact that you'd have room for Spell Focus feats but not for Maximize/Empower.

[Sethasoigh]

It has more to do with the fact that i'm only going up to lvl 12 cleric so my spell points are on the low side (as well as my DC) and i would rather have the BB hit then have the possibility of it hitting for big numbers.

[Logic]

It has more to do with the fact that i'm only going up to lvl 12 cleric so my spell points are on the low side (as well as my DC) and i would rather have the BB hit then have the possibility of it hitting for big numbers.

You have to move move mobs into and out of the blade barrier, so its great against melees but more difficult to use against ranged mobs.

The damage of blade barrier maxes out at 15d6 at caster level 15, so you will have slightly less at 12d6.

Every 2 wisdom increases the DC of the spell. Offensive casters usually start with high wisdom, although it is more important for crowd control spells than damaging spells.

Against most mobs (without evasion) if they save against the blade barrier it will do 1/2 damage, otherwise full damage. Some mobs have evasion in which case the spell does no damage on a save, and 1/2 on a failed save if they have improved evasion. Each spell focus feat increases the DC of the spell by 1, which helps it land slightly more.

Maximize and empower increase the spell damage by 100% and 50% respectively (both for +150%). These will give you far more damage than a spell focus feat.

I would recommend maximize instead of spell focus.

Good luck.

[oweieie]

It has more to do with the fact that i'm only going up to lvl 12 cleric so my spell points are on the low side (as well as my DC) and i would rather have the BB hit then have the possibility of it hitting for big numbers.

Well I was going to say heighten to raise the DC but when you said this... I don't think heighten will actually help.

You'll find that at higher levels your blade barrier will be doing worthless damage unless you have maximize and empower. I can't imagine why you'd go for only 12 levels of cleric, but whatever build you do, blade barrier isn't going to be worth it. Properly geared and feated blade barrier can be doing over 500 damage. Yours... will probably be doing, like, 60, actually more like 30 since it'll almost always be resisted.

[Sethasoigh]

My friends and i are all building multiclass mutts for a static group of crazyness. I'm going with 11 Cleric/6 Ranger/3 Monk (after reading advice the 1 lvl of cleric doesn't give me much in comparison to the extra lvl of Monk). This will allow me to raise dead party members, throw out some heals (from scrolls or sp) and mele with the others. I know this is never going to be the best build and it's not supposed to be, just a challange amongst friends (hence the question on how to get some damage out of BB since i could use it).

Thanks for all of your time and advice. + Rep handed out.