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Mar 2, 2013 -- 12:08PM, IserLuick wrote:

Oh, of course, the Duskblades can do that, with the problem that they have a very limited spell list, and the only multi-touch spell that they can have access to is Chill Touch, I don't know if they can hold the charge of that spell with their Arcane Channeling.

List expansion effects exist out there. I haven't looked through them for touch spells specifically, but they're not hard to do in practice.

And storm sentries can do it with the Storm Touch and the Avalanche of Blades maneuver only once a day as I see in the example that you shared (pretty cool, by the way). But the maneuver says that you have to make a melee attack, I don't know if that can include touch attacks.

1) Storm Touch is a function of the greater dragonmark, not the storm sentry class features. It is only once per day, but the build is not a primary caster (in fact, it was largely intended to see how far I could go with a dragonmark, which has inherently poor stamina).
2) Martial maneuvers with a range of "melee attack" can be delivered with any armed melee attack. A normal touch (not an unarmed strike - just a regular touch, without a spell) isn't an armed melee attack, but if you're holding the charge on a touch spell it certainly is. The problem here is the speed of casting; most touch spells are standard-action effects, which delays when they can be used with maneuvers.

There aren't metamagic feats or items or abilities like the smiting spell that can let you hold the charge with the melee weapon, are they?

Not to my knowledge, no, but you can do something similar with spell storing effects. This is usually not worth it on melee weapons: the things you want enhanced with Spell Storing are ammunition (so you can spend a bit of time between adventures with your team wizard and have him load up a quiver for "special occasions", then you unload a number of situational spells equal to the number of arrows you can fire off per round, chosen as free actions).

If you invest a Wish spell on it, the Item familiar can cast it and duplicate a Scalding Touch (similar to Storm Touch, but with 13d6 fire damage), and hold the charge of the spell and release charges when you make successful attacks with it, as the familiar would touch the enemy with the attack.

I think we have bigger problems here than attempting a multitouch. Wish is gamebreakingly good for other purposes and just happens to be able to emulate other spells. This is akin to funding a fully-functional space program because it happens to provide its employees with sandwiches.

Also, the item familiar isn't actually making the attack - you're swinging the familiar around until it makes bodily contact with the target. Ask your DM what would happen if a wizard cast a touch spell and was then picked up and used as a weapon by your team's brute

Mar 2, 2013 -- 2:25PM, IserLuick wrote:

I know that if you can play those spells like that, it would be overpowered

They're direct-damage spells that allow saving throws (for their secondary effects, which are much, much more useful than the damage they deal) and SR. The damage they will effectively deal is paltry, particularly compared to monster HP. This is the general case for most evocation damage spells; the conjuration ones are generally better because they tend to not allow SR or a saving throw.

Looking at the numbers shows that monster HP is roughly 13 per CR up until CR 15, and about 50 HP per CR, -650 above CR 15. This means that when Storm Touch (10d6 for House Lyrandar - that's 35 damage on average per touch) is available at CR 9, monsters will tend to have about 9*13=117 HP on average, while when Scalding Touch (13d6, or 45.5 per touch) is available at CR 13, monsters will tend to have around 13*13=169 HP on average. (These are approximate - they're rounded estimates from a linear regression - but you can look up the actual numbers at that link.) Both of these translate to four attacks needed to kill their targets - and most of the classes capable of casting those spells never get more than two attacks per round, and they usually prefer keeping their distance anyway! (This is why I used the Storm Knight as an example: using dragonmarks he got Storm Touch on a full-base-attack class.) This gets even worse with level - these spells don't advance their damage at all. (A CR 20 monster averages 400 HP, or twelve Storm Touch attacks or nine Scalding Touch attacks.)

Now look at those spell's secondary effects. Storm Touch has a Fortitude save (15+stat) for a stun effect, and Scalding Touch has a Fortitude save (17+stat) for a daze effect. A "standard" character starts out with 15 in their most important stat, boosts it at every level, and gets ability enhancers around levels 8 (+2), 13 (+4), and 15 (+6). (A specialist, particularly a primary spellcaster, tends to have higher starting scores and puts greater emphasis on the ability enhancer, but these numbers here are the baseline from which CR is computed, according to the DMG and MIC). This means Storm Touch, at the level it's online, has a DC of 19, while Scalding Touch has a DC of 23. These are made against average Fortitude save bonuses of +12 and +14, respectively - which translate into a 30% and 40% success rate for you per touch. Since a stunned or dazed target can take no actions on their next round, and a target that can't act can't hurt you, you've effectively removed them from combat after just two or three touches (as compared to four with raw HP damage - remember that a wounded target fights as well as a fully-healed one!) The DC will continue to improve a little bit as your casting stat improves, but monster saving throws advance faster than this - and not only is Fortitude the biggest of the three for almost every level, but the higher your levels go the bigger your chance of fighting something immune to the condition.

Considering how there are spells which are much better at removing targets from battle than these, and there are much more efficient ways to deal damage, these aren't all that impressive even with multiple touches. Don't look for raw numbers - put them in context with the foes you're facing.

but there are other rules than can be used to deal tremendous amounts of damage as well; for example, a barbarian that uses fury + berserk and does a leap attack with a large greatsword (using the Monkey Grip Feat), with full improved power attack, can deal a lot more than 65 damage with that single attack. (That's actually giving our DM some problems, a friend of ours does exactly that).

First, I will warn you: Monkey Grip is insanely bad as a feat. Generally speaking, anything that you invest in using a really big weapon is a waste - melee damage's primary source is Power Attack, not weapon size. You might actually get ridiculed for suggesting this.

(Example: The Large greatsword with Monkey Grip still suffers a -2 attack penalty. If he were using a regular Medium greatsword, he wouldn't need to spend the feat on Monkey Grip, and could Power Attack for an extra -2 and still hit just as often. The Large greatsword deals 3d6 damage as a base (average 10.5), while the Medium greatsword with the extra -2 Power Attack deals 2d6+4 damage as a base (average 11) at the same attack bonus, and that's without Power Attack enhancers added in. The guy with the Medium sword also has the option of not using that extra Power Attack, if he's fighting a foe where accuracy matters - remember to scale those damage values by your chance to hit. Given how the guy with the Medium sword is up a feat, there's no contest here.)

Second, I assume you're talking about a frenzied berserker using rage+frenzy. Frenzy is a tactical liability - you step on a sharp rock or get cherry-tapped by a lucky shot from a weak enemy, and you flip out and decapitate your party wizard. A wise berserker burns off all his frenzies at the start of the day to prevent this - and an unwise one forces his team to dedicate resources to stopping him if there's a problem. (There are ways of doing this that are pretty cheesy, but you shouldn't need to protect yourself from an ally as well as your enemies!) The true power of the berserker is its Power Attack enhancers. Notice a trend here?

Third, that specific example is numerically pretty poor, particularly after level 6 or so (the level at which the usual "Ubercharge" feats can all come online). Given how the earliest you can have Improved Power Attack is level 11, I'll use those numbers here. The typical ubercharge feats are Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush (not actually used most of the time, it's a prereq), Shock Trooper, and Leap Attack. The last feat adds +100% of your Power Attack bonus damage to your attacks (the same benefit that the best Frenzied Berserkers get - although it stacks with that if you want), and Shock Trooper gives you the option of transferring your Power Attack penalty to your AC instead of your attack rolls so that super-charge will hit. The Pounce ability is usually added in here as well (Complete Champion gave this ability to every barbarian, basically), which lets you full attack at the end of a charge. You can get all of this by level 6 (Barbarian 2 / Fighter 4 qualifies and has feats to spare). Using the same basic array as before (15 starting Strength, boosted every 4 levels, +2 Strength booster) and a basic "charger's" +1 Valorous greatsword (you can probably do better than this at 11th as a primary warrior!), the average damage this guy deals is 109 per swing without raging (and he's swinging three times per pounce, at +18/+13/+8 - which, against an AC 24 CR 6 foe, hit 75%, 50%, and 25% of the time, so you expect to deal 163.5 damage in a single round (not accounting for criticial hits). CR 11 foes have 164 HP or so, meaning this character will actually kill an average target in one round, so that target won't get a chance to strike back (given how his AC has a -13 penalty here from charging with Shock Trooper, that's a good thing).) This only gets more insane as you get more multipliers in there - and this is just using a "standard" (non-specialist) assumption about the character's ability scores and equipment, with only the bare-bones charging infrastructure (i.e. no rage, no berserker boosts, no specific multiplier-friendly damage, no size enhancers, no White Raven charges...).

If you can't deal enough damage to incapacitate the target (like the aforementioned ubercharger), you'd be better off concentrating on denying the target their ability to act (either by cutting off their actions entirely or by limiting what actions they can perform). Melee is generally limited in options here to things like tripping or repositioning the targets (a round spent standing up or moving back into position is a round where they can't bring a full-round action to bear), often through using attack of opportunity mechanics, while spellcasters have much better options for this overall.

Moral of the story here: Big numbers aren't the solution. Reliable numbers, in the context of their targets, are. Putting it poetically, while having 50 when you need 100 isn't optimal, neither is having 300 when you need 100 once. Having 100 every time you need 100 is optimal. If all you can supply is 50, changing the conditions so they only demand 50 is an ideal alternative.

(EDIT: Here's a firsthand example. I'm playing a single-classed hexblade right now. We're level 9 at the moment. I'm routinely dealing about as much damage per round as your berserker (almost exactly, in fact - accounting for miss chances and criticals, I typically output just under 65 damage each round. That's not the raw damage roll - it's the damage roll scaled by my chance of hitting, like I was doing above), and I'm not built as an ubercharger or martial adept. How do I pull that off? Respectable (though not spectacular) Strength and a serious emphasis on making sure every attack, even the last one on a full attack, will connect with my target if I use full Power Attack. The Dead for Nothing link in my signature shows how we looked at level 8.)

Now, returning to the Smiting Spell Feat, the text doesn't say explicitly that you lose the spell after you hit with the weapon, so you should be able to still hold the charge of the spell, doesn't it?

"The rules don't say I can't" isn't a good justification. The PHB does not say that I can't swallow something larger than my head.

The meaty text for Smiting Spell is: The next time you strike an opponent with that weapon, the spell discharges. The target takes the normal damage and effects of a successful attack in addition to the spell's effect. Once you place a spell into a weapon, you must discharge it within 1 minute, or its energy dissipates harmlessly.

Once a touch spell discharges, it's gone. I think the spell itself might override this (in the case of multitouch spells, they have that extra attack text - but that refers specifically to a touch attack, so this is partially contentious), but I'm not the one sitting in your DM's seat.

Although I will say repeatedly arguing the same point by asking for second, third, and fourth opinions isn't a good rhetorical strategy.