Saving against the Command spell
jmerry
Member Posts: 4,015
As is well known to experienced players, the Command spell is extremely potent in low-level play, knocking enemies up to 5 HD unconscious for a round with no save. That round is frequently enough to kill them.
But then you try it against higher-level enemies - and it's still far more effective than a first-level spell has any right to be.
Tranzig is a level 6 mage, with base save vs. spell 4 and a ring of protection +1. Against a spell with no bonus or penalty, he should save 90% of the time. So this time? He saved. He saved again. And he still went down. He did not survive that round of unconsciousness.
What is going on with that spell?
But then you try it against higher-level enemies - and it's still far more effective than a first-level spell has any right to be.
Tranzig is a level 6 mage, with base save vs. spell 4 and a ring of protection +1. Against a spell with no bonus or penalty, he should save 90% of the time. So this time? He saved. He saved again. And he still went down. He did not survive that round of unconsciousness.
What is going on with that spell?
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Comments
Tranzig saved separately against the 3 effects: the unconsciousness (which failed), the portrait icon (succeed at 3), and the ending sound (succeeded at 5). They all should have used the same save as the first one (failed), but didn't due to the pause.
Manual pausing can do this as well - you just aren't very likely to pause manually at the exact moment necessary.
Some of it falls down to the campaign. If it was a campaign where food was scarce suddenly we'd all be taking druids along just for their goodberry spell.
A round of unconsciousness is very powerful, because all your attacks automatically hit during that round. If you have a full party then very few enemies can survive that many free hits. So even once the enemy's high enough level to get a save, they only have to fail their save once.
An especially fun thing about that is that you can use weapons you're not proficient in during that round with very little consequence. A mage with no proficiency in slings? Most of the time they can't hit the broad side of a barn, but against an unconscious adversary even they have flawless aim.
Its drawback, if it has one, is that it only effects one enemy, so you get much less mileage out it when fighting multiple powerful adversaries at once.
but still a nice spell
i even use it in ToB, because its that good
and that is one thing i like about the bg series use of 2nd edition rules, given that even measly low level 1 spells can still be good at high levels, unlike 3rd edition type games where basically once you hit level 5 or 6, the only "useful" level 1 spells are ones that cause damage, because crowd control? no chance enemies are going to fail that pitiful save
Slings? Nah, try darts instead. 3 APR is amazing, especially if you pick up some of those elemental darts from Thalantyr. Any non-cleric can get 19.5 average damage per round against a helpless target with them, since the helplessness wipes out any chance of saving against the elemental part.
Wait, unconscious enemies have some sort of penalty to their saving throws? I didn't know this.
If the enemies save a third of the time - fairly typical for low-level monsters - the darts are down to 16 average damage per round. That's still a lot, but it's fairly easy for a warrior to beat.
No, not even auto-crit warrior HLAs work on helpless targets. Not that it's a big deal if they're helpless.
That's also a bit better than it seems due to the way D&D monsters were originally designed - some of those, like ankhegs for instance, were set at low HD levels with bonus HPs and thus are more vulnerable to sleep and command than you would expect.