Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

The spell changes your alignment to evil (possibly chaotic evil) so it should let people know in the description with those tags.

Agreed. This seems merely to be an oversight.

In PnP it has "Death" and "Evil" descriptors. No "Chaos" descriptor, though.

I don't see anything particularly chaotic about Avasculate...Unlike, for instance Abyssal Might. Evil, sure.

What does the sourcebook description say?

At the moment using the spell shifts you towards CE.

Whatever the sources say I'm nto sure this is a good idea to have that alignment shift, that spell did not have the evil descriptor before and has been taken by everyone. Not to mention it's a powerful spell and that would be quite unfair, on top of all the rest of the evil spells.

It is also blocked by the commonly cast spells of Shadowshield and Death Ward. Making it be Evil would pretty much be limiting it to a few PCs.

AlwaysSummer Day wrote:What does the sourcebook description say?

Libris Mortis, page 62:

AVASCULATE

Necromancy [Death, Evil]

Level: Deathbound 7, sorcerer/wizard 7
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Effect: Ray
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude partial
Spell Resistance: Yes

You shoot a ray of necromantic energy
from your outstretched hand, causing
any living creature struck by the ray to
violently purge blood or other vital fl uids
through its skin. You must succeed on a
ranged touch attack to affect the subject.
If successful, the subject is reduced to
half of its current hit points (rounded
down) and stunned for 1 round. On a
successful Fortitude saving throw, the
subject is not stunned.

Death and Evil. Not "Chaos".

Any news on this?

Was pondering this and wondered if there was a ruling. Is this spell considered evil?

It should be an evil spell IMO. The temptation of evil is after all for mages, some of the spells.

Valefort wrote:Whatever the sources say I'm nto sure this is a good idea to have that alignment shift, that spell did not have the evil descriptor before and has been taken by everyone. Not to mention it's a powerful spell and that would be quite unfair, on top of all the rest of the evil spells.

This remains the current staff position on the matter. We've never added the Evil descriptor because quite a lot of people have taken the spell on spontaneous casters that aren't evil, so for all intents and purposes on our server, despite being a digression from lore, the spell is not evil.

We could change the name and description of the spell to something a little bit more neutral if it's felt like this is presenting an issue, but given the amount of rebuilds it would cause (and the lack of an equally balanced option for good-aligned casters) it's not feasible for us to actually change the spell itself in such a drastic way.

It's kinda one of those "We should've done that from the beginning" sort of things.

*Cough.* I wanna cast evull spells on my goody shoes. Everyone else needs to role-play their sheets though, not me though. I can cast evull spells if I want so. *Cough.*

Actual PnP spell description from the spell compendium, page 19:

You shoot a black ray of necromantic energy from your outstretched hand, causing your foe to violently purge blood or other vital fluids through his skin.

What does the spell name mean? Avascular is a word for having few or no blood vessels.

You can read about hit points in here, also about 'Injury and Death': http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/injuryandDeath.htm

So... if you want to rename and rebrand the spell:


Ray of Lethargy

You shoot a ray of energy from your outstreched hand, causing your foe to lose vigor that they held a mere moments ago. You must succeed on a ranged touch attack with the ray to strike a target. If the attack succeeds, the subject is reduced to half of its current hit points and stunned for 1 round. On a successful Fortitude saving throw, the subject is not stunned.

There, done, problem solved.

so no on evil descriptor on evasculate and a better solution would be to neuter it.. oops i mean make it more neutral. so goodies can still have an effective spell.

maybe we should boil the flavor out of everything. make paladins accessible to all. turn the server into a 1960's hippy utopia of peace love and tea parties by the campfire sharing stories of the old days with my best pals eric the paladin and suzy the necromancer.

aaron22 wrote:so no on evil descriptor on evasculate and a better solution would be to neuter it.. oops i mean make it more neutral. so goodies can still have an effective spell.

maybe we should boil the flavor out of everything. make paladins accessible to all. turn the server into a 1960's hippy utopia of peace love and tea parties by the campfire sharing stories of the old days with my best pals eric the paladin and suzy the necromancer.

This is frankly more likely to happen than giving a free rebuild to every non-evil Sorc on the server who picked Avasculate when it didn't have a descriptor. No offense meant, but we're trying to do the best we can with what we have and changing Avasculate mechanically to make it closer to source material exactly is about the furthest priority from our minds right now.