His cantrips really will be dealing 6d8, so much closer to your reported average damage. As we pushed on past 20th into epic, Orcus too has been amped up. I say this as my epic tier group is going up against him next session. Very interesting to hear your recount of an Orcus encounter. So in the future if you plan to throw a caster at your party, put this cantrip in their roaster of spells and use it as much as you can if you wanna shut down healing for a turn. It has such great combat utility, that I don't know how it's gone so long under the radar for so long.Īs long as you deal 1 point of damage with the spell, you block all healing that player can get in a turn? That's really good, especially if you play tactically like I do. Place a caster just on the cusp of the max range, means it would take a minimum of 2 rounds before they can get there and kill him which is 2 rounds the cleric can't heal someone. But it's also good enough where if the party underestimates it's strength, it can prove to be a great anti-healer spell and can put your players in a world of hurt. Since it's a cantrip, while it's not the most practical option it's just annoying enough for the party wanting to take the caster out as quick as they can. Or prove to be a very big nuisance for the party. If you can keep the pressure up on a more fragile character like a rogue, or wizard you can very easily down them in just a couple turns. Not to mention, because the spell makes it impossible to undo the damage until the start of the next round this makes very useful for shutting down healers and chipping away at hit points. I dealt a total of nearly 300 damage in just over 7 rounds of combat. Things were looking rough for the barbarian, so much so that he was going "I think this might be it for me guys." While they both kept chunking hit points off each other.Īnd even when Orcus did change targets the entire party was starting to feel brunt of this spell making the bard's healing almost useless as any damage was either undone, or prevented outright until Orcus took his turn. Just doing the math, 28X4 meant that he was taking a minimum of 112 damage in a single turn, all of which could not be healed until after Orcus took his turn.ġ12 damage is a lot, even to a barbarian, and because he couldn't heal the damage, it kept adding up and up and knocked his hit points lower and lower, down into double digits.
And because the barbarian was a storm herald and didn't have resistance to necrotic damage, he was taking the full brunt of the attack. With Orcus's legendary actions and using them at every opportunity he could, he was shooting the barbarian a minimum of 3 times in a single round before his turn and then take a 4th shot at the start of his turn and then do the process all over again. With Orcus's +15 to hit and the barbarians low armor class this meant every shot he took, he'd always hit. Since the barbarian was easily causing the most pain for Orcus during the fight and usually the only one in range at any given time, he was the sole focus of Orcus's wrath.
BUT, and this is a big one, the creature CANNOT heal until the start of the caster's next turn. On a hit, you deal 1d8 (or 4) necrotic damage to the creature, and at higher levels can deal up to 4d8 (or 28) necrotic damage. So much so, that I nearly KO'd the Party's barbarian, by bringing him down from a comfortable triple digits, to mere single digits.Ĭhill Touch is a ranged spell attack that targets a single creature. So, in one of my games, the party was fighting Orcus as well as 8 different "minions" he had in his arena.įor a majority of the fight, Orcus sat on his throne and just casted Chill Touch until the minions died, but turned out to be more useful much to the party's dismay for duration of the fight.