Pretty bad spell since fortitude negates and spell resistance while also needing concentration so unless you face a ton of casters that can't disrupt your concentration and also don't have spell resistance it's not worth the spell slot
It's basically Finger of Death/Destruction 1/round for half your level in rounds.
That would be a neat way to conserve slots.
But you can only target a creature once, so it's much less effective, no focusing something until they fail.
Mass harm is the same level and damage, but will half and hits everything at once rather than over multiple rounds, but it won't ever kill anything.
A 1hp creature is as effective as a full hp creature, so that's very significant if the enemy gets to act before whoever you're expecting to finish them off (presumably an archer spreading attacks).
Presumably if you're casting this it's for the instant kill, most monsters have too much hp, but if you're fighting things with class levels then it's actually pretty good, a 17th level 18 con fighter only has 166hp, so 170 damage is a kill.
It's basically Mass Harm. Yet another victim of the kill spell nerfs they did in the switch to pathfinder, and yet another spell that really didn't deserve it. It's technically pretty efficient at dealing damage, assuming your save DCs are high enough... But with fort negates, being unable to retarget the same enemy, and not even being likely to kill appropriately leveled threats in one hit (IIRC an average CR17 monster has like 280 HP) I just don't see a situation where I'd ever want this. 9th level spells should be winning combats, sometimes several combats, on their own. Not dealing "pretty good" damage.
Mass harm doesn't kill, that's important because a 1hp enemy is no less dangerous.
That average is mostly due to monsters with massively inflated HD.
If you're fighting humanoids then not much is going to have more than 10hp/level (you need a d10 and at least 20 con for that)
Used to be a way to save a bit of spell slots on save-or-dies, but now it's not much different from [Harm](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Harm) except fort negates instead of half, and that it can kill outright... and the whole concentration to go multiple rounds thing. It's hard to think of good situations for this, since you need to be fighting many weaker monsters that can't make their saves to get the benefit of the duration, but if you can wipe out a lot of weaker creatures, why not just cast an instantaneous AoE and wipe them out *now?!* Maybe it's for situations where the skill monkey has to fiddle with the artifact for several rounds to win, and a new monster with bad fort saves appears every round until they're finished? That happens more than once per player's lifetimes, right?
I was once in a level 20 one-shot where we fought a bunch of really high level things. The Tarrasque showed up, and the party cleric hit it with Implosion, passed the SR check, and then the Tarrasque rolled a nat 1 on its fort save. He kept concentration up for three rounds while the rest of us kept it at bay and finally deployed some Wish spells to turn off its regeneration.
Good times.
Pretty bad spell since fortitude negates and spell resistance while also needing concentration so unless you face a ton of casters that can't disrupt your concentration and also don't have spell resistance it's not worth the spell slot
It's basically Finger of Death/Destruction 1/round for half your level in rounds. That would be a neat way to conserve slots. But you can only target a creature once, so it's much less effective, no focusing something until they fail. Mass harm is the same level and damage, but will half and hits everything at once rather than over multiple rounds, but it won't ever kill anything. A 1hp creature is as effective as a full hp creature, so that's very significant if the enemy gets to act before whoever you're expecting to finish them off (presumably an archer spreading attacks). Presumably if you're casting this it's for the instant kill, most monsters have too much hp, but if you're fighting things with class levels then it's actually pretty good, a 17th level 18 con fighter only has 166hp, so 170 damage is a kill.
It's basically Mass Harm. Yet another victim of the kill spell nerfs they did in the switch to pathfinder, and yet another spell that really didn't deserve it. It's technically pretty efficient at dealing damage, assuming your save DCs are high enough... But with fort negates, being unable to retarget the same enemy, and not even being likely to kill appropriately leveled threats in one hit (IIRC an average CR17 monster has like 280 HP) I just don't see a situation where I'd ever want this. 9th level spells should be winning combats, sometimes several combats, on their own. Not dealing "pretty good" damage.
Mass harm doesn't kill, that's important because a 1hp enemy is no less dangerous. That average is mostly due to monsters with massively inflated HD. If you're fighting humanoids then not much is going to have more than 10hp/level (you need a d10 and at least 20 con for that)
Yeah, but it still is not a mass harm spell, it's more like a finger of death each round for 1 lvl 9 slot unless you loose concentration
Used to be a way to save a bit of spell slots on save-or-dies, but now it's not much different from [Harm](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Harm) except fort negates instead of half, and that it can kill outright... and the whole concentration to go multiple rounds thing. It's hard to think of good situations for this, since you need to be fighting many weaker monsters that can't make their saves to get the benefit of the duration, but if you can wipe out a lot of weaker creatures, why not just cast an instantaneous AoE and wipe them out *now?!* Maybe it's for situations where the skill monkey has to fiddle with the artifact for several rounds to win, and a new monster with bad fort saves appears every round until they're finished? That happens more than once per player's lifetimes, right?
I was once in a level 20 one-shot where we fought a bunch of really high level things. The Tarrasque showed up, and the party cleric hit it with Implosion, passed the SR check, and then the Tarrasque rolled a nat 1 on its fort save. He kept concentration up for three rounds while the rest of us kept it at bay and finally deployed some Wish spells to turn off its regeneration. Good times.