we've been doing Ray of Enfeeblement wrong

[Velaryon]

I read over Ray of Enfeeblement after reading a topic on the WotC message board, and discovered that we've been using it wrong in two ways.

1. The spell does not actually do ability damage. Rather, it imposes a penalty to the target's Strength score. While this may sound like a mostly meaningless distinction, it actually means that multiple castings of this spell on the same target should not stack.

2. The spell explicitly says that it cannot reduce a target's Strength below 1. So that time in the forest where you reduced Morg the barbarian's strength to 0 could not have actually happened.



So now the question is what to do about it. As for #2 there, I'm going to rule in all future cases that the spell cannot reduce a target's Strength below 1, just as the spell says.

But as far as multiple castings, I don't think it has been game-breaking (yet), and as long as it's not abused I don't see a real problem with allowing them to just deal ability damage like we've been playing it so far. I'd like some feedback on this, though.

[Tyrrox Zym]

I say we rule it as it is meant to be. No stacking and cannot be reduced below 1. I can forsee the stacking to be abusive and as a DM that would aggrevate me so I can understand ruling it this way for your game too.

[leon]

i'm gonna have to agree, i think the not stacking thing wont be so much of a problem, since his caster level is gonna start rising again soon, esspecially if he takes practiced spellcaster lik e i'm gonna suggest.

[Vanemuine]

I agree with not letting the strength go below 1 as the rules say and it makes sense to me. But at least Morg at the time was pretty weak anyway.

Now as for the no stacking aspect I'm not in agreement with. Mainly because there have been several dangerous situations where I think the ablity to stack on strong opponents I think may of kept people alive. One thing that comes to mind is the second time we encountered the ogres throwing boulders another time I think it may of help was during that amubsh with Knolls although I don't remember that fight as clearly. But what I do remember clearly was the fight with the kraken which would of ended up badly if I wasn't able to sap its strength more then the rules allow. Anyway its up to you to decide to enforce the rule or not but if you feel like ignoring it then do it and I would like that. My intention anyway is not to abuse it but to use it the sameway as I have been which is mainly on highly physically strong enemies like ogres and krakens or bigger things to make things more smoothly especially in situations where there are multiple enemies to worrry about. Or really strong individuals like the kraken and other big monsters that can hit hard.

[Thallatos]

I think as caster levels increase it won't even matter if you can stack it or not. One use will be so effective that you will have gotten what you need to out of one use. Capping at 1d6+5 is plenty. Sure giant creatures with huge strength won't feel that quite as much as your generic strong Orc but that's the point of a creature with huge strength. So am with the majority in saying one use is just fine.