Lightning!

[Dredi]

So, just a few things with relation to lightning theme elemental spells

Lightning Avatar:
Love it, super fun. Could we add 20ft Bright blue light to it? The VFX are amazing but it should definately give off light, otherwise it feels a bit..off, in darker areas.
Could we also clear up the wording a bit, change it fom "+1 Attack" to "+1 Bonus to attack rolls" as this could otherwise be interpreted as a haste-like attack per round.

I cant really speak to its efficacy just yet, though it does feel a little hard to use. Might be much more viable if the lightning damage continued beyond the target of the spell (like a regular lightning bolt) as in most situations its pretty difficult to be positioned behind mobs - though certainly not impossible.

GSF: Evocation, Lightning Bonus.
This one seems just..super inconsistant and flat out worse than fire.

So just for conjfirmation, this relates to the bonuses you get to elemental spells when you have GSF Evocation and cast a spell of your selected element. You can only have 1 selected element at a time and it typically ties into your flame weapon element.
These bonuses are:

Fire - Damaged targets make a saving throw or are set on fire. They receive 1d4 damage per round until a successful save is made.
Cold - Damaged targets make a saving throw or suffer Slow for one round.
Acid - Damaged targets make a save throw or experience -2 Armour Class for 1d6 rounds.
Electrical - Damaged targets spread 1d4 electrical damage to other nearby targets.

So there are few important distinctions to make here:
Fire, Acid and Cold all occur every time a spell strikes an opponent, but they have a saving throw to negate the effects.
Electrical does not occur every time a spell strikes an opponent (Seems to be random %) requires another target to be nearby but does NOT require a saving throw.

This being said, fire only needs to fail its saving throw once to already have done more damage than electrical in practically any given situation - and even then it requires there to be 2 targets in relatively close proximity which is not always going to be the case which means the ability to take advantage of this bonus is reduced over that of the other spells.

So. In my opinion, how do we fix this?

I see two ways we could do this, either we change the effect to being a debuf, more akin to Acid and Cold (For example -2 AB for 1d3 rounds with a reflex save to negate)
Or we lean into the "Burst AOE damage" which, arcing electricity? Does feel more thematically appropriate and fun.

But to do that you'd need to make some changes. Remove the % failure rate from it so it always occurs, add a reflex save and cap it (if it isnt already) to hitting one additional target per person struck. So a lightning bolt hitting 5 targets, 5 additional targets would be chosen to take an additional hit of damage, with a reflex save to either half or negate the additional damage.  You could also consider delaying this damage and "Charging" the enemies struck with it to cause damage when another hostile creature comes within 5 feet of it but thats probably a lot of work for something not particularly important as things go.

I would be tempted to consider allowing a tiny increase to the damage (1d4+1 or 1d6) if it is to be a pure damage effect, just to keep it more in line with fire. Alternatively you could scale it with the level of the spell. 1d4 for cantrip, 1d6 for level 1 and 2 spells, 1d8 for level 3 and 4 spells, 1d10 for level 5 - just  throwing out ideas.

I do feel though that in its current incarnation it is particularly weak though, comparatively at least.

[Dredi]

Lightning Avatar. Hoo Boy.. Here we go.

So I decided to pick this up as a Sorceror as one of my 2 level 8 spells, give it a go and my honest feedback is that this is a really cool, incredibly frustrating and sometimes buggy spell which is weak for a level 4 spell as it stands right now. It also unfortunately has some serious quality of life issues and bugs that tie into this.

What the spell is listed as doing:

Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Long
Area of effect: Single
Duration: Instant
Save: Reflex 1/2
Spell Resistance: No

The caster fires a bolt of lightning at their ally, enhancing them with the power of lightning, granting them
+1 Bonus to Attack Rolls
+2 Electrical Damage (This is applied to the character, not to the weapon which means this damage bypasses all forms of damage reduction except DM invuln)
+2 Reflex save,
25% movement increase
50% immunity to electrical damage
(Unlisted) Magic Damage sheild causing X Damage to be caused to anyone striking the target

all for 2 rounds / level of the caster.

Any creature that is caught in the lightning's path suffers a 1d4 electrical damage per caster level and increases the duration by a single round.
With GSF Evocation increase Damage to 1d6
With GSF Transmutation Increase Duration by 1d4 rounds per "Enemy" hit
With SF Necromancy Heal target for 1 point per creature hit
With GSF Necromancy Heal Target for 1d4 points per creature hit.

In addition to the incorrect spell listed highlighted in bold above there is also a fairly major bug with this spell.
If the spell passes through a non-hostile target, (Generally I've found this to happen more consistantly when that non-hostile target is a summon) the buff may not be applied and may stop in its arc at that non-hostile creature along the lightnings path.

From here we need to consider the mechanics of the spell and quality of life issues that this spell presents.
The buff from the spell, while nice is kind of..mediocre and its only balanced by the fact that you can do damage with the spell as well - the problem is that the damage is really, REALLY hard to pull off in an actual fight.

• The average fight in EFU is generally fairly tight corridors with your melee attacks in front and support/ranged behind them, this means that in generally really closed quarters settings you need to manouver on to your opponents side of the fight and fire the spell from there. There are definately QA's which are more accessible than others but trying to get the damage off from it is consistantly difficult.
  
  If you miss your ally and select a hostile creature, it still buffs the hostile creature - and then probably does damage to the person you were trying to help, this is bad.
  
  With all the movement, healing the front line, you're constantly at risk of striking your own team with damage as well so even if you use the spell purely for the buff then you've still got your own teammates to contend with to actually pull the spell off without hurting your own team.
  
  You cannot self buff with this spell. You MUST have an ally.
  
  You cannot use the spell's offensive element without an Ally, you MUST have an ally.

These latter two mean that if you pick this up as a sorceror and are traveling alone, you basically have a dead level 4 spell in your kit.

So how do we fix this?

Best suggestion would mean some fairly substantial changes to how the spell functions.
On Cast -> If cast on a Non Hostile creature, target that creature, otherwise Locate closest Non Hostile Creature and target them. (Caster > Other PC > Summon/Henchman, does not effect Non Hostile NPC's unless cast on them directly)  This should allow the spell to target an area or a hostile and still function correctly.
Once target is located, they become the centre of the spell and the buff is applied to them.
From the centre point cause lightning damage to Hostile Targets within Range of the buffed target. You could either do this as a single blast of lightning, or one chain of lightning which arcs from person to person (so long as they were within a certain distance of one another) maybe with reduced damage after the first target.

Thats my best shot at it anyway, Another thought I had was maybe remove the damage element from the initial cast alltogether and add some sort of lightning damage aura? Shooting off lightning bolts from the buff holder which have a reflex vs low lightning damage each round or something.

[Tala]

Right, so-
I appreciate the detailed post, but this was a lot to read. I think it's best to focus on the buggy issues and the actual suggestion.

I think I get the gist of it though, no promise that everything here will be done.

For now I added the light effect, lightning damage should be applied to the weapon, and there was an issue with the radius of the spell so this is probably why it was cut off for you (I don't think it had anything with hostile settings).
I'll later adjust it more.