Level 9 Priest Auto-crits with Disintegrate?

[EdgeOfDreams]

Tell me if this works:

A Level 9 Priest can have all 5 steps in the Destruction Path, gaining the spell Disintegrate once per scene.  With the Devotion Supremacy Feat (from Adventure Companion), he can cast Disintegrate an extra time per scene, or give up that extra casting to have the spell Threaten.  1 little action die later, the spell has become a crit, dealing 9d10 wounds to the target.

Does this work? It pretty much becomes an auto-kill against any Special character once per scene.  It only costs 3 feats and an action die.  Seems a bit OP, though fun.

[Coyote0273]

It also costs 5 steps in a Path to the exclusion of all else. But chars get very powerful by the 10s.

[Krensky]

Well, said priest will have a Spell DC of 13 + his Cha mod.

The NPC will have a bonus of +4 or +8 to his save.

[Sletchman]

With between a +7 and +16 to his save (before attributes) the NPC will almost certainly pass the save.  It's Fort Half though, and half of 9d10 wounds is still gonna kill most things - 25 wounds is a fair wack.

Of course if the NPC has even one grade of Tough, you've just wasted your single shot that you spent all of your 5 Steps and 3 of your Feats and an Action Die.  Lot of investment for something that in my game is almost always negated by a 5xp NPC quality - not because I'm being a dick, but because if it's a Special NPC for a combat encounter, they usually have a Tough (or 2) so that they don't fall to the first lucky crit.

EDIT: Also, if you did it a lot (and became known through the setting for this trick) you'd likely face a NPC with Spell Reflection, who would reflect your auto-crit back at you.  But my players know not to put all their eggs in one basket.

[glimmerrat]

Yeah, that works. A level 9 character *should* be able to pull stuff like that.

OTOH, if you do that to the wrong NPC then you've just singled yourself out as a threat to be eliminated... quickly.