If the mage spells are being weakened, what compensation is being given to the mage?

[National Acrobat]

Wow. I guess that concrete changes will be interesting reading once the books come out next month. It will be interesting to see just how close to the mark many of the rumors and speculations are on the changes.

My group, which rotates between 3 DM's is sticking to the 3.0 rules. We never use the 'broken' spells that much that are listed and quite frankly, we hardly ever have a dedicated arcane caster anyway.

 

[The_Gneech]

Re: Re: If the mage spells are being weakened, what compensation is being given to the ma

Whilst many people consider this a bad thing, the nature of the posters of this board discourages them from voicing their opinions. I am not going to bother to post anymore as this facist community has turned hostile against any reasonable dissenting opinion.

*sputter*

*snicker*

*chortle*

BWAAHAHAHAA!

*coughs, wipes a tear from his eye*

Phew! Thanks, man, I needed that.

In every game I've played in, once the group reaches fifth level, it becomes all about the magic-users.

ALL about the magic-users. Fighters are just there to soak up hit point damage since the magic-users can't.

Magic using classes, for my taste, are and will continue to be TOO DAMN POWERFUL.

Nerf 'em! Nerf 'em good!

-The Gneech ("Fascist community. *snicker*")

 

[Grishnak]

At the end of the day I guess most people have pretty much been playing 3e since it's release and have their own rules on certain things.
These books are only guides and as a group you can decide that the wizard/sorcerer spells will not be altered etc. Our group has discussed the books and some will be buying them but in general we're happy with what we have currently and don't want too many changes in the middle of a campaign. If someone sees something that is better than the current rules we'll possibly alter it using a group vote on the matter.

 

[Felon]

WotC reacted to an increasing number of threads complaining that wizards were broken, that at higher levels wizards would dominate the scene and threads about smackdowns seemingly predominated by wizards. In response, they decided to tone down the spells most likely to be abused.

You state that Wizards' reaction was based entirely on complaints received in messageboard threads. That I would dispute. I suspect their own gaming sessions would be more revealing than any second-hand info they receive off the web.

Now some of the spells were patently out-of-line. Heal, Harm and Haste were good and sensible changes. Polymorph Other was justifiable, as was Hold Person (just). They didn't stop there. The 'animal' buffs are now nearly worthless, Horrid Wilting is severely hampered, Disintegrate is barely worthwhile and *all* spells suffered from the degrading of Spell Focus.

Here's a good place to elaborate and thereby gain credible support for your thesis. Give us some bullet points explaining briefly and succinctly why the anibuffs are now near-worthless. Horrid Wiliting was certainly quite horridly OTT previously, so let us know why toning it down went wrong. Might also help gain support if you explained what was actually done to hamper it. Disintegrate barely worthwhile? Heard it did ridiculous amounts of damage now. Ridiculous damage doesn't sound barely worthwhile. What's up with that?

And I still haven't heard what the info source on the Spell Focus "nerf" is. I guess I can only assume nobody really knows where that rumor came from.

The problem was that WotC *were* responding to a legitimate concern, but the concern itself was misplaced. Most of the complaints about wizards being too powerful were based on supplements. Many of the 'smackdown-wizards' used official WotC supplements at best, and third-party supplements at worst. It was the supplements, not the core rules (with some exceptions, such as Haste) which made wizards too powerful. FRCS could add +10 to the DCs of wizards alone (Archmage, Red Wizard, Spellcasting Prodigy, Greater Spell Focus, Shadow Weave etc.). It was through supplements that characters achieved DCs in the 40s.

Hmm. Getting to be less of a thesis and more of a hypothesis. A thesis is based on cited research. This sounds more like speculation regarding Wizards' motives. Speculation is all good and well, as long as it's presented as such.

However, given that the most vocal lobby was the most 'active' gaming group, and given that they tended to have supplements (by dint of being more 'active') and more vocal (the average gamer doesn't talk about spell balance on messageboards) WotC decided to tone down the core rules.

Oh, Wizards knows what the mesageboards are worth. I think attempting to design epic levels of play taught them more about how problematic "save-or-die" or uncapped spells are.

In other words, WotC nerfed core rules to fix the 'supplement power inflation' which was becoming increasingly apparent. With the exceptions of some good and sensible fixes, they went too far. The core wizard is now too weak, the supplement-enhanced wizard is still too strong. A lot of problems created; only a few solved.

Reducing anibuff durations does not make the wizard too weak. Switching Disintegrate's effects from death to ridiculous damage is not weak. Things like d4 hit points make the wizard weak.

 

[Will]

First, to the guy who said his group never took haste... boggle.

Second, my big problem with nerfing Bull's Strength and Cat's grace is that, well, as they stand now they are stuff spellcasters will be reluctant to use anyway. At least wizards.

Why? Well, they are purely support casting. Great, here I am, a powerful wizard... and I'm blowing spells on boosting up other party members. I'd rather lob fireballs or bend the minds of men... but sure, I'm game.

Now, with 1 min/level... the wizard is forced to think 'Damn. I'd have to memorize a bunch of these. And cast them in combat instead of other cool stuff... screw that.'

That's my problem. Not that it nerfs power level, but it nerfs the range of things wizards can/want to do.

While I'm a little grumpy about nerfing Haste, I can understand the need for it.

 

[bret]

This will be my last post on the subject. Why ? Because in the end it doesn't matter who is right, only what is. WOTC have made their decision and apparently the majority agrees with them. I do not, that means I will no longer play, why play something if it no longer brings me pleasure? I'll just have to find another hobby.

There is a better solution.

Find a different game system. I would recommend you at least look at GURPS, Ars Magica, or Feng Shui games. There are a lot of game systems out there, several of them are very good.

Edit: Fix URL formatting.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Felon:

I think the Spell Focus thing was found from a stat block in Dungeon where a character's DC didn't add up right with it at +2. This could just as easily be a misprint, since there were other things off in that issue.


As for the constant complaints and cries that spellcasters are being nerfed...argh...I knew the calm wouln't last in this thread for long. Just because Disinitigrate and Horrid Wilting aren't Save or Die spells now, doesn't mean they're useless. Now they do insanely large amounts of damage...that WILL kill people anyway. Don't want to roll that amount of dice? Take the average, OR use a dice rolling program.
About Spell Focus....even if it IS nerfed, I don't see it being much of a problem. In my game, we have a 16th level Sorcerer with a 22 Cha...that's a +6 bonus. A 16+Spell level to DCs. That isn't THAT BAD. The character is normally wearing a +4 Cloak of Charisma, which bumps that up to 26...bringing the DCs to 18+Spell level. Yes, that's higher level...but guess what, even WITH these nerfed spells, casters shine at high level. The +2 from Spell Focus just seems to jump that up too much, so I don't really have a problem if SF and GSF are +1/+2 to DCs.
While I think Rangerjohn is overreacting, he's doing(partially) what the last resort is. Don't like the Revision? Don't but it, House rule things you get it, or just find another game and quit complaining. Yes, complaining about things like this are okay, TO A POINT...but this has gone on far too long. I don't understand how someone can say there is a strong oppression against the people that hate the 'nerfing' of these spells, because there have been at least seven of eight topics on this already....ALL started by people with negative views, and MOST lasting for pages and pages of pointless argument...how long does this have to go on?

 

[Staffan]

Ah, OK, I see where that POV's coming from now. It's that oldest of adages from the MMORPG community: "anything that's a buff for someone else can be called a nerf for me". Weapons become a little better than before, so that makes fireballs a little worse than they were before, without anything actually being done to them.

Not so much the weapons, but the hit points. When hit points increase, things that attack hit points become proportionally worse and things that bypass them (domination, polymorph other, disintegrate) become proportionally more powerful (though some of these will *not* ignore hp anymore in 3.5e).

As an aside, apparently the designers did realize the problem on some level - the Power Word spells affect more hp in 3e than they did in 2e. They just didn't follow through on it to change the damage spells as well.

I am considering increasing the damage of most damage spells by 1d6/spell level, which would help them become competitive again, as well as providing another reason beyond higher damage caps for using higher-level damage spells.

 

[Tidus4444]

Haste, I'll agree, was broken. It needed to be fixed. Almost everything after that was pointless. Buff spells are now useless. Why? Bull's Strength will now give +2 to attack and +2 to damage. For a combat or 2. this is about the same power as bless, who gives everybody +1/+1 to attack, for about the same time. This is a 1st level spell, and indeed, considered one of the weaker ones. The others are even worse. +10 to HP for a combat? blech. +2 to DCs for a combat? blech. I might be able to see these as balanced for 1st level spells, but certainly not for 2nd level spells. Improved Invisibility, now THERE'S a spell that needs to be nerfed. Also, people say that this does not harm the Wizard, because these spells did not help him directly. They did increase the usefulness of a Wizard consdierably, because of the benefits it gives to other party members. It'd be like nerfing the Cleric's heal spells. Makes it much worse as a class. I myself, had a great time playing the Wizard who Shielded the Fighter round one, invised the Rogue round 2. Cast the buffing spells when they got up. Now, the Wizard does this much worse, and is a worse class because of it. There's a reason why Wizards are so powerful at higher levels: they suck at lower levels. If you're gonna nerf higher level spells, gimme a 2d4+1 per missile magic missile, or an extra 2d4 a round Melf's Acid Arrow. Then the classes will be balanced at ALL levels, which is the way it should be.

 

[Codragon]

WotC reacted to an increasing number of threads complaining that wizards were broken, that at higher levels wizards would dominate the scene and threads about smackdowns seemingly predominated by wizards.

I mostly disagree with this one. While I know WotC reads message boards; and even takes them into account when deciding what changes to make to the game; I also think playtesters/customer feedback play a much greater role into how WotC changes the game. I have no formal proof or numbers on this; I am just basing it on the fact the it is well known how much playtesting and Customer feedback went into 3E.

...Now some of the spells were patently out-of-line. Heal, Harm and Haste were good and sensible changes. Polymorph Other was justifiable, as was Hold Person (just).

Agreed.

They didn't stop there. The 'animal' buffs are now nearly worthless, Horrid Wilting is severely hampered, Disintegrate is barely worthwhile and *all* spells suffered from the degrading of Spell Focus.

I disagree here. The "animal" buffs (Cat's Grace, Bull's Strength, Endurance) were overpowered in 3E, and will be more balanced in 3.5E. The 1/hour level duration was far too much for a 2nd level spell. It made these buffs into a permanent ability increase when the caster level got to about ten.
I am glad WotC saw this and decided to make the change. The change from a random bonus to a fixed +4 is great, and makes the spell more reliable, predictible and powerful.

Regarding Disintegrate, the change is from death on a failed save to a flat xxd6 damage amount. I think WotC wants
insta-kill brought under control a bit. While Disintegrate should be fine against enemies up to a point, they don't want the Epic Level Red Dragon failing his Disintegrate save and dying. No problem there by me. Besides, the spell can be empowered/maximed now.

Spell Focus and Greater spell focus being reduced? Apparently WotC thought spell DCs were getting too high to keep up with saving throw bonuses, so they fixed it. They want folks to have chance to make their save. No problem here.

The problem was that WotC *were* responding to a legitimate concern, but the concern itself was misplaced. Most of the complaints about wizards being too powerful were based on supplements. Many of the 'smackdown-wizards' used official WotC supplements at best, and third-party supplements at worst. It was the supplements, not the core rules (with some exceptions, such as Haste) which made wizards too powerful. FRCS could add +10 to the DCs of wizards alone (Archmage, Red Wizard, Spellcasting Prodigy, Greater Spell Focus, Shadow Weave etc.). It was through supplements that characters achieved DCs in the 40s.

While I see your point here, I read somewhere on this board how there will be free conversion documents regarding the FRCS. No doubt these will aim at curbing spell DC bonuses from the various FR spell DC buffing feats. As for the other WotC non-core supplements, they will either get a free conversion document of their own or will be incompatible with 3.5E. As for third-party d20 supplements, any company worth their salt would release appropriate free conversion documents.

However, given that the most vocal lobby was the most 'active' gaming group, and given that they tended to have supplements (by dint of being more 'active') and more vocal (the average gamer doesn't talk about spell balance on messageboards) WotC decided to tone down the core rules. This was their mistake- they attacked the core rules, which were balanced (with exceptions, as noted above) rather than the supplements (which were too powerful). The net result (based on the evidence I've seen) is ironic. Those who continue to use supplements are *still* too powerful, because they use supplementary spells which are too powerful, supplementary feats which are too powerful and supplementary PrCs which are too powerful. The average, casual, core-rules-only gamer will find his wizard too weak. They have creamed off many of the wizard's best offensive spells. They have reduced his ability to help his team mates (buffs). They have reduced his overall offensive capabilities (Spell Focus).

In other words, WotC nerfed core rules to fix the 'supplement power inflation' which was becoming increasingly apparent. With the exceptions of some good and sensible fixes, they went too far. The core wizard is now too weak, the supplement-enhanced wizard is still too strong. A lot of problems created; only a few solved.

I disagree. The arcane caster's are getting re-balanced, and I think WotC is doing a good job at it. I also don't think WoTC listens as much to the Vocal message board users and uses more formal, intelligent customer feedback methods, such as playtesters.