Silence - Broken? & My House Rule

[boredgremlin]

Silence is good for a 2nd level spell. I think its on the high end of usefullness for that level but not overpowered. If you think it is though there are several solutions. You could give it a saving throw, or maybe make it a 3rd level spell if you want to make it less effective.

 

[PaulGreystoke]

Silence is good for a 2nd level spell. I think its on the high end of usefullness for that level but not overpowered. If you think it is though there are several solutions. You could give it a saving throw, or maybe make it a 3rd level spell if you want to make it less effective.

The spell is fine except when used with the ready action to stop enemy casters from casting spells. Our solution was to lengthen the casting time for silence to a full round action when not targeted on an individual. Since a character can't ready anything longer than a standard action, this meant that the non-targeted variant of the spell couldn't be readied. If the caster wanted to ready the spell, he had to use the option of targeting it on an individual, who then would get a Will save to negate the effect.

 

[boredgremlin]

i like that, simple and it solves the problem.

 

[Halcyon]

I agree with both here, but I don't think interpretting a saving throw for creatures brought into the area contradicts the text. Even if it does *a little*, it makes a huge difference in balancing out this spell by granting a save. Neither the spellcaster or the creatures lose out in any significant way, it just gets balanced. For example, why cast it on an area with this ruling? Simple, ALL creatures must make a save in that area. Why cast it on a creature directly? Again, simple, the creature alone will take the silenced effect wherever it goes. Both are advantageous in different situations. By applying a Will save for all creatures, the BBEG that is a spellcaster can make his Will save and not have to worry about taking extra feats and sacrificing high level spell slots to out-do low level spellcasters.

Keep in mind if you change silence like that there is almost never a reason NOT to cast silence on a creature. If you're going to cast it in an area the creature is in, you may as well target the creature since either way it gets a save, except since it is the target if it fails it is probably screwed. With the RAW, casters using silence are highly encouraged to hang the effect near a target, allowing them to move away with the tradeoff that they get no save. So the caster moves out of the relatively small radius as then uses a standard action to cast. As for the poor caster in an itty bitty box of a room syndrome, well as a previous poster stated...casters in close combat who have no way to create space/obstruction between themselves and attackers are most likely screwed to begin with. This is analagous saying that movement inhibiting spells should be gimped because close combat characters affected by them are relatively helpless. Entangle isnt fair because even though they get a save if they make it they are still slowed. Seriously, thats silly. Of course some spells are better against some classes than others.
As for the issue of readying the spell, that does kind of suck, but there are several ways around it. 1v1 if someone keeps using readied actions to silence you and you are unable to cast/get stopped it's just a standoff.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The spell is fine except when used with the ready action to stop enemy casters from casting spells. Our solution was to ...

Any reason why you didn't use Lesser Globe of Invulnerability as a counter as I suggested earlier?

It is, after all, an obvious and complete defence against silence being cast upon you.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I would say that silence is broken if the person/people using it choose to make it so. A party that takes a lot of silence spells can shut down an enemy spellcaster pretty easily and a whole bunch of mooks can do the same to party spellcasters.

But the real problem with silence comes from the ready action. All you need to do is ready a silence spell to an enemy spellcaster's casting and then drop the silence 5 feet behind them. Presto! No more spell. AND the spellcaster just wasted their action (since you waited until they started casting).

Mind you, I've never experienced this problem in a game but the potential is most definitely there...

 

[PaulGreystoke]

Any reason why you didn't use Lesser Globe of Invulnerability as a counter as I suggested earlier?

It is, after all, an obvious and complete defence against silence being cast upon you.

Clerics & Druids don't get LGoI. Sorcerors & Wizards weren't the only victims of the readied non-targeted Silence. While the Arcanists had a viable counter strategy, the Divinists didn't. And after I (as DM) used this trick against the party Cleric & Druid a few times - followed by the party then using it against my NPC casters too - we decided that there was a problem that needed to be fixed. We didn't want to see the majority of spell combats revolving around the use of this one tactic.