3.0 spells broken? BAH!

[Renfield]

Why shouldn't Sorcerers overshadow Fighters? They are essentially arcane spellcasters meant for combat. Not that they don't have any other use. Still they're a variant of Wizard like the Druid is something of a cleric of nature and a Paladin is a Holy Fighter, so why shouldn't they have the massive damage dealing capabilities wizards have?

In my campaign the two spellcasters favor Sorcerers, though one wanted to have variety in the sort of spells he could cast so he decided to play a necromancer. Did a damn good job of it too and still got wounded something nasty more than a few times. A combat heavy Sorcerer played by a player who's good at min/maxing and RPing and he still got ripped to shreds by a troll that got nice and into melee. The Barbarian PC and NPC's were faring far better than the spellcasters were and dealing plenty of damage to boot.

 

[Thanee]

Barbarians are incredible at lower levels!

And they probably still are at mid-high levels...

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

Few buff spells have visible effects, so there's no reason to expect the enemy caster will know to cast dispel magic.

Yeah, it's kinda annoying if the NPCs cast dispels precisely at the most-buffed PCs sometimes, without any means to discern the usefulness of their actions (or to even determine the classes of the PCs). That's something the DM has to keep in mind, even though it makes some buffs even more powerful that way.

Of course, once PCs start casting spells in combat, the chance is good, that they become the target for any dispelling attempts!

Bye
Thanee

 

[S'mon]

Why shouldn't Sorcerers overshadow Fighters?

Err...

I guess if you want Sorcerers to always overshadow Fighters in combat, that's fine. Since they can probably do other things too (Fly, Teleport etc) they will also tend to overshadow Fighters in all other fields of endeavour. It doesn't fit with my campaign world, so I was glad to see the 3.5e changes.

 

[ruleslawyer]

And, um, why should I "be careful" using the term "broken"? I'll call anything I like broken whether it has limited application or not.

Because "potentially overpowered under particular conditions" is NOT the same as "completely unworkable and totally destructive to game balance."

Anyway, I really don't think that 3.5 haste is "broken" or even particularly overpowered. It's a good spell, but only if you have the type of party (i.e., a melee-heavy one) that particularly benefits from this type of buff. It definitely boosts a party's average damage, but no more than a couple of enlarge person or even bull's strength (3.5) spells do.

 

[Toras]

Being a fan of 3.0, as it stood (though we did have a will save for Harm), I can honestly say that the buffing thing has never really been an issue. Haste for fighters came from boots of speed, and the archmage only used it for big fights.
The only person who regularly "abused" haste, was the bladesinger. Also Shield, Cats Grace, etc. were also used by him.

Party buffs were more along the lines of, hey nobody die. (Deathward, Holy Aura, and such). I, as the front line fighter regularly abuse my bracers of enlarge, combined with a keen mercurial Greatsword. But even then, we barely keep our heads afloat. See we play planescape, and are partially based out of Sigil, so we regularly have to deal with things that would kick our asses.