D&D 3.x 3.5 Spells - Far Weaker?

[Testament]

Greetings!
For instance:
Heal/Harm 10 pts/ Level?
Polymorph Self?
Invisibility? (duraitron)
Eyebite is evil? (what the?)
Bulls Strength (1,2ed Strength)? (duration)
Fly? (duration, speed)
Wall of Force (sphere shape)
and many more.

Harm needed to be changed, urgently. As it was, it meant you were dead within the round, no save (caster delays until after Cleric, then sends two of their magic missiles your way). Now it still hurts, A LOT. Heal was brought into line with its mirror image.

Polymorph got better. It now grants TYPE, so you get all the benefits of immunity to crits and the like from turning into a plant, etc.

Invisibility's duration is more than sufficient, I really don't understand what people are complaining about.

Eyebite...I'm trying to figure that one out too.

The Animal buffs were hit too hard, 10 min/level would have been enough. 1/hr a level was stupid, as it meant a 12 level caster was, for all intents and purposes, perma-buffing a party.

Wall of Force losing its sphere was killing redundancy, you already had the Otilukes and Forcecage. And it was a better, cheaper bet than Forcecage.

Many of these spells have remained vertually unchanged for decades! They were the staples of a good spellcasters diet. Why change them?

Oh no, we can't change things that have been that way for so long! Oh no, even when the changes are reasonable and help kill non-caster redundancy!

Please.

 

[Infiniti2000]

I have to admit. This is the first time I've ever seen it spelled "nurf".

 

[UltimaGabe]

I have to admit. This is the first time I've ever seen it spelled "nurf".

You mean "nufred"?

 

[dcollins]

I've checked 2nd edition versions, and 1st editoin versions, and of course 3rd, and to me it seems the overall "power" of spellcasters has stedily decreased with time. Now with 3.5 it seems there is an even steeper decline.

Yes, you have it exactly correct.

I still can't get over the 3.5 spell changes, sometimes I wonder if they left any core spell untouched. Just this weekend I ran into these:

Black Tentacles: individual tentacles -> area attack
Cloud spells: 30 ft. spread -> 20 ft. spread.
Fly: 90 ft, 10 min/level -> 60 ft., 1 min/livel
Disintegrate: save-or-die -> level x 2d6 damage
Hold Person: one save -> save each round
Lightning Bolt: 2 areas -> 1 shorter area
Shield: +7 front cover -> +4 shield bonus
Teleport: Range anywhere -> level x 100 miles
etc.

I mean, were the "cloud" spells really overpowered at a 30 ft. spread? Geez.
http://home.earthlink.net/~danielrcollins1/down3-5.html

 

[Ero Gaki]

I have to agree that the nerfing of the spells sucks; almost all of them were fine in my book. Invisiblity needs an longer duration for its purpose in scouting/spying. Now it seems like it's only useful for sneak attacks. I feel that wizards decided that all of the spells were now going to be only combat effects. That's what the stupid one minute/level durations tell me, anyway.

The Harm/Heal spells being changed likewise sucks, as does disintergrate. But thankfully my DM is smart enough to use 3.0 spells.

 

[Eloi]

The changes just meant divine and arcane users were going to feel a pressing need to do spell research.

Researching a buff (attribute) spell so that it came in at 4th level instead of 2nd, and therefore could enjoy much greater freedom, was actually quite a bit of fun. Buffing with a bonus of +4 for an hour/level is once again possible, for a significant price.. even better is making the bonus unnamed.

When stacked with a nice potent 4th level buff like this, even the new wimpy 3.5 standard issue 2nd level attribute buffs have their time in the sun.

 

[MerricB]

One of the big reasons the spells were changed is that in 3e, you play wizards past 12th level.

Think about it: if disintegrate is "save or die", what then for 7th-9th level spells?

Cheers!

 

[Moon-Lancer]

casters are still the most powerfull classes. If they are still more powerfull after the nurf bat hit them, then i say it was for the better, Although it is strange about invibility. Now its more for powergameing becuse it is useless as a scout spell (as said above). Now it will only be used for sneak attack.

I think casters could take another nurf bat to the head and still be the strongest class. I am alittle worried that divine casters are too powerfull in 3.5 though. I wish they were more blanced or had more hinderences compaired to arcane casters.

 

[Stalker0]

Y
I mean, were the "cloud" spells really overpowered at a 30 ft. spread? Geez.
http://home.earthlink.net/~danielrcollins1/down3-5.html

Cloud Kill got a huge bump in power in 3.5. It used to absolutely blow, it had all these HD restrictions, and everytime you passed the save nothing happened. In 3.5, going through the cloud means your taking con damage, its a question of how much.

Its a nasty spell now, I have no problems with a shorter spread

 

[Li Shenron]

What is the consensus here regarding sed nurfing?

First of all, there is not much of a consensus...

Many of these spells have remained vertually unchanged for decades! They were the staples of a good spellcasters diet. Why change them?

Overall, there is a small shift in focus towards more combat, and less focus on what happens between combat. This is reflected in shortening very many spells' durations so that now they won't cover more than one combat.

I didn't like this change. True that there were spells which were very strong in combat (ability buffs, fly spells, invisibilities), but for me they were more fun to be used outside combat, including cases when you needed them for an extended amount of time.

Harm, Heal, Haste were also powerful. But the 3.5 change went too far (Harm and Heal would have been fixed enough with a ST, IMHO), and now these spells are very different: Harm for example is "just another damaging spell".

The purpose of the 3.5 were to "balance" spells with each other better, but mostly around combat and nothing else, because that is what gamers of the present day want most of the times. For me this balancing tasted like flattening, and some spells are now definitely boring.
Perhaps the original sin was in the choice of changing the spell instead of bumping the level up, because they wanted to keep more compatibility with 3.0 books (which anyway they reprinted almost all at the end...); I would have preferred to keep the old nature of spells, and forget about a compatibility which most 3.5 gamers anyway don't care much about.