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

[Vladamere]

Greetings!
I just got my hands on a 3.5 Players Handbook and was disapointed to see many of my favroite spells have been, well, er.... Nerfed. (see signature). What is the consensus here regarding sed nerfing? 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. Here and there I find increases, but they are outnumbered easily 4 to 1.

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.

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

Does anyone Agree/disagree?

(edit for my super-AWESOME spelling, thank you so very much.)

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

More like, far more sensible. 3.5 corrected some of the glaring problems found in 3.0 spells. Overall, good changes.

 

[Peter Gibbons]

What is the consensus here regarding sed nurfing?

For the most part, the changes were badly needed.

 

[Vladamere]

Yeah, there were some that needed fixing, like Etheral Jaunt ,Haste, and Shield, but why Fly, whose 10min/level duration has remained unchanged sence 1978? Why my beloved Heal? Why! WHY! (shakes fists at sky)(begins sobbing uncontrolably....)(blubler)(sniff..)

 

[Crothian]

All good changes and needed for a while. Even with the weakening of spells, magic is still by far the strongest force out there.

 

[Tellerve]

What about Sleep though? Why was it so wrong in 3.0?

Tellerve

 

[Tarangil]

I liked the origional polymorphs. They were far more applicable to other uses besides combat before.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Don't worry about magic being nerfed, Complete Arcane came along and brought in a whole new batch of broken spells -- in this case, no-SR energy or force damage. Golems' "magic immunity" is now worthless.

 

[Corsair]

Don't worry about magic being nerfed, Complete Arcane came along and brought in a whole new batch of broken spells -- in this case, no-SR energy or force damage. Golems' "magic immunity" is now worthless.

Luckily house rules quickly solved that problem for me...

 

[Victim]

Heal and Harm were changed because the 3.0 versions didn't take into account the vast increase in HP for high end creature. In 1e/2e, 200 HP was alot even for a big dragon. If you think of that as the high end, then Heal/Harm would do about 210 max. In 3rd, the big dragons have over 600 HP. Characters can have over 200 - heck, my wizard had ~160. So the effectiveness of those spells increased about 3X in going from 2nd to third. Those spells needed to be changed. Harm got a slight buff now too; it can kill instead of dropping to 1d4 HP if the victim fails the save.

The Wall of Force change sucks. The problem was that the sphere version was used like Force Cage 2 levels lower and 1500 GP cheaper - a no save time out. They could have just put a Reflex on it like the Otiluke's sphere line.

Durations were nerfed across the board, probably because everyone was running around buffed to hell and gone. However, shortening the duration of the best buffs increases the difference between a buffed party and an unbuffed one.

Also, multi purpose spells get axed (like Eyebite) or split into a bunch of different spells. So much for versatile spells.