Brainstorming on spell fixes

[Empirate]

Lots of stuff posted here while I was away, can't possibly reply to everything (though I'm tempted) - so I'll just reply to the last post.

From about 5th or 6th level on, no 3E caster need worry whether his spells will last out the combat, regardless of spell level. You can call that a bad thing, but I'm inclined to see spell durations differently. For buff spells, I'd say everybody can agree with the following:

1 round: usually cast as a swift action, this kind of spell is just a little ace up your sleeve. Use it only if you can get the max effect from it.

rounds/level: you can only use this spell in combat. Good one to cast in a surprise round. This spell will impact on your action economy.

minutes/level: you can use this spell in-combat, or if you have some kind of forewarning (break down the door yourself, pre-buffed). You cannot use this spell for more than one combat, though.

10 minutes/level: you can use this spell to prepare for a difficult hour or two. So sometimes, you'll be able to clear out a whole dungeon with this. Sometimes not. But the chance it'll see more than one combat is actually very good.

hours/level: this is your standard pre-cast buff. There's usually no excuse for not having it up before combat starts, unless you're caught asleep in the wee hours of morning or something like that.


For offensive spells, rounds/level is almost always enough. You can get by with much shorter durations, depending on the effect. Longer durations are often pointless.


I actually like this, as it gives you a range of spell types, and you don't have to keep in mind lots of different durations for individual spells. Instead, you can lump them into broad categories in your mind, so it's much easier to keep an overview of what to cast when.

I also can't see why higher level spells (which are supposed to be more powerful) shoudl have shorter durations for you than lower level spells. I mean, I can see it from a roleplaying perspective, but mechanically, it makes no sense to me.

 

[akbearfoot]

Generally speaking, at higher levels, monsters tend to have more and more of an arsenal to use. Just as PCs do. Defensive spells SHOULD obviate some of those threats, for at least some of the PCs. Otherwise, there would be a lot more TPKs. Throw half a dozen Spawns of Kyuss(CR like 5 or 6) at a party of 15th level PCs that dont have any fear immunity and see what happens. Likewise, when a bunch of outsiders that cast charm/dominate show up and all they need to do to win the fight is get the mage to fail 1 will save. It is nowhere near the same magnitude as what happens when a melee character fails a save.


Nerfing mind blank, or heroes feast for example does not make the game more balanced or more fun...it will just shrink the 15 minute adventure day even furthur. As soon as those buffs go away, the party runs for the hills to rest and get spells back. I think that is why the designers gave them long durations intentionally.

The 19th level campaign we're running right now, we're in a very bad place. Almost every encounter lately has been against gargantuan/colossal monsters with 40+HD, poison, energy/ability drain, fear auras, breath weapons, and save or die effects. All the save DCs are high 20s-mid 30s. We've been double stacking some buffs because the only 'wimpy' monsters we are encountering cast greater dispel magic, and finger of death. And at the moment its all taking place flying over a lake of green slime.

So yeah...every character standard has mind blank, heroes feast, Death ward, fly/air walk, freedom of movement, and at least 1 person with true seeing. Any of those things missing, and we probably couldn't get past a single encounter without at least 1 death.

Earlier I mentioned Faerie Fire being OP and you asked why. Because its a first level area effect that completely nullifies a host of spells that are higher level than itself. Blur, Displacement, Improved Invisibility, etc...overpowered by definition But it rarely ever gets used, and it doesn't unbalance things when it is used, so why bother fixing it.

 

[Celebrim]

akbearfoot: I'm not going to disagree with you about what happens when you play RAW according to the most obvious path. I've already on this thread argued much the same thing as you. And yes, as I said, under RAW you absolutely have to have the absolute immunities at high level.

I will simply say that I've looked at the whole of the problem. I'm not arguing for 'nerfing' mind blank as you put it in isolation. If that was the only change I was making, then sure you end up where you say. But, my point is that when you play by RAW you end up in something of a bad place IMO even if you don't add changes. Fighters shouldn't have to depend on a stack of 5-6 buffs simply to represent a moderate threat to an equal level caster. The game shouldn't be so binary as 'if I don't have mind blank, I can't make my save, but if I do have mind blank I can't fail my save'.

So I made a lot of changes, some of which I've talked about. For example:

"All the save DCs are high 20s-mid 30s."

I've talked about that earlier when I said that because the DC of saving vs. an attack goes up by 1 per 2HD, saving vs. a monsters abilities becomes increasingly problimatic. Guess what? In my game saves don't go up by 1 per 2HD. Those 40HD monsters? The saves versus their attacks would drop by as much 20 DC points in my game. DC's above 20 are fairly rare in my game. Granted, with low magic, non-fungible items, and no magic supermart (all near necessities I admit in the standard game to ensure you can face opponents of the standard DC), your best saves might not be quite as good but you certainly won't ever find yourself in the situation of having a high level character that can only pass a save by rolling a 20 - something not unthinkable under the RAW.

Throw half a dozen Spawns of Kyuss(CR like 5 or 6) at a party of 15th level PCs that dont have any fear immunity and see what happens.

In my game, that's a walk over (even if we don't assume, as I would, that saving vs. one provides protection from all for 24 hours). Not only does the default Will save DC drop from 14 to 12, but all fear effects are translated into Fear Checks (similar to Ravenloft) so even if a 1 was thrown there is a good chance that no effect would be indicated on a 15th level character and only rarely would a 15th level character be as much as shaken. Not only that, but if it was really a critical situation, someone would spend a destiny point to reroll a failed save. Characters - regardless of class - are assumed to inherently have significant resources and not be utterly dependent on a particular buff being available.

Likewise, when a bunch of outsiders that cast charm/dominate show up and all they need to do to win the fight is get the mage to fail 1 will save. It is nowhere near the same magnitude as what happens when a melee character fails a save.

See, I see that as a problem that is significant enough that simply saying something like, "Well, then they should have Mind Blank up.", isn't sufficient to patch the problem. A more extensive reworking is a necessary to fix that basic problem, and once you have that reworking then one of the minor upshots of that is that you don't need absolute immunities. I started out as among one of my many goals removing that need for absolute immunities, then, when I'd worked out how to do it, I removed them. I'm not just doing this at random with no thought put into it.

Nerfing mind blank, or heroes feast for example does not make the game more balanced or more fun...it will just shrink the 15 minute adventure day even furthur. As soon as those buffs go away, the party runs for the hills to rest and get spells back.

Right. Which is why the '15 minute adventure day' concievably exists anyway. But, what if you aren't 100% dependent on going nova with a bunch of spells and having a huge stack of buffs? What if you simply deescelated the power creep? What if you backed down from the fight between the irresitable force and the immovable object? You end up with a full adventuring day that doesn't depend on super powered buffs. It's nice to have them, but if they aren't there for some reason (dispel magic, party composition, etc.) you aren't 100% screwed.

I think that is why the designers gave them long durations intentionally.

I have no problem with the durations. I have a problem with the fact that the spell prevents you from being scared by the God of Fear unless you state 'This attack can penetrate even a mindblank'. I have a problem with the fact that this sort of thing makes non-casters utterly dependent on casters. I have a problem in that it utterly restricts party composition.

Earlier I mentioned Faerie Fire being OP and you asked why. Because its a first level area effect that completely nullifies a host of spells that are higher level than itself. Blur, Displacement, Improved Invisibility, etc...overpowered by definition

No. Defense always has to be more accessible than offense or it isn't worth taking. That's because defense is passive. The counter to something always has to be more accessible and more powerful than the thing it counters or its not very good defense. If you don't encounter one of those abilities being used against you, your faerie fire is useless. And since you can't know what particular threats you will face, if counters cost more than the thing that they counter then it's usually better to simply not try to defend. Weak, situational counters will be overpowered by cheaper and more effective threats. And not only that, counters aren't a path to victory. So even when you do pull off a counter successfully, you still have to win the fight. They aren't win buttons the way a threat presented with no counter is. One of the big problems with D&D magic in general and the 3e implementation in particular is that typically the counter to some thing is less accessible than the thing it counters. The counter should be able to nullify something stronger than itself, or it really won't get used.

And it really isn't used very much anyway, suggesting that it is not in fact overpowered.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I largely agree. I also agree that the Persistent Spell feat as written is just ripe for abuse.

The way HERO gets around that is by making you jump through each hoop, every time. If I want to make a PC have a "Shroud of Flame" power, that would be an Energy Blast (no range) or HTH Killing Attack. Simple. However, if I want the SoF to be something the PC can do at will without draining his Endurance (the attribute which powers all abilities), I'd have to incrementally buy down the End cost until it was zero... which costs more the more powerful the SoF. THEN and only then could I think about making it persistent.

To put it in D&D terms, Persistent would ONLY work with spells that were of continuous duration. You could make it work with other spells, but only after the duration has been altered to continuous. The cost to do so would be non-trivial.

 

[Ashtagon]

How hard would Persistent Spell suck if it was changed to alter the duration by one 'step' (rounds/level > minutes/level > 10 minutes/level > hours/level)? It'd require a bunch of side notes to explain spells with unusual durations, but could be manageable.

 

[Celebrim]

How hard would Persistent Spell suck if it was changed to alter the duration by one 'step' (rounds/level > minutes/level > 10 minutes/level > hours/level)? It'd require a bunch of side notes to explain spells with unusual durations, but could be manageable.

It would probably look something like this:

PERSISTENT SPELL [METAMAGIC, WIZARD]
You can cast spells which last much longer than normal.
Prerequisite: Extend Spell
Benefit: You can extend the duration of a spell by a very large degree, to a maximum of 24 hours. The difficulty in doing so depends on the duration of the base spell. Consider the following table.


Category Units of duration
1 Rounds or Rounds/level
2 Minutes or Minutes/level
3 10 Minutes or 10 Minutes/level
4 Hours or Hours/level
5 One day

A persistent spell that raises the duration of a spell by one category uses up a spell slot 3 levels higher than normal. For each additional category of improvement, the persistent spell uses up a spell slot 1 additional level higher than normal. For example, a 1st level spell with a duration of 1 round/level can be cast as a 4th level persistent spell with a duration of 1minute/level, or as a 5th level persistent spell with a duration of 10 minutes/level, or with a duration of 24 hours as a 7th level persistent spell. Persistent Spell can never increase the duration of a spell beyond 24 hours, and has no effect on spells with instantaneous duration or durations of longer than one day. Persistent spell cannot be applied to spells with a duration of concentration (though see Stable Spell).

And it wouldn't suck. In fact, it so doesn't suck, that I'm worried I've not been conservative enough.

 

[Empirate]

Actually, your fix only makes Persistent Spell more powerful and versatile, Celebrim. Normally, you'd increase spell level by 6 regardless of the original duration. With your version, you only increase spell level by 6 if you want to make a rounds/lvl spell last all day. You can easily make that less if you're just going for hours/lvl, which will most often suffice. I believe your version Persistent Spell feat would see quite a few overjoyed Clerics...

To me, Persistent Spell never seemed overpowered or broken. What is problematic is the fact that there are so many metamagic cost reducers/nullifiers out there.
Divine Metamagic, Incantatrix' Metamagic Effect, Spelldancing, and all the kinds of Instant Metamagic (Incantatrix 3.0, Halruaan Adept, Anima Mage...) make sure you can easily get one or two persistent buffs without paying a real cost.
Easy Metamagic, Metamagic School Focus, Arcane Thesis and others decrease the spell level increase, thus detracting from Persistent Spell's big balancing factor.

In my opinion, those are the issues to look at, not the feat itself.

 

[Celebrim]

Actually, your fix only makes Persistent Spell more powerful and versatile, Celebrim. Normally, you'd increase spell level by 6 regardless of the original duration.

Really? (*Looks it up. Really, it is.*) I thought for sure that you increased it by 4 under the stock rules. Was it 4 in 3.0 and then 6 in 3.5? It's been so long since I played with any rules but my own I don't really remember if I just got it wrong or they changed it underneath me.

However, if that's the problem it would be quite easy to bump up the base modifier by 2 so that the minimum bump is increase level by 5. I don't know if that would be necessary, because of what you say next.

To me, Persistent Spell never seemed overpowered or broken. What is problematic is the fact that there are so many metamagic cost reducers/nullifiers out there. Divine Metamagic, Incantatrix' Metamagic Effect, Spelldancing, and all the kinds of Instant Metamagic (Incantatrix 3.0, Halruaan Adept, Anima Mage...) make sure you can easily get one or two persistent buffs without paying a real cost.

I have always been very skeptical of anything that reduced the cost of metamagic and none of what you mention is available in my campaign.

I've only seen one implementation of reducing the cost of metamagic that seemed even remotely reasonable, and that was a PrC that let you reduce the cost of metamagic at the price of not advancing your spellcasting ability at all. But, I feel that even that has some negative side effects.

In my opinion, those are the issues to look at, not the feat itself.

I kinda started from the assumption that the cleric, druid, and wizard were already extremely powerful on there own without multiclassing or bumping up power. Therefore, anything that made them even more powerful was extremely suspect. The only reasonable justification for something that helps a full spellcaster is something that provides for improvements in a strategy or flavor that is normally suboptimal for a spellcaster.

 

[Empirate]

Persistent Spell was indeed changed from 4 to 6 spell levels increase in the 3.0-->3.5 transition.

I don't think metamagic cost reducers are necessarily a bad thing. Most metamagic feats are not really worth their spell level increase except in very specific circumstances, or when used with just the right spell. Usually, something more worthwhile will be available at the increased spell level. Empowered Magic Missile, or Fireball? Up to you, but I'd opt for Fireball. Rapid Summon Monster III, or Summon Monster IV? The latter seems better to me in spite of the longer casting time. And don't even get me started on the extremely circumstantial Silent Spell, Enlarge Spell, or Transdimensional Spell (for f***'s sake, what were they thinking?).

As it is, the only worthwhile metamagics in my book are Sculpt, Extend, Quicken, also maybe Split Ray, Empower and Still (I'd list Invisible Spell as well, if it wasn't so outright broken/under-clarified). And even these are only really worthwhile on the right spells.

I believe most metamagic feats should do away with spell level increase entirely (or to a large degree for the more powerful ones), but be only usable a certain number of times per day. How does 1/day per metamagic feat you have sound?

 

[Ranes]

How does 1/day per metamagic feat you have sound?

Could you clarify? For example, if a wizard has quicken spell and empower spell, can he quicken or empower twice a day or are you suggesting he can use each metamagic feat once?

I wouldn't have a problem with either interpretation.