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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eldren" data-source="post: 1572499" data-attributes="member: 16555">As Hyp can likely attest (no doubt with significant frustration), I've always been pretty vocal on the WotC boards about having no problems with the 3.0 Haste.  I'm currently running my party through this module as well, and the Haste has definitely helped my foes challenge the party; they're all 9th level, and twinked to the Nth degree.  The foes have a challenge hitting the freaking Shaman in the party because of his use of "Divine Shield", combined with his having purchased a +5 shield.  He's got an impressive Armor Class, no doubt. I think that 3.0 Haste was just fine the way it was written; yes, it allowed spellcasters to get off more than one spell a round, and got even nastier when they started throwing in quickened magic, but that's part of the strategic design of a spellcaster.  They are the "Fighters" of the spellcasting world; the difference is, what the Fighter does with their huge selection of feats, the Wizard and other spellcasters do with their spells.  For example, consider this:  I just finished playing a Paladin/Knight of the Chalice wielding a +1 Evil Outsider Bane Holy greataxe.  She had the feat "Sanctify Martial Strike" from the Book of Exalted Deeds.  With the casting of the spell Divine Sacrifice, and giving up 10 hit points (which she could easily spare, having had 225 hit points at 17th level), she was doing a simple d12+8+11d6+1d4 of damage on her first hit against an evil outsider, which we're facing many of at this point.  With the average of a d12 being approximately 6, and the average of a d6 being approximately 3 (yes, I know it's actually 3.5, but we'll drop the fractions here and work with actual dice rolling), and the average of a d4 being 2, she was dealing, on that first successful strike, 49 points of damage on average.  That's from a single strike.  She had three more attacks to make in that round, and those attacks against an evil outsider would still be at d12+8+6d6+1d4, for an average of 34 points of damage more on each successful strike.  So in one round, she's dealing an average, on four successful hits with having cast nothing more than a single spell the previous round, a grand total of, averaged, 151 points of damage. The Wizard, meanwhile, could bust off with a maximized Fireball, perhaps altered with the Archmage High Arcana ability "Mastery of Elements" to deal sonic damage (since so few things have sonic resistance), and if they were using 3.0 Haste, and cast two maximized Fireball spells in a round, would only deal 120 points of damage for the round.  Throw in another spell with a quickened Fireball, which likely isn't maximized at that point, for an average of 30 more points of damage, and you're talking an average of 150 points of damage from three spells, compared with four attacks, and two of the spells were maximized. Sounds pretty balanced to me. I realize there are "deadly" combos that the PCs could play with when using 3.0 Haste, everything from a True Strike/Disintegrate combo to even True Strike/Harm (if we're again talking 3.0) from a Cleric with a single level of Wizard or Sorceror (or the use of the spell Anyspell from the Forgotten Realms), but the bottom line is that for the most part, the rules provided just enough for a Dungeon Master to challenge his or her players in spite of their use of 3.0 Haste that it just shouldn't have been an issue.  Intelligent players, even those on the cusp of superior intelligence who recognized the easily-spottable tactic of using 3.0 Haste, should encourage a Dungeon Master to become better at their craft, not to nerf the powers in the first place. But it's an old argument; 3.5 did what it did to Haste, and most people either deal with it or house-rule it back to 3.0 (as I've done).  It doesn't mitigate the fact that 3.5 went too far in nerfing Haste and several other spells.  I was honestly surprised to even find that a few of the individuals from the "Nerf Magic Foundation" on the WotC boards thought WotC went too far with nerfing Haste and a couple of other spells.  It's odd to find your "enemies" fighting on your side.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Ultimately, you're going to have to do what makes the most sense with your campaign, particularly as it relates to making City of the Spider Queen 3.5 compliant.  But for the most part, I've just found that it doesn't require a lot of adjustment.  Most of the spells being used are of the same name, and the given rule for 3.5 is that if 3.5 hasn't specifically updated something, the 3.0 version stands until that something is updated, and a lot of the material from the Forgotten Realms just hasn't been updated to 3.5 yet.  This makes running COTSQ a lot easier. My party is just now at the point where they faced off against the small bit of House Morcane left over, so they still have a long way to go....  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /></blockquote>

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