Converting to 3.5 woes...

[Dinkeldog]

Here's an idea: Make a new self-only version of Fly that still lasts for 10 minutes/level.

Or a feat that lets you take a spell with a range of touch and turn it into a personal spell and bumps the duration one category (1 minute/level -> 10 minutes/level -> 1 hour/level ->24 hours) at no cost.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Re: Killing dragons

But people seem to have a great knack for missing the point in people's posts. The point was that the level 18 fighter could do 5 times the damage as anyone else in the party.

He would have made the point much better if the character had been made with the standard rulebooks though. And lets face, everyone knows that it is technically possible to make "abusive" builds - that's just what the smackdown thread is for after all.

 

[Celtavian]

The problem is that they're both too good for such a long duration. I'd love to see some long-duration spells that boost AC (other than Mage Armor) and hit points (see Andy's spoiler thread - False Life is in the new PHB) rather than ones that make me nearly invincible* to physical combat. That would work great with the shorter term buffs like Mirror Image

I personally have only had trouble with Teleport being used to avoid encounters once. I used a frustrating monster (the new bone devil) and so the players teleported back home. Fortunately, they don't pull the "kill one monster, go home and rest, then go back next day with full spells" cheese, but it's still possible under the rules.

* IME most opponents have both ranged and melee weapons, but their ranged weapons are usually much weaker than their melee weapons (eg lower attack bonus, lower damage, and so forth). On the other hand, flying opponents are just nasty, since they can usually out-fly me

All I can say is that I, Andy and probably several other folks have a different view of wizards. I don't personally mind wizards having long duration spells that take them out of melee combat such as Fly or Improved Invisibility. Wizards wield magic, magic is supposed to be very powerful.

In my perfect campaign world, a single wizard will kill a single fighter about 99% of the time unless that fighter has some real nice equipment for keeping him alive. I would prefer that wizards were walking powerhouses that people feared because their magic is awsome and powerful.

With short duration anti-combat spells, that just isn't the case given that you could just wait a wizard out until his spell duration is gone and not have to wait to long. I understand that this would not happen in most campaigns, but it would happen in ours. Our DM would have no trouble sending an advance force to get the wizard using his spells up and then sending in the main force to mop up the depleted party. Longer duration spells help survivability in our campaign, but probably don't matter in most.

 

[Michael Tree]

That's WHY they converted to d20. That's the point. So that you have more options. Therefore, the core rules need to be solid, so that as much of the additional stuff as possible is also stable.

No matter how stable the core rules are, there will always be unbalanced non-core material. Nothing WotC can do can stop other companies from publishing unbalanced materials, or players from coming up with super-specialized uber-combos.

Here's a new feat: Super-Duper Specialization.
Prerequisites: Having a DM who will allow you to take this turkey of a feat.
Effect: With your chosen weapon, you do +20 damage. On a critical hit you automatically kill your opponent.

So, because I just wrote this feat, does the core rules need to be re-balanced? No way. As in your example, the core rules aren't unbalanced, the non-core material you're using on top of them is.

Here is the point: A 18th level fighter should not be able to kill a base CR 25 monster in 2 or 3 rounds.

That isn't an 18th level fighter. Seriously. It's a character that relies on munchkiny non-core spells, dubious items, and a dubious prestige class. It isn't unbalanced because of the core rules, its unbalanced because of the other stuff added to it.

 

[Fenes 2]

In my perfect campaign world, a single wizard will kill a single fighter about 99% of the time unless that fighter has some real nice equipment for keeping him alive. I would prefer that wizards were walking powerhouses that people feared because their magic is awsome and powerful.

I'd only play in such a campaign if
a) Everyone was playing a wizard
b) wizard was a class limited to NPCs
c) I really wanted to play the cohort/henchman/flunky/servant non-spellcaster
or
d) combat was as rare as a blue moon and the game centered on social encounters, intrigue and political machinations.

As an aside, in my campaign world, people fear high-level wizards because they are awesome and powerful - but people fear experienced knights or any other high-level characters for the same reasons. I see no reason to make PC wizards that more powerful than other PC-classes of equal level.

 

[Gnarlo]

With short duration anti-combat spells, that just isn't the case given that you could just wait a wizard out until his spell duration is gone and not have to wait to long. I understand that this would not happen in most campaigns, but it would happen in ours. Our DM would have no trouble sending an advance force to get the wizard using his spells up and then sending in the main force to mop up the depleted party. Longer duration spells help survivability in our campaign, but probably don't matter in most.

That would cause a rethinking of DMing style for me. It's also a known fact that a DM can always defeat a party; just spontaneously have the critter's mate coming back from hunting and meet the party in the front door, or let the BBEG be the Chosen of his particular god and have an avatar or two show up.

Your above mention of tactics would show me as a DM that I might need to back off on verisimilitude in the interest of fun (just like when I used to use critical hit damage tables). I know that I can come up with situations that, while realistic, might be very frustrating for my players and eventually cause them to drift away from the game; knowing this, I have changed my style from time to time. These are my family and friends I play with after all, we all want to have fun. YDMMMV.

/gnarlo!

edited cause spelling iz hard

 

[Grog]

Re: Killing dragons

Also, as has been repeated many times, it was already fixed in that campaign. The point was that there are areas in 3E that are easily taken advantage of. Only one example was given to help illustrate the point. 3.5 edition will help the issue. No, 3.5 edition won't eliminate that scenario entirely (especially when using splat books), but that has never been the claim. It was claimed that it is frustrating to have to fix things so often. With 3.5 you should have to fix things like that less often.

And the point I made was that 3.5 won't help that issue very much at all. 3.5 won't power that character down very much - the DM will still need to use house rules to fix things. What 3.5 will do is mess with a lot of other characters who aren't problem characters.

 

[BryonD]

I don't personally mind wizards having long duration spells that take them out of melee combat such as Fly or Improved Invisibility. Wizards wield magic, magic is supposed to be very powerful.

Magic is very powerful. Even in D&D magic is very powerful.
However, in D&D a L2 spell is less powerful than a L3 spell. Just saying that "magic is supposed to be very powerful" does not justify ignoring the appropraite power of a spell for its level.

Implying that someone wanting a L2 spell to be correctly powered for a L2 spell means that person does not think magic should be "very powerful" is deeply flawed reasoning.

In my perfect campaign world, a single wizard will kill a single fighter about 99% of the time unless that fighter has some real nice equipment for keeping him alive. I would prefer that wizards were walking powerhouses that people feared because their magic is awsome and powerful.

Ah-ha!!. Well, if you enjoy playing that way, then more power to you. Someone was recently talking to me about a system (Ars-Magica??) that is built around this archetype. Maybe it is designed more to your taste.

But the design goal of D&D is that a wizard and fighter of the same level should be in the ballpark of the same power level. If you do not like that, then fine. But they have made no error in judgement or design when they work towards their established criteria instead of your personal preference. Complaining ad-naseum that they did a bad job is silly when they were not trying to do the job you desire.

Instead, the burden of house ruling the system to meet your preference lies solely with you.

With short duration anti-combat spells, that just isn't the case given that you could just wait a wizard out until his spell duration is gone and not have to wait to long. I understand that this would not happen in most campaigns, but it would happen in ours. Our DM would have no trouble sending an advance force to get the wizard using his spells up and then sending in the main force to mop up the depleted party. Longer duration spells help survivability in our campaign, but probably don't matter in most.

If the ELs for the advance force and the mop up force are approximately correct, then this will be a non-issue. By any set of rules you provide, I can design a series of encounters that can get creamed by a party, present a decent challenge for a party, or handily destroy the party. The specifics of the rules will not change that.

 

[Dimwhit]

I'm still working on a fix for an 18th level fighter PC who can kill a CR 25 dragon in 3 rounds, by himself.

I'm sorry, but if that's happening, there is some SERIOUS munchkinism going on, because there's no way that should be doable. I'd like to see how a single 18th level fighter could do that in 3 rounds, or at all. I'll bet the list of outrageously uber magic items is impressive.