Displacement - a bit wussy eh? Mirror image too...

[Voss]

A reroll isn't a weak power. Ever.

Rerolls scale with level because the things they negate scale with level.

But... you can get a reroll at level 1 or level 16. If they're equally awesome, something is seriously wrong. Especially since the 1st level power is apparently better.


@ Dausuul- actually, 4e seems to scale more than 3e did. 3e spells usually didn't scale. Level 1 spells were largely irrelevant at higher level, and save DCs quickly become level inappropriate. 4e doesn't do that- most things look like they scale now, and attacks (replacing save DCs) definitely do. Sleep, for example, is effective across multiple levels.

But if you're claiming that they're level independent, they can really all be assigned to level 1. What will really matter is the opportunity cost of the power- what you have to give up to get the reroll. In this particular case its pretty low, what with the gutted versions of fly and invisibility, but some levels might have powers you don't want to give up.

 

[Benimoto]

You make good points. For simplicity I would say that you consider what AC would be with Mirror Image (AC 20) and without (AC 14). If the monster would have hit AC 14, but not AC 20 then the Mirror Image took the attack. If the monster hits AC 21+ then the attack hits anyway.

Right, but we're talking about a level 10 spell. By level 10, the Wizard is going to have an AC closer to 20-22 or higher. Maybe 10 AC base, +5 from levels, +4-5 from Int, +2-3 from enchanted cloth armor. Plus other stuff that we don't even know about. Does each mirror image have all that stuff? They didn't in 3rd edition. They were just AC 10 + size + Dex bonuses. I'm guessing there's not a single monster that can miss that at level 10. So let's skip calculating the the mirror image's feeble AC, and say that any attack destroys one, unless it hits you.

I like the simplicity.

 

[Stalker0]

But... you can get a reroll at level 1 or level 16. If they're equally awesome, something is seriously wrong. Especially since the 1st level power is apparently better.

One thing 4e might be going for is the fact that racial abilities are just very cool and special. The fact that the half ling can force a reroll of an attack is a very powerful thing, and it may take a lot of magical mojo to replicate it.

In general, while we have little context for other spells, when I think about how cool rerolling a save in dnd is I have to think displacement is stronger than people give it credit for. I can reroll a dominate, or a petrify, or a fireball, or a big crit, once EVERY battle!!

However, I do agree with plane sailing that is the reroll can turn a regular shot into a crit that's a bit of a break in the system.

 

[Khaim]

You're seeing a symptom of why I wouldn't touch 4E with a 10-foot pole.

The spells in 3E took up, what, half the PHB? And those spells have been refined and playtested over literally 30+ years. You can pick out lots of specific language that was copy-and-pasted from 1E all the way through to 3E, with desired refinements.

Now here's 4E that's burned the entire system right to the ground (half the PHB by my count) and starting over from scratch. They're trying to rewrite ever single spell in a totally different power system. It's simply mandatory that it's going to have loads of balance and writing issues, without the benefit of 30 years of playtesting behind them. And it's a heck of a lot more content to fill in at once than, say, OD&D started out

I think you're both right and wrong here. Yes, they're rewriting everything. But your assumption is that the 1e>2e>3e progression was refining the game to a better, more perfect system. And in my experience, that's false. Yes, it was making the game better- but it was also making it painfully obvious how broken the underlying assumptions are. Namely, that wizards can do everything.

Look at Wish. Mostly unchanged from the first iteration. No problem so far. Now tell me what a fighter, rogue, or any other non-full caster can do that even remotely touches that kind of power. Heck, a simple Forcecage will kill anything that doesn't have access to teleportation or disintegration magic. With no save.

D&D desperately needed a rewrite, so the game would be something more than "watch the wizard blow stuff up". From what I hear, they're doing exactly the right thing.

 

[Nebulous]

Yeah, these spells really suck, especially compared to their 3e counterparts. It looks like that Wizards will not only have far fewer spells, but the spells they have will be far weaker. I fear that in their crusade to "balance" the wizard class, they have gone too far and nerfed it into oblivion.

I'm fearing this as well. 4e is balanced for combat, so that a Wizard 10 and Fighter 10 are equivalent when duking it out. Compared to the past 30 years of D&D, that's going to have a wonky effect on magic.

 

[Dausuul]

@ Dausuul- actually, 4e seems to scale more than 3e did. 3e spells usually didn't scale. Level 1 spells were largely irrelevant at higher level, and save DCs quickly become level inappropriate. 4e doesn't do that- most things look like they scale now, and attacks (replacing save DCs) definitely do. Sleep, for example, is effective across multiple levels.

But the point is that in 3.X, if you compare a high-level spell to a low-level spell, the high-level spell has a greater effect against high-level monsters than the low-level spell has against low-level monsters. To reiterate the point I made earlier, compare blindness (a 2nd-level spell) to finger of death (a 7th-level spell). Both are single-target spells that grant a Fortitude save, but blindness only blinds the target where finger of death kills it outright, as well as doing damage even if the save is made.

What this means is that if we assume these two spells to be representative of their levels, and that a high-level monster is about as likely to save versus finger of death as a low-level monster versus blindness, a 3rd-level wizard who successfully uses her best (where "best" means "highest-level") spell against a monster still has to finish the monster off, and has to worry that the monster might be able to remove the effect somehow. A 13th-level wizard who successfully uses her best spell against a monster takes that monster out completely--and even if she fails, she does a bit of damage. Ergo, the wizard's position on the "weaksauce to uber" scale has shifted; the 13th-level wizard is more powerful for her level than the 3rd-level wizard is for hers.

But if you're claiming that they're level independent, they can really all be assigned to level 1.

True, but then we get a glut of level 1 powers. Ideally, of course, the level-independent powers should be grouped by what they do; so, for instance, forced re-rolls might be considered a "mid-Paragon" effect, even though they could just as easily be early Heroic or late Epic. That would create the feeling of "Hey, I get cool new stuff!" even though what you're getting is not necessarily better than what you had.

What will really matter is the opportunity cost of the power- what you have to give up to get the reroll. In this particular case its pretty low, what with the gutted versions of fly and invisibility, but some levels might have powers you don't want to give up.

This is certainly true. But until we see a power of comparable level that is demonstrably way better, I don't think it's reasonable to claim that displacement isn't balanced.

 

[Khaim]

I'm fearing this as well. 4e is balanced for combat, so that a Wizard 10 and Fighter 10 are equivalent when duking it out. Compared to the past 30 years of D&D, that's going to have a wonky effect on magic.

Rituals.

Which, by the way, we know nothing about.

 

[Wormwood]

Compared to the past 30 years of D&D, that's going to have a wonky effect on magic.

I don't care about its effect on magic. I care about its effect on play.

 

[Baumi]

I think both spells are quite useful ...

The Displacement Spell was already discussed and I concur that a forced reroll is ALWAYS great.

I think the Mirror Image also work quite well as written even though it help only a against a few attacks. A Wizard should never be in the position to be attacked in the first place so he should be far less often attacked as long as the group plays well together.

 

[Khaim]

You seem to be stuck in the 3.5E mindset that all effects must scale up as you advance; if a 1st-level spell dazes one monster for one round, then a 15th-level spell must daze several monsters for several rounds. But that's a recipe for broken wizards; because it means that the wizard is getting more and more powerful relative to monsters of the same level.

I think we're still going to see some of this in 4e. Not so much "daze several monsters for several rounds", but better status effects, better targeting, etc. If they keep the rate of progression to a more reasonable level, it's not so bad. Then dazing several monsters for several rounds (i.e. save ends, in 4e-talk) is more like a mid to high epic spell, and probably a daily at that.

Of course, the balancing factor is that the monsters' abilities are getting more powerful in similar ways. Look at the Bodak: it drops you to 0 hp. I bet you won't see that kind of effect at 1st level, or anywhere in the heroic tier for that matter. And what I've heard about epic play ("once per day, when you die, ...") only confirms this.