Henry
Autoexreginated
I do see a small number of DM's who want to eliminate any spell that does something besides deal damage. It's not a position I agree with, and a D&D game that has no harmful spells except damage dealers seems less fun to me in play. I like the broader tactical options in play, and reducing all spells to just "damage or information or buffing" just seems to cheapen it for me.
Grease, Web, and Entangle all have in common that they restrict movement by area, and they are persistent. Since we use miniatures and a battlemat, this is not a problem for us, since spell effects are marked with wet erase - same as for any wall spell or fog effect. Perhaps it's because Web has such a NASTY requirement for movement (either excessive strength or a skill which no one but rogues seem to take) that people get upset with it.
If web becomes a problem, I would suggest one fix would be to simplify the "stuck" rules - make it like jump, with solid DC's per target. Perhaps the move is at least 5 feet per round, and a dc10 check will make it ten feet, dc 15 will be 15 feet, etc. - making it a little easier to adjudicate, and ensuring that people with bad dice rolls won't be sitting immobile the entire time. Perhaps entangle could be edited the same way, making the target numbers easy for a player to eyeball in the middle of combat. It doesn't make sense to me that they should go to all the trouble of de-powering hold person, yet another 2nd level spell ALL BUT makes a person helpless.
Grease, Web, and Entangle all have in common that they restrict movement by area, and they are persistent. Since we use miniatures and a battlemat, this is not a problem for us, since spell effects are marked with wet erase - same as for any wall spell or fog effect. Perhaps it's because Web has such a NASTY requirement for movement (either excessive strength or a skill which no one but rogues seem to take) that people get upset with it.
If web becomes a problem, I would suggest one fix would be to simplify the "stuck" rules - make it like jump, with solid DC's per target. Perhaps the move is at least 5 feet per round, and a dc10 check will make it ten feet, dc 15 will be 15 feet, etc. - making it a little easier to adjudicate, and ensuring that people with bad dice rolls won't be sitting immobile the entire time. Perhaps entangle could be edited the same way, making the target numbers easy for a player to eyeball in the middle of combat. It doesn't make sense to me that they should go to all the trouble of de-powering hold person, yet another 2nd level spell ALL BUT makes a person helpless.
