Entangle needs nerfing...

[dagger]

I agree. But that's not the point. As has been pointed out already, having a 1st-lvl insta-kill spell with no save and no SR isn't balanced just b/c it can only be used once in a blue moon. Spells of a certain level are supposed to be relatively balanced with each other. Entangle is not.

So now its insta kill?


Some people think its too powerful (no one I have ever met), and some don't. All the more reason to think its balanced.

 

[TheNovaLord]

In our current campaign i have a ranger cleric (of plant and travel). Having used entangle as my domain spell extensively in a campaign that has been pretty wilderness it does seem very powerful in the ideal circumstances. A 2nd level if i remember i cast it at a group of hobgoblins and because of its decent radius many of their somewhat hidden allies i hadnt even seen, and as mentioned above, it can be a very dominating item on the battlefield. if i hadnt have done this spell 2 hidden bugbears would have crunched (it seemed a very high EL encounter IMO).


Then again having longstrider as my other domain spell has also been very useful.

All spells used in ideal and optimum ways can often be over-powering.

Plant domain i think is very good thus far from my experince with this character (she is only 5th at the moment).

JohnD

 

[kenobi65]

But it's not "the majority" of terrain where combats occur. At least not in the campaigns I've played.

Agreed. It's a very potent spell in plant-laden environments. As others have noted, if the druid could count on using it all the time, it *should* be higher level. But, he can't.

To note...
- Doesn't work well, if at all, in cities or large settlements.
- Doesn't work well, if at all, in dungeons (yes, there might be *some* sort of plant life, but (a) that's up to the DM, and (b) it might well be so sparse as to lead to significantly lower DCs)
- Doesn't work well, if at all, on well-traveled roads (where plant life will have been trampled, if not graveled or paved over)

If you're paranoid about Entangle as a player, buy a frickin' ranged weapon, or a potion of Fly.

If you're paranoid about Entangle as a DM, control the environment.

 

[Shadowdweller]

Whereas an unimpeded enemy can close quickly, making the standard area effect damaging spells unusable, an entangled enemy is held at a useful distance for a few rounds of fireballs and ice storms.

In cases where there's room to entangle, area effect damage spells are RARELY rendered useless by the enemy closing.

Unless the Druid is loaded to the gills with Flamestrikes and has the luxury to burn through those spells in the combat at hand, the Druid class itself is pretty darn lousy at killing someone in an Entangle.

Then again (both quotes) there is the possible issue of the druid ALLOWING the required plant life to be burnt to a crisp (or melted, shocked, frozen). Which might be a problem, depending on how one regards the spiritual nature of the druid.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Quite right! So, lets see, I'm building a new campaign world and to balance the usage of entangle I can only make about 30-50% of the surrounding terrain constist of mainly plant life. The rest should be inhospitable to humanoid life. Wow...not much room there for my rolling grasslands, my elven forests, my wooded hills, my swamps, my jungles, or any croplands to feed inhabitants. Or, maybe I should just limit where my players can adventure. Yeah, that's the ticket! I'll just make all most of my adventures dungeons or in the mountains, or along that rocky stretch to the east! Perfect! Take that pesky 1st level spell! [/sarcasm off]

Your sarcasm is misplaced. Let's take a look at the environments you list:

1. Rolling Grasslands. AFAIK, there are pretty much two types of grassland (not counting golf courses which should be about as entangle friendly as an asphalt parking lot): sparse and thin grass mixed with weeds that grows to maybe knee height and tall prairie grasses like I read about on the great plains. Where I live and on the west coast of the US, I've pretty much only seen the first kind.

Now, I find it difficult to believe that the first kind of grass is what the writers had in mind when they specified a normal DC 20 strength check, so if I were running a game, I'd seriously consider reducing the strength check in that environment. In the second kind of environment, I would give the DC 20 strength check but whenever you're dealing with 4-6 foot tall grasses, line of sight becomes an issue. Such an environment would be extremely suboptimal for entangle because you would be unlikely to see normal sized enemies until they were on top of you (unless you were mounted or something) and enemies who were entangled, could hide themselves pretty effectively by dropping prone. Since you're not likley to be going in there to melee with them, this makes entangle more of a delaying tactic against infantry in the prairie enviroment. (And mounted combatants should be able to get out of the area in one round if their mount makes the save or use ranged weapons without the entanglement penalties if their mount fails the save).

So rolling grasslands don't need removal to keep entangle balanced.

2. Elven forests

If these are like Lothlorien in the LotR film or like the pacific redwood forests, ground cover is actually quite sparse. If you're hiding in a patch of bushes and the entangle goes off, you're screwed but the areas that people are likely to walk upon are mostly moss with a few ferns. There's plenty of room to avoid an entangle spell.

3. Wooded hills

As distinguished from forests, I can only assume that you mean more open wooded areas with generous amounts of grass. In that case, the majority of the area will be similar to the grasslands: either it's easier to break out of or it blocks line of sight. The primary difference will be that trees will provide cover in addition to concealment.

4. Swamps

I don't have a lot of experience with swamps, but if the swamp contains generous amounts of water, it's likely that PCs or NPCs will be traversing it in boats. No plant-life in a boat. In a lot of other swamps, PCs or NPCs will be able to use the water for cover while entangled or will have concealment from tall vegetation. (Bullrushes and such would provide many of the same challenges as high grass from what I can tell: they'd entangle enemies really nicely but it's difficult to spot enemies before they're at the edge of the bullrushes and are easily able to get out if they save.

5. jungles

From everything I've read about thick jungles, they should present very severe line of sight issues for PCs using entangle. Sure, the environment would make entangling a very three dimensional effect (and therefore useful against flying or climbing foes), but your 40' radius is wasted if you can only see ten feet in front of the guy with the machete. In this environment, I would expect entangled foes to often be in *melee range.* The spell would hamper them if they stayed put and fought but, on a successful save, they would be able to get out of it (though it might cost them some AoOs).

6. Any cropland

In terms of entangle, I don't think this is really distinct from grassland except that it is likely to have more paths around it and to be more sharply defined. If your cropland is tall grains like midwestern cornfields, then line of sight issues should prevent the spell from getting too out of hand. (How exactly are you going to spot a spread-out group of five orcs moving through the cornfields until they're right next to the trail?) And, it will certainly have vegetation-free paths for the farmers and their horses as well as heavily traveled areas around the well, etc.

On the other hand, if your cropland is a lettuce field....I'm afraid entangle just isn't going to do much if anything. And my observations of pastureland--either for the cattle in the California hills and valleys or the sheep of the Lancashire countryside is that the animals tend to graze the grass down to at most soccer field height. You'll only get good use out of entangle on fallow pastures.

So, even assuming that all of the encounters are outdoors and in those kinds of terrains, you don't need to have entangle get out of hand. A strong focus on the requirement for vegetation in the area, a reduced DC for sparse or weak vegetation, and paying close attention to line of sight will help to control the spell. As an added benefit, paying close attention to line of sight and other terrain issues will also help your games to feel more varied and cinematic. If you put a large rock in the middle of the meadow for the orcs to flee the entangle, PCs can jump onto it to gain higher ground against their enemies. And the image of bugbears springing from the cornrows and then vanishing back into concealment is a lot more dramatic than "you're attacked by a pair of bugbears in a generic cropfield."

But when you consider that, in most campaigns, a lot of battles will be fought in towns, dungeons, city streets, rock quarries, towers, castles, and mines where entangle will be of no use at all it's not that bad. Furthermore, of the battles that do occur on entangle friendly terrain, some of them will be against foes like hippogriffs, vrocks, and air elementals who are not particularly vulnerable to it and some will even be against foes like that blaster wizard you mentioned who will say "thanks, I was worried about your fighters coming to get me but...not any more; it'll take them four rounds to get through then entangle spell. Eat fireball suckers."

 

[Shadowdweller]

Although, REGARDLESS of whether you consider entangle overly potent or not...considering the probable lack of effect in dungeon and town encounters...if a DM chooses to make a spell THAT incredibly circumstantial, his druid players will LOATHE him.

"Nope, I'm sorry. The low ceiling of the dungeon effectively prevents you from swinging a sword. Have any piercing weapons? That's too bad. You should have designed your character better."

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I have seen entangle shut down multiple hill giants for multiple rounds. Show me another 1st-level spell capable of doing this. Furthermore, I have seen entangle be the key component to a wholesale slaughter of an entire group of PCs. It's a very powerful spell outdoors.

I was going to say grease but someone beat me to the punch. Command can do a number on low will save foes like hill giants though. "Flee" should be good for at least two rounds since the hill giant needs to take time to move back to where he was. True Strike combined with a tanglefoot bag also works pretty well. Even the lowly color spray is able to take out a hill giant for a few rounds (stunned for one round then provokes an AoO when he picks up his greatclub). If you move down the line to creatures like ogres and such, sleep and cause fear kick in as well.

As for wholesale slaughter of PCs, I've seen food (or lack thereof) be key to the disastrous misadventures of several groups of PCs who didn't buy any (or who didn't buy much). I've heard of sleep being devastating to groups of low-level PCs too. Especially at low levels, there are so many things capable of slaughtering PCs wholesale that the ability to do that doesn't prove entangle to be broken.

That said, it's important to realize that different things can be broken for NPCs than for PCs. For instance, PCs have to try to create situations where pyrotechnics will be useful. Sometimes they can and sometimes they can't. However, if the NPCs are planning a midnight attack on the PCs and they know the PCs use torches or a campfire, they can guarantee that the spell will be useful. Similarly, PCs can expect to fight creatures with a mix of HD so spells like cause fear and scare may or may not be useful after the first few levels. A 3rd level NPC, however, has no need to fear that PCs (other than paladins) will be immune to his scare spell. He knows he'll get to use it. This is doubly true of home-game encounters that can be planned with a specific group of PCs in mind. At a convention game or in a written module, there's a much better chance that NPCs will be planning tactics that don't take the barbarian/cleric with the travel domain or the party of 5 archers (an archer cleric, a barbarian who carries a bow, an elf wizard with point blank and precise shot, a fighter archer, and a scout who carries a bow as his primary weapon) who actually prefer not to have to close to melee range.

I don't agree. The druid is a better nuker than the cleric, in my experience.

That I'll agree with. Druids are broken. But I don't think it's entangle that makes them broken.

 

[Votan]

I agree. But that's not the point. As has been pointed out already, having a 1st-lvl insta-kill spell with no save and no SR isn't balanced just b/c it can only be used once in a blue moon. Spells of a certain level are supposed to be relatively balanced with each other. Entangle is not.

I think that "insta-kill" is an exageration.

I note that spells have a very narrow range of acceptable ffects at all levels. Hold Person (a 2nd level spell) is way more lethal against humanoids. Grease is death given 3.5 tripping rules on an opponent. I've watched a party take out a cleric of about 4-5 levels above their CR (after being seriously singed by his Blackguard and Undead minions) by preventing him from standing and killing him with melee.

Another nasty, situational spell but hardly overpowered in any way, shape or form.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Just so you realize that the forethought you are contemplating would be specifically to screw the druid. Sure, the terrain needs to be appropriate, so assume that it is. The spell will not be cast in an underground dungeon without plants. I think terrain affects how often the spell will be cast, but once the spell is cast it is not so restrictive. For example, if you let your 1st level group have gate 1/month or 1/year, does that balance the spell? Does the limitation on how often they can cast it really balance the power once cast? Additionally, for everytime you 'nerf' the spell with dead spots (like boulders) you should balance that out with hot spots, like willow trees that do something extra.

The gate analogy has already been addressed. I'll say a little bit about it that hasn't already been said and then move on. There are several other classes of spells that have the same kind of "useful in this situation but not in that" balance point. Greater command, for instance is a powerful 5th level spell but only works on intelligent creatures vulnerable to mind-effecting effects who share a language with you. Those are very significant limitations and they are sufficient to make what might otherwise be a 6th or 7th level spell (somewhere between mass hold person and mass hold monster) a reasonable 5th level spell for PCs (though considerably more useful for NPCs since they can be assured that the PCs will be affected by it). The various charm and dominate spells have similar balance points as do the command undead/halt undead/control undead spells. There shouldn't be any question that restrictions on the targets and locations that a spell will be useful are balancing factors for the spell. The real questions are these:

1. How predictable are the appropriate targets/circumstances? If my cleric is hunting a group of dire wolves, I'm not prepping greater command. OTOH, if my wizard is going into an undead haunted graveyard, I'm likely to prep command undead. However, most of the time, I'm not sure whether my characters will be facing undead or demons on a given day so my cleric prepares a mix of 5th level spells and my wizard leaves command undead on a scroll.

Now, if you simply assume that outdoors=entangle is useful, entangle falls into the easy to predict category. Prepare it when you're travelling in the country or the forest. Don't prepare it when you're going into a dungeon. However, if outdoor travel takes you through a wide variety of lonely switchbacks on a largely bare hillside, trampled pasturelands, high cornrows, and redwood forest, and that each of those terrain types has a different effect on entangle, you can't be sure that entangle will be useful in whatever environment you' get ambushed in. It could be any one of those.

2. How common are the appropriate targets/circumstances
Are they present in maybe 30% of the encounters? That's about the point that a circumstance limited spell becomes worth prepping fulltime. Less than that and it had better have a BIG effect on combat if you're going to prep it just in case a circumstance shows up.

3. How serious are the appropriate targets/circumstances?
This is a big one for curative spells. 95% of encounters don't give my cleric a chance for remove paralysis to come in handy, but in the 5% that do, it's very useful. Since a 2nd level slot carries a very low opportunity cost by the time you're 12th level, I usually carry it. But I don't carry a remove blindness. Blindness doens't come up any more often than paralysis and 3rd level slots are a higher opportunity cost. (And the lesser strand of prayer beads covers that anyway

4. How useful is the spell in the appropriate circumstances?
Dismissal is a relevant example here. It's essentially a ranged save or die (at least be taken out of combat) spell one or two levels earlier than such spells that target more than just outsiders. I've never considered it to be a particularly good choice, but banishment, as a multitarget effect with options to boost the DC and spell penetration roll is a lot more useful. Thus while my cleric has never prepped dismissal, my fighter/mage preps banishment as a matter of course. (He probably wouldn't if he didn't have arcane strike though).

5. What else can you do with the spell if it's not useful?
As I alluded to earlier with arcane strike, this is a serious consideration--especially for wizards. Nearly all other D&D spellcasters (though not rangers, paladins, and some prestige classes) can spontaneously do something with useless spell slots. For clerics, that's healing which is always useful--even when you're talking a 0-level spell and you're 20th level. For druids, OTOH, that's summon nature's ally. Summon Nature's Ally is a good ability, but SNA I stops being useful by sometime around level 6. So, after that point, I would expect to see druids being more picky with their spell list. Similarly, since rangers can't do anything else with a prepared entangle, I would expect rangers to be less likely to prep entangle "just in case."

Finally, it's important to realize that giving forethought to the terrain is not necessarily screwing the druid. Giving forethought to terrain is important to good DMing in general. Archers like wide, unbroken fields of fire. Swashbucklers like tables to leap on, bannisters to slide down, etc. Wizards like terrain that can limit enemy movement and that bunches them up for fireballs and makes it hard to get around walls of force. If you plan out the low drystone wall on one side of the road keeping the sheep out of the cornrows on the other side, you can pick where the hobgoblin ambush comes from. If it makes sense for a hobgoblin ambush, it's not not screwing the druid, it's playing the hobgoblins smart.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

My personal experience is that Entangle is useful in ~10% of encounters. I do not think that the campaign in which I am playing a Druid is all that different from any other campaign I have played in terms of mix of combat terrains. I would bet this is a pretty typical experience.

Heck, flip through a half dozen published adventures. Is the number of outdoor set encounters far off from 10%?

Now if you are finding that Entangle appears in 25+% of your encounters, you are playing an atypical campaign. That is a sound reason to make adjustments. But I do not think it is going to be an issue of this one spell or one class. In all likelihood the Ranger, archer, and Paladin on his warhorse are amazingly effective as well.

In the ballpark of 10%, I would call odd variances as part of the texture of the game. A PC will shine in some encounters and suck in others.

As for the general power level of the Druid class in combat, I have some strong impressions from low level play and and suspect they will hold at least through medium levels. I would sum it up as as: Slow and steady wins the race...if the race is a marathon. The Druid has a lot of resources and will do well in any combat where he gets a chance to use them. That means combats with wide open spaces and mobility, or combats where he get a few rounds to buff up and thereby has a chance to get more of his resources into play. Druids are not so good in fast violent combats. Druids tend to have the lowest AC in the party, and it is difficult to cast that SNA to buy some breathing room when things get hairy. On the offensive side, a few Produce Flames and/or Flamestrikes on hand do not have the same You-Are-Hosed effect you need to match a Sonic Burst, Hold Person, Hold Monster, Confusion, or even the raw damage dealing of axe-wielding Barbarian for fast-paced combat.

As for my PC, even adding in my companion, the damage I dish out and the spells I cast are pretty unremarkable. Any Wizard or Cleric or archer could do much better. The only real eye-opener is how hosed even a powerful NPC is when the Wolf gets a lucky Trip and the party gets a chance to close in.