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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5002152" data-attributes="member: 4937">It's a balance issue.  Wall of Force creates something that lasts 1 round/level (or 5 minutes in your case).  Wall of Stone makes something that is permenate (and has hardness).  Why have 'Wall of Force' at all? The answer is that Wall of Force does two things that Wall of Stone doesn't.First, it slows 'ghosts' or other ethereal creatures down.  But this doesn't make it balanced with 'Wall of Stone' because its easy for a 'ghost' to go around it.  The real advantage of Wall of Force is that for the duration almost nothing can destroy because its immune to brute force.  At high levels, 'Wall of Force' is a pretty essential spell that gives a party time to run away when the dice don't go their way.  'Wall of Force' allows evasion in a way that Wall of Stone or Wall of Iron generally don't, because a high level monster can quickly bust through material walls in short order.   'Wall of Force' is however immune to attack, allowing it to fulfill its purpose as a wall.However, 'immunity' proves to be an abusable concept.  Ideally, you don't want anything that involves essentially infinite numbers, which is what immunity represents.  Things with infinite numbers prove to be show stoppers.  A player can not only trap a monster behind a force effect, but players can themselves be trapped behind them and non-spellcasters lack the narrowly tools to deal with 'infinite' magical effects like 'completely immune to all damage'.  Hense, 'Wall of Force' needs to be fixed such that it works as intended (relatively immune to brute force), but doesn't represent quite the complete game breaker an absolute immunity represents.A 'Wall of Force' without some immunity to damage is a nerf not a fix.  It prevents 'Wall of Force' from being used in the manner intended.I'm unconvinced 'Wall of Force' needs an armor class or hit points.  I'm certain that it needs a hardness (and probably a strength break DC).The problem isn't that the text is unclear.  I know what you see in your mind.  The problem is that the text you've written actually doesn't create the situation you see in your mind.  I've just provided an actual example of that based on your rules.  You have made no attempt to show that I'm confused or am misreading them.So, in other words, a nerf.  You are trying to maintain the existence of the spell in name while banning it in practice.  In practice, a damage dealing spell of a particular level will generally kill something that 'save or suck' would effect, and will at least harm something it won't.In practice, your hitting 'save or suck' harder with a nerf hammer than 4e did and it will lead to the same sort of lack of creativity and lack of variaty.Then by all means, do what 4e did and ban all severe conditions and allow any condition to be quickly recovered from.You hit on something I think critical here, and at the same time swing well wide of the mark.  Animate dead is 4th level for 2 reasons.  First, because the 1e spell was high level and quite powerful.  Second, because Animate Dead has a permenent effect (a new monster is created). First, you are right, Animate Dead could be a lower level spell in 3e than it is.  In fact, it could probably be 2nd level and still be just fine.  But, secondly, just because we decide Animate Dead shouldn't be a 1st level spell doesn't mean that we've decided that necromancers shouldn't be viable from 1st level.  It's quite easy to invent more limited versions of Animate Dead as low level spells or to provide other sorts of flavorful necromancy to the spell lists.  For example, on my official spell list you'll find 'Ambulatory Dead' which does the same thing a duration of 'Concentration' and 'Least Animation' as a cantrip which animates a tiny animal or vermin as a servitor.  Viola, Necromancer from 1st level with minimal overhaul of the rules.</blockquote>

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