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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ptolemy18" data-source="post: 3749139" data-attributes="member: 24970">I dunno. Basically, all the fun and flavorful spells are potentially "game breakers." For instance, I was so pissed when they changed "Polymorph Other" into "Baneful Polymorph" in 3.5. What if a wizard doesn't *want* to change somebody into a harmless little animal? What if they want to change somebody into a giant lizard or a bugbear of the opposite gender? Feh! It would have been one thing if they just made the original version of the spell higher-level, but instead they weakened the whole spell just to make the effects easier to adjudicate. (Grumble gripe... sorry, I'm just complaining because it made one of my characters obsolete when we switched, and I had to ask the DM if I could continue to use 3.0 spellcasting rules for that character. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )I don't think this is a game breaker. After all, if you can save, you can lie all you want, right?Like Fly, this isn't really a game breaker as much as it means your PCs have moved up to a "higher level" of play, a level where they're epic heroes who zip back and forth easily between locations. It can be annoying if you, the GM, prefer a more low-power game, but it really just means that you have to design encounters so that the PCs can't just teleport in and out easily. This isn't impossible; firstly, there's a whole bunch of "anti-teleport" and "anti-scry" spells in 3.0/3.5 which were obviously designed just to counteract Teleport and Scry and give the GM a way to say "Oh, you can't teleport in there." Also, good game design can outwit these spells... I once played in a game where we couldn't Teleport because we had to follow a trail through the jungle to various locations, for instance. We didn't know where we had to Teleport to, so we had to go on the ground.Also not a game breaker; just a new level of power. Yes, it means that murder mysteries become harder to do (unless the body is dissolved in acid or ground into powder or Soul Bound or whatever). But this is a game where dead people can be brought back to life with Raise Dead, so that should also put a damper on murder mysteries, since theoretically anyone with enough money can get brought back to life. :/ It's a high-fantasy game, and if it's gonna be high-fantasy, that's just the way it is. (Actually, I definitely understand the appeal of a more low-fantasy game setting... I enjoy playing in them myself... but if you're trying to play low-fantasy in the later editions of D&D, then that requires big changes across the board.)*shrugs* Just a standard D&D mechanic. Maybe I'm a fatalist, but it never bothered me that much. (Well, of course, if it actually HAPPENS to my character, it bothers me. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> But this is a setting where Raise Dead exists, so being able to die in one blast isn't *that* unfair.)I agree that this could be made harder to use within combat.In 8 years of playing D&D3.x, I've never seen a single PC think to use this spell to resist charm & compulsion, so I don't think it's that much of a gamebreaker. It's more like having the proper tool for the situation. Yes, that tool exists, and it's called Magic Circle vs. Evil. It's actually not so common for the PCs to remember to use the correct tool, though. Or if it is, then the PCs deserve to be rewarded for their smartness.I think the D&D3.x spell list is pretty balanced. And if it's not... well, in my experience the number of D&D players who want to play spellcasters is relatively few. I think it may be because it takes more time to figure out how to use spells than it does to figure out how to be a fighter or a barbarian or whatnot. But if people think that playing a spellcaster is hard, then I actually don't think it's a bad idea if the people who *do* bother to do it, get rewarded by being slightly buffer than a non-spellcasting character of corresponding level. (Yes, I am an elitist spellcaster! Fie on muggles! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Just kidding.)</blockquote>

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