[Haste] The new information

[Hypersmurf]

(It's significant that the reputed changes to buff spells (+5 to stat, 10 min/level)...)

Huh. Hadn't heard that one.

No more Triple-Empowered Bull's Strengths, huh?

-Hyp.

 

[Darklone]

Yipppeeeeeeeeee!

 

[Shard O'Glase]

True enough, although I wouldn't mind terribly if the defensive abilities were checked a bit, causing wizards to rely more on their companions for protection. Maybe I'm a bit traditional there though

Wizard already rely upon a party more than any other class. d4 hp and one good save means your meat if your ever caught alone. All the multiple Ac boosting spells did for the mage was give him/her the round or two needed for the party to bail his/her weak butt out of the fire again. Without the Ac boosting magics it will be way too easy to develop the power fighters who drop the wizard in one blow.

 

[Destil]

You don't think that the arcane prep requirement might be justified considering how much more useful quicken spell is for sorcerers? Its what I've been leaning towards lately anyway.

Sorcerers do have a lot more high lvl spell slots to swap out for metamagicked spells...

-Skaros

To be sure, there are balance issues if sorcerers could do this for free. Personaly I'm leaning towards making it a +3 meta magic feat for prepaired casting, and a +4 for spontanious.

 

[LokiDR]

Wizards don't need more AC, they need less. Have you seen the utter insanity of fully buffed out mage? Polymorph self on its own can give you +7 without even going into MMII or being an outsider and taking a demon form. Then empowered cats grace, stone skin, persistant shield, false life, and empowered endurance. Even as sick as this is, the situation only gets worse with non-core rules. Not to mention the utility of persistant improved invisibility. No, I don't think wizards need the +4 from haste.

 

[Spatzimaus]

To be sure, there are balance issues if sorcerers could do this for free. Personaly I'm leaning towards making it a +3 meta magic feat for prepaired casting, and a +4 for spontanious.

Someone a while back proposed a solution that I liked better than that. They made a new metamagic Feat, "Fast Metamagic", that allowed spontaneous casters to cast without the time increase, for a cost of 1 level.

So, a Wizard can cast a Fireball as a level 3 spell, or a Still Fireball as a level 4 spell, both as 1-action spells. A Sorcerer can cast a Fireball as a level 3 spell (1 action), a Still Fireball as a level 4 spell (full-round action), or with this Feat could cast a Fast Still Fireball as a level 5 spell (back to 1 action again).
The only way a Sorcerer could use Quicken effectively would be if he took this Feat too, paying an extra level compared to the Wizard. Personally I'd give this to Sorcerers as a class ability, but it was originally written as a Feat. If you use this, and drop Quicken to a +3 feat, you end up with the situation you described above.

Or, you could just play a Psion, their spontaneous metamagic doesn't increase casting times.

Anyway, we're off topic. I'm happy with the Haste change, personally. Each of the things I didn't like about the 3E Haste are being changed.
First, because it doubled casting speed, it made spellcasters too strong; as a Sorcerer who has the spell, I KNOW it was broken. When hasted, you don't burn through MORE spells, you just do the usual spells faster... if you're fighting enemies with 100 HP each and you have 12 spells, each doing 50 points, you'll run out of spells after killing 6 enemies. It doesn't matter how quickly you cast them; unless the DM throws more enemies at you to compensate (blatant metagaming), you use exactly as many attack spells getting through the encounters as you would have without Haste. Doing it faster only lessens the risk to your party; instead of dealing with 12 rounds of enemy attacks, you only deal with 6.
As for the melee side, to me, the death of the uberAC character is a good thing. When confronted with an enemy immune to magic, a spellcaster still has many indirect ways of helping the group (buffs, summoned creatures, spells like Forcecage that don't suffer SR or saves), while a Fighter is basically useless against someone immune to attacks due to insane ACs.
IMO, a Fighter should always have SOME chance of hitting, so Haste always annoyed me as being yet another way of pumping your AC up to ungodly levels, besides providing more actions. Whether these hits get through DR/fast healing/regeneration is a different story.
It also annoyed me that a Shielded, Hasted, Mage Armored spellcaster could consistently have a higher AC than the plate-clad Fighter. Add in Displacement, Invisibility, Polymorph Self (for natural armor), and such, and it just gets worse. Making up for a weakness in the class is one thing, but being the best in a category far outside your class' purview is another. Reducing the AC from haste and giving it an attack bonus won't totally destroy the spellcasters, but it keeps a melee-oriented spell from being the most important part of their own protection.

Just my opinions, of course.

 

[The Little Raven]

The extra move action is what makes it overpowered again.
why not simply add +30 feet movement and everything would be fine...summing up:

+30 foot movement
+1 attack (that must be made in the attack action)
+2 AC
+2 Attack
-

but wait...I shouldnt complain, my favorites are the fighter types anyway!

You've said this twice, and you've been wrong both times. At no time did he say that you received an extra move ACTION. He said you gained extra moveMENT. Which means that if you take a move action, you can move farther... probably a flat +10 or +20 bonus.

The listed effects for the revised haste are:
+4 dodge bonus to AC
1 extra attack action
Increased movement

 

[Destil]

Someone a while back proposed a solution that I liked better than that. They made a new metamagic Feat, "Fast Metamagic", that allowed spontaneous casters to cast without the time increase, for a cost of 1 level.

So, a Wizard can cast a Fireball as a level 3 spell, or a Still Fireball as a level 4 spell, both as 1-action spells. A Sorcerer can cast a Fireball as a level 3 spell (1 action), a Still Fireball as a level 4 spell (full-round action), or with this Feat could cast a Fast Still Fireball as a level 5 spell (back to 1 action again).
The only way a Sorcerer could use Quicken effectively would be if he took this Feat too, paying an extra level compared to the Wizard. Personally I'd give this to Sorcerers as a class ability, but it was originally written as a Feat. If you use this, and drop Quicken to a +3 feat, you end up with the situation you described above.

Or, you could just play a Psion, their spontaneous metamagic doesn't increase casting times.

Just to finsh off the hijack discussion before returning you to your regularlly scheduled thread...

The problem I would have with that solution is that a sorcerer, lacking bonus feats, is hard pressed to get any more than a few meta-magic and spell focus feats already. Spontanious Perpration, Fast Metamagic and the like (I've also seen options where a sorcerer could take Spell Mastery for spells and loose the increase on meta-magic casting time with them) would be a serious problem because it requires one of their feat slots, a bit too harsh in my opinion.

And psionics is cool for just that reason (allong with a long list of others that many people who talk about them being underpowered often don't address, like being able to manifest powers while held), though it needs a few small tweeks of it's own.

 

[Plane Sailing]

it seems that wizards who don't want to walk around polymorphed into trolls or hags are effectively without any way of boosting their AC past the point where the fighter's only question is "how much do I power attack?"

Bracers of armour? Rings of protection? Displacement/blink/improved invisibility? fly/levitation/etc? stoneskin/iron body?

I don't think that the wizard is out of options yet...

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think I'm probably just going to continue with my personal revision of haste (which I've been calling "quickness" for clarity).

One target, gets +4 to hit, +4 to AC, +4 to reflex saves and double movement rate.

It's companion spell, slowness, gives -4 to hit, -4 to AC, -4 to reflex saves and halves movement rate.

Cheers