I think buff spells are eroding my enjoyment of D&D.

[MJS]

One of the best checks for spellcasters in any system, except maybe 4E, is other spellcasters. Enemy spellcasters see buff stacks all the time, they have spellcraft, know to watch for it, and will always attempt Dispel Magic on them.
The PC spellcasters will start adopting other non-buff strategies when they start losing whole stacks of buffs to Dispel Magic. You'll still get an enlarged dwarf from time to time, but not nearly so much.
If Dispel Magic sucks in your edition, boost it. That should be the spell that does what you need.

 

[Crothian]

It's not the buff spells themselves I mind, but the way they slow down the game I don't like. It takes too long to recalculate each bonus a buff spell effects and have player remember what buff spells are active. The non casters especially since most of the time they are not familiar with the buffs as it is not their character doing it.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I didn't find Dispel Magic to be a good cure, at least not if you're using buffs strategically. The defender can debuff one PC completely or strip a single buff from the entire party (and apparently this was nerfed in Pathfinder), so most of the buffs remain, and you're also dictating your opponent's first action. In fact, a Ring of Counterspells can stop Dispel Magic in its tracks. The best cure seems to be a Dispel Magic trap, so at least the defender doesn't have to spend an action dispelling.

Tactically it works great. Tactically clerics might buff up a lot (or not, depending on how much warning they had), or maybe the whole party will get Mass Fly or Water Breathing (not a good time to be hit with Dispel Magic)...

(Of course this works the other way too. NPCs can prep and mash the PCs, but that's also unsatisfying.)

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm just one data point, but my experience has consistently been that 2E caster players prefer to rely on control, utility and especially damage spells instead of buffs. I could come up with a list of mitigating reasons why buffs aren't as attractive in 2E as they are in 3E, but really? I think the most important factor is that buffs are less fun to cast, and unless they're actually comparatively very powerful players will avoid them naturally.

boom spells were better as a general rule. Common AD&D buffs were bless, aid, and prayer (clerical basically). Strength is an interesting one for things like high dex wariiro types with 15-17 strength as it lasts a while and 18/xx does dramatic things to your to hit/damage. I have been playing 2nd ed with d20 players and on Sunday one of them commented "there is not a lot of bonuses to hit in this edition is there". I just told him there was probably a good reason for that.

Righteous Wrath of the Faithful (Spells and Magic) is also a great buff spell in 2nd ed. +3 to hit, damage, 1d8 temp hp and an extra attack. In AD&D standards that is huge and more damage than say a flame strike.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Another thing you might consider doing is taking a 5e idea and making them give you "advantage". For example, if Bull's Strength simply caused you to roll 2 d20's and pick the better result for all Str-based checks, there would be no stacking issues and no numbers to recalculate.

 

[billd91]

I don't like 3.x buffs either. I much prefer 4e's short-term, generally non-stacking buffs. I call these "active buffs" because you have to earn them (usually by hitting someone), and there's almost no standard action buffs.

I came away from 4e disliking those short-term buffs. The constant stream of boosts popping on and off all over the place was distracting and difficult to track once you were in the teens for level. I'd prefer a multi-round buff anyway.

Funny thing was, many of 2e's buffs were as powerful. The Strength spell puts 3.5's Bull's Strength to shame, and yet I had literally never seen it used. In fact I only learned it's rules after 4e came out, and was delighted that it worked on creatures when you didn't know their Strength score (so NPCs could use it too). The only buff spell I recall seeing in 2e was Haste. There weren't bonus types then, so stacking was confusing, and I think that's one reason we didn't see them.

We actually did see a lot of prayer and bless combos plus variations on those spells. Yet we still saw relatively few uses of the strength spell. So I think a lot depended on the preference of the table and the perceived utility of the spells. For us, that +2 (or +3 if we added chant) to our combat was much more important than one PC gaining a strength boost, I suspect. The benefit felt more concrete and I think that may be part of the issue with strength being used so frequently in 3e for an easy +2 to hit and damage but so rarely in 2e.

 

[Stormonu]

What's annoying is that buff spells became required - and stacking stuff was allowed. In my own game, I put an arbitrary limit of +10 bonus to d20 rolls. That's for everything - ability mod, skill bonus, magic bonus, etc. Of course, I also dropped hp drastically after 9th level/HD. And I don't, as a rule, play past about 12th level.

 

[Starfox]

In TORG, I called this the "laser sight effect" - the issue that you could not look at a character sheet and get the capabilities of the character at a glance, because there were so many neat little buffs that could completely change things. When I made my homebrew, one of the lessons of TORG was to restrict buffs heavily. In DnD it is so integral that I think it's hopeless to try and get rid of it - +1 weapons and armor are "laser sights" in this meaning, and very deeply integrated into the system.

I think you'd have to go back to a scaled-down 1E to actually do this well in anything resembling DnD. Or perhaps d20 modern.

 

[TwoSix]

I would say the worst offenders for buffs are those with the trickle down effects, or those that cause a lot of analysis paralysis by providing too many new options. Blessing of Fervor is a Pathfinder spell I'm VERY familiar with that's absolutely awful about this, by providing a menu of five different options that each character can select and change each round. And it affects the whole party.

Buff spells I like are those that don't change rolls or numbers, but rather give new tactical options or immunity to a set of options. Freedom of movement is undercosted at 4th level, but a great design. Same thing for fly. Slow is a fantastic debuff spell (debuffs have the same complications as buffs, so I tend to view their design together), because it lowers the tactical options available, but doesn't affect any rolls. Haste would be a much a better spell if it just gave the target a second move action.

Also, as a general principle, I'd say spells that cause actual organic physical enhancements (which mechanically usually cause attribute increases, one of the single worst type of buffs for gameplay) should be restricted to polymorph effects, and generally be higher level spells. Polymorphs are also better off as direct physical swaps (like the 5e wildshape) or as all-day effects that can't be dispelled, so they don't have to be recalculated during battle. Enlarge person would be a great spell if it was 3rd level, lasted all day, and had a 10 min casting time.

 

[Kinak]

Buff spells I like are those that don't change rolls or numbers, but rather give new tactical options or immunity to a set of options. Freedom of movement is undercosted at 4th level, but a great design. Same thing for fly. Slow is a fantastic debuff spell (debuffs have the same complications as buffs, so I tend to view their design together), because it lowers the tactical options available, but doesn't affect any rolls. Haste would be a much a better spell if it just gave the target a second move action.

This is very true. A list that only included buffs that present new options (rather than just providing numerical advantages), would be great.

That said, these same spells are the same ones that trivialize encounters and give a lot of GMs fits. So I'm not sure we exactly want more of them, so much as less of the numerical buffs.

Also, as a general principle, I'd say spells that cause actual organic physical enhancements (which mechanically usually cause attribute increases, one of the single worst type of buffs for gameplay) should be restricted to polymorph effects, and generally be higher level spells. Polymorphs are also better off as direct physical swaps (like the 5e wildshape) or as all-day effects that can't be dispelled, so they don't have to be recalculated during battle. Enlarge person would be a great spell if it was 3rd level, lasted all day, and had a 10 min casting time.

As an added bonus, making them all polymorph effects would also give a really good reason for making none of them stack. You want to be big and a muscle-bound version of your normal self and a healthier version of your normal sense and a more agile version of your normal self? Too bad, pick one.

Cheers!
Kinak