Is The Web Spell Broken?

[Ridley's Cohort]

Battlefield shaping spells are devastating to those who do not have the means or brains to adapt.

The simplest countermeasure is to slowdown or shutdown combat and regroup. I would suggest Sleetstorm. Obscuring Mist, Fog Cloud, or an Invisibility potion is often sufficient.

Obviously many NPCs and monsters do not have the means do so. Do PCs over 4th level have any excuse?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Now... I also have the sneaking suspicion that the sorcerer would burning hands everyone out of it, dealing 5d4+2d4 fire damage to everyone trapped. He does stuff like that. Often.

You might gently remind him that he is never required to cast a spell at the highest possible caster level. He may choose the minimum.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Fire and Webs: Webs, once lit, will burn one square a round, igniting adjacent squares (but not diagonal squares).

That's how we've run it as well.

"Any fire can set the webs alight".

If a square of web is burning, it's 'any fire', right?

-Hyp.

 

[KarinsDad]

That's how we've run it as well.

"Any fire can set the webs alight".

If a square of web is burning, it's 'any fire', right?

Yup.

I was going to use web on my PCs (Brb6, Sorc5/Rog1, Rog6, Rang6, Favored Soul 5) in a soon to be fight against a Hobgoblin Hexblade 5, Sorcerer 4, and mooks, but then I realized that while it might not lead to a TPK, there would be several casualties more than if the enemy Sorcerer was using scorching ray, especially with the Hexex being thrown around (-2 strength checks).

Web is crazy good. A party split up is significantly weaker than the sum of its parts.

Personally I think that web spells are a joke against most PC groups except at real low level (e.g. BBEG 3rd level Wizard against 1st or 2nd level PCs).

I think you should have used the Web spell because you should always use the best tactics that NPCs can "think of".

However, I am constantly surprised at how a simple Web spell can really mess up a combat for higher level PCs because they are not initially willing to set it on fire right away and take the damage. We have had PCs die because the party was separated by a Web spell and nobody thought to get rid of it ASAP and instead, by the time they did, someone trapped on one side of it was dead.

With regard to monsters, Web is often much more powerful merely because many monsters do not use fire. Still not broken, but potent.

 

[Hypersmurf]

[grin]

We took on a bearded devil - with a bunch of minions - at about level 4. We didn't have any silver or good weapons, and only the half-orc paladin could consistently significantly beat the DR the hard way.

In conjunction with the minions, it would have taken us apart. But it got caught in the Web spell for long enough for us to deal to the minions, and concentrate our positions, and buff up the paladin... and the paladin finally managed to kill it with an attack from prone, while staggered, having just been Cure Minored from -1 to 0. (It was an awesome moment.)

After the session, I commented to the DM "I just kept waiting for it to Greater-Teleport-at-will out of the Web..."

The DM looked down at the stat block, and his jaw sagged. "... oh," he said.



-Hyp.

 

[Lasher Dragon]

LMAO Smurf

Your post got me thinking... I don't know if we have been using a variant rule or what, but in our games magical healing starts at 0 HP. So, if you are at -7 and someone casts a cure minor, it puts you at 1. I thought it was kinda weird myself, because we used to always play that you had to "dig your way out" of the negatives. So, are we using some weird variant, or did someone misread something?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

That's a weird variant.

 

[KarinsDad]

In conjunction with the minions, it would have taken us apart. But it got caught in the Web spell for long enough for us to deal to the minions, and concentrate our positions, and buff up the paladin... and the paladin finally managed to kill it with an attack from prone, while staggered, having just been Cure Minored from -1 to 0. (It was an awesome moment.)

Just out of curiosity, do you play that an unconscious character drops any weapon he is holding just as if he were stunned?

The reason I am asking is that if you do (and many people do not), then it is tougher to attack just after having been Cure Minored from -1 to 0.

After the session, I commented to the DM "I just kept waiting for it to Greater-Teleport-at-will out of the Web..."

The DM looked down at the stat block, and his jaw sagged. "... oh," he said.

Never underestimate the ability of the DM to not know what the heck a given creature can do.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Your post got me thinking... I don't know if we have been using a variant rule or what, but in our games magical healing starts at 0 HP. So, if you are at -7 and someone casts a cure minor, it puts you at 1. I thought it was kinda weird myself, because we used to always play that you had to "dig your way out" of the negatives. So, are we using some weird variant, or did someone misread something?

I have a vague memory of doing something similar with our 1E group back in the 80s... but not in 3E.

Except I think in our case, it was "If you're negative, any healing spell puts you at 1." So if you were at -1, and the only healing available was a potion of Cure Serious Wounds... you're at 1. If you were at -9, and someone casts CLW... you're at 1. And then, of course, you were 'walking wounded', and couldn't do anything useful until you'd rested.

Going negative was a Bad Thing. No idea how canon those rules were

Just out of curiosity, do you play that an unconscious character drops any weapon he is holding just as if he were stunned?

I suspect it was glossed over at the time.

-Hyp.

 

[Felon]

2nd level spell, no SR, reflex save to not be rendered immoblie (albeit temporarily, if you can STR-check out or escape-artist out, plus further checks just to be able to move), 20 foot radius... opinions?

Yeah, web is pretty much a "rock without paper", and that makes it pretty poorly designed. Most attack forms have some form of defense you can expect many a monster to have to defend against it--DR, SR, energy resistance/immunity, immune to criticals, immune to mind-affecting effects, etc.--but "snare" spells like entangle and web are largely unaccounted for. As this article on the WotC site points out, this creates an unbalanced situation.

In regards to the "simple" solutions previous posters have offered, most monsters don't carry tindertwigs (obviously, many creature types can't use them even if they did), which don't even burn you out quickly enough to matter, and if you take a look through just about any monster book, you'll see how few have ranks in Escape Artist. Considering that general defenses such as SR or good saving throws aren't much help, it's frustrating that specific defenses just aren't there. Indeed, the spell that's most useful in defeating these spells, freedom of movement, is of a significantly higher level than the spells themselves. It's like the designers really didn't want to give you much to do about it.

There are a few less direct defenses, such as incorporeality or teleportation, but you don't see a lot of this until long after the PC's have access to web and entangle, so for the most part snares routinely make combat very drawn-out and boring, because groups of enemies are routinely neutralized for long periods of time without actually being killed. Personally as a DM, I'd rather see a fireball outright slay NPC's and move on than just have them sit there squirming.

In my world, I found an indirect solution in that I combined Hide and Move Silently into a single skill, Sneak (a la Arcana Unearthed), leaving many monsters with skill points to spare. I converted any ranks of Hide to Sneak, and ranks in Move Silently became Escape Artist. This provides a reasonably common defense against an otherwise unreasonable attack. When players start going nuts with this spell, house rules are your only salvation.

Oh, and have you seen plant growth lately?