Magic Items Aren't As Important Any More!

[Harm]

Traps become even less useful or much more expensive once clerics/druids get Find The Path.

 

[Jack Simth]

Traps become even less useful or much more expensive once clerics/druids get Find The Path.

Interestingly, Find the Path makes no mention about what it does for a trap that can't be bypassed normally. See, Find the Path says "The spell enables the subject to sense the correct direction that will eventually lead it to its destination, indicating at appropriate times the exact path to follow or physical actions to take. For example, the spell enables the subject to sense trip wires or the proper word to bypass a glyph of warding"

Is nothing at all about, say, a no-bypass, no password Glyph of Warding that fills all routes into a particular area... unless, of course, it has you pick up a pick and start digging.....

 

[Li Shenron]

Spells that last all day are fine for low-magic campaigns where the PCs need something to balance the fact that they do not have powerful magic items to create the effect. But what about campaigns where magic items are supposed to be important and powerful? Suppose we cut back the durations of these spells a tad. 3.5 gave us the godsend of fixing the ability score buffs this way so let's take a tip from them. The hour/level ones are the chief offenders, so let's address them. What say we reduce mage armor, magic vestment, greater magic weapon, and similar spells to 10 minutes per level? That way, there is virtually no way to get the spells to last all day, but they still last long enough for a brief dungeon crawl.

I think that these ideas would indeed achieve what you want to.

If defensive and buffing spells' durations are cut, then they need to be cast shortly before combat, which means that there is no time fo 10 spells but maybe only a couple. Hence, characters would need to look elsewhere for permanent effects -> magic items.

However I don't think that 10 minutes/level make a huge difference because as you say they might be enough for a dungeon crawl (2 hrs?), and if not enough, a second or third casting (or a simple Extend spell) can suffice. This probably means that you clearly achieve your goal when dealing with surprise encounters or ambushes, but maybe not a big difference if the party can still cast them at a dungeon's entrance and be protected long enough. But this may work well anyway...

BUT consider anyway the possibility of being disappointed: you wish for powerful magic items, but what if instead this idea produces a situation where characters take loads of MINOR magic items: bracers of armors, cloak of resistance, 2-3 buff items, etc. Does this still match your expectations?

Personally I'm not a fan at all of 3.5 duration reductions exactly because they made things like gloves of dexterity and amulet of health quite ubiquitous IMO.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

I'd just rather the buff spells went away in total. That would make classes more dependant on their actual abilities.

And yes, this most is more than half-joking...

 

[Darklone]

Interestingly, Find the Path makes no mention about what it does for a trap that can't be bypassed normally. See, Find the Path says "The spell enables the subject to sense the correct direction that will eventually lead it to its destination, indicating at appropriate times the exact path to follow or physical actions to take. For example, the spell enables the subject to sense trip wires or the proper word to bypass a glyph of warding"

Is nothing at all about, say, a no-bypass, no password Glyph of Warding that fills all routes into a particular area... unless, of course, it has you pick up a pick and start digging.....

Does that spell help you against a Glyph that checks your alignment? Don't think so.

 

[XO]

1 hour per level...

When reaching level 12+, these all tend to be cast when going to bed...

Next day, the forays hardly last much more than 4+ hours.

Any creature likely to have survived the "human hunters" or the "elven blight" for any amount of time will KNOW to Dispel (if they can).

 

[Harm]

Does that spell help you against a Glyph that checks your alignment? Don't think so.

It says "exact actions to take." So you would know it's an alignment based glyph and yours needs to be changed. The spell is ridiculously "I win" along the lines of the whole augury/divination line and forces DMs to jump through hoops to keep game integrity. Even at the mildest interpretation of "exact actions to take" the spell still becomes a 10 minutes/level-no-concentration 100% trap finder which is bad enough. Anything that makes the 25 points the rogue spent in climb, or find traps or hide be completely obsolete is bad.

 

[Spatzimaus]

It says "exact actions to take." So you would know it's an alignment based glyph and yours needs to be changed.

No, you WOULDN'T know it's alignment-based, because that's not an "action". If the glyph blocked your alignment, then it'd tell you to go around, sure, but remember that not everyone in your party is the same alignment as you, and the spell explicitly only benefits its RECIPIENT. So if you're Chaotic Neutral and the glyph keys off of a Good alignment, then it'd tell you to go right on through, but the moment your Neutral Good buddy steps on it, BOOM!!!. If you're standing next to him then you'd still be damaged by it.

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To the original topic:
I think people are horribly underestimating the number of people who'd need buffs, as evidenced by the comments

greater magic weapon and magic vestment make magical weapons and armor quite pointless.

and

Maybe GMW on the rogue for archery might be worthwhile, but even sneak attacking rogues are crunchy in melee and are best-advised to stay away until it is time for the "killing blow."

First, a well-built Rogue isn't really that much more crunchy than a Fighter, for the simple reason that light armors have higher MaxDEX values (meaning comparable base ACs), and there are so few worthwhile defensive Feats out there that the Fighter can't use all his bonus feats to pull ahead. Yes, the Rogue will have fewer hit points, but that only matters if people have CONs of about 10; a CON 16 Fighter averages 8.5 HP per die, a CON 16 Rogue 6.5. Hardly enough to keep the Rogue out of melee range if he can deal twice as much damage per round as the Fighter can (dual-wielding with a 10d6 Sneak Attack blows Weapon Specialization out of the water). And even if you didn't give your character a 16 CON at birth, all it takes is a +CON item...

Second, in most groups I've been in, at least half the group used melee weapons at any given time. Dual-wielding Rangers and Rogues, tank-like Fighters and Paladins, a semi-insane Barbarian/Rogue... they all needed the benefits of a magic weapon. I NEVER saw anyone say "nah, I don't need a magic sword, I can always get someone to put GMW on me." And even if someone had, the sheer number of people who'd need it would overload the casters quickly. Are you really going to have your Wizard spending all of his 3rd-level slots on GMW each day, when he could be using those slots for haste, fly, fireball, etc.? Same goes for magic vestment and the Cleric's 3rd-level slots; everyone in the group will want that extra AC.

If anything, I've run into the reverse problem; players use multiple AC items to give themselves a high permanent AC and become almost untouchable to regular weapons. I've mentioned this in other threads. Part of the problem is that so many items are perma-effect or at-will activation, so in our house rules most of these simply aren't possible in a Wondrous Item (or anything other than a Ring, for that matter), and are replaced with X/day activations.

Now, that isn't to say that greater magic weapon doesn't have a balance issue. It does, but that has less to do with the duration and more to do with the effect when placed on a +1 flaming keen blahblahblah weapon, IMO, so we house-ruled it to increase the Market Price Modifier to level/4, instead of just the Enhancement. Then we added a superior magic weapon spell at level 7 that can increase it higher.

 

[airwalkrr]

If anything, I've run into the reverse problem; players use multiple AC items to give themselves a high permanent AC and become almost untouchable to regular weapons. I've mentioned this in other threads. Part of the problem is that so many items are perma-effect or at-will activation, so in our house rules most of these simply aren't possible in a Wondrous Item (or anything other than a Ring, for that matter), and are replaced with X/day activations.

I blame 3e DMs who are lazy about balancing equipment and let the PCs buy anything they want. When you control magic items carefully, this is not a problem.

 

[Jack Simth]

Does that spell help you against a Glyph that checks your alignment? Don't think so.

Well, it could argueably have you do stuff to change your alignment first.

"Now you need to murder your companions in their sleep" for something that passes only evil critters, or "Now you need to give all your stuff to the poor" for something that passes only good critters, or "Now you need to turn in your rogue friend" for something that only passes Lawful critters, or "Now you need to dispose of the king" for something that only passes Chaotic critters.

Personally, though, I'm more fond of the spell showing you to a granite cliff and indicating that you should start digging ('cause that's the only way you're getting past the traps unscathed).