Destil
Explorer
From memory it was the dice roll that broke these in 3E. Empower / maximize let you get more than a +6, sometimes a whole lot more...
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Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder overhaul suggestions, pt. 2
- Thread starter RangerWickett
- Start date
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
I think the solution they went for, though, was wrong. It increases the likelyhood of the "15 minute adventure"-day if a spell that is as useful as Bulls Strength lasts only a few minutes. It is a similar problem to the swift action spells - they are nice to have, but you're bleeding spell slots!
And it's also a book-keeping problem - do I have this spell on in this combat? Are 9 minutes over yet?
The better solution would have been to reduce the bonus to +2 and increase the duration to hours. Maybe even the static +4 would have worked. (The original 1d4+1 only lead to metamagic abuse.) Or limited the amount of spells that can be active on you, or that a spellcaster can sustain...
Nifft
Penguin Herder
3e's stacking Metamagic allowed these spells to exceed the bonus a level-appropriate item would give, but it's the hours-long duration that allows you to get away with eschewing the items entirely.
Buff-oriented casters are like that. The more slots they spend before a combat, the fewer rounds the combat is likely to last, and thus the more slots per round (as well as the more slots per encounter).
Yeah, minute-duration spells were very annoying from this side of the DM's screen. They introduce a conflict between "we proceed as carefully as sane, experienced adventurers do" and "we hurry to the next fight before we run out of juice!".
Cheers, -- N
Rodrigo Istalindir
Explorer
Were I going to do it all over myself, I'd introduce the concept of 'concentration' (ala DAoC -- OMG did I just make an MMO reference?) for spells with a duration longer than 'instantaneous'. Casters got a limited amount of concentration slots, and each spell they had to maintain took up one. So instead of rush-rush-rush through the dungeon, or fight/rest/fight, it became a choice of 'Do I keep up 4 bulls strengths, or drop the one on the ranger so I can summon a monster?'
Non-trivial to get the right number of concentration slots, but do-able. Also makes the higher level mass-effect buffs more useful if they took up fewer of the concentration slots.
Non-trivial to get the right number of concentration slots, but do-able. Also makes the higher level mass-effect buffs more useful if they took up fewer of the concentration slots.
James Jacobs
Adventurer
This is a very interesting idea... I'll make sure Jason sees this thread. (It's too late to do anything about this in the Beta, of course... but since we're a year or so away from sending the final RPG to print, there's PLENTY of time to try this out!)
Nifft
Penguin Herder
The only issue with this is that it makes everyone into a half-blaster (and this may be a feature, if you subscribe to 4e's philosophy), since everyone can do X amount of Concentration stuff PLUS as much Instantaneous stuff as they want.
So you could be an Illusionist AND Blaster "for free", but being a Conjurer AND Illusionist would render each side half as effective. Again, this may be a feature, depending on what combat activities you want to encourage.
Cheers, -- N
I haven't really had such huge problems with these issues as most people here seem to imply tend to occur, but nonetheless I like the basic idea being presented here.
Just a couple of comments:
1) Don't remove dispel magic or give it arbitrary restrictions on being completely uncastable in combat or not effecting the long-duration buffs. Instead of just saying "you cannot cast it in combat", make it highly impractical to cast in combat - for example, give it a five round casting time or if you really, really don't want it to be cast in combat, even a 5-minute casting time. It effectively accomplishes the same thing, while still keeping those of us hating the explicitly gamist restrictions happy.
2) Please, please don't introduce explicitly per-encounter effects. Let's have rounds per level effects or hours per level effects or even minutes per level effects. Have effects that are implicitly/effectively per encounter if you wish, but please no gamist explicit per encounter effects.
3) Other than the above two issues, most of the simplifacations here sound very interesting and I wouldn't mind seeing them in the Pathfinder RPG, though because I have not really had such huge issues with these things in the past, it is not as important for me as it appears to be for some posters.
Just a couple of comments:
1) Don't remove dispel magic or give it arbitrary restrictions on being completely uncastable in combat or not effecting the long-duration buffs. Instead of just saying "you cannot cast it in combat", make it highly impractical to cast in combat - for example, give it a five round casting time or if you really, really don't want it to be cast in combat, even a 5-minute casting time. It effectively accomplishes the same thing, while still keeping those of us hating the explicitly gamist restrictions happy.
2) Please, please don't introduce explicitly per-encounter effects. Let's have rounds per level effects or hours per level effects or even minutes per level effects. Have effects that are implicitly/effectively per encounter if you wish, but please no gamist explicit per encounter effects.
3) Other than the above two issues, most of the simplifacations here sound very interesting and I wouldn't mind seeing them in the Pathfinder RPG, though because I have not really had such huge issues with these things in the past, it is not as important for me as it appears to be for some posters.
GlassJaw
Hero
I like this concept a lot. From a fluff perspective, it makes each spell tied to the caster, rather than "fire-and-forget". It's also very similar to sustaining spells in Shadowrun. A caster can keep a spell active but it's makes it more difficult for him to do other things.
The more I think about this, I don't think the problem is necessarily the recalculation itself, because no matter how much you revise or simplify the system, you are always going to have to "do math".
I think the bigger problem is multiple buffs at once. If someone has Bull's Strength cast on them, that's not a big deal. But if someone has Bull's Strength, Haste, Enlarge Person, and a bard song, then things get cumbersome.
jesse.colegoldberg
First Post
The laughing has subsided...
Regarding "long draught" potions, how about a tea or infusion that takes x minutes to steep and then must be consumed. I could see an edge case where people would be chugging cups of steaming hot tea just before the teleport goes off, but there is a certain poetic absurdity to it.
Rodrigo Istalindir
Explorer
Good point. I think you'd have to start with concentration slots being fairly limited, and add a way to increase them where the opportunity cost for a pure-blaster-caster wouldn't be worth it. You could also make an additional concentration slot a perk of specialization in certain schools, although the spell lists have gotten so muddled (esp. Conjuration) that might not work.
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