D&D 3.x problem spells in 3.5

[Ahnehnois]

Why do many GMs completely ignore spell components?

Because doing so is easy.

 

[LostSoul]

Why do many GMs completely ignore spell components?

This is why:

Spell Component Pouch: A spellcaster with a spell component pouch is assumed to have all the material components and focuses needed for spellcasting, except for those components that have a specific cost, divine focuses, and focuses that wouldn’t fit in a pouch.​

 

[N'raac]

Even if we're going to force the issue and make the wizard find a giant octopus or squid (not wholly unreasonable given it's a tough item to expect the commoners to harvest), nothing says a large piece of tentacle is needed, and smoking, drying, salting or pickling it does not seem to impede its use.

 

[Bolcien]

... Why do many GMs completely ignore spell components?

I find Eschew Materials to be quite efficient as well.

 

[doghead]

First let me say if you are having issues with these spells and are a GM then you should stop and do some thing else because you are not 1, very creative 2, too much of a rules lawyer and 3, a whiner. Now if you are not a GM then it does not matter but for the GM who is helpless or needs to be told what to use or not here is a bit of advice. Don't use them.............simple.

Really? Seriously?

If don't have anything positive to add to the discussion, then just move one. Pick another thread to which you can add something in a civil and respectful manner.

On a related note, you might want to pay a little more attention to your grammar and punctuation. Not only would it improve the clarity of your writing, it would also assist you in actually expressing what you mean.

thotd

 

[Evenglare]

Even if we're going to force the issue and make the wizard find a giant octopus or squid (not wholly unreasonable given it's a tough item to expect the commoners to harvest), nothing says a large piece of tentacle is needed, and smoking, drying, salting or pickling it does not seem to impede its use.

To be fair nothing says an altered one can be used either. It seems to me it would be up in the air as a GM call. Also, how rare are octopi in the game? I'd wager it is pretty rare unless you have some sort of under the sea campaign going on... AND let's say that people do catch octopi on a regular occasion. I'm pretty damn sure people willing to sell their tentacles are going to ask for a hell of a lot of money for it, which -again- you the GM get to decide. AND even if the wizard could buy the tentacle many times, what is the party supposed to do when the wizard runs out? Go back to the sea faring town to get one? Yeah, that is gonna make the other PCs happy, completely disrupting the quest.

Also though, the GM can and SHOULD ban certain spells, or at least make them extremely hard to come by, perhaps even going on a quest to learn the spell. I still don't understand the reason everyone seems to think it's okay to ban races, classes, restrict items, but no one seems to ban anything that actually makes the game broken. Of course you can cherry pick spells to ban, but as for the materials, simply do not allow that feat to be taken (essentially banning a feat) instead of banning many spells. It always seems to me that people talk about optimization and all of that because they allow every damn rulebook under the sun. No gamemaster in his right mind should allow every single thing printed in the rule books. D&D gives you the ability to shape and construct your world, in other words the GM gets to make choices that reflect his world and how it works.

And to pre-empt the "When a game is released it should be balanced so I shouldn't have to modify the game myself" argument. This is absolutely untrue, roleplaying games are all about decisions from the player AND GM. Many people who have the argument seem to imply that you have to make up enhance or create something for the game to be balance, when it's exactly the opposite. You are trimming things down on the game, not creating anything new.

tldr; The point is that there are many ways around or to put in check powerful spells but for whatever reason,very few people about those things in a "spell breaking the game" thread.

 

[Empirate]

You are perilously close to committing the Oberoni Fallacy there, [MENTION=63245]Evenglare[/MENTION]. "The game ain't broke, coz you can play it by different rules" doesn't convince me.

Some spells (items, feats, class/race abilities...) in the game AS WRITTEN are problematic. Not because it's hard to figure out and adjudicate how they work, or because it's hard to imagine them working the way they're intended, or because they're hard to include in a given campaign. But because they upset game balance on such a fundamental level that it may ruin your game at least for one session, before everybody sits down together and figures out a gentlemen's agreement or a fitting nerf or a generally agreed-upon ban.

On the topic of spells: The fact of the matter is still that there are spells that are simply, inarguably powerful, with no mitigating factors in their wording, in RP considerations, in components etc. Just picking out some problem spells from the PHB, starting with the letter G, for example's sake: Gate, Glibness, Glitterdust, Grease. All four of them are extremely powerful for their level: Glibness has campain-ruining potential, Grease and Glitterdust can trivialize whole encounters with one casting, Gate can do both.
None of them requires difficult to get or expensive components, unless butter is for some reason extremely rare in your world. Gate eats up 1,000 XP, but that's not much of a balancing factor for what the spell does. None of them is easily RP-restricted, as in e.g. "that's too evil for me to use". None of them has any ambiguous wording, either.

So once these four spells have been identified as problematic, sure, you can get out ye olde banhammer. Or you can implement some houserules to make them more in line with what other spells of their levels can do. BUT you can also play the game and accept that there are bad options, there are good options, and there are some options that border on being broken.
Now I consider none of the four mentioned spells to be broken, so I allow them in my game. I'm aware that these spells exist, I'm aware that they're good, and so are my players. Consequently, they've become part of our common understanding of how the game works. I've thought about toning down Glitterdust at one point, but I couldn't see it making the game significantly more fun to play, so I'm saving myself the hassle. Instead, I've accepted that Glitterdust is really, really good and moved on.

Long story short: what spells are (too) good is mostly a matter of expectation and preference on the DM's and players' part. However, it's also a matter of creativity and circumstance. If you expect or want exciting overland travel at 17th level, banning/heavily restricting Teleport (along with Master Earth, Windwalk, Overland Flight...) is really your only option. Given this goal, I'd ban them too. But if you want a murder mystery to be mysterious at 6th level, you have more options than outright banning Speak With Dead: as a DM, you can expect your PCs to use it. Maybe the murderer's identity isn't the issue, it's the finding of him that's difficult. Heck, you can even make the spell part of the actual mystery: maybe the murderer used a disguise because he actually counted on SWD being used, thus implying an innocent in the murder.


If possible, when applying the ban-/nerfhammer, do it judiciously, and don't go by knee-jerk. Moreover, think long and hard how you can use a spell perceived as problematic to enhance your game, instead of only seeing it as negative.

 

[Evenglare]

You are perilously close to committing the Oberoni Fallacy there, [MENTION=63245]Evenglare[/MENTION]. "The game ain't broke, coz you can play it by different rules" doesn't convince me.

What is this.. I don't even... You completely and utterly disregarded my pre-empt argument and said the exact thing that I rebutted. You aren't changing the rules or making them different, you are limiting them. I guess I should specify what I mean by change. I mean, alter the way a mechanic works in the game. When you disallow a spell or class or race or whatever you aren't changing anything about the rules regarding those races because they simply don't exist assuming you are to ban them. It's like lighting something on fire, then you reduce the fire. You haven't changed how fire works, you have simply made less of it.

I agree with you on most other parts, but again you say X material is or should be easy to come by. Perhaps, but it's still reading the rules in a vacuum. In almost every thread discussing what is OP people seems to not take into account what players are doing in the world, or what the world is. It's just a nebulous void of theory. You know what? Butter probably is going to be hard to come by especially when it's made by hand. Where are you going to find butter when you are days deep into a dungeon? What about on the plane of fire, butter there? Again assuming butter IS easy to come by, is the wizard going to really say "screw it, let's get out of this dungeon", walk however many miles it is to the nearest town, buy butter then walk all the way back?

I know most of this is anecdotal, and normally is not good evidence when trying to prove something, but the fact of the matter is that anecdotal evidence is REQUIRED while playing a roleplaying game. The whole damn thing is contingent on what the players experience in the world, not just a nebulous void of abstract numbers relating to mechanics. While I concede the is the best way of comparison in theory, never in any game, are you going to be looking specifically at numbers and nothing else in that context. The GM simply must use common sense on what is allowed and is not. I believe this is what you were trying to get at anyway and again, I agree. I guess I must be a narrativist rather than a gamist or simulationist.... /shrug

 

[Empirate]

What is this.. I don't even... You completely and utterly disregarded my pre-empt argument and said the exact thing that I rebutted. You aren't changing the rules or making them different, you are limiting them. I guess I should specify what I mean by change. I mean, alter the way a mechanic works in the game. When you disallow a spell or class or race or whatever you aren't changing anything about the rules regarding those races because they simply don't exist assuming you are to ban them. It's like lighting something on fire, then you reduce the fire. You haven't changed how fire works, you have simply made less of it.

I agree with you on most other parts, but again you say X material is or should be easy to come by. Perhaps, but it's still reading the rules in a vacuum. In almost every thread discussing what is OP people seems to not take into account what players are doing in the world, or what the world is. It's just a nebulous void of theory. You know what? Butter probably is going to be hard to come by especially when it's made by hand. Where are you going to find butter when you are days deep into a dungeon? What about on the plane of fire, butter there? Again assuming butter IS easy to come by, is the wizard going to really say "screw it, let's get out of this dungeon", walk however many miles it is to the nearest town, buy butter then walk all the way back?

I know most of this is anecdotal, and normally is not good evidence when trying to prove something, but the fact of the matter is that anecdotal evidence is REQUIRED while playing a roleplaying game. The whole damn thing is contingent on what the players experience in the world, not just a nebulous void of abstract numbers relating to mechanics. While I concede the is the best way of comparison in theory, never in any game, are you going to be looking specifically at numbers and nothing else in that context. The GM simply must use common sense on what is allowed and is not. I believe this is what you were trying to get at anyway and again, I agree. I guess I must be a narrativist rather than a gamist or simulationist.... /shrug

Sorry if I misread/misrepresented your post.

You make a good argument about the contingency of actual in-game situations (which are the ones that matter) as opposed to theorycrafting "X ought be easy to come by" (which might be true, but if it's not in even one case, the whole argument dissipates for that case at least). I'm assuming most people have both a "generic medieval fantasy game" AND their own campaign in mind when posting in threads such as this. Most posters here have provided background information to clarify why specific spells are problem spells for their game, which only goes to show that a problem in one instance might not be one in another.

 

[N'raac]

To be fair nothing says an altered one can be used either. It seems to me it would be up in the air as a GM call.

I agree with this, but only to a limited extent. While the spell does not state whether a preserved piece of tentacle can be used, it does not say it must be fresh either. Do other spells specify either that a component can be preserved, or that it must be fresh? Many spells have components (fireflies, bat guano) which seem like they would need to be preserved, or would need to be gathered on a fairly regular basis.

As well, the rules must be read as a whole. The spell component pouch, by RAW, is assumed to have any material component except for those with a specified cost (this component has no cost specified), divine focuses and focuses which would not fit in a pouch. That includes the component for Black Tentacles. As a GM, carefully reviewing the rules to make my ruling, this tells me that, by RAW, the component for black tentacles is automatically in the component pouch, in adequate supply, easily restocked.

That doesn't mean I have to abide by that rule as written. However, it does mean that making the component difficult to access, expensive and/or requiring the players to seek it out is a change from the rules as written. In other words, it is just as much a house rule as modifying or banning the spell. I would also note that this should be communicated to the players in advance. The wizard would, in researching and learning the spell, discover that the material component is difficult to obtain. To me, if he cannot obtain a ready supply of the component, he can't practically learn to cast the spell reliably, so he would need to decide whether to seek out a supply to practice and master the spell (delaying its addition to his repertoire) or select a different spell and wait until he levels up again to consider that one.

Also, how rare are octopi in the game? I'd wager it is pretty rare unless you have some sort of under the sea campaign going on... AND let's say that people do catch octopi on a regular occasion. I'm pretty damn sure people willing to sell their tentacles are going to ask for a hell of a lot of money for it, which -again- you the GM get to decide. AND even if the wizard could buy the tentacle many times, what is the party supposed to do when the wizard runs out? Go back to the sea faring town to get one? Yeah, that is gonna make the other PCs happy, completely disrupting the quest.

Based on the rules as written, giant octopi and squids are sufficiently common in the game that their tentacles, in a form suitable for use as a component of Black Tentacles, have a negligible cost, and are routinely found in adequate quantity in spell component pouches. Each of your comments above is a perfectly legitimate concern, the implementation of which departs from the rules as written, and is therefore a house rule. It is as legitimate as any other house rule, including one which says "material components are not assumed; no spell component pouch", or "Black Tentacles is too powerful to be readily available - you must quest to obtain the components and they are perishable" or "Black Tentacles is OP and is therefore banned from the game". None of those choices are inherently superior, and all three depart from the rules as written.

Also though, the GM can and SHOULD ban certain spells, or at least make them extremely hard to come by, perhaps even going on a quest to learn the spell. I still don't understand the reason everyone seems to think it's okay to ban races, classes, restrict items, but no one seems to ban anything that actually makes the game broken. Of course you can cherry pick spells to ban, but as for the materials, simply do not allow that feat to be taken (essentially banning a feat) instead of banning many spells. It always seems to me that people talk about optimization and all of that because they allow every damn rulebook under the sun. No gamemaster in his right mind should allow every single thing printed in the rule books. D&D gives you the ability to shape and construct your world, in other words the GM gets to make choices that reflect his world and how it works.

All of these are choices for the individual table. I find "Whatever ruling we decide applies to PC and NPC alike" tends to stimulate a very reasoned discussion as to whether a specific ability or combination should, or should not, be allowed, and how it should be interpreted.