Random Musings: Problemchild Buffs: Wardings and Boosts (really long)

[Ulrik]

Come to think of it, doesn't this parallell what Tome of Battle does with Maneuvers and Stances?

Not that I think that's a bad thing.

 

[Agent Oracle]

Reminds me a bit of the powers of an "Accordian Thief" in Kingdom of Loathing. The class has the most powerful buffing ability in the game (all of the skills it possesses are buff skills that increase the core stats, damage, money, item, and experience gain.) But it can only have three of these skills active at any given time.

Most players settle on their three favorites and keep those running all the time, or they pick two favorites, and have one that can be switched out.

 

[Rackhir]

I don't have the book, so I can't comment with 100% certainty, but you might want to look at Green Ronin's "Black Company Sourcebook". The way you want the wards and boosts to work sounds a lot like how that sort of stuff works in the Black Company books.

 

[jmucchiello]

There was a thread like this before and as I said in that thread, buffing is actually only a mid-level phenomenon in my experience. When characters push into the low teens (high level), they own magic items that give them +4 or more to all the ability score buffs. Once that occurs, the animal buffs never get cast again. Our current game consists of 27th level characters. The only prep time before a combat is taken by the cleric, should he or shouldn't he cast righteous might. The sorcerer throws a haste and sometimes there is time for the cleric to cast prayer. That's it. Everyone has magic items with most of the other buffs always on so the effects are pre-calculated right on the character sheet. Most of the characters have protection from evil in an item, various +6 ability boosts, resistance and AC boost, etc such that most spells would not stack with the equipment so you don't cast those spells. The aforementioned cleric lists his attack stats on his sheet twice, once with and once without righteous might.

I suspect that you don't play past 12th level very much. You would see the buffs go away if you did. (Maybe the old thread I'm thinking about is the "sweet spot" thread from a couple months ago.)

 

[ZSutherland]

As a fix for current 3.x games, I can see a polished up version of this working quite well. However, given the assumption that we're going with the level of overhaul implied in a change of edition, I'd just as soon they tossed all the boring buff spells (flat stat buffs, AC buffs, hit/damage buffs, or any other buff with only a numerical character sheet effect) out the window and re-adjusted mid-to-high level encounters to not require all that prep time and accounting. I sort of disagree with Hussar. Yes, a party that does not spend all its time buffing before combat has substantially more spell-resources at their disposal during the encounter. Unfortunately, as Gold Roger points out, even if the buff spells are slightly weaker than their fellow spells at any given level (and you'd have to make a pretty good arguement to convince me that's true), they make up for the lack by having dumped a lot of their resources outside the 1 standard action/round portion of combat. If one casting of bull's strength is about as effective at depleting enemy resources and/or protecting your own resources as scorching ray, hideos laughter, or summon monster II then the buff is the better option because it's casting time amounts to a swift action. Since save DCs are based mostly on spell level, this becomes even more exacerbated in high-level play because any low-level spell that requires a saving throw is less and less likely to succeed at higher levels, while beneficial spells cast on friendly targets never face this hurdle. Buffs just become the only really useful expenditure of those low-level slots. Make stat-boosting just be a more integral part of leveling (I figure if I spent most of my time swinging a sword, dodging fireballs, and getting beat near-to-death, I'd get stronger, more agile, and physically resiliant a little more often than once every 12 levels) and add in a "last ditch effort" mechanism for short-duration power-buffs, like action points. This would alleve the need for stat boosting spells and items.

Movement or environment buffs should remain roughly as they are, though. Getting a +5 to strength is boring. "Okay, Joe, you're a little stronger." Getting to fly or breathe underwater is more flavorful because it's something you can't usually do, not a slight boost to something you're already doing. The same would be true for invisibility, etc.

As for destroying Transmutation, I doubt it. There's so much that could have been done with that school that wasn't (at least in the core rules, since I don't have the $$$ to buy all these expansion books). The buff spells strike me as mostly lazy filler for a school that should have been much more flavorful.

 

[Thaniel]

PHBII has a 1hr/lvl spell (would be 24hr) that adds +2 Enhancement to Strength. The spell can be ended for a 1-round +8 Strength.

I got a cool idea with this. If Wardings are 2 levels above the Boosts (as Nyeshet suggested), then maybe something like this:

Lvl1 Boost (+2 Str)
Lvl3 Warding (+2 Str, dismissing gives +6 Str for 1 round)

Lvl1 Boost (+2 AC)
Lvl3 Warding (+2 AC, dismissing gives +6 AC for 1 round)

Or something like that?
It evokes some images from fantasy lit in my mind (unless I'm making those up, which I have been known to do)

 

[Hussar]

Oh, hey, I agree that buffing is an effective tactic. It wouldn't be discussed if it wasn't. I just question whether or not it's so effective that it dominates play. As jmucchiello mentions, at high levels, people's magic items overshadow most buffs. I watched my own group try to buff the other day and realized that, even at 12th level, most of the buffs were wasted as the PC's already had better.

I think that people are making this a bigger deal than it needs to be. Yes, saving throws become much more of a problem at higher level. OTOH, higher level casters have more options and can generally target weaker saving throws. Plus, the large number of battlefield control spells generally ignore saving throws anyway. A wall of iron closes off a route of attack pretty effectively.

Plus, the whole buff routine assumes that your players have knowledge of impending combats. How are they gaining this knowledge? Scry/buff/teleport only works if you actually know someone that you want to go face. That is certainly not true in most scenarios other than big boss fights where the tactic is usually foiled through very simple means. Rearrange the furniture and teleport doesn't work anymore.

As far as buff routines on surprised parties, well, that doesn't work either. The party shouldn't have time to drop those buffs before they got surprised, meaning that the buffs are either cast during combat or go unused.

The buff routine only works when the party knows that they are about to face a combat. Parties that rely on burning resources that way will find themselves very short changed in any situation where they have less than good information.

Going to a full day duration in a step back to 3e where the buffs lasted an hour/level. Why spend the money on magic items? Simply burn the spells at the beginning of the day and you were walking around with 2-5 points all day. There's a reason the durations were lowered. It stopped those spells from being so ungodly powerful.

 

[ZSutherland]

I agree that the duration change went a long way towards fixing the problem, and I'm mostly basing my assessment on what I've read here and common sense extrapolation from my understanding of the rules since my group plays AU/AE much more than D&D. However, I just keep thinking back to the thread from a few months ago about the Gencon demo with the black dragon mini where the first several rounds by both the PCs and the dragon were spent buffing.

In general, I'd just like to see the bulk of mundane buffs (both items and non-items) be rolled into character progression instead of spells and items in 4e. The blank spots in Trans could be filled up with low-level situational buffs (like a spell that covers the target with thorns for extra damage during a grapple) and seriously potent buffs at high levels. There's a huge difference between "Jim, you gain 5 to strength for a few minutes" and "Jim hulks out, gaining +20 to strength for 3 rounds" in a purely flavor sense.

 

[Someone]

at high levels, people's magic items overshadow most buffs. I watched my own group try to buff the other day and realized that, even at 12th level, most of the buffs were wasted as the PC's already had better

It's true that some (specially the animal buffs) get obsolete quickly. But it's not my experience or what I learnt from story hours that buffs tend to diminish with high level play. As an example, this is the list of spells currently active on the party members, right in the middle of a combat righ now in a 13-14th level Pbp game I'm in:

Mass resist Energy (cold and electricity)
Greater Invisibility
Displacement
See invisibility
Spell turning
Mage armor (2 characters)
Message
See Invisibility (2 characters)
Magic Circle Against Evil (3 characters)
Detect Scrying
Stoneskin
Freedom of movement
Greater magic fang
Mage Armor
Protection from Arrows.

And the only cleric is a mystic theurge, so he's not very militant -or we'd see Righteous Might and Divine power too- And in later levls surely we'd see some Moments of prescience and Mind Blanks in the list.

 

[Cheiromancer]

I'm of the opinion that the spells can stay as they are, for the most part, but that durations bound to level should be removed.

Buffs should be:

24hr or Encounter.

24hr buffs should be reduced in power ... PHBII has a 1hr/lvl spell (would be 24hr) that adds +2 Enhancement to Strength. The spell can be ended for a 1-round +8 Strength.

Similar spells should be available, I think, for the other stats, but maybe give them some flavor.

Mage Armor ... all day
Righteous Might ... one encounter

The only effect that has a similar non-combat-time duration is the Barbarian Rage fatigue debuff, which lasts until the end of the encounter and is gone.

I don't think it would be verisimilitude breaking to do spells that way ... they last until the encounter is over, then they're over. No tracking rounds, no rushing from place to place looking for something to fight, etc. Spells would have to be totally reimagined with that duration clock, of course, but I think the current system with a single minor change is easier than simplifying the confusion by adding alot more confusion.

--fje

I really like this idea, HeapThaumaturgist. Sepulchrave and I are discussing an epic spell system in House Rules, and one of the results we have is that a +6 ability bonus for 1 minute/level should be priced the same as a +2 ability bonus for 1 hour/level. Which, given a 20-level base caster level for epic effects, makes a +2 bonus last all day.

The "quadruple when dismissed" bit made Sep blink a bit; an epic buff that gives +12 to strength (and last all day) would give +48 strength for a round when it is dismissed. That might be OK, but I think it's the wizard who gets a +24 to his spell DCs for a round which is making him hesitate.

Anyway, I just thought I'd let you know that your suggestion was appreciated.

Oh, and a *bump* to an interesting thread.