[Rant] On Spell Focus...

[Cloudgatherer]

Cloak of Resistance +5 resistance (25K)
Luckstone +1 luck (10K)
Ioun Stone (pearly white) +1 competence (20K)

That's 55K for +7 to all saves.
Conversely, the only way, I think, to boost a DC by core rules is to use stat-booters (items and/or tomes) or Spell Focus (in 3.0 at least).

Later.

Edit: Forgot SF to boost saves.

 

[Xeriar]

And are these items core? This sounds like someone wants items similar to a sword of constant true strike.

Besides, there are non-core items that boost save DCs and even the ability to penetrate SR. For cheap.

The bonuses are core (along with competance... forgot that). There is also sacred/profane which typically provides a straight +2.

 

[Psion]

Even with archmage "nerfed", it was fairly easy to get uber hard to beat DCs. I saw it done.

I've already banned archmage in my campaign. The main wizard is an grey elf with spell focus and spell prodigy, and I still find unadjusted mosnters make their saves a fair proportion of the time. If with that optimized of a character it's not an issue, I'm not especially convinced that in general it's an issue.

Add to the archmage that buffs have also been nerfed, I think that the case for nerfing spellfocus as part of a general DC-nerfing campaign is a lot weaker.

You lost me here. Are you saying weapon focus is less useful than spell focus or more useful?

I am saying that a smaller proportion of a spellcaster's spells will fall under the feat that the number of attacks a fighter will use. Pretty much, with the exception of switching between melee and missile, the fighter will always be using their weapon of preference if they have the choice.

Dodge didn't get a power-up IIRC.

I see multiple references in various threads to dodge being improved. I don't have access to the compiled changes list to verify.

Base feats shouldn't be useless, just LESS useful than Whirlwind attack, Many-Shot or Spring Attack.

I'm not saying that they should be. The should be about as useful as any feat you could take at first level.

Exactly, but they do raise those prescious DCs. They all Stack. And before they stacked on a +4, now its only a +2.

Ah, but Andy Collins himself confesses that SF would be "alright" if it weren't for GSF. But that begs the question, if one feat for +2 is "alright", how is two feats for the same bonus not "weak"?

Nerfing SF for GSF is throwing the baby out with the bathwater AFAIAC.

It makes them worth taking.

Does it? I'm not convinced. You are drawing too direct a correlation between the two, but I don't think that the magnitude of SF is that big a factor in the utility of the save boosters. The more common saves for a PC will probably not involve SF at all, being things like poison saves, traps, unenhances spellcasters, and spell like and supernatural abilities. Either they are worth it now or they are not; a +1 difference in SF does not weigh greatly on this.

the big offender was GSF. +4 was too useful for transmuters, necromancers, evokers, and enchanters to EVER pass up.

That could well be. But my issue is not so much that they nerfed GSF as they nerfed SF.

GSF... well, I'm not convinced either way yet on that one, other than to say, again, our anecdotes differ.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The bonuses are core (along with competance... forgot that). There is also sacred/profane which typically provides a straight +2.

I don't see a +3 ring of profance bonus to saving throw in the DMG, nor do I see a weapon that gives you a +3 morale bonus to attack rolls in the DMG, etc. Those item creation guidelines are just that, guidelines. You can break them really easily.

 

[Xeriar]

I don't see a +3 ring of profance bonus to saving throw in the DMG, nor do I see a weapon that gives you a +3 morale bonus to attack rolls in the DMG, etc. Those item creation guidelines are just that, guidelines. You can break them really easily.

Protection from evil (or good, law, chaos... or all of them).