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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6436495" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, per the title, I'm evaluating these spells as it pertains to being a Wizard specifically.   There are going to be a some cases where it matters.  If you can cast spells while in armor, for example, Mage Armor is going to be of much less utility to you.  But in general, the reasons why I evaluate a spell as good or bad won't change that much.  Whether or not +10 movement is good depends on two things:a) How often is it the case in your game that you spend an entire action moving but are unable to close with the target and attack, where if you had 10' of additional movement, you wouldn't 'waste' the entire turn?   There are a few variations of this with less absolute advantage that is obtainable, but they are IMO equally rare and of much less impact so we could consider them subcases of the best case.   An example would be when you would be able to obtain flanking with 10' of additional movement but wouldn't without it, and it also happens that doing so has a meaningful value (you or an ally wouldn't have hit or as hard without it).   Does it happen?  Yes.   Does it happen a lot?  Not in my experience.  Most of the time 30' is as good as 40'.b) How often is it the case in your game that if you had +10' of additional movement, that you could force a foe to waste his entire turn just moving because they would be unable to close with you.  Again, there are a few variations of this with less absolute advantage that is obtainable, but they are IMO equally rare and of much less impact so we could consider them subcases of the best case.In my experience, small increases in speed rarely lead to significant advantages for the following reasons:a) The foe has a ranged attack mitigating any advantage in positioning.b) You have a ranged attack, mitigating any advantage in the foe's positioning.c) It's not predictable when you need an increase in speed, and if it costs you an action to gain the increase in speed, this mitigates the increased value of your future actions because you otherwise could have spent that action profitably - including in many cases moving.d) DMs generally favor small areas in which battles are conducted, mitigating most value to additional speed.  There just usually isn't a lot of maneuver room anyway.   Fights occur in 20' wide corridors or streets, or in 30'x40' room, or in similarly constrained locations.e) Parties have to stick together if they want to survive.  Thus, it's much more important that you not be slower than average than it is that you be faster than average.  Being faster than average rarely leads to situations where you can exploit your speed fully, for fear of being separated, isolated, cut off from magical support (such as healing or auras or what not) and so forth.f) Many monsters are simply so fast that any marginal increase in PC speed is meaningless for the purposes of attempting tactical positioning.  You can't maneuver compared to dire tigers, fire elementals, djinns, or whatnot so investing resources in trying is generally ineffective.  It's generally just more important for the party to maintain a cohesive tactical unit.g) Even if you can obtain tactical advantage from movement, all you are really doing is moving agro from yourself to another party member who is less able to maneuver and who therefore soaks the attack for you.  Thus, you really need to have some reliable damage sponge in the party before its anything but selfish to be even trying this sort of thing.   I saw this sort of problem a lot with 3e Monks.  The class was really good at surviving, but only because it was really good at abandoning the rest of the party.The reason that Expeditious Retreat was evaluated higher than Longstrider is that the former is far more likely to yield a real tactical advantage regardless of what your class is.   It's not as if there don't exist Wizard builds that gain advantages from tactical positioning.</blockquote>

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