Ridiculous amount of buffs

[Edena_of_Neith]

With apologies to Ashockney

At what point does buffing become ridiculous? What would be the effect of limiting it? Does the higher level game assume that all pcs will be this buffed?

When I ran RttToEE, I got sick of this particular tactic by the pcs: Wake up at 10am, buff to the gills, clear three or four rooms, and teleport back to town to rest for the day. Rinse repeat. I believe they did this because of buffs. They wanted to make sure they had them all up before each fight.

And how does a DM prepare for something like this? Its bad enough trying to create high level npcs...figuring out buff strategies for them makes it a nightmare. For those running high level games, how do you handle it?

I have no problem with powerful characters. But powerful characters might have a problem with my DMing, to the great consternation of their players.
Power is never free, and it's use is never free of consequences.

Let's say your party is doing this with the Temple of Elemental Evil, using Hommlet as their base (it could be any place and base, though.)
After several of these raids, the party is going to find the Temple is an armed camp swarming with monsters sent up from the lower levels by the very annoyed higher-ups.
When the party triumphs over these harsher encounters, further raids will find reinforcements crashing in to support the defending monsters.
When the party triumphs over these, the higher-ups - now royally angry - use their magic to find out just who is attacking and where they are coming from. Now, the first raid of Buffed-Up Monsters, assails Hommlet, looking for the party!
Hommlet demands the party protect them. But how does the party protect an entire town from an army of monsters sent by the Temple? Now they must think defense of the civilian population, as well as look to themselves since eventually the enemy may find out their exact location and teleport right to them.
Now there is a full scale war between the party and the Temple, and the Temple - no longer nice guys about this - sends massive force to eradicate the party.
When the party defeats this force, the leaders at the Temple use their magic to summon an Infernal Army. This army marches forth, destroys Hommlet, then starts rampaging through the countryside, destroying everything in it's path.
The Queen of Celene, the Lords of Waterdeep, the Dwarves of the Lortmils, and assorted other royalty send their armies to deal with this army, and the party is caught in the greater war they started.
Eventually, the party become celebrities throughout the land. They gain the attention of everyone and everything. They're a household name. Of course, this kind of recognition has all sorts of consequences, some which may lead to other adventures, and some which may lead to major unpleasantries.
In the end, if the party does not deal with the higher-ups under the Temple, it is likely the higher-ups will come after them personally. And if the party thinks it has the last word on buffs, wait until they see what these higher-ups had access to (and, of course, if the DM is really nasty, defeating the higher-ups does not end it: Manshoon's Stasis Clone, henchmen with Resurrection and Raise the Undead, and Wish, make it an all night party with an engraved invitation the party simply can't refuse.)

Play with fire, get burned. But hey, it's a character's life!

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi DM-Rocco!

It sounds a bit over powered.

Anyway, let me get this straight, if I have AMC 5 I could cast a maximized and empowered meterswarm? That seems a bit much if I am right.

Thats correct.

As for it being too powerful I disagree. The example you list above would require a minimum of a 27th-level caster (to gain the five AMC feats). Which is exactly the same level you would need to gain 5 improved spellcasting feats (under the official system) which let you cast 14th-level spells.

So indirectly, my method gives you the same power that the official rules bestow.

The problem with the official rules is twofold:

1. Alienation of lower level spells.

By constantly giving higher level spell slots, you increasingly make the lower level spells redundant.

2. Complexity (In terms of the amount of time needed).

I have tried to use the official system (improved spellcasting feats) to create NPC spellcasters at varying epic levels and I must confess it is a total nightmare.

Both of these problems are solved by my system. Its simpler, far more elegant (requires no table), more flexible (can be used on the fly), doesn't alienate lower level spells and its far quicker when creating NPCs.

 

[Rackhir]

You know there are spells in the Spell Compendium (and the complete books) that not only dispel magic, but actually do damage based on how many spell levels they dispel. So the more buffed a character is the more damage they can take. Not something you'd probably want to use every fight, but it should help to moderate the tendancy to buff up to the max.

Look up Reaving Dispel and Reciprocal Gyre. I think there might be some others as well.

 

[jmucchiello]

Finally, the character may be subject to up to X non-enhancement magical effects (invisibility, haste, contingency, etc.) at one time. Decide what you think is reasonable (Personally, I like 3). Attempts to layer spells on top of this instead causes the new spell to replace the oldest spell in effect. That handles most of the remainder cases.

SOP becomes cast quickened endure elements on the BBEG a couple times to destroy his buffs. Stoneskin? Now, how about enjoying a warm environment? Poof.