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<blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 4249743" data-attributes="member: 5435">My first thought on reading this article was: &quot;Make Whole now takes 10 minutes? What if our party is on an unstable platform and needs that spell to save its life?&quot;After mulling it over, I realize why they all have long casting times, even if they could be useful in combat situations.It's to protect the skills. One of the big problems with 3e was that so many skills became irrelevant very early in the game. Now skills are always relevant: people can do most things faster and cheaper than magic.&nbsp; This also helps encourage a low-magic setting. Why bother learning ancient languages if a spell to do the same thing costs nothing?In 3e, you imagine a scene where the party finds itself on a rapidly sinking ship. Then you leave it up to them to have the right spells (Make Whole, Water Walking, etc.) or ditch their armor and swim.In 4e, a scene like this would be represented by a skill challenge. Perhaps a very tough one, but you would have every single player scrambling to work the pump, make crude repairs, and so forth.&nbsp; There is a slim chance that by working together and having creative ideas they can save the ship, which ultimately is much more satisfying than hearing the cleric say &quot;Good thing I prepared water walking today... let her go down!&quot;.Or even worse: &quot;Why didn't you prepare Make Whole instead of Spiritual Weapon?&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="fuindordm, post: 4249743, member: 5435"] My first thought on reading this article was: "Make Whole now takes 10 minutes? What if our party is on an unstable platform and needs that spell to save its life?" After mulling it over, I realize [I]why [/I]they all have long casting times, even if they could be useful in combat situations. It's to protect the skills. One of the big problems with 3e was that so many skills became irrelevant very early in the game. Now skills are always relevant: people can do most things faster and cheaper than magic. This also helps encourage a low-magic setting. Why bother learning ancient languages if a spell to do the same thing costs nothing? In 3e, you imagine a scene where the party finds itself on a rapidly sinking ship. Then you leave it up to them to have the right spells (Make Whole, Water Walking, etc.) or ditch their armor and swim. In 4e, a scene like this would be represented by a skill challenge. Perhaps a very tough one, but you would have every single player scrambling to work the pump, make crude repairs, and so forth. There is a slim chance that by working together and having creative ideas they can save the ship, which ultimately is much more satisfying than hearing the cleric say "Good thing I prepared water walking today... let her go down!". Or even worse: "Why didn't you prepare [I]Make Whole[/I] instead of [I]Spiritual Weapon[/I]?" [/QUOTE]

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