Shortened buff spell durations: Good or bad?

[cable]

Bad idea. WoTC seems intent of neutering any spell that has any out of combat uses. Basically straight jackets the arcane caster for combat only.

Thankfully I'll be exercising my right to choose and not buy into 3.5 "balance" modifications. You don't have to buy/use 3.5 if you're happy with your 3e + houserules.

 

[sithramir]

It sucks

I believe this is a horrible change. Yeah yeah you can complain about the all day boosts being a bit powerful. But now any caster that expects to live a fireball or another caster is going to do what? Spend the first 5 rounds of combat trying to get some basic prot spells up? He's already dead at that point or the fighters have slayed the evil guy they were fighting. It basically makes these spells useless other than for MAKING the stinkin enhancement items.

How often am I gonna know "hmm 2 minutes from now i'll be in a fight let me cast these 3 prot spells now". If you play ANY role-playing at all that probably won't happen and it'd be purely luck. It makes these spells practically useless at lower levels when you need to get magic missiles to slay the guy out quick or higher levels when you'd rather be casting a stoneskin or something else above any little enhancement bonus's to survive anyways. Just seems that it makes casters weaker than fighters a bit too much now.

I played actually checking costs of spell components which a lot of people don't. Things like stoneskin can't be used much when its 250gp and doing that every combat makes you poor. So now I lose out on a lot of prot spells.

SOrry it just angers me because i'm always an abjurer and now it makes a lot of spells i'd use not worth their levels when i might as wel just attack since noone gets 5 rounds to protect themselves in a normal combat i've ever seen.

 

[hong]

Re: Re: Good!

That's exactly the opposite of what happened in my groups. The 2nd-level ability-boosting spells ended up not getting used all that much at high levels, because everybody already had magic items for most of the abilities they cared about. Certainly none of our spellcasters would ever dream of risking his bonus-spell-granting enhancement bonus to a stray dispel magic.

Our spellcasters must have been less risk-averse than yours, then, judging by the number of N-times empowered endurance and cat's grace spells floating around. On a good day, the wizards could have more hit points than the fighters as a result.

Personally, I think the number of buff spells was getting silly. The DM was having to make up a tally sheet of who was buffed and how, just to keep things straight. If this change means more permanent magic items and less bookkeeping, all the better.

 

[JChung2003]

I'm still in "wait and see" mode. I want to know how the changes to spells like bull's strength, cat's grace, etc. affected the pricing and creation costs of magic items that confered the same bonuses, like belts of giant strength, gloves of dexterity, etc.

 

[LokiDR]

Re: Re: Re: Good!

Our spellcasters must have been less risk-averse than yours, then, judging by the number of N-times empowered endurance and cat's grace spells floating around. On a good day, the wizards could have more hit points than the fighters as a result.

Personally, I think the number of buff spells was getting silly. The DM was having to make up a tally sheet of who was buffed and how, just to keep things straight. If this change means more permanent magic items and less bookkeeping, all the better.

Amen, brother.

- Loki "I wish I could be like Hong" DR

 

[isoChron]

These buff spells ruin the day ... always keep two different stats (every day another buffed stat ...). Our Cleric (14) is running around with bull strength (twice per day), and endurance (twice per day) along with several other AC boosts and I-CAN'T-DIE spells. The rest of the group has to buy expensive items and whenever a second level spell from the clerics spell list would do good ... "Sorry, only buffs today ..."

In another group we play with Spellpoints instead of slots per day (more like Psi Power Points) and we reduced the duration of nearly all 1hour/level spells to 10min/level and 24hours to 1hour/level.
We playtested it in various adventures and I must say it works pretty well.
Buff spells at 1min/level are really a bit short living. See Monte's rant about 1min/level spells. I totally agree.
Make 1round/level or 10minutes/level as house rule and look how it works.

Just my 2cents

BYE

 

[Darklone]

Just to point out... cause at least two guys here in this thread said otherwise...

THE BUFF SPELLS DON'T GIVE BONUS SPELL SLOTS!!!

 

[Grazzt]

It could promote the opposite of "run & gun" -- "Hey, we've had our fight, the buffs are running out, no use continuing. Time to go home and rest. We'll come back tomorrow."

Ah- sorta like 1e where ya had to think about things and decide if you continued as is or exited the dungeon (or at least found a safe place to camp) and rested.

I like the idea of reducing the spells' durations. Now spellcasters (and their friends they cast them on) cannot "power-up" and remain that way all day long. I used the altered duration as a house rule IMC for quite a while and no one has complained. And it doesnt lead to the "run and gun" tactics mentioned above. If anything, it does make the players think a bit more about when to use those spells.

 

[Grazzt]

..and as I recall, if the spell is to good for people to pass up, then it's probably to good.

The designers said the same thing about feats, PrC, and several other 3e/3.5 things. If its something every caster/character would want, then its probably too powerful/too good.

I generally agree, and as my post above said, I like the new durations. No more "power-up" in the AM and remain that way most of the day crap. (Now, if WotC would just work to get the rest of the "video game on paper" feel outta 3e/3.5... )

 

[Wormwood]

This change is so good I'm getting it tattooed on my forehead.