Shortened buff spell durations: Good or bad?

[Hypersmurf]

And a +4 buff item shouldn't "usually [be] better" than a buff spell; it should be universally superior. It costs 16,000 gp and takes up an item slot; that's a pretty big deal compared to a free (count it) spell. The good thing about lowering the buff durations in 3.5 is that folk actually will spend their hard-earned cash on the buff items, rather than just using the spells for free.

Rumour is that they'll be spending a lot more of that hard-earned cash for a +4 item come 3.5...

-Hyp.

 

[Ravellion]

Admittedly, it's a Psion. He just needs power points. But a sorcerer had the exact same benefit. The problem with such power is that it is free, and is not intended to be in the system (hence the revision). In general I'd jsut like to say: Get your frickin' Amulet of Health and stop whinging. Oh, wait: you have to PAY for that! You wanted freebies, right, well, tough luck.

Also, instead of casting empowered, they just cast extended, but multiple times per stat if needed. (+4 or +5 will happen 50% of the time, and is entirely feasible at earlier levels: as soon as 8th basically)

He isn't using 7th level powers! That is sooo inefficient, why would you? Use a hell of alot of 3rd level powers instead till you get the +4 and +5s. You might have more chance after a dispel as well!

This is a 10th level psion on average walking around with stats that make him something like 60 point buy. Now, I don't have opponents that can dispel ready everyday.

 

[Ravellion]

Rumour is that they'll be spending a lot more of that hard-earned cash for a +4 item come 3.5...

-Hyp.

This rumour is jsut that a rumour. it started on this board, and has no basis whatsoever. Piratecat said it might, probably since he remembered that Monte Cook said that the effectiveness of Bull Strength etc. made the prices of stat boosters low. Unless Piratecat has information we don't have, that rumour is very insubstantiated.

 

[Darkness]

This rumour is jsut that a rumour. it started on this board, and has no basis whatsoever. Piratecat said it might, probably since he remembered that Monte Cook said that the effectiveness of Bull Strength etc. made the prices of stat boosters low. Unless Piratecat has information we don't have, that rumour is very insubstantiated.

He recently pointed out that he had been misquoted, and that he actually had been talking about skill-enhancing items (IIRC).

 

[Hypersmurf]

Unless Piratecat has information we don't have, that rumour is very insubstantiated.

Aaah.

-Hyp.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

You'll note that I addressed this. My point is that unless you're on a multi-day quest (and parties that are high enough level to use all-day buffs are almost never in this position, since they can teleport),

My party never made it to 9th level in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (although my cleric was one session away when we quit), but I can't imagine that module being anything other than a multi-day quest. (That's my impression of The Heart of Nightfang Spire too--although we never really got off the ground in that mod). At least to me, it seems that high level parties are often on multiday quests--perhaps even more often than low-level parties.

the night-before preparation isn't really an issue. My experience is quite the opposite of yours, I guess; high-level PCs have sufficient access to scrying, teleportation, and secure lairs that they pretty much always have the "initiative." In fact, most high-level adventures IME assume that PCs will do their level best to gain the initiative, because failure to do so generally leads to higher casualties.

Maybe so. It's not my experience, but then again my experience at high levels has some limitations. Still, I don't see PCs always having the initiative reflected in the majority of the high level story hours found in the forum. It doesn't seem to quite be the case in Piratecat's story hour. Nor in Sagiro's. And, while it sometimes seems to be the case in Contact's Liberation of Tenh thread and the Risen Goddess, it's not consistently the case in Sepulchrave's story hour. (I was tempted to think that it was but it really wasn't. There was the attack on Trempa, the treachery at Mourne, Grazz't's invocation of Madness, and the Shadow Chimaera that were all at least partially examples of NPCs seizing the initiative. And the recent example of Mostin annihilating the Sidhe king's embassy is only partly an example of the PCs' initiative. The PCs came to the plane on their own initiative, were surprised by the strength of the shadow chimaera, and then received the embassy of the king which they knew was coming (although they didn't know when) and now they're waiting for the king's response. It seems far from certain that their next combat will be them attacking rather than defending).

The PCs usually try to gain the initiative but they often don't succeed. Or perhaps, one should say, their enemies also try to gain the initiative and often they succeed.

You're only right on the second point, AFAICT. If the PCs are "investigating adventures as they come to them," they can buff the night before they investigate.?

That's true but, assuming the PCs buff before going to bed on day 0 of the adventure, they still don't know it's the adventure on day 1. Consequently wizards and clerics at least still face the opportunity cost of leaving a number of high level slots open so they can be buffed the next day. Now usually, when they discover it's day 1 of the adventure, they can fill those slots with useful spells but they're still short on firepower if they get jumped early.

If they just wander the wilderness looking for things to do... well, that's not really a comfortable life for a bunch of 12th-level characters, is it?

Well, most of my high level experience is in living campaigns so that comes with the territory but I think there's an element of that even in continuous home campaigns. For instance, the home game I probably played the longest in most recently featured the party travelling to the elvish capital for some reason (I've forgotten why, I think it was a quest another party member incurred before I joined the group) then pursuing a necromancer into an ancient plain of burial mounds, discovering the location of his tower, attacking the tower deep in the swamps, and cutting across the haunted forest to get back to the human capital more quickly and claim our reward (and, along the way, return a sword we'd found in the goblin encampment, discover some goblins scouting the road for an invasion, found a haunted elvish city and defeated the hags that guarded the corrupted circle of standing stones that cursed the forest). (Granted, I think the highest level character in the group was 7th level but that's still the area when extended buffs can come in to play).

Now, at almost any point in our characters' journey, they knew what they were doing. However, on day 1 of our journey into the haunted woods, we didn't know that we'd stumble across an ancient elven ruin and be attacked by a pack of dire wolves at dusk. So, if we'd been doing the 24 hour buff spell routine, we'd have had less firepower available to deal with the wolves. Then, the next day, we had a long invasion of the hags' lair and fought the hags. Fair enough. But if we didn't save slots for extended buffing that day, we won't be ready for the standing stones on the next.

As a caster who has to prepare spells, you may not always feel the pain of the cost, but sooner or later it will bite you.

No offense, E_B, but your argument lent itself to misinterpretation. If you're talking about the fact that this strategy is worse than using items: well, yes it is, but OTOH you're comparing a zero-cost situation (buff spells) with a positive-cost situation (items). I'm comparing spell to spell, not spell to item. Of course a party that spends 36,000 gp per ability per PC should have a better chance of withstanding dispelling than a party that spends 0 gp! That wasn't what previous posters were saying.

To be honest in the calculation, you can't consider buff spells a 0-cost commodity. They're not. They cost spell slots. Sometimes that cost is cheap, sometimes it's not. However, every slot that's spent for buffing is one that can be spent for nothing else. For instance, the sorceror who casts triple empowered extended endurance on the party every night is not casting extended Mind Blank on the party every night. The empowered, extended bull's strength could have been Detect Scrying. Etc. Etc. In a cost/benefit analysis, the opportunity cost needs to be figured in--not just of items and short duration or blast spells but also of other buffs.

And a +4 buff item shouldn't "usually [be] better" than a buff spell; it should be universally superior. It costs 16,000 gp and takes up an item slot; that's a pretty big deal compared to a free (count it) spell. The good thing about lowering the buff durations in 3.5 is that folk actually will spend their hard-earned cash on the buff items, rather than just using the spells for free.

Again, buff spells aren't free. In Living Greyhawk, my fighter/wizard uses bull's strength and cat's grace daily, but using his second level spells for that means he can't afford to carry a see invisibility. Or a Rope Trick. (Both potentially very useful spells).

The really strange thing here is the argument that items should always be universally superior to spells. I don't share that intuition although it's apparently widespread. But start talking about different spells and the intuition goes the opposite way.

Wands of cure light wounds? But people should be using spells.
Wand of fireballs? I know my reaction is that the wizard ought to be relying on his spells rather than magic items.
And I don't think anyone would say that wizard/rogues are broken because they vitiate the rogue's need for slippers of spider climbing and rings of invisibility. Relying on spells seems more appropriate.
How about Haste? I know a lot of people thought it was cheesy that a 3e fighter would often want Boots of Speed as a way to get Haste. I don't know many people who thought it inappropriate that a fighter/wizard would cast haste on himself as a way to make himself a viable combatant. Heck, I don't know anyone who thought it was cheesy if the wizard cast haste on the fighter during combat.

In all of these cases, my intuition at least seems to tell me that people should be using spells rather than items.

So if the "Items should always be better than spells in every way" argument works against buff spells why doesn't it work against spider climb, invisibility, nondetection, mind blank, haste, fireball, etc?

 

[ruleslawyer]

My party never made it to 9th level in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (although my cleric was one session away when we quit), but I can't imagine that module being anything other than a multi-day quest. (That's my impression of The Heart of Nightfang Spire too--although we never really got off the ground in that mod). At least to me, it seems that high level parties are often on multiday quests--perhaps even more often than low-level parties.

Fair enough. RTEE is a bad example, though; part of the particular toughness of that module is that there's no time for party prep, so this applies to spells and item creation in general, not just to the all-day ability buffs.

Maybe so. It's not my experience, but then again my experience at high levels has some limitations. Still, I don't see PCs always having the initiative reflected in the majority of the high level story hours found in the forum. It doesn't seem to quite be the case in Piratecat's story hour. Nor in Sagiro's. And, while it sometimes seems to be the case in Contact's Liberation of Tenh thread and the Risen Goddess, it's not consistently the case in Sepulchrave's story hour.

The PCs usually try to gain the initiative but they often don't succeed. Or perhaps, one should say, their enemies also try to gain the initiative and often they succeed.

Sorta true, but the examples you quoted apply on an encounter-to-encounter basis, not day-to-day.

That's true but, assuming the PCs buff before going to bed on day 0 of the adventure, they still don't know it's the adventure on day 1.

My apologies; I misspoke myself. The point is that the PCs can always take a day out to buff prior to setting off. This has the side effect of annoying me as a DM, BTW, since it is pretty damaging to the pacing of an adventure. Perpetually having to catch PCs off guard is really irritating, too.

Well, most of my high level experience is in living campaigns so that comes with the territory but I think there's an element of that even in continuous home campaigns... (Granted, I think the highest level character in the group was 7th level but that's still the area when extended buffs can come in to play).

To be fair, I'm not really talking 7th level; I'm talking 12th+. At 7th level, you still run into problems with spell capacity and duration.

To be honest in the calculation, you can't consider buff spells a 0-cost commodity. They're not. They cost spell slots. Sometimes that cost is cheap, sometimes it's not. However, every slot that's spent for buffing is one that can be spent for nothing else. For instance, the sorceror who casts triple empowered extended endurance on the party every night is not casting extended Mind Blank on the party every night. The empowered, extended bull's strength could have been Detect Scrying. Etc. Etc. In a cost/benefit analysis, the opportunity cost needs to be figured in--not just of items and short duration or blast spells but also of other buffs.

Well, here you're just reiterating your argument about spell slot expenditure. I pointed out why spell slot expenditure isn't really a big deal. The point is that paying 16,000 to 36,000 gp to avoid spell slot expenditure in some cases (i.e., those in which you don't have night-before prep time) should be a good deal, not clearly inferior.

The really strange thing here is the argument that items should always be universally superior to spells. I don't share that intuition although it's apparently widespread. But start talking about different spells and the intuition goes the opposite way.

See my point above. It's not that I think that spending the money on an item should be a no-brainer; that would be silly. It's that it should be a reasonable choice to spend on the item rather than just buffing for free.

Wands of cure light wounds? But people should be using spells.

Different situation. Wands of CLW are slightly suboptimal for parties with a single-classed cleric because of spontaneous casting, as it should be. For parties with bards, they are a superior alternative, well worth the gp cost.

Wand of fireballs? I know my reaction is that the wizard ought to be relying on his spells rather than magic items.

The wizard will be; caster level and spell DC issues, my friend.

And I don't think anyone would say that wizard/rogues are broken because they vitiate the rogue's need for slippers of spider climbing and rings of invisibility. Relying on spells seems more appropriate.

Well, there you forfeit precious rogue levels for that spell capacity. Of course spells should be appropriate in that instance, and if anything, this combo is suboptimal, not broken!

How about Haste? I know a lot of people thought it was cheesy that a 3e fighter would often want Boots of Speed as a way to get Haste. I don't know many people who thought it inappropriate that a fighter/wizard would cast haste on himself as a way to make himself a viable combatant. Heck, I don't know anyone who thought it was cheesy if the wizard cast haste on the fighter during combat.

Again, fighter/wizards are giving up a LOT of raw combat power in order to gain the synergy of fighting and spellcasting; the cost isn't just in terms of item vs. spell, but item vs. spell plus opportunity cost in fighter levels. As for the wizard casting haste on the fighter in combat: a) it's not a long-term buff, and as such clearly inferior to the boots in exactly the same way in which the new buff spells will be clearly inferior to the items. As you pointed out, no one seemed to have problems with wizards casting haste (a short-term buff) on the fighter; they shouldn't have problems with wizards using short-term buffs on party members.

In all of these cases, my intuition at least seems to tell me that people should be using spells rather than items.

As I pointed out, you may not be correct here. Picking up wizard levels to drop buffs on yourself as a rogue or fighter is pretty suboptimal. Why should the all-day ability buffs be an exception to this rule?

So if the "Items should always be better than spells in every way" argument works against buff spells why doesn't it work against spider climb, invisibility, nondetection, mind blank, haste, fireball, etc?

I wasn't suggesting that items always need to be better than spells, all other things being equal. I was suggesting that no-cost spells should not be able to substitute for costly items. Moreover, as noted above, items ARE better than spells in most of the above contexts, as is only appropriate. Why shouldn't it be the same for the stat buffs?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Fair enough. RTEE is a bad example, though; part of the particular toughness of that module is that there's no time for party prep, so this applies to spells and item creation in general, not just to the all-day ability buffs.

And that's rather odd because when we were playing RttToEE, it seemed like our party had the initiative more consistently than we've ever had it in any other campaign I've played. I'll grant that we didn't have much in the way of down time but up to the point that I moved away, we were usually on the attack and chose the time and place of our encounters (although the content and flow of our encounters was another matter entirely--note to self: a frontal assault on the main gate of the Crater Ridge Mines is a bad idea--especially when half the players couldn't make it and you're down to the barbarian the rogue and the cleric; note to rogue: killing anyone who questions you is for when you're impersonating evil high priests, not evil low level clerics ).

Sorta true, but the examples you quoted apply on an encounter-to-encounter basis, not day-to-day.

In many of those cases, the basis of the shifting initiative is day to day instead of encounter to encounter. From my reading of Sepulchrave's Story hour it certainly is there. It's most pronouncedly day to day in the latest adventures of the Defenders of Daybreak. It seems like it's been day to day fairly often for the PCs in Sagiro's story hour too.

My apologies; I misspoke myself. The point is that the PCs can always take a day out to buff prior to setting off. This has the side effect of annoying me as a DM, BTW, since it is pretty damaging to the pacing of an adventure. Perpetually having to catch PCs off guard is really irritating, too.

I guess this is true in some situations (like initially assaulting the CRM in RttToEE) but I suspect that there are still a lot of situations when the PCs don't know whether it's day 0 or day 1 until the spells need to start flying.

To be fair, I'm not really talking 7th level; I'm talking 12th+. At 7th level, you still run into problems with spell capacity and duration.

I would expect, the levels in question somewhat mitigate the possibilities too. (Although I can't say for certain because the cleric in the 6-7th level party was multiclassed and the wizard's player still thought he was in 2e so we didn't use buff spells).

However (assuming DMG standard wealth/level), at level 12+--when spell capacity and duration make 24 hour buffs less of a strain--, 4000gp for a +2 item is a drop in the bucket 16,000 gp for a +4 item (consistently better than the spell in bonus as well as duration and dispellability) is immenently affordable. I know the Living Greyhawk characters I've been playing with would use a lot more items and a lot fewer buff spells if we had more than half the recommended wealth for our levels (when you're 11th level with less than 36kgp in equipment, there's a lot of stuff you just plain can't afford). And if you want a bonus better than that of the affordable item, you need to devote resources that are still scarce at those levels (5th level slot for extended and empowered spells--and they still have a 25% chance of only giving +3; for real reliability, you need a 7th level slot for a double empowered extended buff and that opportunity cost still has lots of teeth).

Well, here you're just reiterating your argument about spell slot expenditure. I pointed out why spell slot expenditure isn't really a big deal. The point is that paying 16,000 to 36,000 gp to avoid spell slot expenditure in some cases (i.e., those in which you don't have night-before prep time) should be a good deal, not clearly inferior.

I don't think it's clearly inferior at all. If my character has 69kgp (11th level) to spend, he'll probably get at least one +4 stat buff item. It's a more reliable bonus than he'd get from the spell slots that aren't a big deal. And it won't go away the first time he runs into a foe with dispel magic. (Which is a big problem for parties that rely upon lots of buff spells--especially if those spells came from Wizards or Clerics who didn't prepare replacements. The dispel magic could very well strip enhancement bonusses not just from the first encounter but from all subsequent encounters).

See my point above. It's not that I think that spending the money on an item should be a no-brainer; that would be silly. It's that it should be a reasonable choice to spend on the item rather than just buffing for free.

Myself, I think that buying stat buff items was pretty much a no-brainer in 3e by the time they were reasonably affordable. In 3.5e, they're a no brainer as soon as they're available at all.

Different situation. Wands of CLW are slightly suboptimal for parties with a single-classed cleric because of spontaneous casting, as it should be. For parties with bards, they are a superior alternative, well worth the gp cost.

IME, wands of CLW are necessities not just for parties without a single-classed cleric but for those with a cleric too. They're usually used to enable the cleric to keep his or her spells between encounters and thus still have a Daylight available when the evil cleric casts Deeper Darkness in the fourth encounter of the day.

Again, fighter/wizards are giving up a LOT of raw combat power in order to gain the synergy of fighting and spellcasting; the cost isn't just in terms of item vs. spell, but item vs. spell plus opportunity cost in fighter levels. As for the wizard casting haste on the fighter in combat: a) it's not a long-term buff, and as such clearly inferior to the boots in exactly the same way in which the new buff spells will be clearly inferior to the items.

Actually, the point I was making is that I've seen lots of complaints about how "all the fighters have boots of speed." Apparently, a lot of people think Haste shouldn't be available in an item at all--or that, if it is, most people shouldn't use it. In that case, why

As you pointed out, no one seemed to have problems with wizards casting haste (a short-term buff) on the fighter; they shouldn't have problems with wizards using short-term buffs on party members.

If this is a reference to the new short term stat buffs, people should have problems with wizards or clerics casting them because they're pathetically weak spells for their level. I suspect that most people would object if the cleric they were travelling with started passing out Aid spells left and right during combat because Aid is a pathetic excuse for a second level spell. In my estimation, the new 1 min/level buffs are just as weak.

The difference with Haste (and improved invisibility and other relatively short term buffs that might be cast in combat) is that Haste was actually a good spell.

As I pointed out, you may not be correct here. Picking up wizard levels to drop buffs on yourself as a rogue or fighter is pretty suboptimal. Why should the all-day ability buffs be an exception to this rule?

Although the fighter/wizard and wizard/rogue character types have been a part of D&D since the beginning. Why shouldn't they have a few optimal options instead of being completely consigned to suckdom? I don't see why "buffing yourself (long or short-term) should be a bad idea" is the default position.

I wasn't suggesting that items always need to be better than spells, all other things being equal. I was suggesting that no-cost spells should not be able to substitute for costly items.

And yet you have no problem with a no-cost (at the levels we're discussing, the opportunity cost of a fireball spell is considerably lower than that of an extended empowered bull's strength (the only kind that reliably substitutes for a +4 belt of strength) fireball spell substituting for a costly wand of fireballs (and doing a better job to boot). Which are the other things that are supposedly unequal in this case?

Moreover, as noted above, items ARE better than spells in most of the above contexts, as is only appropriate. Why shouldn't it be the same for the stat buffs?

I don't know that it's necessarily appropriate for items to be better than spells in some of the above contexts and I do know that it's appropriate for spells to be better than items in a lot of the above contexts (the wand of fireballs vs. fireball casting wizard, for instance). I don't see any particular reason why stat-buffs should fall into the items should be better category instead of the spells should be better category.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Because, as I've been saying all along, they can effectively last just as long as the items and be better to boot. As to dispellability: Well, 3e rules make it not such a great tactic (area dispels take out only one spell per individual, starting at highest level on down; it's not at all clear that dispel will work on stat buffs). Plus, the spells have the countervailing advantage of not taking up item slots.

Wands of fireballs aren't as good as the spell because you can walk around with 50 of them at a time, and trade offensive capacity between PCs. That's a pretty good deal for the cost. 1-hour buffs are effectively tradeable between PCs and last long enough that being able to carry around 50 vs. one isn't a significant advantage.

But, it is clear that your mileage varies. For what it's worth, the buff spells IMC last 10 minutes/level; enough for them to be cast pre-combat and to last for an entire expedition with Extend Spell applied.

 

[Grog]

Because, as I've been saying all along, they can effectively last just as long as the items and be better to boot.

Well, if empowered buffs were the problem, the solution was to change the rules so they couldn't be empowered anymore, not to nerf the entire spell into near-uselessness.