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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 927125" data-attributes="member: 3146">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.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.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.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.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.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?</blockquote>

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