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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 928235" data-attributes="member: 3146">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 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ).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.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.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).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).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.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.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 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.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.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?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.</blockquote>

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