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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DungeonMaster" data-source="post: 3135968" data-attributes="member: 27431">Not prob. I'm of the school of thinking that the DM has absolute authority over the rules of the game and I'm sure you'll not allow nonsense to creep into your game. I'm still rather disenheartened that even after 3 generations of D&D the same mistakes keep cropping up, even after they've been fixed.  Just for the record your druid can't actually drop two empowered maximized call lightnings in the first round of combat. You can only call down one bolt every 10 minutes per the spell description. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> My experience is inexperienced DMs can have their campaigns mauled by unbalanced spells but more often than not the PCs get mauled by inexperienced DMs. Non-powergamers will use 3.5 spells and find ludicrous imbalance as well, shapechanging into a dragon is a common theme in literature, but 3.5 shapechange alllows you and your familiar to shapechange into a dragon and have both of you use your breath-weapon. The same applies to polymorph into digesters, etc... Blasphemy is a common mid-to-high level demon/devil ability. People playing at these level will pick up really quickly that this line of  spells is broken. I've seen a wizard bar transmutation. They can pick up boots of speed, it's not that big a deal. Teleport isn't that useful at high levels where shadow walk ends up being much more effective (that is to say 3rd edition shadow walk). And yes I was exaggerating when I quoted the cost of metamagic rods, though I remain baffled to this day as to why they decreased   the cost AND made them core rules. Those are the rules, in plain black and white. An empowered fireball is a 3rd level spell despite taking up a 5th level slot. A lesser metamagic rod of maximize works! This has to do with the retarded 3rd edition rule that metamagic doesn't increase the spell level. THAT should have been fixed in 3.5.Sure but assuming you put your stats in the same place the 3rd edition ranger has more hitpoints. To normalise the hitpoints the 3rd edition ranger takes more intelligence and the 3.5 takes more constitution. Really the 3.5 ranger has gained very little and I'm surprised anyone at all is happy with them. I did a comparison once between 2 14th level rangers and the 3rd edition ranger moped the floor with the 3.5 one because he has better spells and generally cheaper and better gear.  Polymorph self, not even trying to be abused, makes a huge difference. My impression is that people really like the pseudo-abilities that the 3.5 ranger gets, like "camouflage" at high levels but the reality is at the levels you gain these they are useless against all but a very small selection of monsters. You could have your mage armor spell up 8/hours per day and use the cash you spent on armor to buy something else to better protect you like rings of protection and amulets of natural armor. Or you could buy mithral full plate with a spell selection that generally doesn't involve somatic components and/or use long-duration buff spells (you can take your armor off, that's what I would do).  Spells I see as most important that the bard lost or were significantly reduced in power, starting from the top: 6th: Eyebite - no longer a free action i.e. sucksGeas - target can now benefit from magical healing, is useless in 3.5  Mass haste - need I say more? Project image - can no longer have spells decent magic cast on image duplicate Plane shift - always relevantRepulsion - for archer-bards. 5th: Contact other plane - always relevant4th: Dismissal - always relevant3rd: Clairaudience/Clairvoyance - no longer unlimited range. Emotion - fantastic multipurpose spell for bards, don't need 4 seperate versionsGreater magic weapon - always relevant.  Haste - we know which is better Keen edge - always relevant. Magic circle vs. - always relevant 2nd: Bull's strength - why did they remove this?! 1hour/lvl. Levitate - always relevant 1st: Expeditious retreat: nerfed. Mage armor Protection vs. - always relevant Then there are spells that got their levels juggled up/down for no real reason like see invisibility but these are spells you generally want on a scroll so they're not highly relevant. Overall I feel the threat a bard poses in 3rd edition is much much greater than in 3.5. Free action bard inspire courage + greater magic weapon + keen edge + eyebite (free action) + bull's strength + haste partial action (attack or spell) + mithral full plate + bull's strength (empowered even maybe) + faster movement + protection spells is generally a better deal. Next round he can do the same, switching to inspire greatness and get an eyebite attack and cast a spell from haste and full attack. Then do that again on round 3 with another ally as the inspire greatness target.  I still think the bard lost a lot in the transition and that all the other gains are really just gloss rather than actual effectiveness. I still don't get it why people think the 3.5 bard got anything at all?! They don't even come close in power level.</blockquote>

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