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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Spell Compendium: What are the "broken" spells?
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<blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 4811702" data-attributes="member: 3146"><p>In general, I don't think that "tome of battle characters can do it too" is a good defense. Tome of Battle itself is rather broken. More to the point, the mechanics of the game fall apart whenever characters and NPCs have attacks that will easily one-shot opponents of similar power on a roll of anything but a 1. Tactics and strategy go out the window and the game comes down to who wins initiative. Find the Gap and Rhino's Rush do that. As a general rule, anything that doubles damage or that turns melee attacks into touch attacks is overpowered and should be banned. WotC knew this when they introduced 3.5 (it was the explicit reason behind nerfing rhino hide armor) but had apparently scrapped the goal of balance by the time they wrote Spell Compendium. (And Tome of Battle--it's best not to even think of that).</p><p></p><p>As far as Delay Death goes, I think you are missing that it is an immediate action. So you don't need to spend five rounds buffing the whole party with it. You just wait until someone dies and then say, "no they don't." By mid levels, healing the character up after combat is trivially easy so the duration is not a mitigating factor. By level 11 or so, it essentially removes hit point damage as a way to die which removes the teeth from all melee monsters. (In combination with abilities like Rhino's Rush/Find the Gap, it also contributes to initiative being too important since the only way you can die by hp damage is to be suddenly killed in the first round of combat while the cleric is flatfooted).</p><p></p><p>Energy immunity, on the other hand, I do not see as an issue. It is long duration, but it is also a 6th or 7th level spell slot and a standard action which only protects one character. Even at level 20, 6th and 7th level spell slots are a sacrifice that characters feel and the need to use a standard action to protect one character renders it a generally poor in-combat strategy. So, it's a general buff spell that will sometimes work and sometimes won't. As such, it doesn't seem out of line.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Elder-Basilisk, post: 4811702, member: 3146"] In general, I don't think that "tome of battle characters can do it too" is a good defense. Tome of Battle itself is rather broken. More to the point, the mechanics of the game fall apart whenever characters and NPCs have attacks that will easily one-shot opponents of similar power on a roll of anything but a 1. Tactics and strategy go out the window and the game comes down to who wins initiative. Find the Gap and Rhino's Rush do that. As a general rule, anything that doubles damage or that turns melee attacks into touch attacks is overpowered and should be banned. WotC knew this when they introduced 3.5 (it was the explicit reason behind nerfing rhino hide armor) but had apparently scrapped the goal of balance by the time they wrote Spell Compendium. (And Tome of Battle--it's best not to even think of that). As far as Delay Death goes, I think you are missing that it is an immediate action. So you don't need to spend five rounds buffing the whole party with it. You just wait until someone dies and then say, "no they don't." By mid levels, healing the character up after combat is trivially easy so the duration is not a mitigating factor. By level 11 or so, it essentially removes hit point damage as a way to die which removes the teeth from all melee monsters. (In combination with abilities like Rhino's Rush/Find the Gap, it also contributes to initiative being too important since the only way you can die by hp damage is to be suddenly killed in the first round of combat while the cleric is flatfooted). Energy immunity, on the other hand, I do not see as an issue. It is long duration, but it is also a 6th or 7th level spell slot and a standard action which only protects one character. Even at level 20, 6th and 7th level spell slots are a sacrifice that characters feel and the need to use a standard action to protect one character renders it a generally poor in-combat strategy. So, it's a general buff spell that will sometimes work and sometimes won't. As such, it doesn't seem out of line. [/QUOTE]
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