D&D 3E/3.5 Spell/Rule Changes from 3.0 to 3.5 -- How did we survive 3.0?

[Nail]

So, you use them when you have prescient knowledge of what you are going to face, or when they make no difference to the outcome?

Nope. That's not at all what I said. I'm not sure why you like to abstract people's comments to the point of absurdity-this is not the first time you've done it. Please stop.

 

[MerricB]

Sleep It also means that the wizard is standing around for the whole time casting a spell, and can easily have it disrupted.

In a first-level game, I often see combats working like this:

|MM|
|MM|
|++|
|FC|
|WR|

Thus, the Fighter and Cleric in the front rank, protecting the Rogue and Wizard from the monsters.

Round 1: Monsters and Adventurers engage & trade blows. Wizard starts casting sleep.
Round 2: Monsters and Adventures trade blow, Sleep spell knocks out surviving monsters.

Disrupting a wizard's spellcasting is not really that easy at 1st-3rd level. (If you can do enough damage to make them fail the Concentration check, you've normally killed the wizard!)

The change to the sleep spell merely ensures the combat reaches the second round.

Remember, it's also a Medium range spell, so in many situations the enemy may never engage the party.

Cheers!

 

[Saeviomagy]

Remember, it's also a Medium range spell, so in many situations the enemy may never engage the party.

Also sleep has a lot of uses beyond combat due to it being nonlethal and non-displaying. (ie - there's not a big gout of fire that accompanies it).

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I could never go back to the 3.0 invisibility spell (and ring of). Sheesh! Now you have to actually use your Hide skill.

I approve of the nerf of fly though it wasn't horribly broken in 3.0.

 

[Lodow MoBo]

Agree on all that has been said about the benefits of 3.5.
What I noticed which has not been mentioned.

They killed the fighter/mage archtype . Who I admit was a little over powered, In that he was as effective as a fighter at times and was a lot of fun to play.

The transmutation school suffer a major blow.

The conjuration/enchantment was given a lot of love.

In 3.5 I put the schools are balanced to the test.
I run a specialist wizard with opposition schools of evocation and transmutation. Surprising it works. Even though I get a lot of ”a fireball would really be good right now”

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Agree on all that has been said about the benefits of 3.5.
What I noticed which has not been mentioned.

They killed the fighter/mage archtype . Who I admit was a little over powered, In that he was as effective as a fighter at times and was a lot of fun to play.

That's news to me. My fighter/wizard kills monsters and lets the bards take their names. Well, I suppose that's mere anecdote.

To be more specific, in the 3.0-3.5 transition, fighter/wizards lost:
-The ability to stack Shield with a shield
-The ability to use haste to cast spells and attack every round
-The ability to pump their AC with Haste
-Greater Magic Weapon isn't as good anymore
-Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, etc. as useful spells
-Polymorph Self lasting a decent amount of time
-The ability to use Tenser's Transformation to get better than a 1/1 BAB.

In the 3.0-3.5 transition, they gained:
-A useful enlarge person spell
-2/1 power attack makes two-handed Power attack+True Strike more advantageous.
-Alter Self gives up to a +6 natural armor bonus
-Ray of Enfeeblement and Scorching Ray as premier 1st and 2nd level spells that benefit from higher BAB
-A boost to feats that make use of their intelligence (at least for pre-reqs): Improved Trip and Improved Disarm
-False Life as a core spell
-Heroism
-Greater Heroism
-Overland Flight
-Eldritch Knight That's the really big one. No fighter/wizard need sacrifice more than 4 points of BAB and 2-3 caster levels. A 3.0 fighter/wizard had to figure out some way to take Sacred Exorcist levels if he wanted to keep a decent BAB or drop his caster level through the floor.

in 3.5 expansion books, they also added:
-Fires of Purity
-Arcane Strike
-A worthwhile Spellsword class

The fighter/mage archetype may not be what it was in 2e (though I think it actually comes pretty darn close now) but, on balance, I think it's a long way ahead of where it was in 3.0

The transmutation school suffer a major blow.

No question there. They lost a lot of their premiere spells:
The statbuffs got nerfed into non-existence
Fly got its duration slashed.
Greater Magic Weapon got nerfed.
Haste was nerfed.
Polymorph Self got it's duration slashed.
Baleful Polymorph got bumped to 5th level.
Disintegrate got a save attached.
Tenser's Transformation got nerfed (no longer can it give a fighter/mage or dragon better than a 1/1 BAB)
Teleport, etc got shifted to Conjuration.

Getting Enlarge Person made worthwhile and Mass Enlarge Person added, and Alter Self made into a natural armor buff doesn't even come close to making up for all that. (I'm not really sure a transmuter would be a viable specialist class anymore).

The conjuration/enchantment was given a lot of love.

Conjuration got some--the teleport spells, Augment Summoning, and Glitterdust losing its SR. OTOH, it lost all the power words and the change to druids (spontaneous summons and a better summon list) combined with nerfing the best monsters on the summon monster list really hurt conjurers.

Enchantment picked up the power words, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Touch of Idiocy, Heroism, Greater Heroism, and Daze Monster, but I'm not certain that makes up for nerfing some of its signature spells: Hold Person and Hold Monster and making Dominate Person obvious (the sense motive to notice it is very easy now even if it is much harder to twist the orders).

Necromancy strikes me as the school that got beefed the most.

In 3.5 I put the schools are balanced to the test.
I run a specialist wizard with opposition schools of evocation and transmutation. Surprising it works. Even though I get a lot of ”a fireball would really be good right now”

A lot of the schools DO seem to be balanced. However, I'm pretty sure that Abjuration is no longer worth specializing in. It didn't really pick up any good spells, one of its best spells (shield) got nerfed, and now it costs two good schools to specialize in it rather than just one good school or two marginal schools.

I'd be pretty hesitant to specialize in Transmutation too after the nerf but I suspect it could be made to work.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Disintegrate got a save attached.

Lots of good points, but (and I'm sure this was just finger trouble) disintegrate always had a save - but now it does 2d6 damage per level on a failed save instead of, uh, disintegrating on a failed save.

Which is completely feeble to my mind - taking the NPC characters in the DMG a wizard casting disintegrate against an 11th level fighter who fails his saving throw is still not going to kill him on average!

Save or die might have been a problem in 3e when insane DC buffing was possible, but that has been reigned in now. It looks like another case of double nerfing to me.

(Disintegrate might be interesting if it had no save like most other ranged touch spells, or at least a save for half instead of save for paltry damage.)

Cheers

 

[hong]

Lots of good points, but (and I'm sure this was just finger trouble) disintegrate always had a save - but now it does 2d6 damage per level on a failed save instead of, uh, disintegrating on a failed save.

Which is completely feeble to my mind - taking the NPC characters in the DMG a wizard casting disintegrate against an 11th level fighter who fails his saving throw is still not going to kill him on average!

This is okay. You don't use disintegrate on a fighter or any other melee brute. You use it on a wizard, or a lich, or a vampire. A spell that has a good chance of instakill against a fighter's Fort save is basically auto-kill against a wizard. Against a fighter, you use hold, dominate, confusion, etc.

 

[Storm Raven]

Nope. That's not at all what I said. I'm not sure why you like to abstract people's comments to the point of absurdity-this is not the first time you've done it. Please stop.

Then what did you mean by this:

we're using them in fights that eiether we know are about to happen, or ones that we know we can win.

I didn't abstract your statement at all. You said your party uses the buffing spells (a) when you have the ability to predict when you are about to get into a big fight (prescient knowledge), or (b) when you are fighting something where the outcome is not in doubt (fights you know you can win).

I'm not the one who said it, you did. Basically, you said "these spells are useless and we treat them as such", but you didn't want anyone else to figure that out since it defeats your point.

 

[Storm Raven]

Not so. Power attacking for a fixed value is DRAMATICALLY worse than allowing a fixed set of attacks to vary.

My main problem with all of the "use Power Attack optimally" arguments is that it assumes perfect knowledge on the part of the player, and the ability to do quick math on the spot to figure out the "correct" level of Power Attack to use. Assuming that a player will be able to calculate the optimal Power Attack point on the spot on a a regular basis when he doesn't know his opponent's AC is really stretching the point.