Streamlining Entangle

[Ruined]

Anyone here worked with the spell Entangle? I'll admit, I DM most of the time and don't look at the specifics of some spells, trusting my players with some of the hard work. The tables turned recently, and now I'm handling a low-level druid. Of course, I broke out the Entanlge spell, and wow, it's really convoluted and overly complex in 3.5 (no idea if identical to 3.0).

Grasses, weeds, bushes, and even trees wrap, twist, and entwine about creatures in the area or those that enter the area, holding them fast and causing them to become entangled. The creature can break free and move half its normal speed by using a full-round action to make a DC 20 Strength check or a DC 20 Escape Artist check. A creature that succeeds on a Reflex save is not entangled but can still move at only half speed through the area. Each round on your turn, the plants once again attempt to entangle all creatures that have avoided or escaped entanglement.

So, effectively if you're in the area, you save or you get the entangled status, which gives penalties to attacks, dexterity, casting, and you move at half. But if you save, you still move at half. Or you can make one of two checks and you still move at half...

I imagine the reason is to prevent a first lvl spell from being overpowering to higher lvl monsters, but it seems like there's too many rolls and modifiers involved. I'm looking to create a house rule that's easier on the GM to adjudicate, even if it nerfs the spell a bit. To me, key elements of the spell are:

Area of effect spell that halves movement (unavoidable) for non-flyers.
A save, if failed gives the debuff effect while in AoE.

I'm still working on the writeup, but advice/experience is greatly appreciated.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I agree with your assessment that the spell is quite complicated to run. My version drew few comments the second time it was posted in this thread

I went with almost the same as you did, Ref save or entangled, but used the concept of difficult terrain instead of a flat halving of speed. This allows the spell to have various effect based on the existing terraing.