ShockMeSane said:
There will always be spells that are a problem for a certain Campaign/DM/Playergroup. No edition of D&D will ever solve this.
And smart DM's will do what they have always done, which is castrate/remove problem spells which adversely effect the gameplay of their campaign. I'm really not even sure why this is such an ongoing discussion on this forum. There are such a plethora of ways to deal with the issue from the mechanical (What? Your teleport didn't work? I guess the area you attempted to Scry was under a powerful illusion or enchantment), the diplomatic (listen buddy, its a deal breaker for me to DM for you if you are going to constantly try to find ways to abuse my campaign, so we're going to pretend X spell isn't castable if you want to keep gaming with us), or the downright nasty jerk (oh, your attempt to summon the Dark God through your Gate was scrambled by the mighty "Artifact of X", and your Wizard is disintegrated. If there was anyone in the world who could cast Wish, we could maybe get him back but I'm afraid there isn't, go over to the corner and re-roll).
I've never had anyone leave one of my campaigns over my removal or "nerfing" of a spell I didn't like from a DM'ing perspective, but even if I had, it would have been a small loss. Or really, some kind of gain.
Sure there are groups of players/DMs who love Teleport Without Error/Scry/Gate/Wish etc etc, and more power to 'em. I'm just saying, if you are offended by any particular spell, it's about a one minute long discussion with your group about how it will effect the enjoyment of the campaign to remove it.
I think the 4E tier system is a nice approach to this issue. The "game-breaker" spells still exist, but they belong to a clearly defined tier. If you don't like them, don't go there.
I dislike nerfing spells or even banning them. Published adventurers might assume I have them. (If they don't anticipate their (ab)use, bad for the writer). My players might have wanted to use them. They also might have effects I like. It's too arbitrary.
If I know that I can find certain spells only at certain tiers, it's a lot easier to work with them. Either I consciously change the way the adventures work (like implied in the excerpts), or I avoid these tiers in the first place.
In a way, this was possible in 3E, but the levels range of "game-breaker" or "tier-changing" spells wasn't clearly defined (and in some cases, I'd say they also came to early.)
It also wasn't guaranteed that anyone had them, so either you accounted for them and made the scenario impossible (at least very difficult) without them, or you did not, and make the scenario to easy (and possibly boring) with them.
For any individual group, you usually might have been able to work this out, but for adventures from other sources, this wasn't so easy.
As an example:
Fly is available at 5th (character) level, scry at 7th, teleport at 9th. All 3 spells notably change adventure design. With fly, certain kind of obstacles can be totally avoided, even if used in combat. With fly, the obstacle is a "resource drain", without it, it might be unsurmountable. Scry allows you to spy on people you haven't met yet. You could use Scry as a prerequisite for advancing the storyline, but if the PCs don't have it, they have to jump through hoops to get the info. Or you didn't take it into account, and a whole subplot of your adventure can be scrapped. Teleport allows a party to reach a distant location very quickly. The spell could be the only mean to reach the evil cultists in time to stop their ritual. Or it breaks your whole overland-travel part where the PCs would have found allies, foes and information to further the plot.
Every element that can be foiled by magic must be used before that point. This gives you sometimes a a very short level frame where you can use this elements. Every element that requires a certain type of magic could also be an element that doesn't work for your particular party at hand. In the end, you have a lot of elements that might no longer work, or don't work with your specific party.
With the explicit tier denominations, you don't run into so many problems. At the Heroic tier, you can count on every overland-travel and bounty hunting investigation to work. At Paragon Level, you can use half a mile wide chasms, and have the PCs attack two cultist bases spread over half the continent in two days to stop their World-Ending Ritual.
