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<blockquote data-quote="radferth" data-source="post: 371901" data-attributes="member: 5791">Just feel compelled to post the history of a few spells commonly listed as overpowered.Shield:&nbsp; Back in first edition, Shield gave the equivalent of an armor bonus.&nbsp; Having it give an armor bonus in 3rd ed. seems to fix a lot of balance problems, but doesn't make as much sense based on the discription.Haste used to have the nasty side effect of aging the recipients one year, which came with a small by significant chance of death if they failed a system shock roll (folks with decent constituion scores were 90% or more likely to live).Harm (and all the cause wound spells) gave you one chance to hit only, and was usually done against the normal AC (although many DMs had something like touch AC they used for touch spells even before 3rd ed.)Polymorph other used to have the dual problem of requiring a system shock roll, and had a chance (very complex to calculate) of permanently making you think you were the creature you were polymorphed into.Taking out the arbitrary chance of death for spells like haste and polymorph seems like a good idea overall, but it does make the spells more powerful than they used to be.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="radferth, post: 371901, member: 5791"] Just feel compelled to post the history of a few spells commonly listed as overpowered. Shield: Back in first edition, Shield gave the equivalent of an armor bonus. Having it give an armor bonus in 3rd ed. seems to fix a lot of balance problems, but doesn't make as much sense based on the discription. Haste used to have the nasty side effect of aging the recipients one year, which came with a small by significant chance of death if they failed a system shock roll (folks with decent constituion scores were 90% or more likely to live). Harm (and all the cause wound spells) gave you one chance to hit only, and was usually done against the normal AC (although many DMs had something like touch AC they used for touch spells even before 3rd ed.) Polymorph other used to have the dual problem of requiring a system shock roll, and had a chance (very complex to calculate) of permanently making you think you were the creature you were polymorphed into. Taking out the arbitrary chance of death for spells like haste and polymorph seems like a good idea overall, but it does make the spells more powerful than they used to be. [/QUOTE]

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