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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1129698" data-attributes="member: 151">Well, green slime beat me to it, but his point is my point, namely: a goblin isn't hitting anything near the AC or defenses of a 18-20th level party's defenses. If you've made that goblin into a 19th-level fighter, then the EL has changed and all bets are off, anyhow. At 18th-20th level, there are no 'typical' dungeons. With ethereal, dim-dooring, shadow-jumping, flying, teleporting, shadow-walking, gaseous-formed, wind-walking, hasted, air-walking players, walls pose no problems, and they detect nastiness a long way off. Players often reserve such powers until needed, but at the levels we're discussing, the players choose their own battlefields as often as not.  With the vast array of divination, abjuration and detection magic available at high levels, it's very hard for the players to be suprised in this fashion, unless they're sleeping or completely unprepared. If we're going under your 'typical dungeon' assumption, then the rogue will most likely discover the balor prior to their encounter. With a spot/listen of +38, there's a reasonable chance for a decent rogue to discover the Balor undetected (and I'm talking pure skill to skill here, with magical enhancements...if the rogue goes ethereal, the Balor will only see her if he consciously scans the ethereal).  Nor would I ask you to...I'm just saying that IME, you wouldn't be.  Although, with the plethora of save-or-die spell effects at high levels, every encounter has potential for such, it should be noted. Don't call me Shirley. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> More powerful than Holy Word? Sure, I can't deny that. It's also Evil, so my players won't be using it. But the mechanics aren't wrong, as far as I can tell, and I wouldn't classify it as 'way above'. At 20th level, at least some of the party members are likely to have active SR at any given time. Is someone wielding a Holy Avenger? Wearing a mantle of spell resistance? Have a monk in the party? There are other ways of course, and with any amount of prep time, you can get Shield of Law, Holy Aura, Greater Spell Immunity or any of a host of other spells running. Not to mention items like Metamagic rods to increase the duration of spells, rings of spell-storing and a host of other defenses. Powerful? Yes. Welcome to 20th level encounters. The biggest difference is that in 3.5, encounters don't always come down to, who rolled initiative first and who fails their saving throw first? The Balor is meant to be a nigh-Epic encounter, the sort of which players talk/brag about after the fact. In 3.0, the balor was a push-over. Now he's not. That's a good thing, IMHO. There are plenty of problem spells, but I'm not seeing it with Blasphemy. Most of your problem with it as a spell is in the Balor's use of it as an at-will spell, which has nothing to do with the spell itself, and everything to do with the Balor and a lack of equity with Holy Word.</blockquote>

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