MerakSpielman said:
But JoeBlank, when you build a fighter, you get to pick from a dozen different weapons to be your primary attack. Once you get bored with longswords, greatswords, etc..., you have plenty of choices for your new, first-level fighters to start out with.
Magic missile is so common, every single wizard has it, unless evocation is forbidden. There are no alternative first level ranged attack spells to choose from.
Right. In fact, it *used* to be the case that nearly every single fighter would carry a longsword because a longsword was simply The Best Weapon. And then every single fighter would carry two longswords because two longswords were The Best Offense. 3E completely removed that - it gave actual options with tradeoffs and benefits and no one choice that was clearly The Best. That was great. Which style to use (THF, TWF, S&B)? Within a given style, which weapon to use (warhammer or longsword)? There is no longer any One Best Answer, and that's an amazing design improvement of 3E.
On the other hand, Magic Missile was still The Best, and Tome & Blood basically said to players of wizard PCs "Yeah, we admit it, Magic Missile is still The Best." One of the rules of designing new spells is, "Is this spell so good that nearly every wizard would choose to prepare it? If so, it's not balanced." By that reasoning, MM was clearly unbalanced.
3.5 beefed up Shocking Grasp a lot, so it now does more damage than MM to make up for the fact that is is melee, requires a touch attack, allows energy resistance, and can't auto-hit incorporeals (MM is a "ghost touch" spell, the equivalent of a +1 for a weapon IIRC). More or less a balance, I suppose.
The second issue with MM is its absolute lack of flavor. What is Force damage? Physical gashes? A "pure magic" burning effect? Newtons or pounds applied to the target area? I would like MM more if the player described his PC's particular version as ghostly falcons that swoop and rip at the target, or something like that. And I like physical gashes as the result of force effects - like Spiritual Weapon or Mordenkainen's Sword. Hmm, maybe rename MM "Mordenkainen's Knives" and tweak the effects a bit and you have an interesting spell...
The third issue was its utter reliability. No hit roll, no save, works against almost everything. 3.5 went some way to fixing this by making SR not apply against most conjuration effects - suddenly, Acid Arrow and the like are the more reliable options in some cases, despite lower average damage.
In my opinion, MM was broken until 3.5. Now it is no longer broken (since it is no longer the best choice) but it's still hugely popular, enormously effective, and rather dull. It's the Wal-Mart of magic spells.
Most spells you get bored with by seeing PCs or NPCs use them over and over again. Invisibility, Teleport, and 3.0 Fly, Haste, and Harm. But the one spell I got instantly bored with was Sending, the great magic cell phone where you never get a busy signal. A 5% chance of insanity each time you receive a message would have made it interesting. Or maybe allowing it to be fooled by disguises or polymorphs.
