You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="touc" data-source="post: 8084797" data-attributes="member: 19270">One way to deal with cheese is to feed a dose back to the player(s). Let an enemy or two use it on them, in the same way it's being used. However, I've found the best way is to talk to the players as a group about whether anyone believes certain features of the game need to be nerfed (e.g. a gimmick spell or combo). Here's some points to make to your players about why the spell is unbalanced as written, and some counterpoints:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Incapacitation is already awesome, and this makes it better by removing all movement. Bam, you can't do crap. Total removal of all enemies who failed the save from the combat. The counter-argument is that it could, in theory, catch allies and is limited to roughly 9 enemies in a cube. See below.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Deadly to low level or high level foes. A fireball becomes less deadly as you go up in levels, but this spell remains as potent as ever. You could do 28 damage (14 on a save) with a fireball to four giants, or remove 2-3 of them from combat, given most monsters don't have a proficiency saving throw bonus. No brainer.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A cube with range. You don't need line of sight, just some angle to set the cube. Clever players can use terrain and full cover to avoid counterspell, etc. Match this with no verbal component and foes might not have any idea where the spell came from.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Doesn't even come close to matching similar debilitation spells. Hold Person at 3rd level allows 2 targets, with concentration up to 1 minute, and like this spell effectively removes them from combat. You can get 2 with Hold Person + a save each round, or up to 9 with no save each round and requiring enemies to waste their actions waking allies up. No brainer.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">No saves per turn. Detailed above.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">With a Devotion Paladin (allies immune charm), you can freely drop this nuke at will.</li> </ul>You could offer to nerf the spell a bit. In 3.5, the spell (2nd level) had a Hit Dice maximum of 2d4 + caster level, max 10. The AD&D 2E version (also 2nd level) maxed at 24 HD based on random # of hit dice per level affected and couldn't affect anything above 6th level.</blockquote>

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