Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5189299" data-attributes="member: 4937"><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=":)" />There are two basic problems with that set of statements. First, the second sentence invalidates the first.  If the only defence your Wizard has is Fly, what are invisibility, greater invisibility and mage armor?You've contridicted yourself.  The second problem is more subtle but just as important.  The problem is that one of those things you've listed is not like the others.   One of those things just doesn't belong.  Mage armor provides a relative advantage.  It reduces the chances that you get hit.  Fly and Invisibility usually - at the time that they are employed - provide absolute advantages.  That is, either the foe has some way of dealing with your flight or invisibility, in which case, it provides no advantage to you, or else the foe has no way of dealing with flight or invisibility in which case it is now helpless.  The problem with flight is that it is the equivalent of a spell that gave you a +100 bonus to AC vs. blunt weapons.  The spell give absolute immunity on the one hand, and nothing on the other.  That's IMO quite bad design.  Sadly, 3e (and to a lesser extent 1e) is filled with these sorts of absolute immunities, of which flight is a relatively unegregious example.  Absolute immunities are in my opinion little fun for either the DM or the players.  In the case of the players having an absolute immunity, they make problem solving trivial and tend to suppress creativity.  In the case of the monsters having an absolute immunity, they tend to force one or more players to stand on the sidelines unable to effectively contribute.While I do believe that flight and invisibility are 'undercosted' I don't believe either is inherently broken.  They are reasonable tools to allow the players to have to occasionally solve problems.  However, they shouldn't become skeleton keys used to solve every problem.It should be clear from the start that I'm not talking about taking away Fly.  I'm talking about scaling the availability of fly appropriately to the level of the party.  At lower levels it probably should not be available to allow players the enjoyment of finding creative solutions to mundane problems.  As it becomes available, it should at first be available as winged flight with poor manueverability for relatively short durations and at relatively slow speed.  As the power level of the campaign increases and mundane problems (having been experienced and overcome) become less and less interesting, better and better manueverability and longer and longer durations and higher speeds become balanced both with what the rest of the party can do, and what foes are capable of countering at least to some extent.  That just basic balance considerations.And again, you contridict yourself.  Have you ever heard the term, "The best defense is a good offense"?  Just because your Wizard has a poor defense (which he doesn't, but hypothetically) doesn't mean he's actually weak or unbalanced or at the mercy of his foes.  Incinerated foes don't represent threats.</blockquote>

Verification