Wizards who refuse to use blast spells

[The Green Adam]

It's all a question of creative spell use and interpertation. In the right hands almost any spell can be a deadly weapon. Off the top of my head...

Two guys fighting on the deck of a ship. Cast passwall under your opponent's feet.

Cast shield and convince an orc to take a light pot-shot at you. Tell'em it's this magic copper piece in your pocket. Sell him the copper piece for a bunch of silver or gold pieces. Tell him to take the copper piece over to that Ogre who keeps bullying him and give the jerk what for.

Rock to Mud the ceiling over your enemy, mud to rock after it hits him.

Have unseen servant remove an enemy's belt or tie his boot laces together.

Slide down a bannister, when the opponent follows suit - Wall of Stone or Fire.

The list goes on and on. Anybody can kill with a fireball. It's like all these movies with the gun shooting action heroes. Wanna impress me? Take out the drug dealers with a can of peas and an automatic paint sprayer.

AD

 

[Felon]

Efficient characters are well and good, but when it comes down to using the same three or four tricks, all of which prevent me from doing anything interesting with the NPCs in combat ... it sucks a lot of fun out of it.

Note that in 4e's design, arcane spellcasters are designated as "controllers". I'd say the design your arcanists are using fit that bill pretty well.

You are correct in that these spells make combat encounters boring. That is, unfortunately, how 3e designers set things up. Web (and similar snaring spells) have no common countermeasures. It's a rock without a paper to cancel it out.

Among the simplest things you can do is have your opponents pack some more spellcasting. This allows for dispel magics, and also allows for more ranged striking.

Glitterdust is a very good spell, the wizard in the game I run uses it a lot. Being a conjuration it doesn't even allow SR. He's also a big fan of slow. I do sometimes get tired of monsters being blind and slowed but I can always just use high will save critters such as undead or aberrations.

I think the annoying thing about most debuffs is they prolong fights and add extra rolls. Both grease and web have little sub-rules you have to learn. Grease requires extra rolls every round. Glitterdust means you have to roll a miss chance. Slow otoh, simplifies the game by removing iterative attacks.

All very true. Other posters should take note.

 

[Felon]

What's good for the goose is good for the gander:

PC: "Web!"
BBEG: "Web!"

This -for-tat M.A.D. rationale has been with D&D since the earliest days. That's unfortunate, since it's of the poorest logic (and not just in D&D). Two wrongs don't make a right, and using the other guys tactics does not make a problem go away.

These tactics just up the level of frustration and boredom to even higher levels.

 

[Tarek]

You can set web spells on fire. That's a common countermeasure.

 

[Felon]

Wouldn't using damage-dealing spells count as effectively a single trick?

No. Effectively and consistently dealing damage requires a host of tricks. There is more than one tool in the direct-damage set.

 

[Felon]

You can set web spells on fire. That's a common countermeasure.

It takes a full-round action to burn a single square. This makes it a terrible countermeasure, and few creatures waste time attempting terrible countermeasures.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

You know, back in the days of 1E, Gary Gygax had lots of little off-the-cuff rulings and commentary that wasn't written into the rules specifically, just mentioned in passing. He mentioned that a dinosaur might not be affected in the least by a poisonous snake-no dice rolls, nothing. I haven't read my 3E DMG in a long time, but maybe some of these off-the-cuff type rulings, that are not in the RAW, could just as easily be a solution?

Examples:

Hill giants battling in a forest, and a wizard casts a web spell, anchored between the trees.

Hill giants run into it, get caught. Imagine the wizard's surprise when the giants try to simply bull through the web, and one round later simply rip the trees up by their roots, pick them up, and toss them at the wizard!

Casting grease? Grease doesn't work all that well if your feet aren't moving. Use missile weapons. Creatures like golems won't be affected too much by slipping and falling-they'll just get up and keep on coming. If your enemies can, they should switch to missile weapons in this case.

Casting obscure mist? If your villains have good Listen checks, or otherwise keen senses of smell, those senses can be used to locate a player.

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

Actually, what we do to resolve this is pretty easy. We use the D&D miniatures, or pre-printed tokens, and what I have the players do is to tear off a small corner of scrap paper for each enemy that is wounded or has a condition on them - or write it directly on the token. I make the players keep track of the damage they've done, and the conditions they've slapped on the monsters. Saves me from a lot of bookeeping. At the end of the game we toss the scrap paper in the trash, and it's done.

That was going to be my comment. The player casts the spell, IMC it's his job to remember (1) how it works and to (2) remind if I do something that I can't. So, just mark the mini or area as webbed/greased and when it's those monster's turn say, have the player remind you of the rules. It works 99% of the time and you can move the combat on with a few quick rolls.

If you're just looking to have him vary his tactics, slip a few combats in where his tactics don't work and he gets hurt. You'll see new spells in his spellbook.

 

[Tarek]

A full-round action to burn a single square of Web?

That's ridiculous, considering the roots of the spell. I'll have to move Web up a level or two or rule that a Web spell burns like tissue paper if you set it afire.

 

[Felon]

You know, back in the days of 1E, Gary Gygax had lots of little off-the-cuff rulings and commentary that wasn't written into the rules specifically, just mentioned in passing. He mentioned that a dinosaur might not be affected in the least by a poisonous snake-no dice rolls, nothing. I haven't read my 3E DMG in a long time, but maybe some of these off-the-cuff type rulings, that are not in the RAW, could just as easily be a solution?

The problem with off-the-cuff rulings is that, by the very nature of being off-the-cuff, they haven't been thought through. They're just arbitrary, unreliable instances of saying "no" in one situation and "yes" in another slightly different one. Maybe your spell will work this time, maybe not.

Having consistent reasons why something doesn't work is a lot better for both players and DM. I'd rather a web be usesless against a dinosaur because its size provides a massive bonus to attempts to break free. Currently, it's just a flat Strength check. Since ability checks don't scale very much by level (or anything else), webs are great even at a level where 2nd-level spells are supposedly kids stuff.

It's just not a well-designed spell, as are most of the snaring spells. There are lots of defenses available against damage, but not a lot of effort went into protecting monsters from being rooted.