Arcane Spells Balance

[DangerDolphin]

I was hoping we could have a discussion over the current spell balance, in particular those spells which are overused and those which scale badly.

Spells which are overused are, I think - often a little overpowered but because they have been in the game for such a long time, they have become accepted to be that way. They become a staple of every wizard and sorcerer because the alternatives are inferior. This can become boring over time, as nobody in their right mind would use a level 4 slot that could take an improved invisibility or extended haste to throw off a phantasmal killer or bestow curse.

By spells which don't scale, I don't just mean the awful hit-dice based spells (as if people needed even more incentive to stack CON), but also those lower level spells which become reliant on an opponent rolling a one because their DC becomes insignificant, and on the opposite side of the coin, buff spells which provide the same effect regardless of a mage's specialisation.

As a result, we have some rather bizarre and frankly dull outcomes whereby an evoker wizard is casting mass haste instead of causing fiery explosions, because his mass haste is just as powerful as a transmuter's. Meanwhile, the transmuter is attacking with a missile storm, because why bother with Slow or Flesh to Stone when the enemies would have to critically fail their saving throw for it to have any effect? They're both buffed up with improved invisibility, which you guessed it, is just as powerful and long-lasting as that illusionist wizard's spell.

I'm not necessarily asking for buffs or nerfs here, but perhaps some gentle changes combining both.

For instance, using some of the spells mentioned above:

- Improved invisibility could have only 40% concealment if cast by a non illusion spell focused character.
- Invisibility effects could last turns/level instead of rounds/level for an epic illusionist focus
- Haste could provide less AC if cast by a non transmuter
- Slow could be made single target, but higher DC and becomes AoE only with Empower/Maximise
- Evokers could have a small (+1/+2) bonus to overcome spell resistance when casting evocation spells
- Flesh to stone could have a 20% movement speed penalty and grant a weak stoneskin shield on a passed saving throw

[Apokriphos]

I completely agree.

Having every mage cast empowered, maximized, and regular IGMS in every battle is not only boring, but strongly uninspired.

Where are the mages who throw Pufferfish of fire at their enemies, the druids who call lightning from the skies, the necromancer who drains the life from his enemy?

Due to the proliferation of high saves via easy access to dweumercraft in Arelith, their spells are mostly ineffective. So they, and the spells they used, died off.

No save spells, such as IGMS, Mords, Timestop survived.

[Hunter548]

I don't just mean the awful hit-dice based spells (as if people needed even more incentive to stack CON),

Your CON score has no effect on your hit dice for the purpose of spells that check your hit dice (Sleep, Daze, Circle of Death, etc). Hit dice is just a fancy way of saying "level" that's a hold-over from PnP (Where a lot of monsters don't actually have levels in a class, they just have "6 HD of goblinoid" or w/e).



I'll fully agree with you that there's a lot of spells that could be buffed, or a lot that could be done to make a wider of variety of spells viable. I don't think, however, that nerfing spells as they currently stand (Like you suggested for Haste/Mass Haste/Improved Invisibility) is a good idea, largely because that spirals out to affect a lot more than just internal caster balance. Rather, buffing spells to make different focuses more viable and different play-styles more viable is the better path.


The reason every mage spams IGMS is largely because other spells suck, more or less. There's some other good spells, but most of them are niche because of saves or whatever (Case in point: Fireball is a garbage spell even at level 5, the second you get it, just because of how HP scales and how it interacts with saves/evasion/resistance to fire. This goes for pretty much all direct damage spells with a couple of exceptions).

The flip side of that, of course, is that getting one-shot by a wizard with a finger of death or whatever feels pretty bad to be on the receiving end of.

Ideally (to my mind) saves auto-passing/auto-failing on 1s and 20s would be removed. Then you could go through and touch up a bunch of spells that are "save or bad thing" and give them small debuffs on successful saves.

[garrbear758]

This is a nice idea, and if balanced properly (which is a whole other can of worms) would be pretty cool, but what you're talking about doing would involve recoding just about every single one of the 300ish spells in the game.

[Wuthering]

I completely agree.

Having every mage cast empowered, maximized, and regular IGMS in every battle is not only boring, but strongly uninspired.

Where are the mages who throw Pufferfish of fire at their enemies, the druids who call lightning from the skies, the necromancer who drains the life from his enemy?

Due to the proliferation of high saves via easy access to dweumercraft in Arelith, their spells are mostly ineffective. So they, and the spells they used, died off.

No save spells, such as IGMS, Mords, Timestop survived.

There's also economy of spells. It's generally much better to have summons, buffs and utility spells on hand when slots are precious. If you're a generalist wizard it's almost impossible to have enough offensive spells prepared to rely on for more than a single tough encounter. Sorcerers fare better but it's also very easy to burn through all your spells if you're heavy on offense (especially when they don't work)

I guess if you ask who's throwing fireballs around with impunity it's not mages, it's warlocks (kind of) and true flames, though even they rely on IGMS more than anything because there's no save. But you pretty much need infinite casts to use offensive magic heavily.

[Test Drive]

Ideally (to my mind) saves auto-passing/auto-failing on 1s and 20s would be removed. Then you could go through and touch up a bunch of spells that are "save or bad thing" and give them small debuffs on successful saves.

This is how it was on my last server, and the PvP scene was, while much different and had many more clear, cookie cutter builds and counters, I found it incredibly irritating when I died to 1's, or have hit someone with a spell at an over 24 dc difference here. With the availability of saves on gear and many, many immunity spells being on the breach list, I think it would be a good change. I'd assume it'd force some builds to re-gear a few pieces, for those that only gear to the point vs. average dangerous DC's +2, for only the 1 chance to fail.

However, I also hardly know the build sets here apart from the typical SS, Harm Clerics, and Weaponmasters I've seen, and am not entirely sure how much this would effect some lower teir builds, or people trolling / harassing lower level players. Which, happened quite often on the last server I was on.

[SayaMustFight]

Imo any wiz whose running around spamming IGMS no matter where they go isn't a good wiz. Pure dmg just isn't efficient enough for a wiz, especially a generalist, not even IGMS.

Save or dies and save or loses are great but require a deeper understanding of the game as well as the server. Most mobs don't have immunity to everything so as long as you know where you are going you can prepare accordingly and attack their weaknesses.

Against undead? use utd/control undead/sunburst.
Against high con/str? Bigby 7 is great
Against low will? Hold monster/Dominates/Mind Fog
Death immune? Is it also Fear/Mind immune? if not try weird.
Seems like it's immune to everything? If it doesn't have high con try FTS-ing it. If it has high con see if cloudkill drops its saves down a ton.
And on and on ad nauseum. Most spells in your spellbook have a use if used appropriately.

Similiar rules apply to pvp. Know every class and their weaknesses and if you are prepared you can often stack the deck overwhelmingly in your favor.

As a wiz there are a ton of keys available to you.(Things you can do) You can generally get most locks open. (Solve most problems.)

There's also economy of spells. It's generally much better to have summons, buffs and utility spells on hand when slots are precious. If you're a generalist wizard it's almost impossible to have enough offensive spells prepared to rely on for more than a single tough encounter. Sorcerers fare better but it's also very easy to burn through all your spells if you're heavy on offense (especially when they don't work)

I guess if you ask who's throwing fireballs around with impunity it's not mages, it's warlocks (kind of) and true flames, though even they rely on IGMS more than anything because there's no save. But you pretty much need infinite casts to use offensive magic heavily.

You need to cast save or loses or save or dies. Save or sucks can be okay too. They also need to reliably land which means you need to know what the saves and immunities of your enemies looks like before the fight. Most enemies are not badly designed where they have no weaknesses.

Fireball is trash due to changes from 2nd ed to 3.0. Hp numbers are just too big in 3.0/3.5 for the classic fireball wizard to be effective. This goes as well for other classic spells like cone of cold delayed blast fireball etc.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

add more save for partial bad stuff spells.

Like calcifying touch. Touch attack removed 1d4+ caster lvl/2 (max + 10) amount of dex and slowed. Fort save to negate slow and half the amount of dex lost.

Spells that dont auto win it save fails but have serious effects save or pass while also imposing much risk on the caster who has to get in touch range (and could fail to touch a dex character).

Doing stuff like making improved invisibility weaker for non illusionists just shafts mundanes more while making arelith even more non DnD as you start to mess with basic principles (50% miss chance on an target you can't see is how DnD work and what the concealment represents).

IGMS is a ridiculous powerfull spell (doesnt exist in PnP) but we kind of balanced things around stapled spells already. Not being able to stack metamagic or have feats to add to certain elements also limits spell viability. Also that fact that all our HD are max rolled makes direct spell damage more meh from traditional spells like fireballs (as does not being able to see a thousand feet away or needing to grind out several encounters vs just a few, PW problems).

[Irongron]

With the sheer amount of spells out there, going through and adjusting each would be a painstaking process, but likely worthwhile.

One key problem, as highlighted above, saving throws, in PvP and PvE alike, many are just too high to make many spells a worthwhile choice. One of our developers was looking at adding lesser negative effects to many 'passing rolls' last year - and I think that would be a decent start.

The class that always struck me as having the most 'wasted' spells was bard, as a player was far less likely to choose a 'single shot' offensive spell, over a duration buff.

We are not dealing with weak classes here though, and the aim is only to encourage diversity. I find it hard to envision a means by which we can boost some spells without nerfing others if we want to avoid it being up power creep for classes that really don't need it.

And the idea of going through all the NWN spells and further adjusting for 'balance'? The prospect fills me with dread.

[Anomandaris]

With the sheer amount of spells out there, going through and adjusting each would be a painstaking process, but likely worthwhile.

One key problem, as highlighted above, saving throws, in PvP and PvE alike, many are just too high to make many spells a worthwhile choice. One of our developers was looking at adding lesser negative effects to many 'passing rolls' last year - and I think that would be a decent start.

The class that always struck me as having the most 'wasted' spells was bard, as a player was far less likely to choose a 'single shot' offensive spell, over a duration buff.

We are not dealing with weak classes here though, and the aim is only to encourage diversity. I find it hard to envision a means by which we can boost some spells without nerfing others if we want to avoid it being up power creep for classes that really don't need it.

And the idea of going through all the NWN spells and further adjusting for 'balance'? The prospect fills me with dread.

I agree w/ the bard comment 100%. However I don't think adding negative effects for lower tier spells will necessitate balancing the other, higher tier DC spells (like wail or weird). A player only has "x" spells to cast in a given fight. If anything, it will pull me further away from trying to throw out a "speculative wail/weird" in a fight. That's why I don't think it would really have power creep, but rather create more diversity in play style. Now, there is a "formula" for what spells one casts in a given order in a fight. By opening up that set of options it's not giving the mage anything "more powerful," just different, "equally powerful" options.

I would however never add any negative impact to a spell that has a save or die effect as it drastically reduces the risk of throwing such a spell out (i.e. having no effect); that would add serious power creep. People often overstate the danger of these save or die spells. It is extremely risky to throw a wail of the banshee or weird in a spell because often it may be one of maybe 2-3 spells you'll have a chance to get off in a fight. It also often requires a breach first, meaning it's a 2 spell combo (and maybe the only thing you will get to try before you die). If that save or die spell had an effect no matter what, it would be more of a "go-to" in a fight rather than a risky gambit.

As a Rogue/SD I am literally a textbook example of who to target with Enchantment or Necromancy. But with Shadow Shield 2/day, HIPS and the general chaos of PvP, I don't feel outmatched by mages walking around with a DC-42 wail that I will basically never pass. Frankly, it's not much different than me popping out of stealth and 1 round killing someone with crazy attacks per round + sneak attack and crits.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Honestly pathfinder ((3.x is too broad for me to cover with all the splats) spells are pretty balanced in said regards (and most are copy and pasted from 3.5). The save or die/dominate spells are pretty pathetic if they save. Meanwhile you have a lot of cool middle ground spells such as Sirroco or waves of exhaustion.