Interacting with Figments& Glamers

[dbb]

Because Wizards is classifying some spells according to what they do, and some spells according to how they do it. They're actually getting closer to having everything be the former in 3.5 (note how almost all the damage-dealing spells in the core rules are Evocations even if they were something else previously), but they still have the flavor text.

As for why you make a Will save ... of the three, it's the closest to being the effect you want. It does benefit from having a high Wisdom, which is thematically appropriate for noticing things that are out of place or "don't feel right".

--d.

[Username17]

Well, considering that the low level guy isn't a PC but instead some PC's hireling or follower, I think it's important. I could really care less about a PC using this for the most part, because PCs are about the same level and fight monsters about their power level.

But when you can drag in some crappy 1st level illusionist and negate 50% of your opponent's offense with no drawback, that's just too much.

You can already have low level Wizards contribute to your high level combats. They can use your wands of Enervation, they can cast grease, they can cast silent image, they can cast light, etc. etc.. This is something that you can already do. But you don't. Why?

[*] High level combats are hard to get to. It often takes teleport, planeshift, planar survival, flight, or endure elements just to get a character to a high level battlefield. It's not worth those spell slots off your high level characters to bring scrubs to battles.

[*] High level combats are hard on bystanders. A 1st level Wizard has about 5 hit points. At even the low end of the high level world you are facing a plethora of enemies who fight standardly with chaos hammer or fire breath. When you face that Red Dragon, all the 1st level wizards and their familiars are dead in the first round and it didn't really cost the Dragon a god damned thing.

[*] Equipping a low level character is expensive. How much does it cost to equip a low level character? How much you got? You're probably going to have to slap down a few k for a flying mount (which the low level character can't keep alive, so have fun paying that over and over again), and a wand of a 4th level spell costs 21,000 gp. Raising the dead costs a few diamonds, and you're going to have to do that constantly.

So no. High level parties don't drag around low level Wizards. It's not that they can't. It's not even that they can't get a good benefit out of doing it. It's that the costs involved are prohibitive. Similarly, high level parties could go a long way by having a couple guys with death blow and Lucern Hammers with delayed actions waiting for enemies to get held. This would work, but people don't do it for the reasons laid out above.

---

The Buffing paradigm is the thing that makes us cry. The debuffing paradigm is just fine. We want to encourage people to use debuffs in combat. I am totally unable to understand why you think it is a problem that if debuffs were good they would be used. That's insanity.

Debuffs should be good. And they should be used. That's how we save Wizards as a useful class after we take away all their cool toys. And we have to take away all their cool toys because those things break the game. That's the things like mage armor, not the things like silent image.

Buffs are bad. Debuffs are good. You've said so yourself. Debuffs being good is a feature, not a bug.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

How is blinding someone a debuff?

[dbb]

How is it not a debuff? Being blind is a condition that imposes serious penalties on you offensively and defensively. If there were a spell that allowed you to give someone a 50% miss chance, a -2 to his AC, and lose his Dexterity bonus, all without having the the "oh, and you can't see" flavor text, that spell would totally be a debuff. That's what being blind does, so, unless you restrict your definition of debuff exclusively to "get rid of buff spells", blinding someone should probably count as debuffing them.

--d.

[MrWaeseL]

unless you restrict your definition of debuff exclusively to "get rid of buff spells", blinding someone should probably count as debuffing them.

That's what I thought debuffing was. Blinding someone would be " inflicting status conditions" or something.

[dbb]

The only problem there is that some status conditions actually disable the target, and some status conditions only hinder it, and there's still a need to distinguish. You could call the latter "anti-buffs" rather than "debuffs", I guess.

I always classified removing existing buff spells as "dispelling", that being a subset of debuffing as a whole, and took the general case of "debuff" to mean "inflict penalties on"; after all, mechanically, removing someone's bonus to hit is pretty much the same thing as inflicting an equivalent penalty to hit on them (stacking questions aside).

Of course, in everyday use it really doesn't matter as long as everyone knows what you mean. Frank was talking about removing buff spells entirely and leaving debuff spells in, so I took that to mean he was thinking about debuffs in the broader "inflict penalties" sense.

--d.

[RandomCasualty]

1121962854[/unixtime]]
Buffs are bad. Debuffs are good. You've said so yourself. Debuffs being good is a feature, not a bug.

I have no problem with debuffs as a whole, only when you run into absolute debuffs. That is you've got certain parts of the game which don't degrade when used agasint a high level opponent. In fact they actually become more valuable when used against a high levle opponent. That's not good design.

It's equivalent to the old 3.0 harm, where it didn't matter how many hp the thing had, it just got reduced to 1d4 hp, regardless. Making the spell actually do more damage againist high level guys than it did against low level ones. Which is pretty crazy from the point of view of a level paradigm.

In a level paradigm, effects do less to high level characters and more to lower level ones. Specifically for the reason that having a bunch of low level guys won't make a difference in a high level battle. You aren't supposed to be able to benefit much by bringing a bunch of 1st level crossbowmen into a battle with a CR 15 and you aren't supposed to benefit much by doing the same with apprentice wizards.

And while all the statements you made about low level characters in high level combats are true to an extent, but not to this particular case. There's zero equipment cost, because it's a first levle spell, so it's different than giving some guy a wand of enervation. Transportation isnt' a big deal because it's just 2-3 1st level wizards, you aren't bringing an army or anything. And while they can die real easy to area effects, who cares? They're replaceable and they don't cost you anything to replace.

It's just too much impact for a low level character to have. Debuffs should be good, but the level paradigm needs to remain in place. There's no problem with a 10th level character blinding a CR 10, but you don't want apprentice wizards doing that. It makes them far too useful.

Basically the illusion tradeoff is that you cannot perform any actions while you're doing it. For a high level character, big factor. But for an apprentice wizard you couldn't give a fuck. So the spell is actually most efficient when cast by a lower level guy. Does the same thing as your 20th level archmage casting it, only the lower level guy isn't sacrificing actions that actually mean anything.

[Username17]

The problem with this line of reasoning is that actually it applies to every form of attack. The actual D&D problem is that being a higher level monster doesn't necessarily guaranty you having higher values in any area vs. being a lower level (but different) monster. Girallons are stronger than Mind Flayers, and Nymphs have less hit points than buffalo.

There's nothing that you can tie any offensive action to that doesn't end up in some instances making it work better against an opponent who is nominally more powerful than another. That's because D&D has no power levels as regards the defenses that creatures have. Every monster is just a pile of values and unique abilities that are eyeballed into a power range.

So stop looking at this as "how big of a monster can you Blindzor!?" That's not a useful metric, because even such attack forms as trip and grease really can completely tentacle rape several of the monsters in the ELH.

Start looking at this like a buff spell that you have to wait until you're in battle before you can use it. Auto-blinding an opponent is a lot like Invis or Displacement. Only unlike those unfair abilities that can be cast before combat and ruin the game's cobat turn paradigm, Image has to be used during combat, because it is an attack.

That's great. No longer can people wander around with their buffing choir that put up spells like Displacement and Mage Armor just before they Teleport Ambush their enemies. Instead, if you want the buff spell, you have to accept that the source is in harm's way. This doesn't fix all of D&D's problems with character levels and monster power levels. But it solves a lot of them, and it's totally a step in the right direction.

There shouldn't be spells like Mage Armor that give a character +4 AC. There should be spells like "disorient", that give an opponent a -4 attack penalty with no save. The fact that it reduces your opponent's stats instead of benefitting your own means that you actually have to have an opponent before you can use it. And that's the direction things need to go. Bless is bad for the game. Curse is good for the game. The thing where Bless is considered harmless and doom grants a save is the single most fundamental problem with D&D right now.

-Username17

[Essence]

Actually, Frank, that's a very interesting way of solving the "combat buffs" problem in it's entirety.

What if every single buff in the game had either a range of "touch" and a duration of "24 hours" OR had this text:

Range: Personal and Short (see text)
Target: You

When you cast XXXX, you gain <some stat bonus or special ability> against all foes within 25 ft. +5 ft./2 levels, and against all foes who enter this radius while this spell is active. When no foes remain within this radius, the spell's duration ends.


Would that work to reduce buffs to "class features" and "combat actions"?

[User3]

That does not quite solve the issue. With your version you can still buff up pre-combat, although only in a few select situations. It should probably at least count as an attack for purposes of invisibility and maybe even be given visible and audible components.

[fbmf]

1122063145[/unixtime]]Actually, Frank, that's a very interesting way of solving the "combat buffs" problem in it's entirety.

What if every single buff in the game had either a range of "touch" and a duration of "24 hours" OR had this text:

Range: Personal and Short (see text)
Target: You

When you cast XXXX, you gain <some stat bonus or special ability> against all foes within 25 ft. +5 ft./2 levels, and against all foes who enter this radius while this spell is active. When no foes remain within this radius, the spell's duration ends.


Would that work to reduce buffs to "class features" and "combat actions"?

How do you designate a "foe" though?

Ruleslawyering a bit, could you do one chickenshit attack against a party member for like a point of damage and make a point of staying within 25 feet of that guy all day?

Game On,
fbmf

[Josh_Kablack]

Forget that..just Flesh to Stone an actual enemy. Or Sleep it a bunch, or first time you fight a troll, don't bother dealing any real damage to it and just keep its nonlethal damage above it's HP.

[RandomCasualty]

1122069418[/unixtime]]
How do you designate a "foe" though?

It's a semantical nightmare, but I don't see it as being a problem in a real game. The DM generally will know when players are trying to abuse the rule and simply not allow it. That is what DMs are for anyway.

When you're playing a game with a human DM you can simply insert a statement like "Any attempt to create artificial or trivial foes to prolong the spell won't work." There's no way to actually put that in code, but that's not a problem when you've got a human instead of a computer interpreting it. Figuring out when people are trying to abuse the rule is painfully obvious for a human being to spot.

So having the rat constantly chewing on your armor won't help.

[Crissa]

Why is a problem that 1st level spells are still useful at 20th level?

The Warrior still uses his last attack, doesn't he? He still uses trip, yes?

Buffs are fine - if they're limited, predesigned, and aligned to mesh with the debuffs you will find in combat.

There's no damn reason Blind has to be permanent - Throwing sand in a guy's eyes does the same thing for a round.

-Crissa

[Lago_AM3P]

I distinguish who my foes are, not the goddamn DM.

[RandomCasualty]

1122076640[/unixtime]]Why is a problem that 1st level spells are still useful at 20th level?

It's not necessarily, so long as 20th level characters are casting them. The problem isn't that 1st level spells are useful, but that CR 1 characters are useful to CR 20s.

The bottom line is that you wouldn't allow a 1st level character to blind a 20th level fighter by throwing sand in his eyes, so you shouldn't let a 1st level illusionist do that either.

[Crissa]

1122078295[/unixtime]]The bottom line is that you wouldn't allow a 1st level character to blind a 20th level fighter by throwing sand in his eyes, so you shouldn't let a 1st level illusionist do that either.

Why not?

It doesn't matter if the wall is 1st level or 20th level, it's still opaque.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1122080523[/unixtime]]
It doesn't matter if the wall is 1st level or 20th level, it's still opaque.

But it's not a wall. A wall affects both sides. This is a cheesy floating box which is essentially a called shot. It's the same as if the archer decided to try to shoot someone's eye out, only it doesn't even require an attack roll.

Called shots aren't supported by D&D, why we give illusions the priviledge of having called shot style effects is beyond me. A normal orc couldn't run up and cover someone's eyes with his hands, why should an illusionary one be able to?

[Username17]

A normal orc couldn't run up and cover someone's eyes with his hands, why should an illusionary one be able to?

Because a normal Cloaker could?

This isn't even about "realism". Realism was out the window a long ass time ago. This is about the straight mechanics of buffing. I honestly don't give a rat's ass about people blinding others with a 1st level spell. I've looked at it from every side and it's mathematetically no more problematic than anything else in D&D.

There shouldn't be buffing. You shouldn't worry about who your "foes" are. None of that shit. You should buff yourself exclusively with curses that target others and reduce their capabilities. And that's a shit tonne more important than worrying about how much benefit 15th level characters can squeeze out of their cannon fodder allies in the round and a half they live before they get killed by the negative energy aura of the local Nightshade.

Defensive bonuses can be curses to your opponents' attacks, and offensive bonuses can be curses to your opponents' defenses. This is all about the fact that Polymorph is broken and Baleful Polymorph is not.

Weaker buffs can target one enemy. Stronger buffs can target lots of enemies. Weaker buffs can reduce their values against you. Stronger buffs can reduce their values against everybody.

Invisibility is gone. The new spell is:

Vanish
Illusion
As many targetted creatures as you damned well feel like
Long Range
All creatures targetted can't see you any more. Suck it.

Stone Skin is gone. The new spell is:

Brittle Blade
Transmutation
All weapons that a single targetted creature is attending
Medium Range
All weaponry of the targetted creature does 10 less damage. Adamantine weaponry is immune to the spell.

And they's have durations and crap. The idea is that noone gets to have a philosophical argument about whether some extremely hostile rock counts as an opponent, and noone gets to turn on the Popeye music so quietly that noone notices.

Buffs are now an attack and they only benefit you if you use them on the people you want to use the bonuses against, because they are technically targetted as curses instead of targetted as blessings at all.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Well I dont' really have much of a problem getting rid of combat buffs and replacing them with curses, that's fine. I just have a problem with having spells which make low level characters too useful.

Now it's actually fine to do all sorts of stuff with personal buffs. If the enemy can't see you anymore and just you, then it really doesn't matter what level you or the targets are, because what you can do after that is determined by your level. The invisible first level mage for instance isn't going to be much more useful whether he's visible or invisible. In fact invisibility is probably worse for him to cast against high level opponents, since that increases the chance they'll just attack an easier target, probably someone who can hurt them. So personal only curses, like personal only buffs, don't really have any problem with level gaps.

However, when the curse applies to everyone, I think you run into a problem where you need level relative penalties for the caster level of the spell versus the level of the target. Though this delves more into the problem of D&D's bonus accumulation paradigm than it does anything to do with curses in general. Basically instead of haivng a -2 curse, a -4 curse, and a -6 curse, you'd determine the penalty of the curse based on the difference between level of target and level of caster.

So a low level caster may only generate a -1 penalty on a high level target where you'd generate a -10 possibly if you were real high level and your target sucked. That way you'd only need one curse spell to handle all situations, and you don't have to worry much about an army of 1st level wizards ruling the day.

[Username17]

See, what you are doing is getting emmotionally affected by the idea that the spell is "doing somethig" to the high level monster. Don't even think of it like that, this is a buff spell. The limitations are that you give up your further actions in combat and have to actually be in the combat to provide the bonus.

In short, this is just like the current paradigm of using low level spellcasters except that it actually works. The real problems that you allude to are:

[*] Low level characters and monsters are supposed to have little effect on high level combats. However, when you put a Kobold Expert on the team of an Efreet or a 1st level Wizard with Mage Armor and Enlarge Person on the team of an Octopus Druid, the difference in power of that team is quite large.

[*] High level characters and monsters are supposed to wade through tremendous numbers of low level opposition. And some of them can and some of them can't. A 10th level character/monster is supposed to be an unreasonable challenge for 32 1st level characters or 64 basic warriors. A War Troll or a 10th level Wizard really can just walk around killing them fools, but a 10th level Fighter or a Fire Giant might not last one whole round.

Now the problem you keep harping on is the first one. It's been a problem of D&D forever. Like, back before we even had the concept of CR. Actually, this system of blessings as curses solves this problem as well as I think it can solved in D&D. The fact that your buffs actually require the low-level wizards to get an action in combat, and go away when they drop, means that your low-level magic support is in extreme danger all the time. More danger than is really worth it for PCs to use. The "caused the death of followers" penalty is pretty severe, and only a small number of your followers actually are low level wizards (like zero by some readings of the rules).

The second problem is actually much more systemic. I don't think there's anything simple you can do that will keep 10th level Fighters from just getting crushed by hordes of weenies. You can give them a lot of subtle defensive powers (Energy Resistance Everything/3 is a shockingly big deal for survivability, for example). You can give out a lot more mass offensive powers - noone should have to pay four feats to get Supreme Cleave. If fighters don't "just do that", they should only spend one feat for the priviledge.

But the problem you keep stating and restating is actually solved. It's a non-issue for the system of buffs that I am describing. It is a serious issue for the normal rules. The thing where a +2 bonus means the same thing on the 20 when you are 1st level as it does when you are 12th means that low level casters are basically just as effective casting spells on 12th level Druids and Monks just before they go in the door as they are mixing it up in the middle of 2nd level combats.

But your problem is that when I turned everything on its head, when I state all the buffs as working against the creatures that would ultimately be on the receiving end of those bonuses, the small amount of off-level utility that is left becomes obvious to you. That's an emotional response and has no place in probability analysis. Your objections have been noted and have been carefully considered, and they have no merit.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1122133867[/unixtime]]
Now the problem you keep harping on is the first one. It's been a problem of D&D forever.

Absolutely true. And basically this is a symptom of D&D's static bonus system. And that system is fundamentally flawed. It's the same system that makes divine favor absolutely useless at 1st level, and makes spikes insanely powerful at 10th level. It's also what absolutely destroys epic levels and increases the divergence in D&D to crazy levels.

The solution is actually fairly easy to create. Basically all your buffs/curses have a comparison between the level of the target and the level of the caster, similar to holy word. So for instance you'd subtract the targets's level from the caster's level and have a table like this. (the numbers themselves probably need some fine tuning but it's there for a sample)

6+ : -6 penalty
+3 - +5 : -5 penalty
+0 - +2 : -4 penalty
-3 - -1 : -3 penalty
-6 - -4 : -2 penalty
-7 or lower: -1 penalty

And there's your curse (or buff) format. you may add status effects at certain levels, such as blindness may by default just put on concealment at the -1 to -5 levels, granting 10% concealment with each level (max 50%), and at -6 it actually makes the person fully blind, and unable to see his surroundings at all. A failed save could worsen the effect by one or two catagories to create some randomness.

So you never have to worry about your 1st level mage super cursing/buffing an efreet, because it's only a +1 bonus or -1 penalty. This does mean that the efreet can however super buff or super curse the 1st level mage, but I think this is a lot more desireable than the alternative. Spending a high level action to make a low level character more useful seems reasonable. Spending a trivial low level action to make a high level character more useful is power for nothing.

My solution eliminates the problem nicely. It also lets you have epic level curses which don't have to hand out huge -20 penalties. It's rather simple and easy to use as well, and it'd probably be possible to get a table progression that's more logical and able to be derived through a formula.

But anyway, that's fairly easy to implement and fixes any problems for buffing or cursing across a level gap.

[Username17]

That actually works pretty well for numeric bonuses. But it shouldn't be necessary, because a -3 penalty is already a bigger deal against someone weaker than you than it is against someone stronger than you. And as long as you have to be in the fight to get these off, that still matters.

The problem is that it doesn't work satisfactorily for binary things like blindness or earthbind. For things like that, you just have to factor in the fact that higher level targets have more abilities and higher level spells deny more abilities.

A first level character can blind a target. But a 7th level monser has the ability to maybe fight with scent or area attacks or whatever. A higher level spell might blind both the eyes and the nose, or perhaps disorient the subject at the same time (negating Blindfighting).

Yes, you'll come across nominally higher level monsters against whom you happen to have precisely the right effect, where their list of powers does not actually cover whatever your curse does. That's good, because that's actually entirely under the control of the DM, and basically allows for a bit of puzzle-monster hoohaws for low level characters to do their research and take down a big powerful bad guy.

And no, it's not very elegant. But it's how things have to be done in D&D. Monsters are set up like this already (though it can be argued that they don't get enough ability redundancy at mid to high levels).

With a little work (and by a little, I mean "a crap tonne") you could even have ability progressions in which the defensive, movement, and attack powers available to monsters were actually set to the levels of attainment for curse effects. This could be a much stronger level disparity than currently exists - and might actually start making people of levels 10-14 be able to tell the difference between one another.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1122146525[/unixtime]]
A first level character can blind a target. But a 7th level monser has the ability to maybe fight with scent or area attacks or whatever. A higher level spell might blind both the eyes and the nose, or perhaps disorient the subject at the same time (negating Blindfighting).

Yeah, I would actually recommend having that as well. It allows the low level blinding spell to be both level relative for high/low level opponents and become weaker in comparison to higher level spells.

Generally I like the paradigm that low level spells beat mundane abilities (like sight) and high level spells are geared toward higher level abilities (like blindsight and teleportation).

So your basic fireball should probably do the same damage as a higher level fire spell, but a higher level fire spell should be better at punching through fire resistnace and fire immunity, evasion and similar abilities that would reduce the normal lower level fireball.

That way you can have higher level stuff be useful without totally hosing multiclassed casters.