The Gaming Den

[Dr_Noface]

Why is Regenerate a 7th level spell? It seems to me its not two levels more impressive than raising the dead or shifting to another plane of existence. Did DMs of old enjoy chopping off a character's limbs and then flip their players the bird?

What other spells do you feel are placed at the wrong spell level? Animate Objects is another cool spell that seems to be wasted as a sixth level spell. I'd say it was worthy of a fourth slot.

Of course, a lot of the damage spells spells should have decreased level or at least be uncapped.

Your thoughts?

[Maxus]

Polar Ray shouldn't be 8th level. If it was long range, it'd be worth the 3rd-level slot, along with Fireball and Lightning bolt. Or at least not be much worse than them.
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He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

[TheFlatline]

[deanruel87]

Refuge. A 9th level spell that literally no commoner in the world would give a copper penny to know. If you gave a 1st level commoner access to at will magic missile he could rule the countryside, if he had access to at will Refuge he could.... go fuck himself
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[LR]

[Maxus]

[shirak]

Paizo seems to have taken down Frank's rant on Evocation levels so here it is:

[Roy]

[MfA]

The Paizo boards can get pretty bad, but they usually just lock the threads about things they don't want to hear about ... Frank's post is still there.

[Maxus]

Yeah, I forgot that bit, Roy. Thank you.

But I maintain that removing damage caps would be part of making evocation worth it. Flat damage rates would help speed up gameplay, too.
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He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

[Thymos]

The larger problem are spells that shouldn't exist at all. There is no appropriate spell level for Blasphemy for example.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That thread is making me angry just reading it.

You know, that's kind of what gets me about people who whine about optimized characters who can take on challenges. It's not their characters that have the problems, it other people. They would seriously rather have to rewrite monsters AND several classes rather than just agreeing that it is their archetype that is the problem.

Pathfinder should've been a fucking slam dunk that could've been taken care of after a month's worth of work even if they completely ignored the Tome material. It would have just required rewriting the core classes to boost their power level rather than having to overhaul the spell and monster system aside from a couple of outliers.

Fucking narrow-minded crybabies, preening their own egos at the cost of ease, credibility, and profit. God I hate TTRPGs sometimes.
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This will not happen in D&D Next because Mearls is a hack-of-all-trades, a true renaissance man of fail. - rasmuswagner

[Kaelik]

[Roy]

[Maxus]

[Lago PARANOIA]

I guess you could do it half-flat, half-rolled.

For example, rather than rolling 15d6 for a cone of cold, you roll 8d6+21.
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This will not happen in D&D Next because Mearls is a hack-of-all-trades, a true renaissance man of fail. - rasmuswagner

[Josh_Kablack]

[hogarth]

Ridiculous spell levels:
Otiluke's Freezing Sphere
Eyebite
Drawmij's Instant Summons
Screen

[fbmf]

[sigma999]

Dragon Slave

I find the spell Rope Trick far too low for what it does. Easily, at least SL 6, but hopefully higher.

I mean seriously... SL2! 2!!!
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"Kender work, just 99% of the people playing them dont understand them well enough." ~ shadzar

[Koumei]

Level 9 would be like the BoVD spell that affects miles/level radius, but with level appropriate damage. Or maybe a boring old "Make an RTA to deal 1 metric shit-tonne of damage per CL".

And I'll add that Eyebite is a shitty spell at its level. We're talking Spell Level 2 or 3. It'd be nice for 2 where the Comatose option will ever actually show up, though (it's single target, and at SL 2 you're level 3 or 4, meaning it lasts all of 1 round and you're still probably using Colour Spray instead).
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[Doom]

I think the old Hackmaster had "atomic fireball", with a radius of 1 mile or something ridiculous....that might be a good level 9 evocation spell.

Maybe "Acid Hurricane", or "Freezing Tsunami" (areas of effect comparable to actual hurricanes or tsunamis).

"Moonbringer"...brings the freakin' Moon down, with variable area of effect (minimum 30' radius crater), then it floats back to normal orbit, leaving a meteor swarm effect behind.

Damage should be on the order of 100-1000 points, I suppose, damage scaling doesn't strike me as so important at this level.

[fectin]

Level 1-2 DnD is a ghetto of pain and sadness. The best thing about it is that you often get out alive, and then it's over.
It is also the time when a small horde of skeletons or kobolds or whatever are a level appropriate challenge. Fireball doesn't do 1d6 per level: it does 1d6 per level per target, and does it at long range, and does half of it automatically (so AC doesn't help), and only vaguely needs line of sight.
So, pretend fireball is first level. At 2nd level, 8 kobolds is the level appropriate encounter. Maybe they're smart and spread out, so you only get half of them, but that's still an expected 2.4 kills and 22.5 damage (assuming a very modest 16 Int). That's significantly better than anyone else.
It's less good in other situations, but that's why you don't use it then. Saying it's not good against single targets is like saying arbitrary artifact swords aren't good against flying targets, or grease isn't good against swimming targets: it doesn't matter. You can't balance a power by having it win half the time and lose sometimes.
You're right later on, but early access is not okay.

[sigma999]

A 10' radius Close range Fireball that has Reflex save: Negates works.
Agreed with fectin, and I mentioned this a long time ago in one of the Tome threads, what Frank pushes for with the Fireball spell as-is rocks the shit out of swarms far better than anything, anything, else.
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"Kender work, just 99% of the people playing them dont understand them well enough." ~ shadzar

[FrankTrollman]