Swordslinger's page

Lets face it, 1 minute/level is a bad duration. It basically amounts to "How your DM wants to screw you over." Because everytime I've played with such spells, it seems like they expire ridiculously quickly, even though you technically could be crossing many rooms within the span of 5 minutes (which is 50 rounds).

So it has DMs make odd judgment calls, and that tends to suck. I would propose that this duration be abolished. You can replace it with one of the following:

-Combat buff spells should become 1 minute fixed duration (like divine favor) with a swift action casting time instead of a standard action.

-Other spells can simply be moved to 10 minutes/level or even 1 hour/level. Really, the short duration is just a pain.

Really I realize that the fly skill is supposed to simply maneuverability categories, but I just don't see the point. Having to make random checks just to move is a bad idea, because it really slows the game down. And there are also a lot of complex rules to memorize. Most players just don't want to deal with that.

I advise just getting rid of the fly skill and going back to maneuverability categories but simplify them quite a bit. Forget about the turning radius, because quite simply, it's just too complicated to figure out in play and it makes even less sense in a game that doesn't even have facing rules.

Further just about every group I've ever played with has ignored the maneuverability class rules in the DMG, and I suspect that they'll ignore the fly skill checks as well. It's just too much work trying to figure out how fast you turn in midair and how many movement points you're spending to turn in place or what not. I don't think most groups even want to deal with that. It's clunky and it's cumbersome.

Here's what I would do. Three maneuverability categories: poor, average and good.

Poor: Your standard action becomes a move action while flying and thus you can only use it for move action related tasks. You cannot make attacks of opportunity while flying. While flying, your space (But not your size), doubles. So a 15x15 creature takes up a 30x30 space while flying. If it must squeeze to enter an area, then it crashes.

Average: You cannot make attacks of opportunity while flying. While flying, your space (But not your size) doubles. So a 15x15 creature takes up a 30x30 space while flying. If it must squeeze to enter an area, then it crashes.

Good: Your space while flying is equal to your normal space. If you enter an area where you must squeeze, then you crash.

And that's it. As far as crashing goes, you'd have basic damage assigned for hitting an object, and possibly have some feats that allow you to avert crashes (or maybe even keep the fly skill specifically for that purpose). So you might get scenes where a creature is flying in tight quarters and must make a check each round to avoid a crash if you want those sort of close quarters cinematic tense crash scenes.

I feel like my presented system is something that most groups are going to use, instead of the ignored maneuverability class rules, and I suspect the new PF flight rules, which are just too complex for most groups to care about.

Diplomacy still seems outrageously powerful. I mean, you can go into a magic shop and ask the shopkeeper to "let you borrow" his most powerful magic item, and you can reasonably expect to succeed most of the time if you build a diplomacy based character.

With the massive bonuses capable by 3.5 skill manipulation, skills like diplomacy really need to be cut back in terms of what they can do. Because you very well can have characters rolling huge diplomacy checks.

With the addition of CMB, there's an easy way to help out maneuver based fighters and prevent them from turning into one trick ponies (that is, prevent the lame "I trip every round" fighter build).

There should be one feat to give a +4 to CMB, period. However everytime you use the same maneuver in the same combat you suffer some penalty, either a -2 or a -4, depending on playtesting. This allows fighters to really mix it up, it's simple, and it prevents boring archetypes like the guy who does nothing but trip people.

The concept of CMB was a great addition because it centralizes maneuvers. We should take another step forward and truly combine them into one coherent category by combining the Improved Maneuver feats into one feat.

As far as I can tell, nothing has been done about increasing the hardness of dungeon walls, meaning that as far as I can tell you can still take your sword and hack a path through the dungeon.

Isn't it about time that PF made the simple fix of giving walls and metallic doors a bigger hardness so you can't simply chop through them in a few rounds with a big power attack?

Overall, the spell changes seem pretty good. Since other people are already talking about the spells that got nerfed (and if those nerfs went too far), I figured I'd bring up spells that I think may still be too powerful.

Here's a list of spells that I found that are still problematic and may warrant some changes still:

• Protection from Evil/Magic circle against evil: The compulsion/charm immunity is crazy powerful.
  
• Astral Projection: I don't really see the changes to this, beyond just adding two negative levels (which can be removed with restoration easily). it's still the "I can't lose" god code that it was before.
  
• Teleport: Lets face it, this one is very problematic, greater teleport as well. From scry and die to 15 minute adventuring day retreat tactics. This one is crazy.
  
• Wall of Force: Still unbreakable and doesn't grant any kind of save. As far as divide and conquer goes it's awesome
  
• Maze: Again, a total fighter hoser with no save.
  
• Otto's Dance: ditto on the no save instant kill spells.
  
• Disjunction: While the changes are kinda nice, it's still a problem to have to roll for each and every magical item you have. For a high level character, you're looking at 15+ rolls per PC, and it's an area spell. Have it just be one saving throw to avoid your items getting taken out. If you fail, all the items get disabled. On a natural 1, one item at random is permanently destroyed.
  
• Solid Fog: This one is a very powerful battlefield control spell. I'm not sure if it's nerf worthy exactly, but it should still be looked into.
  
• Death ward: I disagree with the changes. Not because the spell wasn't broken but because you fixed the wrong part of it. The immunity to death effects was pretty much fine, it's the immunity to energy drain that made death ward crazy powerful, as a great many undead rely almost entirely on energy drain as their only means of hurting foes (like spectres). Instead of being complete immunity it should instead cost you 5 hp for each negative level you'd normally obtain.
  
• Fabricate: The economy destroyer of spells.
  
• Silence: You changed this, but I don't think by enough. It's still a super mage hoser. Personally I'd get rid of the ability to bind silence to objects or creatures and make it an area spell only. The 1 round casting time is good though as it prevents it from being used as an automatic counterspell.
  

I'm sure I missed some in this list, so feel free to add some others if you think of them.

With the nerf to mind blank, I assume that letting protection from evil get by with its blanket immunity to compulsion/charm effects was an oversight.

I have to wonder, why was there no changes for spells included in the alpha release?

The single most gamebreaking elements of 3.5 were the spells and the druid. Two things that you've ignored in the alpha version. As far as making 3.5 better, I really doubt you can do that without fixing the spells.

The polymorph mechanics (starting with alter self) especially need a complete overhaul, as does planar binding, charm person and command undead. Hell, pretty much the entire 9th level list of spells with gate, astral projection and shapechange need to be looked at. You've also got a ton of fighter screw spells that should probably get toned down, like maze and forcecage.

We've known about these problematic spells for a long time. They really should be fixed.