Haste is an amazing spell for 3rd level and in my game I changed haste so it affects one person and made a mass haste spell at 5th level. My players are now picking mass haste and casting it every battle. Is it just my group or is the pathfinder haste spell too powerful as written?
It is a great spell, however, in the single target version it requires positioning and has a duration in rounds. Making a mass version will probably make it casted every single encounter.
The weapon enhancement "Speed" also does the better part of Haste's melee effects and is present all the time.
If you're in a very high level campaign Speed becomes far more feasible and in the lower level campaigns you have less tier 3 spells AND shorter durations.
It's powerful, but not too powerful in my opinion.
haste makes melee characters useful, but not more useful than the death spewing awesomeness of a wizard. the one who casts it gets the least benefit.
in 3.5 there was a swift haste, which was personal range, swift action to cast and lasted a d4 rounds. Was a 1st or second level spell.
Making haste work on 1 target is an unnecessary nerf IMHO.
Drack530 wrote: Is it just my group or is the pathfinder haste spell too powerful as written? No. It's highly useful, and one most groups should have access to, but it's not too powerful.
The 3.0 version of haste, which gave you an additional standard action each turn (which you could, for instance, use to cast a spell), was too powerful :)
Haste is one of those spells that, like heroes' feast, is more-or-less assumed to be constantly active when determining the CR of various monsters and encounters once the levels reach the point at which these spells are readily accessible.
Yes, you'll see haste getting cast pretty much every fight. When your players get to level 13+, you'll see heroes' feast come out every morning too. Without these powerful buffs, the challenge level of many monsters will be much, MUCH higher than their CR would otherwise indicate. The designers ASSUME that you are going to have access to these kinds of spells and will use them often, if not always.
Haste does the most damage of any spell in the book.
Scrogz wrote: Haste does the most damage of any spell in the book. Depends on your party composition. If your party consists of 3 wizards and a bard... probably not. :)
Scrogz wrote: Haste does the most damage of any spell in the book. Save or die > any amount of damage
Name Violation wrote: Scrogz wrote: Haste does the most damage of any spell in the book. Save or die > any amount of damage There are precious few "save or die" spells left, however. Most of them are now "save or take enormous truckloads of damage," usually to the tune of 10 x caster level.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
I think this is a good idea. The question to me always seems, would I still be casting haste if it was a 4th level spell? And the answer is almost certianly yes. In fact it could be a much higher level spell and it would still be cast. Haste is probably the best party buff spell, regardless of level.
So from that perspective, it could make sense to split it into two different spells. I like the idea of Haste being split up into a single target and a mass version at say levels 2 and 4.
Haste could also be tunned down in various ways. One no brainer is having it only affect level/2 instead of level number of creatures. That way when a wizard first gets it, he can't apply it to the whole party just yet, giving the spell some room to grow. I also like the idea of haste fatiguing the targets when it's duration runs out.
Basically, I have to agree, haste is ridiculously overpowered compared to other spells of similar level. Ofcourse none of that matters if the party is more or less assumed to have it active in every rougher than average encounter. If the spell has to be considered a must have it is a good guess it is overpowered.
It will not matter what level you make haste, 3rd 5th or 6th, if the players can cast it they will, just because it is that good.
Myself restricted haste to one target and still sees use all the time, not even sure I want to introduce a mass version, but will make it about 6th level if I do.
Haste is a buff spell and much like any buff spell is better than its tier...when casted on someone who can use it.
Bull's Strength is adding +2hit and +2~3 damage. If you casted it on the wizard/sorcerer, it's an alright buff that helps comepnsate for low BaB and is "meh", but if casted on a warrior it makes him extra fierce.
Heroism gives +2 to hit among other bonuses. Greater Heroism increases these bonuses to +4.
Plus when you consider that Haste will likely be extended, it's basically a 4th tier spell in order to match the duration of the other options.
The buffs spells are awesome when casted on people who are intent on meleeing, significantly less so when casted on those who are not. Even then, a nuke should be doing much more damage than a single additional swing, so Haste is only giving you an advantage in damage if you take multiple full round attack turns within the limited duration.
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Phage wrote: Even then, a nuke should be doing much more damage than a single additional swing, so Haste is only giving you an advantage in damage if you take multiple full round attack turns within the limited duration. Almost certianly not. You're 5th level fireball does only 5d6 or ~17.5 average damage. A 5th level warrior with a two handed weapon easily exceeds that in a single swing (assuming +4 Str) 2d6+1 weapon +6 Str +6 Power Attack =~ 20, which is a rather concervative estimate, many builds could do quite a bit more. Even a sneak attacking rogue will come quite close (could pass it depending upon the build).
Of course the math changes at every level, but consider when fireball caps out at level 10. It does ~35 damage now on average. Our fighter has moved up even more though. Going off of MiB's Falchion Fred deals very nearly as much, 34.5 with an additional attack. And of course from this point forward, he will exceed that total.
In terms of damage, if the party warrior can get a full attack on the target, haste is almost always the most damaging spell the wizard can cast, even if only a single round of damage is considered.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Fatespinner wrote: Haste is one of those spells that, like heroes' feast, is more-or-less assumed to be constantly active when determining the CR of various monsters and encounters once the levels reach the point at which these spells are readily accessible.
Yes, you'll see haste getting cast pretty much every fight. When your players get to level 13+, you'll see heroes' feast come out every morning too. Without these powerful buffs, the challenge level of many monsters will be much, MUCH higher than their CR would otherwise indicate. The designers ASSUME that you are going to have access to these kinds of spells and will use them often, if not always.
heroes' feast was nerfed in Pathfinder, it no longer gives you blanket immunities.
Max Mahem wrote: lots of misleading math First you're disregarding accuracy. Many spells can hit their targets significantly easier than physical attacks and if they miss they still deal half damage.
Your expected warrior damage would be [2d6+bonuses]*accuracy, which easily could reduce it to ~15 if not lower. The harder the mob is to hit the better off magic tends to be.
Also remember that a lot of spells scale off the CL. Lightning Bolt deals 5d6~10d6. Fireball deals 6d6~10d6 to multiple mobs. Ball Lightning deals 3d6 to 2~5 targets. Dragon's Breath deals 7d6~12d6 damage to multiple mobs. Cone of Cold deals 9d6~15d6 to multiple mobs.
Warriors gain 2~3 damage every 4 levels whereas mages are gaining 4d6 (~14). Magic does more damage the higher you go, often to more targets as well.
Also mages approach combat very differently than physical classes. You often cast your strongest spells first and follow them with weaker spells. For a turn by turn DPR calculation you would want to consider your highest level spell when comparing it to haste because that is what you would be casting. They are very different approaches to combat, but fundamentally you're looking at the output from the mage's turn and not the warriors.
Don't get me wrong, haste is indeed an awesome spell. Even more so if you can pop it off without delaying any of your aggressive casting, but it doesn't detract from the fact that a mage could easily do more damage than an additional melee hit per turn if they are going balls to the walls.
I am not sure how far the haste spell is assumed to be in use for monster cr's and what not but when it comes to comparing haste to other buff spells of the same level it is way better. No one I know takes the spell heroism over haste. Even with me nerfing haste to one target, players still pick haste over heroism.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Phage wrote: First you're disregarding accuracy. Many spells can hit their targets significantly easier than physical attacks and if they miss they still deal half damage.
Your expected warrior damage would be [2d6+bonuses]*accuracy, which easily could reduce it to ~15 if not lower. The harder the mob is to hit the better off magic tends to be.
Firstly, the extra expected damage output for Fred (linked above) does consider his to hit chance, as measured against a CR appropriate enemy (AC 24). But I did disregard it in my initial level 5 estimate. However, I also disregarded the potential for saving throws against fireball and the like, which also reduces its expected damage. I also didn't consider elemental resistances, SR, DR, miss chance or other factors which could all change the equation. There are of course quite a number of foes against whom magic comes out inferior to, especially the area of affect damage spells we tend to be discussing here. But you have to use some basis for comparison, so I selected raw damage output.
Quote: Also remember that a lot of spells scale off the CL. Lightning Bolt deals 5d6~10d6. Fireball deals 6d6~10d6 to multiple mobs. Ball Lightning deals 3d6 to 2~5 targets. Dragon's Breath deals 7d6~12d6 damage to multiple mobs. Cone of Cold deals 9d6~15d6 to multiple mobs.
Warriors gain 2~3 damage every 4 levels whereas mages are gaining 4d6 (~14). Magic does more damage the higher you go, often to more targets as well.
I did consider magic damage scaling, but 3rd level spells cap out at a max of 10d6. How a warriors damage scale is highly dependent upon the build, but in many cases exceeds the 3.5/level wizard magic does so. For example a Paladin's smite damage scales at 2/level for Evil Outsiders and Dragons before we consider the effects of power attack, weapon and stat enhancements, and the like.
Also note that we are primarily discussing only a single strike from a warrior, at high levels you could expect the 5% increase in his-to-chance over his full attack haste gives him to be a very meaning full increase to his damage output. For Fred the +1 is worth a whole level worth of Wizard increase (3.9) bringing his expected damage increase from haste up into the 40's.
You're right that damage spells can be multi-target. But of course haste hits 1 target a level as well.
Quote: Also mages approach combat very differently than physical classes. You often cast your strongest spells first and follow them with weaker spells. For a turn by turn DPR calculation you would want to consider your highest level spell when comparing it to haste because that is what you would be casting. They are very different approaches to combat, but fundamentally you're looking at the output from the mage's turn and not the warriors. There are a number of valid strategies a wizard can take into battle, one of which is attempting to conserve his spell power for later potential encounters. Which strategy is appropriate depends, again, on the situation. However when determining the value of haste, I don't think comparing it to higher level spells to determine its value as a 3rd level spell spell is appropriate. Though I would note that in many situations damage from haste can exceed any spell in the game. Taken to the extreme, 20 high level warriors wailing on something for 20 rounds is going to beat the pants off of the damage any other spell a 20th level caster could possibly cast.
But the comparison for turn by turn damage comparison goes only unfavorably for you though. We've only considered a single round of damage a single warrior could potentially do with haste. When considering the encounter in its totality, the damage increase is multiplied by the length of the encounter. A single round of haste for a warrior can do comparable damage to any 3rd level spell, 10 rounds of it does several times more damage then any 9th level spell.
Quote: Don't get me wrong, haste is indeed an awesome spell. Even more so if you can pop it off without delaying any of your aggressive casting, but it doesn't detract from the fact that a mage could easily do more damage than an additional melee hit per turn if they are going balls to the walls. I'm not really interested in a warrior vs wizard debate, but I don't think the numbers bare this out. Of course which spell is appropriate against which foe is of course always situationally dependent, but in terms of damage output, especially when considered over the length of an encounter, haste should almost always win out over any 3rd level spell, and quite frankly can win out over much higher level spells. And none of this considers the defensive and speed boost haste also gives.
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I think the old 3.0 haste may have been more the right style. Not the partial actions bit, but 3.0 haste affected a single target and you needed level 6 haste (mass haste) to affect the party. Probably a better fit IMO.
I have a simple rule with haste in my campaign. When you accept the benefits of haste, you have a 10% chance of being aged one year.
Though elves might laugh at this it can add up if it's being used too much. It's a fun and not so limiting way of making players pay without paying too much for something already calculated into the rules.
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Haste is a force multiplier.
Force multipliers require an appropriate force to be multiplied.
If you have an 'effective' force to be multiplied the spell will seem 'powerful'.
If you do not have an 'effective' force to be multiplied the spell will seem less 'powerful'.
For example:
Haste cast on X max-dpr-optimised Paladins while they attack an evil dragon will out damage most spells. THE POWER!1!
Haste cast on your pacifist Toad familiar will barely traumatise a disgruntled cabbage. LULZ1!!!1
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Note: For a given value of 'effective' and 'powerful' and 'toad'.
*shakes fist*
In my opinion it is just a horrible (overpowered) spell, extra 30'speed, +1 AB, +1 AC, +1 Attack, +1 Reflex for everyone in the party quickly adds up, it has all the signs of an overpowered spell, but I guess alot of people emotionally attached to it, so it will be allowed to persist.
Roughly doubling the effectiveness of a 5th fighter every single round with a single spell is powerful, let alone it is not a single target spell. Yes that did not take into account possibly not taking a full attack every round, but neither did it take into account a +1 to hit, ac, reflex and 30'bonus movement.
The movement alone could be considered at least a 2nd or 3rd level spell (mass expeditious retreat), but that is discarded as a side effect.
The +1 Dodge, +1 AB and +1 Reflex for the entire party, these entirely stackable bonus' would probably be at least 2nd or 3rd level spell, somewhere between bless and prayer.
The +1 Attack (on a full attack) for everyone in the party is just icing on the cake, probably the most powerful aspect of the spell I think it is at least worth a 3rd level spell, but more likely 4th or 5th.
Remco Sommeling wrote: In my opinion it is just a horrible (overpowered) spell, extra 30'speed, +1 AB, +1 AC, +1 Attack, +1 Reflex for everyone in the party quickly adds up, it has all the signs of an overpowered spell, but I guess alot of people emotionally attached to it, so it will be allowed to persist.
Roughly doubling the effectiveness of a 5th fighter every single round with a single spell is powerful, let alone it is not a single target spell. Yes that did not take into account possibly not taking a full attack every round, but neither did it take into account a +1 to hit, ac, reflex and 30'bonus movement.
The movement alone could be considered at least a 2nd or 3rd level spell (mass expeditious retreat), but that is discarded as a side effect.
The +1 Dodge, +1 AB and +1 Reflex for the entire party, these entirely stackable bonus' would probably be at least 2nd or 3rd level spell, somewhere between bless and prayer.
The +1 Attack (on a full attack) for everyone in the party is just icing on the cake, probably the most powerful aspect of the spell I think it is at least worth a 3rd level spell, but more likely 4th or 5th.
I think you hit the nail on the head with that one.
If you really want to control it, go back to 1st & 2nd edition rules. Age 1 year for EVERY casting of haste. And it was scaled, that was for humans and halflings. Dwarves/gnomes - it was 3 years, and elves was 10. If you do that, potions of longevity and elixers of youth will become very important, make sure they show up every once in a while in the treasure. Haste will still be used, but not as an every battle occurrance, rather an every really important battle occurrance.
Although in the old rules it also said you should keep track of natural aging and haste aging separately, we found that too much paperwork. So watch out for the wizard voluntarily hasting himself whenever he does anyone else, to get older and add Wis and Int points.
Oh, and personally, I don't have a problem with Haste. It's a useful spell, but not really overpowering.
Drack530 wrote: Haste is an amazing spell for 3rd level and in my game I changed haste so it affects one person and made a mass haste spell at 5th level. My players are now picking mass haste and casting it every battle. Is it just my group or is the pathfinder haste spell too powerful as written? I seriously hate haste. The last thing Pathfinder needs is a spell that is assumed to be always active that requires more dice rolling.
I got sick of it during my last game because the summoner spammed it every fight. It is banned from PC and NPC this game.
Drack530 wrote: I am not sure how far the haste spell is assumed to be in use for monster cr's and what not but when it comes to comparing haste to other buff spells of the same level it is way better. No one I know takes the spell heroism over haste. Even with me nerfing haste to one target, players still pick haste over heroism. It's even worse on the stupid summoner who can barely learn any spells, but gets Haste on his second level list which makes the rest of the list COMPLETELY obsolete.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
cranewings wrote: Drack530 wrote: I am not sure how far the haste spell is assumed to be in use for monster cr's and what not but when it comes to comparing haste to other buff spells of the same level it is way better. No one I know takes the spell heroism over haste. Even with me nerfing haste to one target, players still pick haste over heroism. It's even worse on the stupid summoner who can barely learn any spells, but gets Haste on his second level list which makes the rest of the list COMPLETELY obsolete. +1 to this. It's still a 3rd level spell for bards (also 6th level casters) and a steal at that.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Yeah, because we all know that spells that help non-casters classes are bad. Imagine what would happen if a *gasp* Fighter *shock* gets a boost while a weakling full caster doesn't! The humanity!
Gorbacz wrote: Yeah, because we all know that spells that help non-casters classes are bad. Imagine what would happen if a *gasp* Fighter *shock* gets a boost while a weakling full caster doesn't! The humanity! Oh, I agree with you. In the context of the vacuum of this conversation - RAW everything - haste, you would be right.
But honestly, the kind of GM that will ban haste probably doesn't give a crap about the purity of RAW. I've personally nerfed the wizard to the point that a lot of people who read my house rules wonder how they can do anything at all.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
cranewings wrote: Gorbacz wrote: Yeah, because we all know that spells that help non-casters classes are bad. Imagine what would happen if a *gasp* Fighter *shock* gets a boost while a weakling full caster doesn't! The humanity! Oh, I agree with you. In the context of the vacuum of this conversation - RAW everything - haste, you would be right.
But honestly, the kind of GM that will ban haste probably doesn't give a crap about the purity of RAW. I've personally nerfed the wizard to the point that a lot of people who read my house rules wonder how they can do anything at all. Taking things away is never a good way of balancing.
Gorbacz wrote: cranewings wrote: Gorbacz wrote: Yeah, because we all know that spells that help non-casters classes are bad. Imagine what would happen if a *gasp* Fighter *shock* gets a boost while a weakling full caster doesn't! The humanity! Oh, I agree with you. In the context of the vacuum of this conversation - RAW everything - haste, you would be right.
But honestly, the kind of GM that will ban haste probably doesn't give a crap about the purity of RAW. I've personally nerfed the wizard to the point that a lot of people who read my house rules wonder how they can do anything at all. Taking things away is never a good way of balancing. Sometimes it is an AWESOME way of balancing.
Gorbacz wrote: cranewings wrote: Gorbacz wrote: Yeah, because we all know that spells that help non-casters classes are bad. Imagine what would happen if a *gasp* Fighter *shock* gets a boost while a weakling full caster doesn't! The humanity! Oh, I agree with you. In the context of the vacuum of this conversation - RAW everything - haste, you would be right.
But honestly, the kind of GM that will ban haste probably doesn't give a crap about the purity of RAW. I've personally nerfed the wizard to the point that a lot of people who read my house rules wonder how they can do anything at all. Taking things away is never a good way of balancing. I didn't really take it away I just altered haste to affect one target and made a mass haste (5th level spell) that works like the normal haste spell.
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I'm a GM and one of my players is a summoner. I too was taken aback by some of the early entry spells (notably Haste and Slow). Not only can the summoner cast these by 4th level, the fact that they're lower level spells means he'll be casting them more often at higher levels. By 6th level, they'll be hasted almost every encounter...ugh.
One idea I had to balance these spells is to put Haste and Slow back as 3rd level spells, but provide the following spells at 2nd level:
Haste Outsider
Slow Outsider
These spells work essentially the same as Haste/Slow, but only work on outsiders. So the summoner can still Haste his summons at 2nd level, but none of the other PCs.
Slightly more powerful versions would allow the summoner to target non-outsiders, but they would count as 2 creatures instead of one. At 4th level, he could haste 2 PCs or 4 summoned monsters.
How have others dealt with these spells?
BeauJest wrote: I'm a GM and one of my players is a summoner. I too was taken aback by some of the early entry spells (notably Haste and Slow). Not only can the summoner cast these by 4th level, the fact that they're lower level spells means he'll be casting them more often at higher levels. By 6th level, they'll be hasted almost every encounter...ugh.
One idea I had to balance these spells is to put Haste and Slow back as 3rd level spells, but provide the following spells at 2nd level:
Haste Outsider
Slow Outsider
These spells work essentially the same as Haste/Slow, but only work on outsiders. So the summoner can still Haste his summons at 2nd level, but none of the other PCs.
Slightly more powerful versions would allow the summoner to target non-outsiders, but they would count as 2 creatures instead of one. At 4th level, he could haste 2 PCs or 4 summoned monsters.
How have others dealt with these spells?
I don't have an issue with them. Most people don't. How a person runs their games determines what is "broken" though. Some GM's will swear that monks and rogues are OP, while many GM's laugh at the idea.
If your players are mostly the damage dealing type, and you use one monster then he is going to be in trouble since he will be the center of attention for a bunch of buffed warriors.
Gorbacz wrote: Taking things away is never a good way of balancing. People with cancer might disagree.
But yeah, its a balancing act (no pun intended). Every time you cut something out of the game, it has repercussions and sometimes need compensation (thus I'll be taking medication for the rest of my life). But for those who think that the tree has grown too big, pruning can be an efficient way of balancing things down to the expected size.
Pruning a game system is not as easy as it sounds, but it can be done. It has been done, and you can do it too! But sometimes, a little homebrew medication is in order. I like haste as a 5th level spell...
'findel
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Haste is a spell that really grows in power the more characters in the party. If you are running a 4 character party its probably not overpowered. If its the classic Cleric/Fighter/Rogue/Wizard party its only really fully effective on the Fighter/Rogue. But every character you add makes it more powerful, particularly every person who has an effective full attack.
First, enforce the spell. I regularly see people cast haste on targets more than 30' from each other. Particularly if you are dealing with a large party.
Second, don't over value haste. Haste is good, no doubt. But realize the opportunity cost of the character casting it. The first round of encounter is usually the most vital, enemies/friendlies are often grouped and separate from each other. This is the most effective round to be casting a large variety of area effect spells and he only gets one action. Also realize it forces the party to stay together, which means they are more vulnerable to opposing AoE abilities.
If you really want to water it down, try breaking the spell up like they did with blessing of fervor, so each recipient has to choose which bonus he gets each round, rather than getting all of it. Water it down more, make the caster choose one effect per cast. Or reduce the number of targets from 1 per CL to 1 per 2 CL. But water down the haste spell, and people will just go get the haste like effect from something else (boots of speed, speed weapon enchanment, etc.)
I think its a separate issue, but I'll admit I'm not a big fan of the what they did with Summoner spell casting. I think it would have been better with something closer to the witches progression (limited spell list but still over 9 levels, sorcerer progression of spells known, with wizard spells per day, possibly with spontaneous casting of Summon Monster X spells known for free) but that ship has sailed.
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