Something I've noticed is that the majority of buff spells tend to have issues when used in play. It's rare that I see casters given the time to cast many spells before an encounter starts, and the action economy to cast buffs in combat basically means that it's pointless to use more than one.
The durations of the spells are often too short to last more than one encounter, making the difference between 1 round/level and 1 minute/level practically nil.
This is especially bothersome in the case of arcane casters, who rely almost exclusively on defensive buffs to make up for a lack of armor.
In my own games, I'd like to come up with rules to make using buff spells more efficient. Extend Spell only really helps with the longer duration buffs, and Quicken Spell comes into play late.
I understand why self-buffing casters need to be limited, to avoid things like Cleric-zilla builds, but it seems like there should be a happy medium.
One thing I was considering was allowing casters to expend an additional spell slot to further increase durations or reduce the casting time (full-round to standard, standard to move, for example).
The real issue I have with durations expressed in units of time is that I never saw the point for meticulous timekeeping, and saying things like "it takes you a minute to cross the clearing" seems to arbitrary.
Often, a "game day" in most of my sessions consists of a few separate encounters, often spaced tens of minutes to hours apart, which makes all but the longest duration buffs basically last one fight, leaving no real difference between things like Displacement or Alter Self.
I'd appreciate any insight on this topic, especially if anyone else has run into the same problems. I'd like to see casters actually consider giving the martials a Bull's Strength to be worth it, but they often complain that most battles are over before they feel expending the spell slot was necessary.
It's called "resource management."
Casters shouldn't be buffing and casting every encounter. Squishy casters need to stay behind armored fighters to be safe. When the big threat appears, that's when the casters unleash their powers.
If every encounter requires buffing spells, someone's designing the encounters wrong.
Of course, YMMV, past performance does not predict future results, no warranty implied, etc.
PM sent...
My view on buffing is that it is a reward for planning. If you scout ahead and plan encounters, you also have time to buff ahead of combat.
That said, I feel there is a way to do what Lynceus proposes, namely to allow Extend Spell to stack with itself, exponentially. So for +1 metamagic, you get x2 duration, for +2 metamagic, you get x4 duration, and so on. At tenth level a 2nd level spell like mirror image, with +3 metamagic to 5th level, lasts 10 minutes x8, or 80 minutes. That should handle most of these issues without making buffing too cheap.
Of course, I use more lenient metamagic rules, so this may work best IMC.
Thanks for the replies (and thanks for the PM, Morne, I'll be considering your ideas). I understand that casters don't need to buff each fight, the problem I'm running into is more that each encounter tends to have very few decision points, and often, players I've witnessed seem to feel doing nothing but casting a buff on their turn to be wasted effort.
Ideally, yes, smart casters choose their battles carefully and try to cast spells in advance, but that doesn't always happen, and then I see casters react like this:
"Oh crap, oh crap, I better cast mirror image or I might die."
"Or maybe I should cast bull's strength on the fighter..."
"No, that's not worth it, he's not going to make that many attacks, maybe I should use web instead..."
And so on. And especially when I'm the GM, I see martial types that are really annoyed that they never get buffs from the casters.
In 3.5 you could stack Extend Spell (at least, that's how I remember it), and there was Persist Spell at higher levels.
In 3.0, bull's strength and the like lasted hours per level.
Again, I know the reason these options aren't around- nobody liked a self-buffed caster showing up everybody. I'm just trying to work out a happy medium without destroying my game in the process.
One house rule I'm considering is to suspend spells that have duration remaining as a move action. You can only have one spell suspended in this way. While suspended, the spell has no effect, and it's duration does not run down.
As a move action, you can then cease to suspend the spell, causing it once again to take effect.
Unfortunately I can already see a few headaches, like a caster putting stinking cloud in a hallway, suspending it, and then luring monsters into the spell's area of effect and activating it once again...
So limit suspension to spells with a target of self, and have it count as their readied action until used.
I'd like a caster to be able to suspend a buff on allies as well, maybe that's the easiest way to go; ie, the spell has to be one that is currently targeting you or an ally.
I'm almost never in a situation where I know that theres a fight in the next room, even with scouts. I just assumed the first round was ideal for positioning and therefore buffing.
I have had the problem of the rest of the party not being on board with that idea. first two rounds I cast shield and mirror image on myself while I set myself up to make sure the rogue gets to flank and that I'm the easiest target so my party doesn't get attacked and use my swift actions to apply more buffs. At the beginning of round three I have 33 AC and 5 mirror images and ready with an attack bonus that almost garuntees a hit with a ton of damage and a high crit range. There is one enemy left, the other seven were killed by the rest of the party. So I one-shot the last one and insist on looking for another fight before my buffs wear off because I'm insanely strong right now. So I quickly fly off to find something good and find two boss monsters alone in two rooms, spend a round buffing myself more while setting up a full attack and one-shot them both. This was all in Curse of the Crimson Throne.
Adventure paths are not particularly high-powered. High-power tactics like buff overload are rarely needed. You're playing a character that can clearly outmatch the opposition when buffed, so perhaps you're buffing too much.
A buff in time saves a ton of healing, but when only a pinch of healing is needed, buffs can be superfluous.
(...)
One house rule I'm considering is to suspend spells that have duration remaining as a move action. You can only have one spell suspended in this way. While suspended, the spell has no effect, and it's duration does not run down.As a move action, you can then cease to suspend the spell, causing it once again to take effect.
Unfortunately I can already see a few headaches, like a caster putting stinking cloud in a hallway, suspending it, and then luring monsters into the spell's area of effect and activating it once again...
That actually sounds like a nice +2 level Metamagic feat:
Suspend Spell; (using some of your wording)
As a move action you can suspend the spell if it has a duration remaining. As a move action, you can then cease to suspend the spell, causing it once again to take effect. This wouldn't cause an Attack of Opportunity. A suspended spell can be dispelled or countered.
This can only be applied to spells that affect allies or self. Durations should loose a minimum of a "duration unit" (1 round for rds/levels, 1 minute for 1 min./level, 10 min. for 10 min./level.) and a caster could suspend the spell 1+caster attribute bonus per day.
Many of those parameters come from SL and SA from caster classes.
Edit: Not sure as to the max. of suspended spells that should be allowed at the same time. Maybe each shot of "suspension" would be counted from the same "pause-pool" ...
The non-AoO option for spells makes it way too powerful.