Alberic Strein
2013-10-20, 05:45 PM
Or, more accurately, spells, class features, enhancements, etc, which could be balanced, and might be, looking at the numbers alone, but come off as completeley and utterly broken in terms of power... Because of the way the game is played, campaigns are designed... Well, because of (what I call) the metagame, really.
So, anything allowing you to quicken spells is sure to come off on the list, actually, due to fairly few encounters per day in an average campaign, spells could (just barely) be an example.
What have you found that sounded perfectly reasonable until a game actually rolled in and you saw the implications?
I just played a game in which, after a very, very bad day (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=305367) I rolled with some better spells for my cleric while still deciding to prepare Holy Storm. A simple level 3 cleric spell creating a 20ft zone centered around you that rains holy water, undead take 2d6, fiends 2d6*2 and one of them per round takes the equivalent of 9d6. For caster levels/rounds. No SR. No saving throws. The zone doesn't move and the spell, in itself is extremely, extremely circumstantial. Until you ask yourself just how many of the BBEG are fiends. When you get the spell, still relatively few fiends pull out teleports and planar escapes, and if you manage to pin the foe in the AoE the damage adds up fast and without you doing anything.
The spell is highly, highly situational. But the "situational" part is not about finding a fiend up to no good each of your adventuring days (that's simple), the situational is preventing him to escape the zone. Of you manage that, then ooooh boy do you ever get "rains of castamere" on his poor sorry arse...
So, what feature did you find pretty nice and then discovered to be completely overpowered in the context of an average adventuring day?
So, anything allowing you to quicken spells is sure to come off on the list, actually, due to fairly few encounters per day in an average campaign, spells could (just barely) be an example.
What have you found that sounded perfectly reasonable until a game actually rolled in and you saw the implications?
I just played a game in which, after a very, very bad day (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=305367) I rolled with some better spells for my cleric while still deciding to prepare Holy Storm. A simple level 3 cleric spell creating a 20ft zone centered around you that rains holy water, undead take 2d6, fiends 2d6*2 and one of them per round takes the equivalent of 9d6. For caster levels/rounds. No SR. No saving throws. The zone doesn't move and the spell, in itself is extremely, extremely circumstantial. Until you ask yourself just how many of the BBEG are fiends. When you get the spell, still relatively few fiends pull out teleports and planar escapes, and if you manage to pin the foe in the AoE the damage adds up fast and without you doing anything.
The spell is highly, highly situational. But the "situational" part is not about finding a fiend up to no good each of your adventuring days (that's simple), the situational is preventing him to escape the zone. Of you manage that, then ooooh boy do you ever get "rains of castamere" on his poor sorry arse...
So, what feature did you find pretty nice and then discovered to be completely overpowered in the context of an average adventuring day?