Power Stones - Why?

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Kromm

What kills Great Haste in my games is the three-second casting time.

We found that it was a wash or a waste trying to use it during a fight for that reason. What made it worth using were those occasions when you had time to buff your fighters before combat.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

What kills Great Haste in my games is the three-second casting time.

It becomes situational. If, for example, you're temporarily behind cover, or otherwise have a situation where a delay is practical, great haste can be scary.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

We found that it was a wash or a waste trying to use it during a fight for that reason. What made it worth using were those occasions when you had time to buff your fighters before combat.

Originally Posted by Anthony

It becomes situational. If, for example, you're temporarily behind cover, or otherwise have a situation where a delay is practical, great haste can be scary.

Yes, although you only get 10 seconds once the clock starts ticking. If, like me, you neither let wizards "hold" spells until ready to cast nor conveniently have fights start at predictable moments (I roll 1d for the delay), half the spell can be wasted before hostilities begin. If you have Magical Styles, I could see Continuous Ritual (Great Haste) being very popular for this application. Barring that, Absolute Timing might be more popular.

[Stone Dog]

Originally Posted by Kromm

(I roll 1d for the delay),

Out of curiosity... how does that work?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Yes, although you only get 10 seconds once the clock starts ticking. If, like me, you neither let wizards "hold" spells until ready to cast nor conveniently have fights start at predictable moments (I roll 1d for the delay)

When the tactic is 'wait until the Haste is cast, then charge out killing everything in sight', you're pretty much guaranteed a predictable start of the fight. This doesn't mean I consider Great Haste to be all that broken, though; IME invisibility is a lot more problematic.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Stone Dog

Out of curiosity... how does that work?

When the PCs wish to time anything – casting a spell, setting a fuse, starting a noisy machine, etc. – to coincide with the arrival of hostiles, I roll 1d-3 and keep negative numbers. A -2 or a -1 means things go off 1-2 seconds premature, warning the enemy; a 0 means perfect timing; and a 1, 2 or 3 means initiation locks up those involved for the first 1-3 seconds of the fight (who can still opt to abort the plan and act). People with Absolute Timing get to move a step closer to 0: -1, 0, 0, 0, 1, or 2. I find that this makes Absolute Timing more desirable. In essence, it amounts to saying that Wait has error when held for more than a few seconds in combat.

[Harald387]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The "classic" IQ 14, Magery 3 wizard shooting for all of his Hard spells at skill 15 for a point needs to pay 16 or 36 points for the privilege. There's lots you can do with that many points that's considerably more effective in a battle.

This is one of the many reasons my baseline DF wizard has become an IQ 16/Magery 6 monster. The savings in casting time and energy (not to mention the excellent skill defaults) are just too good to pass up.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Kromm

What kills Great Haste in my games is the three-second casting time.

If anyone wonders, Nyx the Barbarian used a an item with multiple levels of Speed and Power on it. Terribly, terribly expensive of course but in an "all you can spend" campaign it's worth it.

Things were still balanced in that campaign because Aldehar the Incendiary usually opened the festivities with a 30D explosive Fireball.

...which he could usually do because Gage the Rogue's Danger Sense of 16+ gave reliable warnings. Of course, Aldehar used Earth Vision a lot too.

...and Brother Hugh casually told the undead to "Shoo!" and did some _very_ high power healings.

Yes, this started out as a relatively high CP campaign and grew a lot. There were a lot of monetary rewards too.

This post is mostly intended as a warning to be sure you're comparing apples to apples (400 pt characters with million $ budgets) rather than apples to oranges (100pt characters with 100 $ budgets). This tends to happen a lot in "x is broken" discussions.

[Kromm]

Mmm, my apples are more like pears. Specifically, they're very powerful PCs (I think it's well-established here that my campaigns are high-powered), with huge budgets . . . but I abhor the "magic items for sale" model, so artifacts are 100% found. In my games, it simply isn't possible to start with, make, or order them. You have to luck into them as part of an adventure. This includes Powerstones. Thus, a big budget can get you the finest weapons, armor, and tools, and hire lots of help, but not buy so much as a magical cigarette lighter.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Kromm

but I abhor the "magic items for sale" model, so artifacts are 100% found.

Not an entirely reasonable take on human (or otherwise) behavior. It's a very rare thing in the real world that you can not procure for money. that you'd be able to just find these things is not particularly reasonable either.

Then there's preventing PCs from spending their CPs on the ability to Enchant things themselves or from having Patrons who'd provide such things.

Nah, I think your apples are lemons. they'd leave a sour taste in my mouth anyway. :)

On a serious note it is much too arbitrary for me.