Cause Fear is similar to mind affecting 3E, but the distance is so short that the NPC just charges back into combat (or uses a range attack) the next round. The creature is not really afraid. It does not make any bad decisions or anything because of the fear (other than opportunity attacks). And, I'm not sure why they need a mental compulsion charm keyword and a mental compulsion fear keyword.
Command??? It slightly moves and dazes a foe. But you cannot order the foe to drop his weapon or run away. There is no real command there. It's extremely watered down. Course, 3E was somewhat watered down from 2E in the name of making the effects more specific.
Visions of Avarice. Again, it moves foes. It doesn't trick them. One might consider it a trick, but it is more like a mental compusion. Not that a compulsion is not a fine spell like ability, but this spell should be mind controlling, not illusion. This spell should be a Charm and then, it would be ok. But several 4E illusion spells are mind affecting powers disguised as illusions. Creatures immune or resistant to mind affecting powers should be resistant to this one. IMO. What the heck does a Tarrasque or a Construct care about treasure (or even food) when it is in the middle of a battle? It just feels wrong.
Maze of Mirrors. This spell is pretty decent in that the effects mostly mirror (pun intended) the writeup. However, it is pretty specific. One cannot use the mirrors in any way to deceive the foe except to immobilize him and penalize his attacks. Any attack against him is not affected. There's no real illusionary meat and potatoes to it. But, that's not too dissimilar from Color Spray in 3E (i.e. very specific effect), so no harm / no foul.
Illusory Wall. 10th level spell encounter spell that works better in some ways and worse in others than the 6th level daily spell wall of fog. Again, this is more mind affecting then sense affecting. Yeah, one could argue that the sense of touch is affected except for the fact that the wall does not prevent slides or pushes, it just prevents the target's own personal movement.
They seem to have gotten mind affecting and sense affecting confused with a lot of these spells. As far as I am concerned, they don't even follow their own keyword descriptions on many of their illusion spells. I also think they should have worked more on restrainted versus immobilized as the first being physical and the latter being mental.
And, I'm just looking for suggestions, and charms, and real fear. Effects that affect the minds of the foes, not that throw conditions and riders on them.
The names of the spells are the same, but the effects are far from the same. And I don't need them to be the same as 3E, I just need them to be more internally consistent and less just a serious of conditions and/or riders.
Badass how?
Yes, it blocks line of sight. Darkness did that in 2E.
It does damage now instead of being incapacitating. But, it damages allies and foes equally. So, how exactly does the spell caster manage to target more than one or two foes with it once the foes get in and amongst the PCs. Sure, he might get a few foes every once in a while, possibly early in an encounter, but I hardly call that badass for a Daily.
And it targets Fort, so the chance to hit many foes is less. And with it being a Daily, most players would hesitate casting it in round one unless they happen to know that the foes are worth attempting to slow down with it. And one cannot really use it too well in 5x5 or smaller rooms. It takes two actions to both move and sustain it.
Stinking Cloud USED to be badass. It was used early in the encounter to incapacitate multiple foes so that the PCs could focus fire on the non-incapacitated foes.
I'm not seeing the badass aspect of it. Could you enlighten me? Is it because PCs now have so many abilities to slide or push foes into it???
Damage as a general rule is not lame. Damage as part of a spell that has always been an incapacitating spell is lame.
The issue is that the vast majority of attack powers do damage now. Many historic spell attacks did not do damage, they incapacitated. They hindered.
In the case of Entangle, it changes the feel of Entangle to Evard's Tentacles.
Did you add and subtract condition tokens (or write it down or whatever) nearly EVERY SINGLE ROUND on 1 to 10 miniatures (and typicallly 5 or more), or did you just have to have the information handy in case of dispels? Not just spell casters, but every class now has riders on their powers. And, the NPCs do too.
No doubt changing Mirror Image and Stoneskin to set effects instead of "charges" was a good thing. But I still bet that your group is still keeping track of more state information on a round by round basis in 4E than 3E, especially in "heroic" levels. Yeah, high level could get nuts in 3E. Not so much levels 1 to 10.
I'm also seeing the same increase in riders in 4E as the PCs level. Even though I know the PCs somewhat well in my campaign, every once in a while a player says "I do x, y, and z, ..." and I ask "how exactly are you doing all of this?" and they explain the synergies of their feats and powers and class features and I go "Oh yeah". It's a lot harder to keep track of as a DM, but that is probably due to the lack of historical reinforcement.
Well, the system does not need ability score increases while leveling or feats either, but now that the genies are out of the bottle, they will never be put back.
On the other hand, buff spells have been in since day one. I do think 3E went overboard on quantities buff spells, but the nerf solution to that went overboard in both quantity and quality.
