D&D 3E/3.5 Haste question

[Gorg]

I'm curious, having seen the discussions for decades, the carrying of lit torches and pitchforks, etal.

Would it effectively stop the abuse, if I simply disallowed the ability to cast a second spell in a single round?

I ask, because in all my years of playing and DM'ing, I've never used the spell, or had anyone else use it! Including the OG 3E version the internet insists is irredeemably broken. BUT, I'm currently DMing a 3E game, and wondered just in case.

We're using the original 3rd edition books- because everyone has them. (and to avoid any extra bloat or annoying compatibility issues.) I do have softcover reprints of the 3.5 rules, and have been picking and choosing items from them. For example, the lists for the 3.5E summon monster spells are WAY better- there is a much more interesting- and useful- selection there. Cuts down on my having to break out the ruler to smack at hands reaching for my Monster Manual, lol. I haven't compared the 2 Haste spells side by side, yet- we're nowhere near that level!

TBH, I still like playing 2014, and OSR style games better, but 3E as an edition IS quite fun as well. For one thing scaling things up and down is a breeze, and I LOVE monster templates, and their monster advancement rules. ( I know... WAY off topic, but I've been on a real Ebay kick, lately, and have been devouring new adventures and monster books, lol)

 

[GreyLord]

I suppose it could, or you could go retro with it.

They cast it and they age 5 years. They need to make a Constitution Save or die.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Isn’t the only way to cast multiple spells is to cast a quickened spell? Haste doesn’t give you an extra action to cast a spell. Unless it allowed that in 3.0. It definitely doesn’t allow that in 3.5.

In any case, Haste is a great spell. It affects the entire party and gives incredible mobility. The more fighter types you have makes the extra attack that much more useful.

For casters, it doesn’t do much. (Besides the movement which is super useful for squishy casters to stay safe). The extra AC is nice but I find things hit you no matter what unless you’ve really tuned your AC. Which most casters haven’t.

Edit: just read 3.0. Yeah, +4 AC and an extra partial action is powerful. On top of extra spells, it allows fighter types to move and then do their full attack. You might want to use the 3.5 version. It only gives a +1 AC.

 

[GuardianLurker]

So the thing with Haste and extra spells boils down to novas (i.e. blowing everything you have in a few encounters).

To counter this:

• Quickened spells are expensive, if you're not using the metamagic staves. (Which, come to think of it, might be a 3.5 thing.) If you only allow quickened spells through the metamagic FEATS this will cut down on that problem.
• You also need to REALLY have multiple encounters in an adventuring day, and not let the PCs cut a day short without some hard consequences. Dungeon-crawls with their more restricted rest points are great for this. Another solution are long "chase" encounters; the PC manage to break contact, but they only get 5 rounds or so before the next groups of pursuers manages to find them again.

Barring those, disallowing spells with Haste is exactly the solution 3.5 (and later) have all taken, so that will do just fine.

 

[Gorg]

I had similar thoughts when reading thru the 3E metamagic feats. Neat, but... REALLY expensive! +2 or more to spell level hurts- esp when you only have a few slots available at +2 levels higher...

Same with Quickened spells. Just how fast do you intend to burn through your daily allotment of spell slots?? Was reading a Dungeon mag adventure, today, and one of the foes used quicken to cast 2 spells every round. Better hope this fight doesn't turn into a long duration slug fest...

I ended up deciding- for my caster characters- that it wasn't worth a big investment into metamagic feats.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm curious, having seen the discussions for decades, the carrying of lit torches and pitchforks, etal.
Would it effectively stop the abuse, if I simply disallowed the ability to cast a second spell in a single round?

Basically, yes,, though this solution is equivalent in most respects to the 3.5e solution that increases movement speed and gives you an extra attack action.

I ask, because in all my years of playing and DM'ing, I've never used the spell, or had anyone else use it! Including the OG 3E version the internet insists is irredeemably broken. BUT, I'm currently DMing a 3E game, and wondered just in case.

So the general idea of 3.0 Haste from an optimization perspective is that it's better than or as good as "Time Stop" which is a 9th level spell. Third level spells shouldn't be as good or better than 9th level spells.

In the first round of combat, there is no downside to caster casting haste if they aren't going to have another encounter before recovering spells. You cast haste, now you are hasted, so you use your newly created action to cast something else. You now get to cast two spells a turn for the remainder of combat without having to waste high level spell slots quickening spells. Of course, if you have enough spell slots, you'd cast haste then cast three spells a turn - two spells plus one quickened spell.

That is overwhelmingly powerful. It also has negative impact on how people play the game, since it encourages going nova then retreating which is bad for the games pacing and makes it hard to balance the game.

I do have softcover reprints of the 3.5 rules, and have been picking and choosing items from them. For example, the lists for the 3.5E summon monster spells are WAY better- there is a much more interesting- and useful- selection there.

In general I find 3.0E better designed than 3.5E with fewer broken things in it, but I do pick and choose 3.5e spells in the few cases where the 3.5e spell is better designed than the 3.0e counterpart. Haste is one of those places.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Just to reiterate that it’s not just spells.

An extra partial action allows a fighter to move in and then use his full round action to attack multiple times.

The 3.5 haste only allows for a second attack.

So, at 5th, it gives a bit of a boost to a fighter who only gets their second attack at 6th but, for an 11th level fighter, that’s 3 attacks after moving instead of one. Multiply this by however many people have multiple attacks.

 

[Celebrim]

Just to reiterate that it’s not just spells.

An extra partial action allows a fighter to move in and then use his full round action to attack multiple times.

The 3.5 haste only allows for a second attack.

So, at 5th, it gives a bit of a boost to a fighter who only gets their second attack at 6th but, for an 11th level fighter, that’s 3 attacks after moving instead of one. Multiply this by however many people have multiple attacks.

While true, it's also not the reason Haste in 3.0e was considered unbalanced. The partial action is actually fun and you can use it in a lot of interesting ways, it's just the two spells a round that had an extreme detrimental impact on the game.

In the case of gaining an extra attack, this is so situational as to have really low impact and indeed is actually a point in the 3.0e's version of the spells favor. It's what the spell was designed to do on the theory that casters in 3.0e would be heavily involved in buffing fighters (rather than themselves). In order for your situation to be meaningful, the fighter had to on receiving the spell be in move range of the target. If it was charge in range, it was still just two attacks no matter the level. The fighter had to be at least 11th level AND, taking a full attack had to on average yield more damage than two attacks at their full BAB. That is to say, was it better to make one attack at -5 and one attack at -10 or make one additional attack at -0. In the case of a target with meaningful AC (you have a 75% chance or lower of hitting), it might be just as good or better make the one extra full BAB attack. Giving a pure fighter an extra partial action is so balanced they more or less did that as a normal fighter power in later editions of the game.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I didn't like the 3.0 version of Haste, but I don't like the 3.5 version either. As noted, the ability to cast two spells in a round is a huge deal, and something I'll discourage, put stoppers on various tricks to allow it, and even blanket-ban (with the possible exception of Time Stop, but even that would still be limited to 1 spell per subjective round).

My current house rule (that I'm still not 100% happy with) is that Haste grants an extra move / move-equivalent action. Thus a Hasted figure can move & take a full round action, move twice and take a standard action, move three times without the drawbacks of the Run action, or take the Run action plus an extra move.

Moving away from Haste, I've been toying for a long time with a change to make the default for casting a spell a full round action instead of a standard action. Not the wonky "spells that take a full round to cast" rule where the spell goes off on the following round, but just a full-round action like a full-attack sequence. It would hobble spell casters in what I think is a good way (because spell casters need hobbling) but it's also a relatively big change for a relatively small benefit. Which is why I haven't gone ahead and implemented it.

 

[Mannahnin]

I didn't like the 3.0 version of Haste, but I don't like the 3.5 version either. As noted, the ability to cast two spells in a round is a huge deal, and something I'll discourage, put stoppers on various tricks to allow it, and even blanket-ban (with the possible exception of Time Stop, but even that would still be limited to 1 spell per subjective round).

My current house rule (that I'm still not 100% happy with) is that Haste grants an extra move / move-equivalent action. Thus a Hasted figure can move & take a full round action, move twice and take a standard action, move three times without the drawbacks of the Run action, or take the Run action plus an extra move.

Moving away from Haste, I've been toying for a long time with a change to make the default for casting a spell a full round action instead of a standard action. Not the wonky "spells that take a full round to cast" rule where the spell goes off on the following round, but just a full-round action like a full-attack sequence. It would hobble spell casters in what I think is a good way (because spell casters need hobbling) but it's also a relatively big change for a relatively small benefit. Which is why I haven't gone ahead and implemented it.

Casting in OD&D, B/X and AD&D precludes moving in the same round, although magic items can usually be used while moving. In playing a lot of OSR in the last several years that's presented a lot of interesting tactical limitations. Making it a full-round action so allowing a 5' step in 3.x is more forgiving than that. It at least allows a caster to pop around a corner or doorframe and get a spell off.

I do tend to find that Haste is just one of those spells that is extremely good to the point of obligatory in most editions. Kind of like how Celerity was broken in Vampire: The Masquerade. Getting more actions than other people is just always stupidly good.

Ben Riggs had a conversation on his Reading D&D Aloud podcast with Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo in which Jonathan opined that the spell tends to be boring in a way as well, in that it's just letting you do more things rather than new and interesting things.

Addressing both of those complaints, I think Original Edition Delta for OD&D makes a pretty nice choice in interpreting it as literally just making it the reverse of Slow per Chainmail (which is all it says in OD&D)- in both cases each allows(forces) an entire unit of troops (/party) to move twice as fast (or half speed), but this doesn't give them more or fewer actions. This avoids the issue of being overpowered from an action economy standpoint, but does have tactical uses. Or even strategic ones if the duration is long enough (three Turns in OD&D).