FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1084977414[/unixtime]]What about just hiding in an Illusion? Or putting your enemies into a Solid Fog?
Well, a solid fog implies you've got line of effect to your opponent. So sure if you want to bank on winning init then getting your spell off, then hoping they can't traverse it fast enough, then sure. As for an illusion, that's a big gamble, because if they spot it as an illusion, they can just take a move action straight through it, auto disbelieve it, and then attack you anyway. And you're left one action down.
Or in any other way altering the battlefield so that your opponents can't get to you or don't know about you until you damn well want them to?
If you can gain stealth against them, then you deserve to be buffed. It'll probably require you have silent spells so you don't give yourself away, which is perfectly ok as far as I'm concerned. If you want to try to pull off that tactic, then by all means you can do it.
If you end up altering the battlefield in some way, usually your foes can just pull back and retreat, and just let your buffs run out.
I don't know that there's any way you can stop that, since you could always just close and lock a door and cast buffs from behind it.
And your foes could just flee for a minute or so, and let your buffs run out, thus leaving you in bad shape.
So long as the enemy knows you're there and all buffs are short term, it becomes a no brainer tactic for any intelligent foe to do hit and run attacks against casters, and provides a natural counter to buff casters, especially heavily armored buffcasters who lack speed.
The gamble you take as a buff caster is that the guy you're against doesn't turn and head for the hills while you're busy taking your 3rd round of buffing. Then about 2 minutes later, he returns to kick your teeth in when all your buffs have worn off.