If you find yourself saying...

[RandomCasualty]

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.

[The_Hanged_Man]

Then your campaign comes down to this.

We teleport in buffed. They teleport out. We quickly loot the place (or do whatever else we want) in about 3 rounds (the time it takes to buff and come back). They teleport back. We teleport away.

Substitute "run in" and "run away" for teleport at low levels.

[RandomCasualty]

1084991712[/unixtime]]Then your campaign comes down to this.

We teleport in buffed. They teleport out. We quickly loot the place (or do whatever else we want) in about 3 rounds (the time it takes to buff and come back). They teleport back. We teleport away.

Substitute "run in" and "run away" for teleport at low levels.

Well, obviously you don't build 1 room dungeons. So it amounts to falling back deeper into your stronghold when you get attacked, or just carrying all your treasure on you. Seriously with bags of holding there's no reason you need to have treasure in your lair at all. You could be carrying everything of value on your person.

In the teleport scenario, I think teleport should be a 10 min casting time at least anyway, meaning that while you can teleport in, you can't teleport out. So sure, if you really want to be stranded in the middle of the enemy stronghold for at least another 10 minutes, go for it. You'll be safe for about two of those ten minutes, while your buffs are still in effect, then the whole stronghold comes down on you from all sides and you die.

[The_Hanged_Man]

As long as there are buffs, of any duration, that have a casting time, battles come down to who buffs first. If the other side buffs first, then you run away. If you buff first, they run away.

Your campaign comes down to making up reasons why somebody can't run away - b/c that's the obvious thing to do if you're not buffed. Which means your campaign is based on railroading the players, or playing dumb NPC's.

Every adventure I write for 13th level on up is based on not running away. Either time limits, or crucial locations, or something else has to make running away impossible or stupid for either the party, the NPC's, or both. I generally can get away with it b/c I'm pretty subtle with it, but that's how I start each adventure - with a reason why people can't run away.

The only other thing to do is just assume there's going to be a teleport war.

[RandomCasualty]

Well, not everyone is going to necessarily buff. A fighter can just win initiative and rush in there. The disadvantage of being a buff lover is that they can counter you by running away. It's the disadvantage of the combat style, not necessarily the dominant force in the game. Some monsters don't have buffs at all, and are just going to either attack or pull back.

And remember, one round of buffing should just put you roughly on par with a fighter as a cleric, so it's not as though you instantly have to run as soon as you see a buff being cast. You really only want to run if you know they've had several rounds before you even knew about them to buff themselves up. Then you're totally screwed, and your best tactic is to wait 2 minutes for the buffs to go away.

Strategically there has to be some weakness to casting buff spells over other spells. The advantage to them is you may be able to get some ready before combat starts, which you can't do with a flame strike. The disadvantage is that your foes can just run away and wait for your buffs to end. Which they can't do against a flame strike.

Assuming you even want buffing as a valid tactic, you basically have to play it this way, and as I said, instantaneous teleportation can't exist if you play with buffs, because your enemies can't be halfway across the world in the two minutes it takes for your buffs to wear off.

Buffs as a concept are tough to balance though they can work if there are a few basic concessions, the first being no instant teleportation. You can't have buffs and instant teleport, the two concepts are just two abuseable together.

[The_Hanged_Man]

I don't see how instaneous transportation matters here. You have to get rid of every way to delay the start of combat. That's all teleportation is, in this context.

So, you need to get rid of:

Wall spells;
Mist spells;
Plane travel;
Flight;
Hiding/Invisibility;
And all the other things I can't think of right now.

How can you do that?

There's only two ways to go. You can make buffs instanteous ("Wonder Twin Powers - Activate"). Or you can eliminate buffs altogether. Since the first is obviously crazy, you have to eliminate buffs, in some form or another.

[RandomCasualty]

So long as they know you're there, and you know they're there, there's no problem with spells whcih delay the onset of combat. First, you could lose initiative, in which case whatever plan you had for delaying combat doesn't happen because you're in melee.

Second, if they do see you throwing up spells like walls and mist spells, they could just ID you as buffcasters and then retreat for a couple minutes. So you cast your wall of stone, then buff, then have to chop it down. By the time you're through it, you've only got a little bit of buff time left.

As for hiding, as I said before, if you can manage to hide on the guy and thus gain surprise, you do deserve some kind of advantage. I have no problem granting bonuses to people who can pull off ambushes, especially ambushes with a cleric. The spellcasting alone is going to give him away unless he took silent spell.

Basically what you do here is make buffs advantageous against low intelligence and non-intelligent stuff and disadvantageous against intelligent creatures that can just run away.

Now, you could always ban buffs too, but you're talking about getting rid of a great lot of spells.

[The_Hanged_Man]

Losing initiative doesn't matter at all. The caster just casts obscuring mist. And buffs. Or flies straight up. And buffs. Or goes ethereal. And buffs. Or casts Invisibility. And buffs. None of this has anything to do w/ ambushes.

Which leaves running away as the only "intelligent" strategy. Don't you see a fundamental problem w/ any basic mechanic that makes running away the only sensible strategy?

[Username17]

First, you could lose initiative, in which case whatever plan you had for delaying combat doesn't happen because you're in melee.

...Because they just jumped you and have all of their buffs instead of the other way around.

There's only two ways to go. You can make buffs instanteous ("Wonder Twin Powers - Activate"). Or you can eliminate buffs altogether. Since the first is obviously crazy, you have to eliminate buffs, in some form or another.

Is the Rage Mechanic so very crazy?

-Username17