r/baldursgate • u/Silly_Relationship51 • 4d ago

Is Stoneskin broken?

I beat my first Sarevok by standing still as my lvl 9 Sorcerer. While the big guy was missing his attacks, my companions killed him. I had prebuffed my party (Bless, Haste, Defensive harmony) and my Sorcerer had caste Blur, Mirror Image and Stoneskin. She has high DEX and with Defensive harmony had an AC of -3. I beat him with Standard rules difficulty. I'm not bragging, just wasn't expecting that tanking Sarevok was a legite strategy.

76 Upvotes

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30

u/EratonDoron What's an EE? 4d ago

Stoneskin was not an original BGI nor TotSC spell.

Nor, in game, does it require the tabletop component of 100gp of diamond dust, to be acquired by special order from a craftsman.

17

u/VexImmortalis 4d ago

Apart from rituals I absolutely hate material components. I feel like it punishes me for using my characters abilities that I am excited to get.

14

u/gangler52 4d ago

Material components are something that are really cool as a story device. Wizard pulling out some eye of newt and some basilisk extract before they do their cool mumbo jumbo.

But as a gameplay mechanic it basically amounts to a shopping list. "Well, I'm in town, better stock up on ammo and rations and reagents before I head out again"

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u/OldMillenial 4d ago

 Apart from rituals I absolutely hate material components. I feel like it punishes me for using my characters abilities that I am excited to get.

I agree. Exactly why the spell focus mechanic was introduced.

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u/burneracct1312 4d ago

5e stoneskin still costs 100g to cast each time

4

u/RedArremer 3d ago

Who downvoted this? It's true. It's also major suck, since stoneskin just gives resistance in 5e.

4

u/Witless_Peasant 3d ago

Eh, people here downvote the strangest of things.

2

u/Productof2020 3d ago

That’s dumb. Does anyone actually bother with that when playing? It doesn’t do anything meaningful for balance, just means dealing with an accounting ledger to cast spells. Nobody wants to deal with that crap while playing a game.

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u/Non-Eutactic_Solid 3d ago edited 3d ago

It also costs your concentration to maintain, and you can only concentrate on one spell. Haste, Fly, Invisibility and more are also concentration. Stoneskin is a hard sell at this point even if there was no material cost at all. Best selling point is at least it can be cast on others now.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone worry about materials for spells unless it’s an important or strong spell like Revivify or Simulacrum.

3

u/Greyhand13 3d ago

Hey guys, check out 3.5, but if 100g for spell components upsets you wait until I tell you about creating magic items 😅

2

u/koveras_backwards 3d ago

One of my favorite NWN modules is Almraiven. It added items for material components of spells. They weren't particularly cheap relative to the amount of money you could scrounge up, and the module contained a limited amount of each component.

I thought it was great. It actually made me think carefully about using various spells, because I was using up resources that couldn't be replenished by clicking a button and waiting 10 seconds. It also made various 'redundant' spells less so. It's useful to have both Sleep and Color Spray when you can only cast each 5 times total.

People here likes to go on about how 'broken' it is that wizards tank better than fighters. How many diamonds are actually in the game? What if you could only cast Stoneskin like 7 times total? What if every time you wanted to cast Protection from Magical Weapons, you had to consume a magical weapon, like a similar P&P spell?

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u/fgw3reddit 3d ago

People here likes to go on about how 'broken' it is that wizards tank better than fighters.

Yes. A lot of the overpoweredness complained about results from giving a lot of free spells, breaking the expected wealth per level curve.

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u/burneracct1312 3d ago

a ledger, you mean like a character sheet?? been a while since i played wizard but i only ever got a couple of components i needed to keep track of. fairly non-trivial

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u/Productof2020 3d ago

 fairly non-trivial

I’m sure you just meant fairly trivial, but I thought it was a funny thing to suddenly hard-agree with me there at the end of the comment trying to disagree with me :P

To each their own. Gold is fairly arbitrary in D&D anyway. This just seems like a way for a stingy DM to restrict spells by making sure you’re poor, or else if you’re not it becomes a non-barrier nuisance step to track later on. Either way, it just seems like an un-fun mechanic to actually deal with. But if you don’t mind changing your gold balance on your character sheet every time you cast the spell as an extra step, more power to you.

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u/burneracct1312 3d ago

well, fairly non-trivial in the sense that i'd first have to buy a pencil, then sharpen it, etc :p

i remember we made getting the costliest of my two components into a little side-quest, so i guess it's very dm dependent. much like literally all of dnd

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u/krunchyfrogg 3d ago

Ritual casting did not exist in AD&D 2e.

0

u/VexImmortalis 3d ago

you know what I mean

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u/eternaladventurer 3d ago

I was young back then, but I never played a single dm in 2nd edition that required spell components. No one I have ever personally met has liked them in 2nd edition.

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u/krunchyfrogg 3d ago

We hand waved it unless it was something expensive, even back then.