[Balanor]

For some time we had spell overrides in place that were meant to limit all spell durations to no more than 2 minutes/level. However, due to a scripting error of mine, these changes were actually not being applied as I thought they were. As I was looking at the problem of using the Scribe Scroll feat with our modified spells (such as Greater Magic Weapon), I discovered and corrected this error (along with the fix that all modified spells may now be correctly scribed to scrolls – including Greater Magic Weapon).

I especially wanted this to apply to spells that have a duration of 1 hour/level as our in-game hour is 15 minutes, since a few simple spells (like Greater Magic Weapon, etc) could essentially give a PC a magic weapon or magic bonus for an extremely long period of time. 2 minutes/level is actually the default amount of time per hour in the original NWN game, which is why that duration was selected. Being this is a PW where magic items of +3 or more are difficult to find, these changes are primarily put in place in an effort to balance the power that magic-users have over non-magic users.

I do realize the miscommunication on spell durations is my fault. These spell duration changes are listed in the in-game guide, but were not updated here on the forum site since they occurred during one of the transition phases to this forum. My apologies on not communicating this better, and as with any complaints/concerns/feedback/etc about something, I request you contact me directly with them.

[Balanor]

I have recently been reviewing changes to spells with the D&D 3.5 ruleset and browsing other PW's forums and the NWN Bioware site. In many cases, for reasons that were hashed out and re-hashed again, certain spell durations with the 3.5 ruleset were reduced. See Bull's Strength for example.

In those cases because of the arguments I have seen made in favor of certain spell durations being modified to match the 3.5 ruleset, as well as observing gameplay tendencies in Thay, and consulting with others who play here; additional spell changes have been made (here is the IC reason for your PCs if you want/need to RP the changes out). I realize reduced durations may cause people to rush more than before, however with these changes rushing will no longer really 'work' as a way of extending their usefulness since casting them will mostly need to be timed out for specific battles - not for having them last throughout an entire dungeon crawl.

Additionally, certain upper-level spells will begin to require material components. However, this is a configurable option the PC may turn off and instead have gold taken directly from them instead. See the Spell Modifications thread for all the details, and certainly feel free to PM me with any questions/concerns/complaints on the changes.

It is my sincere hope that these will be the last spell changes (minus possibly requiring material components for aadditional upper-level spells) as I dislike trying to explain the game-balancing rational behind these changes as much as you with spellcasting PCs probably like dislike finding out about them and having to adjust your gameplay because of them.