Talk:Mind Sweep (3.5e Maneuver)

Balance level
Not sure that this is H balance. H balance level effects are supposed to be an at least somewhat effective counter to enemies of an equal level. This doesn't have a great chance of stopping an enemy caster from casting, as there is a very good chance that the attack won't connect, and if it does, there's a good chance that you'll drain a spell slot that the character has little use for.Fluffykittens (talk) 21:01, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Failing if the attack misses is a common characteristic of maneuvers. Not really a problem - if you're a martial adept (especially a swordsage or war blade), you can refresh them when you need to. If not, well, maneuvers are just kind of a bonus to your fighting style. And about the randomization of spell slots eliminated... that's intentional. A lot of very useful spells have a low spell level (magic missile, anyone?), and focusing on eliminating the higher-level spells first (which is what most spell-removing effects do) means that the wizard's still left with the spell that, as Mr. Welch put it, can do 200 damage automatic with no save. (...Wait... 5 &times; 6 equals 30... how the heck did he make magic missile do 200 damage?!?) Then there's spell flower, which is easily the best friend of a touch-spell-happy sorcerer - and also a 1st-level spell. Feather fall is also 1st-level, undetectable alignment is 2nd-level, fly is 3rd-level, and I could keep going on... basically, I think that there needs to be a way to purge those spells from the minds of high-level spellcasters who have a lot of high-level spells to burn through before the low-level ones are vulnerable to elimination by conventional spell-wiping effects. And a martial discipline that specializes in fighting spellcasters has an especially strong need to eliminate spells of any level from a spellcaster's mind. --Luigifan18 (talk) 21:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I've found that usually only using the highest three spell levels while actually fighting a combat is usually a pretty good strategy, and I have no idea why Luigifan18 thinks that magic missile, feather fall, and undetectable alignment are spells you should be happy about removing when the caster has greater teleport, time stop, and forcecage prepared. That said, if you remove enough extra spells to compensate for not removing the most important ones, this could be good. It should probably scale with the number of spell levels they have, because as is it gets much weaker against high-level casters and it's a melee ability and thus not capable of being particularly broken when you use a regiment of Mind Scrubbers no matter what you do.
 * I agree with you that this is a bit weak, Fluffykittens, but your argument looks like "this can miss AND it doesn't totally ruin on a hit", which sounds like a call for SoD-logic in a High-balance maneuver. --Foxwarrior (talk) 22:55, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "I agree with you that this is a bit weak, Fluffykittens, but your argument looks like "this can miss AND it doesn't totally ruin on a hit", which sounds like a call for SoD-logic in a High-balance maneuver." Not exactly what I meant. I meant that there's a very good chance for this spell to hit and drain four slots of little to no consequence to the caster. At 9th level, a sorcerer has a bare minimum of 28 spell slots, and a wizard has a bare minimum of 18. With all the ways casters have of getting more slots and refreshing ones they already have, this maneuver's usefulness goes from circumstantial and luck based to nigh- useless, as the chance of eliminating a enough spell slots to cripple the caster drops to essentially nil. Perhaps if it removed 1 spell level per initiator level? "Failing if the attack misses is a common characteristic of maneuvers. Not really a problem - if you're a martial adept (especially a swordsage or warblade), you can refresh them when you need to" I'm not saying that that is a problem- but you need to factor in the fact that there's a high chance that this will miss when used to counter a caster. This is more of a problem of the cheesiness of casters, but if you're making a move that is supposed to counter casters, it needs to be able to counter casters.Fluffykittens (talk) 23:19, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I did give this maneuver a bit of a buff, but I don't want it to outshine "This is Your Brain on Magic". Also, I only buffed this maneuver because I'm about to release a new one, and the new one's going to be lower-level and potentially more potent over a longer period of time. Also, I want this maneuver to be able to wipe out spells that won't necessarily be used in combat, so that even if a spellcaster who's hit with this survives the encounter, he's still not gonna be a happy camper for the rest of the day. ("We're going to the desert? No problem, I'll just cast endure elements - oh goddamnit, that blasted swordsage smacked it out of my mind!!!") --Luigifan18 (talk) 00:37, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * By the way, the gold standard of spellcasting capacity destruction is, without a doubt, spell worm. That thing is insane. Not only does it hemorrhage your foe's spell slots rapidly over time, it also costs him a standard action each round until his spell slots are entirely gone! And he doesn't even realize what's happening until he tries to cast a spell and finds that he has none left! Utterly diabolical... too bad it's an epic spell, because I'd love to figure out a way to work something like that into this martial discipline! --Luigifan18 (talk) 00:45, 17 November 2012 (UTC)