Shattered Kingdoms

Anyone remember the ether dagger?

The above option of 1/2 damage to ethereal Arcane type damage is better.

1/2 damage is still gobs of damage considering how much life the average spellcaster with access to etherealform has

So? You can't bash ethereal people.

Bashes are way underpowered, that buff might actually put them on post with ultra cool skills like swim.

Alternate solution, if people are way too squeamish about my massive remove-class-unique-spells approach: have ethereal wands force casters to release all spells when etherealform succeeds. Only wands, not the spell itself.

I think this would be a fantastic solution, personally.

I think a better solution would be to have etherealform come with a curse-type effect. So you have a choice of sticking around ethereal to see if you can bring in a clutch dispel, or quaff up and see if you can be effective at the tail end, OR you can quaff a vial of recall, but not both.

I agree that this is an excellent idea. It also makes IC sense. You can't cast a spell on someone who is in another plane. It's not much of a stretch to think that you can't hold a spell on someone across a plane.

The suggestion would warrant a bit more discussion about how it affects game balance, though. I imagine that sorcs/necros will have to recall as soon as they start getting hit with arrows.

"like"

Well, I think it's a first step in the right direction to getting down to a real conversation of class balance. We won't really see how balance plays out until we see it in action. I think it's a practical impossibility to really balance classes unless/until they're no longer using balancing spells of other classes to supplement themselves.

In the end, some classes may even need buffs after this is done. I am not entirely opposed to buffing necros if it turns out they are absolutely beyond redemption useless after a change like this. But I like the idea of buffs/wimps occurring on merit of actual class balance, instead of being ignored because they become OP using another class's skill. It subsequently masks any flaws in the balance of the class itself.