Why are so many great spells Personal only?

[Endarire]

Draconic polymorph.  Mirror image.  Divine power.  Shapechange.

All these buffs are normally personal-only and they rock.  Why limit them to only the caster?  Why are personal buffs so powerful, and usually the best buffs of a spell level?

[veekie]

The writers'(erroneous) assumption that allowing these benefits to apply to a specialist in close combat would make them overpowered, hence the awesome combat buffs that can only be applied to casters.

[Tempest]

I'd think it's exactly because they're so powerful, by limiting one thing about the spell you can make it stronger. It would become extremely unbalanced if spellcasters were capable of using Personal buffs on other party members, just imagine being able to use Divine Power on the Rogue/any 3/4 BaB warrior, or Righteous Might on the fighter/barbarian, it'd become really silly really fast.

I suppose that Wizards had been using a sort of point economy system for Spells, much like they did with Classes. So for example, having a spell make someone Large size, adding damage reduction and giving a Con bonus would all substract points from the ammount you have for spells on that level, but applying Personal Range on the spell would offset some of the loss, making it possible to keep it within the point economy.
This part is just speculation on my part of course, but the point remains the same.

Limiting a spell in one aspect = Making it stronger in another.

EDIT: Also, what Veekie said =)

[veekie]

Of course, the problem arises that these spells remain extremely good, so much better, in fact, that Wild Shape(a narrow application of ONE such spell enough to send many classes up a tier), so basically you're stuck with only casters getting to kick ass with the spells.

[SorO_Lost]

Q: Why are so many great spells Personal only?
A: To make Ocular Spell more useful.

[Basket Burner]

Because part of system mastery is realizing you don't need those other guys.

Or they just fucked up and tried to cover for themselves with a long it's not a bug it's a feature speech.

[Empirate]

So your familiar gets to kick some ass.

So you have something nice to do when Magic Jar'ing 'round the 'hood.

So the Monk can take cross-class ranks in UMD and buy some partially charged wands.

[Halinn]

So the mundanes can't even be buffed to usefulness.

[kitep]

So they'ld work with Persistent Spell and become even more awesome

[Endarire]

How does Ocular Spell work with Personal effects?

Ocular Spell states that it doesn't work if the target is personal (which I suspect means no self-only stuff).

[Keldar]

Because Third Edition's writers were kind of clueless.  They feared Fighters with Righteous Might would be Too Awesome, while utterly forgetting that a Cleric with the same would be likely to pack on several other spells on top becoming CoDzilla, the giant, divine fire breathing, campaign crushing fish.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I've really been considering of late simply making all personal spells other than emanations to be touch range instead.  But all of my friends I play with think it would be a mistake to do that...

Goal would be to strip away any sort of justification a caster has to be "selfish."  I love the polymorph spell BECAUSE you can use it on others, I like using it to make the Fighter even better at fighting.  Why waste it on my 1/2 BAB d4 HD carcass?  But they think it would unbalance the game too much or whatever. *shrug*

[X-Codes]

Because Third Edition's writers were kind of clueless.  They feared Fighters with Righteous Might would be Too Awesome, while utterly forgetting that a Cleric with the same would be likely to pack on several other spells on top becoming CoDzilla, the giant, divine fire breathing, campaign crushing fish.

Lizard.  He's a lizard.

In any case, 3 of the 4 mentioned spells are core, when honestly none of the developers knew fuck about anything.  The last is actually mentioned as a "dragon" spell, I believe, in Draconomicon, meaning that it's meant that Dragons cast the spell on themselves, and since Dragons are so selfish and all, the range only makes sense to be personal.

The ridiculous ones, though, are all Bite of the WereX.  I have no clue what the hell the developers were smoking there.  Also, putting them on the Druid and Wizard lists?  The two classes that so don't need them.

[dman11235]

I pretty much agree with the general sentiment of this thread so far.  HOwever, I do feel that sometimes a personal range would just be the best range for a spell.  A spell like Righteous Might, although executed poorly, should probably be Personal, while different buffs end up being touch/area.  It's a matter of different mechanic/same effect.

[SorO_Lost]

How does Ocular Spell work with Personal effects?

Ocular Spell states that it doesn't work if the target is personal (which I suspect means no self-only stuff).

Hmm, I'm mind blanking on it but there is a to ray ability somewhere that applies to anything allowing you to shoot buffs across the battle field like a laser of awesome. W/E it is, that one.

[Rejakor]

It's a feat in Dragon, I forgot which.

didn't even make the compendium, so that's a hint as to how balanced it is.

EDIT:  Honestly I wish people would stop assuming that the developers are some kind of gods.  WAI is a joke when it comes to character capability and balance in DnD.  That's why I like Tome, it makes it so that mundanes can be played alongside casters without the casters focusing on buffing.

[Coidzor]

I think part of it is that it took them a rather long time to really grok buffing as a role, which is part of why the Marshal and Dragon Shaman, the only two classes I know of actually devoted to party buffing, rather than incidentally/accidentally becoming good at it in a very limited way like the Bard, quite frankly suck at buffing and in general.

So they didn't understand or value the concept of sharing the magic with the rest of the party as something that a caster could take on as a role rather than occasionally forcing the fighter or rogue to contribute in a certain way, such as by enlarging or shrinking them to get them to accomplish a task for the party to continue.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Mundanes can't have nice things. If full BAB classes got divine power, they'd be ... marginally stronger! We can't have that! Better through it on a guy with access to all the buffs and make him into a full BAB class!

didn't even make the compendium, so that's a hint as to how balanced it is.

Well since all those nameless overpriced items didn't make it into the MIC, I guess they are just too powerful. If all the crappy, weak stuff Drag Mag has went into the compendium, it would be like a thousand pages.

[X-Codes]

To be fair, Divine Power isn't anything special when cast on a guy with full BAB.  Righteous Might is the big one, and frankly it really should be a 3rd-levelish short-range spell.  5th-level was, IIRC, appropriate for the un-errata'd or perhaps 3.0 version of the spell, but not the 3.5e one.

[Endarire]

What changed from 3.0 to 3.5 for righteous might?