BG is already easy with Wands of Fireball lying around. What exactly will access to all spells do to significantly reduce the difficulty that the game already hasn't done?
Same goes for IWD. The original game was easy enough. The new spells might just give players to make the game marginally easier but the overall lack pf difficulty is a problem of the original.
Time stop essentially allows your mage to cast 3 spells simultaneously, when he would otherwise only be casting one. How could this possibly be bad (aside from the one drawback I mentioned before)? Yeah, it makes the fight seem longer for you, the player, but unless you're some high profile lawyer or something and your time is extremely valuable, it makes no difference whatsoever.
Oh noes, time stop is not just 'casting three spells instead of one', no, we have contingency and triggers for that. (Which are also op in iwd environment, especially as no mage I have seen thus far uses them) time stop is a massive tactical advantage, you can manuever through the combat area for a safe position, or since enemies are helpless you can whack them to death with a decent weapon or a spell like melf's meteors, black blade of disaster, or, perhaps the most feared of them all, mind flayer shapechange!
The OP contains the question about new spells and the Time Stop spell is a new spell for IWD, so it could be a legitimate discussion.
But anyway I ask everyone involved not to continue this certain argument about the TS spell in this particular thread. You've made your views clear already.
Let's focus more on the main question of the OP: whether the new spells in IWDEE are OP or not.
Given a distinct lack of all disadvantages to magic in general, even the core spells were already grossly overpowered. Adding more on top isn't going to change that, it simply gives you more variety in your broken options, but you will still be taking advantage of broken things.
I think the enemy AI is a bit too weak. They don't use the powerful new spells but I would want them to go to BG2 level not to SCS levels. I feel rather comfortable with SCS without the smarter mages component. In a group they are still quite dangerous but they are not the completely overpowered class compared to all others. Which makes sense in PnP but not in a game where they don't need additional resources and where powerful mages are not super rare but where every hedge mage has the power of Elminster.
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Same goes for IWD. The original game was easy enough. The new spells might just give players to make the game marginally easier but the overall lack pf difficulty is a problem of the original.
The OP contains the question about new spells and the Time Stop spell is a new spell for IWD, so it could be a legitimate discussion.
But anyway I ask everyone involved not to continue this certain argument about the TS spell in this particular thread. You've made your views clear already.
Let's focus more on the main question of the OP: whether the new spells in IWDEE are OP or not.