The most hated spell

[Killer Angel]

This thread could have been a rant about a DM (mine dm, of course), that shattered our group's gentlemen's agreement,but instead i'll try to turn it in something more... worth discussing.

Basically, what's the spell you hate the most, and why?

Mine, is probably mage's disjunction. A single spell that can easily cripple an entire group, even at high level. All the active spells are wiped away, you don't have protection from it, and most of all there's a very solid chance that a good portion of your magic items is gone. It's a single friggin spell that not only can change the course of a battle, but can really ruin a group.
You don't use it, cause it's stupid to break your potential loot, and the enemy can use it because they can decide to don't care.
Conclusion: it's a dangerous spell, it's overpowered and it can ruin the fun more than a killing.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Anyone that does not reply with Mage's Disjunction either doesn't really understand what it does, or is lying. Or they figure "well, games don't go that high in level anyway..."

It's no contest. Thread title should really be "The most hated spell...after Mage's Disjunction"

Aside from what you said. Really, really look at the spell. Who does it hurt the most?
a) Those who rely the most on magic items
b) Those who have the hardest time replacing magic items (ie, can't craft them)
c) Those with weak will saves

Guess what kinds of characters fit in ALL THREE FREAKING CATEGORIES? That's right! Your rogues and fighters of the world! Already the most underpowered party members! Not only is MD blatantly unfair and bs, it's practically a guided homing missile that targets the weak and pathetic.

And then there's the fact that even if you completely stripped away the permanent, item-destroying effects of the spell, it is *still* an auto-win dispel check against freaking everything within its big radius.

It's super duper ultra gigantic mondo wtf-were-they-thinking? with a cherry on top BROKEN.

[BWR]

Thank you, Gary Gygax.
It's one of those 'gentleman's agreement' spells. Everybody looks at it and decides not to use it. DM's don't have to say they ban it, players would never dream of using it.

Still, a modified version would be in keeping with the need for 'Dispel MAgic, just bigger'.

[DonDuckie]

try the pathfinder version... less permanent damage :)

also: i believe Gate has a chance of a balor walking by... even if you don't summon it.

It's a ninth level spell, it's supposed to be an adventure capstone: the wizard risking all to destroy the evil artifact... or some such... not defeat-the-challenge-at-no-risk, and not meteor swarm...

all your stuff has gone bye-bye - time to go adventuring for new stuff...

all-in-all: great spell...

evil GM spell: astral projection
1) encounter high level enemy party
2) defeat enemy party at great risk and some loss
3) too bad for you the loot has just a projection
4) the enemy isn't even dead!

I'll totally do that, when my players get to high enough levels...

[StreamOfTheSky]

Thank you, Gary Gygax.
It's one of those 'gentleman's agreement' spells. Everybody looks at it and decides not to use it. DM's don't have to say they ban it, players would never dream of using it.

No, they very much do need to pledge not to use it. I never, ever join a game w/ any hope of reaching high levels w/o asking the DM point blank if he'd ever EVER even *think* of using the spell. It needs to be known in advance. Because if he does not guarantee to never use it, I either need to find a new game, or scrap any plans I had and instead play a spellcaster (to mitigate the nuclear fallout upon myself should the DM use it) and devote substantial character resources towards trying to protect the party from it. At a bare minimum having a contingent AMF so that we at least have a [100 - enemy CL] % chance of withstanding it, preferably something better.

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

Anyone that does not reply with Mage's Disjunction either doesn't really understand what it does, or is lying. Or they figure "well, games don't go that high in level anyway..."

Well, that or they simply have specific, irrational hatred for certain other spells; hatred, after all, isn't reasonable. In example, I'll readily agree that Mage's Disjunction is the worst spell in the game, but it's not the spell I hold in the greatest contempt, purely because of my seething hatred of fear effects. For some reason, thought I'll accept critical existence failure, mount/dismount teleportation, and all sorts of other things, the fact that every creature capable of feeling fear reacts to it in exactly the same fashion breaks my suspension of disbelief. I'm far more likely to gripe about the panicked condition than losing all of my magic items, regardless of which is more debilitating. I don't really know why, and I don't have a good explanation for why fear effects bother me more than other mechanics similarly lacking in verisimilitude, but I'd be lying if I said that they didn't.

[Xerxus]

Invoke Magic. Because why should wizards be immune to everything?

[Menzath]

a) Those who rely the most on magic items
b) Those who have the hardest time replacing magic items (ie, can't craft them)
c) Those with weak will saves


Read: Party rogue.

Too bad that is me at the moment, I forget does SR apply? If so, thank goodness I have that Holy Avenger and a really high UMD.

At the same time... Disintegrate is about the same to low HP peeps, I mean "You AND all your gear is a pile of dust, lolz."

As a side note, the people who fall under A, B, and C are the upfront fighters, where the magic is extra useful fluff, or the lewt monkey who should be hiding and using said lewtz from the shadows.

[Nettlekid]

I've yet to face a Mage's Disjunction in-game, so I don't know its true horror. I expect that a spellcaster faced with it could always Celerity and Dimension Door out of the way?

For most hated spell, I'd say Mind Blank. It's just too good. And the ease of access invalidates any sort of fun, flavorful build involving Enchantments or Fear at high levels.

[Killer Angel]

It's no contest. Thread title should really be "The most hated spell...after Mage's Disjunction"

Aside from what you said. Really, really look at the spell. Who does it hurt the most?
a) Those who rely the most on magic items
b) Those who have the hardest time replacing magic items (ie, can't craft them)
c) Those with weak will saves

Guess what kinds of characters fit in ALL THREE FREAKING CATEGORIES? That's right! Your rogues and fighters of the world! Already the most underpowered party members! Not only is MD blatantly unfair and bs, it's practically a guided homing missile that targets the weak and pathetic.


eh... :smallsigh:
and, given that it's a ninth spell, casted by a high lev. wizard, the will save will be sky high. Even considering some optimization on your STs, the weak classes, will have around 25-30% chances to save.
Plus, when the enemy caster is an archmage (not impossible at all, at those levels), it will be a very guided homing missile...

[Karnith]

TI forget does SR apply?
Hah! Of course not. That'd just be silly.

and, given that it's a ninth spell, casted by a high lev. wizard, the will save will be sky high. Even considering some optimization on your STs, the weak classes, will have around 25-30% chances to save.
Importantly, the save is per item, so unless you happen to have no magic items at all, you're almost certainly going to lose something, and it's entirely likely that you'll lose a bunch of your stuff.

[Keneth]

I actually like disjunction, but then I only play Pathfinder. And besides, if anyone could come up with something that broken, it's the goddamn Mordenkainen. :smallbiggrin:

[Nettlekid]

Does MDJ get blocked by force effects, like Wall of Force or Otiluke's Resilient Sphere? It does say that it breaks things down as Dispel Magic, to which those force effects are immune.

What are good defenses against MDJ, besides "carry an artifact" or something impractical like that? Since the pulse kind of comes out toward you it logically affects things in succession, closest to the caster out, so there must be something you can do with that. Or Celerity+Useful Spell. Maybe Wall of Stone.

[Krobar]

Mage's Disjunction. As a DM I hate when my players pull it out, and as a player I hate when DMs pull it out.

[Emperor Tippy]

I love Disjunction, both as a player and as a DM.

My most hated spell? Hmm probably the Shadow Evocation and Shades lines, at least in core.

[Nettlekid]

I think Invoke Magic is really cool. Sure, it punches a hole in the ONE thing that can stop Wizards (though there's not too much you can do with a 4th level spell, for the cost of a 9th and a 4th, not to mention there were already defensed against AMFs like the Tinfoil Hat) but imagine some Sorcerer standing against an Astral Dreadnought, trapped in its antimagic cone, and suddenly his eyes flicker with passion and he proudly exclaims that no force in all the planes can break the power of raw magic which runs through his veins! That's cool.

Why hatred for the Shadow/Shades line? The versatility is pretty awesome. The only thing I don't like is that Shades can theoretically imitate Conjuration: Calling spells like Planar Binding...and I don't know what that would do. Make an 80% real extraplanar creature with 80% strength abilities (including spells?) that you bargain with...even though it's your own illusion and so you have full control over it? Who knows how that works.

[Killer Angel]

My most hated spell? Hmm probably the Shadow Evocation and Shades lines, at least in core.

An... interesting choice.
May I join Nettlekid, and ask why?

[Emperor Tippy]

Because they don't do anything new, they just let you pretty much ignore the fact that you banned the schools in question.

They give greatly increased versatility in an utterly boring manner.

There were tons of great things that could have been done with the basic idea and with illusions that D&D didn't do. Instead we got those lines.

[AmberVael]

Just to be different:

Antimagic Field.

I should note that I was thinking earlier that my two most disliked spells are Antimagic Field and Disjunction, because they are both incredibly lazy and frustrating.

But of the two, Antimagic Field is the worse in that regard. I can't recall a single time it has ever been used well, and by design, it is almost impossible to use well. Abilities that apply so broadly that they can nullify everything many characters can reasonably attempt are just terrible design. Yes, there are a few tricks that might be used to combat it, but largely it is a pain to work with- at best, it drastically narrows down offensive tactics, and at worst, it's a method to turn a large number of classes into sub-par fighters.

Disjunction is similar, with the exceptions that it affects less, and mostly has a shorter duration, but destroys all your items because screwing over characters more permanently is a brilliant plan.

[TuggyNE]

It's no contest. Thread title should really be "The most hated spell...after Mage's Disjunction"

Yes.

I don't know for sure what I'd pick as my top three, but I'm going to be even more different and mention Tenser's transformation. It's just so stupidly lame, what with the blanket ban on casting spells, all spells from any source. (Even a multiclass Wizard/Barbarian can cast spells when not raging!)

[Yahzi]

Because they don't do anything new
That's a pretty good reason.

The spell I hate the most is Scry. The people who wrote the game simply didn't understand how powerful information is. IRL no one would ever go into a dungeon until it had been fully mapped through scrying.

Second is Teleport. Third is Commune. All of these are spells designed to bypass the game; all hidden information and physical access are reduced to a single action by the wizard and he usually doesn't even have to roll.

[Fitz10019]

As a DM, I hate Identify. Every time I tell the players what a magic item does, essentially what it is, I feel like I'm burning the bridges to a 100 other ideas that may have come to me later.

So, yeah, MDJ as the nuclear spell, no argument... but Identify is the stone in my shoe every adventure.

[Urpriest]

I love Disjunction, both as a player and as a DM.

My most hated spell? Hmm probably the Shadow Evocation and Shades lines, at least in core.

Oh right, wouldn't have remembered this if you hadn't shown up:

Ice Assassin.

RAI is about as obvious as it gets: you create a duplicate of a creature, it goes after the original and tries to kill it. It's like lesser Aleax.

RAW, it's an uncapped full-strength Simulacrum under your absolute command, a slightly more costly but potentially much more powerful Gate.

Writing the spell to do what it was supposed to do would have been trivial. Even a few moments' thought would have revealed that nothing in the spell description guarantees that it will be used in the intended manner. And yet, it was written the way it was.

Mordenkainen's Disjunction is hate-worthy because its designers didn't understand the metagame. Ice Assassin makes my blood boil because its designers didn't understand the game itself.

[Nettlekid]

What happens to an Ice Assassin that's been used the way it was intended to, and has killed its original? Does it live on, and you can boss it around using the originals powers in the way that it's been abused?

Also, what happens if you make an Ice Assassin of yourself? It wants to kill you, but it's under your complete and absolute control. Tell it not to kill you, and have you just doubled your spells per day and all other qualities?

[ArcturusV]

I'm gonna second Emperor Tippy there. Letting characters drop schools, then have a nearly blank check to still use the school via illusion is kinda up there for me as well. Similarly thinks like Planar Binding and Gate being used in a similar manner.

Course that's DM side. It irks me when a player takes a weakness that is completely negated by one of their strengths. I mean, not "balanced against" but "My weakness is not really there at all". "Balrog's power is to have all the powers he wants".

As a Player though? Most hated, even before Disjunction, would be Wish.

I never use it. It makes DMs get far too evil. But there's always SOMEONE in a group who will hunt down Djinns, or a Ring of Three Wishes, or learn the spell themselves. And invariably the game is pretty much over at that point. It always causes something so terribly bad that we might as well just call it a TPK.

I recognize it might fall under the category of DM screw. And DM screw is something else. But I think it's kinda safe because I've never seen a DM NOT go full monkey's paw mode with Wish. Everyone knows it. Everyone has horror stories about it. Still people use it.

It's actually resulted in me punching someone in the shoulder before.

"Don't you DARE use that ring."
"No man, I'm gonna do something really cool and you'll see."
"No... no. Just... no. It will not be cool, it will bite us in the ass."
"But I could solve our problems with it!"
"No... no you won't. You'll just give us new, more insurmountable problems."
"I'm going to do it."
*punch*

Pretty much how it went, with the DM having a blatantly sadistic grin on his face as my friend was talking about using his wish.

[Snowbluff]

Wish is every 8th level arcane spell. It's pretty bad.

Ice Assassin is a pretty awful as well.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Shadow Evocation/Conjuration don't just let you "drop schools."

First of all, you don't get teleporting, calling, or other random conj. goodness. And the main draw of creation spells is NO SPELL RESISTANCE, which you forfeit by using the shadow spell.

Even Evocation, sucky as it may be, is not replaced. The best evocations are not the direct damage spells, but the other ones. Most agree with this.

So, umm... teensy little problem....


Nondamaging effects have normal effects except against those who disbelieve them. Against disbelievers, they have no effect.

Those shadow Resilient Spheres? Walls of Force? Gusts of Wind? Yeeeeaaaah... not quite as reliable.


Wish is every 8th level arcane spell. It's pretty bad.

Wish is every 8th level arcane spell...at too great a cost.

Miracle, on the other hand, is basically every 8th level divine spell at no cost, and is pretty silly.

[JaronK]

I'm going to have to go with Guidance of the Avatar. Because seriously, why do Clerics get a low level spell that just makes them better at skills than everybody else?

JaronK

[Nettlekid]

Are psionic powers candidates? Because Hypercognition is pretty bad. It's like however bad Find The Path is for getting through a maze, Hypercognition is worse, for EVERYTHING. It quite explicitly states that if you have a problem, you figure out the solution. And even suggests that if there is no way you could figure out the solution, you do anyway. What's a DM to do?

[jindra34]

Are psionic powers candidates? Because Hypercognition is pretty bad. It's like however bad Find The Path is for getting through a maze, Hypercognition is worse, for EVERYTHING. It quite explicitly states that if you have a problem, you figure out the solution. And even suggests that if there is no way you could figure out the solution, you do anyway. What's a DM to do?

Knowing a solution (or even worse the BEST solution) does not in fact mean that you can act on it. Or that it won't create even bigger problems.

[Eurus]

Anyone that does not reply with Mage's Disjunction either doesn't really understand what it does, or is lying. Or they figure "well, games don't go that high in level anyway..."

It's no contest. Thread title should really be "The most hated spell...after Mage's Disjunction"

Aside from what you said. Really, really look at the spell. Who does it hurt the most?
a) Those who rely the most on magic items
b) Those who have the hardest time replacing magic items (ie, can't craft them)
c) Those with weak will saves

Guess what kinds of characters fit in ALL THREE FREAKING CATEGORIES? That's right! Your rogues and fighters of the world! Already the most underpowered party members! Not only is MD blatantly unfair and bs, it's practically a guided homing missile that targets the weak and pathetic.

And then there's the fact that even if you completely stripped away the permanent, item-destroying effects of the spell, it is *still* an auto-win dispel check against freaking everything within its big radius.

It's super duper ultra gigantic mondo wtf-were-they-thinking? with a cherry on top BROKEN.

I actually kind of like the idea of Disjunction as a perfect-dispel. I think it fills a necessary niche; it's entirely possible to boost your buffs to be utterly untouchable by conventional Greater Dispels, so Disjunction functions as an effective counter -- arguably the only viable counter -- against certain combinations.

Destroying magic items, on the other hand, is obnoxious, and rolling a will save for every magic item on your person is completely ridiculous. Just... ignore that entire part, really. >_>

[DarkEternal]

When I was a DM in a fairly high level campaign(early twenties), I really, really, REALLY hated Superior Invisibility. There are two versions. One is a level 9 spell that lasted an hour per level or something which was just absurd, the other lasted minutes per level or something. Still awful.

Especially when cast on a ranger who's already high enough level to move without a trace, and has all of his little abilities which basically means he could clear any dungeon solo, unless the mobs had True Sight(which they naturally had sooner or later since there was no real point in playing without it)


Also Shivering Touch. What's that? You have a badarse goliath or an awesome old dragon that can rend the world asunder? 'k, here is my touch attack and he now loses 3d6 DEX. One or two more of those and your awful dragon-giant-what have you that is huge is as good as dead.

[Arbane]

Mindrape. Whoever learns it first conquers the world, which would logically imply that someone has ALREADY learned it and taken over the world, and the only reason your PCs still have the illusion of free will is because you're still too insignificant to get mindraped YET.

Possibly the worst thing in a book that also has necrophilia-based feats.

[GoatBoy]

Web.

A spell that can single-handedly neutralize an otherwise significant threat is bad. But a second-level spell that can?

Web is the first and least of many way-too-powerful spells. It only gets worse from there.

[Animastryfe]

Anyone that does not reply with Mage's Disjunction either doesn't really understand what it does, or is lying. Or they figure "well, games don't go that high in level anyway..."

It's no contest. Thread title should really be "The most hated spell...after Mage's Disjunction"


They may be playing Pathfinder.

[Story]

What are good defenses against MDJ, besides "carry an artifact" or something impractical like that? Since the pulse kind of comes out toward you it logically affects things in succession, closest to the caster out, so there must be something you can do with that. Or Celerity+Useful Spell. Maybe Wall of Stone.

Would the standard Tinfoil hat work?



As a Player though? Most hated, even before Disjunction, would be Wish.

I never use it. It makes DMs get far too evil. But there's always SOMEONE in a group who will hunt down Djinns, or a Ring of Three Wishes, or learn the spell themselves. And invariably the game is pretty much over at that point. It always causes something so terribly bad that we might as well just call it a TPK.

I recognize it might fall under the category of DM screw. And DM screw is something else. But I think it's kinda safe because I've never seen a DM NOT go full monkey's paw mode with Wish. Everyone knows it. Everyone has horror stories about it. Still people use it.


That's why 3.5's Wish has an explicit list of safe effects. If your DM is going to deliberately ignore the rules out of old school nostalgia or whatever, it's important to discuss beforehand.

[TheCountAlucard]

Anyone that does not reply with Mage's Disjunction either doesn't really understand what it does, or is lying. Or they figure "well, games don't go that high in level anyway..."Or have other systems in mind when they stumbled into this thread by accident. :smallamused:


I've yet to face a Mage's Disjunction in-game, so I don't know its true horror. I expect that a spellcaster faced with it could always Celerity and Dimension Door out of the way?Assuming one both knows and has those spells prepped in a game where a GM allows the former, anyway.

But then again, the only time I got hit with it was when an epic-level Blue Dragon decided to screw over my mid-level Cleric. Luckily PrCing had boosted my Will save, so I only lost a couple of inconsequential wands.

[Pickford]

This thread could have been a rant about a DM (mine dm, of course), that shattered our group's gentlemen's agreement,but instead i'll try to turn it in something more... worth discussing.

Basically, what's the spell you hate the most, and why?

Mine, is probably mage's disjunction. A single spell that can easily cripple an entire group, even at high level. All the active spells are wiped away, you don't have protection from it, and most of all there's a very solid chance that a good portion of your magic items is gone. It's a single friggin spell that not only can change the course of a battle, but can really ruin a group.
You don't use it, cause it's stupid to break your potential loot, and the enemy can use it because they can decide to don't care.
Conclusion: it's a dangerous spell, it's overpowered and it can ruin the fun more than a killing.

Use it, that'll teach them not to invest in Will saving throws! ;) (muahahaha)

I'm not a big fan of charm person if only because I've found it gets treated as incite riot (i.e. when players/dms are incapable of separating their character knowledge and their player knowledge).

[Telok]

Mordenkainen's Disjunction is hate-worthy because its designers didn't understand the metagame.

Disjunction, Anti-Magic Field, Tenser's Transformation, and other such spells are legacy spells from the earlier editions. In those editions they did what they were supposed to.

By the time these sorts of spells came on line the characters were supposed to be lords of the land, bandit kings, and other sorts of famous hero end-game people. For Disjunction minor and moderate artifacts were expected to be part of the party gear or the plot. Anti-magic was a mage ploy to shut down other casters so the fighter could beat them down. And Tenser's turned you into a reasonable fighter because the wizards didn't get extra high level spells, running out of effective middle and high level spells happened back then.

The translation to 3rd and 3.5 changed things. Casters got more spells earlier and more easily, magic items became more critical to melee, artifacts almost disappeared from games. Plus the high level meta-game changed. 3.5 high level play is still focused on dungeons and standard combat encounters just like the lower levels but with bigger guns and more teleportation. The old spells that change your available options don't fit with this anymore because the current style is predicated on adding bigger and bigger numbers but not changing your options.

Essentially the old spells don't fit the new playstyle.

My beef is much more with the new spells that try to break or end-run the 3.5 paradigms. I have strong dislikes for Ebon Eyes (terribly written) and the Orb of Energy Type conjuration spells. These sorts of spells were written with full knowledge of the 3.5 system and are designed to be strictly more powerful than normal and obsolete higher level spells that were considered balanced.

[NeoPhoenix0]

disjunction is pretty bad but it is a 9th level spell. by that time there is all kinds of brokenness in the game.

ray of stupidity is a 2-level spell that is just plane broken and too early to be that broken. it is the only spell my group openly bans.

[Telonius]

Disjunction is D&D's mutually assured destruction. I've never seen it used for that reason.

The spell I hate most? Dispel Magic, either targeted on a creature or area effect. Nothing worse than having to hunt through several sourcebooks to figure out the caster level of all your magic items, or make a half-dozen rolls depending on how many buff spells you have active at the moment.

[Mithril Leaf]

Normally I'd say something like Ice Assassin or Disjunction, but I'm really feeling True Seeing right now. It's one of those spells that totally negates a big aspect of the game. Similar to that is Mind Blank, but it's more defensive so not quite as bad in my book. Any massive blanket immunities.

[Wookie-ranger]

All the spell that have been mentioned are very legitimate.

Personally as a DM its Genesis (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/genesis.htm).
The Magic (none-psionic) version. It makes players spend HOURS of their time (hopefully not game time) thinking about the perfect plane. What elements exist there? How does time flow? How long is a day? What is the exact composition of the air? I had a player once hand me a 6 page paper of 'his perfect plane'. It was VERY detailed to say the least! This may or may not have had something to do with the way I am about badly worded Wishes :smallamused:
And all that for me just to say: "this is going to break the game. please don't". We did come to an agreement, which was more a gentlemen's agreement, but it worked OK (one of the great benefits when playing with mature and reasonable people)
I don't mind if people use the spell in a reasonably manner, but even with a mediocre idea of planar mechanics it is easy to break the spell. In its simplest form: You need a certain material (gold/diamond/platinum/adamantine/etc)? simply make a plane made out of that material with a small pocket where you enter.


Honorable mention: Energy Transformation Field (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230105) This is for me the ONE most abusable spell there is. Is basically all the brokenness of the boon-traps in a nice and simple Level-7 spell.

[Urpriest]

Disjunction, Anti-Magic Field, Tenser's Transformation, and other such spells are legacy spells from the earlier editions. In those editions they did what they were supposed to.

By the time these sorts of spells came on line the characters were supposed to be lords of the land, bandit kings, and other sorts of famous hero end-game people. For Disjunction minor and moderate artifacts were expected to be part of the party gear or the plot. Anti-magic was a mage ploy to shut down other casters so the fighter could beat them down. And Tenser's turned you into a reasonable fighter because the wizards didn't get extra high level spells, running out of effective middle and high level spells happened back then.

The translation to 3rd and 3.5 changed things. Casters got more spells earlier and more easily, magic items became more critical to melee, artifacts almost disappeared from games. Plus the high level meta-game changed. 3.5 high level play is still focused on dungeons and standard combat encounters just like the lower levels but with bigger guns and more teleportation. The old spells that change your available options don't fit with this anymore because the current style is predicated on adding bigger and bigger numbers but not changing your options.

Essentially the old spells don't fit the new playstyle.

My beef is much more with the new spells that try to break or end-run the 3.5 paradigms. I have strong dislikes for Ebon Eyes (terribly written) and the Orb of Energy Type conjuration spells. These sorts of spells were written with full knowledge of the 3.5 system and are designed to be strictly more powerful than normal and obsolete higher level spells that were considered balanced.

They wrote the new metagame, though. They knew that high level characters would be bedecked in items because they wrote the WBL tables, random loot tables, and NPC gear guidelines that covered that. They knew that melee characters' AC scaled with items while their attack scaled by class because they wrote that mechanic. So some aspects of the metagame really should have been more evident at first.

[Rubik]

What are good defenses against MDJ, besides "carry an artifact" or something impractical like that? Since the pulse kind of comes out toward you it logically affects things in succession, closest to the caster out, so there must be something you can do with that. Or Celerity+Useful Spell. Maybe Wall of Stone.You have questions? We have answers!

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=278656

[Soranar]

I agree that disjunction is completely broken, however I've seen it blow up in the caster's face before: I was playing a high level paladin and I got in over my head by attacking a demilich (I had an holy avenger and a very low sense of self preservation)

The demilich cast mage's disjunction to remove my flight ability and take me out of the fight but it, inavertently, destroyed an artifact I was carrying which

A : destroyed it's spellcasting ability
B : pissed off Mystra, as it was her shield

That completely screwed our campaign mind, the demilich was supposed to be the big bad for a while and I was expecting to die while distracting the thing while my group escaped

Instead I lost all my gear but ''won'' the encounter.

Personally I think my worst spells are all the summoning spells , in every form (from astral construct to summon monster/elemental/nature's ally, anything really)

meatshields that don't need to survive are just a bit too useful for my taste

[Stea1k]

As a player who loves to use the Illusion school, True Seeing is by and large the most frustrating spell in the game. An antimagic field is similarly annoying, but at least it tends to be stationary or cause problems for everyone. How do you, as an Illusionist, beat a spell that automatically sees through all of your spells as long as the person can see? It completely nullifies an entire school of magic. Even if you use a fog cloud to stop it, guess what else the enemy doesn't see until they are within 5 ft of it, and still they see through it.

Sure you can say that shadow magic still affects things, but if the person auto saves on the will save because of a single spell (without interaction no less), now they just reduced the effects by 2/5's minimum (not including feats, of course) before possible saves.

[Scow2]

The problem I suspect with spells like Gate, Disjunction, Genesis, and Wish is that they're Epic Spells dancing around in ninth-level spell slots. Gate, Disjunction, and Wish are all spells that probably should be cast throughout a campaign - but not as Business-as-usual.


All the spell that have been mentioned are very legitimate.

Personally as a DM its Genesis (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/genesis.htm).
The Magic (none-psionic) version. It makes players spend HOURS of their time (hopefully not game time) thinking about the perfect plane. What elements exist there? How does time flow? How long is a day? What is the exact composition of the air? I had a player once hand me a 6 page paper of 'his perfect plane'. It was VERY detailed to say the least! This may or may not have had something to do with the way I am about badly worded Wishes :smallamused:
And all that for me just to say: "this is going to break the game. please don't". We did come to an agreement, which was more a gentlemen's agreement, but it worked OK (one of the great benefits when playing with mature and reasonable people)
I don't mind if people use the spell in a reasonably manner, but even with a mediocre idea of planar mechanics it is easy to break the spell. In its simplest form: You need a certain material (gold/diamond/platinum/adamantine/etc)? simply make a plane made out of that material with a small pocket where you enter. Contrary to common knowledge, Genesis doesn't work that way. This became clear when compared to the planar manipulation abilities of Gods. You can select the environment: Atmosphere, water, temperature, and general shape. It doesn't say you can select specific material composition. You also can't select its timeflow - something not even demigods can do.

[rockdeworld]

My beef is much more with the new spells that try to break or end-run the 3.5 paradigms. I have strong dislikes for Ebon Eyes (terribly written) and the Orb of Energy Type conjuration spells. These sorts of spells were written with full knowledge of the 3.5 system and are designed to be strictly more powerful than normal and obsolete higher level spells that were considered balanced.
I first read that as "...designed to be strictly more powerful than normal and obsolete higher level spells." Heh, English. :smallamused:

I haven't personally felt the effects of Dysjunction, so I don't have any hatred for it. The spells I dislike the most are the weak ones that are written like they should be good, but actually suck, like Aid or Chill Touch.

[Snowbluff]

I've been on the receiving end of an Adamantine Clockwork Horror's Disjunction. Not fun.

Choll Touch is a pretty efficient MM seed, especially for Poison Spell and Fell Drain.

[navar100]

After Disjunction, I'll say Wish. Wish is the DM's excuse to screw over a player's character. The player has his own responsibility. As long as a player is not trying to Win D&D, the DM should let the Wish happen as intended.

[Scow2]

After Disjunction, I'll say Wish. Wish is the DM's excuse to screw over a player's character. The player has his own responsibility. As long as a player is not trying to Win D&D, the DM should let the Wish happen as intended.By RAW and RAI, the only time the granting of a Wish can be twisted into a negative effect is if it's used to accomplish something more powerful than the proscribed uses of the spells. Trying to screw someone over who's using it within those defined parameters is just as valid as screwing over any other character for doing a routine thing because they didn't Lawyerspeak it.

[Emperor Tippy]

Why don't people get that Wish abuse and Disjunction cancel each other out?

You are supposed to have WBL pretty much all the time. So you get hit with Disjunction and loose your gear, then five minutes after the fight you use Wish abuse to get all new gear to bring you back up to WBL.

Loosing items isn't some permanent penalty, it's not like WBL is how much money you are supposed to have made over your career, it's how much you are supposed to have at any given point in time.

Recognize that and realize that Disjunction is just another tactic to use in high level D&D and that it should be used. All those buffs and persistent spells people bitch about? All those complaints about over powered builds based on magic items? They exist because neither the players nor the DM is willing to use the counter that exists right in the core rules.

Besides, it's easy to defend against Disjunction if you bother to plan and prepare at all.

[Rubik]

Why don't people get that Wish abuse and Disjunction cancel each other out?

You are supposed to have WBL pretty much all the time. So you get hit with Disjunction and loose your gear, then five minutes after the fight you use Wish abuse to get all new gear to bring you back up to WBL.

Loosing items isn't some permanent penalty, it's not like WBL is how much money you are supposed to have made over your career, it's how much you are supposed to have at any given point in time.

Recognize that and realize that Disjunction is just another tactic to use in high level D&D and that it should be used. All those buffs and persistent spells people bitch about? All those complaints about over powered builds based on magic items? They exist because neither the players nor the DM is willing to use the counter that exists right in the core rules.

Besides, it's easy to defend against Disjunction if you bother to plan and prepare at all.Even juggling Disjunction with Wish, that's a LOT of time and effort that will have to go into kitting your character out with junk. I mean, I love doing so, but throwing out everything you've got (including macguffins and important plot-and-character-centric items which you've spent the entire campaign tracking down) is a serious undertaking for the effects of a single spell.

Plus it does obsolete the aforementioned macguffins, etc. What if my character's original primary goal was to obtain an item, and a lot of emotional investment went into it? Now it's gone and there's no way to bring it back, especially if it's an intelligent item.

[TuggyNE]

As a side note, a recent thread brought up a surprising problem with golems: they're explicitly magic items (CL and all), and thus vulnerable to dispel magic, never mind disjunction. How do you like that Will save-or-die? :smalltongue:

[Killer Angel]

Use it, that'll teach them not to invest in Will saving throws! ;) (muahahaha)

I know you're joking, but at 17th lev., for almost all the "mundane" classes, aka rogue, fignter, and so on, the basis for a will save is +5. Even optimizing, will be hard to reliably beat that DC 32-33 (that could be easily higher).

That said, I'll add a +1 to the orb line. Conj is already strong, and evocation weak. So yeah, seems a good idea to give conj also one of the most abusable and reliable way to do direct damage.
The orb line, is a perfect example of designers that don't know what they're doing.
Not counting that orb of force, that absolutely is not magical... :smallsigh:

[Susano-wo]

RE golems, I think it was pointed out that that is only during creation? I dunno, not 100% on that myself...though they are magic immune, yes? I owuld think that would make dispell and disjunction not be effective

RE WBL: no, WBL is not what you are supposed to have, at any given time, no matter what. WBL is what they estimate you should have by then, given treasure standards from monsters, and accounting for some consumable use.

You can use WBL like that, and its probably best to, at least to some degree, since monster CRs, etc assume you have WBL, but that's not what WBL *is* (also, isn't wishing for all your disjunctioned stuff a GM screwable wish?)
Also, also, would you do the other way around? if a character somehow got more than WBL, would you make them lose gear or not gain gear until they were up to WBL?

[NeoPhoenix0]

As a side note, a recent thread brought up a surprising problem with golems: they're explicitly magic items (CL and all), and thus vulnerable to dispel magic, never mind disjunction. How do you like that Will save-or-die? :smalltongue:

no, magic items are generally vulnerable to dispel magic and disjunction. golems are specifically immune to magic unless otherwise stated in their stat block. specific trumps general.

[Jon_Dahl]

disjunction is pretty bad but it is a 9th level spell. by that time there is all kinds of brokenness in the game.

ray of stupidity is a 2-level spell that is just plane broken and too early to be that broken. it is the only spell my group openly bans.

This is true. Eventhough MD is by far the worst spell, it's still not the spell I hate the most because our games never go that high. MD has no relevance for me. It's just a bunch of words in Player's Handbook that will never affect my games.

I'd say that I hate Detect Evil the most. You scan around and you immediately know who the bad guy is. Very easy to use, convenient to the extreme. This spell robs lots of intrigue from D&D. When it comes to cloak & dagger sort of games, this is the worst offender.
Of course you can use Undetectable Alignment, but it's not available for all classes or monsters.

[TuggyNE]

no, magic items are generally vulnerable to dispel magic and disjunction. golems are specifically immune to magic unless otherwise stated in their stat block. specific trumps general.

That would be great if it were true, but golems are only immune to spells that allow spell resistance. Neither (greater) dispel magic nor Mordenkainen's disjunction, however, are SR: Yes. No immunity therefore applies, or can apply.

[Killer Angel]

That would be great if it were true, but golems are only immune to spells that allow spell resistance. Neither (greater) dispel magic nor Mordenkainen's disjunction, however, are SR: Yes. No immunity therefore applies, or can apply.

I missed that thread... but aren't golem (and constructs) considered creatures?
They're not strictly "magic items"...

[Harrow]

no, magic items are generally vulnerable to dispel magic and disjunction. golems are specifically immune to magic unless otherwise stated in their stat block. specific trumps general.

Note that 'magic immune' means they are just treated as having arbitrarily high spell resistance. This is important to remember, because it means that a golem inside of an anti-magic field can be hit with an Orb spell without any problem, as long as it isn't one of the elements that heals them.

But everyone knows the Orb spells were poorly written and should be made Evocation. The spell I probably take issue with the most would be True Strike, because of how it effects the metagame, specifically the custom item creation guidelines. Most spells, when run through the guidelines, aren't too bad in most applications. But everyone always sees the rules and jumps straight to "Constant Effect True Strike is way too inexpensive, these rules allow way too much abuse". I understand these rules can be used for abuse, and players are going to naturally only use them when it benefits them most, but I don't think they are as bad as most people seem to think they are after they think up that example, which just about everyone seems to do independently.

[Curmudgeon]

Mordenkainen's Disjunction doesn't just destroy magic items; it destroys the game.

The spell destroys magic items if a Will save is failed. Any attended magic item uses the attending character's save, or the item's if that's higher. Who wouldn't check every single item's Will save to make sure they're using the right value, especially if their character's save is low? I've seen just the book lookup part of this exercise take two full hours because most people don't record the book name and page number of all their magic items.
In what order are the checks made? The spell doesn't specify. Do you really want your items affected before your adjacent companion — you know, the one who thought ahead and has a contingent Antimagic Field? Personally, I'd much prefer they start with those useless cursed artifacts we've been dragging around specifically for this very spell. Start the argument, now.
What happens to items in magical containers which fail their saves? Start the next argument.
Are extradimensional spaces affected by burst spells? Here's the following argument, for when those magical containers make their saves.

In all my years of playing D&D I've only seen this spell used 4 times, every time by a DM. I've never seen a campaign continue, even for a single session, after the spell was used; nobody would ever show up again, and usually would refuse to play with that same person as DM (and sometimes as a player).

[The Grue]

I once played a rogue in a party where the druid kept threatening to cast Faerie Fire on me.

Though that's probably more a comment on the guy playing the druid than the spell itself.

[Killer Angel]

Why don't people get that Wish abuse and Disjunction cancel each other out?

Wish abuse is an high limit of TO. The fact that MD is a valid counter to a thing that normally should be never seen in real play, IMO tells a lot.


realize that Disjunction is just another tactic to use in high level D&D and that it should be used.

To survive MD, you need to be high Op and ready for it.
But anyone can use MD, you don't need combo or even the ability to use it correctly, it's a single spell. Take a standard DM and a standard group, and you'll have only nasty results.
It's a bad spell, that casually happens to be usable to counter certain things, that weren't intended for by the designers...

[Urpriest]

I missed that thread... but aren't golem (and constructs) considered creatures?
They're not strictly "magic items"...

Yeah, Golems are crafted like magic items, but afterwards are not magic items in any sense. They work in an AMF and everything. A functioning Golem is entirely nonmagical, much like an elemental.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Mordenkainen's Disjunction doesn't just destroy magic items; it destroys the game.

The spell destroys magic items if a Will save is failed. Any attended magic item uses the attending character's save, or the item's if that's higher. Who wouldn't check every single item's Will save to make sure they're using the right value, especially if their character's save is low? I've seen just the book lookup part of this exercise take two full hours because most people don't record the book name and page number of all their magic items.
In what order are the checks made? The spell doesn't specify. Do you really want your items affected before your adjacent companion — you know, the one who thought ahead and has a contingent Antimagic Field? Personally, I'd much prefer they start with those useless cursed artifacts we've been dragging around specifically for this very spell. Start the argument, now.
What happens to items in magical containers which fail their saves? Start the next argument.
Are extradimensional spaces affected by burst spells? Here's the following argument, for when those magical containers make their saves.

In all my years of playing D&D I've only seen this spell used 4 times, every time by a DM. I've never seen a campaign continue, even for a single session, after the spell was used; nobody would ever show up again, and usually would refuse to play with that same person as DM (and sometimes as a player).

Exactly. It is quite literally the nuclear option.

There is no other single spell, feat, ability, ANYTHING that changes things so suddenly, dramatically, and permanently. Nor any other thing that will drudge up such a strong, emotional reaction from players. I can certainly see it ending a game. I would absolutely seek to leave a game if a DM ever used it on our party. Even if I personally did not lose a single magic item. Just the very idea of it is insulting down to the core.

There are just certain things you do not do in polite society.

[ArcturusV]

It's like that joker who, after spending two hours setting up the board for World War 3... they use a Cruise missile on turn one, set off nuclear Armageddon, and boom. Game over. :smallsigh:

[TuggyNE]

I missed that thread... but aren't golem (and constructs) considered creatures?
They're not strictly "magic items"...

I can't remember what the topic was, unfortunately, and a few quick searches didn't turn anything up. :smallsigh:


The characteristics of a golem that come from its nature as a magic item (caster level, prerequisite feats and spells, market price, cost to create) are given in summary form at the end of each golem’s description.

So their nature is that of a magic item.


All magical effects and magic items within the radius of the spell, except for those that you carry or touch, are disjoined.


Yeah, Golems are crafted like magic items, but afterwards are not magic items in any sense. They work in an AMF and everything. A functioning Golem is entirely nonmagical, much like an elemental.

Hmm. Intelligent magic items also function (at least to some degree) in an AMF, right? Are they no longer magic items? (Note that they, as well as golems, are unable to use any Su, Sp, or overtly magical abilities they might have.)

Yeah, originally I was against this interpretation, but it seems hard to ignore.

[rockdeworld]

isn't wishing for all your disjunctioned stuff a GM screwable wish?)
No, one of the safe uses of wish is "Undo misfortune" which can include being hit with Disjunction. Even if your DM rules that that wish can only be used on rolls within the last round, another safe use of wish is to create a 25,000gp item. 122 wishes can restore a party of 4 to full WBL, assuming everything they had was magical and they failed all their saves.


Wish abuse is an high limit of TO.
It seems to me that it is not. From what I've seen, wish is one of the first things people try to abuse, and the one attempted most often. The Wish (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Wish_and_the_Word_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Bu ild)#The_Wish) is at the high limit of TO, but the spell is not. If you mean it's rarely if ever allowed in a game, I have not had the same experience.

[TiaC]

Bestow Power and Syncronicity(sp?), for being the core of most broken psionic tricks.

[PlusSixPelican]

I've never been too fond of anything with the [Evil] descriptor, mostly because I'll never, ever get to cast them. Ever. And some of them are err, AWESOME. This has more to do with how games go than the actual spells.

[Sith_Happens]

I've never been too fond of anything with the [Evil] descriptor, mostly because I'll never, ever get to cast them. Ever. And some of them are err, AWESOME. This has more to do with how games go than the actual spells.

You should try an arcane caster some time. They don't have that problem.:smallwink:

[Thiyr]

Things that give outright immunity tend to be things I take issue with. Most of all, Freedom of Movement, though true seeing as well. That you can cast a single spell and entire builds, classes, methods of fighting are rendered irrelevant without a chance to contest it rubs me the wrong way. I certainly don't mind the concept, but they go a step too far imo.

(Only reason I don't hate MDJ is because I haven't been in a game which was at a point it could be cast, in a group that would never consider using it if they got to that point. I pretty much forget it exists at this point.)

[ArcturusV]

Eh, another reason to hate the "Immunity: Something" spells like that is there's always going to be some situation where the table starts arguing about how two things that explicitly say something counter to one another interact.

So you have Foresight up. Cannot ever be surprised.

I'm a level 10 Iajutsu Master, I have "Get a free surprise round, even if the enemy is aware of you".

... I've seen that one go into a 3 hour long argument over what in fact happens.

"Well I can't be surprised! I knew it was coming!"
"But I get a surprise round against you even if you knew I was coming!"

And you'll hear that over and over and over.

Similarly with things like Mind-Blank versus Illusion spells or the few enchantments that don't actually have the "Mind Affecting" tag.

[Neo Tin Robo]

Celerity. I've never seen anyone take this spell who didn't fully intend to abuse it to the utmost.

It's already the ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card, but then they always try to finagle some means of immunity to the dazed condition. It gets even worse with Greater Celerity, where they're counteracting things that haven't even happened yet.

[Sith_Happens]

So you have Foresight up. Cannot ever be surprised.

I'm a level 10 Iajutsu Master, I have "Get a free surprise round, even if the enemy is aware of you".

... I've seen that one go into a 3 hour long argument over what in fact happens.

"Well I can't be surprised! I knew it was coming!"
"But I get a surprise round against you even if you knew I was coming!"

And you'll hear that over and over and over.

That one's easy. There's a surprise round because the Iaijitsu Master always gets a surprise round. Both characters get to act in said surprise round, because neither of them are surprised. Anyone else who was hoping to take part in the fight needs to wait until regular initiative (unless of course they also have Foresight and/or are a Iaijitsu Master).

[Story]

I'd say that I hate Detect Evil the most. You scan around and you immediately know who the bad guy is. Very easy to use, convenient to the extreme. This spell robs lots of intrigue from D&D. When it comes to cloak & dagger sort of games, this is the worst offender.
Of course you can use Undetectable Alignment, but it's not available for all classes or monsters.

That depends on how your group handles alignment. I think some books suggest that a third of the normal population is evil, which means there's no easy way to tell who's the bad guy and who's just another civilian.




There is no other single spell, feat, ability, ANYTHING that changes things so suddenly, dramatically, and permanently. Nor any other thing that will drudge up such a strong, emotional reaction from players. I can certainly see it ending a game. I would absolutely seek to leave a game if a DM ever used it on our party. Even if I personally did not lose a single magic item. Just the very idea of it is insulting down to the core.

There are just certain things you do not do in polite society.

Deck of Many Things is also a pretty potent campaign ender (and possibly group ender), but as an artifact, it's explicitly under DM purview.


You should try an arcane caster some time. They don't have that problem.:smallwink:

Not if your DM decides that casting an evil spell instantly makes you evil. Still annoyed that my PF DM won't let me cast Infernal Healing.


That one's easy. There's a surprise round because the Iaijitsu Master always gets a surprise round. Both characters get to act in said surprise round, because neither of them are surprised. Anyone else who was hoping to take part in the fight needs to wait until regular initiative (unless of course they also have Foresight and/or are a Iaijitsu Master).

But what if you have a Dire Tortoise Iajitsu Master against a Divine Oracle with Foresight?

[Lapak]

All the most obvious candidates have been discussed at length, but I'd like to throw another vote in for the Orb spells, because:

1. They should really be in another school
Everything the Orbs do is energy-blasting-based, yet they sit in Conjuration rather than Evocation - making Conjuration substantially more powerful than it already is and making Evocation an afterthought. Why are they there? That's so that they have an excuse for reason 2:

2. They ignore Spell Resistance
This doesn't make sense fluff-wise (it's a nonmagical fire that burns hotter than other nonmagical fire! It's a non-magical ball of pure magical force!(?) ) and it's stupidly overpowered considering reason 3:

3. They show up at low level
Bypassing SR with a level 1 spell i.e. bypassing an entire, rare, expensive defensive mechanism with a level 1 spell? That's absurd.

I don't have a problem with the orbs beyond the Conjuration aspect and SR:No. They could be moved to Evocation (giving those two schools FAR better balance) and be SR:Yes and still serve a useful purpose - they are blasting attacks that also tack on a debuff and they are blasting attacks that target Touch AC rather than Reflex saves. Those are two very good features already! The Orbs would be plenty useful with just that!

So Orbs are right up there on the 'most hated' list for me.

[Seer_of_Heart]

This is true. Eventhough MD is by far the worst spell, it's still not the spell I hate the most because our games never go that high. MD has no relevance for me. It's just a bunch of words in Player's Handbook that will never affect my games.

I'd say that I hate Detect Evil the most. You scan around and you immediately know who the bad guy is. Very easy to use, convenient to the extreme. This spell robs lots of intrigue from D&D. When it comes to cloak & dagger sort of games, this is the worst offender.
Of course you can use Undetectable Alignment, but it's not available for all classes or monsters.

Easy, for humans roughly 1/3 of them should be evil. That's because humans aren't predisposed by RAW and it makes logical sense for people's feelings to be spread out over the alignment spectrum.

[Ramza00]

Would Mage's Disjunction be that bad that instead of destroying magic items, it just suppresses the magic inside them for 24 hours instead?

[Story]

That's basically what Pathfinder did, and it's a lot more reasonable.

Still really annoying, but now people might actually consider using the spell.

[rockdeworld]

Would Mage's Disjunction be that bad that instead of destroying magic items, it just suppresses the magic inside them for 24 hours instead?
No, that is a reasonable change. The reason Disjunction is bad isn't because it ends battles; it's because it ends games. If it only lasts for awhile, you can suddenly use it on bad guy equipment, and it's only temporarily (instead of permanently) devastating if used on you.

[Bakeru]

Easy, for humans roughly 1/3 of them should be evil. That's because humans aren't predisposed by RAW and it makes logical sense for people's feelings to be spread out over the alignment spectrum.I'd argue that humans have slightly neutral tendencies, but I'd still give them 1/4 evil and 1/4 good.
Still, in D&D, humans are definitely not "inherently good", so good/evil should have a pretty even split - if you have random good people walking around, there are bound to be evil people (who might just be to careful/scared of the law to actually do "big" evil things).

[StreamOfTheSky]

Would Mage's Disjunction be that bad that instead of destroying magic items, it just suppresses the magic inside them for 24 hours instead?

It would be infinitely less bad.

It would still mean at best the party needs to beat a hasty, teleporting retreat and at worst a TPK. And if you were on a time-sensitive mission, being forcibly removed from action for a full 24 hours automatically (there's a save, but the noncasters are going to fail it enough times for it to effectively be a "no save, just lose" spell), with no guarantee when you return the same enemy won't just cast it on you again anyway.

I suppose on a time-sensitive mission the casters could just ditch the now-literally instead of perviously-figuratively worthless noncasters and accomplish it on their own. But I don't think the noncaster players would enjoy that session much.

[Killer Angel]

It seems to me that it is not. From what I've seen, wish is one of the first things people try to abuse, and the one attempted most often.

It depends on what you intend for "abuse".
When I hear about wish abuse, i tend to think to gate loop, or any mean that lets cast the spell, without the limitations of xps expenditure. Things that break D&D.
Wish abuse is often discussed, but it's rarely played at full potential.


Would Mage's Disjunction be that bad that instead of destroying magic items, it just suppresses the magic inside them for 24 hours instead?

It would be a whole different world...

[Mr Adventurer]

True story time!

I was in a game once that ran from 10th to 21st level. Faerun. The premise was that the Red Wizards got uppity, invaded the world, and we were some of the key players opposing them.

The first thing we did was houserule MDJ (with a rule that was quickly adopted in all other games where the spell wasn't outright banned): there's no Will save but magic items are automatically suppressed as though by a targeted Dispel Magic (that is, for 1d4 rounds). Still devastating in the high-buff context of high level 3.5, but not the awful thing it is as RAW.

It was STILL so useful that it became the go-to tactic for PCs and antagonists alike. I was playing a cleric with the ACF where you build your own domain from a restricted set of arcane spells; my 9th level pick was MDJ. People on both sides - our wizard and theirs - started optimising for counterspelling, to prevent the opponent's MDJ from ever going off. Our wizard developed the very clever tactic of preparing a Quickened Wall of Force; sure it was another 9th level slot but he could drop it in front of an enemy caster, thus blocking line of effect for the purposes of counterspelling, then go ahead and cast his MDJ - which would disjoin his own Wall of Force and spread on to hit the target wizard.

We called the whole game Disjunction Wars, and still do to this day, even though we did loads of epic stuff throughout the campaign.

And then we hit level 21, I took my first level of Hierophant (awesome epic level PRC for clerics BTW) and picked up Disjunction as a spell-like ability. Spell-likes can't be counterspelled. It was like I'd invented a new kind of nuke.

Disjunction Wars was a good fun game with some excellent adventures. But nobody wants to go to Disjunction War again.

[Chained Birds]

The Shivering Touch line of spells. Man I hate it when mages hit an Ability Score that is either extremely high and essential (Dex-Focused Builds) or something that is usually kept around the 10-14 area. In either situation, you are crippling or incapacitating a character with just a Touch Attack (Or a Ranged Touch Attack with Reach).
Mostly I just hate how this spell can be used quite early in a Mage's journey and can end many BBEGs without too much effort.

[Calimehter]

Celerity. I've never seen anyone take this spell who didn't fully intend to abuse it to the utmost.

It's already the ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card, but then they always try to finagle some means of immunity to the dazed condition. It gets even worse with Greater Celerity, where they're counteracting things that haven't even happened yet.

Heh, that last bit reminded me of a GURPS character from long ago who had a form of precognitive quick-draw.

DM: You are sitting in a chair, reading a nice book and minding your own business, when suddenly you draw your gun.

Player: Aw, shuuuuuuucks

----------------------

On topic, I'll have to agree with those who have mentioned divinations, especially things like Commune. The big problem IMO is that they can require a DM to come up with answers that he has not thought out ahead of time. Shooting from the hip or telling the player "give me time to think about it" are not especially satisfactory answers.

Then there is the abuse resulting from repeated castings to "triangulate" in on a more specific answer than the spell is designed for. Its an amusing logic exercise I suppose, and legal by RAW, but there's just something about tugging on the skirts of omniscient beings and asking "why??" a zillion times that just seems to be begging for a time-out or other suitable punishment. Luckily, no player has called me on that one yet. :smallcool:


I get the arguements for MDJ, but it does only cover a small subset of games, and there are plenty of other problems with high level play that *also* need solving and/or gentlemens' agreements, so it actually doesn't bother me as much.

[Snowbluff]

1. They should really be in another school
Everything the Orbs do is energy-blasting-based, yet they sit in Conjuration rather than Evocation - making Conjuration substantially more powerful than it already is and making Evocation an afterthought. Why are they there? That's so that they have an excuse for reason 2:

2. They ignore Spell Resistance
This doesn't make sense fluff-wise (it's a nonmagical fire that burns hotter than other nonmagical fire! It's a non-magical ball of pure magical force!(?) ) and it's stupidly overpowered considering reason 3:

3. They show up at low level
Bypassing SR with a level 1 spell i.e. bypassing an entire, rare, expensive defensive mechanism with a level 1 spell? That's absurd.

I don't have a problem with the orbs beyond the Conjuration aspect and SR:No. They could be moved to Evocation (giving those two schools FAR better balance) and be SR:Yes and still serve a useful purpose - they are blasting attacks that also tack on a debuff and they are blasting attacks that target Touch AC rather than Reflex saves. Those are two very good features already! The Orbs would be plenty useful with just that!

So Orbs are right up there on the 'most hated' list for me.

I have never seen such a spell before! (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/acidArrow.htm) There are other examples, but whatevs.

[Arbane]

By RAW and RAI, the only time the granting of a Wish can be twisted into a negative effect is if it's used to accomplish something more powerful than the proscribed uses of the spells. Trying to screw someone over who's using it within those defined parameters is just as valid as screwing over any other character for doing a routine thing because they didn't Lawyerspeak it.

I can top that: I heard of a game where the GM screwed over someone else's character because of a wish.

Chump: "I wish I was as strong as the fighter!"
Killer GM: "Okay. The fighter now ALSO has Strength 8."
Fighter's player: :smallfurious:

[hamishspence]

I'd argue that humans have slightly neutral tendencies, but I'd still give them 1/4 evil and 1/4 good.

That's a bit more than "slightly": a monster with those alignment proportions would be tagged "Often neutral (any)" and be on the borderline between that and "Usually neutral (any)"

[Suddo]

Why don't people get that Wish abuse and Disjunction cancel each other out?

You are supposed to have WBL pretty much all the time. So you get hit with Disjunction and loose your gear, then five minutes after the fight you use Wish abuse to get all new gear to bring you back up to WBL.

Loosing items isn't some permanent penalty, it's not like WBL is how much money you are supposed to have made over your career, it's how much you are supposed to have at any given point in time.

Recognize that and realize that Disjunction is just another tactic to use in high level D&D and that it should be used. All those buffs and persistent spells people bitch about? All those complaints about over powered builds based on magic items? They exist because neither the players nor the DM is willing to use the counter that exists right in the core rules.

Besides, it's easy to defend against Disjunction if you bother to plan and prepare at all.

This is why I love reading Tippy's posts. He plays almost a completely different game than most and its always interesting to see his opinion from the other side of the looking glass (so to speak). He actually plays games, from my understanding, that are very close to a tippyverse. He assumes players wish abuse after a certain level which means spells like Disjunction are totally within reason. He also plays WBL as a RAW your character has this much magic on them or they explode rather than an arguable RAI guideline.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I think most of us play in games where WBL is at least attempted to be closely followed. Most of us just don't play in games where if you suddenly and permanently lose 200,000 gp of crap, you'll have found replacements for all of it by the next session.

And yeah, I'm pretty sure most of us don't play in wish economy games. And even using Wish RAW to "undo misfortune" is dicey, what with the time limit on it. You'd have to have it prepared and ready to cast on your very next turn, and even then by RAW it probably does nothing to help.


•Undo misfortune. A wish can undo a single recent event. The wish forces a reroll of any roll made within the last round (including your last turn). Reality reshapes itself to accommodate the new result. For example, a wish could undo an opponent’s successful save, a foe’s successful critical hit (either the attack roll or the critical roll), a friend’s failed save, and so on. The reroll, however, may be as bad as or worse than the original roll. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.

One failed save. ONE.

The "spell" that would actually completely counteract MDJ...or rather, put the party into an infinite loop of having it cast on them until the psionic PC ran out of pp or the party figured out a way to actually stop the MDJ from happening would be Time Regression (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/timeRegression.htm)


You can regress apparent time 1 round into the past. In effect, you “replay” the previous round of activity. The power regresses time to the point along the time stream just prior to your previous turn, undoing the effects of everyone else’s actions in the meantime. Once you have used time regression, only you retain knowledge of what happened during the round that is being replayed; however, you can communicate that knowledge verbally to your companions, if desired. During the round that you live through a second time, you can act on knowledge you previously gained by already living through the immediate future. In all likelihood, you’ll probably not choose to manifest time regression during your second pass through the time stream, instead taking completely new actions, but you pay the XP cost all the same.

[Nettlekid]

I think what he meant by Wish-abuse getting back your stuff is, you get MDJed, then you retreat to safety, chant Pazuzu three times, grab a Candle of Invocation, chain-gate Efreeti or Solars or whatever you want, and wish for replacements for all your magic items one by one. Or something to that effect. At which point, if you're doing that, why are you playing the game?

[Venger]

You should try an arcane caster some time. They don't have that problem.:smallwink:

or play in eberron. or roll ur-priest. or chameleon. or archivist.

[Bakeru]

That's a bit more than "slightly": a monster with those alignment proportions would be tagged "Often neutral (any)" and be on the borderline between that and "Usually neutral (any)"It doesn't matter either way. "Often" is 40%-50%, "Usually" is more than 50%.
A totally even distribution already makes human "Usually Neutral (Any)", since 5/9 (55.55...%) of all humans would at least have one part of their alignment as neutral.

However, humans wouldn't be "Alignment: [Often/Usually] True Neutral", neither in the original, nor in my version.

The full spread in my version would be:
1/16 LG, 1/8 NG, 1/16 CG,
1/8 LN, 1/4 TN, 1/8 CN,
1/16 LE, 1/8 NE, 1/16 CE.
With variances depending on local culture.

Which would still have Humans as clearly "Alignment: Usually Neutral (Any)", given that 75% have at least one part of their alignment neutral, but with only 25% "True Neutral", they don't even qualify as "Often True Neutral"

Given that the majority of humans doesn't care about things, I don't see a problem with that.

[Lord Haart]

Heh, that last bit reminded me of a GURPS character from long ago who had a form of precognitive quick-draw.

DM: You are sitting in a chair, reading a nice book and minding your own business, when suddenly you draw your gun.

Player: Aw, shuuuuuuucksThat actually sounds pretty awesome.

[Snowbluff]

That actually sounds pretty awesome.

1) You draw your gun.
2) Jumpy person sees you brandishing a weapon and attacks you.
3) You were attacked, causing the quickdraw to happen in step one.

Sounds awful.

[Doug Lampert]

This is true. Eventhough MD is by far the worst spell, it's still not the spell I hate the most because our games never go that high. MD has no relevance for me. It's just a bunch of words in Player's Handbook that will never affect my games.

I'd say that I hate Detect Evil the most. You scan around and you immediately know who the bad guy is. Very easy to use, convenient to the extreme. This spell robs lots of intrigue from D&D. When it comes to cloak & dagger sort of games, this is the worst offender.
Of course you can use Undetectable Alignment, but it's not available for all classes or monsters.

As others have pointed out: By the book roughly 1/3rd of all humans are Evil (note: this is clear since humans have no tendancy toward any alignment, not even nuetral). I tend to assume authority figures are MORE LIKELY to be ambitious bastards than most people. Thus if you use Detect Evil in the baroness's court about 70% of the people present ping.

Which one is the enemy agent?

One of the people pinging as evil is the baroness herself, who the party keeps thinking is Lawful Good even though she openly admits her alignment (she's a real bastard toward anyone she sees as an enemy and meets "in the field", but is quite nice to "her" people when she's at home).

Just how does this remove any intrigue? Especially given that the criminal may not be evil or may have an undetectable alignment spell and that someone who's not evil may ping due to being under the effect of a spell like Protection from Good. (It gives you the strength and location of auras, it does not actually give you anyone's alignment directly, just that there is an aura at their location, and the aura of a spell on a person has the same location as the person's aura.)

[Calimehter]

1) You draw your gun.
2) Jumpy person sees you brandishing a weapon and attacks you.
3) You were attacked, causing the quickdraw to happen in step one.

Sounds awful.

IIRC the character didn't get too far beyond the conceptual stage. I don't recall exactly how he fared in the game (there were a few false start campaigns around then) but his signature ability is still memorable years later - almost as memorable as a much longer-running character of mine that paid for large amounts of pyrokinesis by investing in paranoia and pyromania as disads.

I'm . . . not sure GURPS brought out the best in our gaming group, but it sure is fun to reminisce about. :smalltongue:

----------------------------------

Back to the original topic, I'd consider adding Explosive Runes to the list - certainly not in the top spot as "most hated spells" go but its got honorable mention in my book. Not only can you theoretically abuse the heck out of it for infinite damage, but even when played 'as intended' it can have a detrimental effect on the game. There was a stretch when our less-good-aligned members wanted to hire a professional "reader" along the lines of a professional taster after a criminal group kept trying to knock them off by sending couriers with trapped messages. It slowed the game down rather more than I expected it would. Maybe that doesn't make it worse than any other trap in the game (i.e. use it a couple of times and then watch PCs spend inordinate amounts of time searching everything for traps) but it got old when every single message to the PCs turned into a mini-drama before it was actually read.

[Scow2]

As others have pointed out: By the book roughly 1/3rd of all humans are Evil (note: this is clear since humans have no tendancy toward any alignment, not even nuetral). I tend to assume authority figures are MORE LIKELY to be ambitious bastards than most people. Thus if you use Detect Evil in the baroness's court about 70% of the people present ping.Alignment isn't evenly distributed among humans. While overall 33% of humans may be Evil, the actual demographics of a given location will probably be closer to less than 10% evil (If not lower), while another country (or a blighted city) has a 90% Evil human population.

[Urpriest]

So their nature is that of a magic item.

Hmm. Intelligent magic items also function (at least to some degree) in an AMF, right? Are they no longer magic items? (Note that they, as well as golems, are unable to use any Su, Sp, or overtly magical abilities they might have.)

Yeah, originally I was against this interpretation, but it seems hard to ignore.

That quote explicitly lists the traits of a golem that come from its nature as a magic item, and they are all traits that apply during the crafting, not afterwards. The implication is that all of a golem's other traits are due to its nature as a creature. There simply aren't any traits for MDJ to remove.

Intelligent magic items only (arguably) function in an AMF because they are constructs. In that they can function in an AMF, they are creatures, and cannot be destroyed by MDJ. MDJ can destroy any other features of said items however.

[Story]

Back to the original topic, I'd consider adding Explosive Runes to the list - certainly not in the top spot as "most hated spells" go but its got honorable mention in my book. Not only can you theoretically abuse the heck out of it for infinite damage, but even when played 'as intended' it can have a detrimental effect on the game. There was a stretch when our less-good-aligned members wanted to hire a professional "reader" along the lines of a professional taster after a criminal group kept trying to knock them off by sending couriers with trapped messages. It slowed the game down rather more than I expected it would. Maybe that doesn't make it worse than any other trap in the game (i.e. use it a couple of times and then watch PCs spend inordinate amounts of time searching everything for traps) but it got old when every single message to the PCs turned into a mini-drama before it was actually read.

There's a simple solution. Just use Pathfinder cantrip rules and have them cast Amaneunsis on everything, guaranteed to trigger the runes from a safe distance.

Alternatively, have them get high spot checks and read it from 20 feet away.

[TuggyNE]

That quote explicitly lists the traits of a golem that come from its nature as a magic item, and they are all traits that apply during the crafting, not afterwards. The implication is that all of a golem's other traits are due to its nature as a creature. There simply aren't any traits for MDJ to remove.

Intelligent magic items only (arguably) function in an AMF because they are constructs. In that they can function in an AMF, they are creatures, and cannot be destroyed by MDJ. MDJ can destroy any other features of said items however.

OK, now I'm really not sure what to think. :smalltongue:

That does sound plausible, but I dunno.

[Rubik]

There's a simple solution. Just use Pathfinder cantrip rules and have them cast Amaneunsis on everything, guaranteed to trigger the runes from a safe distance.

Alternatively, have them get high spot checks and read it from 20 feet away.Unfortunately, Explosive Runes affects you no matter how far away you are if you're able to read the text. You could even be on another plane and still take the damage, if you're able to view it from that far away.

[Venger]

Unfortunately, Explosive Runes affects you no matter how far away you are if you're able to read the text. You could even be on another plane and still take the damage, if you're able to view it from that far away.

as amusing as that would be for the dysfunctional rules thread, the text (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/explosiveRunes.htm) doesn't seem to support this interpretation. it says 10 feet for people standing in the vicinity, so it seems clear (to me) this is the maximum range.

was it erratae'd to change it?

[SimonMoon6]

Just to be different:

Antimagic Field.



I have to agree with this. Especially when one of my wizard characters was running through a dungeon where there were permanent AMFs everywhere. Yeah, maybe wizards are overpowered. But the solution shouldn't be "You're not a wizard anymore".

I considered what would happen if there was an Anti-Weapon Field in which characters may not attack with weapons, but can cast all the spells they want. That would be totally stupid but equally balanced (especially if only full BAB characters could create an Anti-Weapon Field).

[Rubik]

as amusing as that would be for the dysfunctional rules thread, the text (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/explosiveRunes.htm) doesn't seem to support this interpretation. it says 10 feet for people standing in the vicinity, so it seems clear (to me) this is the maximum range.

was it erratae'd to change it?It does say "Anyone next to the runes (close enough to read them) takes the full damage with no saving throw". So anyone close enough to read them takes damage with no save. And "next to" is questionable. If it had said "adjacent," I'd say it meant what it said, but it's magic. I imagine anyone who can actually read it (through whatever means) takes the damage, even if it's from divination magic.

[Sith_Happens]

I considered what would happen if there was an Anti-Weapon Field in which characters may not attack with weapons, but can cast all the spells they want. That would be totally stupid but equally balanced (especially if only full BAB characters could create an Anti-Weapon Field).

There's something very close to one in Cityscape, and at one spell level lower than Antimagic Field and a much greater radius, no less.:smallsigh:

[TuggyNE]

There's something very close to one in Cityscape, and at one spell level lower than Antimagic Field and a much greater radius, no less.:smallsigh:

But, see, that's not balanced because it's a spell! :smalltongue:

[Pickford]

I know you're joking, but at 17th lev., for almost all the "mundane" classes, aka rogue, fignter, and so on, the basis for a will save is +5. Even optimizing, will be hard to reliably beat that DC 32-33 (that could be easily higher).

That said, I'll add a +1 to the orb line. Conj is already strong, and evocation weak. So yeah, seems a good idea to give conj also one of the most abusable and reliable way to do direct damage.
The orb line, is a perfect example of designers that don't know what they're doing.
Not counting that orb of force, that absolutely is not magical... :smallsigh:

Well, the will save on a 17 monk with a +5 resistance item is 15...the DC on the 9th level disjunction is at least 23 (must have 19 primary casting stat), so it's a base 8 DC. This is assuming, for whatever reason, the monk has a +0 in wisdom, which is probably ridiculous so if we assume the standard +4 (even without magic items) it's a DC 4...if there are bonus magic items for say, +6 wis that's a DC 1 or automatic pass.

A Fighter would have a slightly harder time:
Base Will save at 17 is +5, +5 cloak of resistance to 10 for a base DC of 13. Seems equivalent to a fighter dealing with a 1st level save actually.

Of course, all this really does is make feats like Iron will, Combat Focus, Miser's Fortune, Unbelievable Luck, Mage Slayer, etc... can whittle this down to a DC 1 for auto-success. And this is excluding various bloodline feats/racial benefits, nor does it include other magic item boosts to will or saves in general. (i.e. ioun stones) A Fighter could afford to boost their wisdom a few points fairly cheaply.

I know, it requires some forethought, but lacking that is the point of it being a weakness. Always investing everything in a particular style is never a bad idea if there's no chance to encounter someone who picks at your gaping weakness right? (And of course...this may not be as fun for everyone, but if it's clear that enemies won't necessarily be things a player is guaranteed to win against, that's fair. Expectations matter either way.)

[BowStreetRunner]

While I certainly understand the anger directed against Mage's Disjunction, there can't be too many people who have much love for the guy who drops a Greater Shadow Conjuration (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shadowConjurationGreater.htm) (Black Tentacles (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blackTentacles.htm)) into the game with a large number of creatures in the area of effect. It's almost like a Time Stop was just cast in real life.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I have to agree with this. Especially when one of my wizard characters was running through a dungeon where there were permanent AMFs everywhere. Yeah, maybe wizards are overpowered. But the solution shouldn't be "You're not a wizard anymore".

I considered what would happen if there was an Anti-Weapon Field in which characters may not attack with weapons, but can cast all the spells they want. That would be totally stupid but equally balanced (especially if only full BAB characters could create an Anti-Weapon Field).

Large Size + Spiked Chain + Whirlwind Attack + Improved Disarm.

20' radius centered around the caster fighter of 'you don't have weapons anymore'

[Snowbluff]

While I certainly understand the anger directed against Mage's Disjunction, there can't be too many people who have much love for the guy who drops a Greater Shadow Conjuration (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shadowConjurationGreater.htm) (Black Tentacles (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blackTentacles.htm)) into the game with a large number of creatures in the area of effect. It's almost like a Time Stop was just cast in real life.

Shadow spells are a joke. They should be listed as most loved for adding a save to everything.

Except for Uberreal Shadowcrafter shadows. Nevermind, about those.

[The Random NPC]

No, one of the safe uses of wish is "Undo misfortune" which can include being hit with Disjunction. Even if your DM rules that that wish can only be used on rolls within the last round, another safe use of wish is to create a 25,000gp item. 122 wishes can restore a party of 4 to full WBL, assuming everything they had was magical and they failed all their saves.


It seems to me that it is not. From what I've seen, wish is one of the first things people try to abuse, and the one attempted most often. The Wish (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Wish_and_the_Word_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Bu ild)#The_Wish) is at the high limit of TO, but the spell is not. If you mean it's rarely if ever allowed in a game, I have not had the same experience.

Technically (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm), you can create a 25,000gp nonmagical item. Magical items don't have a gp limit.

[PlusSixPelican]

You should try an arcane caster some time. They don't have that problem.:smallwink:

Even with arcane casters. I've had DMs who don't wanna let me have 'em.

[Harrow]

Here's a little thought exercise to try and put in perspective how awful Mage's Disjunction is.

Imagine, for a moment, a 9th level spell that made an entire parties worth of magic items, permanently. No exp cost. No expensive component.

But wait, there's more. Let's throw on a 1% chance per level of making an artifact.

Would anyone consider playing in a campaign that allowed this spell? Of course not. It's completely broken. Money has no meaning after this comes into play.

If Disjunction is allowed as written, and is used regularly, money similarly begins to lose value. You only have equipment "for now", and if it's going to get replaced then it's more like daily buff, and if you don't you can't compete against things you're expected to be able to kill at that level.

[lord pringle]

Heh, that last bit reminded me of a GURPS character from long ago who had a form of precognitive quick-draw.

DM: You are sitting in a chair, reading a nice book and minding your own business, when suddenly you draw your gun.

Player: Aw, shuuuuuuucks

Off topic:
How did you do that? I totally want to use that in my next GURPS game.

[nobodez]

Mordenkainen's Disjunction doesn't just destroy magic items; it destroys the game.

The spell destroys magic items if a Will save is failed. Any attended magic item uses the attending character's save, or the item's if that's higher. Who wouldn't check every single item's Will save to make sure they're using the right value, especially if their character's save is low? I've seen just the book lookup part of this exercise take two full hours because most people don't record the book name and page number of all their magic items.
In what order are the checks made? The spell doesn't specify. Do you really want your items affected before your adjacent companion — you know, the one who thought ahead and has a contingent Antimagic Field? Personally, I'd much prefer they start with those useless cursed artifacts we've been dragging around specifically for this very spell. Start the argument, now.
What happens to items in magical containers which fail their saves? Start the next argument.
Are extradimensional spaces affected by burst spells? Here's the following argument, for when those magical containers make their saves.

In all my years of playing D&D I've only seen this spell used 4 times, every time by a DM. I've never seen a campaign continue, even for a single session, after the spell was used; nobody would ever show up again, and usually would refuse to play with that same person as DM (and sometimes as a player).

I did an MDJ in my long-running Eberron game. I think they were around 16th level or so. Killed about half the party's items. Luckily I placed it where they were fighting alternate universe mirror versions of themselves, so they got new magic items that either replaced their lost ones or were able to be sold to replace their lost ones. Yes, it was difficult, but they played with me for another year or so until they passed 20th level and I stopped the game because it stopped being fun to build an adventure every couple of weeks for them.


All the most obvious candidates have been discussed at length, but I'd like to throw another vote in for the Orb spells, because:

1. They should really be in another school
Everything the Orbs do is energy-blasting-based, yet they sit in Conjuration rather than Evocation - making Conjuration substantially more powerful than it already is and making Evocation an afterthought. Why are they there? That's so that they have an excuse for reason 2:

2. They ignore Spell Resistance
This doesn't make sense fluff-wise (it's a nonmagical fire that burns hotter than other nonmagical fire! It's a non-magical ball of pure magical force!(?) ) and it's stupidly overpowered considering reason 3:

3. They show up at low level
Bypassing SR with a level 1 spell i.e. bypassing an entire, rare, expensive defensive mechanism with a level 1 spell? That's absurd.

I don't have a problem with the orbs beyond the Conjuration aspect and SR:No. They could be moved to Evocation (giving those two schools FAR better balance) and be SR:Yes and still serve a useful purpose - they are blasting attacks that also tack on a debuff and they are blasting attacks that target Touch AC rather than Reflex saves. Those are two very good features already! The Orbs would be plenty useful with just that!

So Orbs are right up there on the 'most hated' list for me.

It's already been said, but yeah, they seem to be expanded versions of Acid Splash and Melf's Acid Arrow.

[Pickford]

That quote explicitly lists the traits of a golem that come from its nature as a magic item, and they are all traits that apply during the crafting, not afterwards. The implication is that all of a golem's other traits are due to its nature as a creature. There simply aren't any traits for MDJ to remove.

Intelligent magic items only (arguably) function in an AMF because they are constructs. In that they can function in an AMF, they are creatures, and cannot be destroyed by MDJ. MDJ can destroy any other features of said items however.

It's a magic item. MDJ affects magic items (to include artifacts) whereas AMF specifically gives a free pass to golems and artifacts. If AMF didn't have the exception for golems, it would affect them too.

[dascarletm]

things fall into 2 categories:
Objects
Creatures

Separate rules for both.

[ArcturusV]

Well, generally I'd think the distinction would be, "Does it have HP?" "If yes, creature."

I mean an Undead is created by magic spells, but you don't.... rekill? Double kill? Unanimate? Something like that just by casting a dispel at it. Even though it's a corpse walking around by the power of a spell.

I would think similar logic would apply. The moment it starts having things like HP and HD, can act on it's own, etc. You're not talking about an Object anymore.

If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But that was always my understanding. Even innately, obviously "This is Magic!" creatures are still creatures and thus can't just be dispelled away.

[TuggyNE]

Even innately, obviously "This is Magic!" creatures are still creatures and thus can't just be dispelled away.

Well, sure, normally, but nothing else is listed specifically as a magic item that I know of. (With the possible exception of a few other constructs.) So golems are nearly unique in that respect.

(Also, technically the deciding factor is not HP, which objects always have as well, but Wis/Cha scores.)

[Killer Angel]

Well, the will save on a 17 monk with a +5 resistance item is 15...the DC on the 9th level disjunction is at least 23 (must have 19 primary casting stat), so it's a base 8 DC. This is assuming, for whatever reason, the monk has a +0 in wisdom, which is probably ridiculous so if we assume the standard +4 (even without magic items) it's a DC 4...if there are bonus magic items for say, +6 wis that's a DC 1 or automatic pass.

Well, the monk at least got better ST than other classes, but if we're assuming a "standard +4" to wis for a monk (not exactly its primary stat), what should we assume for the 17° lev. wiz.? +8 int? more?
Add specialization, and a couple of other things, and we're back at "it will be difficult to beat the DC, and you must do it multiple times".
Edit: unless is a scroll, then we have that DC 23.

[Mr Beer]

I had a GM who got a hair up his ass about the high level party having too many magic items and we got hit with about 6 Mordenkainen's Disjunctions over the next few gaming sessions. Once we were down to like a Dagger +1 and a potion of healing each - we were about 15th level at the time - he stopped doing it.

I've never used it on any players in any game because I'm not a complete bastard. Well, I am, but I have limits.

[Wookie-ranger]

Well, generally I'd think the distinction would be, "Does it have HP?" "If yes, creature."

Everything has HP, walls, doors, plants (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/dungeons.htm#walls)....


I mean an Undead is created by magic spells, but you don't.... rekill? Double kill? Unanimate? Something like that just by casting a dispel at it. Even though it's a corpse walking around by the power of a spell.

well, Undead are not fueled by a spell, not even the one that animated them. They are given un-life by the negative energy plane, the same way that normal creatures are animated by positive energy. The spell used to animate them simply creates a connection between an dead body and negative energy plane.
I always thought about it like this:
This is also the reason that that undead can only be created from something that was once alive. Something that is alive is filled with positive energy (think of it as a filled vessel). This positive energy can be called Its soul or it is simply life-force that makes it possible for a soul to inhabit a body. Once that creature is dead, that energy dissipates and returns to earth/ goes to the afterlife/ etc. No there is a void in the bead body. This void can be filled with negative energy animating it yet again. But this time in un-life, a mockery of what it once was.
This is obviously only my opinion and not even RAI.

[DigoDragon]

In all my years of playing D&D I've only seen this spell used 4 times, every time by a DM.

Dang. I must be real lucky then, for in my DMing experience I've never needed to use it (I have more targetable ways of killing a magic item or two).
Player side, I only recall one use of Disjunction. My wife used it on a BBEG wizard who was curb-stomping the party. Killed the loot on the BBEG, but hey, can't spend it if you're dead. :3

For my particular group, I think the most hated spell is the Polymorph family due to it's annoying book-keeping and ease of abuse.

[ArcturusV]

Wouldn't similar logic apply to Golems though? They're not just items. They're fueled by Elemental Energy/Beings.

[NNescio]

My most hated spell after MDJ? Hmm... Contact Other Plane, I guess.

Essentially it has the same problem as some other Divination spells (Hi DM, show me your notes! And while you're at it, can you predict my future actions?), 'though it's far more obnoxious in the way it works. Also, expect statistics and rule arguments over what constitutes a threat to be thrown around.

It's worse than Commune. At least with the latter the DM has more control over the answers instead of leaving it to a die roll.

True, there's a built in DM fiat line in CoP, but that's just smacks of poor design, and doesn't stop me feeling bad for using it.

That said, Deathwatch is one of my pet peeves. Triage shouldn't be an evil act, gah.

[TuggyNE]

That said, Deathwatch is one of my pet peeves. Triage shouldn't be an evil act, gah.

Seriously. Sure, it uses "the foul sight granted by the forces of unlife", or some such nonsense, but so does false life basically, and that has no [evil] tag. (Please, don't say that false life should have the [evil] tag, or I'll haveta hurtcha.)

It's just the old nomenclature/preconception problem of Necromancy = evulz, but it's such a virulent form of that it's really annoying.

[Phaederkiel]

I have to heavily second celerity. This spell is completely stupid even when mr. Wizard does by some chance chose NOT to evade the side effects.

Imagine that ability as a class feature of a mundane class: 3 times per day, stop the opponents acting and act right now. You are sick afterwards. Everyone would cry bloody murder.


When asked what my players hate most, i'd say it is wings of cover. Not entirely as bad as celerity, but by far bad enough. The one NPC i ever gave it got killed afterwards, no mercy, by my normally quite merciful players.


And then there is KNOCK. Now that is bad design. The wizard cannot replace the rogue? There is a spell for that...
Stealing the spotlight of other classes is something which design should've avoided, but did do again and again in reality.

[Sith_Happens]

Imagine that ability as a class feature of a mundane class: 3 times per day, stop the opponents acting and act right now. You are sick afterwards. Everyone would cry bloody murder.

At least most people around here would sooner cry "awesome." Not to mention there already is a PrC (Eternal Blade) whose capstone is 1/encounter Greater Celerity without the dazing.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Also, pretty much any Conjuration (Calling) spell.

Let's look at the abilities you can get through, say, Lesser Planar Binding. This is available at 9th level without shenanigans. Earlier with cheese.

Nightmare gets you Astral Projection. Meaning you don't even have to risk yourself anymore.

A Janni can net you Plane Shift, as well as Ethereal Jaunt.

With these two at your beck and call, and a scroll of Genesis, a 9th level Wizard is pretty much immortal. Create a demiplane, stay there, and send out your Astral Projection to do your adventuring for you.

[Grayson01]

Okay you will all think I am crazy but my most hated spell BUZZING BEE!!! Why might you ask well I had made the most badass death dealing Rouge Assassin, right pretty cool but my DM decided to get even for me killing his Jester NPC he thought was so funny. So he had a vender sell me an awesome set of gantlets of Murder for dirt cheep 700 gp. I thought there was something up so had them identified good to go till I put them in and turns out they were curst with buzzing be that identify did tell me. So now my badass Jester slaying Assassin has the big yellow buzzing Bee annoying the **** out of him!!!!



This thread could have been a rant about a DM (mine dm, of course), that shattered our group's gentlemen's agreement,but instead i'll try to turn it in something more... worth discussing.

Basically, what's the spell you hate the most, and why?

Mine, is probably mage's disjunction. A single spell that can easily cripple an entire group, even at high level. All the active spells are wiped away, you don't have protection from it, and most of all there's a very solid chance that a good portion of your magic items is gone. It's a single friggin spell that not only can change the course of a battle, but can really ruin a group.
You don't use it, cause it's stupid to break your potential loot, and the enemy can use it because they can decide to don't care.
Conclusion: it's a dangerous spell, it's overpowered and it can ruin the fun more than a killing.

[Shining Wrath]

Hmmmm

Limited Wish, because you get all the Monkey's Paw goodness of Wish PLUS the complication of "is it limited"?

Gate, because there is no way that anyone should be able to just tell a Solar or a Balor or whatever what to do. These critters hang out with deities, their absence is going to be noticed by said deity, and they are going to have dignity and / or pride and not like being bossed around by mortals. It's one thing to summon a dretch or a chain devil or a hound archon. The biggies, though, ought to be beyond the power of any mortal not on the cusp of godhood themselves to summon.

Any spell allowing characters to know what ought to be in the DM's purview. Greater Scry, Divination, and so on. All this does is make the most powerful classes in the game (full casters) capable of preparing themselves for *exactly* what's going to be in the dungeon.

[Nettlekid]

Question about MDJ and AMF. According to what people on the forums have been saying, you're actually able to cast inside an AMF, but all spell effects are suppressed, right? So you could buff with long durations, and when the AMF fades those buffs are on you? If I've understood what people are saying correctly. It's the same for instantaneous spells, except they're immediately suppressed and then their duration ends and so nothing happens. But with MDJ, it has a chance of destroying an AMF. So if you were in one, could you cast MDJ and it might break the AMF?

[Calimehter]

Off topic:
How did you do that? I totally want to use that in my next GURPS game.

If I still had my old character sheet (or even my rulebook from 15+ years ago), I could probably tell you. As of right now, though, I don't think I can reconstruct it. Sorry about that. :smallredface:

[Lapak]

I have never seen such a spell before! (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/acidArrow.htm) There are other examples, but whatevs.The existence of other spells with the same problems does not negate the problems I mentioned.

Also, Acid Arrow doesn't apply a debuff and does terrible damage for the level, making it slightly more balanced (and more appropriate for a damage spell outside the main damage-dealing school.)

Also also, Acid Arrow is a carryover from earlier editions - earlier editions in which spell resistance applied to it.

So I don't find it to be a compelling counterargument.

[Rubik]

badass death dealing Rouge AssassinRouge assassin, you say?

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100907135755/powerpuff/images/5/55/HIM.jpg

[mangosta71]

What are good defenses against MDJ, besides "carry an artifact" or something impractical like that?
Step 1: Roll a human monk.
Step 2: Select Sacred Vow and Vow of Poverty at level 1.
Step 3: Enjoy total immunity to MDJ for your entire career.

[Pickford]

Well, the monk at least got better ST than other classes, but if we're assuming a "standard +4" to wis for a monk (not exactly its primary stat), what should we assume for the 17° lev. wiz.? +8 int? more?
Add specialization, and a couple of other things, and we're back at "it will be difficult to beat the DC, and you must do it multiple times".
Edit: unless is a scroll, then we have that DC 23.

I was working off the minimum required primary casting stat (i.e. a 19 for 9th level spells) which is +4, on a human that can realistically scale to...33 (+11) as only 4 ability points are available, a 5 inherent bonus and a 6 enhancement bonus (+8 enhancement would be too expensive)

so : 18 + 4 ability, + 5 inherent, +6 enhancement = 33 for +11 to the DC.

Of course, this requires at least 300k invested in one stat which breaks the wbl at 17...so it's not actually possible to get the +5 inherent from a single tome, it would require buying scrolls of wish. (Which may not be available if there aren't cities of sufficient size)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Step 1: Roll a human monk.
Step 2: Select Sacred Vow and Vow of Poverty at level 1.
Step 3: Enjoy total immunity to MDJ for your entire career.

Also enjoy total immunity to being able to meaningfully contribute after third level...

[Rubik]

Also enjoy total immunity to being able to meaningfully contribute after third level...I thought it was sarcasm, despite the lack of blue text...

[Arbane]

Step 1: Roll a human monk.
Step 2: Select Sacred Vow and Vow of Poverty at level 1.
Step 3: Enjoy total immunity to MDJ for your entire career.

This plan has one small flaw: you're playing a monk with no magic items in D&D.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I thought it was sarcasm, despite the lack of blue text...

Nope...


This plan has one small flaw: you're playing a monk with no magic items in D&D.

Pretty much this. The minor stat boosts do nothing to augment your ability to actually accomplish anything meaningful after around level five. At least Barbarians can dish out one-hit kills, rogues have utility as well as more damage output, Fighters have the possibility for a couple of different methods of battlefield control (Zhent sub fear lockdown and gattling tripping) plus decent damage output.

The VoP Monk? Has nothing. The only reason it survives is that no one takes it seriously, so no one ever tries attacking it.

[mucco]

Celerity line. Before MDJ, which is an awesome spell for plot purposes.

On creatures: I thought the definition of a creature is "it has a Wis score".

[Venger]

This plan has one small flaw: you're playing a monk with no magic items in D&D.

sort of a "you can't fire me, I quit" scenario.

instead of monk, totemist.

[mangosta71]

I thought it was sarcasm, despite the lack of blue text...
Yeah, I figured it was obvious enough that I didn't need to color it.

[Coidzor]

And then there is KNOCK. Now that is bad design. The wizard cannot replace the rogue? There is a spell for that...
Stealing the spotlight of other classes is something which design should've avoided, but did do again and again in reality.

Rogues don't have any special bonuses or unique abilities to interact with locks. It's traps and trapfinding that they've got a sacred cow niche for.


Gate, because there is no way that anyone should be able to just tell a Solar or a Balor or whatever what to do. These critters hang out with deities, their absence is going to be noticed by said deity, and they are going to have dignity and / or pride and not like being bossed around by mortals. It's one thing to summon a dretch or a chain devil or a hound archon. The biggies, though, ought to be beyond the power of any mortal not on the cusp of godhood themselves to summon.

As Gate is a 9th level spell, they are pretty much on the cusp of godhood.

[Lapak]

Rogues don't have any special bonuses or unique abilities to interact with locks. It's traps and trapfinding that they've got a sacred cow niche for.They're the only core class with Open Lock as a class skill (and Open Lock is a trained-only skill, to boot) which would probably count as a 'special bonus' in most people's eyes.

[Urpriest]

It's a magic item. MDJ affects magic items (to include artifacts) whereas AMF specifically gives a free pass to golems and artifacts. If AMF didn't have the exception for golems, it would affect them too.

MDJ explicitly turns magic items into normal items. A golem explicitly has four traits that come from its nature as a magic item: "caster level, prerequisite feats and spells, market price, cost to create". When you use MDJ on a golem it stops being a magic item and starts being a normal item of its type, in this case a normal golem. A normal golem is a golem without the traits that come from its nature as a magic item. So MDJ destroys the golem's caster level, prerequisite feats and spells, market price, and cost to create. That's it.

The exception in AMF also applies to undead, elementals, and outsiders, as others have noted. It's in there not to introduce new rules, but to remind players of how the fluff works.

[Valwyn]

I'm not completely familiar with the game and all the spells, but I'd have to say any of the No/I Win buttons. Celerity, Disjunction, Gate, Wings of Cover, Time Stop, Force Cage, Orbs, Antimagic Field (sometimes), Shivering Touch, Abrupt Jaunt (not a spell, but still worth mentioning), Mind Blank (those poor Enchanters), True Seeing... I'm sure there are others, but these are the one that come to mind.

[The Random NPC]

Yeah, I figured it was obvious enough that I didn't need to color it.

It's never obvious enough to not need coloring. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

[Shining Wrath]

As Gate is a 9th level spell, they are pretty much on the cusp of godhood.

Uh, there's a big difference in my mind between "can cast Wish / Gate" and "can answer the prayers of thousands of worshipers". Or to put it another way, take a generically optimized 17th level Cleric or Wizard, and then take a random selected demigod from any MM. By "generically optimized" I mean "optimized to be a PC, not to win this one fight" optimization.

Steel cage match.

Who are you betting on?

Here's the link to Divine Ranks on SRD (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Divine_Ranks#Rank_0). Let's consider what a rank 1 demigod gets.

20 10 sided HD + 30 to 50 character levels. So let's say "30". And maximum HP per HD, so as a minimum 20*10 + 30*4 = 320 HP.

AC + 1 bonus, divine type, deflection, in addition to whatever else they might have from armor / dex.
Natural armor bonus + 14.
Deflection bonus equal to Charisma modifier (may be quite large).

+1 to all SR which are otherwise based off of 20 HD Outsider + character level 30.

Immune to a long list of things, including most of your favorite SoS / SoL / SoD spells.

Attacks +1 and do not automatically miss on 1.

Damage Reduction 15 / epic.

Spell Resistance 33.

Oh, and immortal.

So you're going to beat this lowest-possible-rank demigod with your level 17 caster?

[mangosta71]

Well, he's an Outsider, so Dismissal.

[Venger]

Uh, there's a big difference in my mind between "can cast Wish / Gate" and "can answer the prayers of thousands of worshipers". Or to put it another way, take a generically optimized 17th level Cleric or Wizard, and then take a random selected demigod from any MM. By "generically optimized" I mean "optimized to be a PC, not to win this one fight" optimization.

Steel cage match.

Who are you betting on?

Here's the link to Divine Ranks on SRD (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Divine_Ranks#Rank_0). Let's consider what a rank 1 demigod gets.

20 10 sided HD + 30 to 50 character levels. So let's say "30". And maximum HP per HD, so as a minimum 20*10 + 30*4 = 320 HP.

AC + 1 bonus, divine type, deflection, in addition to whatever else they might have from armor / dex.
Natural armor bonus + 14.
Deflection bonus equal to Charisma modifier (may be quite large).

+1 to all SR which are otherwise based off of 20 HD Outsider + character level 30.

Immune to a long list of things, including most of your favorite SoS / SoL / SoD spells.

Attacks +1 and do not automatically miss on 1.

Damage Reduction 15 / epic.

Spell Resistance 33.

Oh, and immortal.

So you're going to beat this lowest-possible-rank demigod with your level 17 caster?

yes.

any mailman can deal more than 320 damage with his orb of choice, or a metamagiced to hell enervation.

killing gods is not hard. I'd bet on the wiz/cleric any time. the gods and demigods are incompetently built.

[Shining Wrath]

yes.

any mailman can deal more than 320 damage with his orb of choice, or a metamagiced to hell enervation.

killing gods is not hard. I'd bet on the wiz/cleric any time. the gods and demigods are incompetently built.

320 assumes 4 sided HD.
4 sided HD implies 30th level wizard or sorcerer.

Who's going to win initiative?
What's that first spell from a 30th level caster going to look like?

[Seer_of_Heart]

Well obviously you don't fight the competent gods/demigods who are full casters :smallbiggrin:. You befriend them and bond over spell selection and the like :smalltongue:. Also, he was just talking about the minimum possible hp for a demigod which means they have D4s for class levels. Though its still probably winnable if it is designed like the WOTC npcs and stuff are like nowhere near as powerful as what the players can build.

[Chained Birds]

If you stat it, they will kill it!

This is why the Lady of -

*Poster was Mazed for trying to complete the above sentence.*

Edit: Back from the Mazing (Took a few years), hope I didn't miss much.

[Coidzor]

320 assumes 4 sided HD.
4 sided HD implies 30th level wizard or sorcerer.

Who's going to win initiative?
What's that first spell from a 30th level caster going to look like?

If you're making them a 30th level caster to prove that they're better than a 17th level caster, you're kind of missing the point of the exercise.

[Venger]

320 assumes 4 sided HD.
4 sided HD implies 30th level wizard or sorcerer.

Who's going to win initiative?
What's that first spell from a 30th level caster going to look like?

you said "randomly selected demigod from any mm"

there aren't any that are 30th level casters. what wotco will do, even up to greater deities like vecna, is have them do some nonsense like cleric20/wiz 10

if we're determining randomly, the odds are better than not that we wouldn't get a caster

and


Well obviously you don't fight the competent gods/demigods who are full casters :smallbiggrin:. You befriend them and bond over spell selection and the like :smalltongue:. Also, he was just talking about the minimum possible hp for a demigod which means they have D4s for class levels. Though its still probably winnable if it is designed like the WOTC npcs and stuff are like nowhere near as powerful as what the players can build.

there are no competent gods/demigods.

the challenge was indeed against a wotc npc.

[Maginomicon]

All of these high-level spells and powers...

Everyone rags on the official variant systems, but buried within them are ways to solve many problems GMs face regarding "overpowered" effects.

Consider the incantation rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm) (essentially low-magic skill-challenge-like rules).

With these rules, now you don't have to outright ban a spell or power if you feel it still has some merit. Through incantations, you make it nigh-on impossible to use it in combat (except as the first round). You incorporate an inherent (and perhaps high) chance of failure, strictly control how often they're used, set a defined (or even an undefined) potential backlash, set a requisite minimum number of secondary casters... and all of these factors are at GM's discretion. There's a million little things that can go wrong when attempting an incantation, resulting it being improbable that the effects will ever enter play but not impossible. Even when they do enter play, the circumstances surrounding their use are intrinsically under the GM's control.

For non-arcane effects, you can easily re-flavor the incantation rules as "communals" (divine) or "meditations" (psionic) using knowledge religion or knowledge psionics as a relevant skill (or whatever other skills you deem required).

Also, be aware that the issue with Shivering Touch is probably a typo. The duration for Shivering Touch is not "instantaneous", giving a hint that the effect isn't supposed to be instantaneous either. Odds are it's not supposed to do DEX damage, but a DEX penalty (the Lesser Shivering Touch spell has the same duration-clued typo and likewise probably does a DEX penalty).

[TuggyNE]

Also, be aware that the issue with Shivering Touch is probably a typo. The duration for Shivering Touch is not "instantaneous", giving a hint that the effect isn't supposed to be instantaneous either. Odds are it's not supposed to do DEX damage, but a DEX penalty (the Lesser Shivering Touch spell has the same duration typo and likewise probably does a DEX penalty).

I'm not sure how that helps anything; is there a general rule that ability penalties can't drop the score to 0? (There's a specific rule for ray of enfeeblement, but it's not worded generally.)

[Maginomicon]

I'm not sure how that helps anything; is there a general rule that ability penalties can't drop the score to 0?
Yes.

Ability damage is different from penalties to ability scores, which go away when the conditions causing them go away.

I can't seem to find a clarification on this in the Rules Compendium or in the SRD, but I was able to find this:

Ability Score Penalties

Some spells and abilities cause you to take an ability penalty for a limited amount of time. While in effect, these penalties function just like ability damage, but they cannot cause you to fall unconscious or die. In essence, penalties cannot decrease your ability score to less than 1.
That said, everything I've seen that imposes an ability score penalty has that rider that it can't be reduced to less than 1.

[TuggyNE]

Yes.

That doesn't appear to indicate anything other than the duration (fixed in one case, slowly wearing off in the other).


I can't seem to find a clarification on this in the Rules Compendium or in the SRD, but I was able to find this:

That's in PF, which (very possibly) noticed the lack of a general rule in 3.5 and realized they needed to supply such a thing. :smallwink:


That said, everything I've seen that imposes an ability score penalty has that rider that it can't be reduced to less than 1.

I figured as much; as a houserule, it just means you'd need to additionally specify that to make sure your proposed fix works, but as an alternate reading of RAW, or even RAI, it's more dubious, precisely because it's lacking that exception. (Also, doesn't the spell text actually use the word "damage", not the word "penalty"? That would seem conclusive right there.)

[Maginomicon]

Also, doesn't the spell text actually use the word "damage", not the word "penalty"? That would seem conclusive right there.)
That's why I said

the issue with Shivering Touch is probably a typo.

... [truncated for clarity]

Lesser Shivering Touch spell has the same ... typo

[Shining Wrath]

If you're making them a 30th level caster to prove that they're better than a 17th level caster, you're kind of missing the point of the exercise.

I am arguing that a 17th level caster is not equivalent to a deity. The least deity (level 1 demigod) has 30 PC levels plus 20 Outsider HD. If that seems unfair, it proves my point.

[Curmudgeon]

Because there are no errata, Shivering Touch and Lesser Shivering Touch do what they say: inflict ability damage, with a non-standard duration (much shorter than the usual 1 point healed per day). Damage always stacks unless there's an explicit statement to prevent that from happening.

[Xerxus]

I am arguing that a 17th level caster is not equivalent to a deity. The least deity (level 1 demigod) has 30 PC levels plus 20 Outsider HD. If that seems unfair, it proves my point.

Well, in any case where those PC levels aren't full casting levels, that demigod has a problem.

[Maginomicon]

Because there are no errata, Shivering Touch and Lesser Shivering Touch do what they say: inflict ability damage, with a non-standard duration (much shorter than the usual 1 point healed per day). Damage always stacks unless there's an explicit statement to prevent that from happening.

You're technically correct. However, there's no legitimately-written examples of a non-standard duration for ability damage with any other spell, power, etc that don't explicitly call themselves out as doing that much damage each round in the text or have a non-standard duration otherwise explained in the text. That does not mean my (and others') understandable explanation that the odd non-standard duration belies a typo is unreasonable (as a house rule). The explanation that they meant an ability penalty is especially reasonable when you consider that in every properly-worded spell/power/effect out there that involves these terms...

ability penalties, like ability bonuses, are intended to have a very short definite duration (the duration of the spell),
ability damage is intended to have an elsewhere-specified naturally-healing longer-term but definite duration (spell duration instantaneous), and
ability drain is intended to have an elsewhere-specified non-naturally-healing indefinite duration (spell duration instantaneous).

The idea that the editor for the book simply screwed up on two spells is a far easier pill to swallow than the idea that those two spells were written exactly as they were intended.

In any case, Frostburn overall was a poorly edited book (more so than even Complete Psionic, but at least Complete Psionic got errata, hard-to-find as that errata may be).

[Ace Nex]

Gate.

Gate, call a Solar, which uses miracle and gate to get another Solar. Welcome to infinite miracles that you don't need to pay for and a personal Solar army.

[streakster]

PAO.

Someone, somewhere thought that "Turn anything into anything else" was a good idea.

[Neo Tin Robo]

Gate.

Gate, call a Solar, which uses miracle and gate to get another Solar. Welcome to infinite miracles that you don't need to pay for and a personal Solar army.

Forgetting the XP cost for both you and the Solar. It doesn't have a Gate SLA.

[Karoht]

[PF] Paragon Surge
It is a 3rd Level half elf racial spell. It is available to every caster class, to my knowledge, so long as they are half elves, or have the half elf racial heritage feat.
It gives a minor buff to Dex and Int. And lasts for 15 minutes. Which is fine.
It also grants access to any feat you meet the prereq's for.
So what do spontaneous casters do? They use it to take Extended Arcana (Extra Spell), go access extra spells known. And later on down the pipe, they can actually use another feat to grant access to 3 spells known at a time, at any caster level. Sorcerer who normally gets to know a handful of 9ths? Have 3 more in a standard/swift action.
This, all in addition to the fun one could have by granting one's self access to a metamagic feat you don't have but would be excellent to have. Or any other feat one might want.

Now I'm fully guilty in endulging with this particular piece of cheese. With an Int based Sorcerer. And believe me, it was GLORIOUS. It was like playing a Wizard, only better. I had pretty much any tool I needed at any time, I had all the spontaneous ability with the full arcane spell selection at my fingertips.

Which pretty much breaks the class by defeating the whole point of Sorcerer or other spontaneous casters.

But I agree, it was not exactly well thought out, and had serious impacts.

[Killer Angel]

Edit: Back from the Mazing (Took a few years), hope I didn't miss much.

Don't be dramatic! The Maze (for GitP Forum) lasted only a week... :smalltongue:

[charcoalninja]

Gate isn't so bad on the Solar front since you can't actually compel an angel to go through the gate due to their constant magic circle vs. evil effect making them immune to mental control and compulsion so gating a Solar is entirely dependent on the solar actually wanting to come through the gate, and than having him gate other solars is entirely dependent on him actually wanting to do that at all, unless you're burning actions to dispel his MCvsE and dominate him, even though he probably has mind blank up all the time anyway.

It's more the gating in planar dragons of insane HD to trounce whatever's in your way. Or advanced Balors/pit fiends and such that makes it the problem.

I'm on the side of MDJ being the worst spell ever. Most other things in the game are pretty manageable especially since I play PF now and don't have to worry about an over abundance of metamagic reducers...

[StreamOfTheSky]

[PF] Paragon Surge
It is a 3rd Level half elf racial spell. It is available to every caster class, to my knowledge, so long as they are half elves, or have the half elf racial heritage feat.
It gives a minor buff to Dex and Int. And lasts for 15 minutes. Which is fine.
It also grants access to any feat you meet the prereq's for.
So what do spontaneous casters do? They use it to take Extended Arcana (Extra Spell), go access extra spells known. And later on down the pipe, they can actually use another feat to grant access to 3 spells known at a time, at any caster level. Sorcerer who normally gets to know a handful of 9ths? Have 3 more in a standard/swift action.
This, all in addition to the fun one could have by granting one's self access to a metamagic feat you don't have but would be excellent to have. Or any other feat one might want.

Now I'm fully guilty in endulging with this particular piece of cheese. With an Int based Sorcerer. And believe me, it was GLORIOUS. It was like playing a Wizard, only better. I had pretty much any tool I needed at any time, I had all the spontaneous ability with the full arcane spell selection at my fingertips.

Which pretty much breaks the class by defeating the whole point of Sorcerer or other spontaneous casters.

But I agree, it was not exactly well thought out, and had serious impacts.

Even more abusively, Oracles can use that same Extra Arcana feat for full cleric list access but can just as easily as a sorc access the improved eldritch heritage (arcane bloodline) feat (the one you mentioned to get 3up to 3 spells known at a time) to add sorc/wiz spells to their repertoire! Sorcs can at most get a bunch of sorc/wiz spells on call 24/7. Oracles can do that and also dial in the entire cleric spell list on top of that.

Also, anyone who counts as a human (humans, half-orcs, aasimar w/ scion of humanity variant, probably others...) can take the Racial Heritage feat to count as a Half-Elf and access this wonder spell, so it's not even actually exclusive to one race. Use Magic Device to pretend to be a Half-Elf + wand of Paragon Surge probably works, too.

[Shining Wrath]

Well, in any case where those PC levels aren't full casting levels, that demigod has a problem.

OK, I'll take the challenge.

Create a deity with twenty levels of Warblade, five of Sword Sage, and five of Master of Nine, normal 30th level WBL gear.

Abilities: You want STR, then CON and DEX, then INT, then WIS, then CHR. Given that we're talking a demi-god I think a 40 point buy plus the 7 level adds is appropriate, so something like this:

Start with 17, 15, 16, 13, 10, 10.
Add +5 to STR, +1 each to Dex and INT for the various levels.
Now: 22, 16, 16, 14, 10, 10.
WBL: Gear of +12 to STR, CON, DEX, +6 to the non-physical stuff.
Books / manuals of +4 to STR, CON, DEX.
End with something like 38, 32, 32, 20, 16, 16. Note I didn't go full opt and just add 17 to everything.

Maximum HP per HD, so 240 for Warblade, 40 for SS, 40 for Mo9, 200 for outsider = 520 HP. Plus 50 times the CON boost of 11 per level makes 1070 HP.
Saves: Fort (14 + 11 = 25). Reflex (11 + 11 = 22). Will (14 + 6 = 20). Add on a +5 clock of resistance gives 30, 27, 25. Then throw in the Diamond Mind and Iron heart boosts. Then remember SR = 33 for a level 1 demigod. Conclusion: you will most likely not one shot this guy. You will probably not succeed with a SoS, SoL, or SoD spell. Remember as a deity he is immune to the "fail on a roll of one" bit.

Weapon is +5 or better to hit with appropriate bonuses for the deity's persona. Given how important not being flat-footed is to a Warblade, I'm thinking Warning is one of them.

Between gear (Ring of Anticipation?) and high dexterity and Improved Initiative as a WB bonus feat and +2 from SS levels he's likely to get to go first; plus 17 to init before RoA and Warning and so on. Whatever gear you can afford, he can afford. And he's going to have the Shadow Hand teleport maneuvers and the Diamond Mind / White Raven quick motion maneuvers plus a base move of 60 or so. Do you really think your 17th level caster is going to survive Time Stands Still from an entity making 10 attacks and a BAB of 26/21/16/11/6, with the attacks at +5 for weapon and +14 for STR? With lots of cool gear you may have AC of 40. Very well; the demigod attacks at +45 / + 40 / + 35 / + 30 / +25, twice. Without power attack and damage bonuses, but using a great sword, that's going to be 10.5 + 5 + 21 = 36.5 per hit. And the chance of hitting is 100%, 100%, 80%, 55%, 30%, 5%, twice. That's an average of 7.4 hits times 36.5 damage per hit is 270 HP on a 17th level caster. Did you get 16 HP per level with your full caster? You didn't? Sucks to be you.

That's right - unless you get to pick the ground, he can reach you, and he can hit you repeatedly for lots of damage, and probably while you are flat footed.

IF you go first - and IF you then cast Time Stop - and then you buff yourself with great buffedness - you may survive one round. Second round you get hit with Feral Death Blow or Strike of Perfect Clarity and you are again taking triple digit damage (or having your head removed and handed to you).

That's a demigod with NO full caster levels. Remember, you don't get to have your caster optimized to win this one particular fight. I didn't optimize the demigod to beat a caster; I just built a good character with no caster levels at all.

Also important: the usual high level caster bit of divination magic prior to combat to know exactly what to bring may not work quite so well when you are scrying somebody who is not only a VIP but who presumably has a friend who is a Greater Deity and who wants the demigod to be safe. Even if the GD permits the combat to happen at all, it is not likely to happen exactly how when and where you expect or desire. Imagine this combat and the demigod is forewarned and, e.g., has Mage Slayer on their weapon, or a ring of Spell Turning.

[Urpriest]

Gate isn't so bad on the Solar front since you can't actually compel an angel to go through the gate due to their constant magic circle vs. evil effect making them immune to mental control and compulsion so gating a Solar is entirely dependent on the solar actually wanting to come through the gate, and than having him gate other solars is entirely dependent on him actually wanting to do that at all, unless you're burning actions to dispel his MCvsE and dominate him, even though he probably has mind blank up all the time anyway.

It's more the gating in planar dragons of insane HD to trounce whatever's in your way. Or advanced Balors/pit fiends and such that makes it the problem.

I'm on the side of MDJ being the worst spell ever. Most other things in the game are pretty manageable especially since I play PF now and don't have to worry about an over abundance of metamagic reducers...

Gate isn't a compulsion effect. But yeah, the rest is true. Also, while Solars aren't chain-Gate-able (the reason they're always mentioned is probably because of the whole summon a horde of angels thing), Titans are, so there's that.

[Snails]

Skipping ahead...


They wrote the new metagame, though. They knew that high level characters would be bedecked in items because they wrote the WBL tables, random loot tables, and NPC gear guidelines that covered that. They knew that melee characters' AC scaled with items while their attack scaled by class because they wrote that mechanic. So some aspects of the metagame really should have been more evident at first.

You have to turn back the clock to 1999. The Designers were re-writing a lot of stuff, and they were under enormous pressure to produce something that "captured the feel of 1e".

IMHO, they felt compelled to put in the Paladin and the Monk and the legacy spells, even if the produced version sucked. If they are there but sort of suck, they get grudging respect (which is what happened, because it is not like 1e/2e did not have lots of sort of suck stuff as well). If they are not there, even for superb reasons, they get grief. If they are there, but massively rewritten because of all these correct and well reasoned metagame reasons, they still get grief.

The smart move was to let a bunch of clunkers into 3e, and err on the side of "I dunno; they did it that way in 1e; whatever!"

Now we understand the metagame tradeoffs and can make savvy tradeoffs. Back then it was not clear what the players of the game would accept.

[Snails]

Disjunction, Anti-Magic Field, Tenser's Transformation, and other such spells are legacy spells from the earlier editions. In those editions they did what they were supposed to.

By the time these sorts of spells came on line the characters were supposed to be lords of the land, bandit kings, and other sorts of famous hero end-game people. For Disjunction minor and moderate artifacts were expected to be part of the party gear or the plot. Anti-magic was a mage ploy to shut down other casters so the fighter could beat them down. And Tenser's turned you into a reasonable fighter because the wizards didn't get extra high level spells, running out of effective middle and high level spells happened back then.

The translation to 3rd and 3.5 changed things. Casters got more spells earlier and more easily, magic items became more critical to melee, artifacts almost disappeared from games. Plus the high level meta-game changed. 3.5 high level play is still focused on dungeons and standard combat encounters just like the lower levels but with bigger guns and more teleportation. The old spells that change your available options don't fit with this anymore because the current style is predicated on adding bigger and bigger numbers but not changing your options.

Essentially the old spells don't fit the new playstyle.


One the nose. Spells of level 7th or higher were "epic" and few could ever be expected to be cast. PCs usually entered semi-retirement at double-digit levels, so their progress ground to halt.

Another spell to add to this list is Blasphemy.

As a one time or two time event in a long-running campaign, it is a perfectly reasonable epic spell to make that particular battle memorable. But in 3e, it is pretty easy for any 13th level evil cleric to simply cast this spell three times in a row, and utterly demolish a 13th level party who is not prepared to counter this exact tactic.

[Melcar]

I personally play a level 28 wizard, and I have simply created a spell that give me some opportunity to resist dispel, greater dispel and Mordenkainen's Disjunktion. Thats takes care of that problem. Do I use it! Yes, in about 50% of the battles I fight in agains other mages. Most of them does not have any gear I want anyways, and the one that do, well that item i sure to save agaist the spell anyway. So for me, I dont mind that spell that much!

[Killer Angel]

I personally play a level 28 wizard, and I have simply created a spell that give me some opportunity to resist dispel, greater dispel and Mordenkainen's Disjunktion. Thats takes care of that problem. Do I use it! Yes, in about 50% of the battles I fight in agains other mages. Most of them does not have any gear I want anyways, and the one that do, well that item i sure to save agaist the spell anyway. So for me, I dont mind that spell that much!

The fact that you create a custom spell to fix a problem, is the proof that there is a problem.
Leaving aside that you're playing epic, of course.

[tiercel]

I actually hate polymorph more than disjunction.

Believe me, I understand the problems with disjunction -- it's just that for me it's a theoretical problem because having anyone high enough level to cast it (even BBEG) in the entire campaign has hardly ever happened in my experience. And for me, it's hard for me to hate something as much when it is (more or less) purely theoretical in my experience.

Polymorph, on the other hand, is awfully hard to avoid. Unless playing low-level only (perhaps E6), the potential for it comes up in almost every campaign I've ever been in, and once the potential is there it's hard to avoid. Not only is the power level and flexibility of the spell idiotically good, but shapeshifting magic is an iconic sort of magic that's hard to blanket-ban without it feeling like magic is missing something.

Perhaps no spell has received as many errata and FAQs and Rules of the Game and Sage Advice as polymorph and it's still problematic, not only from a power level point of view but an adjudication point of view (which monsters are allowable? what does a character have to do to "know" a certain kind of monster? exactly which monsters are "humanoid shaped" enough to allow all/most of equipment to stay active when polymorphing? how many preprepared index cards does your wizard/sorcerer's player need to carry? is there any reason beyond a certain level that the entire party isn't getting polymorphed for any major fight? is there a viable gish build which doesn't put polymorph front and center above any other buff?).

Some of these concerns show up in a lesser way with alter self and to a different degree with polymorph any object (even more of a headache, but less ubiquitous due to its level).

Yes I know Oberoni's Fallacy. The fact that you can ban/handwave/houserule/"gentleman's agreement" disjunction doesn't mean it's not a problem; but the fact that it is significantly harder to do something about polymorph/all shapeshifting magic, plus the problem appearing in almost every campaign and lasting for a significant portion of most campaigns in my experience, makes it more of a problem for me.

(Dis)honorable mention goes to "SR: No" spells; spell resistance and spell immunity which can't resist or be immune to a whole class of spells gets my goat (and makes the already Almighty "high-tier" classes even stronger), not to mention the philosophical idiocy of hurling "nonmagical magical coherent balls of fire/force/whatever into an 'antimagic' field to slay a 'magic-immune' creature" sort of thing.

[Karoht]

I actually hate polymorph more than disjunction.Related question, what is the opinion of the Pathfinder nerfs to the polymorph line?


(Dis)honorable mention goes to "SR: No" spells; spell resistance and spell immunity which can't resist or be immune to a whole class of spells gets my goat (and makes the already Almighty "high-tier" classes even stronger), not to mention the philosophical idiocy of hurling "nonmagical magical coherent balls of fire/force/whatever into an 'antimagic' field to slay a 'magic-immune' creature" sort of thing.
I'm with you, and not with you on this.

Sure, using magic to hurl a non magic ball of [element] into an anti-magic field at a magic immune enemy seems silly. I agree. However, how different is it from summonging a physical object and letting it fall from a high height on the same bad guy?

I don't hate all SR: No spells.
I dislike the SR: No spells that only check for a ranged touch AC hit, especially if they have no save. I especially dislike SR: No spell sthat only check for a ranged touch AC hit and with metamagic feats such as blazing spell, have no means to even resist, let alone be immune to. No save, just a paltry simple roll to confirm that it was aimed properly, and something dies.

[Snails]

The kernel idea of conjuring damaging stuff rather than evoking it is fine, but the mechanics do not do the concept justice. Better to not have the option at all rather than put a very bright spotlight the mechanical flaws of Spell Resistance.

Off topic rant: Spell Resistance is just a rules hack because Gary noticed that spellcasters were starting to run roughshod over the campaign as simple staples like Fireball scaled up (the 10d6 limit is from 2e). In that context, it was a "good enough" way to go. 3e did not need to do this. The same effect could have been accomplish with racial bonuses to saves, damage resistance, re-rolls, etc.

[Urpriest]

Off topic rant: Spell Resistance is just a rules hack because Gary noticed that spellcasters were starting to run roughshod over the campaign as simple staples like Fireball scaled up (the 10d6 limit is from 2e). In that context, it was a "good enough" way to go. 3e did not need to do this. The same effect could have been accomplish with racial bonuses to saves, damage resistance, re-rolls, etc.

Yeah, actually, this is the real issue. There's no problem with the Orb spells being able to damage golems in antimagic fields. The problem is that Fireball can't do the same thing. There's no reason for the vast majority of evocation to be SR:Yes when all it does is burn things, and there was less reason in early D&D when the fire clearly behaved like mundane fire (being compressed in various volumes, etc.). SR itself was a lazy rules-hack.

[Chained Birds]

I am kind of curious how much SR you'd need to be a relevant threat against a non-orb spewing caster (As in, he/she didn't prepare the spell today or something)?

[StreamOfTheSky]

And I hate people who hate on polymorph so much.

It's not that bad, maybe with some of the splat monsters where things got more and more ridiculous, but the spell itself is pretty fine. It doesn't last TOO long (the main reason Alter Self is completely broken for its spell level), it still only gives Ex attacks (not qualities, not Su anything, and certainly not Sp), and best of all: You can cast it on other people! I love buffing the party tank w/ Polymorph, and it's annoying that posters attack it when most other polymorph spells (including ALL of the supposed "more balanced" polymorph subschool spells that came later) do not include this cooperative factor.

I think Enervation, and the ability to spam it, is far more broken, to look at another 4th level spell. A bunch of enervates will neuter any spellcaster, and casters are the most dangerous foes in D&D, so that's quite a big deal. There's a reason Xykon loves his Energy Drain so much and Durkon felt compelled to research a mass death ward just to counter it. Polymorph just buffs the martials to make them better in melee, or fools an idiot caster into thinking just because he now has str 30 and some reach, he can "melee." *snickers*

Alter Self = broken
Shapechange = supercalifrajilistic holy-crap-on-toast BROKEN
Polymorph Any Object = Broken and wildly open-ended

Polymorph isn't nearly as bad as any of these, yet it's always "I hate Polymorph!" :smallannoyed:

[tiercel]

Yeah, actually, this is the real issue. There's no problem with the Orb spells being able to damage golems in antimagic fields. The problem is that Fireball can't do the same thing. There's no reason for the vast majority of evocation to be SR:Yes when all it does is burn things, and there was less reason in early D&D when the fire clearly behaved like mundane fire (being compressed in various volumes, etc.). SR itself was a lazy rules-hack.

I think the most obvious problem behind these spells is the power one: full spellcasters already "win" D&D, do we really need their spells -- even direct damage ones -- to be MORE powerful? Sure, maybe you'd prefer better saves/resistances to SR, that's valid, but to make SR not matter so much via no-SR spells and not replace it with a better defense is a boost for spellcasting.

And arguably the REAL problem isn't so much that Orbs are no-SR, but that many battlefield control spells (grease, glitterdust, web, stinking cloud, black tentacles, solid/acid fog etc.) are.

Philosophically I still have a problem with these spells because they expire -- if the effect vanishes when the spell ends/is dispelled, to me that says the materials are inherently magical and should be subject to being resisted the same way the magic fire of a fireball or the lassitude of a slow can be.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any such thing as a "create a lasting effect through an Instantaneous conjuration/whatever that then acts just like nonmagical substance," only that that sounds like a much more substantial effort of magic than temporarily creating a magical substance, and that the created nonmagical substance should act just like any other nonmagical substance (e.g. no magically homing nonmagical objects).

I suppose for me a high-SR/magic-immune foe should actually BE highly resistant or immune to magic, and a wizard facing a golem should be buffing his buddies, using one of a few spells like telekinesis to indirectly affect the golem, or using his Knowledge skills to remember what spells actually do affect the golem.

To get back to my primary contention...

Related question, what is the opinion of the Pathfinder nerfs to the polymorph line?

I've never actually played Pathfinder, but looking at the spells it feels more like the PHB II druid shapeshifting variant -- the mechanics are easy as pie and you can fluff it however you want.

I suppose it's not as flexible as you might think of full-on classical shapeshifting magic to be -- where every form has its own unique advantages -- but then if you want that kind of full-on shapeshifting ability, you can specialize in it via, say, Master of Many Forms. (I think I'd have a lot less problem with polymorph madness if it was your only real trick, as opposed to just one of a number of 4th level spells you could cast today, much less spam on your party.)

My contention still stands that polymorph is more of a problem than disjunction from a "how fixable is it?" point of view, if one (presumably) workable way of fixing polymorph is to create several entire series of spells with specific mechanical adjustments to each level, just to be able to preserve some kind of iconic "shapeshifting mage." (That and most non-E6 campaigns will spend some significant amount of their duration with the polymorph question in play.)

Granted, I'm not so sure that the Pathfinder "fix" to disjunction is a great fix -- while it takes the insane nuclear option off the table, now disjunction is the must-have auto-spam option of its level (given how much high-level combat depends on magical effects and items).

"Avoid the issue" is a lot easier with disjunction since it only applies at quite high levels, and simply banhammering the spell doesn't disrupt an entire typical iconic magic ability.

[Scow2]

And I hate people who hate on polymorph so much.

It's not that bad, maybe with some of the splat monsters where things got more and more ridiculous, but the spell itself is pretty fine. It doesn't last TOO long (the main reason Alter Self is completely broken for its spell level), it still only gives Ex attacks (not qualities, not Su anything, and certainly not Sp), and best of all: You can cast it on other people! I love buffing the party tank w/ Polymorph, and it's annoying that posters attack it when most other polymorph spells (including ALL of the supposed "more balanced" polymorph subschool spells that came later) do not include this cooperative factor.

I think Enervation, and the ability to spam it, is far more broken, to look at another 4th level spell. A bunch of enervates will neuter any spellcaster, and casters are the most dangerous foes in D&D, so that's quite a big deal. There's a reason Xykon loves his Energy Drain so much and Durkon felt compelled to research a mass death ward just to counter it. Polymorph just buffs the martials to make them better in melee, or fools an idiot caster into thinking just because he now has str 30 and some reach, he can "melee." *snickers*

Alter Self = broken
Shapechange = supercalifrajilistic holy-crap-on-toast BROKEN
Polymorph Any Object = Broken and wildly open-ended

Polymorph isn't nearly as bad as any of these, yet it's always "I hate Polymorph!" :smallannoyed:Out of curiosity, how does 3.5's Alter Self stack up to 3.0's version (Which I love because it was much more open-ended)?

And Hydra is not a splatbook monster.

[Augmental]

I think Enervation, and the ability to spam it, is far more broken, to look at another 4th level spell. A bunch of enervates will neuter any spellcaster, and casters are the most dangerous foes in D&D, so that's quite a big deal.

And a spell that neuters spellcasters is a BAD thing? :smallconfused:

[Venger]

And a spell that neuters spellcasters is a BAD thing? :smallconfused:

his point was that it's even bad against spellcasters, which is somewhat rare.

it also imposes a stacking penalty on a bunch of other stufff, like attacks, skills, and ability checks, something that noncasters actually have to care about. they're arguably hit harder by it

[Grod_The_Giant]

Out of curiosity, how does 3.5's Alter Self stack up to 3.0's version (Which I love because it was much more open-ended)?
It's really good. It lasts for 10 minutes/level, and you can use it to get huge mobility buffs (be a Varg! 60 foot move speed and free Spring Attack!), natural armor (+6 for being a Troglodyte), and the like.

[ben-zayb]

Gotta go with Mind Blank as my Top 1. I've always wanted to play a high level mindscrewer enchanter/illusionist (two magic schools!) but Mind Blank completely makes the build nigh unplayable, if not completely.

True Seeing gets my second most hated spell, as it also largely cripples an entire school (illusion)

Gate and Shapechange gets my third place since they're just too broken to the point that they managed to cross the line (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrossesTheLineTwice) twice for me.

[Snowbluff]

Gotta go with Mind Blank as my Top 1. I've always wanted to play a high level mindscrewer enchanter/illusionist (two magic schools!) but Mind Blank completely makes the build nigh unplayable, if not completely. If immunity is not an issue, Dominate is much more powerful than most other SoS, and straight up better than a SoD.


True Seeing gets my second most hated spell, as it also largely cripples an entire school (illusion)


The same can be true for illusion. I give Illusion more slack since it gives players something to play with, but special senses mess that up.

[tiercel]

And I hate people who hate on polymorph so much....

Polymorph isn't nearly as bad as any of these, yet it's always "I hate Polymorph!" :smallannoyed:

A spell that only turned the caster into a troll, ala polymorph, would already be a perfectly strong self-buff for a 4th level spell.

But that's not enough. You can turn all your buddies into trolls, you can turn yourself into better forms as you gain more HD, and you can turn yourself into any critter in any allowed source.

Sure, enervation is also strong, but it's spamming it that's really strong. One polymorph already makes a big difference, much less when you spam IT.

[Squirrel_Dude]

I've yet to face a Mage's Disjunction in-game, so I don't know its true horror. I expect that a spellcaster faced with it could always Celerity and Dimension Door out of the way?Me and my friends played a semester of a Level 20, see how long you can live/fight hillarious things game. By the end, I had 2 to 3 mages disjunctions prepared for every fight, along with 3 time stops.

Yeah, it's that powerful. Basically, I would go, buff my friends. Then, on the next turn I would debuff them and watch my friends kill them. How effective was it?

We made a well played Great Wyrm Red Dragon Ravener run away in terror.

[Pickford]

Gotta go with Mind Blank as my Top 1. I've always wanted to play a high level mindscrewer enchanter/illusionist (two magic schools!) but Mind Blank completely makes the build nigh unplayable, if not completely.

True Seeing gets my second most hated spell, as it also largely cripples an entire school (illusion)

Gate and Shapechange gets my third place since they're just too broken to the point that they managed to cross the line (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrossesTheLineTwice) twice for me.

This and other reasons (immune to mind affecting....) are why Illusions seem to be the weakest school for high level play.

I don't like resistance. +1 to saves for 1 minute? Great.

edit: re: Polymorph...it's only up to 15 HD (assuming 'you' or your friend are 15 HD), so your HP remain a sad 40ish at 10th (assuming a con bonus), no Ex, Su, Sp abilities. (i.e. Nothing that would make it nice to be a troll).

[Augmental]

I don't like resistance. +1 to saves for 1 minute? Great.

Well, it is a cantrip. :smalltongue:

[TuggyNE]

This and other reasons (immune to mind affecting....) are why Illusions seem to be the weakest school for high level play.

? Very few useful Illusions are [mind-affecting]. So why would this make any difference? (You might be thinking of Enchantment, which is probably the weakest school at any level.)

[Pickford]

? Very few useful Illusions are [mind-affecting]. So why would this make any difference? (You might be thinking of Enchantment, which is probably the weakest school at any level.)

Ah yes, you're right.

Still, true seeing negates them entirely and a pair of goggles of continuous true seeing is only 12k. So two schools of magic can be completely negated (easily) at higher levels.

edit: It's bad when one forgets that an entire school (enchantment) even exists...

[Snails]

Ah yes, you're right.

Still, true seeing negates them entirely and a pair of goggles of continuous true seeing is only 12k. So two schools of magic can be completely negated (easily) at higher levels.

edit: It's bad when one forgets that an entire school (enchantment) even exists...

Continuous True Seeing costs 205,000 gp. (90k for continous 5 level spell X 2 for short duration + 25k for special component cost)
1/day Mind Blank costs 43,200 gp.
Undeath costs ???

Such a True Seeing item is a potential balance issue at 20thish level, but it is so expensive that it would very very rarely appear in the hands of an NPC. Not that an NPC could never afford it, but it is easy to figure out how a well-heeled NPC could gain enough of the advantages of the continuous item by other means for fewer less resources invested -- such an NPC could put multiple mid-level clerics on retainer instead. It is an item for PCs who are poke their noses where they do not belong who need a continuous effect.

[Pickford]

Continuous True Seeing costs 205,000 gp. (90k for continous 5 level spell X 2 for short duration + 25k for special component cost)
1/day Mind Blank costs 43,200 gp.
Undeath costs ???

Such a True Seeing item is a potential balance issue at 20thish level, but it is so expensive that it would very very rarely appear in the hands of an NPC. Not that an NPC could never afford it, but it is easy to figure out how a well-heeled NPC could gain enough of the advantages of the continuous item by other means for fewer less resources invested -- such an NPC could put multiple mid-level clerics on retainer instead. It is an item for PCs who are poke their noses where they do not belong who need a continuous effect.

Hrm, I must have been thinking see invisibility...
1.5 (10 min/level) x 2 x 3 x 2000 = 18k

Still, buying the goggles a la carte for 205,000 isn't much in the grand scheme of things to negate an entire school.

Plus the item could be made for just 102,500gp + 4,100 xp, a pittance ;)

[Killer Angel]

Polymorph isn't nearly as bad as any of these, yet it's always "I hate Polymorph!" :smallannoyed:

Indeed, is the polymorph line of spells, that's cheesy. The spell polymorph is not so broken as the other ones.

[nobodez]

Indeed, is the polymorph line of spells, that's cheesy. The spell polymorph is not so broken as the other ones.

The problem with Polymorph is that it's hard to adjudicate quickly. Plus, depending one what books ou have, it works differently (and Im not even talking about different Momater Manuals). If all you have is the Core Rulebooks, then it's a very powerful spell. I you add in PHiI, it gets less powerful, but easier to adjudicate.

At least in Pathfinder the various Form spells are easier to work. Some people are still confused by them, but at least it is a smaller group.

[Pickford]

The problem with Polymorph is that it's hard to adjudicate quickly. Plus, depending one what books ou have, it works differently (and Im not even talking about different Momater Manuals). If all you have is the Core Rulebooks, then it's a very powerful spell. I you add in PHiI, it gets less powerful, but easier to adjudicate.

At least in Pathfinder the various Form spells are easier to work. Some people are still confused by them, but at least it is a smaller group.

(Polymorph rules were updated for PHB in the errata; there's no distinction.)

[nobodez]

(Polymorph rules were updated for PHB in the errata; there's no distinction.)

True, if you have the errata. How many people have it printed out? I know I never did.

[charcoalninja]

Gate isn't a compulsion effect. But yeah, the rest is true. Also, while Solars aren't chain-Gate-able (the reason they're always mentioned is probably because of the whole summon a horde of angels thing), Titans are, so there's that.

Gate, though it doesn't have the tags, is still a compulsion:
I've argued this before so I'll only post my evidence and argument once so as to not derail and people can consider it as they please.
From the SRD:
"pull the subject through, willing or unwilling. Deities and unique beings are under no compulsion to come through the gate" Being pulled through the gate willing or unwilling is a compulsion.

Furthermore the spell grants mental control of the creature allowing you to have it do whatever you want regardless of its alignment. Since it doesn't create magical chains to let you move them like a puppet and they use their abilities, the control must be mental.:
"You can call and control several creatures"
" you can control it if its HD do not exceed twice your caster level. A single creature with more HD than twice your caster level can’t be controlled. Deities and unique beings cannot be controlled in any event. An uncontrolled being acts as it pleases" meaning a controlled being cannot act as it pleases and is therefore mentally controlled by the caster.

"A controlled creature can be commanded " again the creature being compelled to perform a service.

The prot from evil line:
"the barrier blocks any attempt to possess the warded creature (by a magic jar attack, for example) or to exercise mental control over the creature (including enchantment (charm) effects and enchantment (compulsion) effects that grant the caster ongoing control over the subject, such as dominate person). The protection does not prevent such effects from targeting the protected creature, but it suppresses the effect for the duration of the protection from evil effect. If the protection from evil effect ends before the effect granting mental control does, the would-be controller would then be able to mentally command the controlled creature. "

Says it blocks any attempt to exercise mental control over the creature (including but not limited to) ench charm/compulsions. and even says that if the effect ran out, the would be controller, could command the creature.

IMO the language is similar enough that I feel the RAW says Gate can't compel Angels to show up or obey. Instead they, like deities, get to decide if they want to or not, which IMO, makes for better lore anyway, and why most of the settings tend to deal with people summoning and binding fiends rather than angels.

On the polymorph front, I agree that baseline it's a rough one to adjudicate and why you have the phenomenon of GMs decreeing "you don't know enough about that creature" blah blah to try to limit what forms you could take. It's a really potent spell effect for what it does, but honestly the problems just mainly come from the martials not getting nice things. I don't think Shapechange or Polymorph is that much of a problem if you're a tier 1-3 party, or playing with Tome of battle classes, but YMMV

[ben-zayb]

Continuous True Seeing costs 205,000 gp. (90k for continous 5 level spell X 2 for short duration + 25k for special component cost)
1/day Mind Blank costs 43,200 gp.
Undeath costs ???




Hrm, I must have been thinking see invisibility...
1.5 (10 min/level) x 2 x 3 x 2000 = 18k

Still, buying the goggles a la carte for 205,000 isn't much in the grand scheme of things to negate an entire school.

Plus the item could be made for just 102,500gp + 4,100 xp, a pittance ;)

What are you guys talking about? Hathran Mask of True Seeing UE is only 75k, right?

On topic, I'd also add that Mind Blank, in addition to making ~90% of the Enchantment school irrelevant, only affects a portion of the Illusion school.

Which portion, you say? Oh, only the whole Figment and Phantasm subschools! Yep, 2/5 subschools, no biggie. Add that the Figment and Glamer subschools are most likely gets beaten by True Seeing, the entire Illusion-themed caster becomes a Shadow-themed caster instead. :smallbiggrin:

[Scow2]

What are you guys talking about? Hathran Mask of True Seeing UE is only 75k, right?

On topic, I'd also add that Mind Blank, in addition to making ~90% of the Enchantment school irrelevant, only affects a portion of the Illusion school.

Which portion, you say? Oh, only the whole Figment and Phantasm subschools! Yep, 2/5 subschools, no biggie. Add that the Figment and Glamer subschools are most likely gets beaten by True Seeing, the entire Illusion-themed caster becomes a Shadow-themed caster instead. :smallbiggrin:
How does Mind Blank negate Figments?

[Eldest]

I think the poster mixed up Patterns and Figments.

[Urpriest]

snip

The problem here is one of a fluff misunderstanding. You're thinking of control as coming in two forms, mind control or physical control (a la control body). But conjuration spells aren't either. Called creatures can subvert instructions despite being required to obey them (Planar Binding spells), and even when they are required to obey your commands completely lying to them and making them feel like you're on their side makes them more effective (Malconvoker).

Conjuration spells don't impose absolute control, and they don't affect the creature's mind. Rather, they work more like a contract.

Think about the mythology these things are springing from. A summoned demon doesn't have its mind modified, it's bound. It's an analogy to serfdom, slavery, and similar contracts of the era. The target is under an obligation to obey you, but not because their mind is restricted, but because they're in a social situation in which they have an unbreakable obligation to obey your orders.

If I were comparing the sort of control exercised by Conjuration spells I wouldn't compare it to Dominate Person, or any other compulsion effect. I'd compare it to Mark of Justice (Necromancy), or to Magic Circle Against Evil (Abjuration), or Pathfinder's Debilitating Portent (Divination). It's a magical restriction, not a mental one.

[Snails]

What are you guys talking about? Hathran Mask of True Seeing UE is only 75k, right?


Never heard of it. Apparently a book I do not own and will avoid buying.

Mind Blank is a spell that truly hoses one school, but at high high level play nixing divinations is even more critical. Enemies that matter can have a 10th level cleric on retainer divining about your intentions every day.

[Kane0]

I don't contest Disjunction and the polymorph/shapechange line as the worst spells going around (followed closely by spells that just outright ignore normall limitations of spells, such as SR:No) but for me the most hated spell(s) are the ones that just say 'No'. As in grant you total immunity to a slew of things.

As previously stated, Mind Blank and True seeing are the two largest culprits. Where it is perfectly fine to stop one magical effect with another (Dimensional Anchor, See Invisibility, etc) having a single spell render you entirely immune to scores of magical effects is not on.

In my game I have those spells work on spells of spell level equal to their own and lower, higher level spells work as if Mind Blank/True Seeing were not there at all. And even that is a poor attempt at curbing its annoying amount of power.

[Togo]

Think about the mythology these things are springing from. A summoned demon doesn't have its mind modified, it's bound. It's an analogy to serfdom, slavery, and similar contracts of the era. The target is under an obligation to obey you, but not because their mind is restricted, but because they're in a social situation in which they have an unbreakable obligation to obey your orders.

So.. they're compelled to obey you. How is that not a compulsion?

Think of the fluff around those people who freedom from compulsion effects, like paladin of freedom, or holy liberator. Seems like unbreakable obligations and freedom from slavery is exactly what they should be immune to.


If I were comparing the sort of control exercised by Conjuration spells I wouldn't compare it to Dominate Person, or any other compulsion effect. I'd compare it to Mark of Justice (Necromancy), or to Magic Circle Against Evil (Abjuration), or Pathfinder's Debilitating Portent (Divination). It's a magical restriction, not a mental one.

I can see what you're saying about [mind effecting], but it's still clearly a [compulsion] effect - it does nothing else but compel you to do things. As such it would be blocked by protection from evil and similar.

My least favourite? It would have to be a toss-up between glitterdust and Enhance wildshape. Enhance wild shape is a blatent increase in the power of the class features of an already powerful class, achieved by removing restrictions and limits on that class feature, in a flexible manner allowing you to pick and choose what effect you want. It's horrible.

Glitterdust is just bad because it's blatently overpowered for its level, being both the lowest level save-or-nerf effect that hits multiple opponents, and being no SR despite creating a substance that has unnatural properties, and being a valuable utility spell, and being a spell that negates other people's class features (stealth) without a save. And because it's both low level and core, it crops up everywhere.

[TuggyNE]

I can see what you're saying about [mind effecting], but it's still clearly a [compulsion] effect - it does nothing else but compel you to do things. As such it would be blocked by protection from evil and similar.

There is no [compulsion] tag; there's a [mind-affecting] tag and a (Compulsion) subschool, but since gate is Conjuration it isn't an Enchantment (Compulsion). Therefore, RAW, protection from evil doesn't do anything in particular, because it's not mental control, and it certainly isn't mental control powered by Enchantment (Charm) or Enchantment (Compulsion).

Gate is annoying because it has a lot of quirky unintuitive implications. Should probably be rewritten.

[Osiris]

Has anybody thought of Miracle? Not only does it replicate what wish can do but with 'divine' and 'arcane' switched FOR FREE, well, actually that's about it, but what more would you NEED :smallwink: This spell can pull off a Firestorm, Earthquake, Antimagic Field- which a cleric can survive in, or a symbol of Insanity.

Now, I love versatility, but this just screams MINMAX! :smallannoyed:

[ben-zayb]

How does Mind Blank negate Figments?


I think the poster mixed up Patterns and Figments.
By having a very confused/overcaffeinated poster apparently. :smallredface:

There is no [compulsion] tag; there's a [mind-affecting] tag and a (Compulsion) subschool, but since gate is Conjuration it isn't an Enchantment (Compulsion). Therefore, RAW, protection from evil doesn't do anything in particular, because it's not mental control, and it certainly isn't mental control powered by Enchantment (Charm) or Enchantment (Compulsion).
Pretty much seconded this. Prot from X goes something like:

Does this spell or effect attempting to possess the creature? If yes, then block it.
Does this spell or effect attempting to exercise mental control (including enchantment (charm) and enchantment (compulsion)) over the creature? If yes, then block it.


Oh wait, somebody used the Control Body power to psychokinetically control the creature? Tough luck. It's not mental control.

Oh, no, did somebody use the Planar Binding spell to trap a creature and keep it held (bound) until it fulfilled a service for you? Tough luck, it's just a magically complex coercion, not a mental control. Same with gate.

This is pretty much the part not quoted by Togo from Ur-Priest .The part that I believe has the more substance needed for an argument.

The problem here is one of a fluff misunderstanding. You're thinking of control as coming in two forms, mind control or physical control (a la control body). But conjuration spells aren't either. Called creatures can subvert instructions despite being required to obey them (Planar Binding spells), and even when they are required to obey your commands completely lying to them and making them feel like you're on their side makes them more effective (Malconvoker).

Conjuration spells don't impose absolute control, and they don't affect the creature's mind. Rather, they work more like a contract.

EDIT: Another pet-peeve spell of mine: Freedom of Movement. I mean seriously, take a look at the spell and tell me there is nothing wrong with it. :smallbiggrin: There is.

[Snails]

So.. they're compelled to obey you. How is that not a compulsion?

Think of the fluff around those people who freedom from compulsion effects, like paladin of freedom, or holy liberator. Seems like unbreakable obligations and freedom from slavery is exactly what they should be immune to.

Ah, but the reason the demon complies to your wizard's bidding is actually much like how the Paladin obeys her Code of Conduct. It is not a Compulsion because it is logically impossible for a sentient creature to do otherwise, but merely compelling (with a small 'c') to obey because the it is the nature of Outsiders to feel personally obligated under those circumstances.

It would not be a bad thing to have summoned or called creatures break free and run amok some random amount of the time, but it would be a completely terrible thing to put that within the Core rules, because it would cause horrific rules bloat around something the designers want to be fun and not too difficult to accomplish.

[Urpriest]

So.. they're compelled to obey you. How is that not a compulsion?

Think of the fluff around those people who freedom from compulsion effects, like paladin of freedom, or holy liberator. Seems like unbreakable obligations and freedom from slavery is exactly what they should be immune to.


Think about the implications of this argument for a second. Are you seriously saying that if you put Protection from Law on a Samurai, they could betray their lord with no consequences? Or that if you put Protection from Evil on a slave, they would cease being a slave? Because that seems to be the implication here.

[Phelix-Mu]

For many reasons, not least of which being the possibility of compulsion-type effects to remove fun from the game, WotC was all over the board with how this was handled. This is pretty clear when we see that the best ways to force people to do things are not Enchantment school at all, and that the best Enchantment effects are largely not effective at higher levels, as they are pretty widely negated by a whole slew of other spells, and resisted by an even broader array of things.

Gate really is the kind of thing that, unlike disjunction, can hijack the entire plot. Loss of items can be crippling, but a party usually has other resources to draw upon while falling back and re-equipping. It's a blunt instrument to throw around, and can certainly lead to TPK or the party failing in plot-crucial encounters. It's kind of meta to ban the spell, though, as it is the kind of thing that would probably have been useful in a world with magic. Weaponized anti-magic clearly has appeal to the mind of an archmage.

I dislike gate more, because it is a tool with much broader, plot-scale implications. Due to the fun of spell interactions, gate can be used to pretty much undo balance at high levels. While disjunction has a pretty specific, narrow use, it's hard for me to imagine that gate works the way it's worded and archmages don't somehow secretly control everything through a network of mindraped solars, or solars that have been mind swapped with demons, or gate-enabled simulacra chains. And this doesn't even get into the issues with gate RAW potentially allowing direct calling of plot figures. And the spell almost making Epic Spellcasting somehow less balanced.

Anyway, I have been spared any players that disjunction as a tactic (or are even aware of it...and in any case it's not as useful for players), and if I am going to break items, I like to do it in a more intentional, less random, and more dramatic way that single-spell AoE monkey wrench. In the epic campaign in which I am a partial caster player, I am still trying to get the full casters in the party to comprehend the true power of gate as written.

[Sith_Happens]

In the epic campaign in which I am a partial caster player, I am still trying to get the full casters in the party to comprehend the true power of gate as written.

Since you're playing epic, just point them to the Abomination section.:smallwink:

[Snails]

As I see it, Gate should have exactly two purposes: (1) a means of travel, and (2) a means of opening negotiations with a powerful extraplanar being. That is all.

If you simply want an obedient creature for combat, you should be using Summon Monster. Gate can bring in reinforcements, if you negotiated the terms beforehand.

[Bakeru]

As I see it, Gate should have exactly two purposes: (1) a means of travel, and (2) a means of opening negotiations with a powerful extraplanar being. That is all.

If you simply want an obedient creature for combat, you should be using Summon Monster. Gate can bring in reinforcements, if you negotiated the terms beforehand.I'd add a third option: Calling in beings you don't control, but whose behaviour is suitably predictable.
If you're fighting devils and gate in a few demons, they're going to enjoy the chance to hurt devils. Of course, they'd fight you, too, if you get to close, but as long as you keep a low profile and/or choose your gate-targets appropriately, it's entirely possible to get "reinforcements" that will help you more than they hurt you, even without negotiation.
Of course, gated-in devils might decide to just teleport away and let you be the cannon-fodder, or similar things, since you have no control over them. It's just a way to weaponise NPC-infighting.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I'd add a third option: Calling in beings you don't control, but whose behaviour is suitably predictable.
If you're fighting devils and gate in a few demons, they're going to enjoy the chance to hurt devils. Of course, they'd fight you, too, if you get to close, but as long as you keep a low profile and/or choose your gate-targets appropriately, it's entirely possible to get "reinforcements" that will help you more than they hurt you, even without negotiation.
Of course, gated-in devils might decide to just teleport away and let you be the cannon-fodder, or similar things, since you have no control over them. It's just a way to weaponise NPC-infighting.

No, that's horrible and broken, and the thing I hate the most about Gate. The ability to bring in insanely super high HD outsiders for the "drawback" of not being able to control them. Oh man, because it's not like a high level caster has teleport or anything. And I'm sure if you open said gate in the middle of an enemy kingdom's metropolis and have a mega-demon come through, you can't count on him w/o any direction or control from you whatsoever to destroy said metropolis anyway. Why, no. Never. :smallmad:

If you don't care about the immediate 100 mile radius of where you open the gate, there's basically no drawback, it's just instant win.
In my high level game we've literally not even seen our caster archnemesis despite trying to track him down for YEARS in real life time (maybe 1 year, game time). He's CONSTANTLY exploiting the fact that we're the good guys to do s**t like this, just porting in a bunch of uber fiends to wreck civilized areas and then we have to struggle and often take some deaths to contain/defeat it, as he's already on his way to the next MacGuffin.
This particular abuse of Gate touches a nerve for me.

[Snails]

I agree with StreamOfTheSky.

That kind of gambit encourages a lot of second guessing about politics during moments when the PCs' job is to seize the spotlight and be heroic. Politics has its place in those high level games, but I would not want to adjudicate those far-reaching issues during the fighting.

It sets up the DM to be the mean parent in a mother-may-I drama whenever the player chooses. Better to quash expectations of such gifts in the first place, but offer leeway in the pre-combat negotiations on very special occasions.

[ericgrau]

Because there are no errata, Shivering Touch and Lesser Shivering Touch do what they say: inflict ability damage, with a non-standard duration (much shorter than the usual 1 point healed per day). Damage always stacks unless there's an explicit statement to prevent that from happening.

This and spells like it are the ones I hate the most. Poorly edited, exploited, and able to take down a foe regardless of level or normal defensive ability. I've seen arguments that an equally poorly designed counter exists somewhere so it's ok, but I only see that as twice the problem. Binary encounters & tactics are a boring and a stupid waste of gaming time. You shouldn't instantly die because you forgot a single specific non-default tactic, and you shouldn't be immune to everything because someone else forgot one.

On the note of defenses, defensive spells are often rated as 10 times better than they really are. Unless the cost of the defense vs your total assets - in gp, rounds, spell slots and so on - is less than the fraction of time that you will need it, defenses do not automatically make a certain tactic useless.


Related question, what is the opinion of the Pathfinder nerfs to the polymorph line?
They remove all of the ability of the polymorph line to change into a form and change them into simple buffs. IMO that removes the entire purpose of even having polymorph, and you might as well ban it and use the buffs that you already have anyway. 3.5 polymorph is a pain to adjudicate though. I would do something halfway in between 3.5 and PF, and have the player doing the work to stat out each and every form ahead of time which he wants to use. Then the DM also looks at them ahead of time. I find often unless you're seeking out a loophole the stats aren't nearly as bad as you'd think. Even the dreaded hydra has a poor attack bonus making the actual damage output not so spectacular, except with a liberal interpretation of their combat reflexes. Which strikes me as silly that people will argue so hard for the broken interpretation from a literal look at part of the wording. When for actual play who cares if you're legally right or not just go with the non-broken interpretation which is probably the intent anyway.

Which brings me to gate. It's silly how hard people argue that it's ok to break it, then complain about how broken it is. Specifically it requires that a bargain be made for greater tasks like those that take longer than 1 rnd/level. Immediately the powergamer says, ooh if I do something epicly broken it's ok if it takes less than 1 rnd/level. Uhhh, no. Just force the player to make a deal with the gated creature if he tries shenanigans or anything that's in any way not minor. Who cares if you're technically right or wrong by the purest letter of the law, there is a perfectly plausible non-broken interpretation right in front of you so take it.

It's like Rain Man stopping in the middle of the cross walk when the sign changes from walk to stop... and then arguing on the internet for days about how it said stop so the facts say he should stop. Blows my mind.

As for gating in a creature but not controlling it, most creatures that powerful can plane shift or find someone to plane shift them anyway if they wanted. And they have their own foes and own problems. They aren't going to stop everything to risk their lives on a new foe just because he has an opposing alignment. If the DM has no sense of verisimilitude then his poor storytelling ability is the real issue, and a much bigger issue at that.

[Seffbasilisk]

Despite 'What do you mean, your barbarian can't fly?'

I actually agree with Tippy about Disjunction. D&D is story-telling. If at a part in the character's life, he's blasted by the unraveling of magic, and had to get by mundane for a bit until he could acquire items of power again? Adds to the story. If you've Excaliber, you'll never lose, but if now and then someone steals it, or you misplace it, or it's lost...


I dislike Mindrape. Played a Raksasha Sorcerer who used it to great effect in Epic game. He 'made friends' as he called it. It did strain party relations.

[rockdeworld]

Technically (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm), you can create a 25,000gp nonmagical item. Magical items don't have a gp limit.
Yes, that was the point. The Wishes for nonmagical items resupply the party to full WBL.

Let's consider what a rank 1 demigod gets.

20 10 sided HD + 30 to 50 character levels. So let's say "30". And maximum HP per HD, so as a minimum 20*10 + 30*4 = 320 HP.
This part is mistaken. The appropriate text reads "Most deities are 20 HD outsiders with 30 to 50 character levels as well." Not "Most deities get 20 HD outsiders with 30 to 50 character levels as well."

Has anybody thought of Miracle? Not only does it replicate what wish can do but with 'divine' and 'arcane' switched FOR FREE, well, actually that's about it, but what more would you NEED :smallwink: This spell can pull off a Firestorm, Earthquake, Antimagic Field- which a cleric can survive in, or a symbol of Insanity.

Now, I love versatility, but this just screams MINMAX! :smallannoyed:
Miracle requires your god to agree to your request, so it has a built-in limiter.

[Rubik]

Miracle requires your god to agree to your request, so it has a built-in limiter.I'm my own grandpa god.

I worship the ideal of me, so when I ask myself for a Miracle, I'd damned well better give it to me.

[3WhiteFox3]

I'm my own grandpa god.

I worship the ideal of me, so when I ask myself for a Miracle, I'd damned well better give it to me.

If you were a deity who was a 20th level cleric, would you consider yourself your own deity? Could you do things like that at-will?

[NeoPhoenix0]

I'm my own grandpa god.

I worship the ideal of me, so when I ask myself for a Miracle, I'd damned well better give it to me.

you don't grant your own miracles. the ideal of you grants your miracles. you don't really have anything to do with it.

edit: plus the DM could say the ideal of you doesn't have enough power to grant it and could probably prevent you from doing anything out of character with it.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Worshipping yourself and constantly denying yourself spells for pety reasons would be pretty funny. Whole new meaning to, "I'm my own worst enemy."

Anyway, yeah. Wish always costs xp, me no-likey. Miracle gives the nice every day use of "mimic one of 85% of all the other spells in the entire game" and other specific fringe side uses like "kill the Tarrasque dead" just as well as Wish and generally doesn't even cost xp. Much better spell. And for the far-out requests that don't pan out... Wish will **** with you; Miracle...your deity just says "uhh...no."

Miracle >> Wish

[Neo Tin Robo]

Which strikes me as silly that people will argue so hard for the broken interpretation from a literal look at part of the wording. When for actual play who cares if you're legally right or not just go with the non-broken interpretation which is probably the intent anyway.

Deliberately choosing the most broken interpretation and arguing aggressively for it on the internet? That's the real Rule Zero of 3E D&D. I'm pretty sure it's in the errata somewhere...

[rockdeworld]

I'm my own grandpa god.

I worship the ideal of me, so when I ask myself for a Miracle, I'd damned well better give it to me.
If you can grant yourself spells, you can grant whatever Miracles you want :smallamused:

[3WhiteFox3]

If you can grant yourself spells, you can grant whatever Miracles you want :smallamused:

Do deities with cleric levels grant themselves spells? How does that even work? If they can't grant themselves spells, where do they (the spells) even come from?

I actually hate Wish far more than Miracle. Wish has a wider list of effects that are always allowable; Wish can make any Magic Item, Wish can grant inherent bonuses, it can retroactively rewrite reality. Wish can break campaigns because people take time to create documents in legalese to make Wish incorruptible, causing arguments and generally giving everyone a bad day.

But the worst of it is that Wish can be granted via binding, so that xp cost is actually moot, Frank & K's Wish economy explains the problem pretty well.

[Scow2]

Do deities with cleric levels grant themselves spells? How does that even work? If they can't grant themselves spells, where do they (the spells) even come from?

It comes from their divine, primal power source. Dieties can grant spells, but not use them at-will themselves.

[Snails]

Specifically it requires that a bargain be made for greater tasks like those that take longer than 1 rnd/level. Immediately the powergamer says, ooh if I do something epicly broken it's ok if it takes less than 1 rnd/level. Uhhh, no. Just force the player to make a deal with the gated creature if he tries shenanigans or anything that's in any way not minor. Who cares if you're technically right or wrong by the purest letter of the law, there is a perfectly plausible non-broken interpretation right in front of you so take it.

Gibberish is still gibberish, and the problem is obvious even with the most pedestrian usage of the spell. If I am a 17th level caster I can cast Summon Monster IX and bring forth a 12 HD demon or devil to do my bidding for 17 rounds, or I can use Gate and have a Pit Fiend or Balor serve me for 17 rounds.

[Scow2]

Gibberish is still gibberish, and the problem is obvious even with the most pedestrian usage of the spell. If I am a 17th level caster I can cast Summon Monster IX and bring forth a 12 HD demon or devil to do my bidding for 17 rounds, or I can use Gate and have a Pit Fiend or Balor serve me for 17 rounds.

The Summon Monster line is deliberately underpowered compared to the [Calling] subschool. Because when you have to call a creature, you have to put up with its quirks, personality, and shenanigans. You can give it a task that it has to perform... eventually, and through its own methods.

[tyckspoon]

. Wish can break campaigns because people take time to create documents in legalese to make Wish incorruptible, causing arguments and generally giving everyone a bad day.

Waste of time to try, thanks to the partial fulfillment clause; even if you get the DM to admit that your document does not contain any loopholes that he can find, nothing compels him to actually grant you what you wanted. There's only one way to use a non-safe-list Wish and not potentially have it get twisted or altered to some lesser effect: Get your DM to approve of what you want to do before you ever try to make the Wish. (If he just smiles and says "try it and find out" instead of telling you clearly yes or no, just stay the heck away from making unusual Wishes with that DM.)



But the worst of it is that Wish can be granted via binding, so that xp cost is actually moot, Frank & K's Wish economy explains the problem pretty well.

A Wish-based economy can work pretty well, although you have to change Wish slightly; the most significant is reducing or removing its ability to generate magical items. With Wish-as-written, tho, yeah.. the biggest problem with it is the developers scattered around so many methods of acquiring Wishes in fashions much cheaper and easier to do than being a level 17+ Wizard and hardcasting it from your own spell slots and XP.

[Snails]

The Summon Monster line is deliberately underpowered compared to the [Calling] subschool. Because when you have to call a creature, you have to put up with its quirks, personality, and shenanigans. You can give it a task that it has to perform... eventually, and through its own methods.

Surely that was the intention, but intentions are not enough. Furthermore, there is a 1000xp cost for using the calling function of Gate. But how to implement a downside during a simple combat where it is explicit that the called being is supposed to obey is clear as mud. It is just forcing the DM to come up with cheesy side effects on the fly, for the PC daring to use the spell as intended.

In principle, with the right research, the mere 17th level spellcaster can demand combat duty from, say, a Solar with 12 level of Cleric stacked on (netting a 32nd level Cleric). If that is not available, something equally potent. That is the clear implication of the spell as written.

The Gate spell invites the PC to employ a creature that is about 10X as powerful as the entire party put together. It is a SuperWish with the DM left to make up all the rules as to why actually using this spell as intended is a bad idea.

[Krobar]

All you guys complaining about Gate forget one thing: the BBEG (or BBGG) can use it too.

Just take a look at your players' faces the first time they think their epic characters are going to kick a dragon's ***, and that dragon with lots of sorcerer levels they didn't know about starts gating in Great Wyrm Battle Dragons from Ysgard.

[Shining Wrath]

No, that's horrible and broken, and the thing I hate the most about Gate. The ability to bring in insanely super high HD outsiders for the "drawback" of not being able to control them. Oh man, because it's not like a high level caster has teleport or anything. And I'm sure if you open said gate in the middle of an enemy kingdom's metropolis and have a mega-demon come through, you can't count on him w/o any direction or control from you whatsoever to destroy said metropolis anyway. Why, no. Never. :smallmad:

If you don't care about the immediate 100 mile radius of where you open the gate, there's basically no drawback, it's just instant win.
In my high level game we've literally not even seen our caster archnemesis despite trying to track him down for YEARS in real life time (maybe 1 year, game time). He's CONSTANTLY exploiting the fact that we're the good guys to do s**t like this, just porting in a bunch of uber fiends to wreck civilized areas and then we have to struggle and often take some deaths to contain/defeat it, as he's already on his way to the next MacGuffin.
This particular abuse of Gate touches a nerve for me.

The thing that I dislike about Gate is that these creatures have minds, enormous power, and eternal life. Sooner or later they will get around to dealing with you as they think you deserve. Bringing in a Solar or a Balor should be an act of utter and complete desperation by a caster who expects death or worse, or who is quite certain the Solar / Balor will thank the caster for summoning them afterward.

[Krobar]

The thing that I dislike about Gate is that these creatures have minds, enormous power, and eternal life. Sooner or later they will get around to dealing with you as they think you deserve. Bringing in a Solar or a Balor should be an act of utter and complete desperation by a caster who expects death or worse, or who is quite certain the Solar / Balor will thank the caster for summoning them afterward.

For a good time, gate in a Pit Fiend, and order it to bow/scrape/grovel before you and demean itself in the most foul ways it can imagine. Then dismiss it back to Hell as the duration runs out. Get creative with specific instructions in regard to how it is to demean itself.

Repeat that a few times.

I did this when I was playing in a high level game and the DM mentioned in passing that he was starting to run out of ideas for adventures.

[pyromanser244]

No, that's horrible and broken, and the thing I hate the most about Gate. The ability to bring in insanely super high HD outsiders for the "drawback" of not being able to control them. Oh man, because it's not like a high level caster has teleport or anything. And I'm sure if you open said gate in the middle of an enemy kingdom's metropolis and have a mega-demon come through, you can't count on him w/o any direction or control from you whatsoever to destroy said metropolis anyway. Why, no. Never. :smallmad:

If you don't care about the immediate 100 mile radius of where you open the gate, there's basically no drawback, it's just instant win.
In my high level game we've literally not even seen our caster archnemesis despite trying to track him down for YEARS in real life time (maybe 1 year, game time). He's CONSTANTLY exploiting the fact that we're the good guys to do s**t like this, just porting in a bunch of uber fiends to wreck civilized areas and then we have to struggle and often take some deaths to contain/defeat it, as he's already on his way to the next MacGuffin.
This particular abuse of Gate touches a nerve for me.

I can't really say I'm all that familiar with the MO of higher level outsiders, but wouldn't solars and the like take exception to the armies of hell gating into other planes? and wouldn't the opposite also be true?

I kinda get the feeling that some of these spells were written with the assumption that the DM would intervene somehow to make them not break the game. lazy design to be sure and it's bred a lot of FOO strategies in class feature form. still they're manageable for the most part.

my vote for most hated would be the kind of divination spells listed by others. and not for the power they have either but for the attitude they inspire. "hey DM you know that area we're going into? the one you didn't have time to map? tell me everything that's in it." :smallannoyed:

[Shining Wrath]

For a good time, gate in a Pit Fiend, and order it to bow/scrape/grovel before you and demean itself in the most foul ways it can imagine. Then dismiss it back to Hell as the duration runs out. Get creative with specific instructions in regard to how it is to demean itself.

Repeat that a few times.

I did this when I was playing in a high level game and the DM mentioned in passing that he was starting to run out of ideas for adventures.

That ought to get real bad real fast. Lawful Evil creatures ought to run like the Mafia or some such - you disrespect a Pit Fiend that way, you disrespect his bosses all the way up the line. I dunno who a Pit Fiend reports to off the top of my head, but the equivalent of the Pit Fiend's big brother ought to show up about 15 seconds after you complete your ritual humiliation.

[Krobar]

That ought to get real bad real fast. Lawful Evil creatures ought to run like the Mafia or some such - you disrespect a Pit Fiend that way, you disrespect his bosses all the way up the line. I dunno who a Pit Fiend reports to off the top of my head, but the equivalent of the Pit Fiend's big brother ought to show up about 15 seconds after you complete your ritual humiliation.

The Pit Fiends ARE the big brothers. They're the most powerful Baatezu aside from the Dukes of Hell, like Asmodeus, Dispater, Mephistopheles, and the Aspects of the same. They REALLY don't like to be disrespected. In Hell, reputation and position are more important than life. A Baatezu would rather die than be demoted, and they'll be demoted if they're sufficiently humiliated.

However, pretty much NONE of the devils can cast Gate or Plane Shift, so once you send them back they can't just return (otherwise imagine how many pit fiends would be starting up cults trying to take over the world!). Once a year a Pit Fiend can cast a Wish, though, so in that way they CAN come back, but they're smart enough to know that if you're powerful enough to summon them and make them demean themselves, you can quite possibly kick their *** too. They don't usually like the head-on approach against those who might be able to beat them. They make diabolic plans based around diabolic plans that involve more diabolic plans and multiple layers of diabolic subterfuge.


But rest assured, one way or another they come after you for disrespecting them so harshly. Lots of instant adventure hooks!

[StreamOfTheSky]

All you guys complaining about Gate forget one thing: the BBEG (or BBGG) can use it too.

Actually, as several people quoted immediately after your post, *I* complained about the BBEG using it. Quite vociferously.

That was really the crux of my whole hatred about the "gate in something super powerful that you can't control" -- not only is it stupid-abusive, it's much more so for an evil / sociopathic character (typically controlled by the DM) than it is for the good guys trying to avoid innocent people being cut down like blades of grass (typically the PCs) since the former doesn't CARE what rampage the outsider goes on, and can just teleport away.

And how one of my current DMs abuses this exact exploit on us all the freaking time (fun fact: we've never even USED gate ourselves).