Weak Spells made Awesome!

[Miranius]

The task here: find the weak and overlooked in the thousands of spells in D&D and figure out how to make them STRONG.

We know that timestop can end an encounter, that freezing touch can one-shot a dragon or that 10000 explosive runes can do untold damage, but have you ever used an otherwise crappy spell to great effect?

So please post your favourite underrated spells, how they can be used and if possible with source or even link.

So i`ll start:
Khelben's suspended Silence ( http://dndtools.eu/spells/magic-of-faerun--20/khelbens-suspended-silence--1700/ ) is a must for my next archer build on a few dozen of his arrows.
Permanent duration until activated by command word, then silence for 6 rounds. 50 gp material component, but with chainspell it could still pay off nicely against casters or guards.

[koboldish]

Well.... I don't know if these are considered really weak, but dimension door straight up, feather fall, and buff yourself on the way down. My DM houserules the featherfall duration though, as it normally only lasts one round. It was very cool when it worked though.

[HunterOfJello]

Sonic Snap with Fell Drain metamagic is a popular favorite among Artificers. It's even decent as a wizard spell since it would be a 2nd level spell that gives 1 negative level with no save.

[Glimbur]

Well.... I don't know if these are considered really weak, but dimension door straight up, feather fall, and buff yourself on the way down. My DM houserules the featherfall duration though, as it normally only lasts one round. It was very cool when it worked though.

Amusingly, this shouldn't work.
After using this spell, you can’t take any other actions until your next turn.

This is why Dimension Door is only good, and not great. Resilient Sphere does something similar at the same level, and Stone Shape might be able to do what you need also.

[NeoPhoenix0]

Amusingly, this shouldn't work.

This is why Dimension Door is only good, and not great. Resilient Sphere does something similar at the same level, and Stone Shape might be able to do what you need also.

If you apply physics sage advice from dragon suggests you only fall 500 ft. in the first round. At lv7 that leaves you with 180ft. left to fall with feather fall.


Well.... I don't know if these are considered really weak, but dimension door straight up, feather fall, and buff yourself on the way down. My DM houserules the featherfall duration though, as it normally only lasts one round. It was very cool when it worked though.

Feather fall last 1 round/level
So you can use those 3 rounds falling 180 to buff after plummeting 500ft..

This is more of a testament to the power of tactical teleportation than feather fall though.

I'm a fan of Dark Way http://dndtools.eu/spells/magic-of-faerun--20/dark-way--1696/. It is supposed to be used as a bridge. SR monsters that don't take the time to lower their SR risk falling through, if you have a bag of holding full of rocks you can empty it out on the bridge before the monster gets there and the excess rocks and monster will fall through. It can be used as a low level wall of force in narrow corridors because it does not have to be oriented horizontally. It will block any creature without SR. Not sure on the rules but a creature weighing enough might be able to pass through.

[Slipperychicken]

Blockade Bombardment.

The spell: Blockade (Sorc/Wiz 1). Conjures a 2000lb 5x5 cube for 3 rounds, but only on solid ground. Nothing to write home about, right?

The Method: Get a creature (preferably a flying one, or with access to feather fall) with at least 2,000lb maximum load, and have him ready an action to pick something up. Cast Blockade as a Swift action close enough so he can grab it, then cast Dimension Door (or another teleportation spell like Benign Transposition) on him, and target it so the block falls on an enemy. The block deals 10d6 of falling damage, plus another d6 for every 10ft, up to 200ft.

Takes a bit of prep, but you manage 30d6 (10 for block, 20 for height) save for half from a 1st level spell, a 4th (or lower) level spell, and another creature's standard action. You could technically use any random trash for the weight, but who really wants to carry around 4,000 pounds of rocks? This could probably be improved or done better with Shrink Item, though.

[koboldish]

Aww.... I though I was being clever :smallbiggrin:. Anyways, some of my other favorites are ray of frost and the cantrip that does electric damage. Once again, sadly, it does need to be houseruled, but nice DMs will let you freeze water or have the spell conduct through metal. I'm sorry I don't have anything be RAW.

[navar100]

Ghost Sound

The party had to fight a Giant Snake in a junk room, the pet of some Ogres we knew were in the next room. I cast Ghost Sound right by the door to that room of the snake moving around in the junk to mask the sound of the party fighting it. It worked. The Ogres never knew we were there and got surprised when it came time to fight them.

Unseen Servant

The party was to attack an Orc fort. We knew they had archers in towers. I cast Silent Image of the party walking into the fort before us, Ghost Sound to mimic the sound of marching, and Unseen Servant to mimic footprints to ruin their ambush and give us surprise. However, the Unseen Servant could only do one set of footprints. An orc did manage to disbelieve the illusion, but the footprints were real. He thought there was an invisible spellcaster walking around who had cast the illusion and ordered the archers to fire at it. They kept missing because there was no spellcaster there, just the Unseen Servant making footprints. Another spellcaster in the party then cast Wall of Ice blocking off half the fort and obscuring line of sight of the party spellcasters. As the party spellcasters continued to cast spells during the battle, the archers were convinced an invisible spellcaster was walking around doing it all, never firing against the party.

[Skysaber]

The most damage I have ever done in a single round was with a Floating Disk.

Old DM left the group and one of the players took over. He took his character over to the bad guys side, and he'd been an optimized dwarven runesmith who could add dozens of metamagic levels onto very small tiles that anyone could then break to trigger the effect.

Well, on the good guy side he'd been kind of ho hum. On the bad guy side, backed with their full resources, his work was a terror.

First time we knew he'd gone bad, rather than just left the group, was when we'd infiltrated an enemy temple to find the cleric there were wearing armor composed solely of these tiles - you hit them and nasty stuff blows up in your face. But the wearers were somehow immune (he never explained that part).

We'd been fighting four of these guys, and they'd nearly got a TPK on us, when a portal opened up to their main body of reinforcements. Guy on our side dispelled it for a round, but DM told us our characters knew it would be back the next.

Well, we'd dropped a grand total of one of these clerics (using a Harm followed up by an Inflict Wounds), but the body was within 30ft of me, within the range of a Floating Disk. So I used a lesser metamagic rod to quicken a floating disk under the cleric, Swift action. Disk automatically moves to within 5' of me, carrying the body. Took a Move action to stand next to where the portal had been/would be, the Readied an action to move my disk through the portal when it appeared.

Next round portal reappeared and I shoved my disk through it. It instantly winked out as it was now out of range of the spell, dropping the body which shattered the tiles his armor was made of.

Dm knew exactly how many tiles went into this armor, how many we had already destroyed, and the exact damage each did when it went off. He excused himself for ten minutes of calculating, coming back to declare that we had done 5,785 damage each to over two thousand men.

And we'd been spared because the item generating the portal got destroyed before the blast got through it back to us.

Finished off the remaining clerics with more harm spells.

[NeoPhoenix0]

Aww.... I though I was being clever :smallbiggrin:. Anyways, some of my other favorites are ray of frost and the cantrip that does electric damage. Once again, sadly, it does need to be houseruled, but nice DMs will let you freeze water or have the spell conduct through metal. I'm sorry I don't have anything be RAW.

Hey parachuting is awesome. I once used feather fall to repeatedly sound lance a big scary abomination from the air. The main reason to feather fall over teleport away is to fight from the air out of reach. Then you are taking advantage of feather fall as a weak low level fly spell.

I once used ghost sound as a make shift PA system to alert my group that i was burning down the inn we were fighting in.

[ericgrau]

Amusingly, this shouldn't work.

This is why Dimension Door is only good, and not great. Resilient Sphere does something similar at the same level, and Stone Shape might be able to do what you need also.

Actually all you have to do is cast the feather fall before the dimension door and it works. Resilient sphere is better for this, ya, but maybe you expected to need transportation today and dimension door is all you have. There more versatile you can make a single spell the better.

The thing is if I know how to make a "weak" spell awesome I no longer think it's weak. But let's see. A lot of overly situational spells can be made awesome by putting them on scrolls. Then it doesn't matter that they're only awesome 1/100th of the time; you can wait.

[NeoPhoenix0]

I don't think Stone Shape is weak but you can make it better. You can affect 10 cu. ft. + 1 cu. ft./level with a range of touch. It doesn't say how the stone has to be oriented. If you only affect the area around a large portion of stone you could cause a large portion of stone dungeon ceiling to fall down and block the way.

[only1doug]

Actually all you have to do is cast the feather fall before the dimension door and it works.

unfortunately not, featherfall only works while you are falling


Feather fall works only upon free-falling objects

[Slipperychicken]

Ghost Sound

Unseen Servant


Those are regarded as some of the strongest and most versatile spells of their level. Any caster worth his spell components can make those spells work.

[ericgrau]

Ok I got one:

Lesser globe of invulnerability is like a selective anti-magic field for spell levels 3 and below, and you can still target those outside of the globe with those spells. Even SR:no spells fail to form inside the globe. It's rarely a first choice unless you fight wizards on a constant basis. But instead of waiting for enemy casters you can lay down area spells on yourself: fireball, web, sleet storm, etc. Sleet storm is one of my favorites but there often isn't room for it. Because of the 10 foot radius you can cram the party inside too. So now in even the tightest quarters you can huddle the party in a globe, sleet storm and force your foes to clumsily come to you one by one.

[Menzath]

Enhance wildshape + persisted thunderhead.
requires being able to become a shambling mound before the enhance wildshape so that you can get all special qualities.

shambling mounds get 1d4 con every time they take electricity damage, as well as being immune to it.

thunder head yourself. do stuff and not die.

[Miranius]

Please note: we`re looking for WEAK spells, not killer-combos!

[illyrus]

Shrink Item:
Used this everywhere in a 3.0 campaign once. Turned large lead blocks (though any dense substance works for this) into small cloth, put a little bit of paint on them so I knew which command word went with which.

First use was to destroy doors (stuff a little bit in a lock or underneath the door frame).

Lobbed them onto structures that couldn't support them screaming the command word mid air. Also turned out to be a pretty good fireball substitute (especially when with a day/level duration you can spam them).

Could feasibly carpet bomb the area too.

Dealt with an anti-magic field using melee monster. Flung them at him from above with telekinesis and when they entered the field their shrink was dispelled and crushed him.

Turn lava into your own portable trap (paint the cloth shrunk object with camo to have it blend in).

Add as an "ingested poison" for food. "Hey does this taste a bit off to you OH SEVEN GODS LAVA".

The GM got tired of this so had thieves steal all of my character's possessions in the night (no chance to detect). Sadly for the thieving crew I had to cast at least 2 shrink items to refresh a day and when those wore off and expanded it caused a chain reaction and destroyed their hideout. As we had planned for an errant dispel to eventually kill me our gear was stored in a way where it wouldn't be destroyed so we recovered my gear from the wreckage.

[nobodez]

Updraft (SpC 228) a Clr 1/Drd 1 is pretty fun. Due to how the spell is written, it's actually better than feather fall, at least in certain situations. Need to get down a cliff quickly? Cast updraft at the edge, five-foot step before you get back to your starting position, and "gently float back down to the ground".

Another fun use of an otherwise commonly used, and not exactly weak, spell, is benign transposition. Similar to the dimension door/feather fall combo above, though instead relies on flying familiars. Have your familiar fly above you as normal, and then benign transposition to get the height, then feather fall to keep it for a few rounds, playing god from on high as a proper wizard should.

Why a wizard of 9th level or above isn't constantly under the effect of overland flight is beyond me (in regards to the dimension door/feather fall problem. which can also be solved with a ring of feather fall).

[Slipperychicken]

Add as an "ingested poison" for food. "Hey does this taste a bit off to you OH SEVEN GODS LAVA".

This reminds me of two I had a while back.

Poison Wine: Prestidigitation is already a great spell, but you cast it on a bottle full of deadly poison and make it look, taste, and feel like cheap liquor (or something else the target would readily drink a lot of). Since poison is 1oz=1 dose, your target will ingest a preposterous quantity and hopefully die or be KO'd by ability damage.

Part of an Unbalanced Breakfast: Cast Shrink Item on something huge like a boulder, then Prestidigitation it into delicious candy and feed it to your target, instructing him to swallow it quickly. Say the command word and your target explodes in gore as the boulder tears him apart from the inside. Take the clothlike option and you have "cotton candy". Ideally, you get the target to eat bowls full of the stuff so he explodes more dramatically (and also has physics fire boulders in every direction from the expansion).

[MesiDoomstalker]

Updraft (SpC 228) a Clr 1/Drd 1 is pretty fun. Due to how the spell is written, it's actually better than feather fall, at least in certain situations. Need to get down a cliff quickly? Cast updraft at the edge, five-foot step before you get back to your starting position, and "gently float back down to the ground".

Another fun use of an otherwise commonly used, and not exactly weak, spell, is benign transposition. Similar to the dimension door/feather fall combo above, though instead relies on flying familiars. Have your familiar fly above you as normal, and then benign transposition to get the height, then feather fall to keep it for a few rounds, playing god from on high as a proper wizard should.

Why a wizard of 9th level or above isn't constantly under the effect of overland flight is beyond me (in regards to the dimension door/feather fall problem. which can also be solved with a ring of feather fall).

Updraft is an amazing spell for Cleric or Druid Raptorans/Wing Aspect Dragonborns. I've played my fair share of both, my group knows the shenanigans I do with a flying CODzilla. As such, my GMs typically load important encounters with anti-flying measures. Updraft typically solves most of them.

Things I have done with Updraft:

Quickly gain altitude
Force opponents to gain altitude via grappling, and proceed to CODzilla their non-flying butts in freefall
Save an airship from crashing to do a natural downdraft (took multiple castings and a natural 20 Str check, but it was worth it)
Remove several variations of Fog spells (Solid, unfortunately, is not removed in this way) This may have been DM fiat though
Remove a Rock-with-Widened-Darkness-and-Widened-Silence to screw over the Killer Gnome trying to, well, kill us.

[Curmudgeon]

Khelben's suspended Silence ( http://dndtools.eu/spells/magic-of-faerun--20/khelbens-suspended-silence--1700/ ) is a must for my next archer build on a few dozen of his arrows.
Permanent duration until activated by command word, then ...
Aren't you playing 3.5? That's a 3.0 spell, explicitly updated to a 3.5 version in Spell Compendium (page 216). Permanent has become 24 hours instead.

[thethird]

Earthen Shield (Dragonlance campaign setting) A wall of earth, easy to break, and easy to manipulate so it is not totally straight.

And it is level three (2 levels lower than stone wall) so it can be in eternal wands.

Give it to a dungeoncrasher and have fun.

[Person_Man]

Arcane Focus soulmeld bound to your Throat chakra (Incarnate 14, or ECL 15 Necrocarnate, or level 17 with a spell or psionic power, or level 18 with a Feat) forces one living enemy damaged by a spell to Save or be Dazed for one round. The DC is based on the Soulmeld, not the spell. So 10 + Wisdom (Incarnate) or Charisma (Soulborn) bonus + essentia invested, instead of the normal spell DC. This can transform even 0 level spells into a useful Daze-lock combo, making them more useful at high levels. Magic of Incarnum.

Illusion Veil soulmeld adds +1 to the DC of any Illusion spell or spell-like ability, and +1 round of duration for every point of essentia invested in the soulmeld. (Has no effect on spells with an "instantaneous" duration). This is very useful for spells like Swift Invisibility, which only have a duration of 1 round. Magic of Incarnum.

Eilservs School Feat: When you strike a creature with a magic staff, it deals +1 damage for every 10 charges the staff contains. And if you strike a creature with both ends, you can activate one of the spells in the staff as a Swift action. Drow of the Underdark pg 56.

Karsus vestige (Binder 5, or Binder 3 with the Improved Binder Feat): Gives you at will Detect Magic, +2 DC to any magic item you use, Greater Dispel Magic on touch once every 5 rounds, auto-UMD as if you were a Wizard with your effective Binder level. Makes certain magic items (including spell trigger items, and thus low level spells) more useful. Tome of Magic.

It's also worth mentioning that the Incarnate has easy access to large UMD bonuses, making certain magic item combos very effective in his hands.

[Legendxp]

Remember that Fire Trap can be used on any object that can be opened or closed. So cast it on a flask or water-skin and throw at an opponent. Bonus points for using a open/close spell on it. I've successfully used this on the mouth of a construct wizard before. :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: and yes I know the casting time is ten minutes. Cast this spell on items before you go to sleep.

[ksbsnowowl]

Fire Seeds. Everyone thinks the 1d6/caster level acorn grenades are the best.
Holly Berry Bombs, meet Empower Spell (probably from a metamagic rod).

You can't just read the SRD version (which lacks examples). You must read the Empower Spell feat from the PHB.

All variable, numeric effects of an empowered spell are increased by one-half. An empowered spell deals half again as much damage as normal, cures half again as many hit points, affects half again as many targets, and so forth, as appropriate. For example, an empowered magic missile deals 1-1/2 times its normal damage (roll 1d4+1 and multiply the result by 1-1/2 for each missile). Saving throws and opposed rolls (such as the one you make when you cast dispel magic) are not affected, nor are spells without random variables. An empowered spell uses up a spell slot two levels higher than the spell's actual level.Magic missile generates a variable numeric effect between 2 and 5.

Holly Berry Bombs generate a variable numeric effect between (caster level + 1) and (caster level + 8), and you get EIGHT of those. Also, there is no caster level cap, so any increase in caster level will up that substantially. A simple Bead of Karma will increase your damage by 32 before empower spell.

A 15th level druid using a metamagic rod of empower deals 1.5*(8*(1d8+15)) damage = average of 234 points of fire damage.

Each does get its own reflex save for half, and fire resistance would apply to each of the eight bombs individually, so you have to be smart about who you use them on. Also, having Energy Immunity (Fire) active on you makes using them a whole lot easier.

[Rubik]

They're technically not spells, but the Psionic Fabricate and Greater Psionic Fabricate powers can be used effectively in combat if you use the Linked Power metapsionic feat to manifest them as an immediate/swift/move/standard action, with the resulting object appearing the following round. You can basically use wall of stone/iron/adamantine with the Psionic Fabricate powers, depending on what substances are available, since the entirety of the power's manifesting time is compressed in a single instant.

The same can be done for other powers, such as Psionic Identify, which is otherwise really, really bad.

[Miranius]

bump :smalltongue:

[Slipperychicken]

This one's for Pathfinder's Blood Money (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/blood-money) spell (Magus/Sorc/Wiz/Witch 1). Normally it's a pretty cool spell, but usually doesn't provide much benefit.


11 points of recoverable Strength damage in exchange for a free Raise Dead.


True Resurrection would be (25,000/500)+1 = 51 Strength damage. If a Cleric cast Blood Money from a scroll, and had someone else ready an action to cast Greater Restoration on him immediately after, he would wake up and can still cast the True Res using the summoned component. He would still have to pay for the Greater Restoration (5000gp) and the scroll (12.5gp), but that's much less than the 25,000gp for True Res. One could use the same technique for Wish too...

...

...

A 1st level spell and a readied action cut the cost of a True Res by ~80%. but if the Restoration-caster also used a scroll of Blood Money and had at least a Strength of 12, the grand total cost [of a True Res spell] would be 25gp, 1d6 damage to two people, and 11 strength damage: a pittance compared to the 25,000 material component for True Res.

Guys, help me out I think I just broke death.


The gist of it is, the spell lets you take Strength damage to provide costly material components (1+ [1str damage/500gp cost]). Normally, this is awesome for some spells, doesn't work for really expensive spells (like True Res and Wish) because taking too much Strength damage KOs you. You fix this by having someone cast Greater Restoration on you during your turn, after the Strength damage KOs you, and then you wake up and cast the spell you wanted to cast. Of course, Greater Restoration has a material component too, which can be largely negated by another casting of Blood Money, which would only deal 11 Strength damage to the restoration-caster. One could cast Blood Money as any class from dirt-cheap easily-activated 12.5gp scrolls.

[Miranius]

Nice trick, i wonder how long would one need to research to use that spell in 3.5

[Grey Watcher]

Speaking of abusing Unseen Servant, one of my fellow players tried to use it to hold lit torches up to a Barbarian's eyes in order to permanently blind him. (It helped that this was a "you're all specialist wizards" campaign, so we had plenty of means to keep him in the same square the whole time.) Ultimately, it didn't work, because she had to break her concentration for some reason, and our Enchanter was able to hypnotize him, but it was still a fun tactic.

[TheDarkSaint]

I like to use Arcane Mark on other PC's. I check it every time we get together to make sure we don't have shapeshifters. The PC's think I'm helping ward them against disease.

[Slipperychicken]

I like to use Arcane Mark on other PC's. I check it every time we get together to make sure we don't have shapeshifters. The PC's think I'm helping ward them against disease.

Your fellow PCs either have no Spellcraft ranks and/or are retarded. A spellcaster failing to identify a cantrip being cast on them is pathetic. Just saying.

[TuggyNE]

Your fellow PCs either have no Spellcraft ranks and/or are retarded. A spellcaster failing to identify a cantrip being cast on them is pathetic. Just saying.

Most PCs don't have Spellcraft ranks, you know? It's a decent skill, but not a must-have unless you're a caster (and maybe not even then).

[Miranius]

bump:smallsmile:

[manyslayer]

I've used a force ladder (http://dndtools.eu/spells/magic-of-faerun--20/force-ladder--1671/) (ladder of force up to 60' long) along with some obscuring smoke wedged against some terrain features as a low-level wall of force to stop an enemy mass charge (right in front of our soldiers armed with longspears).