most powerful wizard spell

[drakoonity]

So I'm making a wizard and I wanted to know what is the most broken spell (if any at some levels) for the wizard at each different spell level. Excluding polymorph.

[Coidzor]

Simulacrum, Genesis, and Mindrape are up there, I suppose. Genesis especially if you can get a fast time trait. IIRC, Astral Projection helps with immortality, though it's more usually acquired via the planar binding of nightmares.

Animate Dread Warrior is a fair contender for 6th level, along with wall of iron.

Though, really, the point with wizards is not a single spell but access to so many.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'm not too sure about the lower levels but, if you allow certain questionable cheese, gate is undeniably the most powerful of the lot with only one probable exception; shapechange, if fiend folio's zodar is in the game.

Since you said you were excluding the polymorph line, though, definitely gate.

[Gwendol]

Web, glitterdust, color spray at low levels.

[eggynack]

It might not be the most powerful, whatever that means, but I've always loved freezing fog. Your opponents are only able to move five feet per round, at most, and they have to make continual saves and checks to avoid falling over repeatedly. It lasts one minute per level, and I could actually imagine engineering a situation which makes use of the entire duration. If you layer anything else on top of that, the enemy is pretty much screwed. Also, it deals 1d6 cold damage per turn. That takes approximately infinite time to kill anything worth killing, but with freezing fog, that's the amount of time you've got. It does just about everything you could ever possibly want in a battlefield control spell, and then some.

[drakoonity]

I was looking at the Power Word Pain spell and was a little confused, is it like the first round it deals 1d6 if damage, and then the second round it deals 2d6 of damage or is it, it just deals 1d6 again?

[DaedalusMkV]

Streamers probably wins level 5 spells, at least for a higher-level Wizard (by level 18, it's the best pure-damage spell you can cast, period, without massive amounts of metamagic reduction). Create one Streamer, plus one for each three CL you have beyond ninth. Each Streamer follows a designated target (and you can have all of your Streamers target one enemy if you want), and every time that opponent takes any action, the Streamer makes a Touch Attack to do 5d10 Untyped Damage. Every action. So, at level 18, if the enemy takes any action at all they take attacks dealing up to 30d10 Damage, no save. If they Move, then cast a spell, then cast a Quickened spell? 18 Touch Attacks go in, dealing up to 90d10 Damage, and the enemy has to make a Concentration check for every hit going in or lose their spell. Duration is 1 round/level, and the only way to get rid of them is to hit them with Magic Weapons. When each attack you make is causing every Streamer still on you to make an attack at you.

A single casting of Streamers is usually enough to turn around a fight against basically any threat, be it a single large enemy or a small group of dangerous fighters, since the absolute best-case scenario for a character getting hit with it is they waste a Standard action and take a decent chunk of damage to get rid of it, turning it into the equivalent of a mass no-save-no-immunity Nauseate. Even well-optimized Casters can find themselves utterly unprepared to deal with it.

Who ever said Evocation can't get broken things?

[Fyermind]

Level 0: Launch bolt (with a colossal bolt), Sonic Snap (For metamagics)
level 1: Color Spray, Sleep, Power Word Pain, Wall of Smoke, Magic missile (for your metamagics), nerveskitter
Level 2: Glitterdust, web, invisibility, beguiling mist, kelgore's Grave mist
level 3: Summon Monster III, Alter Fortune, Dispel Magic, haboob (For metamagics), Haste
Level 4: Orb of fire/orb of force (mailman), Assay Spell resistance, Bestow Curse, celerity

I'm not a master on level 4 plus, but these all came to mind.

[Gwendol]

Cloud of bewilderment is quite nasty as well: nauseated is a terrible condition. It can fairly easily be combined with web/entangle or similar to make a complete lock-down.

[Devronq]

Streamers probably wins level 5 spells, at least for a higher-level Wizard (by level 18, it's the best pure-damage spell you can cast, period, without massive amounts of metamagic reduction). Create one Streamer, plus one for each three CL you have beyond ninth. Each Streamer follows a designated target (and you can have all of your Streamers target one enemy if you want), and every time that opponent takes any action, the Streamer makes a Touch Attack to do 5d10 Untyped Damage. Every action. So, at level 18, if the enemy takes any action at all they take attacks dealing up to 30d10 Damage, no save. If they Move, then cast a spell, then cast a Quickened spell? 18 Touch Attacks go in, dealing up to 90d10 Damage, and the enemy has to make a Concentration check for every hit going in or lose their spell. Duration is 1 round/level, and the only way to get rid of them is to hit them with Magic Weapons. When each attack you make is causing every Streamer still on you to make an attack at you.

A single casting of Streamers is usually enough to turn around a fight against basically any threat, be it a single large enemy or a small group of dangerous fighters, since the absolute best-case scenario for a character getting hit with it is they waste a Standard action and take a decent chunk of damage to get rid of it, turning it into the equivalent of a mass no-save-no-immunity Nauseate. Even well-optimized Casters can find themselves utterly unprepared to deal with it.

Who ever said Evocation can't get broken things?


thats a pretty generous interpretation of the spell i think alot of people take it that the streamer is gone once it attacks once.

and not the person i quoted by wall is wall of iron soo good?

[Norin]

I was looking at the Power Word Pain spell and was a little confused, is it like the first round it deals 1d6 if damage, and then the second round it deals 2d6 of damage or is it, it just deals 1d6 again?

1d6 every round after the first, for the duration of the spell, is correct as far as i know.

[Tvtyrant]

Call Optimizer. You cannot control who comes, but if you crit you get Tippy or Doc Roc.

My favorite is the prismatic line. Rainbows are awesome.

[Slipperychicken]

Is Shapechange considered Polymorph for our purposes? If it is, disregard the spoiler.

Level 9: Shapechange.

Turn into something which gives you wishes, give yourself the wishes, revert to normal form, turn into Wish-granting creature again, give yourself more wishes...

Gain any ability you could possibly want. Cast pretty much any spell as an SLA.

You can pull many powerful shenanigans off this spell.


Call Optimizer. You cannot control who comes, but if you crit you get Tippy or Doc Roc.

Man, it's been a while since I've seen him around these boards. Got a much better chance of calling Tippy, since he's been active recently.

[Gwendol]

No, it's quite clear from the description of the spell the streamers hover for the duration of the spell


Whenever the target next takes any sort of action, the streamer makes a touch attack against it (at the caster's base attack bonus).
On a successful attack roll, the streamer deals 5d10 points of damage.

Needless to say, a cleric, who is likely buffed by divine power, will be a bit more lethal than a wizard using this spell.

[Cicciograna]

Call Optimizer. You cannot control who comes, but if you crit you get Tippy or Doc Roc.

Definitely the most powerful spell. You win.

[TuggyNE]

Ice assassin, full stop. I'm not British, I just like to affect some of their idioms.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Is Shapechange considered Polymorph for our purposes? If it is, disregard the spoiler.

Level 9: Shapechange.

Turn into something which gives you wishes, give yourself the wishes, revert to normal form, turn into Wish-granting creature again, give yourself more wishes...

Gain any ability you could possibly want. Cast pretty much any spell as an SLA.

You can pull many powerful shenanigans off this spell.

Shapechange actually only gives you the ex and su abilities of the form you take. That's why zodar is awesomesauce; it gets wish as an SU. It's the only creature in the game that does, if I'm not mistaken.

[Spuddles]

Gate, followed closely with Simulacum and Greater Planar Binding.

[Tvtyrant]

Man, it's been a while since I've seen him around these boards. Got a much better chance of calling Tippy, since he's been active recently.

I think he moved full time into Legends. I miss having him around, he was cool.

[Coidzor]

and not the person i quoted by wall is wall of iron soo good?

Wall of Iron breaks the economy in core. Wall of Salt/Flesh to Salt break the economy with splats. Making gold less relevant as a limitation on one's power or no longer a limitation at all is fairly broken, but it is more the economic manipulation than any given spell.

[JaronK]

Various contenders:

Stone Metamorphosis. Turn any type of stone into any other. My god, there's so many options in Underdark! There's a few others in other books. Sickstone, Elukian Clay, Slickstone, and more. Combine with Wall of Stone and Fabricate and you can make some insane stuff.

Magecraft. First level spell that basically means you never need ranks to craft anything... combine with Fabricate and you're done.

Genesis. Create a flowing time plane. Win game.

Minor Creation. Use it to create Black Lotus, Sinmaker's Surprise, or those fruits that give endless power points.

Animate Dread Warrior and Extract Gift are contenders but only if you can get them as spell like abilities. See Spellstitching for how to do this. Also, Spell Like Major Creation lets you instant kill any enemy that isn't immune to poison.

Ice Assassin. With some cleverness, you can get a duplicate Palor to fight your battles for you.

Planar Binding: Endless wishes for free. Whee.

Really, there's a lot of stupidly broken spells.

JaronK

[drakoonity]

And this is why I love this forum, I haven't even heard about even half of that stuff up there now I'm itching to play another wizard just so I can try them all out.

[Spuddles]

Where's magecraft from? I love spells like that.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Where's magecraft from? I love spells like that.

ECS (eberron campaign setting)

It's being a tad over-sold ther though. It's only a +5 bonus on crafting checks.

[Malroth]

and the ability to make the checks as if trained, create a masterwork tool for that job and cast this spell on a 1/2 HD skeletal housecat while some other fractional HD undead aids another it full time and you've got something making DC 19 craft checks for you untill the universe ends.

[Carth]

Wu jen are close enough to wizardsthat I'll throw a shout out to arboreal transformation. If the target fails it's save, it's a treant under your command for days/level. If it succeeds, it's slowed for days per level. Probably the one of the bigger corner cases where having mettle is important. :smallbiggrin:

[Malroth]

2nd: Gnome Illusionist Substution lv giving you Illusionary Script. Cast it on a sign, banner or your hat and suddenly you're giving at will suggestions to everything that can see you for 1 day per caster lv.

[Chronos]

Zeroth level: Prestidigitation.

And on Streamers, maybe the streamers themselves hang out for the full duration, but their attack only triggers on "the next time the target takes an action", and it's based on the streamers readying an action, which would mean at most once per turn.

[Gwendol]

Yes, that's what I read as well, but for the duration of the spell.

[drack]

"Wish", it does most of the above (including infinite wishes if your GM rolls that way), and has god mode powers that anyone with a good GM knows not to take lightly. :smallwink:

[Asrrin]

So I'm making a wizard and I wanted to know what is the most broken spell (if any at some levels) for the wizard at each different spell level. Excluding polymorph.

Sorry if I'm stepping on anyone's toes, but I didn't see anyone actually address which spells at which levels are broken

0th: Prestidigitation (aka Minor Wish)
1st: Grease and/or Sleep
2nd: Glitterdust (for AoE) Ray of Stupidity (against animals, can even one shot a Tarrasque)
3rd: Stinking Cloud
4th: Other than Polymorph? Clerity
5th: Cloudkill
6th: Planar Binding
7th: Limited Wish
8th: Mind Blank or Prismatic all
9th: If Shapechange counts as the polymorph line, then either Gate or Wish, obviously.

[iDesu]

Rockburst, a third level wizard spell from Shining South, can cause any stone object of at least 8 cubic feet to explode. Plenty of broken uses for that.

[Slipperychicken]

"Wish", it does most of the above (including infinite wishes if your GM rolls that way), and has god mode powers that anyone with a good GM knows not to take lightly. :smallwink:

I think it's fair to only count the "safe" options on Wish, since anything beyond that authorizes compels the DM to weasel out of it and screw your character over.

[Emperor Tippy]

Shapechange, Wish (if you have a method to avoid the XP cost and are ruling out Shapechange as it gives you unlimited free wish's), Ice Assassin, and Simulacrum; the four most powerful spells in the game.

[Roguenewb]

I'll agree with Tippy on this one, I don't know any spell or effect that is even vaguely as powerful as Ice Assassin/Simulacrum. I've also never understood why the game has 2 almost identical "copy something with ice" spells. Was there ever a clear ruling as to whether or not Ice Assassin has to live by the same max HD rule that Simulacrum lives by?

After that is Shapechange, if the DM rules that spells are an ability you can inherit. I know there's argument on that point, and I don't know what the correct answer is.

Wish is next, followed by like Time Stop and Genesis. After that, it gets a lot more bogged down.

[Slipperychicken]

why the game has 2 almost identical "copy something with ice" spells.

First line of Ice Assassin.


The ice assassin spell is in many ways an improved version of simulacrum.

It's basically a Greater version of Simulacrum.

[ericgrau]

I think there's some confusion here between broken as in good, broken as in breaks real games, and broken as in wrecks the universe in theory. The OP seems to want to play this wizard so broken as in good seems to be in order. And he's getting some of that from posts like Asrrin's, but there's also a lot of the other 2 which is less useful. Drakoonity: Try googling "wizard good spells by level site:www.giantitp.com" (without quotation marks).

And I think it'll be fun and quite powerful but not truly broken and campaign wrecking, which is good.

[eggynack]

I think there's some confusion here between broken as in good, broken as in breaks real games, and broken as in wrecks the universe in theory. The OP seems to want to play this wizard so broken as in good seems to be in order. And he's getting some of that from posts like Asrrin's, but there's also a lot of the other 2 which is less useful. Drakoonity: Try googling "wizard good spells by level site:www.giantitp.com" (without quotation marks).

And I think it'll be fun and quite powerful but not truly broken and campaign wrecking, which is good.
The real problem with that is that broken doesn't mean good. Broken means one of the other two definitions. You have to break something to be broken. I posted a regular good spell, because I love freezing fog, but that doesn't mean that Tippy shenanigans aren't a valid post. I figure that you've gotta at least be doing something crazy to be broken. That's why I never posted heart of water, even though I pretty much always post it. It's a fantastic spell, but I wouldn't call it broken in any sense of the word, so it doesn't technically fit the topic. I mean, he asked for things that were like polymorph, so that indicates something around game breaking level.

[Chronos]

I'd put Gate at the same level of brokenness as Wish or Shapechange, since you can use a Gate to get a Wish, anyway.

[ericgrau]

The real problem with that is that broken doesn't mean good. Broken means one of the other two definitions.
Yeup, and the OP should have tried a different word. But it seems to be what he's going for. Or at worst something that's broken and yet can be sneaked past his DM.

[centeotl]

Let's not forget energy transformation field.

[eggynack]

Yeup, and the OP should have tried a different word. But it seems to be what he's going for. Or at worst something that's broken and yet can be sneaked past his DM.
I guess it's time for heart of water then. It's like freedom movement, except it lasts hours per level, and is a spell level lower. It's a thing of beauty in spell form. I mean, technically you have to expend it to get a rounds per level effect, but if you only need the ability once in a day, the duration is much better. You also get swimming based superpowers, and you can spend a 2nd level spell for light fortification, and possible feather fall. It's just a really well designed set of spells. Also, silent image. For the cost of a first level spell, you can do just about anything. All you need is the power of imagination. Finally, let's go with stone shape. It's like silent image, except with stone instead of images. Spells that are powered by imagination are cool.

[Mithril Leaf]

I'd just like to point out that Minor Creation can in fact make Greensickness which by volume is even more poison than liquids, and being spores can be released on the wind to decimate armies. It's exceptional as a psion, but still great as a wizard. Even better on a Storm Domain Wizard that picks up Control Wind to spread it.