[3.5] Need some help handpicking spells.

[aphoticConniver]

Hello once again! I'm running a campaign in the next year, and to do so I've decided to take the year and develop a setting for this and future campaigns I'll run. The thing is, I've hit a roadblock. That block being finding the Tippyverse. I've started to think of how a good amount of spells would totally wreck my setting. Teleport and the like. So, I've decided to make a blacklist of spells that only a certain few NPCs would have the magical knowledge and talent to cast them. I know most of the teleportation spells will be disallowed, but what other ones would either wreck the setting or be just plain broken? I know there's going to be an Archivist, and definitely either a Psychic Warrior or another Psionic caster other than Psion. Any help would be appreciated!

[Extra Anchovies]

Preventing the player characters from doing something that some NPCs are capable of doing is a good way to annoy the players. Maybe make the potentially game-breaking spells harder to cast? Maybe to cast Teleport, you have to brew a draught of powdered albino minotaur horn and a pint fresh drow's blood from a willing donor, and each person you want to take along has to take a swig? Gathering the materials could be a quest in itself, and would present enough of a bother to prevent players from trying to Teleport unless the really, really needed to.

[aphoticConniver]

Preventing the player characters from doing something that some NPCs are capable of doing is a good way to annoy the players. Maybe make the potentially game-breaking spells harder to cast? Maybe to cast Teleport, you have to brew a draught of powdered albino minotaur horn and a pint fresh drow's blood from a willing donor, and each person you want to take along has to take a swig? Gathering the materials could be a quest in itself, and would present enough of a bother to prevent players from trying to Teleport unless the really, really needed to.

I'm fairly certain that they'd be okay with it. I've been playing with them for a good 4 or 5 years, and until my game we've had a general "no flying" rule from both sides, which I'm abolishing for my game (dragons feature in the second act of the campaign, and I have no intention of hamstringing them). Maybe mixing a little of both? For example, NPC has practiced casting the Teleport spell, and studied it so intently, that he can eschew the materials for it, but the PCs still need the materials? I'd only have one or two NPCs that could do this, on the level of Elminster.

[JusticeZero]

Main issue is simply that after third level spells, the number of effects that can have really drastic campaign effects explodes.. and honestly, there's a lot of cantrips and 1st level effects that can do drastic things.

[aphoticConniver]

Main issue is simply that after third level spells, the number of effects that can have really drastic campaign effects explodes.. and honestly, there's a lot of cantrips and 1st level effects that can do drastic things.

Travel spells would completely invalidate the train system I've set up (which is a fairly big part of the setting. I'm racking my brain to think of what else shouldn't be allowed. Creation and Fabrication, to keep the economy sane maybe?

[JusticeZero]

Don't know; an indy RPG I played once made the point that by the time a wizard can create currency out of thin air, it's already a poor return of value for her time to do so, so no-one considers it counterfeiting.

[aphoticConniver]

Don't know; an indy RPG I played once made the point that by the time a wizard can create currency out of thin air, it's already a poor return of value for her time to do so, so no-one considers it counterfeiting.

So it seems like making the broken spells hard and expensive to cast is the way to go then. Question now is, what spells to put on that list?

[jiriku]

If flight is considered high-power at your gaming table, I'm worried that high-level spells in general may just not fit with your group's playstyle. You might consider E6 as an alternative. It makes world-building a lot simpler, to be sure.

To directly hit your question, the following spells tend to directly attack a nonmagical feudal world's economy:
wall of salt
wall of iron
wall of stone
fabricate
unseen crafter
polymorph any object
hardness

The following spells can be used to create instantaneous communication networks or gather information at levels that irrevocably put the world on a magical footing:
whispering sand
sending
commune
contact other plane
permanency (rary's telepathic bond)
scrying
scry location

[aphoticConniver]

If flight is considered high-power at your gaming table, I'm worried that high-level spells in general may just not fit with your group's playstyle. You might consider E6 as an alternative. It makes world-building a lot simpler, to be sure.

To directly hit your question, the following spells tend to directly attack a nonmagical feudal world's economy:
wall of salt
wall of iron
wall of stone
fabricate
unseen crafter
polymorph any object
hardness

The following spells can be used to create instantaneous communication networks or gather information at levels that irrevocably put the world on a magical footing:
whispering sand
sending
commune
contact other plane
permanency (rary's telepathic bond)
scrying
scry location


Our issue with flying was born of fear of abuse from the DM, yes, but also to save time in combat because we were always too lazy to put things into 3 dimensions.

[JusticeZero]

Okay, well, are you aware of the E6 variant? It's very popular, for exactly the reason you are talking about.
In a nutshell, characters level up to level 6, then stop, and instead start getting a river of feats - one feat every 5000 xp. There are a lot of little-used "Extra whatever" feats and the like that, when you have feats pouring down like a river and a slowly bloating WBL, are a very satisfying form of character advancement. Furthermore, capping at 6 avoids the problematic, high-Tippy spells and effects coming online. The world itself has BBEG bosses at CL 10 or so, and everything below that is filled as normal; you keep running into all the same stuff, and nothing completely "goes grey". Heroes get up to the power level one would expect from an action movie star and don't proceed into wuxia and fourcolor superhero realms, as standard does. 5e seems to have taken a fair amount of inspiration from it insofar as attempting to flatten progression is concerned.
You might consider retuning your game into that format, and you won't have to worry about the problems you are referring to.

[aphoticConniver]

Okay, well, are you aware of the E6 variant? It's very popular, for exactly the reason you are talking about.
In a nutshell, characters level up to level 6, then stop, and instead start getting a river of feats - one feat every 5000 xp. There are a lot of little-used "Extra whatever" feats and the like that, when you have feats pouring down like a river and a slowly bloating WBL, are a very satisfying form of character advancement. Furthermore, capping at 6 avoids the problematic, high-Tippy spells and effects coming online. The world itself has BBEG bosses at CL 10 or so, and everything below that is filled as normal; you keep running into all the same stuff, and nothing completely "goes grey". Heroes get up to the power level one would expect from an action movie star and don't proceed into wuxia and fourcolor superhero realms, as standard does. 5e seems to have taken a fair amount of inspiration from it insofar as attempting to flatten progression is concerned.
You might consider retuning your game into that format, and you won't have to worry about the problems you are referring to.

I will definitely look into that, actually. Now I feel silly for thinking that E6 was a super dumbed-down version of the game, but color me pink and draw me as a daffodil, because I was wrong. Thanks!

[jordan.k93]

Handle it in a different way, simply pre-approve all spells first since there are so many that would **** on your campaign in ways you've never dreamt of.