Spell Research: Changing personal-target to any willing creature?

[gadren]

For the purposes of researching a "new" spell that is identical to an existing "target: personal" spell, except that it can be cast on any willing target, how much higher of a level do you think the "new" spell should be?

And before you say "ask your DM" I am the DM. I was curious of getting others input on this before making a decision. Specifically, I have a wizard player that wants to research versions of disguise self, alter self, expeditious retreat and eventually overland flight that he can cast on his friends.

[JDL]

Pathfinder has Disguise Other at level 2, which functions as the level 1 Disguise Self spell.

Alter Self is substantially different in Pathfinder compared to 3.5e, and I'd probably list it as a level 4 spell beside Polymorph. Longer duration, more limited effect seems to balance out (but still gets abusable by Outsider typed PCs).

Expeditious Retreat is strictly worse than Fly, which is level 3, so I'd make it a level 2 spell.

I'd work to convince your player that an effect similar to Overland Flight is already provided by the Wind Walk spell available to Clerics and that if they wanted a spell that lets their allies fly in combat they should simply cast the Fly spell on them.

[Extra Anchovies]

Why not just take Ocular Spell from Lords of Madness? It lets you store one spell in each of your eyes, and deliver them as a touch attack within 8 hours. It carries with it the condition that "only ray spells and spells with a target other than personal can be cast as ocular spells". This might look like it prevents what you're trying to do, but that's because you've got something wrong in your post (and the LoM writers got something wrong in their feat).

You see, there are zero spells with a target of personal. There are hundreds of spells with a range of personal, but all of them have a target of "you". This leads to wonderful, wonderful shenanigans like Ocular Tenser's Transformation, a no-save, no-SR, ranged-touch spell that removes all casting ability from the target for 1 round/level.

(before you ask, there isn't a Lords of Madness errata. Thank you based WotC)

Oh, and willing creatures can just let it hit them, so it does what you're looking for and one-ups it by letting you deliver spells to enemies.

[gadren]

Why not just take Ocular Spell from Lords of Madness? It lets you store one spell in each of your eyes, and deliver them as a touch attack within 8 hours. It carries with it the condition that "only ray spells and spells with a target other than personal can be cast as ocular spells". This might look like it prevents what you're trying to do, but that's because you've got something wrong in your post (and the LoM writers got something wrong in their feat).

You see, there are zero spells with a target of personal. There are hundreds of spells with a range of personal, but all of them have a target of "you". This leads to wonderful, wonderful shenanigans like Ocular Tenser's Transformation, a no-save, no-SR, ranged-touch spell that removes all casting ability from the target for 1 round/level.

(before you ask, there isn't a Lords of Madness errata. Thank you based WotC)

Oh, and willing creatures can just let it hit them, so it does what you're looking for and one-ups it by letting you deliver spells to enemies.

I think it's pretty clear what they meant to say. Just because the editors didn't catch the mistake, I'd never allow that in my game.

[Extra Anchovies]

I think it's pretty clear what they meant to say. Just because the editors didn't catch the mistake, I'd never allow that in my game.

Oh, I'm aware that it's cheesy. Dangerously so (https://youtu.be/uHTr6BTqSYk?t=26s). But it does almost exactly what is sought here a means of delivering personal spells to allies), so I felt it was worth mentioning. Your call, though, since you're the DM.

[AvatarVecna]

Show him the War Weaver prestige class; in exchange for wasting a feat, you can apply a wide variety of single target spells to multiple creatures with each casting.

[Psyren]

One level higher seems fair. In addition to the Disguise Other example mentioned above, 3.5 has a couple of similar examples, e.g. Personal Mind Blank (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/mindBlankPersonal.htm) and Mind Blank (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/mindBlankPsionic.htm).

For low level spells, be warned however - changing this makes them eligible to be made into potions, which in turn opens them up for non-casting classes, where they can become standard issue. For instance, the archers of a low-magic kingdom would have no reason not to buy stockpiles of Shield potions; assassins would go nuts for True Strike potions before shooting the king through a dark window; Comprehend Languages potions would make interpreters obsolete etc. This could be good or bad for your setting but I have to assume that base D&D didn't want these sorts of things widely available to the noncasters for a reason.