Steel dance 3.5

[finaldooms]

So i had a player way back when use a spell to animate 2 greatswords on his wizard to fight for him
He says its steel dance, but that spell says daggers only. ..do people normally allow other weapons to,be used for steeldance? Did i miss something?
Also whatever he used..used his casting stat for the to hit and damage bonus but steel dance doesnt say so..but animate weapon does ( for the hit at least) so...im confused!!

[Venger]

steeldance can be used with swords or daggers of any kind. you do use your primary casting stat as a mod to attack and damage. I assume you're looking at the old version in magic of faerun. the spell was updated and the most up to date version is on p206 of the spell compendium

[zlefin]

neat spell.
looking it up; the targets field says "two daggers"
but the required focus item is: "two bladed weapons"

I also note it doesn't require the daggers to be properly sized for you, and doesn't list a penalty for having inappropriately sized weapons. (it spells out their exact attack bonus, and does not indicate them receiving any other penalties/bonuses they might get from you if they were wielded directly)

[barakaka]

Actually, the focus says bladed weapons such as daggers or longswords, but the spell targets only daggers. So really, it's up to the DM.

[finaldooms]

Ah..that makes sense

[daremetoidareyo]

does it specify a size for those daggers?

[Thurbane]

As per the Spell Compendium p.206:

Targets: Two swords or daggers
Focus: Two bladed weapons, such as daggers or longswords.

Errata says this:

Remove the word “swords” in the target line of the spell.

...so aside from epically bad editing, it appears the errata means the spell can only affect daggers.

[finaldooms]

Dm im,playing with house ruled i gota be proficient with the weapons ( elf) so im fine with his version lol..and no it doesnt specify a size limit

[Thurbane]

Dm im,playing with house ruled i gota be proficient with the weapons ( elf) so im fine with his version lol..and no it doesnt specify a size limit

Seems fairly reasonable. It's not OP for a 3rd level spell to be doing 1d8 base damage instead of 1d4.

It might get a bit silly if you were using it on a pair of gargantuan fullblades. :smalltongue:

[Kayblis]

Yeah, this is a cool spell for those that want to go the melee way. You can have 2 bladed weapons, the dagger-only part is DM dependant but it also doesn't specify size, so a Gargantuan Dagger would deal 2d6 like a greatsword. It's easier if we just let the person use blades in general for his size, or restrict it to 1-handed ones(2 longswords for 1d8 each is pretty fair). You use your CL+INT to hit(assuming wizard), so it's like a fighter using BAB+STR to hit, and your INT adds to damage. From then on, you get 2 free attacks per turn for around ~9 damage that can benefit from precision damage to discourage enemies from standing around the wizard for too long. It's a good spell for low optimization and opens up some possibilities like Sneak Attacking casters and easier melee gishes.

It's not a broken spell by any measure, but it sure deviates from the standard frail, staff-wielding wizard most people are used to.

[Nifft]

Steal Dance
Enchantment / Abjuration
Level: Paladin 1, bard 2
Components: V
Casting Time: 1 immediate action
Range: Touch
Target: One pair of living creatures who are dancing
Duration: Instantaneous

You interrupt a pair of dancing creatures, and you gain a +10 bonus to any skills used to convince one of the creatures to dance with you instead of the other one. If you succeed, you can start dancing with the creature of your preference, and the discarded dancer may not counter-trip.

This spell can be used to interrupt other spells, as if using dispel magic to counterspell, which one dancer may be attempting on another. When used in this manner, you can narratively teleport across a dance floor of arbitrary size to arrive at exactly the right moment to interrupt the spell. Dimensional lock and similar effects are not proof against narrative dance teleportation.