Top 10 level 7 spells at ECL14 and 20

[Anthrowhale]

We're in the final 3 levels starting with level 7 (See 0 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?657743-Top-10-cantrips),1 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?657825-Top-10-level-1-spells-at-ECL2-amp-20),2 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658094-Top-10-level-2-spells-at-ECL-4-amp-20),3 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658251-Top-10-level-3-spells-at-ECL6-amp-20),4 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658751-Top-10-level-4-spells-at-ECL-8-amp-20#post25846144),5 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?659463-Top-10-level-5-spells-at-ECL-10-amp-20),6 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?660156-Top-10-level-6-spells-at-ECL-12-amp-20)). What are the top 10 level 7 spells? Questions/Comments/Thoughts are welcome. What is a better L7 spell? What should not be on this list?

Some clarifying questions:
What level? It seems there is still some difference between the optimal spell at ECL14 and ECL20, so both are under consideration. However, if a spellcaster is focusing on caster level escalation, save DC escalation, or persistomancy it's typically available by the time 7th level spells are available.
Essentials? Yes, let's include essentials like healing. There are many ways to find this in the game, but a list of 10 spells is also generous.
Combos? Yes, let's include relevant combos.
What about offbeat prestige classes giving early access? I'm happy to make a note about early access, but the general preference was to not include.
What level? For spells at different levels on different lists, it's the level on a core class or domain, and if that's not available on some other base class.

ECL14

W7O8 Simulacrum (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/simulacrum.htm). Illusion(Shadow). Create half hit dice duplicate of creature with HD less than twice caster level under your command. The exact special abilities of a half-hit dice Balor (for example) is unclear, but fortunately a Balor, and many other creatures advance up to twice their starting hit dice. The creatures don't heal easily, but this otherwise gives you potential access to a vast array of special abilities from virtually any creature in the game. The biggest issue though is that getting an upleveled Balor needs to wait until Gate when you'll have access to Ice Assassin then anyways. The real value of simulacrums is in your ability to control which feats or classes they have, so for example they are near-perfect for fueling circle magic, creating high DC Bloodfreeze arrows via Coooperative Spell, or adding metamagic to spells as an Incantatrix. This is on the ECL14 list because Ice Assassin deeply eclipses Simulacrum on the level 9 list.
OW Limited Wish (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/limitedWish.htm). Universal. Duplicate any wizard spell L6-, other spell L5- including prohibited wizard spells, or other prohibited spells L4-. Alternatively, impose a -7 penalty on a creature's next save or similar power effects. The XP cost for Limited Wish is pretty reasonable, so this is a great way to handle rarely used but great spells like permanency or dragonblood spell-pact. It also provides offlist access and the casting time is a standard action making it pair well with Dweomerkeeper's Supernatural Spell for the vast number of spells it can duplicate. At higher levels Miracle costs no XP and is more powerful.


ECL20

CW Planar Bubble(Spell Compendium). Abjuration. For 10 minutes/level in a 10' radius, touched creature's environment emulates it's native plane. This spell allows creatures to safely traverse hostile planes and use magic normally expanding the scope of game play. It can also be used (with appropriate minions) to leverage the traits of any plane. Planar traits (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#planarTraits) have a set of unique effects which you can't get anywhere else. For example, the static trait (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#static) which makes a creature and it's objects unaffected by any nonnative of the plane. Planar Bubble becomes much more potent once you have access to Genesis.
W Greater Shadow Conjuration (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shadowConjurationGreater.htm). Illusion(Shadow). As a standard action emulate any L6- Conjuration(summoning) or Conjuration(creation) wizard spell. For example, Shalantha's Delicate Disk is suddenly free, you have access to a vast array of SLAs from the summon monster (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?255219-The-Summoner-s-Desk-Reference-D-amp-D-3-5) line, and you can access all kinds of esoteric and dangerous materials from Major Creation. Fero also notes Mudslide, Wall of Gears, Call of the Twilight Defender, Phantasmal Thief, etc... The L5- spells are accessible via Greater Anyspell, but this allows you to choose the effect at casting time.


ECL14&20

C Greater Consumptive Field(Spell Compendium). Necromancy[Death,Evil]. For round/level creatures in 30' radius with 9 or fewer hit points die adding 2 to your strength and 1 to caster level (max 50% increase) fortitude negates. If you can't persist spells, this is highly cumulative with Consumptive Field to create a large caster level for the purpose of buffs, although it's somewhat tricky to use. If you can persist spells, you can ladder up to a very high caster level. Without GCF, Persistent Consumptive Field can at most double your caster level since it's not self-cumulative. With GCF, there's no upper limit in general.
CO Holy Word (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/holyWord.htm). Evocation[Good, Sonic]. In a 40' radius spread centered on you nongood creatures levels of caster level HD- deafened 1d4 rounds, caster level-1 HD- also blinded 2d4 rounds, caster level-5 HD- also paralyzed 1d10 minutes, caster level-10 HD- also dead. Also non-good extraplanar creatures banished Will-4 negates. With caster level escalation this is just devastating. There's a series of spells here also including Blasphemy (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blasphemy.htm), Word of Chaos (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wordOfChaos.htm), Dictum (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dictum.htm), and Word of Balance. Usually Holy Word is the best choice since badguys are archtypally evil but this could vary with the campaign and party composition since you want to avoid friendly fire. Note that a Savage Species ritual can add an alignment subtype regardless of true alignment, generating immunity to all but Word of Balance.
W Crown of Despair(Dragon 331). Enchantment(Compulsion)[Mind-Affecting] Paralyze all creatures seeing you for 1d4 rounds Will negates. This is directly persistable and a passive attack which affects any creature not immune to mind-affecting or paralysis. Note that paralysis creates opportunities for Coup de Grace. This is generally surpassed by Unearthly Beauty on the level 8 list although it retains a range advantage.
CDOW Control Weather (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/controlWeather.htm). Transmutation. After a 10 minute casting, for 4d12 hours choose a season-appropriate weather in a 2 mile radius (or 3 mile radius for Druids) with a 10 minute delay. Season appropriate weather include tornado, hurricane, hailstorm, blizzard, and hurricane. This can set conditions for Control Wind to escalate to Tornado, and more constructively it can be used to protect a settlement from inimical use of the same spell or natural disasters. This is a 6th level spell for Wu Jen.
W Energy Transformation Field(Spell Compendium). Transmutation. In a 40' radius absorb spells cast, SLAs, and Supernatural abilities activated, transforming them into a particular spell cast when sufficient levels are absorbed. This has numerous uses. Since spells cast outside can take effect inside, it can be create a trap for magic-dependent creatures. If you overcome the 4 round casting time (via Uncanny Forethought for example), this is a double radius dimensional lock for example. This is also makes all buffs free. Just bring along a summons with an at-will SLA to power things and engage in a daily walk. You can also potentially create a Delicate Disk assembly line using the same techniques.
W Amber Sarcophagus(Book of Exalted Deeds). Evocation. With a close ranged touch attack, target is held in stasis inside amber with hardness 5 and 10 hp/caster level for day/level or until amber is destroyed. This works against all creatures and you can use a rod of chain spell to take out an entire encounter.
Wu Body Outside Body(Complete Arcane). Conjuration(Creation). For 1 round/2 levels 1 duplicate of you (except magical gear becomes mundane, can't cast spells, and 1/4 hit points) appears within 10' and thereafter acts as you command, This spell is persistable and the duplicates follow even suicidal orders making for highly disposable minions. The limitation on spellcasting is annoying, but there are several good spellcaster-synergistic classes providing supernatural abilities like Dweomerkeeper or Incantatrix, and of course you can use Magic Jar on other party members to clone them as well.
W Arcane Spellsurge(Dragon Magic). Universal. For round/level, arcane spell casting times change as standard->swift, full round->standard, 2-10 rounds->1 round less. This spell is persistable. Used naively this spell has a modest effect since it does not allow multiple spells to be cast per round. However, with metamagic on a spontaneous arcane caster or Alternate Source Spell, Southern Magician, or Uncanny Forethought on a prepared caster it can double spells/round.


C=Cleric, O=dOmain, W=Wizard, Wu=Wu Jen

Counts by:
class: 3.5C, 3O, 7W, 1Wu
school: 0.5 Abj, 1 Conj, 1 Ench, 2 Evoc, 1 Illus, 1 Necro, 2 Trans, 1.5 Universal
modifiers: 1 compulsion, 1 creation, 1 death, 1 evil, 1 good, 1 mind-affecting, 1 shadow, 1 sonic
source: 1 BoED, 1 CA, 1 DM, 1 Dragon, 3.5 PHB, 2.5 SC

The maybe-not list:
Gem Tracer. An interesting effect, but locate object also can work.
Spell Turning. This is sometimes nice, but has many limitations.
Greater Plane Shift. Not really a new effect.
Scrying, Greater. Not really a new effect.
OW Magnificent Mansion (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magesMagnificentMansion.htm). Conjuration(Creation). For 2 hours/level extradimensional mansion accommodates only guests you designate when casting. For many foes, this a "timeout" spell that can be used even mid combat. Very few adversaries have access to transdimensional spell (for example), so this is a pretty secure resting place. There are alternatives though---you can gemjump a party out of an ambush and plane shift to a safe place for resting.
OW Avasculate(Spell Compendium). Necromancy[Death,Evil]. A close range target hit by a ray halves it's hit points and is stunned for 1 round Fortitude negates stun only. This applies to everything except Constructs, since the Fort-save immunity only protects from the stun effect. Logically, this is something like doubling the damage of any source of hit point damage for an encounter. Since the hit point reduction is not technically damage, a rod of Chain Spell is particularly potent. Alternatively, a lens of ray widening (lords of madness) can create a similar effect. It's a brutal effect, but no-save spells are even more powerful.
Death by Thorns. A solid kill spell since it incapacitates even on a save. Amber Sarcophagus appears better because it has more range.
W Arcane Spellsurge(Dragon Magic). Universal. For round/level casting time for arcane spells reduced from standard to swift, 1 full round to standard, and 2-10 rounds to 1 round less. This is something like automatic quicken for arcane spells. It is most easily used on sorcerer who can add a +0 metamagic to some spells, but a wizard or a cleric with alternate source spell or southern magician can also double spell output. Ultimately, this spell isn't used in the first round because you cast nerveskitter and it's probably not used in the second round because you cast Triptych, so it's not clear how much utility it actually provides.
CW Necrotic Tumor(Libris Mortis). Necromancy[Evil]. Dominate a living creature with a necrotic cyst permanently with Fortitude save for Suggestion instead for day/level. This is not a good combat spell because the subject must have a necrotic cyst, but it is a comprehensive form of minion-making---typically only undead and constructs are immune. This does require a feat (Mother Cyst). There is a significant competitor in that Charm Monster (Or Dream Casting[Charm Monster]) + a DC 60 diplomacy check can create a fanatically loyal minion per the epic diplomacy rules (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#diplomacy). A DC 60 skill check is actually fairly reasonable given the first level skill enhancers, Surge of Fortune, and skill ranks.
Stun Ray. This stuns a creature for at least 1 round, even if it saves. It's a good effect, but it seems Amber Sarcophagus is generally better. The extra 500gp cost is significant, but plausibly acceptable by this level.

[Fero]

Consider Adding

Energy Transformation Field--> Turn spells into other spells. Use summons with SLAs to make unlimited use spell engines.

Amber Sarcophagus--> No save multi-day stasis. Very few creatures are immune to stasis, making this a potent offensive spell.

Wall of Eyes--> An instantanious wall, and nasty, that you can look through, forever?

Renewal Pact--> High level combat is a brutal, nasty affair. The ability to place contingencies like this on the entire party is very powerful.

Reconsider?

Plane Shift Greater--> The ability to accurately go anywhere is pretty amazing. Recharge your planar touchstones. Scour lorebooks for places with strange bonuses, etc.

Similacrum--> I would place this on the short list for the top level 7 spell. Power circle magic/cooperative metamagic. Build collections of skilled crafters. Obtain powerful spellcasting assistants. You don't need a Balor. Cloning PCs is perfectly viable.

Remove?

Greater Consumptive Field--> I understand how powerful combining this with normal Consumptive Field can be. However, I feel like this is largely duplicative with the lesser version and provides little extra outside those Combos that may or may not work.

Magnificent Mansion--> I love the style of this spell. However, for practical purposes it adds little beyond a level 2 rope trick. If you want to use a level 7 spell for rest, just cast greater planeshift/teleport and return to your stronghold with all of your energy Transformation Field's and chickens to sacrifice to consumptive fields.

Avasculate--> I find high level combat to be too fast/brutal for reducing an opponent's HP by half to be all thar powerful. Compare this to Amber Sarcophagus, which will fully remove the foe from combat.

[Biggus]

Amber Sarcophagus--> No save multi-day stasis. Very few creatures are immune to stasis, making this a potent offensive spell.

Agree with this one.



Greater Consumptive Field--> I understand how powerful combining this with normal Consumptive Field can be. However, I feel like this is largely duplicative with the lesser version and provides little extra outside those Combos that may or may not work.

The big difference is that CF requires targets to be on 0 or less HPs, whereas GCF requires them to be on 9 or less HPs, so you don't have to waste time attacking anyone, you just stand near a bunch of commoners (or a bag of rats) and it happens automatically. As far as I can see it's one of the most powerful spells in the game, as well as the caster level bonus it can give you nigh-infinite strength and HPs, especially if persisted.

[Fero]

A few more suggestions.

Giant Size- Become colossal

Body Outside Body- Opens up all sorts of combos.

Kiss of the Vampire- persistable at will SLAs.

I feel like the problem at level 7 is that the lower level spells are already so powerful that it becomes hard to stay impressed. Damage and Save or Suck both seem a bit feeble by this level. Battlefield Control fully unlocks by around 5th level spells. As such, the level 7s really need to do somehing special to stand out.

[Anthrowhale]

Added ETF and Amber Sarcophagus while removing Magnificent Mansion and Avasculate.



Wall of Eyes--> An instantanious wall, and nasty, that you can look through, forever?

It's a great spell. You can probably even get around the 'vertical' limit using planar bubble. I'm not seeing what to drop for it at the moment.


Renewal Pact--> High level combat is a brutal, nasty affair. The ability to place contingencies like this on the entire party is very powerful.

This is a good spell which reminded me of Fortunate Fate. But what to drop?


Plane Shift Greater--> The ability to accurately go anywhere is pretty amazing. Recharge your planar touchstones. Scour lorebooks for places with strange bonuses, etc.

Plane shift + Gemjump could potentially handle anywhere you've been before. Plane Shift+Teleport for places you haven't been seems good enough when that arises? I'm trying to squeeze utility out of limited choices here...


Similacrum--> I would place this on the short list for the top level 7 spell. Power circle magic/cooperative metamagic. Build collections of skilled crafters. Obtain powerful spellcasting assistants. You don't need a Balor. Cloning PCs is perfectly viable.

A good point, but what to remove?


Greater Consumptive Field--> I understand how powerful combining this with normal Consumptive Field can be. However, I feel like this is largely duplicative with the lesser version and provides little extra outside those Combos that may or may not work.

There's a question mark around what "original caster level" means. Is it the caster level when casting Consumptive Field? Or the caster level without taking into account Consumptive Field?

For the former, CF or GCF alone allow you to double the caster level through repeat castings. For example 20->30->35->37->38->39->39 limiting out due to overlap of effects. For the latter, repeat castings of CF or GCF do nothing: 20->30 is all you get.

When you have both CF & GCF and alternate under the former you can grow caster level arbitrarily for exmaple: 20->CF->30->GCF->40->CF->50->GCF->65->... For the latter, you can merely double caster level 20->CF->30->GCF->40.

So, depending on interpretation, GCF on top of CF either allows you to climb towards arbitrary caster levels (utterly broken) or merely add 10 to caster level (making Holy Word an instawin.) Either way, it seems a strong enough effect to merit the top-10?

[Chronos]

I'd drop Greater Consumptive Field. Used by itself, it offers very little beyond regular Consumptive Field. Neither one is going to be practical when using enemies as the sacrifices, and if you're using a bag of rats or something, having to actually get them to 0 HP yourself is a trivial task. It might combo very well with the regular version, depending on interpretation, but even if we accept that interpretation, I think the credit for the combo should go to the one that's better on its own, which is the lower-level one (better by virtue of being lower-level).

I might also drop Greater Shadow Conjuration-- It needs more examples of what it can mimic to justify its position. You know what else can mimic any 6th-level or lower Summon Monster spell? Summon Monster VI. With no special investment needed for 100% reality. And Shalanthar's Delicate Disk is already on our lists, and is a downtime spell anyway, so there's no reason it has to be competing for prep space.

I'd also list all of Holy Word's brothers under the same heading. Though I will note that there is a subtle asymmetry between them: The good and chaotic versions only work on creatures that can hear them, while the lawful and evil ones work regardless. In other words, a deaf lawful evil character is immune to all four.

Body Outside Body definitely deserves a place on this list. As soon as you get any way to consider a spell as anything other than a spell (SLA from Archmage, Su from Dweomerkeeper, etc.) your clones get a good option to use. Likewise if you're a gish, or one of the not-technically-spellcasting theurge classes like Cerebromancer, Anima Mage, or Soulcaster. And if you get BOB itself as a SLA or Su, then it goes crazy, because now all your copies get copies, too.

[Troacctid]

I've gone down on Arcane Spellsurge over time, and I think it's a bit overrated. There's just so many other ways to quicken spells or otherwise make use of your swift action in this edition, and the competition is fierce enough that Arcane Spellsurge is good, but not a top 10, IMO.

I also think Necrotic Tumor is a bit of a cheat. It pretends to be a no-save domination effect, but it would really like you to forget that it only works against enemies who already failed their save against another spell that's 5 levels lower. The fact that it's a little more resilient against some of the defenses that would normally foil lower-level enchantments isn't enough that I'd put it in the top tier of 7ths.

Simulacrum and Searing Touch would both rank very highly for me.


I'd also list all of Holy Word's brothers under the same heading. Though I will note that there is a subtle asymmetry between them: The good and chaotic versions only work on creatures that can hear them, while the lawful and evil ones work regardless. In other words, a deaf lawful evil character is immune to all four.
Lumping together Holy Word with Blasphemy would be like lumping together Charm Person with Charm Animal. Changing the targeted alignment results in a really substantial power level gap. They're not the same.

[Anthrowhale]

Dropped Greater Shadow Conjuration in favor of Body Outside Body.

I'm still debating Simulacrum. One reason to not get it is that you can pick it up at caster level 8 anyways from Lesser Planar Binding via the Mirror Mephit. Given that you won't use it often anyways, maybe that's good enough? You'll need 18 hit dice before something new is required, and Ice Assassin should be available by then.



The big difference is that CF requires targets to be on 0 or less HPs, whereas GCF requires them to be on 9 or less HPs,
I disagree here---the big difference between GCF and CF here are that they are different spells and hence have different stacking rules than CF with CF or GCF with GCF.



Giant Size- Become colossal

Why bother? W.r.t. damage, you can already hit like a colossal weapon. W.r.t. strength, Consumptive Field can already escalate quite a bit. The only thing that remains is reach, and I'm not sure reach is worth it.


Body Outside Body- Opens up all sorts of combos.

Yep, added.


Kiss of the Vampire- persistable at will SLAs.

They're kind of weak though---I'm not seeing much utility.


I feel like the problem at level 7 is that the lower level spells are already so powerful that it becomes hard to stay impressed. Damage and Save or Suck both seem a bit feeble by this level. Battlefield Control fully unlocks by around 5th level spells. As such, the level 7s really need to do somehing special to stand out.
Agreed, I believe.

... Greater Consumptive Field. Used by itself, it offers very little beyond regular Consumptive Field.
Agreed.


It might combo very well with the regular version, depending on interpretation, but even if we accept that interpretation,

Where is the uncertainty coming from? I get that GCF isn't that different from CF, but the effect of comboing the two seems "yikes"



I might also drop Greater Shadow Conjuration
After review, yeah this seems like a good idea.


I'd also list all of Holy Word's brothers under the same heading. Though I will note that there is a subtle asymmetry between them: The good and chaotic versions only work on creatures that can hear them, while the lawful and evil ones work regardless. In other words, a deaf lawful evil character is immune to all four.

I believe they are all listed although there's actually 5 if you throw in Word of Balance.


I've gone down on Arcane Spellsurge over time, and I think it's a bit overrated. There's just so many other ways to quicken spells or otherwise make use of your swift action in this edition, and the competition is fierce enough that Arcane Spellsurge is good, but not a top 10, IMO.

The competition is pretty fierce.

We currently have:
0. Dawn
1. Instant of Power, Nerveskitter, and Vision of Punishment.
2. Wings of Cover and Wraithstrike (although you are probably persisting Wraithstrike even if you have to do it the hard way).
4. Celerity and Bloodfreeze Arrow (although you probably cast offline)
5. Alaunghaer's Triptych, Surge of Fortune (using, not casting), Unfettered Heroism, and Skin of the Steel Dragon (although you'll really want to persist that one).

Triptych is a good broad competitor---that's 3 spells for swift+standard instead of 2. The substantial downside is that Arcane Spellsurge is persistable and the Triptych consumes staff charges.
Celerity is also a good broad competitor. It has the downside of consuming an extra 4th level slot.

The optimal use of Arcane Spellsurge is as a persistent spell, so there is no need for in-combat casting. You won't be able to leverage it in the first round, because you'll cast Nerveskitter instead (and gain a bonus action off of Contingency[Cast Nerveskitter][Celerity]). In the second round, you could leverage Celerity (bonus standard action spell at the cost of L4 slot), Triptych (effectively 2 bonus spells at the cost of 3 staff charges), or Arcane Spellsurge. How often does the second round matter? And if it does is it better to leverage Triptych instead?


I also think Necrotic Tumor is a bit of a cheat. It pretends to be a no-save domination effect, but it would really like you to forget that it only works against enemies who already failed their save against another spell that's 5 levels lower. The fact that it's a little more resilient against some of the defenses that would normally foil lower-level enchantments isn't enough that I'd put it in the top tier of 7ths.
It's definitely not a combat spell---way to complex. But Planar Binding is still in the same boat and we regard that as a quite potent spell. Necrotic Tumor isn't a calling spell, but it can be applied to any living creature, not just elementals and outsiders. Consider something like a rod of Chain Spell on a Sanctum Amber Sarcophagus to generate no-save stasis on up to 21 adversaries followed by opening up each Amber Sarcophagus in an Energy Transformation Field to shut down all Spells/SLAs/Su's, spamming (a) casting Necrotic Cyst outside of the ETF and then (b) touching until it works, and then spamming Necrotic Tumor.



Simulacrum and Searing Touch would both rank very highly for me.

I suspect you mean Scalding Touch? Several folks have serious doubt that you can apply all the hits to a single creature with Storm Touch, for example here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25865169&postcount=15). Given that, I was kind of avoiding.

W.r.t. Simulacrum, I have two concerns:
(a) The abilities of half-normal-hit-die creatures are entirely undefined and (hence) up to the DM. There's a nerfstick here that may not be fully understood.
(b) Lesser Planar Binding[Mirror Mephit].

It is definitely a great spell for making backfield mini-mes.



Lumping together Holy Word with Blasphemy would be like lumping together Charm Person with Charm Animal. Changing the targeted alignment results in a really substantial power level gap. They're not the same.
Agreed. Nevertheless, I found it interesting that "Word" in the title means you must hear it---I hadn't appreciated that previously.

[Fero]

I am not convinced GCF stacks with CF. GCF states "This spell functions like Consumptive Field, except. . ." Taken literally, this language would mean that GCF functions exactly like CF for all non excepted purposes, including stacking with CF. This also makes sense RaI as GCF is intended as a CF with slightly more killing.

Similarly, the spell can only increase your CL by your "original" CL. Original is not defined and your GM could easily rule in this context that your original CL is your CL before you start mass Death Knelling everyone.

Are there good arguments that GCF and CF stack? Yes, very good ones. However, in light of the RAW ambiguity and the apparent intent of CF to limit the overall CL bonus, I suspect very few DMs would allow this combo. This in turn relegated GCF to the long list of spells and abilities that are.theoretically good in one combo, and based on certain interpretations of the rules. As such, I feel the spell fares poorly against the monster spells otherwise filling this list.

[RandomPeasant]

Honestly I would drop limited wish. Note that it doesn't actually save you any XP for permanency or whatnot unless you are ignoring the XP cost entirely (if it duplicates a spell with an XP cost "duplicates a spell that has an XP cost, you must pay that cost or 300 XP, whichever is more"), and I don't really think the power of Supernatural Spell can be assumed as a part of limited wish. If you are paying the XP cost, you have to figure that "the absolute perfect 6th level spell for this situation" is better than "just casting holy word with a big CL" and "using arcane fusion to pop out whatever low-level silver bullet you want" and "relying on minionmancy to get you obscure spells". Plus the real (if not mechanical) constraint that you are simply not going to be able to go through every spell every time you cast limited wish. Once it becomes "whatever spell I can think of before the DM skips my turn" it becomes a lot less impressive.


Wall of Eyes--> An instantanious wall, and nasty, that you can look through, forever?

Well, until someone destroys it, which is not terribly difficult to do at high levels. The trapping effect is neat, but it seems like it inherits the 3.0 -> 3.5 changes to hold monster, meaning it will almost never actually kill stuff. Plus it doesn't work against weapons, spells, or ranged attacks. Also the most useful forms of long-ranged surveillance are ones you can use either covertly or on places you haven't been, and this is neither of those. The idea of a BBEG who can spy all throughout his base at will by looking through the walls is neat, but it's not really a scenario of much use to the PCs in most campaigns.


Renewal Pact--> High level combat is a brutal, nasty affair. The ability to place contingencies like this on the entire party is very powerful.

The XP cost and the fact this triggers on things like "dazzled" leaves me a little skeptical. It's very easy for a DM to set things up to drain your resources by blowing these on conditions that are not worrisome in practice. Hell, you can't even really use it on a Barbarian, because it will go off the second he comes out of rage.


Similacrum--> I would place this on the short list for the top level 7 spell. Power circle magic/cooperative metamagic. Build collections of skilled crafters. Obtain powerful spellcasting assistants. You don't need a Balor. Cloning PCs is perfectly viable.

I'm torn with simulacrum. On the one hand, it's objectively powerful. On the other hand it compares pretty unfavorably to other minionmancy spells at lower levels, particularly because it costs XP. How many clones of yourself do you need for this to be better than dominate person or planar binding? It is really good if you believe in "I can pull a piece of an advanced Balor out of my spell component pouch and make a copy of it that is a full-strength Balor", but that requires you to win at least two different arguments with your DM. It probably gets a spot just because it is abusable, but it's one of the worst minionmancy spells for its level.


Greater Consumptive Field--> I understand how powerful combining this with normal Consumptive Field can be. However, I feel like this is largely duplicative with the lesser version and provides little extra outside those Combos that may or may not work.

One question that's worth asking is the percentage of the time you will get the pretty favorable stacking (where these apply after all your CL boosters and stack with each other) but not the very favorable stacking (where you can just repeat one for credit). I don't actually think that's very large, so I don't think the second one adds much.


Avasculate--> I find high level combat to be too fast/brutal for reducing an opponent's HP by half to be all thar powerful. Compare this to Amber Sarcophagus, which will fully remove the foe from combat.

The save-or-stun is not irrelevant. avasculate is sort of weird in that in a lot of high-op games people's damage output will be big enough to just kill things so it gets worse as power levels go up, but in lower-op scenarios it's very strong.


The big difference is that CF requires targets to be on 0 or less HPs, whereas GCF requires them to be on 9 or less HPs, so you don't have to waste time attacking anyone, you just stand near a bunch of commoners (or a bag of rats) and it happens automatically. As far as I can see it's one of the most powerful spells in the game, as well as the caster level bonus it can give you nigh-infinite strength and HPs, especially if persisted.

Killing the stuff is not really the limiting factor on consumptive field.


Kiss of the Vampire- persistable at will SLAs.

This also makes you get super owned by Sun domain Clerics, which is a not-great vulnerability to add. Not quite as owned as if you were actually undead, but it's not great. Rebuking is even worse, if a bit harder to optimize. If you really want an effect like this, evil glare is better (though probably worse than crown of despair).


I might also drop Greater Shadow Conjuration-- It needs more examples of what it can mimic to justify its position.

greater shadow conjuration is the first one that can mimic minor creation and/or major creation, which is a really nasty effect to get as a standard action. It is a little awkward that it's a 7th level spell when a 5th or 6th level shadow conjuration could've done the same thing, but it's a really strong effect.


Body Outside Body definitely deserves a place on this list. As soon as you get any way to consider a spell as anything other than a spell (SLA from Archmage, Su from Dweomerkeeper, etc.) your clones get a good option to use. Likewise if you're a gish, or one of the not-technically-spellcasting theurge classes like Cerebromancer, Anima Mage, or Soulcaster. And if you get BOB itself as a SLA or Su, then it goes crazy, because now all your copies get copies, too.

body outside body is an incredibly trash spell if you have not built around it to at least some degree, and honestly still a pretty mediocre spell if you don't have something for the bodies to do plus a way to make it Persistent, as that 1 minute duration means you are almost certainly getting only one fight out of the clones. I don't think a build-around effect belongs on a general-purpose list even if it is very strong when built around.


I also think Necrotic Tumor is a bit of a cheat. It pretends to be a no-save domination effect, but it would really like you to forget that it only works against enemies who already failed their save against another spell that's 5 levels lower. The fact that it's a little more resilient against some of the defenses that would normally foil lower-level enchantments isn't enough that I'd put it in the top tier of 7ths.

Yeah, the basic thing is that the necrotic tumor stuff only really works if you can capture enemies, and if you can capture enemies you can rootkit them anyway as an Enchanter.


Lumping together Holy Word with Blasphemy would be like lumping together Charm Person with Charm Animal. Changing the targeted alignment results in a really substantial power level gap. They're not the same.

You absolutely should list the spells that compare your caster level to people's HD and make them die if your CL is bigger enough together. The idea that there is a "best alignment" you can determine a priori is silly, and if you are using the spells right the lesser effects do not matter.


One reason to not get it is that you can pick it up at caster level 8 anyways from Lesser Planar Binding via the Mirror Mephit.

If you believe this, there is no spell that is justifiably included on this list because Efreet exist.


I suspect you mean Scalding Touch? Several folks have serious doubt that you can apply all the hits to a single creature with Storm Touch, for example here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25865169&postcount=15). Given that, I was kind of avoiding.

scalding touch is just bad avasculate. Being able to attack people at range is good.

[eggynack]

I will throw curse of pain eternal into the running as the weirdest spell that arguably belongs on the list. Basically, you cast it on someone to apply a tiny pointless debuff, and then the spell runs out, and the target permanently has the "masochism fetish". Which, for some reason, is a marginal little buff that actually might be occasionally pertinent. So, it's an effect that's way smaller than pretty much any other seventh level spell in the game, but with such a low cost to apply it that it's basically always correct to do so if you have the downtime. I don't even know what to make of that. Is it right to call something a "top spell" on the sole basis that everyone should be casting it?

[Fero]

I will throw curse of pain eternal into the running as the weirdest spell that arguably belongs on the list. Basically, you cast it on someone to apply a tiny pointless debuff, and then the spell runs out, and the target permanently has the "masochism fetish". Which, for some reason, is a marginal little buff that actually might be occasionally pertinent. So, it's an effect that's way smaller than pretty much any other seventh level spell in the game, but with such a low cost to apply it that it's basically always correct to do so if you have the downtime. I don't even know what to make of that. Is it right to call something a "top spell" on the sole basis that everyone should be casting it?

Sounds awesome. What book is it from?

[eggynack]

Sounds awesome. What book is it from?
Dragon 300, page 55. Also the source for a spell that I'm definitely gonna bring up when we get to 9th's, putrefaction. That thing is underappreciated.

[Anthrowhale]

Current status:

Debating GCF, Arcane Spellsurge, Greater Shadow Conjuration.


I am not convinced GCF stacks with CF. GCF states "This spell functions like Consumptive Field, except. . ." Taken literally, this language would mean that GCF functions exactly like CF for all non excepted purposes, including stacking with CF.
Asking editors to put things like "except that it's a different spell for all purposes (such as stacking)" if that's what they means seems obnoxiously pedantic to me.

This also makes sense RaI as GCF is intended as a CF with slightly more killing.
RAI is as always disputable. My guess would be that the spell was intended as a NPC BBEG spell and that they didn't really think about CF+GCF stacking at all.

Similarly, the spell can only increase your CL by your "original" CL. Original is not defined and your GM could easily rule in this context that your original CL is your CL before you start mass Death Knelling everyone.

Yeah, discussed above.

I'm getting that GCF and CF stacking is more controversial than I realized. I'm unsure whether the logic here is goal-oriented. "Woah, that's incredibly powerful... can we come up with any way to avoid the very powerful interpretation?" The same thing comes up with Planar Binding, for example.


Honestly I would drop limited wish.
The limits discussed seem valid, but at the same time I'm wary of assumed hindsight omniscience in low op settings. Even if you confine spell selection to the top-10 lists, it can be very hard to predict in advance which of the top-10 spells are of interest on a particular day. Particularly with a prepared caster, Limited Wish provides a useful mechanism to sort-of retroactively memorize the right spell. That can be amazing when you get to the last encounter of the day and realize you memorized the wrong one.

There are other approaches of coarse---you could use Uncanny Forethought or take levels in Hathran, but then you are riding the build optimization curve. So: low end it helps and high end it helps as well with leveraging Dweomerkeeper.


I'm torn with simulacrum.

Yeah, I'm still debating here as well.


One question that's worth asking is the percentage of the time you will get the pretty favorable stacking (where these apply after all your CL boosters and stack with each other) but not the very favorable stacking (where you can just repeat one for credit). I don't actually think that's very large, so I don't think the second one adds much.

Interesting---your 'very favorable' seems explicitly counter to the rules to me. I'm wary of reasoning based on misinterpretation of the rules.


greater shadow conjuration is the first one that can mimic minor creation and/or major creation, which is a really nasty effect to get as a standard action. It is a little awkward that it's a 7th level spell when a 5th or 6th level shadow conjuration could've done the same thing, but it's a really strong effect.

Tactical use of Minor/Major creation does seem potentially pretty important.


body outside body is an incredibly trash spell if you have not built around it to at least some degree, and honestly still a pretty mediocre spell if you don't have something for the bodies to do plus a way to make it Persistent, as that 1 minute duration means you are almost certainly getting only one fight out of the clones. I don't think a build-around effect belongs on a general-purpose list even if it is very strong when built around.

I'm not sure how much 'build around' is really required. At this level, I would not assume persistent spell is a 'build around' for the spell, and leveraging persistent spell + lower level combat buffs (i.e. greater mighty wallop) already creates some pretty good minions. For extra fun, you can even Magic Jar your minions to keep the opponents guessing about which is the "real" you.


Yeah, the basic thing is that the necrotic tumor stuff only really works if you can capture enemies, and if you can capture enemies you can rootkit them anyway as an Enchanter.

Can you explain further?


You absolutely should list the spells that compare your caster level to people's HD and make them die if your CL is bigger enough together. The idea that there is a "best alignment" you can determine a priori is silly, and if you are using the spells right the lesser effects do not matter.

In what sense are they not listed?


I will throw curse of pain eternal into the running as the weirdest spell that arguably belongs on the list. Basically, you cast it on someone to apply a tiny pointless debuff, and then the spell runs out, and the target permanently has the "masochism fetish". Which, for some reason, is a marginal little buff that actually might be occasionally pertinent. So, it's an effect that's way smaller than pretty much any other seventh level spell in the game, but with such a low cost to apply it that it's basically always correct to do so if you have the downtime. I don't even know what to make of that. Is it right to call something a "top spell" on the sole basis that everyone should be casting it?
I'm generally regarding small numeric buffs, even if they are universally useful, as not wort a top-10 slot. A more extreme version of this is that Superior Resistance is not on the top-10 list for L6 spells (although I regard it as close).

[eggynack]

I'm generally regarding small numeric buffs, even if they are universally useful, as not wort a top-10 slot. A more extreme version of this is that Superior Resistance is not on the top-10 list for L6 spells (although I regard it as close).
Superior resistance is substantially different, because you actually have to cast the thing. Not every caster with access is going to have superior resistance running all the time. Curse of pain eternal is something you can basically just stick on your character sheet because it lasts forever. Superior resistance, with its lengthy duration, is a highly efficient spell. Curse of pain eternal is an infinitely efficient spell. It just happens to be an infinitely efficient spell that doesn't do all that much.

[RandomPeasant]

'm getting that GCF and CF stacking is more controversial than I realized. I'm unsure whether the logic here is goal-oriented. "Woah, that's incredibly powerful... can we come up with any way to avoid the very powerful interpretation?" The same thing comes up with Planar Binding, for example.

My argument would not really be that they don't stack but that I'm not convinced they stack with other stuff. What is your "original caster level"? Is it your base caster level before you start adding any modifiers? Your caster level when you cast consumptive field? Does it update round-by-round? What order are multiple modifiers applied in? If I cast consumptive field and do some Circle Magic, is the resulting caster level 40, 50, or 60? If I then cast greater consumptive field, is my result the same, 10 higher, or 50% higher? I think you can make plausible arguments for any of those.


The limits discussed seem valid, but at the same time I'm wary of assumed hindsight omniscience in low op settings.

In low op settings you are not going to have the encyclopedic knowledge of spells required to make limited wish more effective than other spells on the typical day. If you're just casting whatever 6th level spell looks good, it's probably just worse than casting a good 7th level spell, especially with the XP cost.


Interesting---your 'very favorable' seems explicitly counter to the rules to me. I'm wary of reasoning based on misinterpretation of the rules.

It's not precisely "stacking". because the interpretation isn't "you cast two and get +2" but "if you cast a second one it counts the first one for 'original caster level'". So you'd have two bonuses (that don't stack), but one of them would have a higher maximum than the other.


I'm not sure how much 'build around' is really required. At this level, I would not assume persistent spell is a 'build around' for the spell, and leveraging persistent spell + lower level combat buffs (i.e. greater mighty wallop) already creates some pretty good minions. For extra fun, you can even Magic Jar your minions to keep the opponents guessing about which is the "real" you.

Why not just do that with any other minionmancy effect? Then you'd get to start from a baseline that isn't "something with a quarter of a d4 HD, poor BAB, and a feat selection for casting spells", and you wouldn't have to spend the spell slot that day. I don't think you can copy over buffs, because it doesn't say you can and it says explicitly they get non-magic versions of magic gear. Probably the best utility for them is arguing that "cannot ... use any spell completion or spell trigger items" only means they can't do that on the basis of class and can still make UMD checks. Of course, UMD isn't a class skill for Wu Jen, so even that is a bit of extra effort.

That said, this is absolutely a build-around effect. You need access to a pretty obscure list (BoB is on exactly the Wu Jen list), a way of making spells Persistent (which, yes, you won't have only for this, but is not free -- consider that you might want to be a Shadowcraft Mage or something else that speaks for a great many feats), and something for the clones to do (which requires either winning an argument with the DM and some build investment, or significant additional build investment). The baseline alternative here is that you can cast planar binding yesterday and have a thing that fights for you and gets all its HP and can use all its abilities. There are ways to use body outside body effectively, but it is not plug-and-play in the way other spells are.


Can you explain further?

You can't reliably put necrotic cysts into people in combat time, so you need to disable enemies until you can repeatedly cast on them until they fail a save. If you can do that, you can just remove their defenses (by a combination of dispelling, removing protective items, and just waiting for durations to expire) and then repeatedly hit them with dominate person (or charm monster + Diplomacy). The percentage of living creatures that have inherent immunity to regular charms and domination effects is pretty small, so in practice the broader targeting restrictions don't matter much, since you will be able to hit the cap on how many minions the game can function with you having either way.


In what sense are they not listed?

I was arguing with someone who was suggesting they not be listed together.

[remetagross]

Control Weather - huge huge area of effect, and it's fairly easy to get to hurricane-level. It is a devastating area of effect spell that'll flatten entire cities. Cast it as a standard action through the usual tricks.

Wave of pain - save or stunned for 1 round/ 2CL in a big cone area.

Reverse Gravity - huge area of effect and the effect is totally unique. You can wipe out entire armies of non-flying creatures.

[Kalkra]

Pocket Cave does pretty much everything Magnificent Mansion does, but 2 levels lower and with a feat tax. Arguably so does Rope Trick.

[Chronos]

Yeah, Magnificent Mansion is definitely a spell that you cast purely for style points. I mean, it's worth a lot of style points, but that's all it's really good for. But I don't think anyone is actually arguing for its inclusion.

And Body Outside Body does require some building around, but not all that much. Take a single level in Archmage for the Spell-Like Ability option, and at CL 20 you can get 100 copies of yourself with a single casting. Even if all they're doing is making attacks with poor BAB and nonmagical weapons, that's nothing to sneeze at. At it scales with the cube of your caster level, so caster level boosts can make that go pretty out of control: With CL 25, that'd be 180 copies from a single casting, and CL 30 would be 294 copies.

Or if you're, say, a Jade Phoenix Mage (a good combo with Wu Jen for a variety of reasons), now each of your copies is using high-level maneuvers. Or Cerebromancer, for a lot of manifesting all at once.

Speaking of Wu Jen spells, by the way, if you're not a gish, then Minute Form is, I think, a much better spell than Giant Size. It gives you a buff to Dex, which is much more useful to most spellcasters than Str; it gives you good bonuses to AC and stealth; and it lets you go a lot of places where PCs couldn't ordinarily go, at the cost of being worse at things you probably weren't trying to do anyway.

[Anthrowhale]

I did the math on Triptych---it appears affordable and the extra spell/round it allows you to get off is pretty notable. Given that, I decided to go with Troacctid's argument against Arcane Spellsurge, making space for Simulacrum.

I'm still finding Greater Shadow Conjuration tempting. What are the best uses?
(a) Free Shalantha's Delicate Disk.
(b) SM VI- SLAs.
(c) Major/Minor creation for things. This could be anything in general, but battlefield use of super-nasty poisons come to mind.


Curse of pain eternal is an infinitely efficient spell.
Spell slots usage efficiency certainly matters, but only down to some threshold. Once you are casting a spell once every 2 days (or more), it becomes a typically-lesser concern. The core goal is more of a notion of 'impact'. How much difference does this make in the story of a character? A small numerical bonus typically doesn't make much of a difference compared to (say) a single spell that ends an encounter.


I think you can make plausible arguments for any of those.
To be concrete, which is most aligned with GCF not mattering and what is the argument?


In low op settings you are not going to have the encyclopedic knowledge of spells required to make limited wish more effective than other spells on the typical day. If you're just casting whatever 6th level spell looks good, it's probably just worse than casting a good 7th level spell, especially with the XP cost.

I'm skeptical that whatever 6th spell seems good is weaker than whatever 7th level spell you happened to memorize.

The XP cost seems in the acceptable range. If you cast it once/day at 4 encounters/day and 13.333 encounters/level, then you burn ~1000xp/level. It's more than nothing, but still fairly reasonable.


Why not just do that with any other minionmancy effect? Then you'd get to start from a baseline that isn't "something with a quarter of a d4 HD, poor BAB, and a feat selection for casting spells", and you wouldn't have to spend the spell slot that day.

Several answers come to mind:

1) A degree of misdirection can be helpful in gameplay.
2) Your mini-mes can go pretty much anywhere you can go, almost by definition.
3) The mini-mes are totally loyal. There is no "dispel magic and then they turn on you" possibility.
4) The mini-mes are comedically disposable. This is comparable to summons, but they last all day and are precast rather than an cast in an encounter.
5) Quarter d4, poor BAB, and wrong feats with decent spell buffs is actually pretty good.

The most comparable minion is {Spirit,Planar} Binding, which does not generally handle (1) or (2) and typically won't agree to (4).


I don't think you can copy over buffs, because it doesn't say you can and it says explicitly they get non-magic versions of magic gear.

Sure, but you can buff them with the rest of the party.


There are ways to use body outside body effectively, but it is not plug-and-play in the way other spells are.

If you are stuck with the Wu Jen list, I'll somewhat agree, but if you aren't I believe this is less true.


...If you can do that, you can just remove their defenses (by a combination of dispelling, removing protective items, and just waiting for durations to expire) and then repeatedly hit them with dominate person (or charm monster + Diplomacy). The percentage of living creatures that have inherent immunity to regular charms and domination effects is pretty small, so in practice the broader targeting restrictions don't matter much, since you will be able to hit the cap on how many minions the game can function with you having either way.

Dominate Person is pretty narrow. Charm Monster+Diplomacy is fairly potent but the opposed charisma checks are kind of 'meh' as far as planning. It's better to have minions who never fight back. With regards to creature types, the set vulnerable to Necrotic Tumor but not Charm Monster is indeed fairly esoteric: Ooze, Plant, and Vermin. The greater value of Necrotic Tumor is that you are getting something comparable to Dominate Monster two levels earlier.


Control Weather - huge huge area of effect, and it's fairly easy to get to hurricane-level. It is a devastating area of effect spell that'll flatten entire cities. Cast it as a standard action through the usual tricks.
This is clearly a very powerful spell, but it doesn't seem all that useful to a character. How often do you want to destroy a city?

Wave of pain - save or stunned for 1 round/ 2CL in a big cone area.
This one actually counts as a 6th level spell by our criteria. It's pretty good---comparable to Call Avalanche except with Stun&Fort instead of Buried&Refl. It's a tough call though---what should be removed from the L6 list?

Reverse Gravity - huge area of effect and the effect is totally unique. You can wipe out entire armies of non-flying creatures.
This one is pretty amusing, but armies of non-flying creatures at this level aren't to impressive and I suspect you are overestimating the volume subject to the spell.


Pocket Cave does pretty much everything Magnificent Mansion does, but 2 levels lower and with a feat tax. Arguably so does Rope Trick.
Yes, that's why Magnificent Mansion isn't on the list.

[Fero]

I did the math on Triptych---it appears affordable and the extra spell/round it allows you to get off is pretty notable. Given that, I decided to go with Troacctid's argument against Arcane Spellsurge, making space for Simulacrum.

I'm still finding Greater Shadow Conjuration tempting. What are the best uses?
(a) Free Shalantha's Delicate Disk.
(b) SM VI- SLAs.
(c) Major/Minor creation for things. This could be anything in general, but battlefield use of super-nasty poisons come to mind.


Other uses include: (1) a wide range of control and damage spells including gems such as Wall of Gears and Mudslide, (2) Leomund's secret chest, spacious carriage, and and billet, (3) Trusted Bloodhound, for guard duty and scouting, (4) Call of the Twilight Defender to teleport through plants, (5) Phantasmal Thief, (6) Summon Undead 5, in case you want to destroy a city with uncontrolled shadows, (7) Hidden Lodge, to hide the party, (8) Sparkles, for dramatic effect, and (9) steal summoning.

The combo with Delicate Disk is the big thing however. Otherwise, I don't think GSC would be able to hold its own against the much more versatile limited wish.

[eggynack]

Spell slots usage efficiency certainly matters, but only down to some threshold. Once you are casting a spell once every 2 days (or more), it becomes a typically-lesser concern. The core goal is more of a notion of 'impact'. How much difference does this make in the story of a character? A small numerical bonus typically doesn't make much of a difference compared to (say) a single spell that ends an encounter.
Going from two days to a week certainly doesn't seem like a huge deal. But going from either of those to infinity is pretty important. It makes the spell valuable at arbitrarily low amounts of power. Which is good cause that effect is weak as hell.

[RandomPeasant]

Control Weather - huge huge area of effect, and it's fairly easy to get to hurricane-level. It is a devastating area of effect spell that'll flatten entire cities. Cast it as a standard action through the usual tricks.

control weather definitely belongs on the list. It's just a very unique effect. Probably over necrotic tumor, which is a somewhat marginal upgrade to the thing Enchanters have been doing for like half the game at this point.


And Body Outside Body does require some building around, but not all that much. Take a single level in Archmage for the Spell-Like Ability option, and at CL 20 you can get 100 copies of yourself with a single casting. Even if all they're doing is making attacks with poor BAB and nonmagical weapons, that's nothing to sneeze at. At it scales with the cube of your caster level, so caster level boosts can make that go pretty out of control: With CL 25, that'd be 180 copies from a single casting, and CL 30 would be 294 copies.

That's true. If you are an Archmage and you use your class ability to pick up SLA body outside body you can have an effectively-unbounded tide of outside bodies to bury the world under. But also you could be, like, a guy who knows planar binding and then you could cast planar binding and bind an Efreet and be off to the same sort of race except instead of "gimpy little clones of you" your minions are Pit Fiends and instead of lasting 1 minute they last several days. body outside body is a cool build-around effect, but it doesn't do anything uniquely powerful.


Major/Minor creation for things. This could be anything in general, but battlefield use of super-nasty poisons come to mind.

Also lava. It's like forcecage except it kills them.


To be concrete, which is most aligned with GCF not mattering and what is the argument?

GCF is bad if A) you can't combine the bonuses to increase your caster level by more than 50% of the original (this is effectively thinking of the bonus as analogous to two sources of Enhancement bonus) or B) subsequent castings of consumptive field use your consumptive field-boosted CL as your "original caster level" and you can repeatedly cast just the basic version for larger and larger maximum bonuses.


I'm skeptical that whatever 6th spell seems good is weaker than whatever 7th level spell you happened to memorize.

That 7th level spell is allowed to be holy word.


The XP cost seems in the acceptable range. If you cast it once/day at 4 encounters/day and 13.333 encounters/level, then you burn ~1000xp/level. It's more than nothing, but still fairly reasonable.

That's about what it costs to make a simulacrum of yourself, which will typically be a better use of your scarce XP.


1) A degree of misdirection can be helpful in gameplay.

The degree of misdirection you're getting is pretty small when you out yourself with perfect accuracy when you cast a spell.


2) Your mini-mes can go pretty much anywhere you can go, almost by definition.

And if you have minions that are inconspicuous or have disguise powers, they can go places you can't.


3) The mini-mes are totally loyal. There is no "dispel magic and then they turn on you" possibility.

This is only a failure mode of the charm and dominate lines. And your mini-mes might not turn on you if dispelled but they do, you know, get dispelled, which is also quite bad.


4) The mini-mes are comedically disposable. This is comparable to summons, but they last all day and are precast rather than an cast in an encounter.

The mini-mes are less disposable than minions with a longer duration, because they trade off with slots from the same day. If you throw away your body outside body clones, you're out a casting of holy word or finger of death or whatever 7th level combat spell you love best. If you throw away a mook from planar binding you're out an extra delicate disk (and that's assuming you're playing at a level of optimization where all your downtime slots get turned into long-term power).


5) Quarter d4, poor BAB, and wrong feats with decent spell buffs is actually pretty good.

No it's not. It's exactly as bad as it was before it got all those buffs, and worse if those buffs are in any way synergistic with whatever you would've been buffing otherwise. If you can buff your gimpy body outside body clones into something good, you could do it with the Warriors you can buy as hirelings.


The most comparable minion is {Spirit,Planar} Binding, which does not generally handle (1) or (2) and typically won't agree to (4).

There's plenty of stuff you can bind that has disguise magic, and the number of places you want to go as a 14th level character that have and can enforce an anti-demon dress code is basically non-existent. It's true that the bodies are a bit more suicidal than demons, but you can get that from animate dead if you really need it.


Sure, but you can buff them with the rest of the party.

But, again, this is even more investment into making body outside body work. It's perfectly reasonable to have primarily defensive buffs and rely on either allies that self-buff, large numbers of minions, or spells for offense. Lots of things are good if you commit all the way to them (e.g. silent image in a full SCM build). But that's not a reasonable framework for evaluating them.


If you are stuck with the Wu Jen list, I'll somewhat agree, but if you aren't I believe this is less true.

I mean, sure, if you ignore what lists spells are on they get better. But you don't seem to what to do that consistently, so it strikes me as a bad argument.


The greater value of Necrotic Tumor is that you are getting something comparable to Dominate Monster two levels earlier.

necrotic tumor isn't comparable to dominate monster. dominate monster is good because it is a death spell that also gives you a minion. necrotic tumor doesn't do that, because it requires them to fail a save against a second (and much lower level) spell first.


This is clearly a very powerful spell, but it doesn't seem all that useful to a character. How often do you want to destroy a city?

I thought your whole thing was that new capabilities were all-important even if the scenarios in which they are useful are marginal. How are "what if a Wizard ambushes you on a featureless plane with enough fireballs to kill you" or "what if you encounter a guy who has buffed himself into invulnerability but forgotten to also cheese up his caster level" reasonable arguments for spells, but not "what if I want to destroy a city"?

[remetagross]

Hmm Control Weather is 6th-level for Wu Jens. I guess that means the discussion about it should head in the relevant thread.

[Chronos]

On the subject of Limited Wish and "but why not just prepare the spell you would have emulated", remember that sorcerers exist. A sorcerer can't get all of the good spells directly, so often, their only option for grabbing some particular spell is Limited Wish or other emulate-many-different-spells effects.

[RandomPeasant]

On the subject of Limited Wish and "but why not just prepare the spell you would have emulated", remember that sorcerers exist. A sorcerer can't get all of the good spells directly, so often, their only option for grabbing some particular spell is Limited Wish or other emulate-many-different-spells effects.

I think this is a valid point generally, and one of the big flaws to Anthro's "view from nowhere" approach to what class is supposed to consider this class useful. A Sorcerer can't pick energy transformation field as a 7th level spell at 14th level, because they get one 7th level spell at 14th level and it'd damn well better be something they can reasonably cast during the average adventuring day. But that's also a problem with limited wish, as you can't reasonably pay 300 XP for every 7th level spell you cast. I think greater shadow conjuration strikes a good balance for the Sorcerer. You get a powerful combat application (emulating major creation), a variety of utility options (emulating summon monster and various other spells), and a downtime power builder (emulating delicate disk). And it doesn't cost you any XP to do any of that.

[Chronos]

Limited Wish shouldn't be any sorcerer's first pick of a 7th-level spell. But it should be most sorcerers' second pick.

Another point in favor of it is off-list access. Sure, there are ways for a wizard, say, to gain access to other lists, but they all have opportunity costs. Most wizards won't take Wyrm Wizard, or the like, because they have other thingst they want to take instead. And if such a non-Wyrm wizard really needs to cast, say, a Heal spell, they can't just prepare it... but they can Limited Wish it.

[Anthrowhale]

I realized that we were struggling over ECL14 vs ECL20 even still, so I separated out Simulacrum (ECL14) and Limited Wish (ECL20). Using the space that created, I added Greater Shadow Conjuration.

Under debate: Control Weather. Should we include it and if so what should be dropped?



Speaking of Wu Jen spells, by the way, if you're not a gish, then Minute Form is, I think, a much better spell than Giant Size. It gives you a buff to Dex, which is much more useful to most spellcasters than Str; it gives you good bonuses to AC and stealth; and it lets you go a lot of places where PCs couldn't ordinarily go, at the cost of being worse at things you probably weren't trying to do anyway.
We'll consider Minute Form with level 8 spells.

Other uses include: (1) a wide range of control and damage spells including gems such as Wall of Gears and Mudslide, (2) Leomund's secret chest, spacious carriage, and and billet, (3) Trusted Bloodhound, for guard duty and scouting, (4) Call of the Twilight Defender to teleport through plants, (5) Phantasmal Thief, (6) Summon Undead 5, in case you want to destroy a city with uncontrolled shadows, (7) Hidden Lodge, to hide the party, (8) Sparkles, for dramatic effect, and (9) steal summoning.

The combo with Delicate Disk is the big thing however. Otherwise, I don't think GSC would be able to hold its own against the much more versatile limited wish.
Several of these are potentially available via Greater Anyspell although the lack of need to bind to an effect until casting time remains a real value even in that case. Phantasmal Thief by the way is awesome. A bit to specialized to be on the top-10 list perhaps, but an amazing effect in the right circumstances with a high caster level.


control weather definitely belongs on the list. It's just a very unique effect. Probably over necrotic tumor, which is a somewhat marginal upgrade to the thing Enchanters have been doing for like half the game at this point.

I'm thinking of a Domination effect as a fair bit more powerful than a Charm effect. You are less impressed?



GCF is bad if A) you can't combine the bonuses to increase your caster level by more than 50% of the original (this is effectively thinking of the bonus as analogous to two sources of Enhancement bonus) or B) subsequent castings of consumptive field use your consumptive field-boosted CL as your "original caster level" and you can repeatedly cast just the basic version for larger and larger maximum bonuses.

I'm not buying case B, since it limits out to 2x caster level. In case B having GCF additionally unlocks arbitrarily large caster level.

Case A seems contrived to me as an interpretation. The obviously definition of "original caster level" is the level at which you cast the spell.


That 7th level spell is allowed to be holy word.

That's a good illustration. What if opponents are not within 40'? The ability to late-bind the choice of effect with Limited Wish is potentially quite powerful.


That's about what it costs to make a simulacrum of yourself, which will typically be a better use of your scarce XP.

Simulacrum seems very different in uses from BOB to me. The former allows spellcasting, which you always miss if you can BOB. The latter is comically disposable.


The mini-mes are less disposable than minions with a longer duration, because they trade off with slots from the same day.
This may be true at high levels of optimization.


If you can buff your gimpy body outside body clones into something good, you could do it with the Warriors you can buy as hirelings.

I expect that in many campaigns you can't buy suicidally brave.


There's plenty of stuff you can bind that has disguise magic, and the number of places you want to go as a 14th level character that have and can enforce an anti-demon dress code is basically non-existent. It's true that the bodies are a bit more suicidal than demons, but you can get that from animate dead if you really need it.

Anti-undead and anti-demon dress codes do seem like a real thing to me.



But, again, this is even more investment into making body outside body work.

Maybe---if you are casting Chained Greater Magic Weapon snagging BoB weapons may be a freebie.


necrotic tumor isn't comparable to dominate monster. dominate monster is good because it is a death spell that also gives you a minion. necrotic tumor doesn't do that, because it requires them to fail a save against a second (and much lower level) spell first.

I agree NT doesn't get the traitor effect of Dominate Monster.

"what if I want to destroy a city"?
The difference is that I'm questioning whether or not you even need Control Weather to destroy a city.

Hmm Control Weather is 6th-level for Wu Jens. I guess that means the discussion about it should head in the relevant thread.
Let's keep it at 7th and I'll make a note that it's available to Wu Jen at 6th. (Yes, this is somewhat core centric.)


Limited Wish shouldn't be any sorcerer's first pick of a 7th-level spell. But it should be most sorcerers' second pick.
Yeah, agree here.

[RandomPeasant]

Limited Wish shouldn't be any sorcerer's first pick of a 7th-level spell. But it should be most sorcerers' second pick.

Eh. Your second pick should probably be arcane spellsurge because it makes your stupid metamagic mechanics good. If you really want to increase your versatility as a Sorcerer, a better strategy is to just take Ancestral Relic and have your ancestral relic be a runestaff. Then you can get a whole bunch of spells and none of them cost any XP to cast.


Another point in favor of it is off-list access. Sure, there are ways for a wizard, say, to gain access to other lists, but they all have opportunity costs. Most wizards won't take Wyrm Wizard, or the like, because they have other thingst they want to take instead. And if such a non-Wyrm wizard really needs to cast, say, a Heal spell, they can't just prepare it... but they can Limited Wish it.

Or they can cast planar binding and have something that can output multiple heals at no XP cost to them. Or, by the premises of this list, they can just learn heal, since we are clearly not considering what classes spells are available to.


I'm thinking of a Domination effect as a fair bit more powerful than a Charm effect. You are less impressed?

Charms make people Friendly, which makes the DC to make them Helpful only 20. A dedicated enchanter will be able to clear that easily.

That said, the basic issue is that necrotic tumor is a downtime minionmancy effect, and there are already a bunch of those that are generally better. You're a 14th level character, you can just cast planar binding. You can even cast dominate person, and while it's true that necrotic tumor hits more targets, it's not like you're going to run out of humanoids to dominate before you hit the point where your horde of minions makes the game unplayable. If you do, that generally means your DM has been careful


I'm not buying case B, since it limits out to 2x caster level. In case B having GCF additionally unlocks arbitrarily large caster level.

If you can double your caster level at 20th level, you kill all but like four (sub-epic) enemies in the MM with no save using holy word. And that's without any other caster level increases like Circle Magic. Frankly even the interpretation that provides the largest relative value for greater consumptive field (you get two bonuses that stack but can't be increased by recasting) already hits diminishing returns with just the little one.


That's a good illustration. What if opponents are not within 40'? The ability to late-bind the choice of effect with Limited Wish is potentially quite powerful.

So is the ability to not have to spend XP every day. As a Wizard, you get to prepare somewhere between three and six 7th level spells at 14th level, I'm sure you can afford to spend one of them on something that is good when holy word is not that still doesn't cost XP. Plus you can use arcane fusion to pop out any 4th-or-lower level spell you know without paying any XP, and you can have minions with casting of their own, and you can have stuff like Runestaves, Mage of the Arcane Order, Pearls of Power, or Uncanny Forethought to give yourself even more versatility, and none of those cost you any XP.


Simulacrum seems very different in uses from BOB to me. The former allows spellcasting, which you always miss if you can BOB. The latter is comically disposable.

I don't really understand how that's relevant, but I agree that simulacrum is much better than body outside body. More pressingly, a simulacrum of yourself is also a better use of your XP than several castings of limited wish, It can prepare different spells than you do (indeed, it's very likely to want to, because it has a worse caster level and no high level slots), it has additional actions, and it does stuff in every encounter you happen to have.


This may be true at high levels of optimization.

I would love to know the level of optimization where "a spell yesterday" is a higher cost than "a spell today".


I expect that in many campaigns you can't buy suicidally brave.

In most campaigns the set of problems that can only be solved by a suicidal clone of you that doesn't have any of your good abilities is empty.


Anti-undead and anti-demon dress codes do seem like a real thing to me.

So bind angels or slaad or archons. Or bind demons with form-changing magic. Or tell your demons to ignore the dress code, because apparently this is a place a clone of you with one-quarter HP and no casting can accomplish something meaningful, so how in the world are they going to be equipped to tell a Glabrezu it can't come in?


Maybe---if you are casting Chained Greater Magic Weapon snagging BoB weapons may be a freebie.

I mean, sure, but putting those weapons on your two clones is not going to make them meaningfully useful.

[Biggus]

I disagree here---the big difference between GCF and CF here are that they are different spells and hence have different stacking rules than CF with CF or GCF with GCF.


I feel you're a little too hung up on caster level. Effectively infinite strength is one of the very few things almost nothing can resist, even gods, assuming you've got a ghost touch weapon; very few spells can compete with that.

Also, CF is difficult and resource intensive to get huge bonuses from, GCF isn't.

[RandomPeasant]

Caster level is like that too, if you have holy word. The thing is that, as the Word (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/The_Wish_and_the_Word_(3.5e_Optimized_Character_Bu ild)) demonstrates, you don't need consumptive field to hit a caster level where blasphemy is a no-save-just-die effect for gods. I think, practically, the issue is that there are relatively few situations where getting +100% or +50% on top of all your normal caster level boosters is insufficient to solve your problems. The Great Wyrm Gold Dragon is the highest-CR creature in the Monster Manual. It dies to blasphemy at CL 60 (Circle Magic + consumptive field). The Tarrasque is (I believe) the highest-HD creature in the Monster Manual. It dies to blasphemy at CL 60 (plus a wish to keep it dead).

Also, I don't really think GCF really has a meaningful ease-of-use advantage. It's the same AoE, and consumptive field picks up that dies normally, so you just pop a fireball or something into a bunch of chickens and go on your merry way. Insofar as there's a logistical issue, it's getting a renewable supply of stuff to kill.

[Anthrowhale]

I'm still looking for any further comment on Control Weather.


Eh. Your second pick should probably be arcane spellsurge because it makes your stupid metamagic mechanics good.
Arcane Spellsurge is presently looking uncompelling because it's incompatible with Triptych which consumes swift+standard to cast 3 spells off staffs.


Charms make people Friendly, which makes the DC to make them Helpful only 20.

Helpful is not as good as "complete control of the actions of the subject". However, it is an interesting thought---Fanatic from epic diplomacy (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm#diplomacy) is getting close. For that, you need DC 60, which is plausibly doable by ECL20 although perhaps not at ECL14. Charm+Diplomance is not a combat effect just as Necrotic Tumor.


...it's not like you're going to run out of humanoids to dominate before you hit the point where your horde of minions makes the game unplayable.

It's fairly common that bad guys are a part of an organization, and the bad guys you manage to capture may not be humanoids. This becomes increasingly true in high level adventures. In that case, being able to turn specific creatures to your side for the purpose of eventually disabling an organization is quite helpful.


If you can double your caster level at 20th level, you kill all but like four (sub-epic) enemies in the MM with no save using holy word. And that's without any other caster level increases like Circle Magic. Frankly even the interpretation that provides the largest relative value for greater consumptive field (you get two bonuses that stack but can't be increased by recasting) already hits diminishing returns with just the little one.

I do agree that there is a diminishing returns effect. The first +10 means you rarely need worry about SR or dispelling. The second +10 is mostly just giving longer durations / bigger effects. There is little need to go beyond caster level 50(ish) unless you are in a race condition with another optimized caster.


Plus you can use arcane fusion to pop out any 4th-or-lower level spell you know without paying any XP, and you can have minions with casting of their own, and you can have stuff like Runestaves, Mage of the Arcane Order, Pearls of Power, or Uncanny Forethought to give yourself even more versatility, and none of those cost you any XP.

This is all on-list alternatives. Just as an example, Rod[Chain Spell] Mindworms[Persistent] Sanctum Ocular Limited Wish[Favor of the Martyr] could be pretty worthwhile. That's free use of celerity by everyone in the party.


... it does stuff in every encounter you happen to have.

Interesting---I'd strobly avoid putting a simulacrum into an encounter. By definition they are radically underpowered, and so likely to fail every save or die from damage. They are just to fragile for the cost. BoBs on the other hand are cheap.


I would love to know the level of optimization where "a spell yesterday" is a higher cost than "a spell today".

It's the level where the DM pulls you aside and says "Look, I need you to pull back on Planar Binding."


I mean, sure, but putting those weapons on your two clones is not going to make them meaningfully useful.
Throw in Greater Mighty Wallop and they can certainly start doing some damage.


I feel you're a little too hung up on caster level. Effectively infinite strength is one of the very few things almost nothing can resist, even gods, assuming you've got a ghost touch weapon; very few spells can compete with that.
I may be. The diminishing returns point above is valid, although it still seems the returns from GCF are fairly significant with conservative stacking.


Also, CF is difficult and resource intensive to get huge bonuses from, GCF isn't.
How so?


The Tarrasque is (I believe) the highest-HD creature in the Monster Manual. It dies to blasphemy at CL 60 (plus a wish to keep it dead).
Note that the Tarrasque can advance arbitrarily in HD.

[RandomPeasant]

Arcane Spellsurge is presently looking uncompelling because it's incompatible with Triptych which consumes swift+standard to cast 3 spells off staffs.

Personally I would rather have the thing that costs zero GP to use and lets me keep my standard action if I have something else I want to do. Plus a zero marginal spell-slot cost per usage (assuming you can make it Persistent, which seems to be the assumption). arcane spellsurge is simply much less commitment, and keeping your standard free lets you do stuff like refreshing a slot with a pearl of power to immediately use it.


Helpful is not as good as "complete control of the actions of the subject".

Sure, but it's good enough, and it only costs you a 4th level slot.


This is all on-list alternatives. Just as an example, Rod[Chain Spell] Mindworms[Persistent] Sanctum Ocular Limited Wish[Favor of the Martyr] could be pretty worthwhile. That's free use of celerity by everyone in the party.

When do you have a party where everyone can use celerity, but no one is a Archivist, Artificer, or otherwise able to learn favor of the martyr? One of the fundamental problems you have with this list is that, by refusing to consider what class is learning spells, you've fundamentally devalued off-list access spells. If I can learn greater consumptive field (a Cleric spell) and body outside body (a Wu Jen spell) and energy transformation field (a Sorcerer/Wizard spell), what class could I possibly be where I would have trouble learning favor of the martyr just because it's a Paladin spell?


Interesting---I'd strobly avoid putting a simulacrum into an encounter. By definition they are radically underpowered, and so likely to fail every save or die from damage. They are just to fragile for the cost. BoBs on the other hand are cheap.

body outside bodies are cheap because they're worthless. It's true that a simulacrum is fragile, and that's an issue because of the XP cost (using them as downtime-only minions is bad, and not really worth a spot), but they're not useless in a fight. The simulacrum copies your stats, so while its CL is low (though at 20th level you can make one that gets Circle Magic if you are a Red Wizard), their DCs are only going to be a few points worse than your own. Is casting a Quickened greater rebuke particularly awesome at 14th level? No. But having one go off without costing you spell slots or actions, and without having to come from the same location as you, is pretty useful, and you can have more than one simulacrum.

As I said initially, I am skeptical of simulacrum because the XP cost makes it infeasible to create very many, and I don't think just one really cuts it. But if you have some way around that, or if you're just considering the utility of having them around, it is a very strong spell. Ignoring the XP issue, I would even rank it at 20th were it not so absolutely overshadowed by ice assassin. And it's much, much better than body outside body.


It's the level where the DM pulls you aside and says "Look, I need you to pull back on Planar Binding."

Sure, but if you hit that level why is he going to allow you to get more power from body outside body? I think it's sort of weird to model allowed optimization on a per-spell level. Either you're going to be allowed to do your broken stuff or you aren't, you're not going to be allowed to stack more broken by breaking the game in more ways.


Throw in Greater Mighty Wallop and they can certainly start doing some damage.

Sure, but so will cloud giant skeletons, and those are just as suicidal and don't cost you any spell slots today and have other advantages (like fighting normally inside a cloudkill). You can even hit them with awaken undead to get them some feats and whatnot. The issue with body outside body is that you have to do quite a bit of work to catch it up with what lower level spells you can just have do. I don't need to do Chained Ocular Persistent buffs to make a Glabrezu fight effectively, I just bind a Glabrezu. I don't need Persistomancy to make my undead minions stick around for multiple fights, I just cast animate dead and they last until destroyed.

[Troacctid]

If "You're probably persisting it" is part of your explanation for why arcane spellsurge is a top 10 spell, I have to say, I'm not impressed. Is that really one of the best things you could be persisting at this level, when swift actions are as competitive as they are? The opportunity cost is very real.

[RandomPeasant]

If "You're probably persisting it" is part of your explanation for why arcane spellsurge is a top 10 spell, I have to say, I'm not impressed. Is that really one of the best things you could be persisting at this level, when swift actions are as competitive as they are? The opportunity cost is very real.

It's better than body outside body and crown of despair (assuming a fairly typical number of encounters per day). Given that those are on the list, it seems to me it deserves a spot. If you think there's a spell that's better, feel free to suggest something.

[Troacctid]

I do think both of those other spells are better persist targets, actually. Notably, neither requires you to spend a swift action each round to benefit from them.

My list puts greater shadow conjuration, scalding touch, simulacrum, and limited wish in the top slots. Checking back, I actually did have arcane spellsurge at #10, but only because I forgot about body outside body, which I would definitely rank above it—it's a very easily exploitable effect.

Regarding control weather, I suspect that for the things you're probably using it for, earthquake is usually just better—it's more reliable and it's a lot faster.

[Chronos]

Y'know, on looking over all of these lists, especially the higher-level ones, it looks like we have rather a shortage of spells that actually do something. Lots of spells to improve action economy... so what spells do we use those actions to cast? Lots of spells that emulate other spells... so what spells do we want to emulate? Lots of spells that boost other spells... so what spells do we want to boost? A fair number that deal with magic used by others... so what spells do we not want our enemies to cast?

By level, going from the spells listed in the first post of each thread:

0th: 10 total, 2 only deal with pre-existing magic
1st: 16 total, one action-economy, one only interacts with pre-existing magic
2nd: 16 total, one improves other spells, one gives access to other spells
3rd: 15 total, 2 interact with enemy magic, one action-economy, one emulates other spells
4th: 15 total, 2 mostly used for emulating other spells, 1 action-economy, 2 improve other spells, 1 shuts down enemy magic
5th: 14 total, 1 mostly for emulating other spells, 2 stop enemy magic, 2 action economy
6th: 13 total, 2 mostly for emulating other spells, 1 stop enemy magic, 3 action economy, 1 emulate other spells, 1 stores other spells
7th: 11 total, 2 emulate other spells, 1 boosts other spells, 1 auto-casts other spells

6th level is particularly notable, here: 8 out of the 13 draw their power from assuming that some other spell is powerful. Draw too much from this list, and you'll end up being really great at doing nothing.

[Anthrowhale]

Personally I would rather have the thing that costs zero GP to use and lets me keep my standard action if I have something else I want to do. Plus a zero marginal spell-slot cost per usage (assuming you can make it Persistent, which seems to be the assumption). arcane spellsurge is simply much less commitment, and keeping your standard free lets you do stuff like refreshing a slot with a pearl of power to immediately use it.

You can be even more efficient of course by never casting Arcane Spellsurge. This might seem snide, but it isn't meant so---in many situations you can simply use persistent or long-lasting effects and expend zero spell slots to deal with an encounter. The situation where you need to expend more is where the above doesn't work. Arcane Spellsurge is aimed at the situation where one spell/round isn't enough but two is. My general expectation is that there is nothing special about "two" --- if things are foobar, you want "lots". Since Arcane Spellsurge is incompatible with other means of casting more spells, it's a trap that doesn't deal with the hard case.


Sure, but if you hit that level why is he going to allow you to get more power from body outside body?

Well, maybe the DM, like you, believe it's worthless :-)


Sure, but so will cloud giant skeletons,
Huge size is quite awkward in many situations, and it's not like they'll do appreciably more damage than the BoBs.


Regarding control weather, I suspect that for the things you're probably using it for, earthquake is usually just better—it's more reliable and it's a lot faster.
At the moment, I'm looking at Control Wind instead. The tornado effect gives "A tornado uproots trees, destroys buildings, and causes other similar forms of major destruction." which seems adequate, and it happens earlier (with caster level advancement) while having a larger area of effect. The only disadvantage I see is a lower range.


6th level is particularly notable, here...
I'm assuming that emulation provides access to things beyond the current list.

Nevertheless, you are right to point out the need for a more systematic study. I was hoping to handle that after working through each of the levels.

[RandomPeasant]

I do think both of those other spells are better persist targets, actually. Notably, neither requires you to spend a swift action each round to benefit from them.

Yeah, body outside body just requires you to dedicate your build to it, which we all know is cheaper than a swift action. crown of despair is closer, and you probably make both Persistent, but it's close and ends up depending a lot on how many encounters you expect to have and how scarce your spell slots are.


My list puts greater shadow conjuration, scalding touch, simulacrum, and limited wish in the top slots.

scalding touch does not belong on this list at all. You do not want to be in melee as a caster. If anyone is reading this list looking for spells to learn, learn almost literally any other offensive spell instead.

simulacrum is ... weird. It's objectively powerful, but also much more costly than the comparably powerful and lower-level planar binding. I think you can make a case for it (particularly if you assume you'll win arguments like "I can totally pull a hair from an advanced Solar out of my spell component pouch"), but it's a hard sell to me to put a spell on this list when you can make a case for just preparing a lower-level spell in the higher-level slot instead.


Y'know, on looking over all of these lists, especially the higher-level ones, it looks like we have rather a shortage of spells that actually do something.

This is true, though this list is relatively good on this, with holy word, amber sarcophagus, and greater shadow conjuration all being pretty good combat effects, and limited wish (incidentally: how on earth is this on the "only ECL 20" version of the list -- you can have miracle then!) and crown of despair are both potentially castable in combat, if better-suited to other purposes.

I've plugged it a couple of times before, but this list (https://dungeons.fandom.com/wiki/Spells_that_Fvcking_Kill_People_(3.5e_Other)) is a much better source for a work-a-day spell selection for the typical caster than these lists are shaping up to be. It's all well and good to make use of planar binding and bloodfreeze arrow and delicate disk in your downtime (and you should absolutely do that), or use contact other plane or teleport to jump off the DM's rails, but at the end of the day you're an adventurer and it behooves you to learn some spells that make enemies fall down. Yes, even if you have other spells at lower levels that also make enemies fall down -- it turns out that higher level spells are better than lower level ones!


Lots of spells that emulate other spells... so what spells do we want to emulate?

To be fair on this front, a lot of spells you want to emulate aren't necessarily things you want to cast/learn/prepare (or, as is the case with major creation, emulating them changes their character fundamentally). I would never recommend using summon monster as any significant part of your arsenal, but being able to call it with greater shadow conjuration can be useful when that comes as the third or fourth use of something you have for other reasons.


You can be even more efficient of course by never casting Arcane Spellsurge. This might seem snide, but it isn't meant so---in many situations you can simply use persistent or long-lasting effects and expend zero spell slots to deal with an encounter.

Except arcane spellsurge has better synergy with that strategy than your plan does. It's absolutely true that you can stack a bunch of Persistent buffs and shred through some number of encounters at no marginal resource cost. But it's really hard to do that if all your 4th level slots are celerity (meaning none of them are enhance wild shape or polymorph or divine power) and all your 5th level slots are alaunghaer's triptych (meaning none of them are animal growth or draconic polymorph or righteous might) and all your 6th level slots are contingency and eyes of the oracle (meaning that none of them are bite of the weretiger or empyreal ecstasy or stone body). Whereas with arcane fusion, you get a significant improvement to your casting for just one spell slot, so you're free to have many more buffs and be much more effective in general, meaning more encounters where you don't need to spend any resources.


My general expectation is that there is nothing special about "two" --- if things are foobar, you want "lots". Since Arcane Spellsurge is incompatible with other means of casting more spells, it's a trap that doesn't deal with the hard case.

True. There's nothing special about two. But there's something special about CL 60 holy word variants, namely that they kill any monster printed in the Monster Manual with no save at the cost of a single spell slot. And there's something special about 2,100 GP, because that's the cost of buying a standard action with Twin Spell, Metamagic Spell Trigger, and a wand of celerity, and you can do it as many times as you want. And there's something special about 11, which is the number of 8th+ level spells a 40 INT 20th level Focused Specialist Wizard can dump out from a single immediate action with celerity, greater arcane fusion, Twin Spell, and one point of metamagic reduction. Plus that last combo comes with the alternative use of turning 8th level slots into spontaneously-cast 7th level spells at no net cost in actions.


Huge size is quite awkward in many situations, and it's not like they'll do appreciably more damage than the BoBs.

I would say that if your 7th level spell cast today is not doing more damage than a 4th level spell cast whenever, it is probably not a good use of a 7th level spell slot. What's the comparison look like between how good holy word is and how good animate dead is?

[Troacctid]

Yeah, body outside body just requires you to dedicate your build to it, which we all know is cheaper than a swift action. crown of despair is closer, and you probably make both Persistent, but it's close and ends up depending a lot on how many encounters you expect to have and how scarce your spell slots are.
I think the amount of building around required to make BOB good is less than the amount of building around required to get multiple free persistent spells in a day.


scalding touch does not belong on this list at all. You do not want to be in melee as a caster. If anyone is reading this list looking for spells to learn, learn almost literally any other offensive spell instead.
Frankly, I'm okay with being in melee as a caster if it means I'm casting spells like scalding touch. It's a great spell, if you're not a fraidy-cat about it.


I've plugged it a couple of times before, but this list (https://dungeons.fandom.com/wiki/Spells_that_Fvcking_Kill_People_(3.5e_Other)) is a much better source for a work-a-day spell selection for the typical caster than these lists are shaping up to be. It's all well and good to make use of planar binding and bloodfreeze arrow and delicate disk in your downtime (and you should absolutely do that), or use contact other plane or teleport to jump off the DM's rails, but at the end of the day you're an adventurer and it behooves you to learn some spells that make enemies fall down. Yes, even if you have other spells at lower levels that also make enemies fall down -- it turns out that higher level spells are better than lower level ones!
It is a pretty nifty list, although I'm disappointed in how few direct damage spells are on it.

[remetagross]

I'm popping in here about that Control Weather discussion.

Were I to adjudicate that we need to make way for Control Weather on the list, which spell would I choose to remove? Ah, it's a hard one. I'm going to go with Necrotic Domination: the fact it requires a pre-existing level 2 spell to actually work is a downer to me. It's either bad action economy, or it requires enough planning to make sure a level 2 spell will go through. If you achieve that stage, you can most likely make a Dominate Person go through anyway, for example.

[Fero]

I'm popping in here about that Control Weather discussion.

Were I to adjudicate that we need to make way for Control Weather on the list, which spell would I choose to remove? Ah, it's a hard one. I'm going to go with Necrotic Domination: the fact it requires a pre-existing level 2 spell to actually work is a downer to me. It's either bad action economy, or it requires enough planning to make sure a level 2 spell will go through. If you achieve that stage, you can most likely make a Dominate Person go through anyway, for example.

Necrotic Tumor has several advantages over Dominate Person including: 1) More total control, 2) controlling creatures other than humanoids, and 3) permanent duration. Thar said, I agree it is largely duplicative of other effects and not practical for combat. In addition, you can achieve much the se effect with regular application of Charm Monster and a good Cha check. As such, Necrotic Tumor is very much a win more type of spell for people who want to build an army of loyal slaves (I always think of The Mule from the Foundation series).

I also continue to think rhat Greater Consumptive Field is worth removing as it is largely duplicative with its little brother and is only really useful under certain interpretations of the rules when you want to oush your caster level from absurd to even more absurd.

As a slight aside, I feel like a lot of the discussion on these lists focus on spells that are amazing for narrow purposes or builds. X, Y, Z spells are amazing IF you can persist whatever you want. A and B are great, IF you have CL 50. One of the nice things about Control Weather is that it just works, out of the box. You don't need an absurd CL or stats. You don't need metamagic. You just need to learn and cast the spell to have a powerful effect over a huge AoE.

[Chronos]

One other point in favor of Control Weather is that, while it can be a great mass-destruction spell, it doesn't have to be. Come to some kingdom that's suffering from a drought, and end it for them, and that might be enough for them to make you the new king. Sure, destruction is a large part of what PCs typically do, but nonviolent options still exist.

[Anthrowhale]

I swapped in Control Weather over Necrotic Tumor as I'm convinced now that there are good charm+diplomacy alternatives.


scalding touch

I believe you and Troacctid are arguing about different spells with the same name. RP's spell allows the effect of at most 1 touch on a single creature when cast. Troacctid's spell allows the effect of level-many touches on a single creature when cast. I've avoided Scalding Touch because it's controversial. It's controversial, because the right effect seems to be dependent on which ruleset you use---RC or SRD.


incidentally: how on earth is this on the "only ECL 20" version of the list -- you can have miracle then!

Good point. I swapped Planar Bubble and Limited Wish for now. Both though are sort of dependent on L9 spells in complementary or antagonistic ways---we need to settle L9 spells.


I've plugged it a couple of times before, but this list (https://dungeons.fandom.com/wiki/Spells_that_Fvcking_Kill_People_(3.5e_Other))

Going through the list:
forcecage: Famous but Amber Sarcophagus is 1/3 the price and chainable.
hiss of sleep: Kind of like a weak 0-cost Amber Sarcophagus. Crown of Despair + minions doing Coup de Grace seems better, or just use Amber Sarcophagus if you want to capture.
evil glare: Crown of Despair just seems superior?
finger of death: this is a decent spell, I guess? Amber Sarcophagus still has it beat due to the lack of save, but it is cheaper.
prismatic spray: Does anyone actually use this? Adversaries messing up your effects seems like a a big enough source of difficulties already.
final rebuke: Crown of Despair + a minion/party member dealing Coup de Grace requires no spells at all. If I really wanted something with a save, I'd go for Finger of Expulsion which at least doesn't have [mind-affecting].


... meaning more encounters where you don't need to spend any resources.

You didn't include the 7th level list :-) And for good reason given that the 7th level list has Crown of Despair which autoclear many encounters and Amber Sarcophagus which no-save clears most of the remainder.


And there's something special about 2,100 GP, because that's the cost of buying a standard action with Twin Spell, Metamagic Spell Trigger, and a wand of celerity
2100 gp seems a bit high on a per encounter (or multiple per encounter) basis.


...I'm going to go with Necrotic Domination...
You mean Necrotic Tumor, and done.


I also continue to think rhat Greater Consumptive Field is worth removing as it is largely duplicative with its little brother and is only really useful under certain interpretations of the rules when you want to oush your caster level from absurd to even more absurd.

In essence, I'm not convinced yet that "more caster level" is a bad choice (or secondarily counter to rules) yet. RP's point that there are diminishing returns to caster level is valid, but there are several effects for which more caster level is just good.

[Doctor Despair]

Wrt your discussion on Necrotic Tumor: I'd contest that undead are immune. You can't use necrotic tumor on an undead creature, but there's no text suggesting that a necrotic tumor is removed if you apply a template to the living creature to make it undead afterward afaik.

[Troacctid]

I swapped in Control Weather over Necrotic Tumor as I'm convinced now that there are good charm+diplomacy alternatives.
I still maintain that earthquake does the same thing better.


I believe you and Troacctid are arguing about different spells with the same name. RP's spell allows the effect of at most 1 touch on a single creature when cast. Troacctid's spell allows the effect of level-many touches on a single creature when cast. I've avoided Scalding Touch because it's controversial. It's controversial, because the right effect seems to be dependent on which ruleset you use---RC or SRD.
It doesn't really matter which version of the rules you use, the spell is pretty unreal either way.


prismatic spray: Does anyone actually use this? Adversaries messing up your effects seems like a a big enough source of difficulties already.
Warmages use it! So do Anarchic Bloodline sorcerers. It's fun to cast, but I don't know that I'd spend a known spell on it if I weren't getting it for free.

[Fero]

Prismatic Spray is a ton of fun . . . And very stylish!

[Troacctid]

Oh, I should also point out that if scalding touch is really so game-breakingly strong as written that no DM would reasonably allow it to work the way the rules say it works, then isn't that a good case for why it's one of the strongest spells of its level? How many spells in this game are so busted that the game cracks in half unless you impose artificial limits on them? There are certainly others, like planar binding, but you must admit it's a rather exclusive club.

[Anthrowhale]

Wrt your discussion on Necrotic Tumor: I'd contest that undead are immune. You can't use necrotic tumor on an undead creature, but there's no text suggesting that a necrotic tumor is removed if you apply a template to the living creature to make it undead afterward afaik.
Sticking a live creature with a necrotic cyst, sticking it with necrotic tumor, killing it, raising it as undead, and then testing that theory seems rather intricate. I don't see the benefit.


I still maintain that earthquake does the same thing better.
End the drought? Counter the evil Druid hitting the town with a hurricane? More seriously, Control Winds seems like a generally adequate destroy-buildings and general mayhem spell, and it's available significantly earlier.


It doesn't really matter which version of the rules you use, the spell is pretty unreal either way.

If you want to daze things in melee, Bladesong is available much earlier and is much surer. If you want to damage things in melee, then Greater Mighty Wallop + Bladesong on an Executioner's Mace.


Warmages use it! ,,,

Prismatic Spray is a ton of fun . . . And very stylish!
I'll grant the stylish.

Edit:


Oh, I should also point out that if scalding touch is really so game-breakingly strong as written that no DM would reasonably allow it to work the way the rules say it works, then isn't that a good case for why it's one of the strongest spells of its level? How many spells in this game are so busted that the game cracks in half unless you impose artificial limits on them? There are certainly others, like planar binding, but you must admit it's a rather exclusive club.
The problem isn't that it's so powerful, but rather that what it does appears to differ between the RC (at most 182d6+14 saves-or-daze to a creature in a round) and SRD (at most 13d6+save-or-daze to a creature in a round) rules. The second option is rather lackluster compared to other options as outlined above.

[RandomPeasant]

I still think simulacrum is being overrated here. There's no reliable way of getting access to over-CR creatures, and without that it's a lot like "planar binding, but it costs XP". Cloning yourself is unique, but the XP cost bites you again there (even more so if you don't have Circle Magic or other build tricks to boost it). What's the situation where this is better than just casting planar binding on the basis of stuff you can unambiguously do on your own?


I think the amount of building around required to make BOB good is less than the amount of building around required to get multiple free persistent spells in a day.

People say that, but then it turns out that what they mean is "if you give up three levels of casting to be a Jade Phoenix Mage your duplicates can have some pretty neat martial initiating" or "what if you could do Chain Binding, but instead of outsiders it was gimped duplicates of you". The most efficient trick I've seen thus far is using body outside body to get a bunch of extra uses of the Incantatrix's Cooperative Metamagic, but even that seems not really much better than just using power leech to get more usages in the first place.


Frankly, I'm okay with being in melee as a caster if it means I'm casting spells like scalding touch. It's a great spell, if you're not a fraidy-cat about it.

No it's not. It's a spell that dares to ask the question "what if instead of being a no-save stun or stunning for multiple rounds, stun ray forced you to get in melee to deal marginal damage". The interpretation where you can retarget the same creature is based on a wishful interpretation of the rules that would make every version of mass inflict the best spell of its level.


It is a pretty nifty list, although I'm disappointed in how few direct damage spells are on it.

Well, that's because direct damage spells are mostly bad. About the only one I think might deserve a spot is orb of fire for its save-or-daze, but that's a hard sell when wings of flurry is the same level and better in so many respects.


I also continue to think rhat Greater Consumptive Field is worth removing as it is largely duplicative with its little brother and is only really useful under certain interpretations of the rules when you want to oush your caster level from absurd to even more absurd.

I too have a hard time seeing the case for the marginal return to greater consumptive field being worth a top ten spot. You can already make your caster level really huge without it. What is the breakpoint it hits that consumptive field doesn't?


As a slight aside, I feel like a lot of the discussion on these lists focus on spells that are amazing for narrow purposes or builds. X, Y, Z spells are amazing IF you can persist whatever you want.

I think Anthro has tended to treat this as "what spells does the most powerful caster build select" and not "what are the most powerful spells for casters in general to select".


finger of death: this is a decent spell, I guess? Amber Sarcophagus still has it beat due to the lack of save, but it is cheaper.

Eh. amber sarcophagus doesn't kill people, and it's not particularly hard for a CR 14+ enemy to break someone out of. That creates real tactical constraints that don't exist with finger of death. If you want to permanently deal with someone with amber sarcophagus it only buys you ~1 round of beating on them without risk to you, depending on how well you time breaking them out relative to their initiative, which is comparable to stun ray (which, I had assumed was on that list, but is not). amber sarcophagus does scale better with Chain Spell because you can break people out in sequence.


2100 gp seems a bit high on a per encounter (or multiple per encounter) basis.

Isn't your plan to activate multiple staffs per round for sustained output? And, yes, that's the base cost, but it goes down with e.g. Practical Metamagic or any of the cost-reducers Artificers get (and I seem to recall someone suggesting shapechange-ing into a Tome Dragon for easier use of metamagic).


RP's point that there are diminishing returns to caster level is valid, but there are several effects for which more caster level is just good.

I mean, if we're disregarding combat spells because "we already have something that targets Fort", I don't see how we don't discard the second identical CL booster.


Oh, I should also point out that if scalding touch is really so game-breakingly strong as written that no DM would reasonably allow it to work the way the rules say it works

The rules say it targets one or more creatures. I agree the spell is broken if you houserule that to mean "or the same creature over and over", but the club of spells that are broken if you houserule them to be broken is rather less exclusive.

[Troacctid]

If you want to daze things in melee, Bladesong is available much earlier and is much surer. If you want to damage things in melee, then Greater Mighty Wallop + Bladesong on an Executioner's Mace.
How is it much surer?


The problem isn't that it's so powerful, but rather that what it does appears to differ between the RC (at most 182d6+14 saves-or-daze to a creature in a round) and SRD (at most 13d6+save-or-daze to a creature in a round) rules. The second option is rather lackluster compared to other options as outlined above.
Is RC not a legal source for this exercise? Why would we exclude it? Are we excluding SC too?

And, again, the second option is still fantastic. It's a lot of repeatable damage that can be pre-cast to build up unlimited charges in advance to effectively be usable at will, potentially with metamagic added on.

[Doctor Despair]

Sticking a live creature with a necrotic cyst, sticking it with necrotic tumor, killing it, raising it as undead, and then testing that theory seems rather intricate. I don't see the benefit.

Same benefit as there is for living creatures: permanent duration servants. :smalltongue: Granted if they're already tumor'd up as living creatures, there are only certain circumstances or strategies where it would be preferable to render them undead afterward.

[Troacctid]

People say that, but then it turns out that what they mean is "if you give up three levels of casting to be a Jade Phoenix Mage your duplicates can have some pretty neat martial initiating" or "what if you could do Chain Binding, but instead of outsiders it was gimped duplicates of you". The most efficient trick I've seen thus far is using body outside body to get a bunch of extra uses of the Incantatrix's Cooperative Metamagic, but even that seems not really much better than just using power leech to get more usages in the first place.
It's just pretty common to have abilities that benefit from extra daily uses. Throw a rock at a random caster prestige class and you'll hit an ability that benefits from BOB.


Well, that's because direct damage spells are mostly bad. About the only one I think might deserve a spot is orb of fire for its save-or-daze, but that's a hard sell when wings of flurry is the same level and better in so many respects.
There are good direct damage spells, bad direct damage spells, and a whole range in between. I personally would try to include the good ones, but it's not as if the list doesn't have mediocre-to-bad spells on it already: if all a direct damage spell needs is to be better than cloudkill at killing enemies, I'd consider that to be a fairly low bar.


No it's not. It's a spell that dares to ask the question "what if instead of being a no-save stun or stunning for multiple rounds, stun ray forced you to get in melee to deal marginal damage".

[...]

Eh. amber sarcophagus doesn't kill people, and it's not particularly hard for a CR 14+ enemy to break someone out of. That creates real tactical constraints that don't exist with finger of death. If you want to permanently deal with someone with amber sarcophagus it only buys you ~1 round of beating on them without risk to you, depending on how well you time breaking them out relative to their initiative, which is comparable to stun ray (which, I had assumed was on that list, but is not). amber sarcophagus does scale better with Chain Spell because you can break people out in sequence.
Stun ray, incidentally, another very strong contender at this level, I think. Probably would have been on my initial top 10 list if I'd remembered about it.


The interpretation where you can retarget the same creature is based on a wishful interpretation of the rules that would make every version of mass inflict the best spell of its level. [...] The rules say it targets one or more creatures. I agree the spell is broken if you houserule that to mean "or the same creature over and over", but the club of spells that are broken if you houserule them to be broken is rather less exclusive.
Yeah. It also says to do it a number of times equal to your caster level. If mass inflict said "Repeat this effect twelve times" then yes, it would be one of the best spells of its level.

[Anthrowhale]

I still think simulacrum is being overrated here. There's no reliable way of getting access to over-CR creatures, and without that it's a lot like "planar binding, but it costs XP". Cloning yourself is unique, but the XP cost bites you again there (even more so if you don't have Circle Magic or other build tricks to boost it). What's the situation where this is better than just casting planar binding on the basis of stuff you can unambiguously do on your own?
At ECL14, simulacrums using these lists can:
(a) Bring you back from the dead. Get ahold of your body, cast Animate with the Spirit, then Last Breath.
(b) Give you as many Bloodfreeze Arrows as you can carry.
(c) Proxy minions from Lesser Spirit Binding & Animate Dead.
(d) Scry all over the place to support a serious intel operation.
(e) Shrink item a bunch of gear so you can use it as necessary on an adventure.


The most efficient trick I've seen thus far is using body outside body to get a bunch of extra uses of the Incantatrix's Cooperative Metamagic, but even that seems not really much better than just using power leech to get more usages in the first place.

Heartfire Fanner (bardic music+give feats) and Dweomerkeeper (Supernatural Spell) come to mind.


I too have a hard time seeing the case for the marginal return to greater consumptive field being worth a top ten spot. You can already make your caster level really huge without it. What is the breakpoint it hits that consumptive field doesn't?

If you allow nonrecursive caster level stacking, then at ECL 14, Suffer the Flesh + Consumptive Field can put you up to 26 while StF+CF+GCF can put you at caster level 33. That goes from mostly clearing Greater Dispel Magic to fully clearing it and elevates Holy Word to taking out 23 or fewer HD creatures rather than 16 or fewer.


If you want to permanently deal with someone with amber sarcophagus it only buys you ~1 round of beating on them without risk to you, depending on how well you time breaking them out relative to their initiative, which is comparable to stun ray (which, I had assumed was on that list, but is not).

Bladesong can daze lock a creature, and if it's a Mindworms[persistent] Rod[chained] ocular bladesong that can go on all day long.

In addition, there's Ocular Plane Shift which is a decent alternative to Finger of Death. It's a somewhat more adaptable form of Finger of Expulsion.


Isn't your plan to activate multiple staffs per round for sustained output?
There's a difference here between plan A (win in the first round) and plan B (solve the problem with a brute number of spells). If plan A works, then you don't need to pay for plan B.

How is it much surer?
Bladesong has no save.


Is RC not a legal source for this exercise? Why would we exclude it? Are we excluding SC too?

It's legal, but in practice where RC differs from SRD I expect controversy and extremely uneven application amongst games.

SC differs because it's mostly about content rather than rules.

Same benefit as there is for living creatures: permanent duration servants. :smalltongue: Granted if they're already tumor'd up as living creatures, there are only certain circumstances or strategies where it would be preferable to render them undead afterward.
Given that Command Undead + Diplomacy is pretty effective, it's not clear this use case even matters much.

Stun ray, incidentally, another very strong contender at this level, I think. Probably would have been on my initial top 10 list if I'd remembered about it.
The minimum duration of stun is the advantage over Wave of Pain, I guess. I'm still thinking that if you really want it to stick, you just use Amber Sarcophagus.

[Troacctid]

Bladesong has no save.
We're talking about the SC version, right? Will negates? What am I missing here?


It's legal, but in practice where RC differs from SRD I expect controversy and extremely uneven application amongst games.
I realize a lot of people don't know what was added, changed, or clarified in RC. But a lot of people also don't know that a lot of the more obscure spells exist at all, and I don't think that should remove them from contention. And in this case, as I said, even without RC, the spell effectively comes with built-in Persist. I'd challenge you to arrive at a more intuitive reading that isn't still broken.


The minimum duration of stun is the advantage over Wave of Pain, I guess. I'm still thinking that if you really want it to stick, you just use Amber Sarcophagus.
Can't wail on the target while they're in stasis like you can while they're stunned. Plus, save 500 gp.

[remetagross]

I have to admit that, even disregarding the potential for discharging all of the charges of Scalding Touch at the same time, the fact that's it has an instantaneous duration is pretty darn awesome. Even if going with regular iterative attacks, it's fairly likely that between you and your familiar (and your BOB clones, if you cast BOB after Scalding touch!) can discharge a fair number of 13d6+save vs daze touch attacks each round.

About Amber Sarcophagus being liable to be broken off by the allies of the target, fair enough, but a Chained version makes it fairly easy to entomb the entire group of ennemies, which negates that problem. by the way, skimming through the BoED, I've found an interesting spell which I think is an upgraded version of Wave of Pain (ironic, since the latter comes from the BoVD). It is Heaven's Trumpet. Think Wave of Pain, but instead of stunned for CL/2, it's paralyzed for 1d4 rounds. Still Fort negates, still SR: yes. But the area is much bigger (120ft burst vs 25+5/2lvl ft cone), it is more party friendly (it targets "foes" instead of "all living creatures) and paralysis is better than stun, since it allows coups de grâce.

While Stun Ray is nice, it requires a ranged touch attack, does not work on electricity-immune foes, allows for SR as well and only works on only one foe. I'm not finding it superior to Amber Sarcophagus.

Finger of Death I find pretty meh. Flesh to Ice does the same thing, but better (no [death] tag, works at a longer range) and is two levels earlier.

@Troacctid the Bladesong spell Anthrowhale is referring to comes from a web enhancement, and makes it so that a targeted bladed weapon dazes with no save on a hit.

[Anthrowhale]

We're talking about the SC version, right? Will negates? What am I missing here?
I believe you are referring to Bladeweave. Bladesong is here (https://web.archive.org/web/20100330024737/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010126a). It shares 'blade' in the name and is level 2, but it's a different spell. Illusion vs. Transformation, range: personal vs touch, will save vs. no save, not listed as a rename in the beginning of Spell Compendium.


I'd challenge you to arrive at a more intuitive reading that isn't still broken.


Even if going with regular iterative attacks, it's fairly likely that between you and your familiar (and your BOB clones, if you cast BOB after Scalding touch!) can discharge a fair number of 13d6+save vs daze touch attacks each round.
I find the effect available much earlier. (Persistent)Bladesong gives daze. (Persistent)Wraithstrike gives a touch attack. Greater Mighty Wallop gives damage. Combo them, and you have something better than Scalding Touch due to iteratives and multiple weapons.


Can't wail on the target while they're in stasis like you can while they're stunned. Plus, save 500 gp.
Yeah, but the save:No and universal applicability still seem like a big deal.

If you think we should include Wave of Pain, what should be dropped from the L6 list?

Heaven's Trumpet.
Oh, nice. Except Component:Archon is a bit messy. What's the best way to handle that?


While Stun Ray is nice, it requires a ranged touch attack, does not work on electricity-immune foes, allows for SR as well and only works on only one foe. I'm not finding it superior to Amber Sarcophagus.

Stun Ray could be chained also, yes?


Finger of Death I find pretty meh. Flesh to Ice does the same thing, but better (no [death] tag, works at a longer range) and is two levels earlier.

Flesh to Ice isn't quite on the L5 list---should it be?

[remetagross]

Crap, I had overlooked the "Archon" component. Well, a Use Magic Device check might allow you to get around that by emulating the relevant race...but I agree it makes things messy.

About your Bladesong + Wraithstrike + Greater Mighty Wallop combo, sure enough, it beats Scalding Touch. But this is resource-intense, requiring two persisted spells, able to be dispelled and a total of 7 spell levels. And 3 spell known slots, and 2 standard+1 swift action to initiate in an emergency. Okay, I guess I'd call it a wash.

Stun ray could be chained indeed, but then what remains is that the only situation Amber Sarcophagus is worse is when you face non-electricity-immune, non-stun immune ennemies that you can dispatch preferrably in a single round. All of this just to save 500gp. I'm not a fan.

Finger of Death, by the way, is utterly overshadowed by Destruction. Same [death] descriptor, same Fort partial and SR:yes. Except Destruction deals a bit more damage on a failed save, makes it harder for ennemies to come back, and can target "creatures" instead of "living creatures" (undead and constructs remain immune, but it's still a strict upgrade).

About Flesh to Ice, let's see what 5th-level spells we have there...but that has made me discover Glass Strike. It's like a 7th-level Flesh to Stone, except it can also affect objects. which means it can be cast on everything, including undead and constructs. Which typically have very poor to moderate Fort saves. It also lacks any descriptor whatsoever. And by the way, here's something funny. It can affect "up to 4 cubic feet of material". It does not specify "solid material". Bam, transform 4 cubic feet of air ("part of a larger object") into glass, no save (air is not a worn object) and whatever creatures are inside the area are now encased in glass. How about that? :smallbiggrin:

[Troacctid]

I believe you are referring to Bladeweave. Bladesong is here (https://web.archive.org/web/20100330024737/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010126a). It shares 'blade' in the name and is level 2, but it's a different spell. Illusion vs. Transformation, range: personal vs touch, will save vs. no save, not listed as a rename in the beginning of Spell Compendium.

I find the effect available much earlier. (Persistent)Bladesong gives daze. (Persistent)Wraithstrike gives a touch attack. Greater Mighty Wallop gives damage. Combo them, and you have something better than Scalding Touch due to iteratives and multiple weapons.
Oh—why would it be listed as renamed in SC? It wasn't renamed in SC, it was renamed in CAd. And it is Will negates, says so right there in the saving throw line.

How do you figure that Rules Compendium is less likely to be allowed in a game than the obsolete 3.0 version of a spell that was significantly changed in the update? And even if you think RC material isn't going to be allowed, why would you rather be full attacking with light maces if you and your familiar(s) could be full attacking with 13d6 damage touch attacks enhanced by your favorite metamagic?


Flesh to Ice isn't quite on the L5 list---should it be?
I don't think so.

[Chronos]

Quoth RandomPeasant:

Eh. amber sarcophagus doesn't kill people, and it's not particularly hard for a CR 14+ enemy to break someone out of.
At level 14, it's also not too hard for enemies to break someone out of death.


Quoth remetagross:

About Flesh to Ice, let's see what 5th-level spells we have there...but that has made me discover Glass Strike. It's like a 7th-level Flesh to Stone, except it can also affect objects. which means it can be cast on everything, including undead and constructs. Which typically have very poor to moderate Fort saves. It also lacks any descriptor whatsoever. And by the way, here's something funny. It can affect "up to 4 cubic feet of material". It does not specify "solid material". Bam, transform 4 cubic feet of air ("part of a larger object") into glass, no save (air is not a worn object) and whatever creatures are inside the area are now encased in glass. How about that?
You're not going to be able to trap very many creatures in 4 cubic feet. Even if we assume that it's perfectly shapeable, that's only a layer a couple of inches thick around a person (in a very fragile shape), and much less than that for anything larger.

[RandomPeasant]

And, again, the second option is still fantastic. It's a lot of repeatable damage that can be pre-cast to build up unlimited charges in advance to effectively be usable at will, potentially with metamagic added on.

You know what else you can pre-cast? planar binding. But, sure, I'm very proud you've found a way to deal damage comparable to a Rogue who has forgotten everything other than iterative attacks exists.


It's just pretty common to have abilities that benefit from extra daily uses. Throw a rock at a random caster prestige class and you'll hit an ability that benefits from BOB.

Throw a rock at a random caster PrC and you get something that's unplayable because of how many levels of casting it wants you to give up. It is, technically, true that if you decide to become an Acolyte of the Skin your body outside body doubles will get some extra uses of SLAs like poison and your stun gaze. But also you don't get body outside body until you are an 18th level character. But what if you are, instead, a Shadowcraft Mage? Your doubles get nothing. If you are instead a Dweomerkeeper, they get ... at will arcane sight. Feel the power! Or maybe you're a Hathran or Red Wizard, and your doubles again get nothing relevant. Or a Mage of the Arcane Order. Or a Rainbow Servant. Of course, that's not to say that there's nothing out there that does something good with body outside body. Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil does pretty well, though you still run into duration issues with the BoBs. But overall, I think you need to provide a little more than "there's a ton, dude" for me to buy what you're selling.


There are good direct damage spells, bad direct damage spells, and a whole range in between. I personally would try to include the good ones, but it's not as if the list doesn't have mediocre-to-bad spells on it already: if all a direct damage spell needs is to be better than cloudkill at killing enemies, I'd consider that to be a fairly low bar.

It does include the good one. wings of flurry is right there. cloudkill, with some positioning, does 10d4/level points of CON damage, which I find rather more effective at killing things than the likes of cone of cold.


Yeah. It also says to do it a number of times equal to your caster level. If mass inflict said "Repeat this effect twelve times" then yes, it would be one of the best spells of its level.

Yes, you can touch multiple creatures. Personally, as a spellcaster in melee with multiple enemies, I'd be looking to leave, but maybe they'll all fail their saves.


At ECL14, simulacrums using these lists can:

Sure, but so can planar binding'd stuff. Particularly the downtime stuff. The advantage simulacrum offers you over planar binding (ignoring the "what random parts can I find to make into clones" question) is that you can have a mini-me that has the abilities of half a you instead of your favorite 12 HD outsider. So that really rests on having either something like Circle Magic (making casting specifically very good) or a strong case that you can prepare a spell list on your 7th-level dude that is better than, like, a Glabrezu.


Heartfire Fanner (bardic music+give feats) and Dweomerkeeper (Supernatural Spell) come to mind.

The Incantatrix trick is compelling because you already really want to be an Incantatrix. Hearthfire Fanner is fine as a way to abuse body outside body, but so is just being a Anima Mage or something. I don't think the Dweomerkeeper trick you're trying works, because I'm pretty sure Supernatural Spell still count as casting the spell (though, yes, if it doesn't that's very good).


If you allow nonrecursive caster level stacking, then at ECL 14, Suffer the Flesh + Consumptive Field can put you up to 26 while StF+CF+GCF can put you at caster level 33. That goes from mostly clearing Greater Dispel Magic to fully clearing it and elevates Holy Word to taking out 23 or fewer HD creatures rather than 16 or fewer.

If you're looking to boost caster level, why not Circle Magic + simulacrum? That gets you all the way to 30 before you start adding in any other boosters (plus at 20th it's even better, as your simulacra can lead their own circles).


There's a difference here between plan A (win in the first round) and plan B (solve the problem with a brute number of spells). If plan A works, then you don't need to pay for plan B.

Sure, but your plan A is worse than greater arcane fusion shenanigans. So what are we getting out of all these eyes of the oracle exactly?


(and your BOB clones, if you cast BOB after Scalding touch!)

There's no reason to think that body outside body copies over active spells.


About Amber Sarcophagus being liable to be broken off by the allies of the target, fair enough, but a Chained version makes it fairly easy to entomb the entire group of ennemies, which negates that problem. by the way,

Well, sort of. It stops them from breaking their buddy out during that fight, but that's not typically going to be a huge concern, as the sacrophagus has enough HP to survive a few rounds from most enemies. But it doesn't do anything about some other ground of enemies finding the sarcophagi later and busting them open. So you really want to pop them yourself and clean up the enemies. The fact that you can do this sequentially does give the spell an advantage over stun ray once you can chain it, but it's not really fire-and-forget.


About your Bladesong + Wraithstrike + Greater Mighty Wallop combo, sure enough, it beats Scalding Touch. But this is resource-intense, requiring two persisted spells, able to be dispelled and a total of 7 spell levels. And 3 spell known slots, and 2 standard+1 swift action to initiate in an emergency. Okay, I guess I'd call it a wash.

I mean if you really want to do damage, do venomfire + Wild Shape or venomfire + shapechange. Or just have several minions that can all deal damage, or a Rogue that's good at their job.


At level 14, it's also not too hard for enemies to break someone out of death.

It's not too hard for PCs to do it, but enemies have specific capabilities, and while almost all of them can do the damage necessary to open an amber sarcophagus in fairly short order, almost none of them have any native ability to raise the dead (plus there are various types of creature that can't be raised, and you can snag a barghest from lesser planar binding if you're really worried).

[Chronos]

Quoth RandomPeasant:

There's no reason to think that body outside body copies over active spells.
The catch is that, due to extremely unwise wording, Scalding Touch isn't an active spell, since it's instantaneous. The intent was almost surely that the damage it deals is instantaneous, but it doesn't specify any other duration for how long you have to make your attacks with it. So once you cast it, you instantaneously gain the ability to make those attacks (until you lose the ability by using up the attacks), and so your copies would also have that ability.

[Anthrowhale]

I placed Stun Ray on the "maybe not" list for now. It's good, but it seems the only downside of Amber Sarcophagus is the 500 gp cost which is plausibly acceptable by this level.


Crap, I had overlooked the "Archon" component. Well, a Use Magic Device check might allow you to get around that by emulating the relevant race...but I agree it makes things messy.
It's not a fundamental blocker. UMD seems reasonable enough when you have spell giving skill bonuses. Holy Transformation makes your type Outsider(archon) and Polymorph Any Object can directly change you into an Archon. I don't think Holy Transformation is good enough for the top-10 spells at L7, but PaO almost certainly will be at L8.

Another tricky element here is just siezing the opportunity that Heaven's Trumpet provides. If you Maximize it, you get a consistent 4 rounds to CdG your way through bad guys failing the save, but if you move naively you'll only be able to get off 2 CdGs since they require a full-round action.


About your Bladesong + Wraithstrike + Greater Mighty Wallop combo, sure enough, it beats Scalding Touch. But this is resource-intense, requiring two persisted spells, able to be dispelled and a total of 7 spell levels. And 3 spell known slots, and 2 standard+1 swift action to initiate in an emergency. Okay, I guess I'd call it a wash.

The potential to bring it online much sooner seems pretty relevant, as does the no-save daze.


Stun ray could be chained indeed, but then what remains is that the only situation Amber Sarcophagus is worse is when you face non-electricity-immune, non-stun immune ennemies that you can dispatch preferrably in a single round. All of this just to save 500gp. I'm not a fan.

Yeah, it seems like Stun Ray doesn't displace Amber Sarcophagus. Does it displace something else?


Finger of Death, by the way, is utterly overshadowed by Destruction. Same [death] descriptor, same Fort partial and SR:yes. Except Destruction deals a bit more damage on a failed save, makes it harder for ennemies to come back, and can target "creatures" instead of "living creatures" (undead and constructs remain immune, but it's still a strict upgrade).

Good point. Destruction > Finger of Death. Destruction is a better effect than Finger of Expulsion because you get to keep the loot, but it's a different save.


About Flesh to Ice, let's see what 5th-level spells we have there...but that has made me discover Glass Strike. It's like a 7th-level Flesh to Stone, except it can also affect objects. which means it can be cast on everything, including undead and constructs. Which typically have very poor to moderate Fort saves. It also lacks any descriptor whatsoever. And by the way, here's something funny. It can affect "up to 4 cubic feet of material". It does not specify "solid material". Bam, transform 4 cubic feet of air ("part of a larger object") into glass, no save (air is not a worn object) and whatever creatures are inside the area are now encased in glass. How about that? :smallbiggrin:
L7 Glass Strike, L6 Flesh to Stone, and L5 Flesh to Ice all lose the loot while L7 Destruction keeps the loot. Similarly L7 Destruction, L6 Flesh to Stone, and L5 Flesh to Ice do not affect undead while L7 Glass Strike does.


Oh—why would it be listed as renamed in SC? It wasn't renamed in SC, it was renamed in CAd. And it is Will negates, says so right there in the saving throw line.
SC is the only place I know of which officially discusses renaming (pages 5&6). I searched through CAd and didn't see anything about Bladesong. What makes you think Bladeweave is a rename of Bladesong in CAd?

For Bladesong, the person wielding the blade can save to negate it when cast on the blade, but why would they do that?


And even if you think RC material isn't going to be allowed, why would you rather be full attacking with light maces if you and your familiar(s) could be full attacking with 13d6 damage touch attacks enhanced by your favorite metamagic?

I probably wouldn't. But an Executioner's Mace (Dungeon Magazine 135) is a valid target for both Bladesong and Greater Mighty Wallop. Throw in Wraithstrike and you can generally crank out comparable or superior damage from iteratives.

I don't think so.
Due to the lost loot?



Sure, but so can planar binding'd stuff. Particularly the downtime stuff.
How would you use Planar Binding for Bloodfreeze Arrow spam?


So that really rests on having either something like Circle Magic (making casting specifically very good) or a strong case that you can prepare a spell list on your 7th-level dude that is better than, like, a Glabrezu.

There's another element here: Simulacrum's last forever while Planar Binding limits to day/level. That's hard to take advantage of since you need many Simulacrums before the burden of recasting Planar Binding becomes significant. Nevertheless, it's less hassle.


The Incantatrix trick is compelling because you already really want to be an Incantatrix. Hearthfire Fanner is fine as a way to abuse body outside body, but so is just being a Anima Mage or something. I don't think the Dweomerkeeper trick you're trying works, because I'm pretty sure Supernatural Spell still count as casting the spell (though, yes, if it doesn't that's very good).

It looks legit to me on close inspection. Supernatural Spell is a supernatural ability which allows you use use a spell as a supernatural ability:

...use any one spell with a casting time of up to 1 standard action as a supernatural ability...
BoB says you can't cast spells

...they cannot cast spells...
but you don't cast a spell with Supernatural Ability. Instead you "use" it, so there is no conflict. Falling back to the BoB baseline, we have:

This spell creates one or more indistinguishable duplicates of you...
Not having the spells is distinguishing, so by default the BoBs have them but can't cast them.


If you're looking to boost caster level, why not Circle Magic + simulacrum?

I'm generally allowing for synergies with specific classes yet would like a justification for spells without specific class dependence. This could be contradictory, but has not yet been so far. For example:
(a) Spells like Kelpstrand or Skin of the Steel Dragon which leverage a high caster level do not require class-based abilities to leverage.
(b) Unfettered Heroism is pretty good just leveraging Wand Surge, even if Primordial Scholar makes it better.
(c) BoBs are good with just some spell benefits.



Sure, but your plan A is worse than greater arcane fusion shenanigans. So what are we getting out of all these eyes of the oracle exactly?

Eyes of the Oracle is cumulative with Greater Arcane Fusion.


There's no reason to think that body outside body copies over active spells.

The argument for copy over is that it's an instantaneous spell which gives you an ability, and it's the ability which is copied.

[Troacctid]

You know what else you can pre-cast? planar binding. But, sure, I'm very proud you've found a way to deal damage comparable to a Rogue who has forgotten everything other than iterative attacks exists.
Oh no, it's only in the same tier as planar binding, what a damning indictment of the spell's power level! :smalltongue:


Throw a rock at a random caster PrC and you get something that's unplayable because of how many levels of casting it wants you to give up. It is, technically, true that if you decide to become an Acolyte of the Skin your body outside body doubles will get some extra uses of SLAs like poison and your stun gaze. But also you don't get body outside body until you are an 18th level character. But what if you are, instead, a Shadowcraft Mage? Your doubles get nothing. If you are instead a Dweomerkeeper, they get ... at will arcane sight. Feel the power! Or maybe you're a Hathran or Red Wizard, and your doubles again get nothing relevant. Or a Mage of the Arcane Order. Or a Rainbow Servant. Of course, that's not to say that there's nothing out there that does something good with body outside body. Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil does pretty well, though you still run into duration issues with the BoBs. But overall, I think you need to provide a little more than "there's a ton, dude" for me to buy what you're selling.
You're looking for things like good spell-like or supernatural abilities, multiclass synergies, racial abilities, powerful feats, and abusable items. Theurging into alternate magic systems is a particularly obvious application (JPM, soulcaster, cerebremancer, etc), and so are Su or SLA versions of your normal spells e.g. dweomerkeeper, archmage, spell sovereign. You might have SLAs from your race, or from a dragonpact or a dragonmark. Maybe you have a Su ability that keys off your spell slots, like a reserve feat, or nosomatic chirurgeon, or Draconic Breath. Or maybe you just have good combat stats because you're a run-of-the-mill gish, and your clones get to go wild spending unusable spell slots to stack up damage with Arcane Strike.

This isn't even getting into what a UMD user might do with a staff of it. It's a powerful open-ended effect—there are a lot of possibilities.


It does include the good one. wings of flurry is right there. cloudkill, with some positioning, does 10d4/level points of CON damage, which I find rather more effective at killing things than the likes of cone of cold.
If you can actually manage to deal 10d4/level Con damage with a cloudkill, you might as well do a coup de grace and save the spell slot. Any combat that lasts that long is just playing with your food.


Good point. Destruction > Finger of Death.
I agree, but I think they're also basically interchangeable.


SC is the only place I know of which officially discusses renaming (pages 5&6). I searched through CAd and didn't see anything about Bladesong. What makes you think Bladeweave is a rename of Bladesong in CAd?
I mean, just look at it. It's the same exact effect with the wording shuffled around a little.

But if you want to get specific, the sidebar in the introduction says:

This book includes material from other previously published work, including Dragon Magazine and earlier supplements such as Defenders of the Faith and Song and Silence. This material has been picked up and revised to v.3.5 based on feedback from thousands of D&D players comparing and debating the strengths and weaknesses of characters and options at gaming conventions, on message boards, on email lists, and over the counters of their friendly local gaming stores.

The changes we make to previously published material are intended to create an improved version of that material—to help out prestige classes that were formerly suboptimal choices, to adjust feats or spells that were simply too good, or take whatever steps the D&D v.3.5 revision made necessary for each individual class, feat, spell, or item. Of course, if you’re playing with older material and it’s working fine in your game, you shouldn’t feel compelled to change.

The old Spellbook Archive is one of the sources that they raided for updated content, and other spells from there were included and revised in CAd as well, including master's touch, mindless rage, hindsight, exacting shot, and foebane. So the provenance is there, along with the stated intent to adjust spells that were simply too good. (Divine insight is there too, incidentally, and can easily be read as a riff on guidance of the avatar.)

If you want to go strictly by the stated RAW, and not by any semblance of what was intended or what was reasonable, I respect that, but I also think at that point you have no excuse not to include storm touch and scalding touch in their respective top 10s based on RC's stealth buff to how they work, which, by RAW, is pretty unambiguously OP.

[RandomPeasant]

The catch is that, due to extremely unwise wording, Scalding Touch isn't an active spell, since it's instantaneous. The intent was almost surely that the damage it deals is instantaneous, but it doesn't specify any other duration for how long you have to make your attacks with it. So once you cast it, you instantaneously gain the ability to make those attacks (until you lose the ability by using up the attacks), and so your copies would also have that ability.

It strikes me more as "ludicrous interpretation" than "unwise wording", but whatever. body outside body copies over your "ability scores, personality, class levels, skills, feats, and memories". Having it copy over anything else is sort of inherently dicey. If you're prone, are the copies prone? Do they get your inherent bonuses? Saying "it definitely copies whatever it is that scalding touch is after you've cast it" strikes me as pretty dicey when it doesn't specify either way.


How would you use Planar Binding for Bloodfreeze Arrow spam?

Efreet can grant wishes, which can emulate bloodfreeze arrow (as can the limited wishes on offer from Dao, if you want to avoid the big guns).


There's another element here: Simulacrum's last forever while Planar Binding limits to day/level. That's hard to take advantage of since you need many Simulacrums before the burden of recasting Planar Binding becomes significant. Nevertheless, it's less hassle.

simulacrum costs XP every time you use it. If you've got some way to avoid that, it gets a lot better, but without that it's going to be hard to beat just casting planar binding a bunch.


It looks legit to me on close inspection. Supernatural Spell is a supernatural ability which allows you use use a spell as a supernatural ability:

Can you recover a spell used with Supernatural Spell with a pearl of power? If you are both a Dweomerkeeper and a Master Specialist, does Supernatural Spell-ing a spell from your chosen school trigger your Moderate School Esoterica? It seems to me that you probably can, or at least would expect to, and reading "use" as substantively different from "cast" in this context causes a bunch of weird problems in service of enabling a broken trick, so you should probably just not understand the rules that way.


BoBs are good with just some spell benefits.

They're not, though. The baseline is not a particularly good target for buffs. And even having a way to buff the BoBs in addition to whatever party member(s) you'd normally buff takes build investment. Getting Ocular Chain Persistent greater mighty wallop isn't free.


Eyes of the Oracle is cumulative with Greater Arcane Fusion.

greater arcane fusion can give you enough actions to cast as many spells as you happen to have. You get more output by preparing offensive spells in your 6th level slots.


Oh no, it's only in the same tier as planar binding, what a damning indictment of the spell's power level! :smalltongue:

If by "in the same tier" you mean "you would prepare planar binding in your 7th level spell slots rather than learning scalding touch literally 100% of the time", sure.


Theurging into alternate magic systems is a particularly obvious application (JPM, soulcaster, cerebremancer, etc)

Yes, you can build to make body outside body good. The point is that you don't need to do that with other spells. The way you make greater shadow conjuration good is that you cast it and it emulates any of a wide range of spells, which is a good effect on its own. You can build to make it better by taking various things to make the shadow illusion effect more real, but the baseline is that it has an effect that is worth using even if you have no other relevant abilities.

Basically all your examples are like this. Yes, I could be a Spell Sovereign. But the class costs me three levels of casting, and there are other PrCs that are better and don't. As I said, the Incantatrix example is compelling precisely because Incantatrix is a class you would take otherwise. Don't take a bunch of bad options and hope you can combine them into something good. Just take good options.


This isn't even getting into what a UMD user might do with a staff of it. It's a powerful open-ended effect—there are a lot of possibilities.

The list of spells that are good with UMD is pretty different from the list of spells that are good to learn.

[Troacctid]

If by "in the same tier" you mean "you would prepare planar binding in your 7th level spell slots rather than learning scalding touch literally 100% of the time", sure.
Oh noooo, it's worse than planar binding? Oh, how awful! There's no way it could possibly be on a "Top Spells" list if it's not as good as, nay, better than planar binding, oh, what a terrible shame! 🙄

Anyway,

The list of spells that are good with UMD is pretty different from the list of spells that are good to learn.
Is it, though? Are we not discussing these spells independent of class?

[remetagross]

I don't think we should have both Amber Sarcophagus and Stun Ray in the list. The effect they provide is too similar.

About Glass Strike destroying loot: if that's really an issue, there's always the fact the spell specifically does not affect worn magic items. And I guess that by the time you can cast 7th-level spells you don't care much for nonmagical loot.

About what BoB copies and does not copy...it doesn't say it duplicates your racial abilities. Nor does it copy your spoken languages. Does a BoB from a human lose the bonus feat? A dwarf BoB loses darkvision? Can you speak with it? It does not copy your templates either. Does a dragonborn BoB revert to its base race? If instantaneous effects are not copied, how about ability increases from Wish? But ability scores are indeed copied, so what gives?

I think what is and is not copied by BoB is rather murky and requires DM adjudication either way, and no RAW answer can easily tell. Depending on what the DM says, the power of the spell varies.

[Chronos]

While Destruction does target "creatures" and Finger of Death targets "living creatures", is there any case, at all, anywhere in the rules where that distinction actually matters? The rules define "living" as "has a Con score", and things without Con scores are immune to Fort saves that don't affect objects, so even if you find some nonliving creature other than an undead or construct, still neither spell will work on it.

[Anthrowhale]

I mean, just look at it. It's the same exact effect with the wording shuffled around a little.

In my opinion this exaggerates although the Complete Adventurer version is similar (something I hadn't appreciated). Looking closely.


Name: Similar. Bladesong vs. Bladeweave
Type: Different. Transformation vs. Illusion[Pattern]
Level: Very Similar. Bard 2, Sor/Wiz 2 vs. Bard 2, Sor/Wiz 2, Vigilante 2
Components: Different. V, S, F vs. V
Casting time: Different. Standard Action vs Swift Action
Range: Different. Touch vs. Personal
Target: Different. Weapon Touched vs. You
Duration: Similar. Round/level vs. Round/level(D)
Saving Throw: Different. Will Negates(Harmless, Object) vs. See Text->Will Save to avoid daze on extra touch attack
Spell Resistance: Different. Yes(Harmless, Object) vs. See Text->Spell Resistance on extra touch attack

First sentence: Different. "Bladesong makes a bladed weapon emit magical music in combat." vs. "A bladeweave spell imbues your melee attacks with a fascinating pattern or rhythm that entrances your opponent."
Next part: Similar. "Any round that the weapon is used in melee combat, this spell allows the wielder to make a single, additional touch attack with the sword ..." vs "Any round that you attack with a melee weapon, you can make a single additional touch attack with that weapon..."
Next part: Very Similar. "...as a free action. The attack uses the wielder's normal attack bonus with that weapon but inflicts no damage." vs. "... at your normal attack bonus as a free action. This attack deals no damage."
Next part: Similar. "Instead, anyone successfully touched by the weapon in this way is dazed for one round." vs. "Instead, anyone successfully touched by the weapon must succeed on a Will save or be dazed for 1 round. Spell resistance applies to this effect."
Last part: Different. "Dazed characters cannot take actions but can defend themselves normally. Focus: The weapon." vs. nothing


Overall, there are significant differences, but enough similarities that the Complete Adventurer Bladeweave was made while considering (and being inspired by) Bladesong. I don't believe it's "strictly by the stated RAW" to call these different spells though---"inspired by" is not a close enough relationship in general. As an example, Scintillating Sphere is a different spell from Fireball even though the difference could mostly be described as Energy Substitution[fire]. In terms of the relative effect, Bladeweave is definitely nerfed relative to Bladesong, but that's expected for Swift Action vs. Standard action casting time. Consider Quickblast vs. Magic Missile for example. In terms of the overall effect, both Bladeweave and Bladesong seems quite powerful to me. With some optimization you want to do anyways(Power Leech for primary casting stat, caster level escalation), Persistent Bladeweave only differs from rod[chain] Persistent Ocular Bladesong in that you can daze lock one creature vs. several creatures.

As for Storm Touch & Scalding Touch, if you convince others to go with the 182d6 interpretation, at least one of these will deserve a top-10 slot.

Saying "it definitely copies whatever it is that scalding touch is after you've cast it" strikes me as pretty dicey when it doesn't specify either way.
I agree it's dicey, but it does specify "This spell creates one or more indistinguishable duplicates of you..." The enumerated indistinctions after that add further texture but don't read as a complete enumeration.

Anyways, this seems irrelevant for the purpose of considering BoB as there are other melee spell effects which are as good or better anyways.


Efreet can grant wishes, which can emulate bloodfreeze arrow (as can the limited wishes on offer from Dao, if you want to avoid the big guns).

These are somewhat disappointing alternatives in terms of turning to a clearly broken things and also the save DC which Bloodfreeze Arrow is exceptionally sensitive to.


Can you recover a spell used with Supernatural Spell with a pearl of power? If you are both a Dweomerkeeper and a Master Specialist, does Supernatural Spell-ing a spell from your chosen school trigger your Moderate School Esoterica?

It looks like "no" by RAW to me.


They're not, though. The baseline is not a particularly good target for buffs. And even having a way to buff the BoBs in addition to whatever party member(s) you'd normally buff takes build investment. Getting Ocular Chain Persistent greater mighty wallop isn't free.

That depends on whether or not the rest of the party has 21 bludgeoning melee weapons.


greater arcane fusion can give you enough actions to cast as many spells as you happen to have. You get more output by preparing offensive spells in your 6th level slots.

Via GAF[Celerity, Celerity]. You may be correct---let's revisit after we finish a first pass about what the best way to nova is.



About Glass Strike destroying loot: if that's really an issue, there's always the fact the spell specifically does not affect worn magic items. And I guess that by the time you can cast 7th-level spells you don't care much for nonmagical loot.

Ah, good point. Looking through things, it seems that Baleful Polymorph is the first instantaneous fort-or-lose which preserves weapons. Glass Strike has an advantage in that it applies to Undead and a disadvantage in arriving 2 levels later.

At the moment, I'm not seeing a good argument to drop something on the existing list for it although it seems a fine offensive spell. Perhaps we should keep in mind for the second pass.


I think what is and is not copied by BoB is rather murky and requires DM adjudication either way, and no RAW answer can easily tell. Depending on what the DM says, the power of the spell varies.
Personally, I'd default to the opening phrase (i.e. default indistinguishable).


is there any case, at all, anywhere in the rules where that distinction actually matters?
Yeah, unclear.

[RandomPeasant]

Oh noooo, it's worse than planar binding? Oh, how awful! There's no way it could possibly be on a "Top Spells" list if it's not as good as, nay, better than planar binding, oh, what a terrible shame! 🙄

You know, some people provide arguments for propositions they consider to be true. Perhaps if you can't do that, your proposition isn't true.


Is it, though? Are we not discussing these spells independent of class?

Spells like arcane spellsurge, greater consumptive field, and arcane fusion are all useless if you don't personally have casting. Stuff that relies on Persistent or other metamagic is also generally worse out of items (unless you're an Artificer or Incantatrix who can do metamagic from items). Conversely, while holy word is on this list, it's even better if you're doing UMD because your caster level with a staff scales with your skill check, and can get even larger than a real caster's.


I don't think we should have both Amber Sarcophagus and Stun Ray in the list. The effect they provide is too similar.

Depends what you think the list is for. amber sarcophagus is generally superior to stun ray, but it isn't a strictly better/strictly worse situation. I would probably prepare one of each before I prepared two of either (though I would not learn both as a Sorcerer). I think if you are doing a strict top ten, you probably just put amber sarcophagus, but that's also somewhat misleading in terms of how people should select spells practically speaking.


I think what is and is not copied by BoB is rather murky and requires DM adjudication either way, and no RAW answer can easily tell. Depending on what the DM says, the power of the spell varies.

That was the point I was intending to get at. I think you can make an argument for various things being or not being copied, but I don't think "it definitely does copy this thing where there's no clear RAW either way and it's much more powerful if it copies it" is likely to be a winning argument.


I agree it's dicey, but it does specify "This spell creates one or more indistinguishable duplicates of you..." The enumerated indistinctions after that add further texture but don't read as a complete enumeration.

Sure, but the spell is very explicit about not copying your casting. To the point that it even explicitly turns off using magic items. If we are trying to infer the murky grey areas of the spell, I would expect it to not copy spell-related stuff.


These are somewhat disappointing alternatives in terms of turning to a clearly broken things and also the save DC which Bloodfreeze Arrow is exceptionally sensitive to.

I don't really think there is a way that planar binding is "clearly broken" and simulacrum is not. Even within "clearly broken" there is better and worse, simulacrum just happens to be the "worse" to planar binding's "better". Go back to polymorph and draconic polymorph. If we're excluding the latter due to it being too similar to a prior effect (despite being objectively more powerful than that prior effect), why are we including simuacrum?


It looks like "no" by RAW to me.

Certainly it does if you're reading "used" as different from "cast". But there's not really any reason to do that in the text, and my point is that even outside of letting you do abusive things with body outside body, that interpretation creates several unintuitive or disappointing interactions.


That depends on whether or not the rest of the party has 21 bludgeoning melee weapons.

It hard-caps there, but it soft-caps on the rest of the party's ability to engage at melee range, which is generally going to reach saturation before your BoBs have a chance to get up close and personal. Plus, you're ignoring the reality that there's still a resource commitment involved in doing this. What if you don't build your character for Chain-buffing? It's not exactly the only, or even a particularly common, strategy for casters.


Via GAF[Celerity, Celerity]. You may be correct---let's revisit after we finish a first pass about what the best way to nova is.

The wand trick is available at a lower level. I do not see a niche where you are spending all your 6th level slots on eyes of the oracle and contingency.

[Anthrowhale]

Go back to polymorph and draconic polymorph. If we're excluding the latter due to it being too similar to a prior effect (despite being objectively more powerful than that prior effect), why are we including simuacrum?

I've been thinking about this.

Via Planar Binding you have access to Cleric 14, Wizard 12, and Bard 6 spellcasting (see here (https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1582.0)) while the Simulacrum is stuck with <something> 7 casting, leaving them fairly outclassed. Their fragility and cost makes them pure out-of-combat minions in my mind.

The advantage over Planar Binding seems to be in the character's control over the feats and classes taken. Of these Circle Magic and Cooperative Spell seem the most interesting. You may also pick up Incantatrix 2 for persistent spells, and that may be useful since the BOBs have difficulty benefitting from skill-enhancing spells.

I'm on the fence about keeping it. Dropping Simulacrum would certainly simplify the L7 list.


What if you don't build your character for Chain-buffing? It's not exactly the only, or even a particularly common, strategy for casters.

It is a potent choice though.

The wand trick is available at a lower level. I do not see a niche where you are spending all your 6th level slots on eyes of the oracle and contingency.
A slot-bound nova is available at level 12 via Celerity, Arcane Fusion, Favor of the Martyr(or Least Dragonmark+Mark of the Dauntless), Arcane Thesis[Arcane Fusion], Twin Spell, Cooperative Spell, Sanctum Spell, Invisible Spell.

[RandomPeasant]

I'm on the fence about keeping it. Dropping Simulacrum would certainly simplify the L7 list.

Honestly if you're going to have it at all just have it at ECL 20 too. The argument for caring about it when ice assassin exists is the same as the argument for caring about it when planar binding exists (i.e. don't drop an objectively-powerful thing just because even more broken things exist), and the Circle Magic builds do get way better at 20th level because you can (assuming you're a Red Wizard) make simulacra that can lead their own circles. At 14th level, you can get yourself up to CL 30. At 20th level, you can get CL 40 and also Heighten every offensive spell you play to cast that day all the way up to 20th.


It is a potent choice though.

Honestly not really. You can just have more minions. The range of problems you can solve with one ultra-buffed dude and a swarm of mooks versus several ultra-buffed dudes is just not that different. There's this sort of weird dynamic where the power levels you can hit with chain buffing are objectively lower than the ones you can hit with chain binding, but since the latter can hit a power level of infinity it's hard to determine what's a fair comparison.

But even insofar as you might want to do chain buffing, it's still really unclear to me how body outside body has any meaningful synergy with that. Your duplicates have bad BAB, bad weapon proficiencies, and feats that are spec'd for casting. A large elemental probably has comparable base combat stats, and it is CR 5.


A slot-bound nova is available at level 12 via Celerity, Arcane Fusion, Favor of the Martyr(or Least Dragonmark+Mark of the Dauntless), Arcane Thesis[Arcane Fusion], Twin Spell, Cooperative Spell, Sanctum Spell, Invisible Spell.

You get Metamagic Spell Trigger at 10th level as an Incantatrix and 7th level as an Artificer. And, yes, that costs money. But, similar to minions, you can just break WBL over your knee. So we get the same problem. You are probably not going to be allowed to wall of salt (or whatever) your way into infinite money. But also it's sort of inconceivable to me that you'd have a campaign where you got to do celerity + arcane fusion + favor of the martyr + metamagic stacking, but also you have to keep to exactly WBL (particularly for the Artificer, which is pretty much WBL breaking as a class). So what is the breakpoint where it becomes worth it to just burn the wand charges? Is it if you can cut the cost by 20%? 50%? 80%? What is the amount of WBLmancy it is fair to assume?

[Anthrowhale]

I was reminded of Holy Star, which is an ok spell as written and quite nice if metamagicked. You get a AC+6(circumstance) which is moderately useful, Spell Turning 1d4+3 which is again moderately useful, or a 10d6 laser beam that works all day long as a free action. It doesn't compare to an at-will fireball or (next level) at-will meteor swarm, but it's decent.

Honestly if you're going to have it at all just have it at ECL 20 too.
Nah, Ice Assassin can do all the same tricks, but better.


So what is the breakpoint where it becomes worth it to just burn the wand charges? Is it if you can cut the cost by 20%? 50%? 80%? What is the amount of WBLmancy it is fair to assume?
1/3 of WBL is supposed to be spent on consumables and you're supposed to average 13.3333 encounters/level. By level 20, that's quite a bit, about 19k gp/level.

[RandomPeasant]

Nah, Ice Assassin can do all the same tricks, but better.

planar binding is more powerful too. The point is that if you're going to ignore that, you can also ignore ice assassin. And ice assassin is not quite strictly better than simulacrum, unless you're ignoring the XP cost. As a 20th level Red Wizard looking to make boosters for your Circle Magic, simulacra cost 1/5th the XP and can feed you just as many spell levels.


1/3 of WBL is supposed to be spent on consumables and you're supposed to average 13.3333 encounters/level. By level 20, that's quite a bit, about 19k gp/level.

Not really the point. The question isn't how much you blow on consumables, it's how much over normal WBL you are going to be allowed to get. "Zero" is a convenient assumption for analysis, but there is not a meaningful percentage of games where you can be, like, an Incantatrix learning spells off every spell list with minions from all the different forms of minionmancy, but you get exactly WBL worth of gear. So where is the breakpoint where it becomes worth it to just blow charges when you need to nova? Is it 30k gp/level on consumables? 40k? I don't even think it's that high, because not only does "prepare a bunch of offensive spells and nova via wands" make you nova better, it also makes you better when there are lots of encounters and your 6th level spells are wave of pain rather than more eyes of the oracle you don't need.

[remetagross]

Hey, nice find for Holy Star. The cool thing is that RAW the spell does not say that each function can only be activated once per turn, and you can take an infinite amount of free actions in your turn. So you persist it and gain (infinite)d6 of range touch fire damage.

A saner interpretation still remarks that even if it is agreed that each function can only be activated 1/turn, you can start you turn with, say, the +6 to AC function. Then, free action, you unleash the 10d6 beam. Then, free action, you select back the +6 to AC function. You have indeed activated each function no more than once in your turn. And a +6 to AC is nothing to scoff at, all the more so that a circumstance bonus is quite an uncommon type of AC bonus.

[Bonzai]

Regarding Similacrum, I have a soft spot for it. I had a red wizard that used his Similacra to power his circle magic boosts every day for some insane bonuses.

[Anthrowhale]

planar binding is more powerful too.
Not for the purpose of Circle Magic. For that purpose, it's either Ice Assassin or Simulacrum.


The point is that if you're going to ignore that, you can also ignore ice assassin. And ice assassin is not quite strictly better than simulacrum, unless you're ignoring the XP cost. As a 20th level Red Wizard looking to make boosters for your Circle Magic, simulacra cost 1/5th the XP and can feed you just as many spell levels.

That's not the right way to use Ice Assassin.

Ice assassin (unlike Simulacrum) has range: touch which could given a nontrivial range via Reach Spell (for instance). That in turn qualifies it for a rod of chain spell, which in turn implies you create 21 Ice Assassins at the cost of 5K xp. You can deal with the psychotic killer clause via either mindwiping with Programmed Amnesia/Mindrape or spending an extra 5K xp to create an Ice Assassin of you which you then create 21 Ice Assassins of as above.


So where is the breakpoint where it becomes worth it to just blow charges when you need to nova? Is it 30k gp/level on consumables?
Yeah, I'm not sure.



A saner interpretation still remarks that even if it is agreed that each function can only be activated 1/turn, you can start you turn with, say, the +6 to AC function. Then, free action, you unleash the 10d6 beam. Then, free action, you select back the +6 to AC function. You have indeed activated each function no more than once in your turn. And a +6 to AC is nothing to scoff at, all the more so that a circumstance bonus is quite an uncommon type of AC bonus.
It's definitely strong although I'm unsure as yet what can be deprioritized for it. One drawback is that it makes hiding hard.


Regarding Similacrum, I have a soft spot for it. I had a red wizard that used his Similacra to power his circle magic boosts every day for some insane bonuses.
Definitely an extremely potent usage. There doesn't seem to be any limit other than time to the number of circle magic ceremonies you can have in a day as well, so many spells can have a high save DC.

[redking]

I've been watching this thread and the other spell threads by Anthrowhale interest. We have spells by caster level, but I wonder if the value of certain spells increases given metamagic feats. Is that something that could be examined?

[Fero]

I've been watching this thread and the other spell threads by Anthrowhale interest. We have spells by caster level, but I wonder if the value of certain spells increases given metamagic feats. Is that something that could be examined?

Several of the lists contain significant discussion of Persist Spell. That said, it is very difficult to compare non-MM'ed and MM'ed spells as the comparison requires significant analysis or assumptions about the casters build. Nonetheless, a MM "seed" analysis would be very interesting.

[Anthrowhale]

In practice, we've not considered metamagic at lower levels and considered it at higher levels. There are two drivers of this: you have more room for metamagic feats at higher levels, and spellcasters are more capable of using metamagic, most notably via mindworms.

[Chronos]

I think it's slightly more nuanced than that: Low-level casters can make good use of Extend Spell, for instance. But the normal way of using metamagic is by increasing the spell level, and our benchmark for "low level" on each of these lists is "the lowest level at which a sorcerer gets that spell level", which doesn't strictly speaking leave any room for even a +1 metamagic.