Guards and Wards

[TheLogman]

I was reading the description of Guards and Wards on the d20 Srd.

Seems like a really cool spell, I mean, there's a lot of awesome effects, and I can see using it when some bad guys are banging in the doors. Hell, it would have been awesome if the spell was used in the siege of Azure City.

From an in-game standpoint, it's awesome.

From a DM's standpoint, it seems to be the thing is a total nightmare. Tons of effects, some of which have little or no crunch. Imagine 20-30 or even 100 enemies flooding into a castle. The DM has to decide exactly how every single one of those enemies is affected by the spell.

I kinda wanted to homebrew a higher level version of the spell, like level 9, and I have a good feel of what I want it to do, but it feels like the spell would be impossible to use. If the regular version is hard to use, a more complex version would be ridiculously hard. If I did homebrew it, the first consideration is a way of blocking entry to the castle, and a second is a blocking of extra dimensional travel. I'm basically done with it, but I just realized it might be totally useless, since a DM would hate it when players cast it. The only time it would be useful is when a DM or NPC is casting it.

Thoughts? Has anyone used this spell before?

[arguskos]

I've used Guards and Wards a few times. It's decent enough, IMO. I personally liked the Suggestion choice, since if you have a single good bottleneck, it can turn the tides of battles.

Though, I am confused as to why you think it's not statted out or easy to run. Just have the DM make group saves, say, every 5 or so dudes.

[Ethdred]

I've never run it as a DM, but if I did, I'd be making heavy use of the law of averages - if I had 100 attackers and the DC is 20, then all but 5 of them are going to be affected. I'd make it clear to the players that I wasn't going to make every die roll and that I'd be fudging some choices, and hopefully they'd be OK wih that. As long as you stick with the overall efffect of confusion and chaos, I don't think many players would get too het up about the actions of one or two mooks.

[Adumbration]

I remember seeing a spell - Complete Arcane, perhaps? - that created a permanent, powerful guardian to a specific place. I'm away from books, but it sounds like something you should take a look at.