(3.5) Where to find commonly abused spells, and why they are abused?

[Ilmryn]

I have seen a few spells on the forum that are considered overpowered. Even though I have the Spell Compendium, I have no clue what they are and where to find them. Could someone please enlighten me on the following spells?

Ice Assassin
Power Word Pain

[arguskos]

I have seen a few spells on the forum that are considered overpowered. Even though I have the Spell Compendium, I have no clue what they are and where to find them. Could someone please enlighten me on the following spells?

Ice Assassin
Power Word Pain

Ice Assassin lets you make a copy of a divinity for basically free. This copy then gives you all its divine ranks. Ta-da, you're a god. Go you. Frostburn is the source.

PW: Pain is just really good for it's level, doing lots of damage. Races of the Dragon is the source.

[Ryuk01]

Quoted from TLN's guide:
"Stinky Cheese: spells that are broken, broken, broken.

Level 2:
-Alter Self: give yourself +6 natural armor, or flight, for 10 min/level with a level 2 spell? Like all the polymorph spells, way too good for its level--not so broken you probably shouldn't use it in a game, though. Combine with the Otherworldly feat for even more cheese.
-Wraithstrike: swift action, make all attacks as touch attacks that round. Ridiculously good for fighter-mages, Power Attack for huge amounts of damage. You can Persist it quite normally in an 8th level slot, or by using various kinds of cheese, and that's when it becomes *completely* broken.

Level 3:
-Shivering Touch (Frostburn): a touch attack, no save, 3d6 dex damage. 3d6! Dex damage! Wanna one-shot a dragon? NOOO problem! Add some kind of reach (Arcane Reach from Archmage, or Reach Spell metamagic) and you can do it from safety. For the love of god, don't resport to this.

Level 4:
-Polymorph: far better than any other spell of its level, and many higher-level spells. The things you can do with this are ridiculous. It's completely broken, so much so WotC has given up on trying to fix it. Just don't use it.
-Celerity (PHB II): this breaks casters worse than they're already broken. As an immediate action casting, gain a standard action, and be dazed on the next round. This means that no matter what, the wizard goes first. Combine with Time Stop to negate the disadvantage of being dazed in combat, or just use it to Teleport out of there or Dimension Door way out of reach.

Level 8:
-Polymorph Any Object: the worst of the lot. Turn yourself into a gold dragon and gain its INT score plus everything else? Come on. Most broken spell in the game.
-Greater Celerity (PHB II): as Celerity, but grants a full-round action.

Level 9:
-Shapechange: CL up to 25 HD monsters. Gain their (Su) special qualities and attacks as well as the (Ex) ones. Completely and utterly ridiculous, as a more powerful Polymorph of course must be. Don't use this.
-Disjunction: both DMs and players avoid it. Use it as a player and you fry the bad guy's loot; use it as a DM and your players lose their magic items and are very upset.
-Gate: so many abuses. So very many. For example, Gate in creatures that can cast Wish as a (Su) ability and make them give you free wishes."

[Hague]

Assuming you actually make contact with said divinity. This doesn't work in Eberron, for instance, since divinities don't meddle with mortals. Since you can't actually find a clipping of Dol Arrah or the Mockery's hair, you can't copy them.

[arguskos]

Assuming you actually make contact with said divinity. This doesn't work in Eberron, for instance, since divinities don't meddle with mortals. Since you can't actually find a clipping of Dol Arrah or the Mockery's hair, you can't copy them.

And yet, by RAW, I can use Eschew Materials to avoid that issue. I only need pay for the statue, since the "piece of the person to be copied" has no cost. Note: it is entirely reasonable to say this fails, but RAW speaking, it totally works.

[Hague]

You can't do that. The clipping is part of the statue. Without it, you don't have the right statue.

Any DM that'd allow that has already hit full-RAWtard.

[Boci]

Level 3:
-Shivering Touch (Frostburn): a touch attack, no save, 3d6 dex damage. 3d6! Dex damage! Wanna one-shot a dragon? NOOO problem! Add some kind of reach (Arcane Reach from Archmage, or Reach Spell metamagic) and you can do it from safety. For the love of god, don't resport to this.

Just make it a dex penalty. Problem solved.

-Celerity (PHB II): this breaks casters worse than they're already broken. As an immediate action casting, gain a standard action, and be dazed on the next round. This means that no matter what, the wizard goes first.

Thats not true. You cannot take immediate actions when you are flat footed.

Combine with Time Stop to negate the disadvantage of being dazed in combat, or just use it to Teleport out of there or Dimension Door way out of reach.

And what about the 10 levels between getting celerity and not having time stop?

-Greater Celerity (PHB II): as Celerity, but grants a full-round action.

Meaning its a much higher spell slot for not that much extra.

@Hague: you do realize that is exactly what arguskos said? It should not work, but by RAW it does.

[Ilmryn]

Thats not true. You cannot take immediate actions when you are flat footed.

I'm pretty sure you can, especially since there is an immediate action spell that gives you a bonus to initiative. That would be pretty useless if you can't cast it before you would go anyways...

[Starbuck_II]

Thats not true. You cannot take immediate actions when you are flat footed.

2 levels of scout fixes that. Scouts are never flatfoot.

[Boci]

I'm pretty sure you can, especially since there is an immediate action spell that gives you a bonus to initiative. That would be pretty useless if you can't cast it before you would go anyways...

Which was errated/updated to specifically say it could be used before you had taken any actions.
And yes, the origional version of skitternerve was useless for that exact reason.

2 levels of scout fixes that. Scouts are never flatfoot.

Same ability as the barbarian and doesn't specify that it overrules the PHB (indeed it refers to that ability), so we can assume thats a typo. Even if we don't, it still cost 2 CL.

[Endarire]

Nitpick: CantripN and Treantmonk said these in their respective guides. Maybe LogicNinja did as well. Did he?

[shadow_archmagi]

Don't forget Glitterdust, which says "Make a will save or don't make any attacks that hit for the rest of the fight"

[Brendan]

Ice assassin certainly would make the Hand of Vecna a lot more sought after if the spell component cheese is houseruled out...

[Boci]

Don't forget Glitterdust, which says "Make a will save or don't make any attacks that hit for the rest of the fight"

Thats more powerful than abusable.

[arguskos]

Don't forget Glitterdust, which says "Make a will save or don't make any attacks that hit for the rest of the fight"

Yeah, GDust is good. It's not abused. Now, abusing GDust might be using it with Sculpt Spell. That's abuse, but more of wording than anything else (and mostly cause Sculpt Spell is kinda towards the OP end of things, in my opinion).

[PId6]

Celerity needs Foresight to let you always go first. Besides that, it's ridiculous if you negate the daze in any way (Time Stop, Favor of the Martyr, Fire-Souled, etc), and only overpowered if you don't (due to the nova-abuse and "OH SHI-" button it provides). Greater Celerity is not nearly as much a problem since it's much higher level and doesn't provide too much more benefit, though it's still too good if you prevent the daze somehow.

[Cespenar]

Going from memory, I remember Wings of Flurry and Wings of Cover (were those the names?) being used in an awful lot of places, so they have to be at least overpowered for their level if not broken per se.

Also, Grease.

[PId6]

Going from memory, I remember Wings of Flurry and Wings of Cover (were those the names?) being used in an awful lot of places, so they have to be at least overpowered for their level if not broken per se.

Wings of Flurry is a great blasting spell, but I wouldn't say it's too good. It's about even with the Orb of X line, maybe slightly better, but sorcerer-only. Much better than Fireball and friends, but that's like saying warblade's much better than fighter.

Wings of Cover is quite possibly overpowered, especially since it's only 2nd level. Still, it has limitations (only works on one attack per round, immediate action eats your swift next round, RAI doesn't work on AoEs, etc), and it is sorcerer-only. It's one of the few advantages that sorcerer has over wizard. In high-op games, I'd say it's fine to allow.

[hamishspence]

Locate City (Races of Destiny)- especially with the Fell Drain metamagic feat. Kills commoners for miles around.

[Tytalus]

Locate City (Races of Destiny)- especially with the Fell Drain metamagic feat. Kills commoners for miles around.

Locate City + Fell Drain does nothing. You need a means to deal damage with the spell first.

The spell is fine by itself. It's the ridiculous MM stacking that makes it a bomb spell, due to the huge spell area.

[Snake-Aes]

Locate City (Races of Destiny)- especially with the Fell Drain metamagic feat. Kills commoners for miles around.

Locate City doesn't qualify for fell drain.

[hamishspence]

It does once metamagic feats are added though (those that add the cold descriptor to any spell, and cause all [cold] spells to do damage.)

[Snake-Aes]

Where does it say that the descriptor automatically gives it damage?

[Tyndmyr]

I'm pretty sure you can, especially since there is an immediate action spell that gives you a bonus to initiative. That would be pretty useless if you can't cast it before you would go anyways...

That would be nerveskitter.

And, it contains an explicit clause saying you can use it even when you are flatfooted. I would not assume that the same applies to all immediate action abilities unless they contain a similar clause.

The only time celerity is really broken is if you somehow make yourself immune to daze.

Locate City bomb is, while cool, not actually that practical. It requires a bunch of metamagic stacking, most of which are not practical for other purposes. Then, yeah, you've killed all level 1 folks that are out of doors. Great. Killing masses of commoners isn't generally a great goal for uber-power. It can be a great RP event and such, but it isn't actually broken.

[hamishspence]

It's probably the Fell Drain feat that's more abusable than the spell.

I think it's commonly cited as part of "most powerful 1st level wizard" builds.

[Snake-Aes]

It's probably the Fell Drain feat that's more abusable than the spell.

I think it's commonly cited as part of "most powerful 1st level wizard" builds.

More than that, a Locate City fell drain bomb really seems to be among the hardcore types of deliberate misinterpretations of rules.

[IdleMuse]

... deliberate misinterpretations of rules.

I don't think it really counts as a misinterpretation when it works by RAW. It probably shouldn't work by RAW, but it does, and that puts it into the realms of houserules, not 'correct interpretations'.

I could accept that the Locate City bomb is clearly a misinterpretation of intent, but then again, so is 'playing a non-blasty wizard', it seems.

[Snake-Aes]

Claiming adding a descriptor to the spell enables it to be a damaging spell because "all spells with that descriptor do damage"? I'm not buying that.

[hamishspence]

I think its more that the damage boosting metamagic feat does not require the spell to be a damaging spell- something like:

"+1 to damage for all spells with the Cold descriptor" - and all spells that do no damage do 0 damage, so can be upgraded to do 1 point of damage.

[Greenish]

Where does it say that the descriptor automatically gives it damage?

Snowcasting (Frostburn) gives it the Cold descriptor, after which Flash Frost (PHBII) causes it to deal damage, allowing one to apply Fell Drain (Libris Mortis) to it, or so I heard.