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Meanwhile, I'm completely comfortable with the role of support caster, and I highly value creativity and versatility in a spell, so I've opted to focus on battlefield control, with a secondary emphasis on debuffing, rather than blasting. (Even though a sorceress is not the ideal battlefield controller. I'm not playing a sorceress for any mechanical benefits the class confers, but rather because I thought of a character I really wanted to play, and that character was definitely a sorceress, not a wizard).
As an aspiring battlefield controller, I intend to acquire a wand of Obscuring Mist as soon as I can possibly afford one. I fully expect this wand to come in very handy. But I keep feeling like I must be missing something terribly obvious as to the uses of the spell. I keep hearing how amazing and essential this particular spell can be, and I'm having trouble understanding just why it has *quite* such an impressive reputation. Here's what I've thought to do with it so far:
1. Cover a retreat. Increases miss-chance for ranged attacks as you flee, and prevents opponents from seeing which turn you took at a crossroads.
2. Protect more vulnerable members of the party/innocent bystanders by hiding them - though if my friends stay too deep within the mist, their vision will be hampered every bit as much as our opponents' vision will be, so they won't be able to contribute to combat very effectively. (Originally, I had it in mind that I could use Obscuring Mist as my poor man's Tiny Hut, ducking in and out of the fog and casting spells. But you can't take a move action both before and after a standard action within a single round, as I understand it).
3. Assist in setting up an ambush/disorienting and dividing foes. If this were real life, I imagine an Obscuring Mist over top of a zone of Grease would be a seriously disorienting obstacle. If you were fighting in a tunnel or passageway of some kind, you could block the passage with mist and lie in wait for your enemies to blunder out of the fog all confused and get clubbed one or two at a time. But I don't think game mechanics support any kind of dizzyfying debuffs just for stumbling around in a fog and falling over a few times, haha.
I brought this up in the car on the way home last night, and my friend said he would: make himself Large, then wear a Mist spell as his giant Fog Suit (charming, no question, but won't work, since the Mist stays put once it's cast; you can't wear it), or buy a bunch of fans and use them to drive the mist from square to square (also highly amusing, but won't work, because winds just gradually dispel fogs).
So I'm extremely curious: what are all your most epic tales of Obscuring Mist? Humorous fog anecdotes? I'm not looking to steal everybody's thunder, but hearing some creative and legal uses for the spell might well shake loose some ideas of my own.