Kimera757's page

For my ideal party of four, I’d go with a balanced mix: a fighter for frontline defense, a wizard for versatile magic, a rogue for traps and stealth, and a cleric for healing and support. This setup covers combat, utility, and survivability, making the group well-rounded for any adventure.

Ditto.

I still play PF1e but I hardly post here anymore, in part because I can't answer a lot of questions. Parties described on these forums tend to use every sourcebook so I can't recognize them.

IMO elementals have needs. Fire elementals need to feed on flammable material (yes, there's nothing in the rules about that). Water elementals want pure water, which is hard to find anywhere near civilization. It's harder to come up with needs for air and earth elementals though.

Keeping elementals around when you're a traveling adventurer would be difficult. I think you're better off befriending the elemental, dismissing it, and getting your friend back when you summon it. The elemental might not want to go back right away.

I don't think many people buy third-party content. I haven't bought the books.

I don't know what you mean by "more serious" but maybe you mean harder? If someone is playing a game that is "true" to LotR then D&D 5e won't actually fit. At low levels PCs have very few hit points and few Hit Dice (poor recovery). This is bad because PCs can turtle after getting mauled by an encounter. (Adventuring while half dead is foolish, but not adventuring to save the world is also foolish.)

I know of a group that did a pretty good job of this with 4e (high starting hit points, but slow inflation, and very good out of combat non-magical healing) at low level. They made Aragorn a warlord because the term ranger means different things for different players. :)

I've seen blogs saying you could do LotR at very low levels (back in 3e) but I don't agree. Gimli and Legolas can each kill almost two dozen opponents in one lengthy encounter. Aragorn himself has done quite a few things prior to LotR such as defeating the third Numenorean kingdom. The halflings seem to have very high AC (they rarely get hit, and then that gets turned by their magic armor). And trolls get killed by sunlight (puzzle bosses that are overpowered if they don't figure out their massive weak spot).

So IMO,

Come up with better non-magical healing. No need for better in-combat healing, but perhaps more Hit Dice. Avoid starting at 1st-level (but LotR PCs probably don't reach high levels either). Limit classes - no obvious magic for any classes that have spellcasting. (Something like the ranger's aiming spell would be fine. The only wizards or clerics would be elves who never leave their lands.)

Long waits between rests are alright. The LotR characters sometimes fought in (and against) entire armies, or made desperate forced marches through mountains.

Spells aren't subtle by default. You have to concentrate and typically use components. Even characters without Spellcraft will usually know you're casting a spell.

IMO your best bet is to cast the spell with no witnesses. Don't cast Charm Person or Suggestion on the king in front of the court mage! Instead, get him alone. Of course, his court mage knows strategy and will try to prevent it... But that's just one more barrier the Enchantment-focused wizard needs to plan for.

I played Kingmaker a very long time ago, and was a druid.

I cast Awaken on a PC's horse, which didn't really change the campaign, but when I cast Awaken again, the campaign changed. Awaken makes the target "receptive" (essentially charmed) but this drops when you Awaken something else. Suddenly the horse exhibited it's natural personality of being a murderous berserker, and could do that to our kingdom. So he took his herd of horses and started rampaging everywhere.

You have no special empathy or connection with a creature you awaken, although it serves you in specific tasks or endeavors if you communicate your desires to it. If you cast awaken again, any previously awakened creatures remain friendly to you, but they no longer undertake tasks for you unless it is in their best interests.

(The last sentence is not in the D&D 3e SRD.)

I also cast Hallow, which is a druid spell, on my grove. Unfortunately we didn't get to use that much.

Do your players actually have their characters interact with their backstories? Over the weekend I was reviewing some old stuff in my megadungeon campaign and I came across the email chains showing each PC's backstory elements. I generated two obvious side plots from them which resolved over a year ago now.

...

I don't know; am I the outlier here?

I don't think you're an outlier. In my experience, the biggest problems with backstories are two-fold:

1. GMs expect so much detail that characters starting at 1st-level makes no sense. (I find this a barrier to working with new GMs.)
2. Different PCs want different things but the campaign is about all the PCs wanting to work together to accomplish a common goal. Different goals starts to split the party, even if not in a combat sense, just in a spotlight sense.

The second problem can be "fixed" but it helps if players cooperate not just on picking appropriate builds but on their individual goals.

I'd steal the Wild Cohort feat from 3e.

I figure the diamonds aren't destroyed but vanish, being distributed amongst diamond-rich regions. So effectively diamonds that are "used up" by magic become a renewable resource.

Diamond prices only go up due to hoarding.

I counterspell with a readied action to inflict direct damage. It's hard to concentrate against 10d6 damage.

I never knew that item existed. Needed for every horror/Cthulhu campaign!

The real reason is game balance. Being able to attack while invisible is a lot stronger than a 2nd level spell should be. The standard invisibility spell is designed to allow you to sneak around and avoid danger. That is why it has a duration of 1 min. per level. Greater Invisibility is designed for combat and has a much shorter (1 round per level ) duration. Vanish has an even shorter duration and caps out at 5 rounds no matter how high the casters level is, but is only a 1st level spell.

This is the right answer. Furthermore it has a poor history with game balance. IIRC in 2e AD&D and earlier, you could make an Intelligence check to "see through it" or realize someone was there, but prior to 3e D&D was so messily written that people got confused by the rules. In 3e and Pathfinder, you can make a Spot or Perception check, but with such huge penalties (especially in Pathfinder, since you can't make an unmodified Listen check) that virtually nobody will ever see you. Put it on a wizard and they will probably not be spotted, put it on a rogue and nobody will ever see them (unless somebody has Perception +30 or something like that). A skill rolloff isn't balanced if somebody has such an unfair advantage.

The most balanced version I saw was in 4e. In that edition, invisibility (the condition) is basically Displacement combined with Hide in Plain Sight. There's no bonus to Stealth. Unfortunately they overnerfed it, raising the level significantly and making maintaining the spell more difficult than was necessary. I did like the Displacement + Hide in Plan Sight combo.

I think it's something similar in 5e, but without the level nerf. The invisibility condition there works just like in 4e.

With all this death and danger, I'd thought they might realize that they aren't diversifying their options. They spend all the money they get on four things: better weapons, better armor, scrolls (for the wizard to copy and that's it), and crafting (wizard crafts wondrous items and armor and weapons, occultist crafts healing potions). They aren't interested in anything that isn't those four things.

Haven't they even heard of the Big Six? They have no stat boosting items? No cloaks of protection?

If they refuse to learn, you should start a new campaign using inherent bonuses, so no need to spend money on boring but necessary pluses. That would also take care of the Cloak of Resistance issue.

The party reminds me of my 2e AD&D days. Instead of a metal wizard, we would have a death cleric who didn't have the Sphere of Healing, and we only found out when the player showed up. (This was before most of us had email. Those were the days.) To this day, I hate bloat, because it makes such things more likely to happen.

I am curious about your players. Have ANY of them been involved in higher level play? My gut is telling me that you have a table full of players that have a "I've read a few guides and know what I am doing" vibe going on.

This is probably going on. There's also mismatched expectations. A friend of mine plays RPGs, but not D&D or Pathfinder. Her players did not learn not to split the party over the course of *five years*.

Two PF1e GMs will often track if NPCs survive. Sometimes they even become recurring NPCs. However, I cannot recall a time when we gave mercy to an NPC and they came back to being a thorn in our side.

For instance, in a homebrew adventure we killed a kobold "king" and knocked out his son, plus the troglodytes who were secretly controlling them. Because the kobold "prince" survived, he was able to tell us what actually happened. We felt kind of bad. He took his people and left. I doubt we will ever see him again unless we specifically seek them out.

For the kobolds levelling up, I think that's a great idea. Chances are the PCs won't even notice they keep fighting the same kobolds. Maybe tell them at the end of the game!

Batman is a wonderful example of a comically serious character.

Here is an illustration of this trope: https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_batgarden.png

I see the magic item market the same way as the housing market.

Where I live, houses are overly expensive. Yes you need to pay for a place to live, but now you need to be rich or have a house to sell to buy one. Many people bought a house decades ago, and literally could not buy the next-door neighbor's identical house since it's "value" has increased so much. There's a lot of Fear Of Missing Out, so people will overspend in bidding wars (they fear the house will just get more expensive if they try to save more). Picture a noble who wants to buy a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, 750 gp. They try to do so, but a team of adventurers, fresh from selling off the loot from a dragon's hoard, show up and make an 800 gp donation and get the wand instead.

Many people treat houses as an investment. However they won't downsize (sell the house for a cheaper house) when they retire. So the house was treated as an investment while working, and as an (overpriced) good while retired. I figure many adventurers will not let go of their magic items post-retirement, since many of those items help keep them alive. Why would the retired fighter give up his Cloak of Resistance?

I figure you have to buy "rare" components when you make a magic item. It's magic, not technology, so making things more efficient probably isn't possible. When making a Wand of Fireballs, you need all that bat guano and sulfur and several thousands of dollars worth of other components (red dragon blood, perhaps?) which could only be obtained, at high risk, by a higher level adventurer. Dragons are greedy enough to sell their blood, but are too prideful to actually do it. (Plus it's dangerous to give a spellcaster your blood.) I'm not seeing an "efficient" way of getting true dragon blood (as an example).

According to the Unseen Servant spell, it acts at your command (and is invisible, not "nearly transparent" unlike the army of servants in a magical mansion). IMO, to "command" something you speak aloud. The servant always seems to understand you. Perhaps the conjuration process allows it to "understand" (as a mindless creature) one of your languages.

1 gp is worth far more than $1 US, which means even a simple Potion of Cure Light Wounds is incredibly expensive for a serf. Having said that, the modern economy is totally different than that of the past. Consider, in the medieval period food was very expensive relative to today, while shelter was cheap. There were homeless people in the medieval period, but they were wandering looking for work or to beg for food, not because they didn't have a hut to live in. Today's homeless people rarely starve but even if they're working can't afford a place to live. D&D (and so Pathfinder) mundane item costs don't make sense compared to real life medieval prices.

Probably more importantly, when it comes to Pathfinder is the magic item economy. If there's little magic there's no comparison. If there's lots of magic, a gun's price should be similar to a sword's price, which means nothing compared to getting it enhanced as a magic item.

I think they're looking at it from an RP perspective where they don't want the animal companion to lose the ability to talk just because their hat falls off.

A hat or circlet also draws attention. I'm not exactly sure how most animals would wear a circlet, even though it's totally rules-legal.

Claxon wrote:

Just buy a Circlet of Speaking for your animal friend.

Yep, I've see this wondrous item.

But it was interesting how to talk with Intelligence animal without spell/Circlet of Speaking

I would beg the GM for a tattoo of this item, placed on the animal. Yes, this would cost more. Unless the animal gets hit by Disjunction (or something similar), the animal will be able to talk over the course of its life.

This is a corner case, so the GM needs to rule.

IMO the weapon could be modified to have a practical trigger for this situation, etc, although whether medieval-skilled people could do that is another story.

Trailblazer has a boss monster template.

Lots of reactive abilities, kind of like 4e solo monsters and 5e legendary monsters.

I found being able to Pounce made me very powerful. (My current brawler can pounce due to gaining a very powerful feat.)

So wild shape into tigers, or the flying sphinx that can also pounce. Unlike a regular (dire) tiger, you have Greater Magic Fang and a higher base BAB.

I mean, what's so bad about being a Mindflayer anyways?

You get free Tentacles and Mind Blasts, can Extract Brains... you can still become a Lich (always awesome).

The part where you lose your personality and become an NPC :)

In Star Trek, the underground colony Terra Nova would use the word "shale" as a swear word.

Apparently I cannot edit anymore?

I'm not a big fan of evokers but the Force Missile power is great. Yes, it's just Magic Missile, but there's nothing better than extra Magic Missiles at 1st-level. Your poor attack bonus is literally meaningless.

Low-level arcane spellcasters have a lot more power and flexibility than they had in the 3.0/3.5 days. One frustrating thing I see are people latching onto abilities that are "cool" or don't come up very often at 1st-level.

I usually just go for direct damage spell-like abilities. Dealing 1d6 + 1/2 levels of fire damage, or acid damage, is pretty low even at 1st-level, but it's a touch attack. A crossbow does not ignore armor. In addition, this accuracy is important because a wizard probably does not want to waste feats on Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot.

Like this, only with four legs (and without the arms, initially). Called Veggie because my half-drow Summoner thought it to be a vegepygmy on their first encounter. The drow-vegepygmy connection was also the reason for it to be a fungus-y creature in the first place.

Upvote just for saying Thanquol.

The last time I saw a summoner, his summon was basically a fiend. It started with claws but the summoner got it a magic greatsword.

Having a holy time to pray makes sense from a gaming perspective, but every single cleric PC I have ever seen worships in the morning. I am probably the only player in my group who is even aware that this is "wrong".

I don't get the tie between rest and regaining cleric spells. It's just easier to worship in the morning.

A big slashing weapon, such as a greatsword or greataxe, for chopping off the heads. There is no metagame reason for this, but it looks cool. Get the weapon silvered.

If you have a cleric, a bludgeoning weapon. Cast Disrupting Weapon on it. A bludgeoning weapon is great for pounding stakes. Carry stones: Magic Stone is pretty good against undead. Spiritual Weapon, since I believe it dishes out force damage, so you can slap ghosts with it.

However, I fail to see exactly why the crossbow, as it doesn't normally act as a wooden stake

If you put a wooden bolt through their heart, after the metal arrowhead has gone through it...

Well, okay. Silvered crossbow bolts. Vampires tend to be urban creatures, and IMO a longbow isn't a great weapon for a city.

I think the guards would realize what is happening due to the negative energy damage, which I picture looks like accelerated rotting or a seriously over-the-top "pins and needles" effect. I think it would be as obvious as taking fire damage, or acid damage, etc.

Even if you can't hear yourself talk, you can still make the mouth movements, right?

I knew a woman with a hearing impediment at university. She could speak in English and at least one other language (plus sign language), but her English sounded strange. It was not an accent. She just wasn't able to speak it properly. She could not hear what she was saying and "auto correct". Fortunately I could understand her most of the time.

I do not know how common this is among the hearing-impaired.

Krogans use the word "quad/s", referring to their four ... you should be able to figure that one out.

So a krogan might say "I like the quads on that fellow" even though they're not talking about a krogan, or a male.

I like Battlestar Galctica's frak. The old version was frack (identical pronunciation) but the actors liked the four letter version better. You could use it exactly the same way as the real f word.

Another option is to make the words culture specific. I read a sci-fi novel where you could tell which planet a character was from by the swear word they used. It involved a military unit cobbled together from units from two planets (one of these planets had been destroyed, so you heard their swear word a lot).

Closing your eyes and pretending the big scary thing isn't there is not a realistic defence.

It takes away your Dex bonus to AC. That alone should stop that strategy.

I assume a standard action is over 3 seconds, because you can only do one within 6 seconds. A move action has to be more than 2 seconds, because you can only do two of them (and less than 3 seconds, because you can do one and a standard action and still have time for a free action, etc).

So I guess a standard action is 3.5 seconds, a move action is 2.5 seconds, and a swift action is less than a second. I don't think any action not involving magic takes less than a fifth of a second, because of human reaction speed. (Yes, some PCs are not human, but generally human PCs can do the same things non-human PCs can.)

It doesn't say it can distinguish between different kinds. For flavor reasons I can't imagine a druid that can't tell the difference between a fey and an undead, but by RAW I see nothing that allows for that.

(I looked up the spell, but of course it only detects undead. It cannot distinguish kinds of undead, but different kinds of undead should vary less than, say, undead and elementals.)

Scrolls are not language dependent either so comprehend langauge would not work.

I believe you, but where is the source for this? (I'd like to know for flavor reasons.)

My favorites are the brawler, unchained monk, and ranger, probably in that order. It seems too difficult to get a magic-free ranger. (Too many things that should be skills are instead spells. 5e made the same mistake.)

I don't know if there's a good swashbuckler anywhere. I think I saw a class where you use Int for AC and I thought "yuck". Even the unchained monk couldn't escape that.

You didn't say retriever, so I would pick an oni. I would move to an area where there are no other oni and try to intelligently blend in.

DeathlessOne wrote:

If EVERY player is not in on the downtime rules, then the downtime rules for those that are into it are relegated to off screen time (ie discord or similar communication platforms) and only the roleplaying aspects make an appearance in the actual gameplay.

This is the bit that gives me pause. It costs money to make downtime work, meaning that the player who is investing time and effort into downtime is doing so instead of buying gear. That means that more than the "roleplaying aspects" are appearing in the gameplay.

I'm beginning to wonder if there's some way to translate downtime bonuses into actual mechanical bonuses.

From 3e onwards, characters "could not" easily retire.

In 1e, there was no sensible magic item market. You were encouraged to build up an entourage, build a castle or temple, etc, and effectively aimed your character toward retirement by name level. This could get silly if (say) your character had low Intelligence and Charisma.

By contrast, in 3e you spend gold on just one thing: survival, which is a basic need. Spending gold on downtime rather than on magic items that will keep you alive is a bit like someone investing in a business while not having enough cash to eat for the month. Gold should not be used for both; it's better to have a separate currency instead. A 3e character could retire by selling off their magic items, but again you're putting your survival at risk, and now you have more enemies than you did at 1st-level.

One of the easiest alternative currencies are taxes. Yes a greedy lord could use the taxes for their own purposes, but that should be earmarked for community projects. Unfortunately this requires the PC to be (or become) a noble. Recall the problems of a character with low Intelligence and Charisma.

There's also another problem, if PCs don't want to build the same community. Quite a few adventuring parties (back in 1e) had each PC build their own domain, which does not work well with the current "band of four" playstyle.

IMO it would be a Fortitude save (unless the pain is purely mental). I don't think Bluff applies, as I can't picture a typical bard just laughing off torture.

I think the DC would increase with damage, and with time.

You could use it on a rogue to prevent sneak attacks, or on a caster to make it harder to buff their allies. I think the latter example is more useful, but spellcasters tend to have decent Will saves.

I don't think it would mess up the targeting of a Chain Lightning spell, sadly (since you target who you want to hit).

Its kind of a simple question, Is it fair to cast a spell on a player if I know the party has no way of combating it? For example Aboleths lung. If that was cast on one of them in an environment with no water and the party isn't super balanced so there really isn't anyone they have that can dispel the spell. So basically if it lands their fate is completely reliant on if they can resist the spell or not. basically a "Save or die" situation. Is that cheap to do or is it alright to do something like that? I figure if one of them dies it's going to give them a chance to make a more balanced party (It's my fault for not doing a better job at trying to prevent something like this at the beginning but basically the entire party is a bunch of melee fighters, some of which can cast weird variants of spells. We have no healers, ranged fighters, or AOE dealers.). but I'm not sure. Can I hear others' thoughts on this?

School transmutation; Level cleric 2, druid 2, sorcerer/wizard 2, witch 2

CASTING

Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M/DF (piece of seaweed)

EFFECT

Range touch
Target living creatures touched
Duration 1 hour/level
Saving Throw Will negates; Spell Resistance yes

DESCRIPTION

The targets are able to breathe water, freely. However, they can no longer breathe air.

Divide the duration evenly among all the creatures you touch. This spell has no effect on creatures that can already breathe water.

I think an opponent would have a hard time casting this spell on everyone in a party. There's a touch attack (which will probably hit) and a Will save (which any PC has a decent chance of making). And of course the caster should be near water (there shouldn't be gillmen or aboleths in a desert). I'm not sure if you can breathe from a waterskin (depending on how realistic you want to be, that should run out of oxygen, and a waterskin probably contains vinegar and dilute wine rather than just water anyway). Having said that, I don't think this makes sense as a combat spell.

Contrary to some other comments, I think the GM does have the right to shape a party. What if a party has no healers? I don't mean no clerics or oracles, but nobody who could use a Wand of Cure Light Wounds? You might have a problem. GMs can shape a party so that you don't have a paladin and a chaotic evil assassin in the same party too. GMs can ban classic summoners or other classes, and can ban certain items or certain spells. Having no influence on a party does not make sense, IMO.

I'm playing a rogue right now in one campaign, who doesn't even have ranks in Sleight of Hand. (Disable Device, Perception, Stealth, but not literal thievery! The game does not give consistent rewards for that, and even if it did, that's something I have to do myself, without party input.)

I don't think "thieves" are actually common, and that's one reason why rogues are called rogues and not thieves.

If for some reason I really needed to steal something, I would ask for PC help and we'd try to isolate and non-lethally take out that one victim, and steal his stuff. A high-level rogue wouldn't bother with low-level gear, and a low-level rogue who messes with a high-level adventurer needs to pay their life insurance beforehand, and perhaps "death insurance" (a Resurrection spell) at the closest temple.

Andostre wrote:

My solution is to just find a class guide I like that evaluates spells, and review the guide's suggestions. It narrows down the options I need to review considerably.

I feel like this works well for spontaneous casters. However, that mess is rough when the niche spells come into play for classes like cleric and druid. All of the guides seem to focus on the best spells to know most of the time whether the ones that are occasionally great depending on situation.

Prepared spellcasters can leave spell slots open or scribe scrolls. I wouldn't be concerned about niche spells except in combat, where most of the time you just want to go with a "good enough for every situation" spell.

It's probably a well-known fact that adventurers hate being captured because they will lose their magic items. They will go to great lengths to get them back (much like Warren Buffett would devote his life to exacting vengeance on anyone who stole his company).

There's little point of stealing if you won't live long enough to enjoy it. Of course, some adventurers keep a low profile, and might be targeted by thieves who don't know better.

Kimera757 wrote:

I agree with you, but do low-level thieves know at what level a wizard can talk to her familiar? (What is the skill and DC required for this?)

sounds like my low level character needs to buy a pet mouse and talk to it incessantly in order to keep the thieves away......

Many years ago, back in 2e D&D, I did this as a PC to the other players :)

I was a rogue 1/wizard 1 but never cast spells publicly. I wielded two daggers (did not dual-wield, one dagger was held just for show) and put green stuff on the daggers so they would appear to be poisoned (obviously, they weren't). I found out after the game ended that the other PCs were all terrified of my PC. :D

In a game I was in, another PC had a pet skunk. We were all powerful but all terrified of the skunk. A skunk familiar should give an extreme bonus to Intimidation to anything with a sense of smell, with said checks occurring without requiring an action on the part of the skunk holder, or even knowledge of someone observing them.

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

There's always a bigger fish. Isn't that the saying? So if you're a PC with 16 levels, a PC classed NPC with 17 levels might think... "I can TAKE 'em!"

That would, of course, be dumb on the NPC's part, but they might try anyway. That's down to the GM though. Will thieves try to rob a PC? I rather think this depends on the thieves, the rep of the PC and the character's general "look" than any one particular item they're carrying.

** spoiler omitted **...

Stupid thieves. She was conversing with the owl! That doesn't just mark her as a caster, but one of reasonable power.

I agree with you, but do low-level thieves know at what level a wizard can talk to her familiar? (What is the skill and DC required for this?)

So I'm going to assume the typical thief here is a level 1 rogue. They operate in groups.

Just something I was musing if you have an adventurer fully geared appropriate to their level but out of their adventure would all those powerful items make them a target or would it make thieve's, etc avoid them out of fear or repurcussions? That is just generic city and someone geared and equipped for . . .

1) CR 2

A CR 2 PC might not have any combat-specced items. Perhaps a few healing potions that could be stolen. CR 2 is not very impressive.

2) CR 4

You want a small gang to rob this character.

3) CR 8

Even if you have such a big group of guys and know you will win, this is not worth it unless there's heavy plot involved. Pick on someone weaker than a literal troll. Said character is powerful enough that if they go full pacifist (retreat, no fighting at all) they will probably still get away. An 8th-level wizard with no combat spells prepared at all could Dimension Door away. A pacifistic fighter might merely shove you out of their way, hard.

4) CR 16

Do not wrestle with someone like Guan Yu! This is a one-person army, and the fourth attack is still better than yours. You only fight them if you have a very good, plot-relevant reason, and 1st-level rogues would need crits!

5) CR 20/Mythic Tier 10

You can't even sneak up on them. If they don't use non-lethal attacks (in other words, they literally try not to kill you) you will die.

Realistically nobody wears heavy armor all day, which will make some of these scenarios easier. Of course, Comfort is a pretty cheap enchantment :) Same with larger weapons; if someone is specialized in the longsword and has a vorpal sword, they are at peak offense. But maybe they specialized in the halberd and left that at home. (Or stored it in their Glove of Storing. You never know!)

Scavion wrote:

There are pretty clear "winners" among spells when it comes to spell slots and situations. Analysis Paralysis boils down to experience. If you don't know your spells, the enemy or some combination of the two, then you're going to struggle a bit.

I dunno. My particular case was evocation wizard 10 archmage 5 facing down some crazy flying darkness-themed incorporeal.

It turned out that wall of light was the right play given the creature's specific weaknesses...

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/w/wall-of-light/

...But finding that one felt like an exercise in manipulating the SRD rather than knowing my spells.

Generally I try to use spells that are useful in as many situations as possible, because I don't know what's coming up next. So a spell that is useful most of the time (such as Fireball or Wall of Force) outranks a more niche spell, even if that's more powerful in specific circumstances.

Glitterdust is one of my favorite spells. It blinds enemies (and few enemies have Blind-Fight or Blindsight). It can reveal invisible enemies. It can affect creatures immune to magic, such as golems (who also tend to have poor Will saves too!) One of my favorite uses was teaming up with a dual-wielder against a very high Hit Dice golem (it had a high Strength score and wasn't going to miss). Said golem splashed acid on you when you hit it. I blinded it, and my friend started hitting it, but resisting multiple low damage attacks was the golem's forte. It was probably dealing more damage than it was taking! One Resist Energy spell later...