Lord Eisen's page

LOG ENTRY #1: NJ's house - 3rd Level

The Cast:
- elven druid (and accompanying elf).
- elven ranger.
- halfling rogue.
- human paladin.
- gnome wizard.

The Director:
- Myself, the intrepid Dungeon Master.

Ahem - the party started off camping in a small grove alongside a highway, which wound through a particularly wild patch of wilderness. In the morning the ranger (with his elven eyes) spotted a cloud of dust on the horizon, coming towards them on the road. While the others either changed into or hid in the trees, the Paladin went to meet whoever was coming; standing in the middle of the road.

A merchant, travelling with three caravans, offered the Paladin, the Rogue and the Wizard (the elves chose to stay in/as trees) the princely sum of 50gp each to guard him on the way to the next town. The Paladin, acting as the party's spokesperson, accepted this offer.

The caravan set off, the elves following a short distance behind. They camped for the night, and the ranger noticed a fire on the horizon in the direction of their destination. In the morning the merchant saw smoke through a spyglass but said nothing.

The party arrived at the town of Galway to find that it had been raided by lizardfolk during the night. They had burned down about half of the wooden palisade surrounding the town. After collecting their payment from the merchant the party set off for the Town Hall, where the townsfolk were meeting to decide what had to be done.

The Mayor of Galway offered 2000gp to anyone who would travel to the lizardfolk's lair at Ironstone in the north and eradicate them. After conferring briefly the party accepted this, and set out.

The first part of their journey was on a small dirt track with tall grass on either side. At about midday the druid heard a sound in the grass. He signalled to the ranger to move quietly into the grass and sneak up on whatever it was. The party heard a muffled cry as the ranger was borne to the ground by a Fleshraker, who then turned his attention on the rest of the party, charging and making a successful rake attack against the rogue. Another Fleshraker then attacked from the either side of the track. The ranger got up and fired two arrows at one of the creatures, one piercing its body; making it shriek in pain. The Druid and Wizard fired off a round of fire spells, but they didn't seem to affect the creature, only setting the grass on fire. The Paladin charged into combat, slashing one of the dinosaurs across the neck with his bastard sword. The Rogue finished it off with the first of many critical hits, scoring a direct hit on its skull with a sling for maximum damage. The wizard slew the other Fleshraker with a magic missile.
Victorious, the party continued on to Ironstone.

When they arrived the party saw the only way into the giant cliff complex was to scale a sheer stone wall to a large cave. Casting spider climb on himself, the druid scaled the wall, but fell when his magic seemed to falter two thirds of the way up. The Ranger tied an arrow to a long rope and fired it into the cave, where it stuck into some wooden object. The party began the ascend into Ironstone.

MORE FROM THIS SESSION TO FOLLOW! - EG

I never thought I would find another DM from Melbourne on these boards.

I'm running the Shackled City AP with a group in the Northern Suburbs. Where are you playing?

Delvesdeep

Hawthorn last Sunday, probably Carlton or Prahran week after next.

I'm DM'ing a campaign starting in a week - decided to keep a log of it on here.

More to follow!

I found this free 3D drawing program lately and fiddled around with trying to create dungeond and such. It works great, if you go to http://sketchup.google.com/ you can download it and check the simple mockup of Blackwall keep I made in about 10 minutes at: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=blackwall&ctyp=&btn G=Search+3D+Warehouse. I might try to make 3d versions of the spire or other 3D structures of the AoW later.

Looks awesome; I'll check it out.

For someone's funny story about this cover, check out the thread "Funny Attitudes to Gaming".

I read somewhere that the IDF in Israel automatically give soldiers a lower security clearance if they play Dungeons and Dragons.

Has anyone else heard of crazy stories like this one - BADD etc.?

Quit naming celebrities . . . they show up when you say their name aloud!

Kind of like that guy named Hastur on these boards.

Or is is Hasstur? Hasturrr? Hastuur?

To anyone who has a pre-April query that they haven't heard back on: please let us know, as you definitely should have been rejected/greenlit/asked for a rewrite

As I mentioned before, I sent in a query back in January '05 and still haven't got a reply to it. I don't really care they were pretty crummy ideas.

Hey wait! One from April 18th is still out there...

I still have one from January 06 in "there". Working on another though. Does Dungeon reply to all queries, even those it has rejected?

I was wondering what others suggestions are when it comes to rolling in front of your players (or not, as the case may be).

I am of the view that there are times when a DM needs to roll behind a DM Screen (that's sort of why DM Screens were invented).

Example: PC's walk into (hypothetical) dungeon corridor. There is a small vent through which gas comes if a pressure pad in the floor is activated. If I ask the PC to make a spot check and they roll a 1, they know that:
A; There was something there to see and
B; They didn't see it.

So a DM rolling secretly does solve things like Move Silently, Hide, Spot checks for example.

But what about combat - should you make rolls for NPCs behind the screen or not?

One member of our group has a bit of a problem with metagame thinking (EG: Well you hit it with a 15, but she didn't with a 13, so the orc's AC is 14!). If I roll a critical against him behind the screen he demands I roll again, but if I miss there are no complaints (though he is by no means the only one to do this - just the loudest).

Are DM's justified in making all their rolls (and in some cases, some of the players) behind a screen? Do I just need to (nicely) remind players that the DM's rulings are final?

NOTE: With rolling for the Hide, Spot etc checks, what you CAN do is get each player to roll d20 thirty times, write all numbers down on a piece of paper in order, and cross each one off as they are used up; but I am mainly concerned with combat. Should I do the same thing for NPC attackers?

- Tah

Cosmo wrote:

Evidently Jack Chick was right all along. Who knew?

Definitely a Jack Chick moment. I hope BADD folks are not reading this message board...

I don't think "Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons" is still operational.

You guys are getting me all homesick! *Sniff*

Pining for the fjords ay, ay! Muuooh!

Upon reflection, this might not make much sense to the non-Monty-Python acquainted posters. Ah well...

Has anyone here played D20 Modern? I just want to see what peoples' thoughts on it are?

Ah finally, a thread for me. Where to start? Oh so much anger...

rant rant rant... I'm doing discussions on the writings of Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx with university students at Philosophy Collouqiums.I CAN F&%(ING UNDERSTAND ANY OF THE DAMN TERMS THEY THROW AT ME, BUT THE DAMN SYSTEM GIVES ME A DETENTION IF I EVEN TRY TO CHALLENGE THEIR VAUNTED INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY!

If you are so smart, you would know that the plural of Colloquium is Colloquia. And you would spell colloquium right in the first place.

Link to proof.

I hate that the Catholic Church in Australia tries to block anything it doesn't fully approve of. NOT EVERYONE IS CATHOLIC! WE ARE ALLOWED TO BE DIFFERENT! I hate that RU 486 has come under such huge attantion when it doesn't deserve it. I hate that RU 486 isn't controlled by the TGA.

Well, there are more Catholics than any other sort of Christians. And you are not allowed to be different.

How about not posting your adventure on a site where your players (WHOEVER THEY MAY BE) can read it?

Let’s just say (JUST HYPOTHETICALLY, of course) that I’m one of your players who reads this site. The first thing I’m going to do is to go and change my Ranger’s favoured enemy to ogre-insect-hybrids. Thus you see the problem.

Not that I am indeed, a ranger.
Or even in your game. *cough* *cough*.

If you do not run an evil campaign, do not allow evil actions. You must also make sure that all of the players are comfortable with these actions. Something similar happened in one of my games and it did irreparable damage to my game after one of my players quit, saying he felt uncomfortable with what the others were doing. However, don’t let me affect your judgement; just do what you think is fair.

I would just like to request that everyone stops posting on this thread.

Though my intention in making it was to solve our group's problems, I am beginning to think that this thread has created more problems than it has solved. A valuable lesson has been learned.

"D'v'us", whilst I see and respect your intentions, could you please stop this petty game of one-man-upmanship with the other members of this site (namely Lord Wielder).

The Lord

ah, Eisen? i will admit we have problems, stat wise and other, but that is nooo need to start again. perhaps we can tweak them, give those needed alignment changes, inforce a more RPG atmosphere, and, instead of punishing us all, only punish those who infringe our rules. perhaps loss of exp? we'll discuss it more tommorow...

This what was suggested to me by the player whose character is rellicad the druid. He is willing to make a new character.

Meh, talk to me tomorrow.

OK this is what we're going to do at our next session:

- We are going to start again from level one (as opposed to where we were- level five).

- We are going to roll up our characters right there and then.

- We are going to focus on roleplaying.

- We are going to abide by that set of guidelines I put up earlier, which condensed everyone's valuable advice (thanks a lot for that guys).

- We are going to pay attention to giving the DM the "respek" he's due.

I'm going to start a Campaign Journal (from player's perspective) as well, so I'll post a link here when it's up.

= The Lord.

Please excuse me if I am over-reacting, but your sudden 180 on the situation is setting of warning bells for me.

Are you OK? Are you safe? What happened?

NO, I'm stuck in a warehouse somewhere, in a dark and musty crate, and someone's sharpening knives outside...GET ME OUT!

(DISCLAIMER: I'm not really.)

Basically what happened was that the player found this thread (I don't know how) and expressed mild irritability at its contents. Basically you guys (through no fault of your own) may have miscontrued my words or exagerrated the situation.

Thanks a lot to James Keegan for his post - it had a lot of really good advice.

ALSO, thanks to my DM for withdrawing what he said earlier.

= The Lord

I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the player in question, as some of what I have said and what has been replied to has been taken out of context. Looking at this board for the first time through the eyes of the player, I could understand how offense could have been caused.

Also, I withdraw my remark about the game being fun when he wasn't there, this remark was said in haste and in bad taste.

= The Lord

In summary, mainly for the purposes of compiling all the relevant information for our erstwhile DM Nick (Elan the Bard on these boards):

GENERAL SOLUTIONS THAT WORK WHEN YOU ARE UNABLE TO REMOVE THE PLAYER FROM YOUR GROUP:

I completely agree, Lord Eisen. James does have deep seated mental problems which, unfortunantly, we are forced to work with. However, next time he goes psycho, he's going to be forced out off the house...

NOTE TO THE UNAWARE: This user is the (current) DM in our game.

We should have a good game this Sunday though.
Oh wait, that's because he won't be there...

Edited above post.

Of course, that might not work if your other players are good friends with this problem player, but that is another issue.

About half of them are. Ho hum.

Or, since he is presumably 15, pull the parent card on him. Play DND at someone's house, and have a parent (hopefully his, but with this kind of mentality, that might not be an option) overhear, and either talk to him directly or talk to his parents about his issues.

Interestingly enough, we played at this player's house in his mother's kitchen while his mother was baking cookies, and she was oblivious to his actions (most parents probably just tune out anyway- can you blame them?)

But good advice, all the same.
Thanks mate,

C'mon guys! Don't stop the hilarity!

What do you do when you have a problem player?

Both in game and out?

Here is my situation:
1. I am the DM for a group of four players.
2. ALL of them (except one) have the "video game mentality" (be the best you can, "power-play", don't bother to roleplay).
3. One of them has serious issues.

This last point is my greatest concern (though the second is getting annoying, but I've found a solution to that, detailed near the end of this post). This player is becoming a serious problem, for a number of reasons:

1. Feels that the alignment CE gives him the license to go around things which disgust the other players, such as trying to skin peoples faces and then wearing them, claiming it gives him a bonus to Disguise. I have seriously toyed with the idea of forcing him to change his alignment to Neutral, but I feel that this is just too restrictive (as an added problem there is a lawful-good paladin in the party).

2. Has no respect for me, the DM. When told that an Imp dealt him Dexterity damage (which they do, with poison sting), he got up, ran around to my end of the table, put me in a karate arm hold, and took the MM off me. He examined it, holding up play for five minutes, before claiming I'd fudged the roll (I hadn't, but could you blame me if I had?) and telling me to roll again.

3. He says that unless I roll in the open (even for monsters and NPCs' attacks or skill checks) I'm cheating.

4. Orders me to work in his "background", which mainly consists of him being forced to slaughter all of his family.

Could anyone offer any ideas?

Now I know what you're thinking. TELL HIM TO GET LOST!
Sadly this is not an option, as he and I (and indeed, all of the players) go to the same high school, and as I'm fourteen I'm going to have to put up with him until the end of 2008 (he's in year ten, I in year 9). And, frankly, you've got to have some pity for the guy. No-one else is going to play DnD with him at school (we Australians have never had the "satanism" problem over here, but we still have to put up with the "nerdy-gamer" stigma (thanks a lot, Dr Demento!)).

For the time being, I am handing over the reins of Dungeon Master to someone else and I am going to play for a while as a bard with tens for all his Abilities to show that you can be average and still survive. I'm also going to focues on roleplaying and am hoping by setting a good example I will show the others the true meaning of DnD.

True meaning of DND = its an RPG (ROLE-PLAYING-GAME), not a PPG (POWER-PLAYING-GAME).

I'd appreciate any advice people have to offer.

Teh Lord.

I was taught to play about three years ago in Year 6 by my principal, using the 1st Edition DND rules. I remember looking through the v1 Monster Manual and seeing possibly the funniest looking creature ever. It wasn't updated to 3.5 until the MM II came out.

Of course, I am referring to the Catoblepas.
I mean, look at it!.

*PICTURE FROM WOTC 3.5 MMII*

Who could imagine that such a harmless-looking creature would have something like DEATH RAY listed under SA?

Apart from its DEATH RAY attack its practically harmless. I mean, its maybe one of the only monsters whose alignment is true neutral. Under organization three Catoblepae form a collective group known as a [italic]family.[/italic]

Most of the other creatures in the various MM's usually are listed in the plural as either horde, swarm, warband, pack, hunting party, assembly (Platinum Horror?), cluster, gang (Deathbringers), squad, enclave, company (Insurance Agents, pg 666 MM 4), or brood (Effigies).

This brings up another similar question: what happens if the player (wielding a rapier, which has a critical threat range of 19-20) rolls a natural 20, but then on a confirm rolls 19, when the target has an AC of 20? Does he confirm the critical?

I ruled that he hit, but hey, I'm a nice guy.

"Are any of your characters names not stolen from Orson Scott Card?"
*Much shuffling of character sheets*
"No..."

"Four damage! Teh L33T!

"Is the door real?"

- - -

On Zariph "Half-Mind"'s character sheet he wrote, under background, that he had left his halfling village as a teenager because he had stabbed an attractive girl who'd refused to go out with him. Now whenever he attacks anything, someone pipes up and says:
"He must think its an attractive girl."

- - -

This is not really a one liner, but when the party fell into a half-dragon sorceress' lair and were confronted by her and all her minions, Ender the Paladin, who doesn't really like the party rogue, took out a whiteboard marker and encircled the rogue player's miniature on the battlemat, writing:
"Kill this rogue."

On Monday I'm planning to use a rust monster to offer a challenge to the min-maxing, power-playing, plate-barding-for-heavy-warhorse-buying munchkin of a paladin. I'll report back on what happened.

Well I ran through that adventure about three hours ago and as promised, am able to report back now on what happened to my group of four level 3 characters.

The party entered a warehouse full of large wooden crates. Zariph "Half-Mind", the halfling rogue, loaded his crossbow (as he is wont to do upon entering even the most benign of surroundings) and tried to SPOT or LISTEN for any adversaries. The rust monster hiding behind one of the crates had full concealment and wasn't making any noise, so he escaped detection.

Upon hearing from his companion that there were no foes in the room, Ender the Paladin (clad in full plate mail and with a bastard sword stuck to his hand as the result of a cursed Ioun Stone) strode towards the other side of the room, heading for another door. Upon entering the middle of the room, a net fell upon him and entangled him. The rust monster took this oppurtunity to burst out from behind one of the crates.

Long story short, when the fight was over and the rust monster dispatched, Ender discovered that his full plate mail had rusted away to nothingness. Not too shabby for a creature with 27 hp.

"Ouch!" said Queer...

In the recently started campaign which I DM, we have already managed to come up with several Running Gags.

The over-cautious rogue, upon encountering anything which could possibly contain a trap, will stop, take 20 on Search, Spot, knowledge (every single knowledge category), before proceeding to tap it with a ten-foot pole. He will then ask me whether he finds anything.
"James!" I will reply, "It's a friggin' door! The other patrons of the inn are looking at you with expressions ranging from pity to bewilderment as you frantically tap the front door with your ten-foot pole." He will then say: "Fine, I open the door." It is at this point that I will say that he either:

a) Is killed by a poison trap, or
b) Steps through into another dimension which is haunted by the ghosts of all the monsters he's killed over the course of the adventure, or finally
c) All of the above.

(For those out there who think I'm a horrible DM, both a), b)and c) are jokes and don't actually happen. Otherwise I'd have to look for a new group of players to DM).

The other thing which happens also involves this penny-pinching (or should it be copper piece-pinching?) rogue. Upon entering any room which could feasibly contain anything remotely bearing the slightest resemblance to treasure (I.E: any room) he will proceed to take multiple Search checks (he also has maxed out his Search skill). After each roll he will ask me whether he has found anything, just like this:

*ROLL*
Rogue: 23! Do I find anything!
DM: No.
*ROLL*
Rogue: 30! C'mon I must have found something by now!
DM: No.
*ROLL*
Rogue: 32! Hah!
DM: James, for DM's sake! You find a little crappy copper piece that will require cleaning before being accepted as currency, and even then most shopkeepers will be offput by the Goblin swearwords which cover one side!
Rogue: Cool! (Carefully writes down "1 CP- requires cleaning" on his character sheet).

Just working out adventure for Monday game and am wondering what the monster of choice is for other DMs in the expansive void of cyberspace. What is your favourite creature to use, and why?

On Monday I'm planning to use a rust monster to offer a challenge to the min-maxing, power-playing, plate-barding-for-heavy-warhorse-buying munchkin of a paladin. I'll report back on what happened.

Huzzah!

Just one question: is it Dragon (or Dungeon) policy to send a reply to queries, even if they've been rejected?
Because I sent two queries (in one e-mail) three months ago and didn't recieve a reply, and I resent it one month later yet still have hear nothing.

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding this? I feel that the amount of money for each DC requires adjustment.

Bump. bump.

I'm going to wait a few days for more people to post, then I'll put up a list of all the spells mentioned so far.

Tadaa!

Alarm
Rope Trick
Spike Growth
Spike Stones
Stoneshape
Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum/ Mansion
Faithful Hound
Leomund's Secure Shelter
Wall of Stone/Iron
Glyph of Warding
Symbol of x
Explosive Runes
Screen
Antipathy
Veil
Liveoak
Soften Earth/Rock to Mud

I'm going to wait a few days for more people to post, then I'll put up a list of all the spells mentioned so far.

"I wouldn't touch your skinny, uptight ass with a standard-issue 10ft pole, you overbearing, self-righteous b#&&~!"
Roy to Miko (#250).

a Profession (cooking) chart would be great!

You asked for it:

Cook DC: Result
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------
10 Poor Meals: Cooking meals like these is quite simple. You can sell your meals for as much as 1d10cp.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------
15 Common Meals: These meals can be sold for as much as 1d10sp.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------
20 Good Meals: These meals can be sold for as much as 1d6gp.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------
25 Excellent Meals: These meals can be sold for as much as 2d6gp.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------
30 Extraordinary Meals: Meals such as these are fit for royalty (and those who are skilled enough to be able to craft such masterpieces should expect employment from such if they can reproduce these meals day in, day out). They are worth 2d10gp each.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------

In my game I give a circumstance bonus (+3) for using fresh or fine ingredients.

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding this? I feel that the amount of money for each DC requires adjustment.

I know it's a tiny bit unrelated but...

http://paizo.com/dragon/messageboards/dnd/general/funniestOrderOfTheStickQu otes

Just going to go through everyone's posts so far:

Alasanii: Love the dried twigs idea, would this raise the Move Silently check or give a bonus to Listen checks? (I know its a stupid question, but hey, I'm a stupid guy).
In response to your question at the end, no it wasn't, I just put that in so that no-one would waste valuable cyberspace by writing a post that only contained two words ("post sentries").

Bran: Much as I love to see monsters in pain, the cost of encircling your camp with caltrops would be considerable (though i suppose they're re-usable). Like the familiars/animal companions idea.

Stebehil: The problem with this is that no real DM likes seeing Druids succeed (see the DM Horror Stories thread). Spike Stones is a good spell though.
BTW: I'm thinking of compiling a list of all the spells mentioned, but I'll wait a while first.

farewell2kings: Like the stoneshape idea.

DeadDMWalking: I've used the climbing trees idea before, and most DM's allow it, but unfortunately my DM does not fall into that category. Well, he let's us do it, but last time we did the branch broke and I fell to the ground. Thanks for all these spells.

Zherog: I can just picture our party's wizard putting up a large sign facing away from the camp saying "I PREPARED EXPLOSIVE RUNES THIS MORNING". As you mentioned, Glyph of Warding is expensive.

Peruhain of Brithondy: Assuming you have a reasonable DM, all of your advice will come in handy (never assume this). You mentioned the problem of smoke; a handy spell which can solve this is "Groundsmoke", found on page 73 of Dragon #326.

Kyr:

Trip wires

Pungy sticks
Snares

What is a "pungy stick"? Also- does anyone know if there are any actual rules dealing with snares?

I wrote up a bunch spells in response to a query, they were later rejected, but if folks are interested I can post them for disection.

Consider myself interested.

Dryder: Like the deception idea- might be feasible for an illusionist or bard to make an illusion of the PC's sleeping by the campfire while the real ones hide in cover.
Thanks a lot for all these ideas guys- keep 'em coming!

Just compiling a list of OotS quotes- wondering if people could help out.

Just to get you started:
EPISODE #173: "Hey, this isn't a claim ticket, its just a piece of paper that says: 'I prepared Explosive Runes this morn-'"

EPISODE #191: "Hey, look. I just regenerated a finger, guess which one?"

COMPLETELY UNRELATED QUOTE FROM THE MOVIE JUMANJI:
"Don't worry, its only a pack of wolves."

14. Been playing since 2003. Refer to my extensive post in the DM Horror Stories... Thread for documentation of the first time I played (1st Ed.), with our Principal DM'ing.

( http://paizo.com/dungeon/messageboards/dnd/general/dMHorrorStorys )

David Witanowski wrote:

Actually, isn't it the big one that's named Bitey?

Yes. It's the big one. My bad. I pulled out my DVD to check and you are correct. Now if you will excuse me, I must go and commit sepuku.

Hate to be a pain, but it's actually spelled seppoku (been reading too many damn Von Lustbader novels).

Sounds like the beginning of an interesting encounter. What's the setup?

Basically a band of Gnolls (led by Aldegar and his second-in-command, a Gnoll Cleric of Yeenoghu) have raided a village, burnt it to the ground and enslaved its inhabitants; forcing them to work in a silver mine under the ruins of a mountain monastery.

The Gnolls are actually being controlled by Yuan-Ti who want the silver to finance their latest schemes, and it was these Yuan-Ti who corrupted Aldegar by fusing his body with that of a dire weasel (I thought this would work well with the description of the Tauric template, where it says that most Tauric creatures are created by magical processes).

The characters have to fight through the upper levels of the monastery, first coming up against various groups of gnolls and then the Gnoll cleric of Yeenoghu. There is an also an encounter with some undead, guardians of the monastery's treasure, who are hidden behind a magically locked door which the Gnolls have not been able to open yet. The PC's have the oppurtunity to free the slaves who work in the kitchens on the top level, and are able to get some information about the layout of the place from them.

Descending down a flight of stairs leads to an cavern stacked with boxes, with a large underground river running through it. This is where the Gnoll's store their silver; the actual mine is upstream. Aldegar is here, and orders his gnolls to hold off the attackers while he flees on a barge upstream to get help from the guards of the mine (There is a rope attached to the barge that leads upstream- succeed on str checks to move each round or be beaten back by the current). There is another barge and once the characters have defeated the gnolls they can follow Aldegar.

Aldegar will attempt to leave by using the slave miners as hostages. This should make for an interesting encounter, as PC's will have to use their Diplomacy skill instead of just brute force (it won't be that hard for evil characters who don't care about the lives of the enslaved villagers.)

That's about it.

Looking back that's a bit of a long answer but hey, you asked for it.

Just had a thought that you could introduce a 'divine' version of this for clerics (even though they are reasonably powerful melee-wise already. Wouldn't do it for Paladins though). You could call it "Blessing of the Gods" (Working title).

Maybe shorten the duration of this spell (1 minute/level? Bear in mind that's 10 rounds) and maybe during that time forbid them from casting any other spells (or, if this seems too restrictive, maybe during the spell they can only cast other spells of equal or lower level of this new spell).

Even then, I think its still a bit too high-powered for a first level-spell. Maybe 3rd?

Still, great idea for spell. Might even introduce it to my campaign. Is there a thread for new spells? (or something similar?) If there's not I suggest starting one.

-Lord Eisen