Well, I got into a discussion with a fellow player/DM the other day about Mordenkainen's Disjunction (hereafter refered to as MD). He thought that it was overpowered, since it could permanently destroy an entire party's wealth with one spell. I wasn't convinced until I got home and looked at the rules. I do have to say, that having all of your magical equipment irrevocably lost seems a bit harsh. I supposed Wish can undo the effects, but there goes 5K XP everytime you get hit with this spell.
The more important part is that emphasis on EVERY magic item. Every last potion, scroll, weapon, suit or armor, flying boots, cloaks, EVERYTHING must make a will save or be destroyed. First, let me say that high level fights are slow enough! How long would it take to have the party find EVERYTHING they own (since it's likely that just about everything other than their tidy-whities is magical at this point), list it, find it's Will bonus, compare it to their own, give that to the DM, and let him roll the saves?
The party can't help out, since they can't know what works or doesn't anymore. It's stretching it a bit to say that you have to RP grabbing every wand you own and trying to use it when you just rolled all the saves and know none of them made it. That means the DM will probably be making upwards of 50 saves. Yikes.
These reasons seem to make the spell far overpowered and complicated, even for 9th level. I've never actually played in a campaign high enough level to use it, however, so what have other of you who HAVE played in such campaigns done about this headache?
These reasons seem to make the spell far overpowered and complicated, even for 9th level. I've never actually played in a campaign high enough level to use it, however, so what have other of you who HAVE played in such campaigns done about this headache?
Well, one thing that can help is items of holding. A bag of holding, Hewards Handy Haversack, Portable Hole etc.. are extradimensional containers. I've always ruled that items inside of those don't have to save. (But if the container fails, that's another story). There are a lot of saves to make regardless, which is why the spell tends to be somewhat rare in most high level games I've come across. I haven't used it yet in the game I am running, but I am planning on doing something to prepare when it does come into play. Before an encounter where the spell would be used (An NPC able to cast, etc.) I am going to make saves for most of the key items and jot the rolls down(So I can modify on the fly for buffs, modifiers etc that may change). If it's the last fight of a session I will probably not roll for the majority of potions/scrolls, save when a PC tries to use one. That will cut down on the rolls as well. Doing saves for the rest of the items can be done in downtime (When PCs will likely be using detect magic or some other method to see what still works) which allows the players to manage most of the rolling.
Just my two bits.
If you are a somewhat controlling DM (you know who we are) you can ask people to turn in their character sheets at the end of every session. Then trawl through them and look for major items - weapons, armour, amulets, rings and calculate the items saves (you may as well do all of the saves at once) and then store them all on paper or a spreadsheet. This way you will always have a list of the base saves for the items. Now write next to the items the players current saves. In future when you decide to destroy the item you just get the players new save and see if it is higher.
If you know that the villain has MD memorised you can always roll 50 d20 the night before, it will save a little bit of time. Or get a program (Excel and eTools work) that will roll it for you.
igi
The party can't help out, since they can't know what works or doesn't anymore. It's stretching it a bit to say that you have to RP grabbing every wand you own and trying to use it when you just rolled all the saves and know none of them made it. That means the DM will probably be making upwards of 50 saves. Yikes.
Well, or they could use detect magic and quickly identify the ones that are still magical. But MD does appear to be a massive setback to the party. Worse still the saving throw for an item would be 2 + 1/2 caster level of item or the PC own will save, so most mages, priest, bards should at least save some of their magic items but all the other classes our out of luck ;<
It is ofcourse only a will save vs DC 24+