Ok... I had fun in the best 1st level spell category and learned a few things, so I am curious about second level arcane spells. What do you think THE best is, or if you can't pare it down that much, a short list of the best.
Either core or things like the Spell Compendium are free game.
Sean Mahoney
On a related note, I am curious on how many of you playing arcane spell casters do things like drop a DoT (Damage Over Time) spell on the enemy, like Acid Arrow, first round, then pelt with other spells?
Sean Mahoney
I have to admit, when I played a Mystic Theurge a couple years back, when I was fairly certain a bad guy didn't have fire resistance, the sorcerer slots in combat were very often used to power scorching ray. I eventually knew I could hit most touch ACs, and it was a fairly dependable means of blasting the bad guys.
ray of fire or whatever it is called; is a ray and does fire damage; nice damage output and such, if your talking about damage output; I guess to be the best spell; that spell would have to be versatile to many situations, but it is never bad to put down the bad guys.
RPG Superstar 2013
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Because the dust is already on the body, surelyan already glitter-dusted person can become invisible. I do't recall anything about the spell preventing that.
I play a lot of optimized, multiclassed characters, and in the current evil game I am in, no two second level spells have been more useful than disguise undead and scorching ray. One requires a special situation to be useful, but is fantastically poweerful within its context. One is good output for damage on its own, and is useful vs big or little targets. But even better, scorching ray has the ability to crit, is low enough level to metamagic painlessly, and has great synergy with class abilities related to damage (sneak attack, warmage edge, etc).
In the epic game I concluded last summer, one of my players was a raumathari battlemage (Unapproachable East). Badass spellcaster with a bastard sword. He used simple scorching ray to put the hammer down on my favorite DND monster: winter wights. Of course, it was often a sudden quickened, sudden maximized scorching ray, and it was often followed by another maximized scorching ray (released after a melee attack),but with his 2nd level spell, he routinely dealt over two hundred points of fire damage in a round vs things with cold subtypes.
So, I hate and love that spell now. : }
On a related note, I am curious on how many of you playing arcane spell casters do things like drop a DoT (Damage Over Time) spell on the enemy, like Acid Arrow, first round, then pelt with other spells?
Sean Mahoney
It can be pretty nice to be rolling damage for a spell from a previous round followed by damage from a spell you just cast. Keeping with the theme of the thread I have grown fond of Flaming Sphere which I cast at the beginning of combat and then roll it around on enemies while a buff the group or attack the enegies. Sure a reflex save negates the damage but against certain enemies it works great.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Alter Self is a fun spell, great mobility spell if you're campaign has raptorians or those winged elves. It gets more fun when you're a tiefling or aasimar.
Glitterdust, I don't see why turning invisible would negate it. Then again, after fighting a certain quasit, if she could have thwarted glitterdust that way, I'd have had my first fatalities in RotRL.
Rope Trick, after8th level becomes a camping spell. Just don't rely on it overly much in -my- mournlands though.
I would have to vote for Invisibility. Sure, it has its limitations (especially compared to previous editions of the game), and it can be countered by things like Glitterdust, but I find it has many uses both in and out of combat. YMMV.
If nothing else, rogues should be rather fond of invisibility, especially if they don't have a chance to set up a flank right away, even though it only gives them a "one shot" use of their sneak attack. Now, a rogue/wizard should REALLY love invisibility with scorching ray . . .
(Not too clear on what happens if a creature covered in Glitterdust tries to turn invisible. My personal feeling is that trying to go invisible all over again won't work because part of the effect of showing the creature up is that the dust covering it will reflect light back anyway, irrespective of whether or not it's invisible, making it obvious that something's there except in pitch darkness; however there may be an official ruling on this subject which says otherwise).
I've always threated this as not actually removing invisibility, just outlining them in golden sparklies. So trying to turn invisible wouldn't help. In AoW, actually, I had a grimlock try to turn invisible with glitterdust on him. (The players didn't know he was blind, so glitterdust didn't do anything. But when the grimlock wanted to turn invisible and run away, he didn't know he was covered in glitterdust.)
The duration of glitterdust is not instantaneous with a description indicating that it turn invisible things back to visible. If that were the case then things could certainly go back to invisible just fine.
Instead it has a 1 rd / lvl duration. This means that allowing something to return to invisibility is actually negating the spell.
I would rule that the cloud of sparkling dust is continuous and more dust would fall on them making it irrelevant if that dust already on them turns invisible.
Sean Mahoney
Seeking Ray is my favorite 2nd level spell, hands down. Nice, consistent damage (4d6) AND it negates all concealment and miss chances short of full cover. Awesome. Buy the wand. It has gotten my party out of quite a jam or two...
And I never chimed in on the first-level-spell post, but benign transposition is INVALUABLE to my party. Even at 12th level I'm using that spell at least once a combat...
Fleece