What is the most creative or effective way your character
(or another in your group) has used a low level spell
(1st to 3rd) to achieve powerful results ?
What is the most creative or effective way your character
(or another in your group) has used a low level spell
(1st to 3rd) to achieve powerful results ?
Effective?
Color Spray is an everflowing flask full of effectiveness at low levels, and beyond, as the conditions it hands out are all sorts of combat ending.
I don't know if it was powerful or particularly effective, but I told my GM I would be using grease in the brothels as a lubricant ;).What is the most creative or effective way your character
(or another in your group) has used a low level spell
(1st to 3rd) to achieve powerful results ?
Useful, probably. (insert winking smilie here)
3.5 druid, warp wood:
after the DM described how massive and how strong the table in the middle of the room looked, I let it warp around a monster to hinder its movement.
mechanical tarrasque attacked us, I summoned a few monkeys (summon monster 2 I think) to pull and screw at anything they could find, the DM loved the idea and we won faster than anticipated.
a guy was in a very narrow tower, I mentioned stone shape, the DM gave me a very serious look and told me it was antimagic stone. I accepted.
at low level, an intelligent use of spells can be awesome if the GM likes it, but don't overdo it, that's what I've learned from it.
Very clever, I must say. You are correct that an open-minded
GM is also a great help. They are the ultimate judge of what
players can make happen, even with cooperative dice.
I once traded a jar of pepper (for a few copper) to an innkeeper in exchange for an item worth several hundred gold. I told him it was a "rare spice that I had first tasted in a far distant land that tastes glorious."
Then I used prestidigitation on the pepper so that it did, in fact, have a wonderful taste. I told him that it had no preservatives, so he'd need to enjoy it quickly, within the hour, or the taste would fade.
Grease, seriously. Cast it on a baddies weapon and he has to roll not to drop it every round. Auto-disarm FTW.
Disrupt undead - great for low level undead encounters. no damage reduction, etc
Expedious retreat - I used this to escape combat and/or chase down baddies on more than one occasion. Plus it adds to acrobatics to jump.
Jump - rooftop running. Add with exp retreat and no one will catch you in an urban setting.
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In Masks of the Living God our Bard used Hideous Laughter to get us out of a tight spot with a VERY angry herald. Daze came in handy with the wizard when it came to the low level guys.
The VERY best spells we ever used with Masks of the Living God were Enlarge Person and Bull's Strength on the barbarian. Imagine seeing a 12 ft tiefling with a greataxe greeting you as you run out from the doorway (a smoke stick had been thrown). Ahh the memories.
Silent image, possibly paired up with ghost sound, is an easy way to modify reality in dramatic ways even at high level. I can't count the number of times I've used 1st level illusions to hide or disguise our party to bypass obstacles, to mislead opponents out of combat and to distract or block enemies in combat. Really, with a bit of insight into your opponents' mindset and some creativity, there's little one can't lead them to do or not do.
Nothing too good. Recently used corrosive touch to clear a blocked tunnel with my sorceror. But I have an idea. Acid splash drinking contest. My sorc has acid resist 5, and Id like to meat the barfly who can chug acid.
I did however have a previous party member turn a hopeless fight around with color spray. Dropped 3 flying gargoyles out of the sky. Protip: Cone is a 3 dimentional shape.
I once sank an attacking Pirate Ship by using Warp Wood. The DM was a bit upset because he was planning on it being a large scale battle and it was over in a few rounds instead.
Web and fire spells became a recurring tactic when facing Large or bigger enemies for my group. Each square of the web that is on fire deals 2d4 points of damage to whatever is in the square. That's 8d4 points of fire damage to Large creatures.
Unfortunately, my DMs say the Grease spell isn't flammable. :(
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Silent Image and Minor Image... probably two of the most under rated spells. Need to get your party full of obviously hero types into an unfriendly location. Stick'm in the back of a wagon, cover them with the illusion of cargo, and have one guy out front who can bluff like a mofo.
It is your original Trojan horse.
Or, heavily guarded tower full of trolls who clearly have a massive tactical advantage. Minor image of a small caravan of merchants with cattle. Good enough to draw the hungry buggers out, bye bye tactical superiority. Hello fireball (except our wizard couldn't make it that night.)
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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What is the most creative or effective way your character
(or another in your group) has used a low level spell
(1st to 3rd) to achieve powerful results ?
My two favorite low level spell stories:
Our group was bard, monk, druid. We were traveling through some forest, and every night some creature was out in the woods horribly slaughtering animals loudly, in order to disrupt our sleep. Basically, we went about two nights with no recovery of spells and were fatigued. Whatever it was would just leave if we went to try and find it, then come back once we gave up. The third night, I(the druid) cast light on a couple of small rocks, then cast summon nature's ally II to get 1d3 hawks(I only got one), who picked up a lit object and spiralled out from the camp with its large fly speed, revealing the hatchling black dragon that had been tormenting us. One faerie fire later and the dragon's life was full of monk and kitty cat.
For the other story, I was playing a shugenja/assassin in the Rokugan setting for d20/3.5. We were trying to retrieve a scroll that had a treaty or something on it in order to stop a war. There was some woman that we'll go ahead and label "ninja" trying to stop us, and she had gotten ahold of the scroll. She was standing atop a wall bullrushing people off of it that tried to melee her and while the scroll would occasionally get disarmed, she was fighting unarmed and would just grab it back on her turn. My character got the scroll and I immediately cast meld into stone to merge with the wall. The ninja realized it would take her several rounds to chip me out of the wall while she got beat upon by the rest of the party, and decided to retreat.
Web and fire spells became a recurring tactic when facing Large or bigger enemies for my group. Each square of the web that is on fire deals 2d4 points of damage to whatever is in the square. That's 8d4 points of fire damage to Large creatures.
Unfortunately, my DMs say the Grease spell isn't flammable. :(
"The strands of a web spell are flammable. A flaming weapon can slash them away as easily as a hand brushes away cobwebs. Any fire can set the webs alight and burn away one 5-foot square in 1 round. All creatures within flaming webs take 2d4 points of fire damage from the flames."
I thought each creature just takes 2d4 fire damage, no matter how many squares they take up.
"The strands of a web spell are flammable. A flaming weapon can slash them away as easily as a hand brushes away cobwebs. Any fire can set the webs alight and burn away one 5-foot square in 1 round. All creatures within flaming webs take 2d4 points of fire damage from the flames."
I thought each creature just takes 2d4 fire damage, no matter how many squares they take up.
We decided that if one square burning did 2d4, then managing to burn more did more damage.
Silent Image and Minor Image... It is your original Trojan horse.
Exactly. But it can do so much more than that. Twice I've infiltrated enemy strongholds and then created the illusion of a trusted ally or leader of the inhabitants and instructed them (in the manner expected of the person being mimicked) to gather around to listen to some sort of statement. Since the spells last as long as they're concentrated upon it was a simple matter to wait around while the stronholds' occupants came out of the woodwork to gather in one place. Then, boom, I dropped area of effect magics on the surprised assembly as the illusions faded. In one case it was an improvised bomb made of volatile magic skulls dropped onto the heads of an extended tribe of goblins and in the other it was a cone of cold on a clan of ogres. Then it was a simple matter for the party to come out of hiding to wipe out the survivors. And where was the party hiding? In the first case they were simply invisible and waiting on the sidelines, in the second they were actually clustered beneath skirts of the illusionary ogre leader.
Why slog through an interminable room-to-room running battle within a keep when you can have the inhabitants calmly exit and line up in front for quick and efficient disposal? That's the true power of this lowly first level spell.
Well... I almost TPK'd a group of first level PC's with Color Spray. When I GM my bad guys tend to win more often than not.That's not necessarily something to be proud of. Garden variety mooks should not all fight with the cleverness of your ultimate BBEG. A boast like that sounds somewhat like you're in some sort of competition with your players... a bad place for a GM to be.
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We decided that if one square burning did 2d4, then managing to burn more did more damage."The strands of a web spell are flammable. A flaming weapon can slash them away as easily as a hand brushes away cobwebs. Any fire can set the webs alight and burn away one 5-foot square in 1 round. All creatures within flaming webs take 2d4 points of fire damage from the flames."
I thought each creature just takes 2d4 fire damage, no matter how many squares they take up.
Do large creatures also take more damage from area spells?
We had no way to make an invisible, flying spell caster visible with the spells we had left so I (druid) casted create water over top of him and had the wizard cast a prestigitation on the water as it was forming, making it glow a neon green right before it splashed down on our foe. Didn't make him fully visible but we didn't have any trouble figuring out which square he was in.
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+1Well... I almost TPK'd a group of first level PC's with Color Spray. When I GM my bad guys tend to win more often than not.That's not necessarily something to be proud of. Garden variety mooks should not all fight with the cleverness of your ultimate BBEG. A boast like that sounds somewhat like you're in some sort of competition with your players... a bad place for a GM to be.
+2
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That's not necessarily something to be proud of. Garden variety mooks should not all fight with the cleverness of your ultimate BBEG. A boast like that sounds somewhat like you're in some sort of competition with your players... a bad place for a GM to be.
Not a boast, just a fact. Also, I don't run my own adventures, I just don't have the time to sit down and create something, so I run pre-made adventures or stuff from the PFS that has the bad guys tactics and morale written into the stat block and I run them as written making adjustments based on unexpected player choices. I also roll my dice out in the open so that I don't have to try to explain that the 4 nat 20's I just rolled were really nat 20's or the nat 1 that was rolled at a "convenient" time fro the party was really a nat 1. I was more pointing out that Color Spray is ridiculously powerful at low levels and any "mook" (a.k.a. a first level wizard or sorcerer) that can cast it know's how to make it work. It also doesn't help that the saves from the two fighters was a roll of a 2 and 4 and they were the only real damage dealers the party had.
Are there any other words or attitudes you'd like to put into my message that aren't there?
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In 3rd edition, shield other was decent. Combined with a cleric who can channel energy, and heal himself and the recipient of the shield other with a single action, it's very nice.
Anything that divides big damage hits among multiple characters, combined with the AoE healing potential of channel energy synergizes well.
I once traded a jar of pepper (for a few copper) to an innkeeper in exchange for an item worth several hundred gold. I told him it was a "rare spice that I had first tasted in a far distant land that tastes glorious."
Then I used prestidigitation on the pepper so that it did, in fact, have a wonderful taste. I told him that it had no preservatives, so he'd need to enjoy it quickly, within the hour, or the taste would fade.
In the middle ages pepper was a luxury item, at times worth its weight in gold. It did indeed come from a "far distant land" (India, for the most part). Also, no need for prestidigitation... pepper already has a glorious taste! (sorry to threadjack. I love me some pepper.) =)
That's not necessarily something to be proud of. Garden variety mooks should not all fight with the cleverness of your ultimate BBEG. A boast like that sounds somewhat like you're in some sort of competition with your players... a bad place for a GM to be.Not a boast, just a fact. Also, I don't run my own adventures, I just don't have the time to sit down and create something, so I run pre-made adventures or stuff from the PFS that has the bad guys tactics and morale written into the stat block and I run them as written making adjustments based on unexpected player choices. I also roll my dice out in the open so that I don't have to try to explain that the 4 nat 20's I just rolled were really nat 20's or the nat 1 that was rolled at a "convenient" time fro the party was really a nat 1. I was more pointing out that Color Spray is ridiculously powerful at low levels and any "mook" (a.k.a. a first level wizard or sorcerer) that can cast it know's how to make it work. It also doesn't help that the saves from the two fighters was a roll of a 2 and 4 and they were the only real damage dealers the party had.
Are there any other words or attitudes you'd like to put into my message that aren't there?
I am going to assume you are better than the players at this game. Do you go over what happened to make them lose so they get better?
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I am going to assume you are better than the players at this game. Do you go over what happened to make them lose so they get better?
I try, a lot of the time it's been bad dice rolls, the character with the 50/50 shot of making a save rolls a 3 at the worst possible time, they roll under 10 on the dice to hit the AC 14 creature, I roll nothing below a 15 on five different dice to hit them. Stuff like that. I'm not a cruel, me vs them, type of GM. I'll even give them hints during the combat as to what's going on but I don't want to just say "Oh, here's the Bestiary, the monster's on page "x" and this is what you need to do to kill it." I try to tell them to take knowledge skills, what rolls to make when, etc...
But, back to the topic at hand. I do remember one time when I was playing when we killed an Iron Golem with the Grease spell. We couldn't hit it very easily since it was an advanced bugger, so the wizard after spending 2 rounds going over what spells he had that could affect it cast Grease under it. Needless to say it dropped prone and between it taking a penalty to hit and our fighters getting the bonus we were able to dismantle it. That was a rough fight though from what I recall.
I try, a lot of the time it's been bad dice rolls, the character with the 50/50 shot of making a save rolls a 3 at the worst possible time, they roll under 10 on the dice to hit the AC 14 creature, I roll nothing below a 15 on five different dice to hit them. Stuff like that. I'm not a cruel, me vs them, type of GM. I'll even give them hints during the combat as to what's going on but I don't want to just say "Oh, here's the Bestiary, the monster's on page "x" and this is what you need to do to kill it." I try to tell them to take knowledge skills, what rolls to make when, etc...
And I've fairly consistently killed an average of three people a game (not a session, thankfully) using other systems, even when I'm treading softly and not hitting hard on purpose. Though finally, recently, one guy broke his streak - he'd never played a game where I GM'd that he hadn't died at least once. This time he played a CN (actually becoming CE) selfish jerk who took stupid risks and then thrust others in front of him when convenient. First time he survived a whole adventure.
Good news: this has not proven as true with the pre-published adventure paths. Yet.
Anyway, here's hoping we both get better at that!
I try to tell them to take knowledge skills, what rolls to make when, etc...
Well you have done your part. Sometimes the dice gods are just cruel. I remember it taking my group 2 hours to kill some goblins, just because everyone was rolling so poorly. :(
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Generally, I think it is the job of the GM to make sure his (or her) players are having fun. If they are always dying, they are probably not having fun.
When I used to Gm, I would have my players roll in the open for all to see and verify, but I rolled behind the screen. When they asked why, I told them that the Gm needs to have his secrets. In reality, I was making sure that the adventure was balanced and fun. If I roll a crit roll with a monster and know that it will probably kill a character, I would NEVER hesitate to modify it to be a normal hit, or even a miss if need be. When the Gm rolls in the open, its a lot harder to "fix" rolls, when need be. It can work the other way too, where your monsters always seem to miss and you "fix" a roll into a hit. Likewise, if a monster (or swarm) knocks someone unconscious and one more hit will kill the player, I look for any excuse to have the monster change targets. I've been in games where my character died from that exact scenario and other players were doing everything they could to draw the swarm off my unconscious body, but the Gm chose to have them kill me instead. He was being a jerk and WANTED to kill a character (mine), and trust me, nobody in the group had fun after that. We all saw it for what it was and I doubt any of us will ever play with that GM again. I am not suggesting that you gimp your monsters, but the game tends to play better when nobody is pissed about dying.
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I try, a lot of the time it's been bad dice rolls, the character with the 50/50 shot of making a save rolls a 3 at the worst possible time, they roll under 10 on the dice to hit the AC 14 creature, I roll nothing below a 15 on five different dice to hit them.
[tangent]
I sometimes 'cheat' by not allowing NPC spellcasters to load up on 'save or dies' until higher levels, when players have more options to deal with them. In a 1st level game, a sorcerer with color spray or sleep (not an uncommon choice) can TPK the 1st level party of four by himself, under the wrong circumstances. His alternatives, burning hands or magic missile, at 1st level, tend to *hugely* suck, on the other hand, leaving me in the position of accidentally killing the whole party, or mildly annoying one of them by using evocation.On the other hand, something like Action Points (or Mutants & Masterminds Hero Points) might help to deal with when the dice are being unfair.
The way M&M does it, allows the GM to ration them out as well, by allowing the GM to blatantly cheat in service to the story (letting a bad-guy who you didn't want beaten quite yet escape through a hidden trap door that technically didn't exist until just now, when you needed it for his miraculous escape), but when the GM performs this sort of trickery, it's out in the open, everybody knows about it, and the players all receive a Hero Point, good for one reroll (and, if the reroll on the d20 is less than 10, they get to add +10 to the new roll, so it will pretty much never be worse than the original roll).
Because the PCs are mostly getting Hero Points when the GM is 'cheating' to advance the storyline, it's less of a 'freebie' than the usual sorts of Action Points / Luck Points mechanics, which get rationed out by level or based on Cha score or whatever.
[/tangent]
Well... I almost TPK'd a group of first level PC's with Color Spray. When I GM my bad guys tend to win more often than not.That's not necessarily something to be proud of. Garden variety mooks should not all fight with the cleverness of your ultimate BBEG. A boast like that sounds somewhat like you're in some sort of competition with your players... a bad place for a GM to be.
To paraphrase another poster in another thread, you teach your players to have better Will saves or not to all pack into a 15' cone. You teach them by killing them.
I sometimes 'cheat' by not allowing NPC spellcasters to load up on 'save or dies' until higher levels, when players have more options to deal with them. In a 1st level game, a sorcerer with color spray or sleep (not an uncommon choice) can TPK the 1st level party of four by himself, under the wrong circumstances. His alternatives, burning hands or magic missile, at 1st level, tend to *hugely* suck, on the other hand, leaving me in the position of accidentally killing the whole party, or mildly annoying one of them by using evocation.
Whenever I do this, I usually capture the PCs instead of killing them and let them figure out how to escape.