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What spells do people think are to good or are game wrecking broken?
Depending on the tone of the setting I find a lot of movement spells can be a bit much. Fly, teleport, and maybe haste. LoTR+ teleport= go to mount doom and throw in the ring, scry and die, and inter continental teleport makes exploration games hard if combined with scrying. And the old buff, scry and die trick has been working well for multiple editions.
Greater Magic Weapon is a pet peeve of mine. Not because it breaks the game but it s to efficient and a +1 weapon with XYZ abilities is always better than a +3/+4/+5 weapon. Buff spells to me should be about as powerful as bless, prayer, aid, and haste being the best one. Not a fan of ones that give more than a +2 bonus for more than a single combat or of buff spells stacking.
Anyway are there any spells which you think are so good the game is improved if the DM just says no. Timestop has been a classic one but the game tends to have problems long before level 17.
Timothy that is fine. Just getting an idea for what spells need to go and what spells eed to be rewritten for a personal project of mine.
What's your project?
In an information vacuum, the only spells I would change are the Teleport & Raise Dead series. I'd keep them, but raise the spell levels a bit.
The project is a rewrite of various things.
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I think very few, if any, spells are really broken by themselves. Something like color spray is really good, but it is only broken when used in conjunction with the Heavens Oracle's Awesome Display revelation.
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Terrible Remorse used to be the best spell in the game because it was literally broken: it used to last rounds per level and each round the the enemy would make a save. If he failed he hurt himself as a full round action, and if he failed he took no actions that turn. Problem was a successful save didn't end it early, so for one fourth level spell any enemy lost at least it's next seven turns. They fixed it now though, so a successful save makes them take no actions for that turn but it also ends the effect.
Some spells can be problematic depending on the type of game you're running (Teleport being the big one if your game is big on the journey instead of going "2 weeks pass and you arrive"), but I don't really think any are particularly broken besides the one I just mentioned (that was fixed).
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As for the LOTR example, why didn't Gandalf just have his giant eahgle buddies fly Frodo over mount doom and drop the darn ring in in the first place? (Fridge Logic)
I hear that question a lot. I think the answer is supposed to be that the nazgul will beat the living tar out of a flying eagle who comes even close to mount doom as long as sauron is alive... After he's dead they're perhaps a little to frightened/craven to make an issue of it.
They may even be thankful since the one ring built to rule-over-them-as-well has been destroyed...
That's what I always assumed: the eagles were only able to get in afterward because everything in Mordor was freaking out after having their morale massively broken.
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I think that LOTR + teleport is being caught in a teleport trap and appearing in Sauron's throne room. Game Over.
And really, if we are playing with high magic, its Sauron thats going to be scry-and-dieing you. Incidentally, that's why a hobbit was carrying it. Not because they are resistant to the ring's lure, but because Sauron does not know anything about hobbits :)
Also, keep in mind that regular scrying has a 1 hour cast time and has a duration of minutes/level. That's not a lot of spying.
Teleport has a ~10 percent chance to screw up. At level 9 when you get it, you can only bring 3 other people. Counting animal companions and stuff like that, that's probably not even your entire party.
My point with all this is that before you decide to cut spells, you should figure out why you don't like them. There are plenty of countermeasures available to high-level enemies. Maybe what you want is some mundane countermeasures. For example, maybe thick stone blocks scrying. That would explain all the dungeons.
PARAGON SURGE (aka, "all teh spells are belong to me!")
Emergency Force Sphere (aka, "trade a spell slot to ruin someone else's turn")
Gate ("Oh no, I can't control the thing w/ 2x my HD that I just dropped in the middle of the enemy fortress! Whatever shall I do!")
Obscuring Mist (a level 1 spell w/ no save or SR that shuts down an entire class [rogue]? Yeah, I'll keep some scrolls of that!)
Mirror Image (PF buffed the hell out of it, now by combining it with 50% miss chance and AC whoring, along w/ PF reversing 3E rulings re: Magic Missile, Great Cleave / Whirlwind Attack and the like, it's just insanely tough to break through)
Burning Disarm ("Wait, THAT's what happens if I make the save?! I take it back, I want to fail! Let me fail, damn it!")
Any reflex-based damage spell with Dazing and Persistent metamagic applied (really not the base spell's fault, though...)
Battering blast if you specialize. But its still worse than a lot of dazing spell options (aqueous orb).
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And even if the eagles couldnt have brought them to onto the mountain - they could have brought them to mordor
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I'm not a fan of the scry-'n-fry style either. I've house-ruled that for practically all spells in my campaign, the maximum range is 12 miles (the diameter of a hex on the overland map). You can use teleport to get into and out of the dungeon, but not from halfway across the world. You'll have to get nearby first.
I'm looking hard at the Magic Weapon line of spells, particularly the ones that allow you to circumvent special materials/alignment DR... I feel it kinda cheapens the effect. (Yeah, I'm a fan of the fighter with the golf bag with different weapons.)
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Summon Monster, Planar Binding, and all their ilk maybe? Iunno.
There were NINE nazghul...only NINE.
At the Battle of Five Armies, one of those ARMIES was the EAGLES...yes, an ARMY OF EAGLES. An entire ARMY of giant, flying Cuisinarts. The point that darkwarriorkarg got from a Cracked video still stands: There is no viable reason whatsoever for any of the events in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to have taken place...except that Gandalf, Elron, Boromir, Aragorn, and that Cate Blanchett elf-chick were all abominably stupid.
No great struggle, no "journey of heroes"...just stupid decisions by stupid people. That's your "epic".
That still doesn't answer the most important question...why would the eagles care that much?
Why wouldn't they?
There are many ways to get around these type spells such as my party is right now in a brand new world that no one has heard of fighting enemies they've never met so they can teleport backwards but not forwards if you catch my meaning. And they also just recieved a Phase Ship but they are on a pilgrimage to pay homage to the Goddess of Purity so they have to hoof it or risk angering the goddess. Those are just a couple of ideas.
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Didn't Oglaf just explain why you don't want to make a long journey on the back of a giant eagle?
As for broken spells, isn't Magic Jar basically: "I win the encounter if you guys protect my body"?
Gandalf the White was more powerful than Gandalf the Grey.
Summons are pretty badass, even moreso if you combine them with augment and superior summons, also the the regional feat that makes the casting time a standard action.
Also gotta second emergency force barrier. And any save or suck with persistent on it. Playing a wiz in carrion crown and persistent halt undead is really nasty.
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Every single charm spell that can target intelligent creatures and most non-buff compulsions.
How can societies go more than a year without some bard or enchanter using magic to start a revolution or rebellion to try to carve out his own fief or take someone else's?
From a worldbuilding perspective, I always see the charm school to be as "holy-shit-lets-make-this-illegal" as (much of) necromancy is. Bards getting lynched for casting charm spells and other wizards on the look out for enchanters would be the only way enchanters would not be in control of nearly everything.
As for the LOTR example, why didn't Gandalf just have his giant eahgle buddies fly Frodo over mount doom and drop the darn ring in in the first place? (Fridge Logic)
Because, in the books, unlike the movies, Gandalf has no power over eagles. Radagast the Brown is the only magician with power over nature (and animals), and, at first, he didn't want to get involved in the conflict against Sauron, preferring to remain neutral.
As for which spells are broken, I would say Snowball is one of them. :)
Charm person is the most broken spell the way some people interpret it. It's basically "domination" if you have decent charisma.
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Re: "Charm Person"
I take the first sentence to be meaningful: "The spell does not enable you to control the charmed person as if it were an automaton, but it perceives your words and actions in the most favorable way."
So when it says "you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn't ordinarily do" I take that to mean within the already established bounds of perceiving words and actions in the most favorable way.
In other words, it can operate much like peer pressure. So "charm person" might convince you to do something embarrassing or do a favor that might otherwise not be done.
But "stab your mother in the face" would not, ever, in my interpretation of "charm person" work. No matter what the charisma checks were.
And I assert that this is RAW.
Maybe you could say that sense they perceives your word in the most favorable way if you tell them to do something awful they think that they must have misheard you or you ment something else because surly their dear friend would never ask them to do that.
Maybe you could say that sense they perceives your word in the most favorable way if you tell them to do something awful they think that they must have misheard you or you ment something else because surly their dear friend would never ask them to do that.
This is also a perfectly reasonable approach to deal with the spell. It's a friggin' FIRST LEVEL SPELL. Geez, it totally amazes me how people seek to exploit this spell.
Basically I treat this as listening to a trusted friend. If a trusted friend told me to try some strange drink, I might do it. If they told me to spit on a cop I'd say "you must be crazy."
Greater Magic Weapon is a pet peeve of mine. Not because it breaks the game but it s to efficient and a +1 weapon with XYZ abilities is always better than a +3/+4/+5 weapon.This is true ...
Buff spells to me should be about as powerful as bless, prayer, aid, and haste being the best one. Not a fan of ones that give more than a +2 bonus for more than a single combatWow ... that's sad.
If something is the only action you get to in a round of a combat which might 4, it ought to be something better than +2. As for stacking and uber-buffing, sure that's a problem ... but simply being better than +2???
A +3 bonus is equivalent to 3 levels of a fighter leveling up. Compare Divine Favor to Weapon focus for example. I know it takes a round to cast but it is easily quickened.
And that is before one can start stacking spells. Stacking all those modifiers has been one of the favorite min/max tricks since 3.0 launched.
Stacking spell effects is nice, but it really depends on how many buffs you're talking about. I tend to run into players who go on about how once they cast their four low duration buff spells they'll wreck everything... and then they do that for 80% of the fight and then attack one round when its already about over >_<. It annoys me.
Due to the rocket tag nature of PF/3.5 my PCs tend to cast 1 buff spell then lay the smack down. At higher levels they can quicken things. Still compare a long duration buff spell such as Heroism or Bulls strength which can easily be extended and they give +4 strength or +2 to hit and damage. A very good deal when compared with weapon focus feat for a single spell.
They can be dispelled but since they can be cast in out of combat the NPC dispelling it gives up action economy and gets into the you need magic to counter magic which may not be suited for a low magic game for example.
2nd ed did not have a vast number of buff spells floating around and most were short duration. IIRC bulls strength, heroism and greater magic weapon all stack so that is more or less +6 to hit and damage right there at level 8. Magic spells stacking and the efficiency of the buff spells directly contribute to magic always being better. Its not as bad as 3.5 and especially 3.0 but it is still there.
Acute Senses. Something just feels wrong when a player says "I cast acute senses and then..."
...enter the canyon*.
...search for traps.
...search the room.
...look for treasure.
...pinpoint the invisible elephant in the room.
* Or other scary place likely to hold an ambush/monsters.
No ranks required!
What's more, this spell is literally better in every way to similar spells of the same level.
1.) Why is it irrelevant.
2.) ...You realize Quicken Spell is a Feat too right?