Man Feeblemind is the best spell.
Our RotRL group has a "zoo" full of Feebleminded and captured spellcasters kept on a Bountiful Demiplane.
That is monstrous, Rynjin.
I'm going to agree here. If all a group can do is mindlessly attack, they aren't stretching their full strategic muscles. Next time, they'll prepare fly, or bring potions--or come up with more unorthodox strategies.Teaching an inexperienced group
Who said anything about inexperienced groups? That's a whole other matter. As a rule, things start out relatively easy and linear for newbies.
Who said anything about inexperienced groups? That's a whole other matter. As a rule, things start out relatively easy and linear for newbies.I'm going to agree here. If all a group can do is mindlessly attack, they aren't stretching their full strategic muscles. Next time, they'll prepare fly, or bring potions--or come up with more unorthodox strategies.Teaching an inexperienced group
Really? I got the 'throw him in the river and hope he learns to swim' treatment.
I dunno, the new players I've met would probably get sad and leave if their character got wiped out early.
I don't pit new PCs against things they can't reach. That's only fun if everyone's used to the fact that the Game Master is not their pal. ;D
Man Feeblemind is the best spell.
Our RotRL group has a "zoo" full of Feebleminded and captured spellcasters kept on a Bountiful Demiplane.
That is monstrous, Rynjin.
Correction: I's a Timeless Demiplane.
I thought it was bountiful too but the Witch (now a Wizard) explained that it was Timeless so they didn't need to eat, but if they somehow managed to escape they'd just immediately starve to death.
...Sometimes I wonder who the true evil REALLY is.
Plane shift as an offensive spell. Nothing bogs down a session faster than dealing with the fighter's new solo adventure on the Plane of Fire.How many hitpoints does a fighter need to last more than two rounds on the plane of fire?
"Unprotected wood, paper, cloth, and other flammable materials catch fire almost immediately, and those wearing unprotected flammable clothing catch on fire. In addition, individuals take 3d10 points of fire damage every round they are on a fire-dominant plane. Creatures of the water subtype are extremely uncomfortable on fire-dominant planes. Those that are made of water take double damage each round."
LOL, Assuming he doesn't have fire resistance up, he won't last very long, but not too tough to last for over 2 rounds!
3d10 is 3-30, with an average of 16.5, with a bell-curve distribution. A minor ring of energy resistance buys you a little time, but not much. A major ring can buy you quite a bit of time if the dice are on your side. A greater ring will make you immune. None of those are unreasonable items for a fighter to have at levels where foes can cast plane shift with any regularity. Not to mention various and sundry ways of having fire resistance or immunity.
Negative energy plane is better, but it is still possible the fighter has an active death ward effect or something similar, like deathless armor or being a dhampir.
In any case, the character's death is all but assured unless he already had something like an amulet of the planes already to assure his escape. That's not my point.
My point is that you're being a dick if you don't let the player at least try to take actions, since their character isn't dead yet. Or maybe the whole fight gets derailed into a rescue mission, because someone has two scrolls of plane shift instead of actually moving the plot along.
No matter what happens, its super frustrating to someone. You're basically forcibly splitting the party.
My point is that you're being a dick if you don't let the player at least try to take actions, since their character isn't dead yet.
I should clarify what I mean here: You're being a bit of a jerk to the plane shifted player if you've just decided they're going to die. Either they get no actions, or they get to roll a bunch of dice to find out exactly how slowly they die. But you're also being a jerk to everyone else at the table if you do give them a chance at survival, not only because their turn takes longer to complete, but also because you're splitting your attention generating a random chunk of the Plane of Fire or the Negative/Positive plane for them to scrounge for survival in.
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If they have no way to survive in that alternate plane, guess what? They're going to die very, very quickly and painfully. As for the fire plane? Unless they have somehow mastered the art of breathing, drinking, and eating fire while also not burning to death from incredible amounts of fire damage every round, they've got very little time.
If they have no way to survive in that alternate plane, guess what? They're going to die very, very quickly and painfully. As for the fire plane? Unless they have somehow mastered the art of breathing, drinking, and eating fire while also not burning to death from incredible amounts of fire damage every round, they've got very little time.
Use blood money and fabricate. Create little bits of diamond at a time with blood money. Then fabricate them into one diamond worth 25,000 gold. Boom, you now can cast wish with out blood money. Note this is pretty much the Pathfinder "I win" combo, so use it sparingly or not at all.
I wanted to find a cheap way to boost my stats by chain casting wish without the need for the cost 25,000 gold component. Almost no way to do it without it becoming massively over complicated. Getting the strength to begin with is extremely difficult and time consuming.As far as casting wish, it's not such a useful spell that casting it one time and suffering a massive reduced strength would be a very efficient use of resources. Soon as that tactic was determined to be something a wizard did during a combat situation, he would have an opponent waiting to exploit it and kill...
What craft skill would you use for making diamonds, and what would the DC be? As far as I know, diamonds are not something that can be created in the traditional sense, only found and cut.
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If they have no way to survive in that alternate plane, guess what? They're going to die very, very quickly and painfully. As for the fire plane? Unless they have somehow mastered the art of breathing, drinking, and eating fire while also not burning to death from incredible amounts of fire damage every round, they've got very little time.Life bubble
Does not grant energy resistance.
Death knell is a favourite of mine.. Really adds insult to injury (literally)
Does not grant energy resistance.If they have no way to survive in that alternate plane, guess what? They're going to die very, very quickly and painfully. As for the fire plane? Unless they have somehow mastered the art of breathing, drinking, and eating fire while also not burning to death from incredible amounts of fire damage every round, they've got very little time.Life bubble
There was somewhere earlier in the thread where someone described a way of surviving on the plane of fire, or so I thought, and the caveat was of course that there is no air to breathe. At the very least, fire immunity plus life bubble would allow you to survive, at least until life bubble wore off.
There is air on the Plane of Fire.
Very hot air, but still air.
There is air on the Plane of Fire.
Very hot air, but still air.
Yep. If there wasn't, all the fires would go out.
I had a player once accidentally activate a portal to the plane of fire. Every few seconds I just rolled damage. On the third roll he wanted to go back. :D He barely made it out alive. I had him roll a reflex to see if he could escape before taking damage that round as I had already rolled it but hadn't announced. The party saw their comrade appear before them as a charred unconscious body.
Good times...
I have to admit, I'm looking forward to using blood money.
Not for wishes, but there's a lot of cool spells that get mostly relegated to the "GM only" pile due to high material costs, like symbols or sepia snake sigils or whatever.
A symbol of death scribed in the caster's heartsblood? Tell me that isn't cool.
What craft skill would you use for making diamonds, and what would the DC be? As far as I know, diamonds are not something that can be created in the traditional sense, only found and cut.Use blood money and fabricate. Create little bits of diamond at a time with blood money. Then fabricate them into one diamond worth 25,000 gold. Boom, you now can cast wish with out blood money. Note this is pretty much the Pathfinder "I win" combo, so use it sparingly or not at all.
I wanted to find a cheap way to boost my stats by chain casting wish without the need for the cost 25,000 gold component. Almost no way to do it without it becoming massively over complicated. Getting the strength to begin with is extremely difficult and time consuming.As far as casting wish, it's not such a useful spell that casting it one time and suffering a massive reduced strength would be a very efficient use of resources. Soon as that tactic was determined to be something a wizard did during a combat situation, he would have an opponent waiting to exploit it and kill...
Well, the obvious craft skill is Craft (jewelry)...
The most common Craft skills are alchemy, armor, baskets, books, bows, calligraphy, carpentry, cloth, clothing, glass, jewelry, leather, locks, paintings, pottery, sculptures, ships, shoes, stonemasonry, traps, and weapons.
I would imagine the bare minimum DC to craft a Diamond is DC 25, considering that locks are only a DC 20 check and alchemical items are DC 25.
Modern humans can make synthetic diamonds, all you really need is carbon, heat and pressure (in a nutshell). Blood Money is providing the carbon (both magically and literally since humans are carbon based lifeforms) and Fabricate will provide the heat and pressure.
Technically speaking, graphite and diamonds are the exact same material. The only real difference is how they were formed. Graphite simply didn't get the right amounts of heat and pressure to form a diamond.
The beauty of Blood Money + Fabricate is if you mess up, you can simply try again.
As others have already said, I really don't care for anything that just takes you out of combat (though making everyone else rush to save a paralyzed ally, for example, can still be interesting). I once houseruled a fear effect so that once you've run away from the source it expires; the players were only incapacitated for a round or two and then had to scramble back to the fight.
I haven't encountered level loss in any of my games yet, but it seems almost antithetical to the whole way that threats work; they run the risk of killing or inconveniencing you, but you work through them to keep gaining levels. A threat that reverses that progress just doesn't fit in, especially if you're in an adventure specifically made for people of a certain level. If you ask me, it's an an element of older editions that got carried over because it's "traditional" rather than something that works in a different paradigm.
That said, I think that you can make an argument for arming your NPCs to the teeth with "cheating" magic so long as A) it doesn't overwhelm your players or B) your players are old school hardcore and want to be overwhelmed.
I haven't encountered level loss in any of my games yet, but it seems almost antithetical to the whole way that threats work; they run the risk of killing or inconveniencing you, but you work through them to keep gaining levels. A threat that reverses that progress just doesn't fit in, especially if you're in an adventure specifically made for people of a certain level. If you ask me, it's an an element of older editions that got carried over because it's "traditional" rather than something that works in a different paradigm.
There are many good reasons Pathfinder got rid of anything that can cost a level, replacing them entirely with 'negative levels' which is more of an all-around debuff with special rules that say enough of them can kill you.
Diamonds are not jewelry. They are merely a possible component of jewelry.
To answer the original question: None. No spells are off-limits to the GM.
It's the GM's job to deal with the campaign ramifications of spells, just like anything else. If the GM disjoins the party's equipment, that affects their WBL, so there should, in theory, be a correction over time. At the time it happens, of course, it can be devastating--which is why the PCs should plan accordingly when they reach top-tier.
I have to admit, I'm looking forward to using blood money.
Not for wishes, but there's a lot of cool spells that get mostly relegated to the "GM only" pile due to high material costs, like symbols or sepia snake sigils or whatever.
A symbol of death scribed in the caster's heartsblood? Tell me that isn't cool.
That is pretty cool.
That is pretty cool.I have to admit, I'm looking forward to using blood money.
Not for wishes, but there's a lot of cool spells that get mostly relegated to the "GM only" pile due to high material costs, like symbols or sepia snake sigils or whatever.
A symbol of death scribed in the caster's heartsblood? Tell me that isn't cool.
I used Blood Money in conjunction with Fabricate to pay vampires in Blood Diamonds. They seemed quite happy with that concept.
Mage's disjunction doesn't destroy magical items anymore unless you roll a 1 on your Will save (and EACH item gets that save). Instead, it merely suppresses them.
Mage's disjunction doesn't destroy magical items anymore unless you roll a 1 on your Will save (and EACH item gets that save). Instead, it merely suppresses them.
Even better then.
Firstly, I generally consider anything the PCs are willing to use is fair game. These are spells I dont use, and dont allow others to use:
-Dominate and other mind control: that is just annoying for a player.
-Wish/limited wish/miracle: too unpredictable, only allow it for "basic" uses (IE inherent bonuses, reproducing lower level spells).I also houserule a number of spells, but that's neither here nor there.
Dominate hehe, yeah. Here's the story of my game group's last encounter with dominate.
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The archer knocks an arrow and points it at the caster, but doesn't fire. Myself with my 26 Intelligence thinks, "Hmm, it looks like he's going to try and disrupt my concentration. Let's trick him."Anything is an appropriate action by the GM.
If I have a player who is "readying an action to shoot an arrow when it looks like he's casting a spell" every round, I cast a cantrip that gets interrupted then cast a Quickened Disintegrate.
This is absolutely terrible GM behavior. Period.
** spoiler omitted **
Heck, I've even done this exact thing as a player, except with a bluff check and a move action to "wave my arms and say words to mimic casting a spell."
3d10 is 3-30, with an average of 16.5, with a bell-curve distribution. A minor ring of energy resistance buys you a little time, but not much. A major ring can buy you quite a bit of time if the dice are on your side. A greater ring will make you immune. None of those are unreasonable items for a fighter to have at levels where foes can cast plane shift with any regularity. Not to mention various and sundry ways of having fire resistance or immunity.
Plane shift is only a 5th level spell for clerics, which means it can pretty reasonably show up as an option in enemy hands at 7th or 8th level. A ring of minor energy resistance eats fully half of the normal WBL for a 7th level character; an 8th level character could afford a major ring with a couple thousand gold to spare and that's it. Rings of energy resistance are very expensive items.
I don't think they really fit into my definition of a reasonable option for a character until a much higher level - and even then you still have to get back somehow. It's a very brutal thing to do to a character, and runs the risk of derailing a campaign entirely.
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It's a very brutal thing to do to a character, and runs the risk of derailing a campaign entirely.
This is my point. Slay living is almost always a better choice, gameplay-speaking.
Good stuff.
thanks. Yeah, best part is that because I was already controlling the absent player's character (the one that got dominated) the GM allowed me to play him dominated (trusting that, me being the other GM in the group, I would do as directed and follow his secret text messages of 'mental communication' as intended). Oh the glee I had at basically being able to become evil...against the party...with another player's character. I did my best to make it memorable, hehe. My group had never seen me so excited, hehe.
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Disintegrate, if only because some pc's like coming back from the dead. I like dominate person and such. Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (from 3.5 updated to pathfinder) is AMAZING!
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I've had two players suffer plane-shifts. One from prismatic spray and one from plane shift. Prismatic spray is the more awkward to deal with because it's a random plane. The plane shift came about from a Lich and he sent the player (Druid) to the Abyss.
We role-played the first one off-line and agreed 'he don't come back' for the second.
I've also had the party lose ALL of their loot @ 9th level when captured by troglodytes. They escaped with nothing, not even the hair on their heads (shaved in preparation for sacrifice, it was especially bad for the intelligent ape character)and that escape plus the capers they pulled to retrieve a portion of their loot were the highlight of the campaign.
Moral of the rambling - there are no spells off limits for everyone. Know your players and make certain that they know you and play accordingly.
Disintegrate, if only because some pc's like coming back from the dead.
Rarely have I heard the argument that PCs are entitled to come back from the dead. *sigh*
Disintegrate, if only because some pc's like coming back from the dead.Rarely have I heard the argument that PCs are entitled to come back from the dead. *sigh*
If only he'd said that, your sighing might be the tiniest bit justified. PCs aren't entitled to come back from the dead, no, but if you're gonna be running balls-to-the-walls with potential or automatic permadeath it's only polite to say as much before you open up the campaign.
Not a fan of Mage's Disjunction. Forcing a player to rewrite his character sheet and recalculate everything could bring the game to a screeching halt for logistics.
Not a fan of Mage's Disjunction. Forcing a player to rewrite his character sheet and recalculate everything could bring the game to a screeching halt for logistics.
You must not be talking about Pathfinder's Mage's Disjunction. As written, and as it was mentioned earlier in this very thread, Mage's Disjunction only destroys magic equipment if the will save for a given item comes up as 1, and every magic item gets its own save. Otherwise, duration for the suppression of magic is 1 minute/level, after which, all magic items return to their original functionality.
I tend to not use spells that limit a player's fun. Repeated use of domination or mind control are examples of that. Once in a while, okay, but not as a steady diet.
My game tends to be a low magic item game anyway, so loss of magic items isn't terribly debilitating, so disjunction is legit.
Basically, as a rule of thumb for just about anything is if it limits the players' fun, don't use it. So even with domination, I let the player play up the trying to fight against it. They can still talk, tell their compatriots that they're not in control, etc. I just tend to stray away from anything that takes the play out of the players' hands.
I tend to not use spells that limit a player's fun. Repeated use of domination or mind control are examples of that. Once in a while, okay, but not as a steady diet.
Different tables have different ideas of what is fun. Some players enjoy, and even thrive, when horrible things happen to their characters. Others can't stand dying, loss of agency, or other harmful effects to their characters.
My players very much enjoy when the enemy pulls one over on them, if just for the later opportunities it brings to role play.
For example: Picard became far more interesting as a character once he had to live with what he did while 'Dominated' by the Borg. His loss of agency - and the resulting carnage - are something that will always weigh him down.
Not that our characters seek such. They are careful to lay down spells that can avoid such things (Prot. from Evil is an easy one), and fully accept that if they do not take precautions the DM will not hold back.
Different tables, different fun.
If only he'd said that, your sighing might be the tiniest bit justified. PCs aren't entitled to come back from the dead, no, but if you're gonna be running balls-to-the-walls with potential or automatic permadeath it's only polite to say as much before you open up the campaign.Disintegrate, if only because some pc's like coming back from the dead.Rarely have I heard the argument that PCs are entitled to come back from the dead. *sigh*
Having disintegrate in a campaign at all is considered so hardcore that it requires a disclaimer?
In the words of the immortal Shatner: Namby-pamby.