The variant magic rules Words of Power grants players, and GM alike the opportunity to get creative with spells. No more searching for the sorcerer to find all the fire spells, just because she gets extra damage with just that type, limiting herself. Now she can just pick the effect word: Burning Flash and now it is up to you how you want to use it: touch attack, rays, burst or even walls. Possibilities are almost endless.
I had a real blast with this while playing a magus and for my next character, I want to use this system even more as I will be playing a witch. I stumbled upon one effect word that stood out from the rest: Friendship (Command). Normally effect words are lower in power than normal spells. It is a tradeoff you make for versatility. But this effect word just scares me.
Basically, what it lets you do, is just let a humanoid creature pull an Italian team switch for the entire dungeon crawl (around level 6+). The target of the spell will not attack you, not attack your allies and even defend you for 10 minutes/level. That is insane. Especially since it says nowhere that you can not turn the entire enemy force against one and other, or just target everyone.
I found this effect word for a level 1 extremely above the power curve. Is this something other people discovered, have witnessed or even used? And should this be addressed?
It seems to be in line with the charm person or command undead spells, both of which last substantially longer than this effect and allow you to give commands to the effected creature. I don't see any where that the friendship (command) allows you to order the creature to attack other people. It's up to the DM what the creature decides to do to "defend" you. Maybe it just stands next to you and uses the aid another action to improve your AC. Just because the creature is your friend, it doesn't mean that it no longer considers its old friends allies too.
Certainly, it could be abused if it's misrepresented to the DM.
It is certainly not something that will be addressed. It is part of an optional magical system that, from what I have seen, is very rarely incorporated into games. Even if PF2 wasn't coming out, no one at Paizo was going to spend any time on words of power.
Personally, I think the most 'OP' word of power is the undeath word, animate dead as a standard action with no material component.
Purify (life) word is best word if you have to deal with negative levels a lot.
This word is interesting, but like LordKailas said, "defends the caster" can mean a lot of things, so it's only somewhat better than charm person in that regard.
Lock Ward is the strongest word. Free potions for every one that are faster to use.
If you think a scabbard for a weapon is a container that you open when you draw the weapon. It's a free action potion with quickdraw.
Revive is also good. standard action free resurrection.