Both spells have 120 foot range and affect all targets in a 10 foot burst at the time the spell is cast. Both are second level spells.
Faerie Fire negates invisibility for 5 minutes. No save!
Glitterdust allows a reflex save and negates invisibility for 2 rounds on a successful save and 1 minute on a failed save.
Am I missing something here?
Faerie Fire seems to be way way better. Why would you ever use glitterdust instead of faerie fire?
Yes, I know that there's a chance gliterdust could also cause the target to be dazzled. But who really cares about that. The whole point of using either of these spells is to try to thwart invisibility. And if your goal is to thwart invisibility you should be using the spell that does a way better job of doing what it sets out to do.
Dazzled is pretty nice if it'll affect volume of attacks.
20% miss chance is useless against 1 or 2 attacks, but when you expect it to affect 10 or 15 attacks, that's value!
Bonus: Arcane casters don't get a choice.
If you're confident the fight is going to be over in two rounds then the anti-invisibility effects are equal, so the addition of possible dazzle might be useful.
But if the fight is going to last a couple of rounds you are allowing roughly 50% chance that your enemy(s) regain invisibility, for the sake of possible dazzling.
Suppose you are fighting two invisible enemies. Assume that if you use gliterdust one makes the save and one fails.
Faerie Fire: Both of your enemies are without invisibility for the next five minutes.
Glitterdust: One of your enemies is dazzled (20% miss chance) and is without invisibility for 1 minute. The other enemy is without invisibility for two rounds and then goes invisible again.
Which group of enemies are going to put up more of a fight? 9 times out of 10 I think the group where one of them regains invisibility, even if his buddy is dazzled, poses much more danger then the group totally without invisibility.
Let's say you are fighting 5 enemies, none of which are invisible. You can cast 5 Faerie Fires and get no effect, or you can cast Glitterdust and get 3 of them Dazzled.
I recently played The Perennial Crown. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but the final boss takes a lot time to take down, and one notable help to us was him failing the Glitterdust save and being Dazzled for significant portion of this long combat.
Ya, that's a good point. I wasn't thinking of prepared casters.
My current character is a sorcerer so I was thinking in terms of spell repertoire selection, or purchase of scrolls for emergency use.
If you were going to buy a scroll for emergency use in the event of invisible enemies then Faerie Fire would be better for dealing with invisible enemies.
But in the case of a prepared caster, preparing glitterdust means you can still use it in combat to try to dazzle people. If you prepare faerie fire and don't encounter any invisible enemies it's a wasted spell slot.
So ya, good point. Thanks.