What are some cool "off-label" spell uses you thought of?

[Yqatuba]

It seems to me you could use passwall to collapse a building by putting holes through all the load-bearing columns and the like. You'd probably need dimension door or teleport to avoid dying yourself, though.

[avr]

I'm pretty sure the blinding effect of glitterdust was originally an off-label use. Pre-PF of course.

I imagine a lot of off-label uses have been rediscovered by many people over time. Ray of frost to chill drinks or make chips of ice certainly didn't originate with my group. Create pit to briefly drain a stream (a small amount of excavation was required when the GM ruled that creating it in the stream would create water filling it). Web to gum up a massive machine. Shrink item to use a fire giant's magic greatsword as a dagger (D&D 3.0; no penalties were assumed). Message to try and convince an NPC they were going crazy.

[Yqatuba]

avr wrote:

Message to try and convince an NPC they were going crazy.

That makes me think: if some evil stalker-type guy wanted to harass/threaten someone, sending would work really well. It has unlimited range (even working across planes 95 percent of the time.,) and no saving throw or way to block it as far as i know.

[Chell Raighn]

My favorite off-label use of a spell is to use Auditory Hallucination to cause infighting between enemies… defining the hallucination to be hearing one of the others insulting them or something of that nature seems to do the trick since nothing in the spell description says they all must hear the hallucinations exactly the same, just that they all hear the same auditory hallucinations… The exact voices are drawn from their own minds, so Thug #1 hears it in Thug #2’s voice, while Thug #2 hears it in Thug #1’s voice, etc…

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

We used Burning Hands to start an avalanche.

We used Dimensional Folding to the bottom of the ocean clear out a dungeon level (opens a two-way portal between any two places on the planet). We weren't allowed to do that after that one time.

Shrink on boulders, tie a string around them. In 2e the spell had a clause that shrunk items would not expand if they would destroy anything doing so. I assume this was to prevent clever people from shrinking rocks to dust, sprinkling it on enemy food and waiting a few minutes, or destroying castles by stuffing 'sand' in holes in the walls. What it meant was that you could fly over people, untie a pebble and bombard people with boulders.

Polymorph Other to turn someone into an ooze so they wouldn't take poison damage that was killing them.

[avr]

Chell Raighn wrote:

My favorite off-label use of a spell is to use Auditory Hallucination to cause infighting between enemies… defining the hallucination to be hearing one of the others insulting them or something of that nature seems to do the trick since nothing in the spell description says they all must hear the hallucinations exactly the same, just that they all hear the same auditory hallucinations… The exact voices are drawn from their own minds, so Thug #1 hears it in Thug #2’s voice, while Thug #2 hears it in Thug #1’s voice, etc…

For a detailed version of this read the scene in The Hobbit where Gandalf distracts a bunch of trolls so thoroughly they don't notice the sun rising - and sunlight kills them.

[Lathiira]

Party with no thief/rogue in 2nd edition D&D. Used a polymorph spell to become a black pudding and go under a door to open it from the other side.

[Tim Emrick]

I once had a player save the party's native guide from a dinosaur's jaws by making the NPC taste awful using prestidigitation. It was something of a borderline case, but it was a creative idea, so I asked for a tough Bluff check. They succeeded, and distracted the dinosaur from wanting to hold onto their squishy ally (who surely would have died on the beast's next turn).

I have a friend with a magus whose favorite spell for spell combat is arcane mark. It's dead easy to cast defensively, triggers a weapon attack as part of the spell, and is a really obnoxious way to mark their prey for all to see.

[Coidzor]

I once used many, many castings of Expeditious Construction inside of some hallways, filling them (almost) up to the ceiling with dirt and stone in order to "seal" off a dungeon entrance so that it would take an awful long time to try to dig through it. This was leftover spell slots at the end of the day that I pumped out over the course of a month or so during downtime, though.

A lot of the "this only hurts people of such-and-such alignment" spells are a useful backup to double-check that someone isn't using magic to falsify how they show up under Detect Evil, etc.

Arrow Eruption is arguably more useful for duplicating Durable Arrows than the damage output. Rain of Arrows is similar in that you can make a whole lot more golden arrows than the damage output. Slough can be used on angels or dragons or seals or any other creature with valuable pelts/skin/hides, etc. Slap a bit of Mending on the resultant skin and you've got as many of them as you have uses of Lesser Restoration, instead of just being a creepy torture spell.

Less cheesily, Restore Corpse is mostly intended to be a way to make zombies when all you have is bones, but if you use it in conjunction with Purify Food and Drink, you have a renewable food source.

[Chell Raighn]

Another rather fun off-label use for a spell I found was with the spell Brittle Portal… normally the spell is meant to aid with breaking through a wall or door, but in one encounter our party had I found a way to use it for offense/defense rather than infiltration…

We were on a boat and a horde of Orcs were attacking us and boarding our boat by a boarding plank, so… I targeted the plank with Brittle Portal effectively making it as durable as a wet sheet of paper and dropped a few Orcs who had been on the plank at the time into the river. Later in the same campaign I used it to recover our rope that we had previously tied one end off onto a palisade wall on the other side of a moat… we kinda needed it back and it was our last rope…

[Muse.]

My wife often runs arcane casters, and she's fond of unusual tactics with invisibility

Picture this:
A rogue in the front of the party listening at a door hears something, so my wife slides her Sorcerer forward and says "be sure to act surprised!" and casts invisibility on the door. Says to the judge "Our light shines into the room, while we look surprised, what do we see? do we have to make a bluff check?"

I'm hoping she does this sometime to a caster who drops a fireball on us... that blows up on the invisible door. She has had a Mook charge us... into the door. Her comment was "that's gonna leave a mark!" we never did find out if she meant on the door or the mook...

[Katisha]

Use Detect Thoughts to get information from prisoners -

Katisha: "Who sent you to kill us?"
Mook: "You'll never make me talk!"
Kat: "Where did you first meet this masked man?"
Mook: "huh?"
Kat: "How much did he pay you? "
Mook "Hay! that's not fair!"
Kat: "and where did you put the money?"
Mook "Now wait, that MY money!"
Kat: "Where were you going to meet him after the job?"
Mook "La-la-la-la, I can't hear you!!"

[Katisha]

I have a Bard that would use True Strike, a Whip and Unseen Servant early in her life... just think about it.

"Jeeve's, get any weapons that people drop within 20 feet of me and bring them to me...."...

[Muse.]

Here are a dozen old spell "tricks"...

1) Mage Hand to double as detect magic

Player: "I use Mage Hand to pick up the items on the table..."
GM: "You can lift everything except the dagger..."
Player: "Got a magic dagger here people..."

2) Going to be fighting Harpies in your future? other sonic attacks? Buy a Potion of blindness/deafness, and Drink it. As the caster (drinker) you can dismiss the spell any time you want, and in the mean time you can't hear the Harpies (or anything else for that mater...).

3) Reduce Person to boost Stealth skills (+4 size bonus and +1 for the DX bump). The DX bump can also help with DX based skills (like Disable Device). if the target is small to begin with (Halfling or Gnome), use it to switch the skill "Climb" to a DX based skill, as Tiny creatures use DX to Climb

4) spider climb... to ride on the bottom of a flying carpet, while someone else uses the top.

5 Vanish... to let your prone friend stand up and get away from the monster without suffering AOOs.... works real well from a wand.

6. Light... used to signal timing on something. "Here's a light spell on a coin. Wait till the light goes out, then..." and when you are ready for her to do "it", cast the light again, and the first one goes out.

7. Create Water - useful for cleaning, and can expose some otherwise hard-to-find secrets entries/pits easily. Also useful for locating Invisible creatures (like packets of powder - YMMV), and putting fires out. Cast it a bunch and flood a room - but come back the next day and it's all gone!

8. Detect spells used thru doors and walls less than 1' thick stone. Does the room on the other side of the door contain undead/magic/evil/marmots (ok, maybe not marmots...)

9. Ray of Frost - Frosted mugs in the local tavern. Ice in your drink... Need to move something heavy? Splash water on the floor and zap! some into an Ice slide to make it easier to slide.

10. Disrupt Undead - Is that body across the way a undead creature? Pling it from here and see.

11. message - order drinks from across a (loud!) tavern...

12. Prestidigitation - SO MANY USES! No one can ever call you, or your willing allies, dirty again. And, like many illusion spells, only limited by the user's imagination. Need to keep your friends from

spoilered:

reading EXPLOSIVE RUNES!!!

? Just "soil" them and relax. Unless your friends have a fetish about cleaning things....

[Temperans]

You can place nodes of blasting and similar spells on a construct (Aka they are non-living and not affected by mind effects). Then literally send the construct to touch, not attack, the enemy. You can do even with pretty weak constructs, and the only limit is their capacity to hold the nodes on their "face".

You can use unseen servant to sort of haunt a person. Unless they have see invisibility or high perception there is a low chance of noticing.

You can cast the one low lv spell that let's you breath in water on an enemy to make them suffocate. Or you can use it for disposing of people by telling them it's a "friendly" spell. (I think its aboleth's lung).

The Jolt rare cantrip could theoretically be used to power simple electric equipment. It can probably also charge simple batteries (much like the ones we use IRL). Could maybe even use it as part of a heal check to "revive" someone, if you bring in heart attack and heart failure to the game.

[Sysryke]

Muse. wrote:

Here are a dozen old spell "tricks"...

1) Mage Hand to double as detect magic

Player: "I use Mage Hand to pick up the items on the table..."
GM: "You can lift everything except the dagger..."
Player: "Got a magic dagger here people..."

2) Going to be fighting Harpies in your future? other sonic attacks? Buy a Potion of blindness/deafness, and Drink it. As the caster (drinker) you can dismiss the spell any time you want, and in the mean time you can't hear the Harpies (or anything else for that mater...).

3) Reduce Person to boost Stealth skills (+4 size bonus and +1 for the DX bump). The DX bump can also help with DX based skills (like Disable Device). if the target is small to begin with (Halfling or Gnome), use it to switch the skill "Climb" to a DX based skill, as Tiny creatures use DX to Climb

4) spider climb... to ride on the bottom of a flying carpet, while someone else uses the top.

5 Vanish... to let your prone friend stand up and get away from the monster without suffering AOOs.... works real well from a wand.

6. Light... used to signal timing on something. "Here's a light spell on a coin. Wait till the light goes out, then..." and when you are ready for her to do "it", cast the light again, and the first one goes out.

7. Create Water - useful for cleaning, and can expose some otherwise hard-to-find secrets entries/pits easily. Also useful for locating Invisible creatures (like packets of powder - YMMV), and putting fires out. Cast it a bunch and flood a room - but come back the next day and it's all gone!

8. Detect spells used thru doors and walls less than 1' thick stone. Does the room on the other side of the door contain undead/magic/evil/marmots (ok, maybe not marmots...)

9. Ray of Frost - Frosted mugs in the local tavern. Ice in your drink... Need to move something heavy? Splash water on the floor and zap! some into an Ice slide to make it easier to slide.

10. Disrupt Undead - Is that body across...

Love soooo many of these. Thanks to OP for starting the thread. Thank you for your additions. Funnily enough, my current character is actually a compulsive cleaner. I use "dirty" spells in combat, but am consumed by a frenzied need to make everything (and everyone) clean once the combat ends :p

Not sure if this counts as "off-label", but I've used Prestidigitation as a very light leaf blower. Stirred a pile of leave across a path enough to foil the ambush of some big old beetles.

Have also used the spell Pressure Spray (I think that's the right name) as a literal power washer, as opposed to just a ranged trip or bull rush. Used it to scrap a toxic algae/moss off of some too close for comfort tunnel walls.

Also had a smart alleck wizard who used to "slap" his friends upside the head with mage hand when he felt he needed to make a point. No attack or damage, just a gentle reminder. Think Gibbs from NCIS.

[Da Wander]

Here is a story about a time I used a spell in an unexpected way... and a funny "you do what?" story at the same time...

Party is getting badly beat up in a deeper darkness and four of us are in a cluster. One PC down (neg HP) with a cleric over him, another PC in front and my Arcane Trickster beside... the 4th square of the box has a Bad Guy in it.

Me: "I yell 'Down Elevator!' and cast create pit under us"
Judge & Players: "You do... what?"

Me: "Cast create pit, centered here" pointing at the center of the group of figures. "40' deep".

My companions didn't even blink, trusting me. It's was great!

Me: "When we fall out of the darkness, I'll feather fall my friends and I, and watch the Bad Guy go on past." Roll dice. "He takes 17 HP from the fall".

thou it seems now that feather fall would require a Concentration check of 21 to work... something we missed at the time...

[Sir Ol'Guy]

Long ago in a scenario a group of (lower level) PCs encountered Shadows (incorporeal undead) and things were looking very grim. We had no magic weapons and it looked like we were going to have to "flee for our lives!"... then I realized that I had (and could use) a wand of Cure Light Wounds - and whipped it out. The Ranger saw me do this and copied my action with his wand, and... it turns out all the PCs had wands (yeah PFS!), and all but one of us could use them. Went from a "flee for our lives!" situation to an encounter that we could handle easily.

[Hugo Rune]

Light cast on someone's eyes to blind them.
Light cast on a crossbow bolt that is subsequently fired to act as a distraction.
Transmute rock to mud on the top of a dungeon to bury the entire thing (pretty short adventure that)
Glyph of Warding (Sonic) at the entrance to the dungeon makes for a great doorbell. Gives the denizens plenty of time to prepare.

[shaventalz]

Hugo Rune wrote:

Light cast on someone's eyes to blind them.

Light's a touch range spell. If you're already touching their eyes, I'm pretty sure you don't need to cast a spell to blind them.

[Tim Emrick]

Hugo Rune wrote:

Light cast on someone's eyes to blind them.

IIRC, that was explicitly allowed in a previous edition of D&D, but it's not possible in Pathfinder.

I've seen silence cast on an arrow or crossbow bolt as a way of silencing a caster outside of the spell's range. Either shoot the caster (if you're confident about hitting, and want to do some damage at the same time) or at the caster's square.

[Muse.]

Tim Emrick wrote:

Hugo Rune wrote:

Light cast on someone's eyes to blind them.

IIRC, that was explicitly allowed in a previous edition of D&D, but it's not possible in Pathfinder.

I've seen silence cast on an arrow or crossbow bolt as a way of silencing a caster outside of the spell's range. Either shoot the caster (if you're confident about hitting, and want to do some damage at the same time) or at the caster's square.

encountered a BBE who cast it on a tanglefoot bag and then thru that at the caster...

these was some question about the fact that the T-bag actually still being an object that could have the spell cast on it after it hits and bursts - but it was in the scenario so we went with it...

[Mudfoot]

Unless you're shooting at soft earth, an arrow shot at the ground is likely to bounce off and go far, far away.

I expect there are bits of bag to bear the spell in the burst remains of the T-bag.

[Muse.]

Mudfoot wrote:

...

I expect there are bits of bag to bear the spell in the burst remains of the T-bag.

this poses an interesting question then...

What part of a object is the spell thrown on? When an object (in this case a tanglefoot bag) "comes apart" - counting as destroyed - does a spell (silence in the original example) cast on it effect one or more of the component parts that result from destruction? What determines which part of the original object is the spells Target?

If we cast light on a stick, and then brake the stick in two, does one or both of the resulting "stick parts" have the light spell still active on it?

I guess this is the wrong area of the boards to ask this question, and that it should be referred to "Rules"... so I guess I'm not really looking for an answer here. Sorry.

What I would normally rule as the GM in this case would be to have the spell in question end when the Target it is cast on is destroyed (in the case of the tanglefoot bag that would be when it is thrown and "comes apart"). It is just simpler to end it rather than have progressively smaller and smaller component parts of the original target carrying the original spell.

(Though I do like the image of some Alchemist dissolving an everburning torch in acid, then distilling the Acid away, in order to create a free-floating Continual Flame spell that is cast on a "bit" of the original torch. Say a single hydrogen atom... that sheds light in a 20 foot radius...)

[Mudfoot]

I'd say that the spell is on a point on the item, and when the item breaks the spell goes along with the bit containing that point. Unless it's the sort of spell (eg Magic Weapon) that works on the item in toto, in which case I guess it fizzles.

As for turning it into its component atoms, I think the GM is within his rights to say that the spell requires that it be on an object, and air is not an object. PF physics != RL physics. So the alchemist has actually decomposed the torch into air, water, fire and phlogiston, so the Continual Flame fizzles.

[zza ni]

my warpriest liked using fervor to cast silence on himself. then melee on the caster. killed the dark fey queen of an ap without her getting to cast any spells (and turned out she didn't use sla\su abilities. only spells. poor thing). the epic fight went plump real fast.

back in the island of dread (old school red box if i recall) the gm's reason to send us there was that a wizard hired us to get him dino's samples. my mage had one baleful polymorph a day. and my gm was apparently using a cursed dice that never rolled higher then 10. i went around the island making dino's into turtles (easy to catch and carry. once we got back kill and the body poofs back).
turned out the hex-map only had one dino a hex. max and we were traveling slowly so no more hten one dino a day.

went perfect untill one hex had both an Allosaurus and a t-rex (in the ap .really i read it after ) we met the Allosaurus first and he went turtle. then the t-rex. the biggest baddest dino the isle had to throw at us came ( 20 hd, 1d20 bite if i recall). and me with no more polymorph spells...so i chucked the turtle allo into his mouth. got an 18 or 19. t rex went 'yummy' and then his bite delt enough damage to kill the turtle. turning it into a fully grown Allosaurus. -gm ruled it insta killed the t-rex
...we had to find a way to hull them bodies back to the ship. the two biggest samples we could get couldn't be brought back as tiny turtles.

[UnArcaneElection]

Mount (needs to be Communal if you aren't in a cramped space) as Wall of Horseflesh. I didn't think of this myself, but I have seen it in a few guides.

[Loren Pechtel]

Katisha wrote:

Use Detect Thoughts to get information from prisoners -

Katisha: "Who sent you to kill us?"
Mook: "You'll never make me talk!"
Kat: "Where did you first meet this masked man?"
Mook: "huh?"
Kat: "How much did he pay you? "
Mook "Hay! that's not fair!"
Kat: "and where did you put the money?"
Mook "Now wait, that MY money!"
Kat: "Where were you going to meet him after the job?"
Mook "La-la-la-la, I can't hear you!!"

That's off label??

I would think that's one of the primary uses!

[UnArcaneElection]

^I guess they thought it was still in Emergency Use Authorization . . . .

[Da Wander]

a modification of a Glyph of Warding cast on a metal fixture what is then sold (in groups) thru your local "Magic Home Depot"...

"Fire Sprinkler" - When attached to a ceiling, and when a fire larger than a torch is in it's AOE, it triggers the Glyph which casts a Create Water at Caster Level 5 - delivering 10 gallons of water in "a downpour".

Or use a slightly higher level spell and have the Glyph trigger a Sleet Storm (40' radius, duration 1 rd/level) that extinguishes torches and small fires in the area.

[Katisha]

These are actually some "Designer Label" Fashion ideas...

Don't be the last in your adventuring group to sport a bit of "Flash" - hurry to the exclusive design house "The Pleasure of Fashion" in the Ivy District, Absalom, to get a custom creation by that master of fashion herself, Katisha Lee, enchanting fashion designer.

Resent releases from "The Pleasure of Fashion" seen include,

"The Hot Cloak", a black velvet day cloak, lined in the finest red silk, "Flames" tastefully placed in the lining so as the cloak moves with the wearer the flames flash from around her body, giving that devilish look recently seen in the court of Egorian.

"Flaming Sword of Justice", rumor has it that a Andoran Eagle Knight of some note has been seen using an enchanted blade, a frost weapon, which seems to burst into flame when drawn in combat.

"Fire of the Sun", a golden holy symbol of the Dawnflower herself, set with fire rubies, shrouded in cold "Flames"

Cast on a sterling silver tongue ring - "tastefully" understated, to give one that "Fiendish Smile".

Gnomish skullcaps (available both in velvet and in the more duraable armored versions... Talk about "flame colored hair"

or perhaps do a hairnet, created from the finest silk threads, colored the same as your hair, so it can be worn against your scalp with your natural hair passing thru it, with the continual flames cast on the silk. The flames would appear to come from your scalp!

"Hot Seat", a saddle blanket for my mule. So I can ride into town on a flaming a... mule... never mind.

Everyone knows the trick of putting C.F. on an burned out Ioun stone... so why not on an active stone? No one will even think to check to see if the "Ioun Torch" is anything other than just an item to provide light...

these are but a few of the resent items - surely there will be others!

(All items created with the spell continual flame cast on Master Work Items in the highest quality!)

[Mudfoot]

I've never seen the attraction in an Ioun Torch. Having this bright light zipping past your face every couple of seconds would be incredibly distracting, and I can't imagine that it would improve your vision in the slightest. For a start, half the time the light is behind you, which is useless at best. All it does is show the enemy where you are (with a big flashing light) and probably annoys your companions too.

[*Thelith]

Mudfoot wrote:

I've never seen the attraction in an Ioun Torch. Having this bright light zipping past your face every couple of seconds would be incredibly distracting, and I can't imagine that it would improve your vision in the slightest. For a start, half the time the light is behind you, which is useless at best. All it does is show the enemy where you are (with a big flashing light) and probably annoys your companions too.

I mean, if we want to talk about the reality of it...

The light behind you would be best, as it casts light in all directions it would prevent you from seeing much beyond it if it were in front of you... Same goes for all light sources aside from a directional lantern like the bullseye..

The game mechanics version is that it's a hands free light unlike the others.

[Loren Pechtel]

Mudfoot wrote:

I've never seen the attraction in an Ioun Torch. Having this bright light zipping past your face every couple of seconds would be incredibly distracting, and I can't imagine that it would improve your vision in the slightest. For a start, half the time the light is behind you, which is useless at best. All it does is show the enemy where you are (with a big flashing light) and probably annoys your companions too.

Depends on where it orbits. If it's high enough it doesn't go into shadow but it's still going to cause moving shadows and thus be much more visible than a stationary light source would be. Absolutely not recommended if you're even slightly interested in stealth.

There's also the annoyance of flying bugs that are attracted to your head-mounted light. A bug that would normally not be noticeable at all is very noticeable when it flies a couple of inches in front of your eye, catching the beam from your headlamp!