Spells You Never Cast

[Kaelik]

(except for specific Celerity shenanigans)

You have my undivided attention, Sir.

Game On,
fbmf

Foresight makes you never flatfoored. Celerity has immediate action casting time, which means any time, even during someone else's turn. However, if you are flatfooted, you cannot cast immediate action spells, and you are always flat footed in a surprise round/before init.

So basically, Foresight allows you to be in a hypothetical situation "Oh noes, that party of assassins all arranged to go attack at once to begin the battle. I use Celerity, Time Stop, am dazed for a round, then proceed to set up elaborate traps and/or Gate in a Solar, disguise self him as me, and then Teleport away, and then they all get to fight a disguised Solar, and even if they win, I'm Superior Invisible and watching them do it, attack them one at a time."

Frankly, I think you are better off just Shapechanging into a Dire Tortoise all the time if you are worried about that.

[Username17]

The various "sword" spells (from Spiritual Weapon to Black Blade of Destruction) were pretty awesome in previous editions. So Grognards reach for them reflexively all the time. The fact that they blow monkey ass in 3e is a fountain of endless misery and disappointment.

The Faithful Hound is a waste of space. It stopped having a purpose when higher level random encounters stopped having a chance of bypassing an Alarm spell.

-Username17

[shadzar]

A stone’s perspective, perception, and knowledge may prevent the stone from providing the details you are looking for.

Bolding mine, and what the fuck does that even mean?

Game On,
fbmf

It means the stone could have been "facing" the wrong way, not well versed enough to understand what you are asking of it, and down right dumb as a rock.

How about Animal Messenger? Unless you like making rat grenades.

[Gods_Trick]

A stone’s perspective, perception, and knowledge may prevent the stone from providing the details you are looking for.

Bolding mine, and what the fuck does that even mean?

Game On,
fbmf

It means the stone could have been "facing" the wrong way, not well versed enough to understand what you are asking of it, and down right dumb as a rock.

How about Animal Messenger? Unless you like making rat grenades.

I suspect they meant you to consider what it could 'see' from its perspective/height and the fact it may not know any terms other than no-move, move, hot, maybe cold/wet? Asking about the full plated knight who crossed 3 days ago will mean nothing. Asking about the heavy two legs that crossed 3 warms (days) ago may work, or may not.

[fectin]

Bolding mine, and what the fuck does that even mean?

Game On,
fbmf

It means the stone could have been "facing" the wrong way, not well versed enough to understand what you are asking of it, and down right dumb as a rock.

How about Animal Messenger? Unless you like making rat grenades.

I suspect they meant you to consider what it could 'see' from its perspective/height and the fact it may not know any terms other than no-move, move, hot, maybe cold/wet? Asking about the full plated knight who crossed 3 days ago will mean nothing. Asking about the heavy two legs that crossed 3 warms (days) ago may work, or may not.

Right. And then you're playing Mother May I with your MC, exactly as though there were no rules at all.

[Ganbare Gincun]

How about Animal Messenger? Unless you like making rat grenades.

Works great with birds. Not bad at lower levels.

[Cynic]

The only use I've gotten from animal messenger was to spend all my 2nd level bard spells to get them to carry acid flasks into any enemy base and then sending another animal messenger with a burning flask on its back.

Also while the spell says small object, it really doesn't define what small means in terms of the game.

[shadzar]

How about Animal Messenger? Unless you like making rat grenades.

Works great with birds. Not bad at lower levels.

I have seen it used only once to distract a monster with the animal serving as a diversion, and a snack for a hungry creature.

It is one of those "maybe" spells. Maybe it will be used, maybe not.

[fbmf]

What about Create Undead and the Greater version?

Is there a way to make them not suck? It seems to me the stuff you get to create isn't helpful to you at the level you get the spell.

Of course, I am willing to be proven wrong. Is there something I'm missing?

Game On,
fbmf

[fectin]

Greater gives you mummies.
Shades stay good forever.

[Josh_Kablack]

What about Create Undead and the Greater version?

I was about to defend those, but then I realized the spell I'd actually used to great effect was the lower-level Animate Dead - which gives you weaker minions, but minions who are both under your control and much closer to the caster's CR than the higher level versions, making Animate Dead a useful way to get a horde of lower level mooks or an occasional melee meat-shield.

There's not much reason that the first spell just can't keep scaling to better critters by caster level.

[fbmf]

Greater gives you mummies.

Not according to the SRD.

Shades stay good forever.

How would that reconcile with the Pools of Deep Shadow from the Tome of Necromancy?

But perhaps even more importantly is that almost any time you see a Shadow, or for that matter any incorporeal undead creature, you are looking at a summoned creature. When the Shadow's summoning ends, all of its spawn vanish. Most of the time, an incorporeal undead is summoned forth from the Negative Energy Plane by an object that looks much like a puddle of very oily water, called a Pool of Deep Shadow. Whenever light falls directly upon the pool, or the sun rises high enough in the sky that there are no shadows (about half an hour before and after noon), the summoning effect ends and the Shadow vanishes. When the shadows grow long and darkness has fallen upon the pool, a Shadow is again summoned.

Game On,
fbmf

[fbmf]

What about Create Undead and the Greater version?

There's not much reason that the first spell just can't keep scaling to better critters by caster level.

I'm with you, but don't you run into the same argument we had a page or so ago about the Summon Monster line of spells and what is level appropriate and for how long?

Game On,
fbmf

[fectin]

My bad, regular create undead gives you mummies, but only after you hit CL 15.

Shadows would still be worth creating on the spot to deal with high CR monsters. I don't know how that would interact with the Pools of Deep Shadows. Maybe declare that the caster functions as the pool for this spell? I think that solves it.

From K's Revised Necromancy Guide, as reproduced at http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards ... pic=5584.0 :

Level 15: You can make Mummies with Create Undead. This is important, because Mummies are hard core. Also, the rules for Mummy Lords are extremely vague, but could be read to allow you to use this spell to bring your friends back to life. You also get Shadows with Create Greater Undead. That's key, because 3 out 4 of the CR 15 monsters in the Fiend Folio are still completely powerless against a single Shadow.

[Username17]

That's a 3/3.5 pointless change, if I recall correctly. Andy Collins decided that the game really needed the Create Undead/Greater Undead charts to be shuffled slightly. No one knows why.

-Username17

[tzor]

That's a 3/3.5 pointless change, if I recall correctly. Andy Collins decided that the game really needed the Create Undead/Greater Undead charts to be shuffled slightly. No one knows why.

There are some people who, upon entering a room, tend to move things a few inches either way, here and there. They do that, in effect, to extablish their "mark" upon the space. The changes are generally trivial and often rarely noticed, but it does satisfy their egos significantly.

[Ancient History]

While D&D3 isn't the only example of this, it might be the greatest offender: overspecialized subsets of spells that interact with different magical systems. Examples would include spells that were designed to work primarily or solely with psionics, incarnum, truenaming, invocations, etc. Most of these spells had no other purpose, and were thus useless to sorcerers or others with a very limited spell repertoire, and sometimes even required a feat to learn or use.

What really pissed me off about these kinds of spells was how their use depended heavily on an interaction between the two systems - and that basically amounted to how much Mr. Cavern was drinking, the phase of the moon, and the tightness of his underwear. If magics and psionics are completely transparent, for example, simple spells like detect psionics become worthless. If the bloody writers could have decided on how the rules worked instead of presenting umpteen different "options," at least everybody would be on the same page. Although, granted, this is a weird page where you're storing extra power points in your throat chakra so you get a skill bonus on Truenaming for when you cast Horror of the Spoken Name or something.

[CCarter]

Got some mileage out of Mordenkainen's Sword in 3.0 with a character who had a couple of these, stacked some other effects on top, and kept them in Gloves of Storing to molest people. Doesn't work in 3.5, unfortunately.

As far as useless goes, maybe Stone to Flesh, though its tricky. Break Enchantment seems to do the same job (albeit with a caster level check), is lower level, and doesn't seem to specify a Fortitude save to survive the reverse petrification.
(OK technically Break Enchantment shouldn't work at all on petrification since Flesh to Stone is an instantaneous 6th level effect, but its specifically listed as an example of what Break Enchantment will fix...shrug).

[Slade]

What really pissed me off about these kinds of spells was how their use depended heavily on an interaction between the two systems - and that basically amounted to how much Mr. Cavern was drinking, the phase of the moon, and the tightness of his underwear. If magics and psionics are completely transparent, for example, simple spells like detect psionics become worthless. If the bloody writers could have decided on how the rules worked instead of presenting umpteen different "options," at least everybody would be on the same page. Although, granted, this is a weird page where you're storing extra power points in your throat chakra so you get a skill bonus on Truenaming for when you cast Horror of the Spoken Name or something.

Psst: Detect Psionics is pointless is you have a mage with detect magic, Magic and psionics are default transparent.

[Eikre]

No, no, you've got it all wrong. Detect Magic is pointless if you've got a Psion with Detect Psionics.

There's not an actual spell somewhere called Detect Psionics, is there? I just looked in the SRD and, while there are indeed a handfull of actual spells that were authored and printed with the Psionics Handbook, none of them is built for defying the transparency clause.

[Ancient History]

Magic and psionics are default transparent.

In 3.5, magic and psionics are transparent as the first of several different options presented to the MC. In previous editions, the conditions varied, dependent on which books and setting you were using.

Pages from the Mages, for example, had an actual detect psionics spell listed.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

The various "sword" spells (from Spiritual Weapon to Black Blade of Destruction) were pretty awesome in previous editions. So Grognards reach for them reflexively all the time. The fact that they blow monkey ass in 3e is a fountain of endless misery and disappointment.

How were they better before? I sold my 2e books a long time ago, and don't remember casting them back when I played 1e (I was still at the phase where I prepped Fireball in every slot as a wizard. Cut me some slack, I was 13 )

[RobbyPants]

Of course, Fireball was kind of cool, back then.

[talozin]

How were they better before? I sold my 2e books a long time ago, and don't remember casting them back when I played 1e (I was still at the phase where I prepped Fireball in every slot as a wizard. Cut me some slack, I was 13 )

Most things that involve creating or animating a weapon that fights things for you were better in earlier editions because bonuses, and specifically +hit and +damage bonuses, were much smaller then.

The average 8th level fighter in 1st Edition might have +1 to hit and +3 to damage from Strength, maybe as high as +2/+4 if he were really lucky. He might have a +2 sword that had an extra +2 against some specific kind of creatures. And ... that's about it. Armed with a 2-handed sword, he'd average about 11-12 damage per strike. People who were expected, in the game world, to be setting up their own countries, ran around with attack and damage bonuses that a moderately optimized 1st level Barbarian would be entirely unimpressed by in 3.5. That was okay, because monsters had crap hit points in those days, too.

So getting to attack on the fighter table and do 5-20 points of damage like with Mordenkainen's Sword was actually kind of a big deal. A Dancing Sword was awesome rather than a cruel joke. And so on.

[Kaelik]

Other reasons those spells were awesome include that spell durations were generally shorter, but spells that in 3e had durations of 1 round per cl usually had something like "5 rounds + one round per cl" and so were longer. Also the quivalent of black blade of disaster;

1) did not require concentration
2) did not require your actions
3) attacked at range
4) if they made the save, still did as much damage as the fighter per round as well.