Overpowered/Underpowered Spells?

Well, the thread title says it: which spells from the PHB and the splat books (Defenders of the Faith, Masters of the Wild, Song and Silence, Tome and Blood) do you consider overpowered or underpowered and why?

A friend and I are working on a homebrewed D&D, and perhaps some spells could need a revision...

So far we're considering the following spells as overpowered from gaming experience:

Arcane Sight (3rd level): Detects Illusionary Walls, Screen, or illusionary creatures. This not a big deal because AS has a quite short duration. But when it is made permanent, you don't need to put funny illusions into your adventure.
Energy Immunity (T&B, 6th level): Duration (24 h) too long.
Mind Blank (8th level): Duration (24 h) too long, 100% protection against a complete school (enchantment), plus some illusion spells.
Mordenkainen's Disjunction (9th): No fun at all: Auto-Dispel and item killer in an area.
Overland Flight (5th level): Duration (1 h/level) too long, stupid feather falling effect, even if OF is dispelled (applies also for Fly). Makes non-magic traps like pits or switch-triggered traps in dungeons obsolete, as well as non-flying opponents, especially monsters without ranged weapons.

Underpowered:

Cone of Cold (5th level): Low damage cap (15d6), sometimes difficult to use, if you don't want to freeze your allies.
Foresight (9th level): Nice idea, but only a +2 insight bonus to AC and Ref from a level 9 spell?
Summon Monster I-IX: Some monsters have a really low CR at high levels compared to others. Equal CRs within e.g. Summon Monster IX would be fine, IMO.
Power Word: Blind (7th level): Why is it in the enchantment school? Cast Mind Blank, and that's it... Blindness/Deafness is a necromantic spell...
Power Word: Kill (9th level): See above and compare it with Wail of the Banshee (Neccromancy).

WRT... 3.0 or 3.5?


Mike

mikebr99 said:

WRT... 3.0 or 3.5?


Mike

Click to expand...

D&D 3.5 core spells plus 3.0 splat books.

Teleport, all versions, if your campaign involves traveling.
Gate is pretty damn overpowered as well, even with the XP cost.
Miracle, if the cleric can choose the spell effects to duplicate.
Polymorph, Polymorph Any Object and Shapechange are at least borderline overpowered.
Miasma
Hide Life

About Arcane Sight, maybe you like my house rule:

When magically detecting an illusion, you get a save for interacting with it. Only if you succeed, you find out that it's an illusion. Otherwise you'll get a false reading when determining the school, appropriate to the effect (often evocation, conjuration or transmutation).

Bye
Thanee

Arcane Sight It may be effectively very good with Permanency, otherwise it is not much better than Detect Magic, only easier to use.

Energy Immunity I bet this is going to be shortened by Complete Arcane.

Mind Blank It is a very good spell, but not game-breaking. But if you play like someone says (immunity also to divinations, including the ones which do NOT target your mind like See Invisibility) then it may be very borken.

Mordenkainen's Disjunction The fact that it can destroy magic items is often seen as a downside of the spell (makes combat easier but blows up the treasure ). I don't think it's too powerful at all, but in general I don't bother much with the power of 9th-level spells because I accept the idea they can go over the top - to me it is acceptable since I don't play epic games.

Overland Flight They key is average manouverability (Fly has good). I haven't considered this before, but since you cannot hover, then it means you have to always double-move and cannot attack or cast spells without some special feats. Of course you can if you land, but in that case your are not airborne anymore


Cone of Cold Slightly underpowered. It has the same damage as 3rd level spells, but the area is about double (225%). Considering that a Widened Fireball (lv 6) has quadruple area, the Cone of Cold could have some other advantages, especially because double area is only "potentially" double target creatures.

Foresight This spell is very open for interpretation, and those bonuses are just the granted minimum. With good DM's call you can make this a very nice and useful spell (there is actually even the risk of going too far).

Summon Monster I-IX Well, I think too that CRs are slightly low, and in combat it rather works as a mean to delay or block the foes for a couple rounds. However, there are still some occasional uses out-of combat that make this spell more versatile than it may seem.

Power Word: Blind , Power Word: Kill the whole point of Power Words is: NO SAVE!

I suppose the nerfing of the summon monster line was a reaction to the 3.0 versions being too good (I think so, can't really say I found them overpowered back then).

Oh, some more (IMHO) underpowered spells in 3.5:

Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Bear's Endurance, ..., Invisibility and Fly. All of these have a very short duration (10 min./level is fair enough for these).

Bye
Thanee

Li Shenron said:

Mind Blank It is a very good spell, but not game-breaking. But if you play like someone says (immunity also to divinations, including the ones which do NOT target your mind like See Invisibility) then it may be very borken.

Click to expand...

The three different Power Word spells are in 3.5 mind-affecting spells, and as such, MB works very well against them. I don't like the fact that one spell (MB) wards against the whole enchantment school for one day. No other spell has this capability.

Li Shenron said:

Overland Flight They key is average manouverability (Fly has good). I haven't considered this before, but since you cannot hover, then it means you have to always double-move and cannot attack or cast spells without some special feats. Of course you can if you land, but in that case your are not airborne anymore

Click to expand...

An airborne creature has to take a double move with an average manouverability?

Li Shenron said:

Power Word: Blind , Power Word: Kill the whole point of Power Words is: NO SAVE!

Click to expand...

Yep, that's their advantage. But when you can foil them easily with MB, they are either underpowered or MB is overpowered, IMHO.

Thanee said:

Oh, some more (IMHO) underpowered spells in 3.5:

Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Bear's Endurance, ..., Invisibility and Fly. All of these have a very short duration (10 min./level is fair enough for these).

Click to expand...

Right, at least the ability buff spells and Invisibility have a quite short duration.

Li Shenron said:

Energy Immunity I bet this is going to be shortened by Complete Arcane.

Click to expand...

This spell already has been "updated" to 3.5 - it's in the Draconoicon. Still with a 24h duration.

Cone of Cold Slightly underpowered. It has the same damage as 3rd level spells, but the area is about double (225%). Considering that a Widened Fireball (lv 6) has quadruple area, the Cone of Cold could have some other advantages, especially because double area is only "potentially" double target creatures.

Click to expand...

I think upping the dice to d6's would work (using d4's is a holdover from 1E/2E days, IMO).

[/quote]
Foresight This spell is very open for interpretation, and those bonuses are just the granted minimum. With good DM's call you can make this a very nice and useful spell (there is actually even the risk of going too far).
[/quote]

Summon Monster I-IX Well, I think too that CRs are slightly low, and in combat it rather works as a mean to delay or block the foes for a couple rounds. However, there are still some occasional uses out-of combat that make this spell more versatile than it may seem.

Click to expand...

The entire Summon Monster / Summon Nature's Ally subset needs a lot of work.

I always liked this thread "Problematic Spells In 3.5"

http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86768&perpage=30&pagenumber=1

The WotC "Problematic Spells" thread is very good.....for the first 2 pages. After that, it's fluff.

Dark Dragon, I'm very suprised at your list of spells that "need work". Only two of your list ever come up as being problematic - Cone of Cold and Mord's Disjuction.

What about:

• Alter Self/Polymorph/Shape Change
• Cone of Cold
• Entangle
• Gate
• Mord's Disjunction
• Polar Ray
• Scry/Teleport
• Silence

These, at a minimum, are the problematic spells. The others you list are mere gnats in comparison.