Game-breaking Spells

[Bauglir]

False vision has a prohibitively expensive material component precisely to prohibit it from being kept active all the time. If you are to bypass that with a handwave, you simultaneously invalidate the whole scrying mechanic (If scrying truly were that easily foiled, EVERYONE would be doing this - it's not all that cunning)

 

[Felix]

Human skeleton wieghs in the realm of 15-25 lbs. actually.

Then at 25lbs:
10 can fit in bag of holding 1.
20 can fit in bag of holding 2.
25 will fit in the others.
That's only considering weight. Space is the real problem... to continue:

No, we're talking about folding them up. As skeletons without ligaments/tendons/muscles, they would be able to fold up to approximately 4 cu. feet. each.

If you're so keen on the rules, show me where is says in the rules the difference between a tall fat medium creature and a short skinny medium creature and the space they take up. It doesn't matter if you can fold them up, they're medium creatures that can cram 4 into a 5x5x5 space.

As I stated before: I'm not talking about game balance. I'm talking about the story.

So don't have it in the story. If you don't want your NPC necromancers doing this, then don't. And who is to say that the player's vision of his character is less important than the DM's vision of the "story"?

...give him the bag and have him get the rest of the guys out.

I think mindless undead would have a hard time understanding this. They can grasp "go", "guard", "attack", "stay", that sort of thing. Not, "take this bag here and reach in to grab another skeleton and put him over there. When you've done that, do it again until there are no more skeletons in the bag. Then attack."

He has circumvented this and can bring them out at any convenience. Traps ahead? Can't disarm? Pull out a skeleton, send him forward first. Found brief respite in a cul-de-sac in the dungeon? Pull out all the skeletons for some quick (non-?)meat shields.

Good for him. He's a necromancer that spent 25gp on each HD of skeleton, do you think a high INT character wouldn't deploy his resources intelligently?

I take it you don't like the Robe of Bones. That's basically the same thing, eh.

 

[green slime]

I am, completely, 110%, with Felix.

Space is a problem.

Even at 4 cu ft. folded up. My DMG 3.5 lists the bag of holding varieties at
1: 30 cu.ft = 7 skeletons
2: 70 cu. ft = 17 skeletons
3: 150 cu. ft = 37 skeletons
4: 250 cu. ft = 62 skeletons

What is wrong with a Necromancer PC doing this? It isn't a cheap trick: 25*25 gp (creation cost) +7,400 gp (bag of Holding III) = 8,025 gp or slightly more than 22% of a 9th level character's expected wealth. And this character is a wizard, to boot...

Secondly, at this level, skeletons are not going to seriously hamper any real opposition anyway. Thirdly, you have a quote from description to bag of holding:

If the bag is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag ruptures and is ruined. All content is lost forever.

Packing such a bag choc-full with a large number of creatures/undead with pointy-claw-weapons is ASKING to have the bag pierced.

Lastly: The game is meant to be fun! It is a game! This is fun! Unpacking a horde of skeletons from a bag of holding! Great! Wish my players would do it!

 

[Destil]

Can you find a rule that states the Necromancer cannot store 25 skeletons in his bag of holding?

How the heck does a necromancer dumping out a bag of skeletons break a story any more than a conjurer summoning 1d4+1 earth elementals? Bags of holding full of undead have been a staple of my games since I started DMing (seriously, the first one the PCs ever found had a ghoul in it).

Gamebreaking? We're talking 1HD skellys. A 2nd level cleric is going to take a standard action and blast most of them to bone chips.

And the 5ft by 5ft space is only during combat. More than one person can easily fit into a five foot by five foot area.

 

[Oscar carramiñana]

Arcane sight and greater, make stupid the hide or move silently if the rogue wears magic items or cast spells.

 

[Oscar carramiñana]

The retributive amulet (BofED) are very overpower all people of entire campaign-worlds must have one of them

 

[Brother MacLaren]

all these spells you mentiond can only be used by powerful beings, (comperd to the everyday loozers/commoners) which are about 1% of the world population. we play the power weilding beings, not the everyday loozers, so i see nothing wrong in using such spells.

This is a very important point. Some would assume that you can just set up schools and train your people to become high-level wizards or clerics. If you don't go that way - if you assume that level advancement is only for the truly exceptional and must be earned through danger rather than taught - then you don't have the problem of high-level magic ruining the quasi-medieval feel of the game. The DMG demographics are the major things that need changing, not the spell list.

The existence of supernatural figures such as Merlin and the Green Knight in the Arthurian stories do not make the world of Arthurian myth wholly unlike our medieval history. The supernatural figures simply aren't numerous enough or active enough to change life for the common people. They only act in a few extraordinary stories. That's how I view high-level characters.

"Magic as technology" is a different route and one I choose not to take. If I said that anybody of the requisite intelligence can train to become a wizard and that anybody can increase their skill through training and practice (as is true for science), then I *would* feel obligated to evaluate and adjust for the logical impact of every single spell on the game world.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The teleport thread got me thinking about this. What are the game-breaking spells (and why)? Not spells that are overpowered, per se, just those that are often times adventure-unraveling or become ridiculous in certain situations. Go for magic items as well. I'm looking for those that break the story.

For non-obvious ones, give an example.

Spells:
Teleport
Greater Teleport
Teleportation Circle
Resurrection
Reincarnate
Regenerate (why is that wealthy, grizzled adventurer missing an arm?)

Items:
Bag of Holding

If you're putting in teleport, you may as well put in every single travel spell. If you're putting in regenerate, you may as well ask where the rules in the book are for losing an arm in the first place. And if you put in resurrection, you may as well put in every single curative spell.

Frankly, all these spells (along with most of the divination spells) are only game breakers if the DM wants to continue on with repeated "go to point X and get item Y" quests for all 20 levels of the game, and has no further creativity beyond that.

 

[starkad]

I'll be so glad when the latest round of "oh my god remove all this because it's broken" threads goes back into the background.

D&D is a game of choices. What you say doesn't work and "breaks" your game, works just fine in others. Removing them removes the choices that make this game fun.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

This is a very important point. Some would assume that you can just set up schools and train your people to become high-level wizards or clerics. If you don't go that way - if you assume that level advancement is only for the truly exceptional and must be earned through danger rather than taught - then you don't have the problem of high-level magic ruining the quasi-medieval feel of the game. The DMG demographics are the major things that need changing, not the spell list.

The existence of supernatural figures such as Merlin and the Green Knight in the Arthurian stories do not make the world of Arthurian myth wholly unlike our medieval history. The supernatural figures simply aren't numerous enough or active enough to change life for the common people. They only act in a few extraordinary stories. That's how I view high-level characters.

"Magic as technology" is a different route and one I choose not to take. If I said that anybody of the requisite intelligence can train to become a wizard and that anybody can increase their skill through training and practice (as is true for science), then I *would* feel obligated to evaluate and adjust for the logical impact of every single spell on the game world.

And the trouble with the "characters are the elite specialists and there are very few like them" treatment is that in most campaigns it also lacks credibility. Typically, the PCs walk into the next town and find that the local priest is a 3rd level cleric. So immediately the PC cleric is not "special". Besides, if beings with magical or supernatural powers are so rare, why are there so many of them fluttering around the PCs like moths to a flame? Further, if every town of a reasonable size has a resident with access to cure light wounds - i.e. a 1st level cleric or druid, a 2nd level bard, or a 4th level paladin or ranger - you start having to ask some serious questions about population health, and from that, life expectancy, birth rates, education, the welfare state, separation between church and state, the list goes on.

Like Brother MacLaren, I don't accept magic as technology in my campaigns, and spellcasters are few and far between. See the attached document. I deliberately DM low-magic campaigns, because if magic were as prevalent as it's supposed to be in Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or any of the other "stock D&D" settings, society would look absolutely nothing like it's portrayed in those settings.

Cheers, Al'Kelhar