Spells I Never Use

[Sparafucile]

After DMing 3.5 off and on for 5 years, there are many spells I've never used against players. We've been hearing about 4th edition, and how they have removed save or die effects from the game, and I was wondering how I compare. I still enjoy seeing save or die effects in my games, but only from my players. Never from me as the DM. I've essentially "soft banned" them from myself.

For the first time, I've complied a complete list of the spells I am reticent to use. I'll note again: These spells are not banned from my game, and players are free to use them as much as they want. I just don't use them as DM.

I never use the following, because it slows down game play so much, requiring multiple rolls for each character in the area, on every turn:

Entangle
Web
Confusion (insanity’s okay though, as it affects one PC)
Evard’s Black Tentacles
Holy Word/Blasphemy/Etc. (the confusion effects come up)

I also don't use the following because it requires a stoppage of game time to resolve, even though they only affect a single character. As DM, I can improvise the effects quickly and fairly, but a PC has to play it out by the rules. If the player isn't clueful enough, then it can take twice as long to figure out:

Enervation
Baleful Polymorph
Energy Drain

I never use the following, because they can be a bummer. I actually hate it when a full strength PC is taken out of a fight entirely by a single failed save that has nothing to do with their hit points, ability scores, or their resources. Still, it's always fun whenever a PC does it to me, and often makes a great story for the encounter:

Scare
Death Knell
Phantasmal Killer
Fear
Slay Living
Circle of Death
Flesh to Stone
Disintegrate
Finger of Death
Maze
Symbol of Death
Imprisonment
Power word Kill
Weird
Wail of the Banshee
Implosion

I would like to add the following to the above lists and bury them forever from my NPC's castings, but unfortuantely, I feel like they are necessary spells to use against the PCs. I wish there were ways to speed up their resolution (especially at high levels). For now, they are still used as is:

Dispel Magic
Greater Dispel Magic
Antimagic Shell
Mordenkainen’s Disjunction

I'd also note that certain monsters have abilities that can take out PCs with one save. Except for gaze attacks, which can be avoided in a number of ways, I often do not use that particualr monster's ability. That includes the various fear effects that add frightened or panicked status for more than a couple rounds, death rays (like from a beholder), and so on.

For things like stunning effects that last longer than a round (like a mind flayer), I fudge and make the effect last the minimum duration (as if I rolled 1s). I've also hesitated to use a grapple before, just to speed up game time, but not exclusively.

Has anyone else "soft banned" spells or abilities like this?

 

[roguerouge]

Well, that's one way to power up the rogue and fighter type classes: a lot of these are Will or Fort saves, so reducing the likelihood of your weakest save coming does help them.

 

[werk]

Has anyone else "soft banned" spells or abilities like this?

Nope, never really had problems bad enough to warrant such a huge modification of the game.

 

[Sparafucile]

Nope, never really had problems bad enough to warrant such a huge modification of the game.

That's cool.

I also don't think they're necessarily modifications. It's just when I make a NPC spellcaster, or use a pregenerated one, I simply use other otions than those listed above. The PCs still have acess to those effects.

When I ran Age of Worms, I had this huge buildup leading to the Froghemoth encounter in "Champion's Belt." Then, in round one, the cleric walked up and tried slay living. I roll a "2," and the entire table erupts. It's an encounter we still talk about.

We never talk about the time when the Beholder in Shackled City (me as a PC) reduced half to the party in a single round. . . it has nothing to do with fairness. It's just boring to see half half the table sitting on their hands for the next two hours.

A PC gets ganked, that Player's game stops immediately. An NPC gets ganked, the game goes on.

 

[Voadam]

Has anyone else "soft banned" spells or abilities like this?

I turned save or die effects into save or dieing (-1 hp and bleeding down 1 hp a round).

I was swapping out bodaks for similar CR critters before but have no hesitation about using them as foes now.

Death is game and plot stopping action. Dieing causes dynamic in combat choices about fighting the foe or healing up the dying and does not generally screw up the game plot or active adventure.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Your list of banned spells shows a few common themes:

1) Save or Screwed
2) Heavy Recalculation
3) Complicated ongoing effect

I will just cherry pick a few from your list to comment on:



Entangle, Web: The Str check to break free was set way too damn high for a first level spell. The one time I used entangle, the players were all stuck and then vulnerable to archers. Web also has a break through DC that is set too high. Web in particular presents a problem, since the webs provide cover against ranged attacks. This leaves you in an awkward situation where you have not won the fight, since you cannot easily coup-de-grace or kill your opponents, but those trapped are also unable to fight back.

Confusion: I have never heard complaints about this spell before. What in particular is it that bugs you about the confusion effect? Too much book keeping, or the annoyance of randomly lost actions?


Evard’s Black Tentacles: No one likes grapple.

Scare, Fear: Using the Panicked condition as written just screws things up in play. It takes the victim out of combat for duration x2 (X rounds running away, X rounds returning).


Dispel Magic / Greater Dispel Magic: Combat in my game has not gotten to the point where there are many ongoing effects being tracked. If your players tend to prebuff often, I can see where your coming from.

Antimagic Shell: The only problem here is pure recalculation, and in most cases, I think this one is easy to resolve. No opposed rolls, and you only need to remember a handfull of modifiers. This is perhaps more troublesome if you have a bunch of +X magic items that players have precalculated.

Mordenkainen’s Disjunction: Players are over protective of their gear. But the upshot is that if you use it often enough, it gets pretty easy to resolve.

Other than a few of the ones you list, I can think of a few I tend to avoid.

1) Touch attack spells: The targets I am likely to use them on do not tend to miss on the AoO.

2) Immediate Actions spells: Aside from being potentially infuriating to players who have not used much of the content within PHB 2, it is just too damn easy to forget you have them.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Aidan Milvus]

I tend to agree. While I don't outright ban myself from using a lot of these spells, I do tend to not prepare them, or use them as a last ditch kind of thing if they are prepared.

1) Touch attack spells: The targets I am likely to use them on do not tend to miss on the AoO.

Just curious about something. Do your casters not have good Concentration skills? If they cast defensively, there's no AoO to worry about. Using a touch spell in combat is considered an "armed" attack. And since you can hold touch spell charges, they could just cast it one round away from melee if they don't have good a Concentration skill, then next round move in for the attack.

 

[Nail]

I tend to agree.

Me too.

That said, I still use (as a DM) effects that might kill the PCs if left too long.

For example, during last game a <custom monster> used its touch attack to reduce the PC to unconciousness, then slowly bleed away the PC's Constitution score. Two points per round. However, I did NOT have the PC recalculate his hit points each round -- essentially the Con loss was a "timer" rather than the by-the-books ability drain.

It worked well, and caused the necessary consternation among the others as they tried to rescue the downed PC. ...and it avoided the book-work time lag of classic ability score damage.

 

[Nail]

A PC gets ganked, that Player's game stops immediately. An NPC gets ganked, the game goes on.

Exactly.

...but you still have to support the "suspension of disbelief" of the players. If I was a player in your game, and knew you wouldn't use those particular spells, I'd react accordingly.

What do you do about that?

 

[azhrei_fje]

Based on the comment about recalculation, does no one here use a GM software package?

I use DM Genie. With two clicks I can add the "higher ground" modifier (one click to get to the Conditions tab, another clicked to turn on the checkbox). It only works on melee attacks, so a PC that climbs onto a roof has the checkbox turned on, but any ranged attacks made by the software don't get the +1, only melee attacks do.

As creatures move around the battlefield and conditions change (or expire) the software handles it. There are some things that it doesn't currently include; it handles about 90%-95% of combat, but it is still a work in progress.

The nicest thing about it is when a player says, "I have a +13 to attack" and I correct them and say, "no, it's +14". They love that. Of course, they complain if I say, "no, it's +12". And then we have to compare modifiers. If they'd just take my word for it things would move much faster. I'm currently playing in a game where the GM rolls all of the dice and I think I will start doing the same thing for my next campaign...

Otherwise, I agree that save-or-die should probably go away. I've always played my NPCs as clever and/or as smart as the players play their PCs. Anything else isn't fair to the players (or that's been my story so far). But I lost some players recently because the bad guys (high level clerics) used save-or-die magic on a PC (a mage was hit by slay living) and their fragile egos couldn't handle it (the players, not the PCs ). A plane shift and coup de grace of two different PCs didn't help.

I suppose in the long run I'm better off without those players. But in the short term, the game is on hold until I can come up with more players...