What spells do you not allow?

[MerricB]

Yeah, its a really good spell. But its also an Echantment (Complusion)[Mind-Affecting].

Right off the bat the spell doesn't work on a number of creatures: Swarms, Oozes, Plants, Undead, Constructs, etc.

It works on more creatures than hold person does, and is more effective in the main.

Cheers!

 

[Talmun]

It is of more than passing interest to me how many people (in this thread and elsewhere) ban or otherwise restrict Raise Dead and the like.

I realize this topic has probably been discussed to death (pun intended), and most likely the old-timers around here would rather not see the topic resurrected (sorry, can’t stop myself), but I couldn’t help but remark on the trend.

 

[Greg K]

The first that comes to mind is rope trick. Then, there are the spells that affect lawful or chaotic creatures.

 

[Felix]

Yeah, this is right. But still, scrying someone generally lets you get a "viewed once" level of familiarity for the purposes of teleport. Scrying speficially states that you can see the subject's "immediate surroundings," within about a 10-foot radius. Even greater teleport requires that you at least have a description of the place.

This means that once your character can start tossing around scrying and teleport spells (somewhere around 9th level), the formula for a villain-motivated adventure generally breaks down to something resembling the following: 1) Scry the villain to figure out where he is; 2) teleport in and start wailing on him. If the scrying fails there's generally no reason that you can't just sit around and wait until tomorrow to try again.

Even giving a villain access to detect scrying usually doesn't help too much. If he detects someone looking in on him, he's likely to return the favor and come to the PC's instead of the other way around (he'll probably at least send some minions). The specifics vary from character to character of course, but the general trend seems to stick. You can only have so many fortresses with permanent Mordenkainen's private sanctum effects up, after all.

I heartily endorse Anticipate Teleportation for every wizard who has access to Abjuration spells, and if they don't have access to Abjuration spells, they're toast anyway.

The 4th level spell (Complete Arcane p 97) lets the caster know how many and what size creatures are teleporting in and how many there are if the destination is within a caster-level determined radius. It also creates a delay of 1 round to allow preparations. The Greater version is 8th level, lasts 24 hours, also provides knowledge of the creatures' type, and extends the prep time to 3 rounds.

With these two spells you remove much of the element of suprise from the Scry-Teleport-Assassinate schtick, and put the fight on a much more level playing field. Great Stuff!

 

[Felon]

I bumped enlarge person up to 2nd level.

I'm thinking about what to do with web, but I doubt I'll ban it.