[MENTION=58172]Yaarel[/MENTION]
I seem to have misinterpreted; not having watched the video in the link, I assumed that the proposed spell lists listed above were put forth by MM as potential ways of doing a wizard psion subclass. I did not realize that these were your own proposals based upon the ideas in the video and made my comments accordingly.
The first step is noticing that a spell seems much weaker than other spells in the same spell level.
The second step is being honest. If a spell works better at a lower level, which level should it be in. Sometimes a spell works better in the next lower level. (High level Druid damage spells tend to be off by a level.) But other spells only becoming appealing choices if they are several spell levels lower. The spell level that a spell deserves depends entirely on what that spell can do, and how frequently useful that deed is.
For example, Programmed Illusion is ‘officially’ spell level 6. But this high spell level is absurd. It does about the same thing that Magic Mouth does, which deserves its spell level 2. Magic Mouth is actually a pretty good spell. Some spell descriptions dont explain why the spell is useful or effective. In the case of Magic Mouth, it is the ‘trigger’ that makes it useful. You the caster decides what − exactly − will trigger the mouth. For example, you can cast it on your backpack, and say, ‘Anyone who opens or takes this backpack except me’ triggers the Mouth. And the Mouth will continually repeat, ‘Help! Help! Thief! Thief! Stop stealing me! Stop stealing me!’. In this case, Magic Mouth works as an effective alarm. In comparison, Programmed Illusion does little more than this. At best, its visual component is a slight upgrade. But because the image itself must be determined in advance and is easy to disbelieve, it is spell level 3 at best, if not spell level 2.
Agreed. I suspect that the devs (and probably devs of editions past) struggled to come up with high level illusion spells worth their slot. Phantasmal Killer and Weird (really Mass Phantasmal Killer) would be much improved if the target took the physic damage at the start of their turn, followed by the save to end at the end of their turn. I'm still not sure Weird is worth its high level slot even with this improvement though.
When the designers made D&D 5e they made a great effort to comb out and nerf the old-school ‘broken’ spells. But they often forgot to lower the spell level after a particularly severe nerf. Worse, they made little or no effort to comb out the weak spells.
So to put it less diplomatically, some of the spells on the spell list suck. But if one moves it to a lower spell level, some of these start looking a bit more reasonable.
I can't say I disagree. Care should be taken, and some play testing needed, but you have a point.
When assessing the worth of a spell, a simple question to ask is, would you rather have this spell or the Fireball spell, if you could only have one or the other. If you prefer Fireball, then likely the spell in question is only spell level 3 or lower. Also there are other benchmarks to compare.
Fireball, along with lightning bolt, is somewhat problematic, as it was purposely 'overpowered' for its level due to its iconic status in the game; according to the guidelines in the DMG, it should be a 5th level spell. Personally, I think they should have made these spells do 7d6 damage, still a bit supercharged for third level, but not egregiously so, and more importantly, not making most of other spells seem so severely under powered in comparison. But that ship has sailed, and I see your point.
Sometimes a spell that is generally useless is powerful in certain corner cases. Then it is necessary to ask how frequently do these corner cases happen? Every round? Then of course it is useful. Once per encounter? Once per short rest? Once per long rest? ... Once per adventure? Once per character career across many levels? You in reallife only saw the spell used once last year? If the answer is, ‘Ten years ago some brilliant player used this spell and saved everybody!’, then such an anecdote pretty much proves how terrible the spell is and that the entire game will become better by removing the spell from the list.
Agreed.
Old school spells in particular were more built around problem solving in a way that modern games don't always acknowledge. In more 'killer dungeon' type scenarios, some of the information could be life saving. Some of these high level spells were there to force the DM to give you meta-game packets of help to get you through in one piece.
There are many character optimizers who assess and critique what a spell is worth. Often, they dont care about how powerful a character. Rather, they care about how well the game is designed. The care if a spell is worth the ink of printing it or not. They resent trap options.
This is really good point, and I would like to think I would be among this group, inasmuch as I am in any 'optimizer' group. I dislike trap options, but do not overly mind world building spells. For instance, I don't have a problem with Illusory Script, as far as it goes. I realize it is not something many adventurers would take, but it is flavorful and just something that Wizard's would have up their sleeve, both story wise and setting wise. No one is going to take that spell and think that they are now just a World beater that can take on any dungeon or adventure.
