Since you cats have offered a ton of advice on my other spell-o'-the-day question (Improved Invisibility), I'd like to extend my begging to include another spell that gives me DM headaches.
Yep, it's that innocuous lookin' 2nd level Sor/Wiz spell: Rope Trick.
Leomund, eat your heart out. This 2nd level little bit of arcane tom-foolery allows the PC's to climb into an impregnable, damn-near undetectable, extra-dimensional space.
DM's - ever build a sprawling dungeon/cavern complex with multiple levels? Sure you have. Cackled evilly and scared your wife and children away as you realized the PC's would feel hunted the entire time they remained within your Edifice of Evil (TM)? I bet. And you didn't put a time limit on completion of the quest because, well, the Ancient Golden Globe of Garl has been sitting in mud for 3,000 years; what's another couple days gonna do.
And what do your PC's do? They become Rope Trickin' fiends.
Let me elaborate:
1) Fight.
2) Rope Trick.
3) Fight.
4) Rope Trick.
5) Really tough fight.
6) Rope Trick. Sorc pops head outside his own planar buble. Casts a New Rope Trick.
Yep, with an Extend Spell or two, a medium-level Sorc can basically Rope Trick the party for the rest of an elf's life. If you've got a priest to Create Food/Water, you're set. Bored - sure. But safe.
So...again, I appeal to the masses of DM's out there. Do you see the spell used frequently in your own campaigns? I hate having my PC's always at full strength going into every gosh darned encounter. Sure, I can have them harried and chased in some adventures, and I can have an element of 'beat the clock' in others, but the majority of the time they'll be able to safely reach full health/spells with a little 2nd level spell. It just doesn't sit well with me.
Damn Rope Trick! Damn it I say!
Sorry. Anyway, even those intelligent bad dudes who may know all about the powers of Trickin' da Rope still have to see the PC's climb into a spot in thin air. Or at least have to chase them into an empty room, check for Invisible folks (if they can; see my other post on these boards), and then decide that maybe the miscreants are playing cards in their own portable hole.
Do you see this used all the time? Should I worry about it? Or should I just bump EL's with this in mind? What did you do?
Again, I'd rather not debate the power of the spell, or compare it to higher level Leomund's spells. I'm mainly just probing you cats with much more experience than I to determine if this is just common in 3E games and, if so, does it warrant DM attention?
Vielen Danken,
RJ