Game Breaker Spells - What are they?

[apoptosis]

I think the common thread here is that most of the spells that people consider "game-breaking" completely bypass certain things.

Knock - bypasses any mundane lock, also bypasses the need for open lock skill.
Teleport - Bypasses wilderness adventures completely, can bypass many of the BBEG's defenses in combination with scry.
Fly - Bypasses terrain and obstacles, bypasses land creatures without ranged attacks.
Mind Blank - creates tons of immunities to effects.
Save or Die - bypasses the survival mechanic of hitpoints.

1) Negating of Skills - To me this is fairly big problem in dnd currently, and one of the reasons wizard rule the high level world. I don't mind spell augmenting skills, but they shouldn't be able to bypass skills UNLESS!!! there is a certain amount of headache that goes through them.

For example, I don't mind knock working as if the wizard has to go through a week long ritual or something. The rogue can feel good that he could have bypassed that lock in seconds, and while the wizard gains the power to push through locks when absolutedly needed, he can't do it on an adventuring timetable.

2) Immunities. I don't like magics that make you immune to things. Personally, I think these should be left with races, class abilities, and high level feats. Magic can give you big bonuses, but not flat out perfect immunity.

3) Needing Magic to fight Magic. Another reason high level wizards rule is that everything requires magic to do anything. We need to get into that BBEG's lair? Well its underneath 1000 feet of lava, so we need teleport. Forcecaged? You need d door to get out. We need to find out where the BBEg is located and he's well shieled, we need divinations to find him.

Currently, certain spells require other spells to meet or beat them, which forces non magical characters to acquire gear to compete. There's a reason fighter's rely on their gear, its not just the +X sword, its the boots of flying that become required just to compete in regular adventuring.

Funny i am in favor of everything you are against (which is in no way to be construed as an insult or argumentative just funny). I want magic to be magical and to be capable of doing things that no mundane skill or ability could. Without this, magic just seems to be another bonus. Goes to show that probably no magic system will at its basic really please everybody.

I would prefer magic to be more dangerous to the use though. I dont mind vancian or mana points but would prefer the major limiting factor would be danger ot the user, at least for powerful magic (i know many people hate risky spellcasting). I wouldnt mind there to be different types of casters with less powerful casters being more limited like above while the more powerful types have associated risks.

I should note that i generally dont care about imbalance of power between casters and noncasters particularly if there is a risk or damaging effect to casting

 

[Raven Crowking]

Speak with Dead:
Just ask the victim who it was. Solves most murder mysteries, unless you always have a story that ensures that the murderer wasn't seen by the victim, or the murderer was disguised or controlled by someone else. (Meaning the case is a bit more contrived than usual.)
Possible Fix: Not really one. Might in fact be okay, if you stick to the above limitations. The same as for Zone of Truth and Discern Lies might also apply here.

This occurs in Torchwood: Everything Changes. The solution was simple. The killer attacks from behind, so as not to be seen by the victims.

RC

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Teleport - The Robert Jordan method. To teleport to a place, you must have been there before.

Scry - The Mage: the Awakening method. To scry a person/place/thing, you must have some connection to it, be it either a piece of hair, some dirt, or whatever, you must have or know something intimate about the target. So scrying your best friend or home would be easy. Scrying a secretive enemy or location you've only seen on a map would be very hard.

 

[Doug McCrae]

or there's a null-magic area that extends upward around location x

There's no greater proof that a spell's broken than being forced to resort to null-magic.

 

[Stalker0]

I want magic to be magical and to be capable of doing things that no mundane skill or ability could.

I would prefer magic to be more dangerous to the use though.

We agree on this point. My problem is dnd magic IS mundane, it IS a bonus for the most part, but a far better bonus than other classes get in many cases. Casting a spell is just like a rogue making a skill check. Sure you can't do it as often, but as levels get higher that starts to change. A wizard can cast many spells, and gets spells that become increasingly more awesome than what other classes can do.

As I said in my post, I don't mind a wizard being able to beat a lock with a spell, but in a different way than a rogue. If he has to drain lifeforce or take a long time to summon, then he's not really hindering the skill classes as much.

 

[Lanefan]

There's no greater proof that a spell's broken than being forced to resort to null-magic.

Null magic is vastly under-used in general...mostly because magic makes for more fun thus adventure writers leave it out. But if I'm any kind of important person or bad guy living in a magic-using world and I don't want people messing with me, big areas of null magic that only I know the borders of is my first defense...against *any* spell, along with peoples' tinker toys and buff-ups.

Lanefan

 

[Victim]

Null magic is vastly under-used in general...mostly because magic makes for more fun thus adventure writers leave it out. But if I'm any kind of important person or bad guy living in a magic-using world and I don't want people messing with me, big areas of null magic that only I know the borders of is my first defense...against *any* spell, along with peoples' tinker toys and buff-ups.

Lanefan

Yeah, if null magic works like that. I haven't heard of many null electricity or explosive zones - wouldn't those be handy. Antimagic Field might be all that you get.

 

[Hammerhead]

Why stop at null magic zones? Why not simply extrapolate to null damage, or even "no negative effects at all" zones. I bet those would be handy for a ruler or other VIP.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Why stop at null magic zones? Why not simply extrapolate to null damage, or even "no negative effects at all" zones. I bet those would be handy for a ruler or other VIP.

Now that sounds _really_ video gamey... Basically a "no PVP/PVE" area..

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Looks like a lot of people here want to nerf a lot of things. Let's take these one by one...

No kidding. It seems a lot of DM's want to tell the same type of stories at 20th level that they do at 1st. Sorry, but after a certain point, getting across the raging river or through a desert SHOULD be hand waived with a simple spell.

Speak with Dead? If the killer wears a mask, is invisible, is disguised etc the corpse isnt a a lot of help.

Zone of Truth/Discern Lies? The save alone is, what I assume prevents this from being acceptable in most courts of law. Misdirection also foils Discern Lies and lasts 1 hour/level.

Honestly this feels like people not wanting to work with the presence of magic in order to yank a story from our world and stuff it into a fantasy one. D&D is not by nature a low/non magic game.

One spell that could use a tweak is Silence. Throw a save on that sucker's area of effect.