Game Breaker Spells - What are they?

[Sun Knight]

If you are going against a cultist that can fling "Slay Living" then you should have a cleric able to cast "Raise Dead," right. So instead of trudging back into town you could have taken a day to rest, have the cleric or druid memorize Raise Dead/Reincarnation, raise the fighter, then heal him up then rest one more day to replenish the cleric spells. 2 days instead of 3 weeks in character, and about 15 minutes out of character.

 

[Plane Sailing]

If you are going against a cultist that can fling "Slay Living" then you should have a cleric able to cast "Raise Dead," right. So instead of trudging back into town you could have taken a day to rest, have the cleric or druid memorize Raise Dead/Reincarnation, raise the fighter, then heal him up then rest one more day to replenish the cleric spells. 2 days instead of 3 weeks in character, and about 15 minutes out of character.

Not necessarily - encounters could quite easily be +1-3 levels above your party level and have access to save or die spells before you get raise dead.

Anyway, let's keep this thread on topic, talking about game breaking spells.

(anyone who doesn't think there are game breaking spells won't have much to contribute to this particular thread, but can certainly start other threads on that topic)

Thanks

 

[Warbringer]

As already mentioned

1) Any spell that auto-trumps a skill should be reworked. Out house rule, spells like this add 5+Caster Level to appropriate skill - knock (open/disable), see invisible (spot), true seeing (spot/search), zone of truth (sense motive)

2) Fly - change the movement type and watch the use of this spell plummet. Base movement in house rule is poor. Every 3 caster levels beyond 5th (base level) improves fly class by one.

5th -> Poor; 8th -> Average; 11th -> Good; 14th -> Perfect

High level heroes remain super-heroes

3) Save or else spells... meaning save or oh-crap... I think that the bloodied concept is going to help alot with this. I think alot of the save or else spells will simply not work unless an enemy is bloodied. Meaning, significantly wounded in some way.

 

[Rechan]

Just FYI: Speak with Dead does not break the game. From the SRD:

The corpse’s knowledge is limited to what the creature knew during life, including the languages it spoke (if any). Answers are usually brief, cryptic, or repetitive. If the creature’s alignment was different from yours, the corpse gets a Will save to resist the spell as if it were alive.

If the corpse has been subject to speak with dead within the past week, the new spell fails. You can cast this spell on a corpse that has been deceased for any amount of time, but the body must be mostly intact to be able to respond. A damaged corpse may be able to give partial answers or partially correct answers, but it must at least have a mouth in order to speak at all.

If the killer lives in a word where 5th level priests can cast Speak with Dead, especially if his victim is a high profile victim, the killer will be aware of Speak with Dead. Bashing the corpse's jaw in, hacking it up, etc, will tamper with the spell. As will basically just blitzing the victim/coming from behind/wearing a mask. The victim Must See the attacker to ID them. Or just use a Hat of Disguise/Disguise Self/The DISGUISE SKILL to frame someone else.

You have to build the mystery while anticipating SwD, so that it doesn't give everything away, just a clue, like anything else.

At the moment I'm running a Detective-style campaign, and I assure you it can be done.

 

[MarkB]

You have to build the mystery while anticipating SwD, so that it doesn't give everything away, just a clue, like anything else.

I think this phrase holds the essence of what separates truly game-breaking spells from merely game-altering ones.

Spells which you have to take into consideration when designing your campaign and make alterations accordingly are not game-breakers, they're simply things that cause the style of play to evolve. I'd put Zone of Truth, Discern Lies, Fly and Teleport into this category.

It's only spells for which there isn't a reasonable workaround that are truly game-breaking. Save-or-die spells, Polymorph and maybe the Scry/Teleport combo fall into this category.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I've never tried, but would like to, a system where to teleport somewhere, there needs to be some kind of magical item/ward/location thing there to make sure you arrive ok. This allows for a variety of optional rules. You could make it strictly you-must-have-been-there and so you still need to travel to towns and maybe 'attune' to that town's tele-pad (very CRPG). Or you can perhaps be told about a telepad and that let's you go there, maybe giving you a magical access key. Or you can have an dodgy teleport spell which usually takes you within a mile or some miles or whatever, but the telepads attract anyone teleporting with some radius of them. Basically, a system that stops the party going immediately to the BBEG/dungeon/quest location, but still allows days of travelling to be missed at high levels.

 

[Imp]

I remember thinking that that spell idea (and also the spells which you can 'charge up' by taking longer to cast them) were the two best ideas in the PHB2. I hope we see some of those aspects coming into 4e.

Yeah, I'm currently considering house-ruling for example slay living so that it does either clvl*d6 per round or Con damage per round + stun, so it's more like save or you will die soon, and the effect ends when the caster is incapacitated or the effect dispelled. Like being in check vs. checkmate.

Anyway something along those lines would be pretty cool for 4e death spells.

A lower-level fly could have a predetermined flight path. You set your course when you cast the spell.

Re teleport to predetermined locations, I currently have it so you can only teleport to your arcane marks, so you have a partial have-to-be-there effect with some added subterfuge.

 

[Wormwood]

Rope Trick
Mordenkainen's Mansion

 

[coyote6]

Discern Lies/Zone of Truth:
The game breaker aspect is that suddenly, all the ranks invested in Bluff or Sense Motive are useless. Just use the spell to make the first one unimportant and the second one not required.
Possible Fix: Just let the spells aid the skills (Discern Lies improves Sense Motive, Zone of Truth causes penalties to Bluff). It might also be useful to delay when these spells become available. (In D&D 4 terms, this might be reserved for the Paragon and Epic tier of spells and abilities)**)

I don't know about that; they both have saves, and since zone of truth is an area spell, you don't know if any particular person made their save. So you cast the spell, but you have no way of knowing who is being forced to tell the truth, and who made their save & is lying anyways.

With discern lies, you will know if they made their save -- but if they do save, you don't know if they're lying or not. They may save, and tell the truth anyways. If they fail their save, all you can learn is that they're lying; you won't know what the truth is, and you won't be able to force them to tell the truth.

Heck, a proper suggestion is a more effective truth-forcing spell ("I suggest you cooperate and truthfully tell us what you know" -- you'll know if they made the save or not).

Teleport:
Suddenly, the group doesn't have to travel to a place (no more wilderness encounters for you - which might not be that bad). But the most important game breaking element is the combination with "Scry" - suddenly you can get to your enemy anytime you want.
Possible Fix: You can't teleport into a building or home of someone unwilling (think uninvited vampires). So you can still get out, if necessary, and you can still get to the front gate of the enemy fortress, but you don't get in.

Eh, then it's just "scry and wait for 'em to leave home". Disallow scry as a viable means of targetting a teleport, and you'll be fine -- scrying on someone no longer allows you to count their location as "viewed once".

Then there are lots of other options for adjusting teleport to make it less game altering -- make it less precise, as suggested; use something like Arcana Evolved's teleport version; make teleport not actually instantaneous, but instead takes a few rounds -- but there's some sort of immediately obvious display/disturbance at your destination (thus, if you're trying to TP on top of someone, they get advance notice); add bad after-effects to teleportation (e.g., sickened or nauseated on arrival for a minute, maybe active spells disrupted, etc.); make anti-teleport spells lower level than teleport, and long-lasting; provide entirely non-magical anti-teleport options (e.g., can't teleport past lead or some other substance, etc.); etc.

And teleport doesn't let you get to the Unknown Tomb of Plot Devices, which is lost somewhere in the Wilderness of Lostiness; if you've never been there, and there's no one there to scry on, you can't teleport there. (You can, of course, greater teleport there, if you have a good description; greater teleport adds some extra problems...)

What it really lets you do is adventure from home; one of my groups has a sorcerer with teleport, and a cleric with a helm of teleportation. The group will delve into a dungeon (Heart of Nightfang Spire, say), have their 4 CR-appropriate encounters or whatever, pick an out-of-the-way spot to memorize, and teleport back to the inn (or their home, or wherever). Come the morning, they teleport from the inn to yesterday's spot in the dungeon, and continue.

Brings a whole different meaning to "telecommuting".

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.

In Exalted, the "speak with dead" thaumaturgical rite lets you ask the corpse what it's seen since its death & a day before. That makes the spell very different, though you still have the "who killed you" problem. OTOH, the specified somatic component in Exalted might dissuade some people from using it (must osculate the corpse).

Also, as mentioned, smart murderers will mutilate the corpse to prevent speak with dead from working at all.

OTOH, that trick doesn't actually seem to work with the rules as written, thanks to make whole. A corpse is not a creature, right? So make whole will repair a mutilated corpse, unless it's been burnt (and it's a lot more trouble to burn a corpse than to cut out its tongue or crush its jaw).

Put make whole on my list of "too powerful/useful" spells.

("The ancient tome must be handled with the greatest of care, lest it crumble away!" "Old and crumbly? That's not 'warped, burned, disintegrated, ground to powder, melted, or vaporized', right? I cast make whole -- it's fine now." Or "The runestone is worn with age, it's difficult to make out what it says." "I got it -- make whole.")

Dominate Person/Monster:
Even better than Save or Die spells: Save or get the enemy of your friends. Instead of taking just out one enemy, the caster just also "summoned" an ally.
On the other hand, the spell has great flavour element and is a typical fantasy trope:
Possible Fix: See Save or Die Spells, and also make it harder to use within combat (either the "ally" will have a very easy time to resist commands, or it just takes longer.)

Magic circles & protections from various alignments make these pretty much non-issues for a smart group, IME. Of course, if you do this...

Magic Circle vs Evil:
The +2 to AC and saves is fine. The immunity to charm and compulsion effects not so much. Essentially, you completely negate the ability of many characters and monsters.
Possible Fix: Reduce the benefit (and in turn ensure that compulsions and charms aren't getting to strong, see Dominate Person/Monster)

...then you'll have a problem.

I wouldn't mind seeing fly nerfed some more (or rather, nerfed differently] -- again, Arcana Evolved's version is nice -- the speed is the creature's ground speed or 30 ft., whichever is worse. That turns fly from a speed-booster to a more flexible levitate; if you change the maneuverability to average, I think I'd like it more.

Then, as P-cat said, there's find the path; add discern location, freedom of movement, tongues, comprehend languages ("Decipher Script? Why waste skill points?"), etc.

I don't mind knock quite as much; it generally gets used IME when there's no time for a full-round Open Locks check, when the lock is (apparently) beyond the rogue's skill, or when some kind of arcane lock/hold portal effect is involved.

OTOH, I wouldn't mind them bringing back some multi-purpose spells -- emotion & its ilk, rather than having every spell be for exactly one and only one thing.

 

[ideasmith]

Polymorph Any Object, Shapechange: Obvious reasons. These two spells are the definition of "broken beyond belief". Hell the entire Polymorph line is pretty broken if you use the spells creatively enough. PaO is just the worst.

Possible fix: These spells end when you attack, as with invisibility.