Game Breaker Spells - What are they?

[psionotic]

I hate Glitterdust. No SR, ends the fight for multiple targets, eliminates invisibility, and scales far too well against certain creature types (constructs, for example).

 

[Lanefan]

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

Fly. Extremely useful, yes. Game-breaking? No, because: the opposition can cast it too, or the wind is blowing you sideways faster than you can fly against it, or there's a null-magic area that extends upward around location x, or... It's easy to design around, and it's one of those things that gives the players a chance to think outside the box.

Teleport. If you just put back the 1e chance of deadly failure, the problem Goes Away after the first wizard becomes one with the rock below her intended arrival point. If people want to keep using it despite the risk, let 'em... Also, enforce some weight restrictions; a single teleport should *not* be able to move an entire party plus gear.

Detect Lie (or whatever it's called now). This one's caused me some grief in the past but it's still not broken enough for me to want to fix it.

Polymorph (self). This is broken because the 3e designers broke it by allowing it to work on people not the caster. Put it back to being on self only and much of the problem Goes Away.

(Baleful) Polymorph (other). Not a problem provided measures are taken to prevent this being used in a non-baleful manner. *Nobody* will receive this willingly. The target becomes the creature in all ways and - if intelligent - will realize what the caster has just done to it and act appropriately (ususlly, this means kill with extreme prejudice). Thus, turning your friend into a dragon becomes extremely unadvisable...

Polymorph Any Object. Not familiar with this one but it sounds like a headache looking for a place to happen.

Speak With Dead. Not a problem at all. Keep in mind the dead corpse can't tell you what the live corpse didn't know...

Save-or-die, in general. Not a problem if kept to a dull roar i.e. only used against by BBEG's in climactic encounters. The problem arises when PCs have access to them and use them on a whim... I don't like the idea of what were interesting effects (disintegrate, stoning) being reduced to mere damage just like everything else.

Save-or-freeze, in general. Not a problem at all. So you miss a combat...so what.

Find the Path. This one might need reining in a little but as I haven't really had to deal with it I haven't got any bright ideas as to how.

Tongues/Comprehend Languages. Essential spells, particularly when character languages are determined by place of birth and-or randomly...or when the party goes to a foreign land. I can't at all see how anyone would think these are broken.

Scry (Reflecting Pool and the ilk). Not a game-breaker if the target has a decent chance of noticing the scrying...and excellent when used wisely by the opposition!

Knock. Of all the spells noted (but there's another one not yet hit), this is the only one I intend to fix somehow in order to make Thieves more useful. I might have it not function against physical locks but still work against bars, etc.

Find Traps (does 3e even have this?). The other spell I'll fix to give the Thieves a chance, it'll only pull magic traps once I get done.

Wish. This spell, to my mind, is *supposed* to be broken! It is *the* spell that should be able to turn things on their ear; simply allowing it to replicate any other spell is not good enough and limits it far too much. That said, it's up to the DM to smack down greedy or over-ambitious uses of Wish by corrupting it beyond the call of duty.

Lanefan

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I think there are some solutions to the ones that bug me - fly and teleport. To teleport to a fixed location (as someone already mentioned) is handy. It also limits the spell to "eliminate the unfun distance between two adventure points". Moreover, you can actually make plots out of controlling the entrance/exit areas if they are constant and well known.

With fly, Arcana Evolved produced a decent result as far as movement. I think lowering the duration to a round/level would eliminate many of the "obstacle breaching" issues with this spell. Alternatively, I have in mind houseruling it to empower magical devices. You have a rug. You cast "flying device" on it. The rug now flies, but instead of you having inherent abilities, there's something that can be targeted. (It isn't however a focus or something really valuable that the player will get mad about losing.) Again, it goes from tactical convenience to something cool and a plot point because a greater version of the spell might enable airships, etc.

Many of the other items mentioned actually are challenges to the DM. Think about your plot from this vantage point. One issue I see a lot is that people want the players to figure out who the villain is and how things are done to get to the action quickly. Spells like speak with dead can enable that - or obfuscate depending on how exactly it is done. If the person didn't see who killed them, that doesn't help much does it?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Lot of good suggestions so far, great. Keep them coming.

I like the alternate ideas for fly and teleport a lot. I hope we'll get something like that in D&D 4 (unless what the designers come up with something even better, obviously. )

 

[ptolemy18]

Game breakers? I'll throw in a few more to the list:

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.

Gate: Summon something that grants a wish, need I say more? This is the posterchild for why Wizards obliterate everything on the CO boards.

Wish: Controversial due to the fact the DM can screw you over no matter what you wish for, but given that you can wish for pretty much anything talented (read: tricky) players can make a simple-sounding wish that lets them break the game afterwards..

All of these spells are broken... and AWESOME.

Absolute game balance is an impossibility. Pursuing it too far just leads the game away from fun and towards slavish, nitpicky tactical micromanagement. The whole point of spells is being able to creatively "break the rules", and there are a zillion tools for the DM to tighten up the rules if they want the players to not be able to use spells in a particular scenario.

 

[ptolemy18]

Looks like a lot of people here want to nerf a lot of things.

I'm with you, Lanefan!

 

[Imp]

I would not want to break the function of the very highest-level magics, because it is lame if a mage of ultimate power can't summon great demons, turn into anything he wants, etc. It is possible those kinds of ultimate powers should involve lengthy rituals, however... magic should be able to bend or break reality, but maybe not once per day... that's where it gets strained I think.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Fly. Extremely useful, yes. Game-breaking? No, because: the opposition can cast it too, or the wind is blowing you sideways faster than you can fly against it, or there's a null-magic area that extends upward around location x, or... It's easy to design around, and it's one of those things that gives the players a chance to think outside the box.

I'd respectfully disagree on the game-breaking aspect because while it is possible to design around, it isn't rational to have *every* situation designed around it. How many of the encounters involve a wizard capable of casting fly as against standard MM monsters during your career? How many high winds are there in dungeons (or ever, in fact?). How many null magic areas can there be?

Meanwhile the wizard could be flying in any number of encounters, neutralising the effectiveness of whole rafts of foes or types of obstacles.

At present it is too good at too low a level IMO.

 

[Plane Sailing]

A random thought about Wish BTW.

In 1/2e it was balanced by ageing the PC
in 3e it was balanced with xp penalties

In 4e?

We know that they are moving away from xp penalties (Andy Collins "xp is not a resource" comment etc).

So will wish still be around, and if so what would be the balancing factor, I wonder?

Cheers

 

[Merlion]

I think I've seen hints that more 'save or lose' spells will be converted to stuff which varies with hp ablation.

A current example is disintegrate, which does hp damage but when you get to 0 you are disintegrated.

Possible examples might be polymorph or flesh to stone which do hp damage but if you get to 0 (or whatever is an appropriate threshold) you are turned into a bunny/turned to stone/etc.

One effect is that these become good 'finishing moves' against tough foes, you lose the 'save or die' aspect.

That could make for a very interesting spell system.

I really, REALLY hope they don't take this aproach with transformation spells. A Transmutation school spell that turns you to stone or into an animal or whatever should abso-fraggin-lutely NOT do HP damage. It should simply transform you if you fail the save. I don't have a problem with trying to somewhat reduce the importance of save or die/suck spells...and having actually death spells, disintegrate etc do HP damage is maybe a good idea. But the transformation spells should stay as they are.

Remember also that being transformed is much easier to fix than being killed. It takes you out of the fight...but its very possible that an ally might even be able to bring you back into the fight during the fight (especially given the emphasis in 4e on performing support actions during/as part of other actions) but they can certainly do so afterward.