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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8232301" data-attributes="member: 6988941">Alright, a few of the ones I really have to disagree (with whomever originally posted the original comments) over:Sure Animate Dead/Create Undead (the necromancer spells) are underwhelming if your goal is to be the general of an unstoppable undead army. If that's what you are after play the Necromancer in Diablo II. Group tabletop rpgs are not the place to play a general. There is lots of use to be had for a squad of zombies or whatever in carrying stuff, triggering traps, and generally any creative purpose you can come up with for a completely expendable extra person. They are like hirelings that you don't have to pay and can get killed without any moral compunctions. In combat they are not going to bring much hurt, but they can certainly be in the enemies way and against less strategically competent enemies they can force them to waste their actions mopping up undead mooks rather than attacking anyone important. Any damage they do is gravy.Dragon's Breath is a great spell. It has two features that make it great, the first is giving a meaningful attack to familiars, the second is being able to choose from four types of damage. It is given to the Wizard and the Sorcerer. The first of these can easily have a familiar, the latter is the most known-spells starved class in the game (Tasha's subclasses notwithstanding) and needs spells with flexibility. Basically it gives you a mediocre cantrip with one of several damage options, so when you run up against the enemy that your go to cantrip is ineffective against, or who is vulnerable to a particular type of damage, you've still got something, meaning you can get by with fewer damage cantrips. I still wouldn't necessarily call it a good pick for a Sorcerer, but most spells on the Sorcerer list aren't really worth taking for them with their very limited known spells, this is the fault of class design not of Dragon's Breath.Timestop is better for NPCs than for PCs, as it's principle value is in "oh naughty word, I wasn't expecting combat and I don't have my buffs up". Players generally aren't ambushed into a fight so important that they want to burn their 9th level spell on it. This is especially true of players who have been successfully playing a character up to at least 17th level, and probably extra true of players who spend their time carefully optimizing spell load-outs. PCs also usually aren't inclined to just run without the rest of their group, because D&D characters suffer from codependancy issues by both design and metagame conceit. But the NPC mage they get the jump on will be quite thankful for the opportunity to put on his mage armor, mirror image, and mindblank (just to cover the m's) before doing battle, or to just grab the macguffin, turn ethereal, and leave a delayed action fireball for his antagonists.Create Homoculus is a mediocre spell few people would ever choose, and I absolutely love it. It is there to explain part of the lore of the world (that there are creatures called homoculi, are created by wizards with whom they share a telepathic connection). It then lets wizard characters emulate that lore if they really want to. It is way too high a level for the power it gives, because in the lore having a homoculus is a mid-to-high-level wizard thing. I like spells that bring plot magic and lore magic into the game mechanics accessible to players. And having a familiar equivalent who not only can exist besides your familiar but also shares all your knowledge and senses as long as they are on the same plane as you is actually pretty sweet. The utility of giving it a huge chunk of your hitpoints is pretty damn circumstantial, but no part of the spell forces you to do that when you don't want to.</blockquote>

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