Eridanis said:
I didn't mean to hijack this thread into second-guessing Dinkeldog's decisions at the table, but I want to defend him, since I started it. 
I think it's great that Korak thought of the ingenious use for the spell, and I don't begrudge him using it that way. But I also think that the DM needs to have the power to control the parameters of his game (especially since DD's game started expressly as a "test out the third edition rules" game), and if a spell, item, prestige class, etc., proves unbalancing to the game and group as a whole, then the DM is allowed - no, obligated - to disallow it.
Perhaps I shouldn't have even brought it up, but that incident had a direct effect on my paladin's spell choices, since Wulf, Dinkeldog, and Dorn are all in my group, and the decision in that game trickled over into my game as a result.
I think it's great too.
And I agree that a DM should have the power to control the parameters of his game.
But however, I think there are other things that need to be considered.
A 4th level paladin spell (generally only available to a 15th level paladin), that requires a journey to a temple or chapel of your god, requires you make a 1000 gp offering just for this spell, and then only gives you 8 hours per level to accomplish the quest you are on before the spell wears off is an extremely limited spell.
Applying it to lay on hands narrows it's offensive power even further, now it can only be used offensively against undead who can be touched and are not protected from positive energy.
Compared to a 15d8 horrid wilting or a summoning a 20th level cleric with some of the greatest wizard spells (wish, shapechange, mass charm, power word kill/stun, improved invis, etc) +5 vorpal, dancing greatsword wielding solar to aid you in your quest... Or some of the even more impressive things that 15th level casters can do, sacred journey is pretty tame.
It's my opinion that sacred journey got banned from that game on a superficial reaction to someone saying, "174 damage" or some such. At some point in time, 174 damage to a single specific target under limited circumstances becomes nothing special.
Heck, at 15th level there are hundreds of ways under certain circumstances to do that much damage. There's a whole thread of them, the Sultans of Smack thread. It's just a fact of life, at high level gaming the rules change, the boundaries change.
I'm sure that that lay on hands did not do as much hp damage as the two disintegrates that killed the two dragons in one spell apiece recently in the self same game.
Leave the paladin his strengths, lord knows the spell casters will show him up soon enough.
It's a matter of expanding your imagination to account for things that at 1-10th level were impossible. I admit, that's difficult. The first time I saw a dragon with the wight template and instantly snatched it for my game I was very excited. When I watched it get TURNED I was extremely non-plussed. But stuff like that happens, creative use of resources, good planning, and a little research can not only net you great results, but a load of dirty looks.
But in the worlds these games are played in, these are the types of tactics that are applauded like things as mundane as the British Fleet smashing the Spanish Armada by sailing straight into their broadsides, cannons be damned. Mundane things like troop arrangements, holding the line, and movement maneuvers mean little to nothing in a world with speaking spell granting dieties and area of effect archmages who bend the fabric of reality. In that world, sacrificing and fasting and requesting that your greatest weapon against undead be amplified for 5 days so that you can bring down an evil BBEG is the definition of creative tactics.
But we as players and DM's don't see that. Because we don't live in a world of magic, metamagic, artifacts, elite trained specialists, and monsters. We have our comfort areas that we play in and when something stretches them, when something excels and does something incredible (in a world and game where doing the incredible is the whole attraction) we all squirm and feel uncomfortable. Yes, it goes away eventually, but woe to the first person who plays a character with a stat of 30 or better.
Woe to the first person who does more than 150 damage in a single hit some how.
Because that person is the one who breached the barriers of our comfort zones and that person is the one who is decried.
If anything, and I could be totally wrong here as I'm just a fan of the SH, not a player in it----the problem was not the spell Sacred Journey, it was the character having access to a spell via scroll that normally is not available until 15th level. I certainly know that someone casting holy sword from a scroll in a 10th level party and doing a double damage to evil spirited charge smite evil for 4+6+10+5+5= 30 x 4 = 120 points of damage to my 70 hp BBEG would pop open eyes all around the table. And as I said in my prior post, regardless of how inclined I might be to jump down that player's throat, this is precisely the ingeniuity and superior tactics that I always here people talking about wanting to see.
So now it's up to me to either glare at the player or dejectedly announce the results, or to have a positive attitude and reward clever use of one's own abilities within their limitations in the rules and make the spectacular achievement something spectacular and memorable as opposed to anti-climactic and reviled. The difference between the two is nothing but presesentation.
It's all in the manner things are presented.
Again, as I said before, I'm not a good enough DM or a big enough person just yet to swallow my personal pain at the instant loss of my plans... But if I stop and think about it, if I had been on the other side of the screen and had, I don't know, ambushed Sephiroth before he could assassinate Aeris and found some clever way to make a disintegrate spell stick to him, I'd be pretty ecstatic. Regardless of what the DM had planned, or the quick manner of the foes defeat, I'd be happy that I was greatly successful in accomplishing a normally incredibly difficult task in a slightly less difficult way due to using my head.
Now the only thing that remains is whether the DM can see it in that light before he ruins the moment for both himself, the other gamers, and the player.
As PirateCat and Monte Cook and Bruce Cordell have all said in different words, the hardest part about high level gaming is keeping yourself from neutralizing your player's abilities but instead requiring and celebrating them.
What did you do all that work gaining levels for if you are fighting the same skin of your teeth battles with the same tactics 10 levels from now..
I don't mean to sound preachy, but 3e is most fun when it is focused on what you CAN do rather than what you can't.
And damn if that isn't hard to do. Both as a peer, as a dm, as a friend, and as a player. Don't shine to bright, you don't want to out do the rest. Don't shine to little, you don't want to drag the game into monotony, predictability, or fade into obscurity. Don't try anything new, some people don't like change...
But by remaining open minded, imaginative, and remembering that a fantasy game is about doing fantastic things that are impossible in the mundane world, perhaps I or we will get to the point where we CAN do all those difficult things.
And maybe our games will be that much better for it.
You'll never know what it's like to fly if you don't stretch your wings.
