Level This Spell (Alt)

[Zimbel16]

I think being so reduced in size has some pretty big penalties, otherwise by your logic, you'd be a fool not to play a gnome or halfling. And yet, IME very few pick those races.

Coincidentally, I'm having funny mental images of a wizard casting this spell, forgetting that as he casts, his spell book isn't on his "person" and then desperately trying to move his now gigantic spellbook because he can't dismiss the spell and leaving the spellbook lying around isn't such a great idea...

Not a fool - +1 to hit and AC is much more minor than +8 to both. In the group I'm presently playing D&D with, Gnome and Halfling are moderately common races - very common among major spellcasters (both of the present ones are Gnomes).

The only penalties from size Fine alone are:
1) Your grapple (and simular size-based modifiers) sinks through the floor.
2) No reach.
3) Smaller Weapons

At moderate levels, many Sorcerers and Wizards have such bad grapple modifiers (against likely grappling opponents) that another -16 or so won't make much of a difference (they'll fail regardless). Reach only matters if you focus on offensive (melee) touch spells. On the Sor/Wiz/Druid lists, there are few enough such spells that you can typically plan around them. This is a more significant penalty for a Cleric. Although it's quite possible to construct a major spellcaster who's doing primarily weapon damage, it's certainately neither essential nor typically an optimal build.

My real concern isn't with the power of this spell in and of itself; it's the fact that size modifiers stack with almost every other spell that increases AC. Unless you remove of severely limit some of the other spells, I'd tend to limit spells like this as much as possible. My experience is that because of this sort of stacking, high-level spellcasters can already pump their ACs through the roof.