Overpowered/Underpowered Spells?

[Sereg]

Thanee

Geas is not Charm or Dominate, it's no mind-control, victims are still free to act whatever way they wish... just some of those will give them penalties, but that doesn't really help you in that situation.

Common misconception here. Geas is tagged as: Enchantment (Compulsion) [Language-Dependent, Mind-Affecting]

Note:

The geased creature MUST follow the given instructions until the geas is completed, no matter how long it takes

and

If the subject is prevented from obeying

You are in fact, COMPELLED to follow it. The penality text is there in case your friends knock you out and place you in a jail cell until they can find a high level cleric to remove curse.

Check out the description of compulsion vs charm in the srd for further clarification:

Compulsion is a different matter altogether. A compulsion overrides the subject’s free will in some way or simply changes the way the subject’s mind works. A charm makes the subject a friend of the caster; a compulsion makes the subject obey the caster.

Its pretty cut and dry. Geas, even with 10 minutes casting time, is pretty insane.


Sereg

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I will second anyone that said Polymorph Self is overpowered.

I played a (3.0) Druid/Shifter, and the only reason why I didn`t overshine the other characters because the whole campaign of this DM was a Powergaming campaign. (And we somehow restricted ourself by allowing the halfling bard to use our treasure to build our paladin/cleric/fighter/hospitaler a fortress - 500.000 gp were invested in that, as the player told a few days ago.)
Even the wizard constantly used it to become a fire giant. He could even wade into melee with that, and especially he wasn´t helpless in such a situation.

I think Polymorph self could be made more sensible if it simply didn`t allow any type of creature. Limit it to medium to large size animals and humanoids.
It might not be worth a 4th level slot then, but it would still be extremely useful - becoming a Cat to blend into the city, or transmuting into a hawk to travel overland is nothing to sneeze at ...

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[glass]

I am curious as to why people don't put time stop on here. Let me put out what I did with this beautiful spell. I cast time stop inside a time stop. Eventually this led to an enemy cleric inside a force cube, dimensionally locked, facing a projected image (which I had cast silence on via a scroll) with 4 delayed blast fireballs (76d6 damage). Typically I start a fight with my rod of maximization in hand and switch to my rod of quickening during the time stop. This way I could quicken spell attack and still hold action to use greater dispel as a counter. Pretty powerful stuff

Can you do that? I don't have the text in front of me at the moment, but I wouldn't have thought you could cast a timestop within another timestop.

glass.

 

[Khristos]

Can you do that? I don't have the text in front of me at the moment, but I wouldn't have thought you could cast a timestop within another timestop.

glass.

There is nothing within Timestop that prohibits casting self effecting spells which is what time stop is.

 

[Humanophile]

There is nothing within Timestop that prohibits casting self effecting spells which is what time stop is.

However, there is excellent precedent for spells not stacking directly with themselves.

At best, you could say that a Time Stop within a Time Stop would have the durations overlap. A pretty risky maneuver, considering how random the durations are, and the fact that your DM should not tell you how long random durations are. (Granted, it could be a nasty trick with multiple Maximized Time Stops, but at the times you're epic level enough to pull that off, you're <i>supposed</i> to be obscenely powerful.) That's probably the canon way of doing things, but I would not be at all surprised to see it sage errataed away if the question came up there.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Good points. I'll briefly point out that in the past, 3 out of 5 of these spells had built-in limitations that could possibly kill the user -- but all such side-effects were taken out in 3rd Edition (to make a "softer" game for players), thereby breaking these spells.

In 1st and 2nd Edition:
- Polymorph required a Con check (System Shock) or die.
- Gate brought a free-willed entity who might leave or attack the caster.
- Teleport had a failure option that was instant-death.

In my game using some variant on 1st Ed. rules for these spells makes them not a problem.

Except for Gate, these changes were made because of a philosophical shift in 3e: If the DM wants to stack the deck, stack the deck; but do not expect the basic rules contained in the PHB to do that for you in an underhanded way.

The problem with the old Teleport, Polymorph, Haste, etc. is that they significantly penalized PCs for their use. But these same penalties were never really applied to NPCs. Have you ever seen a BBEG Teleport himself to death? Age to death? Doesn't happen.

These peculiar disincentives may look good on paper, but in practice they are an extremely obnoxious form of DM cheating. At least IME. If the DM wants to make things tougher, give the bad guys more resources. Don't twist & distort the rules for a tactical advantage; that only undermines the credibility of the rules...and the DM.

YMMV.

 

[Bauglir]

I agree.

There is still some of this type of thing in 3e - miss chance on Teleport for example - I can't think of a DM that wouldn't fudge that if the alternative was for the BBEG to appear far enough inside solid rock to be wiped out without an encounter.

Similarly MDJ and sunder are Mechanics that PCs would not use unless desparate, since appropriate amounts of gear are vital to the power curve as levels climb. Even the most sunder-happy NPC/BBEG however always seems to have the right (NPC) amount of gear for their level.

 

[andargor]

With regards to the original question, check out Reality Maelstrom from the MotP.

A tactical nuclear weapon, if I've ever seen one. Launch it at an army of mooks of 6th level or less, and they're pretty much all gone.

Not bad for a 7th level spell...

Andargor

 

[Khristos]

However, there is excellent precedent for spells not stacking directly with themselves.

At best, you could say that a Time Stop within a Time Stop would have the durations overlap. A pretty risky maneuver, considering how random the durations are, and the fact that your DM should not tell you how long random durations are. (Granted, it could be a nasty trick with multiple Maximized Time Stops, but at the times you're epic level enough to pull that off, you're <i>supposed</i> to be obscenely powerful.) That's probably the canon way of doing things, but I would not be at all surprised to see it sage errataed away if the question came up there.

Bonuses dont overlap... Timestop isnt a "time bonus" the only rule that would currently effect this would be rule 0. Also I have been able to maximize 9th lvl spells since level 17 so I miss this whole epic effect that supposedly I need.

To add another quick overpowering effect..... illusion spells if well thought out can be pretty darn powerful.

 

[dcollins]

These peculiar disincentives may look good on paper, but in practice they are an extremely obnoxious form of DM cheating. At least IME. If the DM wants to make things tougher, give the bad guys more resources. Don't twist & distort the rules for a tactical advantage; that only undermines the credibility of the rules...and the DM.

For where I'm sitting, the "twisting & distorting of the rules" is the 3rd Edition move to take away the only drawbacks on these very powerful spells, without properly thinking through the changes. NPCs who never happened to get killed by teleport are a lot easier to swallow than PCs who are always in troll-form or do the scry-buff-teleport routine. The former is merely a theoretical curiousity, the latter actually breaks the game.