Spell Compendium: What are the "broken" spells?

[Noir le Lotus]

Since it's a low level spell with a low caster level necessary to have full effect, it's an extremely power and cheap item effect ... by the regular guidelines. Any magic item involving it must be inflated WAY beyond typical guidelines.

Remember that when a spell gives you a bonus and you want to create a magical item based on that spell, you must use the formula using the gained bonus instead of the formula using the spell level and caster level ...

 

[Thanee]

As far as Delay Death goes, I think you are missing that it is an immediate action. So you don't need to spend five rounds buffing the whole party with it. You just wait until someone dies and then say, "no they don't."

I don't know if that really works. Shouldn't you need to cast the spell BEFORE the damage takes someone over the threshold?

i.e. you have to cast it BEFORE the attack roll, since I don't think you can cast between the hit and the applied damage, at which point the target is already dead.

And with that in mind, I think the spells is not too bad.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

I guess I just really don't see the prohibition against making normal attacks into touch attacks. It doesn't seem unbalanced on the face of it. However, maybe someone can teach me about any nuances I'm missing?

It is extremely potent (unlike True Strike, which is actually pretty crappy in most situations).

1) It's a swift action. (This is the key benefit of Wraithstrike, removing that alone will balance it... i.e. standard action and all attacks made before the end of your next turn are made as touch attacks)

2) It affects ALL of your attacks for one round, regardless of the number (and there are many ways to get a high number of attacks).

3) It stacks well with numerous other effects.

4) Many brute-type monsters have huge natural armour bonuses.

Bye
Thanee

 

[billd91]

It is extremely potent (unlike True Strike, which is actually pretty crappy in most situations).

1) It's a swift action. (This is the key benefit of Wraithstrike, removing that alone will balance it... i.e. standard action and all attacks made before the end of your next turn are made as touch attacks)

2) It affects ALL of your attacks for one round, regardless of the number (and there are many ways to get a high number of attacks).

3) It stacks well with numerous other effects.

4) Many brute-type monsters have huge natural armour bonuses.

Bye
Thanee

I'm thinking that leaving it swift but having it only apply to the first attack would be reasonably balancing as well.

I generally like some of these combat-based swift action spells because they're extremely easy to deal with. Boom the spell goes off, the rest of the round's actions occur, the spell goes off the books. But because they're so convenient and helpful, without costing a whole other standard action to put into effect, their results have to be tightly restricted.

 

[aboyd]

I don't know if that really works. Shouldn't you need to cast the spell BEFORE the damage takes someone over the threshold?

I think most people follow the Close Wounds model for how immediate actions work. They're more like interrupt actions. You can cast them when it's not your turn, and they work like readied actions in the sense that technically jump in before something, even though they really need that "something" to have happened in order for them to trigger.

Close Wounds is an immediate spell. It says, "If you cast this spell immediately after the subject takes damage, it effectively prevents the damage. It would keep alive someone who had just dropped to -10 hit points."

Following that model for how immediate actions work, if you cast Delay Death immediately after the subject takes damage, it should effectively allow the unconscious character to sustain that damage.

Of course, nothing dictates that Close Wounds is the model everything else follows. Perhaps it has explanatory text due to being an exception to the norm. So a DM that ruled counter to what I've written would be well within his right to do so, and probably would be within RAW. In fact, a DM on either side of this would probably be within RAW, as I don't think RAW ever clearly covers this nuance.

I'd love to be wrong though. If someone knows of text that clears things up, I'd love to see it.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Heroics is a controversial one - I just don't like the idea of wizards getting fighter feats with a spell. Not least because it lets them access tome of battle maneuvers, and you can combine it with imbue summoning to give your summons context-specific feats such as mage slayer.

Not just the wizard, it can also be a buff for allies. It's very powerful, but I don't think it's necessarily broken. In my games I did make it Bard 2, because i can't understand why Bards shouldn't have a spell like this. They can Inspire Heroics, but they can't cast it? As for Mage Slayer...it does have requirements. Maybe the spell doesn't say it clearly enough, but I rule the recipient needs to meet the feat's pre-requisites.
In one game, a player made a focus caster transmuter, who could then, via his class feature, give two people Heroics in a single casting. That was kind of crazy.

Owl's insight - insight wis bonus of 1/2 caster lv, and divine casters already have no lack of ways to augment their caster lv...

What's the spell level and duration of this again? I'm pretty sure there's a reason my current cleric doesn't bother to prepare this... And I don't know that many ways to augment CL. The biggest one that comes to mind is Divine Spell Power, which needs a feat and a very good turn undead mod to get the maximum +4.

Anyspell now available to everyone, even those who did not sleep with Mystra?

That doesn't make it broken.

Hunter's mercy...fairly self explanatory.

Again, kinda think Rangers and the other "weak" classes should have awesome spells like this. I don't think it's too much, but it is very powerful.
Unimportant side-story: My lightning-focused Evoker was in a duel once with a archer ranger. I had taken a weak prestige class that fit him thematically, Stormcaster (lost CL = weak ). He tried to use hunter's mercy on me, and I spellcrafted it and used my 1/day immediate action wind wall to negate it. Good times!

Ray of stupidity - more irritating than anything else, because now, the DM can't throw foes with int scores of 3 or lower at the party.

Yeah, this one should probably just be banned. It can't really be nerfed as it already does so little ability damage. It's basically just a "win button" against low int creatures, and not worth using (without being empowered, twinned, repeat cast, etc...) any other time.
In my current game, a PC has Dragonfire Adept and took a breath weapon that inflicts -6 str penalty to the victims. There is a save, but it merely halves the duration, not the penalty. Which means I can't use anything with 6 str or lower unless it's immune to the effect. I really miss swarms.

To be fair, SC did try to balance out a number of clearly problematic spells (such as fleshshiver and quill blast). But true to 3e, they ended up creating more issues than they resolved.

I disagree. The book has a LOT of spells in it, and thus far, only about a dozen have been identified by at least two people in this thread as broken.

It is typically much easier to abuse wraithstrike than truestrike.

Wraithstrike is a swift-action spell and lasts for the whole round, meaning a gish could cast it and still make a full-attack. Alternatively, if the fighter could somehow access persistent wraithstrike (say via a ring of spell storing, or if your party has an incantatrix...).

Then the DM points out how dragons too benefit a great deal from said spell, and the players agree to swear off its use forever.

Agreed. Wraithstrike is broken because it's so low level, a swift action, AND benefits all attacks that round, while True Strike and every other melee touch ability I know of is only for one attack.

Now, with all the debate over whether it's ever balanced to get a melee attack as a touch attack, I would like to point out two things.
1) Unless the target creature has 20+ natural armor / armor / etc... True Strike is giving a better bonus than any melee touch ability.
2) This SAME book also has a level 2 sorc/wiz spell called Scintillating Scales, which for min/level causes the caster's natural AC to count towards his touch AC! And you know, dragons have a tendency to both have huge natural armor and sorcerer spellcasting... Just saying.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Are there equivalents to Owl's Insight for Intelligence, Strength, Charisma, etc? Seems odd there is only one spell to boost stats more than +4?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

There is a 5th level cleric spell that gives a flat +10 enhancement (ie, no stacking) bonus to dexterity that lasts either rounds or minutes per level, personal range only. Which would normally be a very poor spell for a cleric to bother with. My current character is an armorless cleric//ninja gestalt, so I'm considering preparing it.

I don't know if there are any other large stat bonus spells in that book.

 

[Runestar]

What's the spell level and duration of this again? I'm pretty sure there's a reason my current cleric doesn't bother to prepare this... And I don't know that many ways to augment CL. The biggest one that comes to mind is Divine Spell Power, which needs a feat and a very good turn undead mod to get the maximum +4.

Druid 5 (which explains why a cleric can't cast it), duration is a flat 1 hour. Ankh of ascension and prayer beads each gives +4 caster lv. The main upside is that it can be cast on other targets.

Hmm...now that I think about it, I can't seem to come up with that many ways of boosting caster lv. I thought there would be more...

Maybe the spell doesn't say it clearly enough, but I rule the recipient needs to meet the feat's pre-requisites.

A number of summoned monsters do in fact possess sufficient ranks in spellcraft to qualify for the mageslayer feat (offhand, at least the vrock, hezrou and djinni). Though you are right in that it is also a very useful buff for other PCs.

In my current game, a PC has Dragonfire Adept and took a breath weapon that inflicts -6 str penalty to the victims.

Well, penalties can't reduce a stat below 1, which at least makes it somewhat less debiliating than stat damage.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Druid 5 (which explains why a cleric can't cast it.

I need to find the book instead of just going with what I remember, to avoid mistakes like that.

Well, penalties can't reduce a stat below 1, which at least makes it somewhat less debiliating than stat damage.

Is that a rule somewhere? I know ray of enfeeblement specifically stops at 1, but I didn't know there was a general rule. The player in question is more often my DM, and is far more knowledgable on the draconic books than me, so I trusted him to know how it works. If it did have a limit of reducing str to 1, that'd be a big help in expanding the number of monsters that can actually threaten the party. I still use things he can leave paralyzed from time to time because I hate it when DMs completely target their encounters to negate PCs' abilities, but not as often as I'd like, and never in any sort of high EL encounter.