Spell Compendium: What are the "broken" spells?

[concerro]

I've banned the Orb spells, not for their power, but because they encroach on the thematic flavour of the school of Evocation. With their inclusion, no convoker is going to miss banning the school of evocation.

Most evocation spells that do damage are AoE's. The orbs are single target spells. Banning orbs will only affect arcane casters that don't plan on taking any AoE's, which is a bad idea. I know because I was nickel and dimed by opponents 5 or 6 levels lower than me, and I could do nothing about it because I had no AoE which would have taken all of them out.

 

[aboyd]

Evards menacing tentacles is extremely broken.

2 extra attacks with reach as FREE actions every round. That means you can use them as part of a charge or AoO.

First of all, no, you can't use them as part of a charge. The spell is not broken in that regard. The description of a charge action states that you get a single attack. I haven't seen anything stating that free actions bypass that rule. In addition, the description of the charge attack hammers home the point with examples: "Even if you have extra attacks, such as from having a high enough base attack bonus or from using multiple weapons, you only get to make one attack during a charge."

As a DM, my personal reading of that would be "Literally no extra attacks during a charge, no matter what kind of attack it is." Sorry to all the people playing in my campaign.

Having said that, I agree that the spell is broken for another reason. It says the strikes are free actions. Free actions are meant to be repeated many times in a single round! The limit is only the DM's discretion. So a really warped reading of the spell description could lead to players flailing their enemies with 100 attacks in a single round. It's absurd. I'd change the spell description to make the tentacle attack a swift action. It wouldn't be a swift action per tentacle. Instead, it's one swift action to "unlock" use of the tentacles for that round, no matter if the tentacles strike the same or different opponents.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

No, I think the text is pretty clear on there being a limit to the number of tentacle attacks. The spell seems to only become potentially broken with Druid wildshaping or sorc/wiz self-polymorphing. Then you might be able to get the attacks on a charge, by taking a form with pounce. Even with polymorphing/wildshaping, the attacks still aren't dealing that much damage from what I can see. Without them, the str and BAB will be so awful the attacks will be really weak. But consider Spiritual Weapon, which is a level lower, attacks at range and independently of the caster, can full attack, can arguably be used as a "beacon" if a creature goes invisible...and does respectable damage. I'm not convinced it's broken without a great deal of effort to make it so.

In any case, is that spell even in SpC? I saw it in PH2. This thread is about SpC spells.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I've banned the Orb spells, not for their power, but because they encroach on the thematic flavour of the school of Evocation. With their inclusion, no convoker is going to miss banning the school of evocation.

Which, along with a wide-spread view that Evocation is a "weak school," lead me to just put them in as Evocations, like the gods intended.

They were evocations in Tome and Blood, in fact. They also were a bit different and allowed SR back that, but still. I don't mind some evocations not allowing SR. Wall of Force doesn't allow SR, even though you're projecting "force energy" (my made up term), so why not a few spells that allow no SR even though you're projecting fire/cold/acid/electric energy?

The most major "abuse" this has lead to in my games so far is that you can use Shadow Evocation to mimic them, which still isn't so bad.
(As Shadow Conj. is a level lower, it can only mimic spells up to 3rd level. Whether the designers took Shadow spells into account when assigning conj. and evocation direct damage spells' levels I don't know, though there do seem to be an AWFULLY large amount of good level 4 conj. spells (too high to mimic) and level 3 evocation spells (feels like a waste when you can mimic up to 4th) for direct damage between the PH and SpC.)

 

[aboyd]

Low level? Belker claws.

Hmm. That's only a big "maybe" for me, although if it's ban-worthy for you, then it is. No stopping you.

For me, I compare it to Seeking Ray, which is the same level, does maybe a couple more points of damage, and only requires a ranged touch attack. In that regard, Belker Claws sucks -- especially the need for a melee touch attack. That means to deliver the attack, the spellcaster is brawling with tanks -- yikes!

However, Belkar Claws gives extra attacks at higher levels, which Seeking Ray doesn't offer. That starts to make it better than Seeking Ray, despite its drawbacks. For me, at levels 1 through 5 it's worse than Seeking Ray, and at level 9+ it's better. I've made no house rule about Belkar Claws at this point.

As a general rule, anything that doubles damage or that turns melee attacks into touch attacks is overpowered and should be banned. WotC knew this when they introduced 3.5 (it was the explicit reason behind nerfing rhino hide armor) but had apparently scrapped the goal of balance by the time they wrote Spell Compendium.

It had apparently been scrapped as an idea when they introduced crits, the lance, and the spirited charge feat as well. Doubling damage on a single attack is not at all overpowered nor unbalanced in the context of 3.x D&D.

I'm with you on this one, billd91. In addition, I'm looking at the 3.5 DMG description of Rhino Armor right now, and it does not explicitly cite "never deal double damage" as the reason for nerfing it. But maybe one of the book authors explicitly cited that reason in a blog entry or something...?

For that matter, if doubling melee attacks was a rule that 3.x was supposed to avoid, then they also abandoned that rule when it came to Sneak Attacks.

 

[Runestar]

But...how do you expect a fighter to get to move and still make a full attack without belt of battle?

It is tempting, but I won't let this thread devolve into a debate on the merits of ToB. At least not yet.

I thought the bite of the XXX line of spells were quite obscene. Massive stat buffs which stack on top of the already good physical stats a druid gets from wildshaping.

And you can also share it with your animal companion while you are at it.

At least they had the sanity to rule that the stat boosts from the shapeshift variant were enhancement bonuses as well...

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.

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...

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

Hunter's mercy...fairly self explanatory.

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.

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.

 

[Noir le Lotus]

In our Savage Tide campaign, our cleric is using SC a lot.

We all agree to say that all the Mass spells are too low level.

Fugue, a bard spell, is nearly broken as the effect depends on a perform check and it is quite easy and it's a Confusion-like spell that is not a mind affecting effect

 

[aboyd]

nothing should ever make melee attacks into touch attacks. It is very bad juju when you can power attack for max, smite evil and spirited charge/rhino's rush. Level 12 characters end up dealing near 100 points of damage per hit and only missing on a 1.

If a level 12 character can hit for 100 and only misses on a 1, that basically puts them even with level 9 wizards. So what's the problem?

(OK, maybe a level 9 wizard cannot deal 100 HP of damage in a single shot, but that wizard can Cloudkill a dozen Gibbering Mouthers in a single spell, or Fireball them all for about 31 points of damage each. Even if they all saved for half damage, the damage total for the round would be about 180 points of damage spread across the 12 Gibbering Mouthers. A 12th level cleric could cast Harm and do 120 points of damage in one shot. And all that stuff is core rules, not even using splatbooks. So I'm not following how a 12th level paladin getting really good odds to do 100 points is off-balance?)

In addition, I looked up about 20 random monsters. The difference between normal AC and touch AC was about 3 to 10 points, depending upon the creature. So a spell that allows you to strike touch AC is essentially a bonus of +3 to +10 on average (technically, it's the mean, not the average). So if that's too much of a bonus, then spells such as True Strike must be extremely broken. That spell gives a +20 to attack, it's only 1st level, and it's core!

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?

 

[Runestar]

So if that's too much of a bonus, then spells such as True Strike must be extremely broken. That spell gives a +20 to attack, it's only 1st level, and it's core!

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.

True-strike takes a standard action to cast, so you normally cannot attack in the same round you cast it (unless you quicken it, in which case it becomes a 5th lv spell, much more costly than wraithstrike). Plus, that is 1 round wasted which could have been spent attacking. It only benefits 1 attack, so the effect is more limited (the only use I have seen thus far are high lv wizards using quickened true-strikes as added insurance when lobbing orb spells against high touch-AC foes).

We all agree to say that all the Mass spells are too low level.

I dunno - I kinda like mass aid and think it confers a fair benefit for its level. Reminds me of my ghaele PC who would go around aiding everyone prior to combat.

 

[billd91]

True-strike takes a standard action to cast, so you normally cannot attack in the same round you cast it (unless you quicken it, in which case it becomes a 5th lv spell, much more costly than wraithstrike). Plus, that is 1 round wasted which could have been spent attacking. It only benefits 1 attack, so the effect is more limited (the only use I have seen thus far are high lv wizards using quickened true-strikes as added insurance when lobbing orb spells against high touch-AC foes).

True strike's major abusability is in magic item creation. 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.