Spells that are annoying to DMs

[Torment]

Simply put, any spell whose effects cannot be described in 100 words or less.

haha, nice one.

"yeah... well in my campaign, any spell that doesn't do damage doesn't exist. and you can't research it. and i wouldn't bank on finding a wand of non-damage dealing spell either, just ain't gonna happen!"

But yeah, in either case, I guess the druid in my campaign died (dived into a bunch of two-handed sword weilding pirates... with 5 hp... ).
Got reincarnated into a kobold.

So the player decided to make another character. So no more dealing with entangle.

 

[ivocaliban]

Personally, I dislike Fly. It brings another dimension to the game and devalues skills such as Climb and Jump.

Or...maybe I'm just bitter because I made the mistake of giving the Dread Pirate in my campaign a Phoenix Helm (Complete Arcane).

 

[Abraxas]

Any touch attack spell
Any spell that affects a spherical area (I should just change them all to cylinders)

And recently - Ray of Enfeeblement (mostly because of the repetetive use of it)

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Mordenkainen's Disjunction - After my DM cast it he vowed to either never cast it again or figure out a way to speed it up. He knew it would be nasty but he didn't realise what would happen. In order to speed up the game he rolled 100+ saves for the items ahead of time. It still caused the game to come to a dead stop while everyone figured out their new stats and attack figures.

 

[Greg K]

Off the top of my head and limited to core (as there are way too many from supplements)
1. Detect Evil/Good as currently written
2. Detect Chaos/Law, Protection from Chaos/Law and any other Chaos/Law spell
3. Any spell that automatically allows success on a task normally requiring a skill roll.
4. Any spell whose effects are capped by the targets level/hit die. I'd rather have effects staged by degree of failure of the saving throw

5. prismatic spells- never liked them
6. Rope Trick
7. summon spells as written in RAW.
8. teleport spells at their current levels
9. Tensors Transformation

 

[Dragonbait]

Any spell that lasts over a series of rounds and requires many different rolls with modifiers, and changes for the situation. Entangle, for example.

Prismatic Spray screwed over a fight of mine once. It was going to be the PCs vs. a mummy boss. The room had many open spiked pit traps with fire at the bottom. The mummy had a ring of fire resistance or something (it was a higher level game). I gave him bull rush and all that good stuff. He was going to knock pcs into the pits, throw them in, and what have you. When they cast fire spells on him, they'd be in for a big surprise! I was looking forward to this fight. But no.. First action use in combat was the mage casting prismatic spray and got the result that the target is sent to another plane. My mummy failed his save. Poor mummy. (;_

I guess I could have lied about my save, but I'm not that kind of DM.

Edit: For some reason I was writing Disjunction, but was thinking Prismatic Spray.

 

[Pbartender]

haha, nice one.

"yeah... well in my campaign, any spell that doesn't do damage doesn't exist. and you can't research it. and i wouldn't bank on finding a wand of non-damage dealing spell either, just ain't gonna happen!"

I didn't say that I outlawed them. Per the title of the thread, I just find them annoying as a DM. When I build spellcasting NPCs I tend to avoid those sorts of spells.

If it's longer than about a hundred words, it's quickly becomes too complicated to remember all the necessary details of the spell... It really drags combat down, when you have to reference a spell every other round.

 

[Mystaros]

Detect spells of any sort and identify. I've always hated them. Leaves no mystery to things and makes character's lives entirely too easy and much too long.

 

[Drowbane]

Any DMs here have a particular problem with a particular spell? Me, I can't stand entangle. Too much to keep track of, who made their save, who's moving half speed, who's trying to break free, who's just sitting there failing their save. Man... too... much!

Entangle: I've heard a few GMs cry out that this spell is "way too powerful" for level 1.

 

[Goblyn]

Evard's Black testicles tentacles. It's a pain in the butt to run. I find dispel magic annoying, too.

Seconded. One PC in my game got it. He cast it once, and never cast it again. It didn't even turn out bad, or into a rediculous look-up fest. Nobody even looked back at the encounter and said "That spell sucked." He just never cast it again. That's pretty significant, I think, as he was a sorcerer.