spells that lost popularity in 3.0/3.5

[Garnfellow]

Sleep is resting in peace. It's just not worth the super-long casting time.

Cheers, -- N

I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't realize that sleep's casting time had changed in 3.5 to a full-round. That would explain why no one has taken it in any of my games.

 

[maggot]

I agree on heat metal and sleep. Those were powerhouses back in the day. Stinking cloud used to be house as well.

 

[Lanefan]

Umm, Faerie Fire exists in both 3.0 and 3.5.

OK, next session I'm going to look for it in the 3.0 PH...again. But, I'll ask first: did its name change, and-or was it in some other 3.0 book than the PH (either one would explain why we missed it).

Lanefan

 

[Vuron]

Cloudkill and Stinking Cloud has definitely seen less use than back in the day. While they are both still potent they are less of a insta-kill type effect than they tended to be in 1e and 2e.

 

[Tzarevitch]

Here are some:

Prismatic Spray - Hit point totals have become much larger but the spell doesn't scale. It is a total waste now.
Power Word: anything - Same as above. They get left behind too easily as HP climb.
Darkness/Deeper Darkness - They don't even make it dark anymore, just kinda dim.
Regenerate - Spell is pretty useless now as there are no more real dismembering effects besides vorpal, which is fatal anyway.
Reincarnate - Raise Dead hurts much less now, making Reincarnate's random effect very unappealing.
Hold Person - Spell is near useless now.
Stoneskin - Not nearly as good a defense now. It mainly stops creature attacks. Competent melee classes of similar level will just take out an adamantine weapon and beat you with it.
Glyph of Warding - Can't abuse it anymore.
Symbols - Same as Glyph.

Tzarevitch

 

[mearls]

It's funny how the game has changed with respect to spells. It used to be that almost every spell level had an instant win spell: sleep, web, and stinking cloud come to mind from my 1e days. Basically, you'd swap your instant win spell of level X for the instant win spell at level X+1 as you progressed.

Playing a magic user back in the day was much different than playing today's wizard. You'd stand at the back of the party, chucking darts and waiting for the one battle that you absolutely needed to win. Out would come your sleep spell, then the group would head back to the surface. It's crazy to compare playing my 1e MU to playing my 3e arcane casters.

 

[Grue]

Stoneskin. By far one of the best defensive spells of 1 & 2e and a 'must have' in every 7th level-plus wizard's repetoire.

 

[Vuron]

It's funny how the game has changed with respect to spells. It used to be that almost every spell level had an instant win spell: sleep, web, and stinking cloud come to mind from my 1e days. Basically, you'd swap your instant win spell of level X for the instant win spell at level X+1 as you progressed.

Playing a magic user back in the day was much different than playing today's wizard. You'd stand at the back of the party, chucking darts and waiting for the one battle that you absolutely needed to win. Out would come your sleep spell, then the group would head back to the surface. It's crazy to compare playing my 1e MU to playing my 3e arcane casters.

I would concur that this was very much the modus operandi back in the 1e days. I couldn't remember off the top of my head which version had the stinking cloud of doom spell but it was almost always an encounter winner.

Most of the insta-win spells have been pretty much nerfed (justifiably although color spray's dominance over sleep is kinda lame) in 3.5 but there are still some remanants.

Honestly I'm kinda confused over all the complaints about fireball being more useless in 3.5 as it was often heavily avoided back in the dungeon crawling days for fear of blowback and collateral damage.

 

[Ilium]

Slightly off-topic, but I came across a good house rule for Hold Person. Still allow a save every round, but if the target succeeds they are still Slowed for the remaining duration. Nice and flavorful, and a good compromise between "you're out of the combat" and "not worth casting."

 

[Shemeska]

I've never seen 'sleep' used in play in 3e/3.5

However I've seen 'heat metal' used, in a rather vindictive and petty way on a fiend that had piercings in... well... exotic locations. They PCs were feeling malicious that day.