Useless arcane or divine spells

[glass]

This is a no-brainer. The worst spell I've ever seen was in the Tome of Magic for 1e AD&D. It was called (and someone will correct my spelling) Hornung's Guess. This 1st level spell could tell you the order of magnitude of the number of things you could see. So the field commander looks to the wizard and says "How many enemy troops are filing through the trees?" and the wizard casts this spell and responds "Well, between 1000 and 9999 troops and that doesn't include any of the troops I can't see because the trees are in the way."

Another contender from the ToM (which I am pretty sure was a 2e book by the way) was Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. Pick any spell from your books, and apply that spell to th 'wild surge' table. It gave about a two percent chance of casting the spell as intended, or it might create butterflies, or heal you enemies, or render the caster unable to speak...

glass.

 

[der_kluge]

Transmute Dwarf to Elf
transmutation

Subject has to be willing...


/no, I can't take credit for that.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Prestidigitation? One of my favorite spells. Sure it cannot do anything in terms of combat or anything really useful, but I keep my ale cool, fascinate little children on the street, and impress the ladies. In the world of roleplaying it is great to have a simple, yet flexible spell. As for changing the color of sand, I could think of a few other uses for it such as scaring people with prophecies - "and lo, the sands turned black for the evil that dwelled within..."

 

[Voadam]

Transmute Dwarf to Elf
transmutation

Subject has to be willing...


/no, I can't take credit for that.

My favorite from an april issue of Dragon

Power Word Kill Drawmij

Kill's Drawmij instantly with no save.

It noted that the archmage is quite sick of the joke and tries to hunt down all copies of the spell.

 

[jerichothebard]

Another contender from the ToM (which I am pretty sure was a 2e book by the way) was Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. Pick any spell from your books, and apply that spell to th 'wild surge' table. It gave about a two percent chance of casting the spell as intended, or it might create butterflies, or heal you enemies, or render the caster unable to speak...

glass.

Much to the chagrin of my compatriots, that was one of my favorite spells in earlier days. That campaign got a little out of hand on many fronts, though, so I wasn't that out of line...


jtb

 

[Voadam]

Well, some 3ed spells I am quite sure to have never seen used by the PC:

Inflict Minor Wounds
Virtue
Erase
Gust of Wind
Magic Mouth
Phantom Trap
Sepia Snake Sigil
Illusory Script
Gentle Repose
Secret Page
Fire Trap

Some of them are useful as traps, but as such the players never really need them. There is effectively some possible usefulness for every single spell (including Inflict Minor Wounds which I think it's really the least of all ) but clearly some spells are very limited. However I have seen players use things like Arcane Mark, Open/Close or Magic Aura to some effect.

I used secret page as a PC, but only to create a Boccob's Blessed Book.

I used Magic Mouth as warning to enemies. After they sent two werewolf servitors against me and we killed them I cut off the heads of the werewolves, stuck them on poles and cast magic mouth on the heads to pronounce doom on the noble house that sent them. Then I went invisible to the Manor house, planted the poles with the heads set to trigger if they were disturbed (such as the pole being moved), webbed up their barracks entrance then cast lightning bolt into a window setting the webs on fire as I cast invisibility again and flew away.

I had forgotten about gust of wind, yes, truly a weak spell, might be worth a cantrip so you can blow out a candle dramatically though.

 

[Voadam]

This is a no-brainer. The worst spell I've ever seen was in the Tome of Magic for 1e AD&D. It was called (and someone will correct my spelling) Hornung's Guess. This 1st level spell could tell you the order of magnitude of the number of things you could see. So the field commander looks to the wizard and says "How many enemy troops are filing through the trees?" and the wizard casts this spell and responds "Well, between 1000 and 9999 troops and that doesn't include any of the troops I can't see because the trees are in the way."

Utterly braindead and useless. I'll bet the commnader can make a better guess. The only possible upside to the spell was that it was a wild spell so the wizard might cause a wild surge casting it. The Hornung's Guess elemental would be a useful result....

I agree 100%

Might have been worth it if it accurately counted things and I ever had a DM who said "you see a pile of gold" instead of "a pile of 350 gp" but as written it was worse than your visual inspection of the same thing it was analyzing.

 

[jmucchiello]

My favorite from an april issue of Dragon

Power Word Kill Drawmij

Kill's Drawmij instantly with no save.

It noted that the archmage is quite sick of the joke and tries to hunt down all copies of the spell.

No, no, no, it's Drawmij's Instant Death. It was in a series of spell name rotations where you pair up the beginings and ends of spell names to create funny spell names. This was a play on Drawmij's Instant Summons and (I suppose) Finger of Death.

(And jericho is right, ToM is a 2e book, not 1e. My bad.)

 

[Savage Wombat]

Another contender from the ToM (which I am pretty sure was a 2e book by the way) was Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. Pick any spell from your books, and apply that spell to th 'wild surge' table. It gave about a two percent chance of casting the spell as intended, or it might create butterflies, or heal you enemies, or render the caster unable to speak...

Nah, it's an awesome spell. For one thing, you got to add your level to the roll - so at higher levels you had a 10% chance or so of getting the spell you wanted. Also, considering that you could cast, say, Prismatic Spray with a 1st level spell slot, it could be inhumanly dangerous.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Much more useful to the general run of humanity, most of whom never meet a nasty attacker through their entire lives.

But if you ever need a Lightning Bolt, even just once, you will need it more than anything else in the entire world.

Besides, they could just rent a wand of lightning bolt. Why didn't I think of that?