What are your "Problem Spells"?

[Jürgen Hubert]

In my continuing effort to make Urbis more "realistic" from the POV of the D&D rules, I was wondering:

What D&D spells do you consider to be "problem spells"? What spells, in your opinion, either disrupt "game balance" or would radically alter culture and society?

An example would be raise dead and similar spells. In a world where it was possible to bring the dead back to life, wouldn't assassination plots be pointless?


For the record, I'm assuming a fairly high-magic campaign world here - one where quite a few high-level spellcasters exist, and who would be sufficiently mercenary to cast high-level spells for wealthy and influental patrons...

 

[Terwox]

Well, it depends on how high of magic we're talking.
Assassination plots are foiled a little with easy access to raise dead.
This just means that assassinations would take place with people stealing the remains of a body as well. It means that the idea of picking off the king with a poisoned crossbow is useless.
Disintigrating him is a decent idea, as then you have to use normal resurrection.
Also, if it's a high enough magic game to have easy access to true resurrection -- well, it's a high enough level game to have access to spells like trap the soul.
So, perhaps, assassination plots would become soul-stealing plots?

Also, assassination plots themselves would likely be common -- after all, even in many high level campaigns, the lowered powered npcs cannot cough up 5-25k gold. Unless it's planescape or something, I guess. Heh.

I haven't looked into Urbis -- although it certainly sounds cool. I might, soon enough.

 

[KrolltheGreat]

In my continuing effort to make Urbis more "realistic" from the POV of the D&D rules, I was wondering:

What D&D spells do you consider to be "problem spells"? What spells, in your opinion, either disrupt "game balance" or would radically alter culture and society?

An example would be raise dead and similar spells. In a world where it was possible to bring the dead back to life, wouldn't assassination plots be pointless?


For the record, I'm assuming a fairly high-magic campaign world here - one where quite a few high-level spellcasters exist, and who would be sufficiently mercenary to cast high-level spells for wealthy and influental patrons...

Actually, I think all the spells are very creative and great to be available. As always, an experienced DM can always rule and know ahead of time which spells are/are not allowed/exist in a customized world of D&D. But...

Based on your example, I'd say there are a lot of spells that make a lot of stuff pointless... Raise dead, resurrect, Clone, etc. I think the key is finding someone powerful enough to not only cast these spells, but to cast them for your character. I think usually, the character that can cast such spells, would only resurrect your character if you were close to them, or there was a severely supernatural need to bring him/her back. If not, then maybe a lot of money...

But, let's not forget, there are some ways also, to kill someone to make sure they can't be raised... like abolishing them to a randomn plane, or distintigrating them, etc... so usually this stuff balances out.

 

[Cedric]

In a world where it was possible to bring the dead back to life, wouldn't assassination plots be pointless?

If you've never read Stephen Brust's Vlad Taltos novels (Jhereg, Yendi, etc). Then you should.

They have "revivification" in that world, which is basically a raise dead spell. It's is obvious in this world that the presence of easy raise dead spells makes assassination much more common. In fact, you could argue that assassination is not even evil in this world, unless you make it permanent (see below).

What they do though is have a few methods of making death permanent. If you wanted to mimic this in your game world you could have black market purchaseable one use items of the Soul Bind spell...

Just a thought...

Cedric

 

[S'mon]

In my continuing effort to make Urbis more "realistic" from the POV of the D&D rules, I was wondering:

What D&D spells do you consider to be "problem spells"? What spells, in your opinion, either disrupt "game balance" or would radically alter culture and society?

I tend to find the long-range area effect spells the most disruptive, Fireball is the classic. Spells that increase the utility of those spells, like Fly & Improved Invisibility, come in second. Teleportation Circle is potentially a big headache, you can open one in the enemy king's throneroom and send an entire army into his castle hundreds of miles away.

 

[green slime]

I tend to find the long-range area effect spells the most disruptive, Fireball is the classic. Spells that increase the utility of those spells, like Fly & Improved Invisibility, come in second. Teleportation Circle is potentially a big headache, you can open one in the enemy king's throneroom and send an entire army into his castle hundreds of miles away.

Almost the way Charles the XII of Sweden ended the war the Denmark... He shipped his army just outside the Danish King's Palace. The Danish King didn't fancy having his palace plundered, so sued for peace...

Rapidly movement of large numbers of troops will always cause problems, the answer lies in the counters available.

So in a world where raise dead (and the like) is , scry, teleport, ethereal jaunt (and similar), astral projection, invisibility, shapechange, fly, planeshift are all available, there would be serious counters.

1) permanent Anti-magic areas.
2) Spells, poisons and other items that prevent/block the raising of the dead. Could be as mundane as violating the corpse in some manner.
3) Anti-scry and anti-teleport devices would abound. Especially in Noble circles.
4)Anti-cloaking devices to penetrate disguises and force shapechangers into their true forms, reveal the invisible/ethereal.

For instance true seeing is "only" a 5th level spell, so any decent size Kingdom with a few hundred years of history, will probably have a large number of devices with similar abilities available to the leaders and nobility.

 

[S'mon]

3) Anti-scry and anti-teleport devices would abound. Especially in Noble circles.
4)Anti-cloaking devices to penetrate disguises and force shapechangers into their true forms, reveal the invisible/ethereal.

These are common IMC - the problem in 3e is that they have limited effectiveness, a powerful enough Scryer *can* scry a king shielded by amulet vs det & loc etc. I don't make it easy, but recently IMC a 17th-level wizard was charged with assassinating a king. He burned a couple of Wishes to penetrate the king's anti-scrying defenses, then opened a teleportation circle into the king's throneroom. A bunch of high-level attackers went through and killed everyone in just over a round. Hundreds more medium-level attackers poured through the circle to capture the castle & the enemy kingdom's capital city before anyone had a chance to react. It was a fairly major kingdom, too.

 

[humble minion]

Another vote on the transportation spells and the raising of the dead.

A few of the divinations can be problematic. One casting of Commune, for example, can instantly solve any ethical or doctrinary issues within a faith as well as its more utalitarian applications. Discern Location is an obvious one as well.

Plant Growth, Create Water, Create Food and Water, Cure Disease all have major implications for demographics. As do Animate Dead, the Planar Binding spells and construct creation when used to create an untiring workforce. And then there's things like Major Creation, if you're worried about economics.

 

[green slime]

These are common IMC - the problem in 3e is that they have limited effectiveness, a powerful enough Scryer *can* scry a king shielded by amulet vs det & loc etc. I don't make it easy, but recently IMC a 17th-level wizard was charged with assassinating a king. He burned a couple of Wishes to penetrate the king's anti-scrying defenses, then opened a teleportation circle into the king's throneroom. A bunch of high-level attackers went through and killed everyone in just over a round. Hundreds more medium-level attackers poured through the circle to capture the castle & the enemy kingdom's capital city before anyone had a chance to react. It was a fairly major kingdom, too.

Which is why IMC, the Palace of the Undying Emperor and the Parlament building are within a huge Anti-magic Field...

This of course renders the question, how can I trust the 30th+ level Captain of the Guard? Well, you can't. He can be bribed/blackmailed, and corrupted like most other people. But he is probably faithful. The other Guards, all being above 20th level, probably help keep each other in line...

 

[Thanee]

True Resurrection. No penalty for being raised and no significant cost to cast this spell.

Bye
Thanee