What (PHB) Spells have you banned/altered?

[Nellisir]

I've changed fly to affect an object, not a creature; temporarily banned overland flight and wind walk (not that it matters; PCs are only 4th level); and the group as a whole decided to forgo raise dead in favor of walk the gray road, a spell I adapted from Bastion Press's Spells & Magic. The party is transported to the domain of the death god, and have three challenges along the way. Success results in them getting the deceased party member back. The party will probably be needing this spell soon, so I should probably prepare a few challenges.

Obviously the spell is 99% flavor, 1% rules. The challenges should shift every time, and be appropriate to the party's level. In theory, the three challenges are with aspects of the three demigoddesses that serve the death god, but they don't have to be combat - riddles are also appropriate. Or the PCs could have a different encounter along the Gray Road, ie getting rid of a troublesome demon or rescuing souls from a night hag, and get a pass from one of the aspects.

A party member "dying" on the Gray Road gets booted back to their corporeal body with no ill effects. And I'm tempted to rule that if the party does fail one or more challenges, they still get the deceased back, but minus one level per challenge failed.

 

[Michael Morris]

Since Dusk uses a different alignment system all the spells that reference alignment are rewritten slightly so they can continue to be used. All the spells in the PHB also got a color assigned to them and many got new descriptors added such as enhancement, metamagic, triggered, wild and so on. The only spell to get an outright rewrite was identify, which lost it's material component and now only offers a +20 insight bonus to a spellcraft check. The spellcraft skill can be used to identify magic items without resorting to the spell.

With over 600 new spells to track, the last thing I need to do is make my life more complicated by rewritting the PHB too

 

[airwalkrr]

So there is no point in ever casting Resurrection?

J from Three Haligonians

Apparently you've never been killed by a shadow or a slay living spell. Resurrection can revive a creature that has been raised as undead or slain by a death effect while raise dead cannot.

 

[airwalkrr]

I find that lots of people remove teleport.

It was phase I went through too. Though I think it's important whether to realize whether you are removing the spell because its flavor doesn't fit your world, or whether it's because you're scared of PC abuse.

Imho if it's the later, it's the DMing mentality that should change, not the spell that should get banned. Handling teleport is something that's daunting, but it definately can be done magnificently.

The first step is to stop making scenarios that depend on the PCs going through a dungeon to fight a BBEG at the end and rescue a maiden in a locked cell at the bottom of the dungeon. They'll just tp in. Once you realize that, the rest falls into place.

There are a lot of ways to deal with teleport in a HL game. Dimension lock and dimensional anchor are two examples. If the BBEG has a wizard cohort who spends his first action casting dimensional anchor on the fighter, then the PCs can no longer teleport out without leaving the fighter. Or if the wizard is targetted, then teleportation becomes a moot point unless there is a cleric with the travel domain.

 

[Arkhandus]

Since Dusk uses a different alignment system all the spells that reference alignment are rewritten slightly so they can continue to be used. All the spells in the PHB also got a color assigned to them and many got new descriptors added such as enhancement, metamagic, triggered, wild and so on. The only spell to get an outright rewrite was identify, which lost it's material component and now only offers a +20 insight bonus to a spellcraft check. The spellcraft skill can be used to identify magic items without resorting to the spell.

With over 600 new spells to track, the last thing I need to do is make my life more complicated by rewritting the PHB too

Hey Spoony Bard, what's the status on the Dusk website, anyway? I haven't checked it anytime in the past year or so IIRC, but it was kinda interesting when I skimmed it before..... I think I remember you saying at some point that the site was taken down for a while? I know that pages on it seemed to load very slowly for me, though.... Has the site been brought back up yet, or improved? I know I've lost my link to the URL.....

 

[Three_Haligonians]

Apparently you've never been killed by a shadow or a slay living spell. Resurrection can revive a creature that has been raised as undead or slain by a death effect while raise dead cannot.

Ahh... Touché

J from Three Haligonians

 

[Michael Morris]

I'll know more on this myself after Gencon.

 

[Zimbel16]

I've been tempted to ban a lot of spells lately, in particular raise dead and co, along with those low level spells that pretty much negate the need for certain skills (knock and jump coming to mind).

For this campaign, my primary concern is to keep skills useful.

Note that due to environmental conditions (persistant):
1) Extraplanar spells/ spells requiring other planes are virtually impossible to use.
2) All effects or abilities which allow the ability to fly also require skill checks (Fly, cross-class unless your race could normally fly) with fairly difficult DCs.
3) Invisibility (and its varients) grant concealment, not total concelment.
4) All ranges are halved. This includes the areas of effect for bursts, cones, etc., although 5' is rounded up.

Any spell that gives a bonus to a skill instead grants at most 1+ the Spell level to that skill. Note that the maximum for all magical bonuses on a skill is 10.

3.5:

Arcane Lock – The DC to pick an arcane lock is 30 + spell level.
Comprehend Languages – This grants a Bonus (1+Spell level) to your Decipher Script checks, and an identical temporary bonus to your number of languages for the purposes of understanding languages.
Discern Lies – you may lie without detection with a Bluff check DC 25 + spell level.
Remove Disease – This grants a bonus (1+Spell level) to the next Heal check on the target that attempts to cure the disease.
Knock – This grants a bonus (1+Spell level) to open lock checks on the target(s) for 2 minutes.
Neutralize Poison– This grants a bonus (1+Spell level) to the next Heal check on the target that attempts to remove the poison. Immunity to new poisons is unaffected.
Silence – This silences voices. It grants a (1+Spell level) bonus to any Move Silently checks.
Telekinesis – This spell is banned.
Tongues - This grants a Bonus (1+Spell level) to the number of languages of the target for the purposes of understanding and speaking languages. If the target already knows the language in question, then the target gains perfect ability to understand and speak the dialect.
Zone of Truth – you may lie in any case with a Bluff check DC 25 + spell level.