What Spells give the DM the most headache...

[Remathilis]

The spells that make high magic enthusiasts glee and low magic enthusiasts weep...

I noticed that when most people talk about problems of "high magic" they aren't as concerned about moment of prescense, horrid wilting, and mind blank as they are about teleport, raise dead, and meteor swarm.

So, what are the spells that make a DM's job difficult, requiring heavy amounts of DM planning, counterplanning, and winging it. Which have made D&D too fantasitical for many people's tastes?

If you think none of them are so bad, how do you live with scrying, invisibile, unkillable teleporting assassin mages? What tricks do you use to make the game slightly more sane and controlable at these super levels of magic?

NOTE: This isn't a thread to debate low vs high magic, just specific spells that give the DM grief, and the best ways to handle them.

 

[Cerubus Dark]

The spells that make high magic enthusiasts glee and low magic enthusiasts weep...

I noticed that when most people talk about problems of "high magic" they aren't as concerned about moment of prescense, horrid wilting, and mind blank as they are about teleport, raise dead, and meteor swarm.

So, what are the spells that make a DM's job difficult, requiring heavy amounts of DM planning, counterplanning, and winging it. Which have made D&D too fantasitical for many people's tastes?

If you think none of them are so bad, how do you live with scrying, invisibile, unkillable teleporting assassin mages? What tricks do you use to make the game slightly more sane and controlable at these super levels of magic?

NOTE: This isn't a thread to debate low vs high magic, just specific spells that give the DM grief, and the best ways to handle them.

The ones that give me a headache are Wish, Miracle, and limited Wish.
I hate dealing with them, and the fact that my players leave them so friggin open ended is annoying.

"I wish I had a million gold coins.", "I wish I was stronger than a dragon"
Blah blah blah.
Poof, you got your gold, go fetch it from the bottom of the lake.
Poof, your now stronger than a dragon, but your power won't last forever.

 

[diaglo]

the H spells and Polymorph.

plus Contingency or metamagic nexus.

 

[Matafuego]

Teleport (I limit it quite a lot)
Scrying (I raise the DC's and do not allow Scrying as a skill, it's just an int based check with some modificators, anti Scrying devices are common)
Raise Dead (There's NO Raise Dead...The game is more lethal yes, I've changed lot of high level "save or die" spells to "save or at -1hp and no stabilization unless magic" spells and there's also other few changes)

 

[craftyrat]

I don't have a problem with raise dead, but save or die spells annoy me (I do almost all my rolling in front of my players, so they know there is no fudging), and divinations really annoy me. I run a fairly low level level (just made 8th level after a year of playing) campaign, and even detect evil gets on my nerves as a DM.

craftyrat

 

[Shemeska]

Wind walk.

No seriously, the spell pisses me off since in theory you've got almost invisible PCs zipping around at speeds to make half of the encounters in any given place not applicable because they aren't detected and can zip away before most anything can happen.

 

[Will]

I'll second wind walk, though I can work around it. The players usually add invisibility sphere along for the ride.

Polymorph and Shapechange.

Save or die and resurrection magic. I've changed these a lot in my game.

Teleport and invisibility. I just find these annoying as hell. Though to be fair, my players have used teleport in a fairly respectable way. Part of that, though, is that most buildings/castles have teleport alarms, so the players prefer to sneak in. With wind walk, usually...

 

[Qualir]

In AD&D I always hated the summoning magic. Durations were in days and players wanted to bring along armies. Thankfully, 3 E and 3.5 E have cut down the duration, but I still find it annoying when a player tries to summon every round and I have to deal with a massive encounter and look up a continuous flow of monster stats for the players. It totally slows down the game.

The biggest prob I have with 3.5 magic is ability drain. It requires constant refiguring of stat blocks and has totally taken over the poison effects too. I avoid ability drain at all costs and advise players that I will not use it against them unless they use it first. Amazing how few players will use something that they know is going to come back to haunt them.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Two problem areas...

1) Monster Summoning: Most players for some reason feel that it is up to the DM to run their monsters for them. My house rule is that if the Wizard player doesn't have the stats written up in advance or at least bring their own monster manual then no Monster Summoning for them. There is a great Monster Manual database for Tomeraider that can be run on Palm OS that is a godsend.

2) Enchantment spells: Preparing an encounter for hack & slash is a piece of cake but what about when the Wizard casts Charm Monster on one of the baddies and starts wanting to pull all sorts of information out of him that you really hadn't given any consideration to. Heck, you meant for the creep to be cannon fodder not a new NPC henchman. Requires quick thinking on the part of any DM.

 

[RangerWickett]

Very few spells give me fits. My party is 12th level, and so far nothing's caused problems. It's a more goal-oriented game than site-oriented, though, so things like teleport ain't a big problem.

Hell, the most irritating things for me are hold person and the like.