Indistinguishable from Magic

Control Water The effects of this one, particularly the flood aspect, are so sensational that you can almost lose sight of the fact that it doesn't have a lot of practical applications unless you hire yourself out to the city to do civil engineering on the cheap. Admittedly, if you're looking for a distraction or a way to cause mass havoc, causing an entire city to face post-polar-icecap levels of water damage, or crashing a huge wave into the middle of downtown, are pretty good. The main problem is that you face all those same circumstances, so unless you put together a bunch of peripheral spells (Breathe Water, Swim, etc.) or a Contingency or three*, you're literally going to be in the same boat as your enemies. Still, a real doozy for a 4th-level number. Real-World Rating  5 (Effective But Limited) Control Weather Rather the opposite of Control Water, Control Weather is a high (8th) level spell that sounds amazing, but in fact is much less effective than it seems. For on...

Conjure Barrage Do you like to throw a dagger at people?* Do you like to throw, like, two hundred  daggers at people? Well, then, this is the spell for you. It's another low-damage, high-save-potential spell, and it isn't going to do that much in a real-world setting but look cool, but, I mean, it's going to look really cool .  Real-World Rating  5 (Effective But Limited) Conjure Celestial Since we're in the "Conjure" section of the alphabetical listing of spells in the Player's Handbook , be prepared for a bunch of "see above", but here's the basic situation with summoning spells. Although they're hit-or-miss in the D&D game itself, they're completely devastating  in the real world! Nobody has any experience with celestials or any other kind of non-normal creatures, and a lot of them require magic to even damage them. And guess who has no magic in the real world? Everyone ! Everyone but you!  Even at low levels, this is creating ...