Indistinguishable from Magic

Dominate Beast Whether or not this is a good spell depends on what you're trying to get out of it. If the idea is to befriend an animal, this one is a good shortcut to spending several months training it, although, really, what are you going to do with a trained animal beyond being friends with it? You came to a world without magic to win , not to make friends! With a bear! If the idea is to neutralize an animal that might otherwise be a threat, though, just shoot it*. Real-World Rating:  5 (Effective But Limited) Dominate Monster Ain't no monsters. Ain't nothin' to dominate. Real-World Rating :  1 (Worthless) Dominate Person As a front-door mind control spell, this isn't bad; as a back-door mind control spell, it's even better. This does the same basic thing the other Dominate spell, but there's a way to short-circuit your target into total meat-puppet mode. It doesn't last very long, and there's a Save vs. Wisdom, but there's never a bad way to

Disintegrate Now we're talking ! "Disintegrate" is just what it says on the label: point your finger at something (or, ahem, some one ) and they take a whopping 50-100 hit points of damage -- enough to kill almost anything, or to destroy anything on the downside of a garbage truck -- and that's if  it makes a saving throw. Otherwise, it gets reduced to a tiny smoking heap of dust, like when Marvin the Martian's ray gun gets turned backwards on him. It gets even better at higher levels; it takes a near-miracle (literally) to undo the damage; and it's only a 6th-level spell! This one is real-world platinum, baby. Load up on these and you can take out a small army. Real-World Rating:  10 (Essential) Dispel Evil and Good This one, again, is one that was tenuous at best in early versions (contingent on whether or not you think D&D's arbitrary but unbreakable definitions of good and evil apply to the real world), but in this version, is just a huge dud. Reme

Destructive Wave Aside from sounding like a pretty cool metal sub-genre, this is the classic thing that Thor did in the old comics: you whack the ground and a big blast of thunder emanates out from the spot, knocking everyone in sight flat on their asses.  Good damage potential on this (up to 60 HP) and half damage even with the save, but the best part is that the damage is selective  -- unlike the blunt instrument that is a Fireball, you can pick and choose who gets teakettled by it. I think you should get an extra 2d6 damage if you holler "KABLAMMO!" or something as you cast it*, but it's a good solid spell just the same. Real-World Rating:  8 (Very Ineffectual) Detect Evil and Good I don't want to get into a big thing here, but the utility of this spell (as well as a lot of the corridor of Detects that we're about to enter) is entirely contingent on the fact that in the D&D universe, good and evil are quantifiable characteristics like height or nationality.

Dancing Lights In theory, this spell -- a cantrip that lets you create four manipulatable orbs of false fire -- has a lot of uses: illumination, distraction, illusion, etc. In practice, though, I feel like it would mostly be used for pranks. Whoever is the Faerûn equivalent of Johnny Knoxville (Nahum Gundbarg or some fucking thing) probably gets a lot of mileage out of tricking horny rogues into making out with Dancing Lights. Real-World Rating:  3 (Pretty Ineffectual) Darkness There's obviously a lot of utility in being able to create an area of pure, impenetrable darkness which can't be dispelled by any nonmagical means, especially if you're the only magician in existence. The clownish exemption for this spell is that like a light spell, it has to emanate from a specific object, which you can nullify the spell by throwing a towel over . Lame. As an aside, it doesn't say what the verbal component of this spell is, but I like to think it's saying "Darknesses!