Skip to main content

D/4

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 be able to control someone's mind for sheer havoc.

Real-World Rating: 6 (Pretty Okay)

Drawmij's Instant Summons

Another spell of the oldest of old schools, named after the PC of Jim Ward. Get it? Oh my Lord the old D&D guys were hokey. Anyway, this one has a steep buy-in cost -- a sapphire that costs a cool K -- but it's worth it: You can mark any object, from a handgun to a hotel key, and it instantly teleports into your hand no matter who has it, how far away it is, or how closely it's being guarded. If this blog is a heist movie, Drawmij's Instant Summons is the deus ex machina that pulls the whole scam together. A mortal lock.

Real-World Rating: 9 (An All-Time Great)

Dream

It is an article of faith in almost every fantasy story that dreams have magic -- that dreams, indeed, have power. They transport you to another reality, they show you the possibility of the present and the future, and they add a shade of the mystic and the surreal to the everyday and the ordinary.

In fact, this is hogwash. Dreams are just your brain packing the events of the day into its attic, and 90% of them are about being asked to do an endless repetitive task over and over again except you only think you're getting paid for it. (The other 10% are about humiliating yourself in public.) Anyway, this dud of a spell lets you shape another person's dream, which serves merely to provide them with a boring story to tell their domestic partners, and give them a message. A classic JUYP scenario** insofar as you're blowing a 5th-level spell with a pain in the ass material component*** on a situation where you could just send a text instead.

Real-World Rating: 2 (Mostly Pointless)

Druidcraft

This cantrip allows you to predict the weather for the next 24 hours, just like one of the mysterious druids of lore or anyone with a phone (see JUYP, above).  You can also make a flower bloom, light a candle, or create the sensation of a skunk spray, which, with the realization that this is a cantrip, are all still easily accomplished by using a lighter, a glass of water, or a fart.

Real-World Rating: 1 (Worthless)

*: I feel like anyone reading this blog without the proper background would think that I advocate shooting animals an awful lot. That's not what this is about! I advocate shooting people even more!

**: Just Use Your Phone.

***: You have to make a quill pen out of a feather taken from a sleeping bird. Even the cheapest cell phone plans now offer almost unlimited texting.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

B/1

Bane Insert joke here about Tom Hardy's weird voice work here! Actually, for the low low price of one single drop of blood, this spell makes an enemy of your choice bad at things for up to a minute. The perfect example of an effective buff spell:  simple, basic, tilts the odds just enough in your favor. As good in the real world as in D&D. Real-World Rating  7 (Effective) Banishing Smite Another of those high-level spells that is more flash than function. It can inflict a fuck-ton of damage (up to 50 HP in addition to whatever you normally do with a weapon), but the real heat is if that takes your target to under 50 HP -- which it surely will to all but the most powerful foes -- you banish them to another plane of existence! Spectacular, cool, but...why bother? Why not just kill them, thus totally eliminating the possibility this dangerous enemy will return and be super pissed at you? There's no insult-to-injury scale in the real world, so this just seems like murder ...
Post a Comment
Read more

G/1

Gaseous Form Imagine going to Wizard Grad School for 12 years and the farthest you get in your chosen career path is being able to change yourself into a fart. This is pretty advantageous in a lot of ways -- you can get into locked rooms, you're immune to falling, and you get some good boosts to saves and the like -- but not only can you not (obviously) hold on to any of your gear, but you can't attack, cast spells, or use magic. Even that would be tolerable, or at least understandable, but you can still *take* damage, and if you get reduced to zero hit points, you not only are dying, but you become corporeal again! A good idea ruined by ridiculous execution. Real-World Rating:  3 (Pretty Ineffectual) Gate It takes you until 9th level to get this one, and you have to burn 5,000 in gold every time you use it -- the equivalent of flying first class, I guess -- but it is a pretty great spell: It opens an immediate and infallible portal to anywhere you want to go on any other plane...
Post a Comment
Read more

D/1

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!  ...
Post a Comment
Read more