Skip to main content

F/1

Fabricate

Finally, we're free of the tyranny of the Es, and into what I call "The F ZONE"! Why am I so excited about the F ZONE? Because, buddies and pals, it has fire in it. 

But before that, we have to get through some dross like this, which basically lets you do with magic what people have been doing for thousands of years with good old manual labor. Friends, I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't sit down and calculate the actual cost-to-benefit ratio of using a 4th-level spell to turn a cluster of trees into a bench, but why bore you with those numbers when this entry is so boring already? You could make the argument that this could liberate a couple of people from some wage drudgery, but the overarching point is that you don't have to use a relatively potent bit of wizardry to save you the work of a lathe, an overseas below-minimum-wage worker, and a trip to Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

Real-World Rating: 2 (Mostly Pointless)

Faerie Fire

What if Dancing Lights was more annoying? Well, then, it would be Faerie Fire, the spell that made dipshit homophobes giggle for over two decades. I don't have much to say about this spell (which, let's be clear, is pretty dorky), other than that it's actually better than it sounds, giving your tanks up to ten rounds of advantage -- not too shabby for a first-level spell.

Real-World Rating:  7 (Effective)

False Life

Like a lot of necromancy spells, this one sounds very spooky ooky and sinister ("bolstering yourself with a necromantic facsimile of life" -- necromancers are such drama queens), but it's really just some extra hit points for an hour. Which is fine, but there's no need to sound so Grand Guignol about it. One cute detail: the material component of this one is literally just a shot of booze.

Real-World Rating: 5 (Effective But Limited)

Fear

This powerful illusion summons the dread spirit of Lee Ving to croon offensive punk lyrics at your enemies, giving you a chance to escape Los Angeles. Ha ha! Oh, how I kid. No, really, this is your standard scare-your-enemies spell juiced up a little to justify its third-level status. By throwing an illusory Room 101 at your foes, you can make them flee in terror, or at least go far enough away that they won't be able to look at you anymore. Since they can save their way out of it, it's a tad underpowered by 3rd-level standards, but it makes you feel like a real bad-ass, so I'll give it a pass.

Real-World Rating: 6 (Pretty Okay)

Feather Fall

Legitimately one of the best bang-for-your-buck spells in the Player's Handbook. There's a reason that every two-bit rinky-dink wizard ever rolled up since 1974 puts this one in their pocket: it's a first-level spell that basically makes you invulnerable to death from a fall! Even if you don't hang around in dungeons (or skyscrapers, or whatever the real-world equivalent is), this is incredibly useful, and costs practically nothing. A must-have.

Real-World Rating: 10 (Essential) 

Feeblemind

Look, I'm not gonna get too deep into the utility of this one, for once. It's a higher-level spell than I remember (8th!), and it's susceptible to a save, but it's also pretty damn potent, converting even the canniest sorcerer into someone who's spent 72 hours scrolling through blue-check Twitter accounts. 

What I want to talk about...is the name. It seems, well, wrong, doesn't it? It seems like a slur. I don't know how we've come this far in terms of accommodation and sensitivity in role-playing games and we're still stuck with this spell name that's one step above the r-word. Perhaps I am too delicate for these times, but this one should be relegated to the trash heap of RPG history along with Faerie Fire.

Real-World Rating: 6 (Pretty Okay)

Feign Death

Why bother faking it when the real thing is so easy to come by? To each his own, I guess. Anyway, if you carry around a handful of gross cemetery dirt in your pocket for weeks, you can eventually put your buddy in a coma. This isn't that useful for what it actually does, but it's kind of a back-door suspended animation spell: if your buddy has the plague or ate some rat poison, this keeps them from literally dying by clever means of fake-dying. Not really my idea of a good time, but like I said, necromancers are real drama queens.

Real-World Rating: 5 (Effective But Limited)

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

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

B/2

Blade Ward Like a lot of D&D spells, this one is more impressive in a medieval-fantasy milieu than it is in the real world. Unlike previous iterations of the spell, it doesn't make you immune to conventional melee weapon damage; it just gives you advantage. That's not bad, though, and since it's a cantrip in 5th edition, you can just use it over and over again. In the real world, of course, someone would just shoot you*, and you can't use it to, say, protect a crowd against police beatings, because it only works on the caster. Still and all, 'being largely immune to beatings and stabbings' is a good thing to have in your pocket, depending on the circles you travel in. Real-World Rating  5 (Effective But Limited) Blinding Smite We've talked before about the usefulness of these 'tons of damage plus '-type spells, and most of them, including this one, are generally in the why-bother category, especially given that here, the blindness is not permanen...
Post a Comment
Read more