Skip to main content

F/4

Fog Cloud

The very definition of a useful, simple, low-level spell that can easily be replicated with technology. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out why carrying London around in your pocket might be useful, but a smoke grenade would get the job done just as easily and let you save this slot for Magic Missile.

Real-World Rating: 5 (Effective But Limited)

Forbiddance

I love the awkward, over-elaborate name of this spell, which practically begs you to use highfalutin pseudo-Shakespearean English while casting. "Methinks I shall engage in a bout of...forbiddance." Anyway, what this does is create a huge magical no-fly zone, which basically prevents anyone from teleporting, astrally traveling, gating, plane-shifting, or otherwise mystically trespassing on the area for an entire day.

Sound pretty good, right?  In Dungeons & Dragons, it is! It's a high-powered 6th-level abjuration with lots of practical applications. But, as a reminder, the premise of this blog is that you're an extremely powerful wizard in the real world, hanging around in 2022 and having adventures aided and abetted (or hindered) by the stock spells of the Player's Handbook. And since you're the only person on Earth who has magical powers, that means that nobody could teleport, gate, plane-shift, scry, or do anything else to you with or without the Forbiddance spell! That makes it a complete waste of a high-level spell and a thousand gold pieces. Womp-womp. 

Real-World Rating:  1 (Worthless)

Forcecage

As a copy editor, I can never figure out when or why Hasbro decides to use one or two words for a spell. Why is it Flame Strike instead of Flamestrike? Why is it Forcecage instead of Force Cage? I'm sure there's a style guide for this and I'd pay a tidy sum to get my hands on it. This one is another really high-level spell: 7th level, with a buy-in of 1,500 gold in the form of some ruby dust. And for what? It makes a spooky glowing cage that you can keep someone in. They can get out of it magically, though. So basically a locked room.  So dumb.

Real-World Rating: 4 (More Trouble Than It's Worth)

Foresight

It's hard to evaluate spells like this without flashing back to the early history of D&D. Back then, the high-level spells were open-ended and disruptively great. Wish spells let you actually make a wish and alter reality! Prognostication spells really let you see the future!  They were designed to actually emulate the high-level magic of classic fantasy, and they were great...and DMs hated them. You go to all the trouble of writing a big mysterious adventure, only to have to just tell some wise-ass sorcerer your whole fucking plan because he lucked into a scroll. So, over the years, spells like that got quantified and downgraded to, well, stuff like this. Foresight doesn't really give you foresight at all; it's more like a hyped-up Spidey sense. Don't get me wrong: This is a great spell! It gives you a whole day of advantage, immunity to surprise, and hyped-up ability checks and saves, and gives your opponents disadvantage.  It just seems...a little underpowered? That's not even it, really -- more like a little underwhelming. For a 9th-level spell (and that's as good as it gets, folks), it's plenty effective, but it just doesn't seem all that magical or fantastic.

Real-World Rating: 7 (Effective)

Freedom of Movement

This sounds like one of those early amendments to the Constitution that conservatives keep trying to roll back, but it's actually a fancy spell that let s you avoid slowing down in bad terrain, gives you immunity to hindering spells, and even throws in a little magical escape-artistry to boot! It would be great if it didn't sound so much like something a sincere Democrat would have on their t-shirt.

Real-World Rating: 8 (Very Effective)

Friends

How many of us have them?* Anyone who can cast a cantrip, apparently. This is basically a low-wattage version of Charm Person, where instead of 'willing slave' you can turn people into 'someone generally well-disposed to you'. This is the kind of spell that you could cultivate by just being nicer, but who's got time for that?

Real-World Rating: 3 (Pretty Ineffectual)

*: Ones we can depend on?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

E/1

Earthquake It seems a little grumpy to criticize this spell. It does just what it says it's going to do! It makes an earthquake! It knocks people over, it drops people into a hole in the ground, and it destroys buildings! What's not to love? Well, I mean...it's an 8th-level spell , and it's a pretty big investment for something that only effects an area the size of a football field for one minute. Not that that's bad! It's fine. It's fine ! Maybe you got a couple hundred people chasing you because you ass-grabbed the king's daughter, and you don't happen to have a ton of time or C-4. So you throw an extremely localized earthquake at them.  It's...it's fine.  I don't know. Maybe I'm just hard to please.  Real-World Rating:  7 (Effective) Eldritch Blast One of the things that D&D's 5th edition improved -- or ruined, depending on your perspective -- was the relative offensive weakness of low-level spellcasters. Well, you don'...
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

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 Li...
Post a Comment
Read more