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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 of existence. It takes the power of a god to stop it, and you can even say the name of a being on the other plane and it takes you right to them!  Amazing.

There is one hiccup: Since the premise of this blog is this takes place in our (non-magical) reality, and you're the only being in existence who can cast spells, do other planes really exist? If so, some of the other entries on this blog are wrong. If not, where does your magic come from? This kind of imaginary metaphysics* is luckily beyond the scope of work I'm willing to do, so let's leave it at this.

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

Geas

I'm too lazy to go look this up, but I think the tradeoff of making this a lower-level spell is to also make it much weaker than the old Quest spell. You get a pretty reasonable save against it, and if you have enough hit points, you can just ignore it. It gets better at higher levels, but its status as the reason your party has to embark on some insane, near-suicidal mission seems to be a thing of the past.

Real-World Rating: 6 (Pretty Okay)

Gentle Repose

This isn't objectively a great spell; basically, its only purpose is to keep your pal's corpse from stinking up the joint while you're hauling him back to the temple to bribe the priests into bringing him back to life, or from having some grudge-holding necromancer turn him into a skeleton just to annoy you. But I like it for two reasons: the hilariously on-point corniness of the material component (two copper pieces placed on the eyes!  Get it?), and the fact that it has the most mellow name of any necromancy spell, which tend otherwise to sound like Carcass song titles.

Real-World Rating: 5 (Effective But Limited)

Giant Insect

You can turn a small number of tiny, gross insects into a small number of larger, grosser insects. I dunno, I can see spending my precious mana on this if I had a little sister I really want to annoy, but if you're in a fight for your life, just shoot someone.

Real-World Rating: 3 (Pretty Ineffectual)

Glibness

I absolutely love that one of the most effective, useful spells -- you basically make every Charisma roll possible, and you can lie all you want without even the possibility of detection -- is just called "Glibness". 

"Check out this guy, telling us the oceans are made of boiling taco sauce. I mean, he's right, but he shouldn't be so glib about it!"

Real-World Rating: 7 (Effective)

Globe of Invulnerability

Another pretty good spell rendered useless by the premise of this blog. It doesn't actually make you invulnerable; it just makes you invulnerable to certain levels of magic, which, according to our own rules, you are the world's only practitioner of.  Oh well.

Real-World Rating: 1 (Worthless)

*: I mean, all metaphysics are imaginary, but you know what I mean.

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