Vapourware List of actually useful D&D spells in CRPGs

[Fishy]

Really comes down to implementation and encounter design. For example, you could play all of Dark Sun: Shattered Lands without touching Fog Cloud, but good luck beating the final battle without it. That LOS breaking and the tunnel-vision-of-death it creates is priceless. Obviously, you want to add Entangle to the mix too, but Entangle is generally more widely useful in games.

Fog Cloud in general: useless since you're better off with offensive spells that will kill the shooters instead.
Fog Cloud in an encounter with a lot of powerful archers/wizards: life saver.

I'm convinced a lot of generally obscure spells could be redeemed with creative encounter design. And even if a game makes an obscure spell shine just once, that's good enough for me as it makes the battle memorable, like the one described above.


Also special mention to all those wizard vs wizard spells generally made irrelevant because in party-based games, wizards just don't have the time to 1v1. Yet, BG2 has this wizard duel arena in the drow village. It was super refreshing to explore all those invulnerabilities, reflects and magic piercing options.

 

[Dorateen]

Dimension Door, useful for getting your party's wizard out of a tight spot on the battlefield.

 

[CryptRat]

Slow poison is useful when you're stuck inside a hostile place, it's the most useful spell in Eye of the beholder. Also Remove curse.

 

[Calthaer]

Dimension Door, useful for getting your party's wizard out of a tight spot on the battlefield.

I always used Otiluke's Resilient Sphere for that, largely because the same spell could also be used to neutralize an opponent. The whole Vancian thing with limited slots that had to be prepared made me try to get the most out of each slot and choose spells with multiple potential applications.

 

[Falksi]

I's say all of the following are either useful and/or fun to use in Dragon Age: Origins (with the caveat that it's been a few years since I played it, so may not be remembering some properly)

Flame Blast
Flaming Weapons
Fireball
Inferno
Rock Armor
Stonefist
Earthquake
Winter's Grasp
Frost Weapons
Cone of Cold
Blizzard
Lightning
Tempest
Chain Lightning
Heal
Rejuvenate
Regeneration
Mass Rejuvenation
Haste
Glyph of Paralysis
Glyph of Repulsion
Grease
Walking Bomb
Mind Blast
Force Field
Crushing Prison
Sleep
Waking Nightmare
Group Heal
Revival
Lifeward
Cleansing Aura
Thornblades
Mana Clash

I think it handles magic really, really well.

 

[Desiderius]

Dimension Door, useful for getting your party's wizard out of a tight spot on the battlefield.

Keep discovering this anew in every game where this effect is available, starting with Tactical Retreat in D:OS, though probably discovered it long before and forgot.

Absolutely king in Call of the Wild mod for Pathhfinder where positioning is everything.

 

[nightmaar]

Cure Light Wounds

 

[CappenVarra]

Then he sat down and from a journal chose the spells he would take with him. What dangers he might meet he could not know, so he selected three spells of general application: the Excellent Prismatic Spray, Phandaal's Mantle of Stealth, and the Spell of the Slow Hour.

 

[laclongquan]

Cure Light Wounds

Only useful in early IWD1/BG1 and even then Bless generally take the slot. You can always drink potions after all. What are you going to do? Hoard them?

When we can convert directly into CLW, we dont even have memorise them any more.

 

[Testownia]

Haste is probably one of the most useful buffs in RTWp games. Not only it's useful in combat it also makes exploration less bothersome.

That's why they gave a lore reason not to use it in PnP too much - it drastically accelerates ageing. At least it was the case in the Forgotten Realms setting.

 

[Harthwain]

Cure Light Wounds

This could be very useful if drinking had better effects in Baldur's Gate, because it cures intoxication. You could make an argument that intoxication can't be dispelled, while magical effects (such as Resist Fear) can, so it is good for morale, but it also decreases luck at the same rate. As it stands it's much more useful in PnP, for roleplaying reasons.

In The Dungeon Of Unpronounceable: The Amulet of Chaos you can use alcohol in a way that negates the penalty of a drink. Such as giving +4 Strength, +4 Courage, -4 Intelligence wine to the Barbarian, because Strength increase is significant to him - as a melee class - while Courage bonus negates Intelligence penalty, plus he doesn't have high Intelligence anyway. Same goes for the Ogre. The Dwarf could be given light beer (+4 Strength, +4 Courage, -Agility), unless you want to level up his Agility for parries, in that case you could give him dungeon ale (+4 Strength, +4 Courage, -3 Charisma), if you are making him into a tank. The Ogre can benefit from Charisma (due to his abysmal accuracy), so it'd rather reduce his Intelligence (or Agility).

In terms of pure healing Cure Light Wounds becomes useless later on, so you can swap it for any other level 1 spell.

 

[Desiderius]

Hard to get the action economy to work with the drinking tho.

 

[Cael]

I's say all of the following are either useful and/or fun to use in Dragon Age: Origins (with the caveat that it's been a few years since I played it, so may not be remembering some properly)

Flame Blast
Flaming Weapons
Fireball
Inferno
Rock Armor
Stonefist
Earthquake
Winter's Grasp
Frost Weapons
Cone of Cold
Blizzard
Lightning
Tempest
Chain Lightning
Heal
Rejuvenate
Regeneration
Mass Rejuvenation
Haste
Glyph of Paralysis
Glyph of Repulsion
Grease
Walking Bomb
Mind Blast
Force Field
Crushing Prison
Sleep
Waking Nightmare
Group Heal
Revival
Lifeward
Cleansing Aura
Thornblades

I think it handles magic really, really well.

No mana clash. Fail.

 

[Jvegi]

So many magic missile spamming bg noobs itt. Play something serious for a change.

Cure light wounds. Shieeet.

 

[octavius]

The power of Magic Missile is insignificant next to the power of Enlarge. MM is good for taking down Mirror Images, but the damage potential of a single Enlarge spell is far greater.

 

[Falksi]

I's say all of the following are either useful and/or fun to use in Dragon Age: Origins (with the caveat that it's been a few years since I played it, so may not be remembering some properly)

Flame Blast
Flaming Weapons
Fireball
Inferno
Rock Armor
Stonefist
Earthquake
Winter's Grasp
Frost Weapons
Cone of Cold
Blizzard
Lightning
Tempest
Chain Lightning
Heal
Rejuvenate
Regeneration
Mass Rejuvenation
Haste
Glyph of Paralysis
Glyph of Repulsion
Grease
Walking Bomb
Mind Blast
Force Field
Crushing Prison
Sleep
Waking Nightmare
Group Heal
Revival
Lifeward
Cleansing Aura
Thornblades

I think it handles magic really, really well.

No mana clash. Fail.

Knew I'd miss summat, duly amended.

Also, remember this?.........

No? No?

No, no, no, no?

No, no, no, no?

No, no there's no lyrics!!

 

[Harthwain]

I prefered Chromatic Orb over Magic Missle, because Chromatic Orb has double use (damage + spell effect) and spell effect depends on level of the caster. Also, Color Spray.

 

[Testownia]

I prefered Chromatic Orb over Magic Missle because Chromatic Orb has double use (damage + spell effect) and spell effect depends on the level of the caster. Also, Color Spray.

Always found it weird you couldn't pick one of the "lesser" spell effects, though.

 

[Cael]

I prefered Chromatic Orb over Magic Missle because Chromatic Orb has double use (damage + spell effect) and spell effect depends on the level of the caster. Also, Color Spray.

Always found it weird you couldn't pick one of the "lesser" spell effects, though.

The last effect is basically game over if it connects. Absolute paralyse for 13 rounds??? Yes, PLEASE!

 

[octavius]

Last time I played Icewind Dale Yxunomei was stunned by a Chromatic Orb.

 

[DaveO]

In Wizard's Crown and Eternal Dagger, Countermagic was quite handy. In Eternal Dagger, Fear, Freeze, Paralyze, Fireball, Lightning, Life Blast, Life Steal, and Magic Blast were all effective.

 

[Cael]

Dimension Door, useful for getting your party's wizard out of a tight spot on the battlefield.

In PnP, Dimension Door has an added bonus: It doesn't have a somatic component.

So, even if you are grappled, you can easily get out of it by making a Concentration check.

 

[Jvegi]

But is a buff that gives +1 damage really worth adding?

At low levels, yes, obviously. And +1 to rolls is always useful. In difficult games, that is. Select all+click gameplay doesn't require any spells.

Web and Fireball aren't that amazing. In situations where every round is essential, there are usually much better or necessary uses of your precious action. Holy Word for example.

Depend on WHEN you go about it. In a solo-boss fight they are not that useful but if there's a bunch of minions it's necessary to stop them in a pack and AoE them.

On lvl 4 you get confusion. It doesn't limit your mobility, and works just as well at stopping the mob from getting to you. The web refreshes, which is cool, but by the second round those fuckers will be at melee already anyway. Web, and most of low level spells lose their significance pretty quickly.

It might be just my recent IWD2 on insane playthrough mindset talking, but wasting any time on low level spells because that's what we were doing in BG as teenagers, is nonsense. In bg1&2 web is better because the ares are less cramped, so you can run around web aoe. In KotC web is nice because it has (I think) bigger radius than confusion, and in this game you need to deal with dozens of minions accompanying the dangerous foes. In IWD 2 or ToEE you're often attacked by the similarly specked, high level, dangerous enemies, and web does little against them.

 

[Dorateen]

Haste is probably one of the most useful buffs in RTWp games. Not only it's useful in combat it also makes exploration less bothersome.

That's why they gave a lore reason not to use it in PnP too much - it drastically accelerates ageing. At least it was the case in the Forgotten Realms setting.

In the Gold Box games, it was more than a lore reason, it was also a mechanic. The Haste spell would age characters by one year for each use.

 

[RPK]

Haste is probably one of the most useful buffs in RTWp games. Not only it's useful in combat it also makes exploration less bothersome.

That's why they gave a lore reason not to use it in PnP too much - it drastically accelerates ageing. At least it was the case in the Forgotten Realms setting.

In the Gold Box games, it was more than a lore reason, it was also a mechanic. The Haste spell would age characters by one year for each use.

Yeah, that's in the RAW for AD&D 2e. So, only use in case of emergencies.

they removed that effect in 3rd edition.