I thought it might be interesting to find out the different spell preferences people have. For quite a while I tended to choose pretty much the same spells each level, but now I am trying to branch out for different builds. I am currently enjoying a sorcerer/fighter with Enlarge Person and True Strike, a spell I never bothered with before. Are there spells you never use, or do you have uses for spells others find useless? I personally have never used Reduce Person, Protection from Law or Blight for example, and I also don't use Chill Touch or Shocking Grasp. feeblemind is another I never bother with,nor Silence, though that is more about not wanting to waste slots on them because I find the rarely useful. Any views?
For me it might be easier to list the spells I use most often as opposed to the ones I don't so: wizard- Charm Person, Sleep, Grease, Glitterdust, Cat's Grace and Fox's Cunning for crafting, Stinking Cloud, Fireball, Cloudkill, Lesser Globe of Invulnerability for the Fire Node, Teleport, Dismissal, Disintegrate sorcerer- Read Magic, Magic Missile, Protection from Evil/Good, Enlarge Person, Scorching Ray, Fireball, Protection from Elements, Ice Storm, Cone of Cold, Stoneskin, Phantasmal Killer, Dismissal, Disintegrate, Greater Heroism When I play bards I concentrate on the charm spells and snag the spell focus feats for them; clerics are all healing except for the crowd control spells (Holy Smite/Chaos Hammer/Flame Strike, etc.) and with druids it's Entangle, Barksin, Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Call Lightning/Lightning Storm, Heat Metal ( a vastly underrated spell IMO), Spike Growth, Spike Stones and Summon Nature's Ally X.
Love, love, love sound burst for my cleric. On the wizard side, I would add like mirror image, web (once you have a ring of freedom of movement), and heroism/greater heroism.
Sound burst is a great early offensive cleric spell, and silence should also be a great wiz spell, only it seems to work for your party's enemies all the time yet every time I try it the baddies all make their saves. I like grease a lot, but it tends to not go exactly where you want it, much like ice storm. If my guys are close to the edge of the effect, it always slips closer and hits them. Fireball is pretty reliable, though. A good old standby, never leave the inn without it. Never had any luck at all with dispel magic, in any comp RPGs ever.
Cleric Bane - Pretty much outclassed by Prayer. it does stack together with Prayer, but generally Clerics have better things to do than cast a spell that is easily resisted. On the other hand, Heightened Bane might be somewhat decent. Cause Fear - Doesn't last long enough sometimes and most enemies that are affected by this are also vulnerable to Sleep. Silence - Its a Will save... which really hinders this spell since casters usually have a high Will mod. Animate Dead - In a RP sense this is a pretty cool spell, but created zombies and skeletons are pretty weak in this. Invisibility Purge - I can only think of one enemy that casts Invisibility, and that's the caster in the Nulb Ambush. Beyond that, this spell doesn't really see much use. Dimensional Anchor - Senshock and Falrinth are the only enemies that teleport out of battle. Unhallow - Was this spell in the game? I don't remember. It would be useless though... for obvious reasons. Sorcerer/Wizard True Strike - Generally not very useful unless you're a combat Wizard or something. Cause Fear - Same as the Cleric's. Chill Touch - Why use this, when you can use Ray of Enfeeblement? Shocking Grasp - You'll get more use out of Magic Missile and Burning Hands. The former doesn't even require a save or attack roll. Reduce Person - Makes you harder to hit and assists Dexterity based characters, but your damage and movement suffer. Never really found it useful myself, but others might. Gust of Wind - Pretty sure this can make Goblins fall prone... though you could just use Fireball or Sleep to deal with them as well. Blink - Why use this, when you can use Displacement? Displacement also doesn't have any drawbacks. Dimension Door - Very situational. Most of the time it isn't worth the spell slot. Dimensional Anchor - Same as Cleric. Animate Dead - Same as Cleric. Feeblemind - Like Silence, its a Will save... so most enemies you want to cast this on will have a pretty good chance of resisting it. Eyebite - You'd get more use out of Stinking Cloud, and enemies with less than 10HD wouldn't even be considered a threat at this level. Weird - Not a bad spell by any means, but the fact it requires enemies to fail two saves makes it pretty underwhelming and it cannot benefit from Heighten Spell either. Druid Heat/Chill Metal - Pretty underwhelming damage and fairly situational. Druid's have far more important 2nd-level spells to use as well, such as Barkskin or Bear's Endurance. Reduce Animal - Do I need to explain this one? Sleet Storm - Kinda redundant when you have spells like Entangle, Spike Growth/Stones or Obscuring Mist. Soften Earth and Stone - See above. Bard Cause Fear - Same as Cleric. Silence - Same as Cleric. Blink - Same as Wizard. Paladin Virtue - Pointless. I suppose it has some use if say, someone is dying and your Cleric can't reach them, as a method to stabilize them. Magic Weapon - By the time your Paladin gets spells you may already have a +1 weapon.
Totally forgot about Web for my wizards- although once they hit 5th level Stinking Cloud becomes my default use for crowd control of foes that can't be killed by a single Fireball attack...
I kinda like Web more than Stinking Cloud. My frontline fighter, wearing Freedom of Movement ring, can move within the Web freely, but there's always concern she would be sickened by the cloud. Never find much use of Obscuring Mist either..
I've had Lareth cast Obscuring Mists once or twice- it makes it very difficult to land a melee hit and missile attacks are even worse...
Lareth does that to me pretty much all the time. I generally have to wait him out, but hunting down his troops outside of the cloud passes the time effectively. I find it hilarious his own troops complain about the spell after a few misses, too.
It seems we all find pretty much the same spells to be useless! I suppose it's not that surprising, but I was hoping to unearth a few more interesting uses of some of the 'duds'. Of all the spells listed there are actually three that I do use; I use Bane at early for clerics when there are a lot of enemies. I now like True Strike for combat wizard builds - my battlemage (sorc + 1 level of fighter) at level 1-4 gets more kills than my fighters. I've also used Dispel Magic a bit in the lower temple levels and nodes and it sometimes works, so can be quite an important differentiator, though agree most of the time it does little. My problem with Heat metal is I can never seem to tell who's wearing it, otherwise I quite like the spell!
Au contraire, this spell is wonderful. It covers a 40 ft. radius(!) and makes most enemies drop. That's almost the entire site of Imeryd's Run.
There's a reason why I only listed it under Druid spells and not Wizard spells Wizards love it but Druids not so much. Entangle has the same range and arguably, a more powerful effect. On the other hand, Sleet Storm can be used anywhere whereas Entangle cannot. Of course then you have the devastating Spike Stones/Growth spells which, depending on your caster level, will have similar range and a far, far deadlier effect... in a literal sense.
