[RANT] Magic spells that I hate 

Simple solution; the assassin's guild charges for several tiers of death, they even have different words for different kinds of death, like Eskimos with snow. There's common death; the knife in the back, the envenomed cup, the strangler's cord, that's the death of the peasant for whom a ressurection was never really on the cards anyway. Then there's the butcher's death, the body dismembered, key organs removed and destroyed, or else the whole body burned up in an arson attack. This is the death of the merchant, who can maybe afford a ressurection of the lesser kind that requires intact remains. Then there's the reaper's death, the royal death, where the soul itself is bound and kept from entering the afterlife by means of the guild's own cabal of necromancers and a fanatic with a curse'd dagger. They deliver you the victim's soul bound and screaming in the very weapon that took their life. Without it, there's nothing the most powerful cleric could do to return them from the grave - there's literally no soul for them to bring back because it's sitting in your vault.

This is a very underrated topic. It's interesting to see systems acknowledge these issues during their development; during its playtest phase, it was actually a slightly controversial change for PF2 how a lot of travel and resurrection spells became harder to access, in the interest of avoiding trivializing these elements. These spells still exist, but they're now uncommon or rare, meaning you can't just choose them on level up, or they're rituals which require several days and checks to cast. I've definitely played in more than one d20 based game where these things cause a few minor problems here and there, from logistical matters and ignoring adventure steps, to "every NPC has access to teleport and will vanish the moment things look slightly bad."

The power of your magic is insignificant compared to the power of bureaucratic red-tape…

I was in a high level 5e game where the DM banned the wish spell. Which fine, I can certainly understand why with how powerful/broken it can be. My issue is that he informed me of the ban after I tried to cast it in combat to duplicate a different spell.

I mean, the assassination plot thing goes a bit further than just resurrections, if you think about it. In a setting with magic, the king or emperor or whatever is going to be enchanted out the wazoo to be as unkillable as possible. If there is a spell or magic artifact that makes you harder to kill, that dude is going to have it: He's gonna have poison and disease immunity, heavy elemental and magical resistances, rapid health regeneration, be impervious to mundane weapons, his clothes would be stronger than most armor, he'd automatically teleport to safety if he's in danger, etc, etc. Just killing the ruler in the first place would be ridiculously difficult.

I like the idea of a Wish spell being used to prevent things from being done. For example, "I wish the evil demon lord was dead", You receive a message, "Hello, We are the Cabal of Preservation. We understand you have the desire to use a wish to kill someone, but we have decided this power is too great and have put a wish in place to prevent this from being possible. We are sorry for the inconvenience, please try again with a different wish. P.S. wishing to have this undone will not only fail but draw our ire, please do not try it."

I personally would like to see prestidigitation , thaumaturgy and druid craft; become just class abilities. Then make them a little more open-ended so players and DM's could debate what they can do. I would also add sections for similar abilities to all classes. Maybe a fighter can detect magic weapons and armor just by seeing their superior quality. Maybe they could identify army composition by their tracks. This would move it a tiny bit back to 1st edition where players would as "As a fighter do I know what the siege equipment is and have an idea about their range?"

Playing in a homebrew world and the lack if transportationhas created the issue where 'being an orc from the frozen tundra' is a quite strange thing to say while traversing the the feldip hills of dilent. Because theres no airships or large teleportation options, traveling large distances is a big deal, and so theres varst amounts of wildrrness inbetween settlements. Trade across the sea is uncommon and things feel more isolated.

A further addendum on the problems of assassination in D&D: generally death is simply a cheaper method of plane shifting. Their soul isn't gone. It just moved to another plane. That means that a sufficiently advanced empire in a D&D world could span multiple planes and the ruler might have a secondary throne in the afterlife from which to continue dispensing orders and decrees while their vassals work to find the culprits and undo the damage.

On things where the players adjusting the situation are part of the mechanic, like Powered By The Apocalypse based games, the reason it’s not just “let everyone play and why even have a GM” but that the mechanics of success and failure are about a flow between the GM controlling, a compromise on what the PCs want, and the PCs getting what they want. So as a GM my setups and plans are always going to matter (and those systems give you plenty of chances to twist things) but the resulting story ends up being a dance between my plans and the players. The GM also has the crucial role of handling the pacing and facilitating keeping stuff moving and fun, which is absolutely essential for a good game. It requires a different kind of prep as you’ll need to be flexible but the GM’s voice is just as important as in something like D&D. If you want a great example of how resurrection mechanics in a high fantasy setting can effect the world I really recommend Delicious in Dungeon, the world building is fantastic.

The resurrection issue was addressed by an old friend of mine who occasionally DM'ed back in the 80's. In his campaigns, clerics could potentially raise the dead, but had to travel the planes and bargain with the gods or their minions. Not impossible, but an adventure series in and of itself. Used only once in our group.

regarding communication, I have run a game in a setting where that settings "roman empire" hasn't fallen, because magical communication and healing is available, basically every centurion has a tacked on diviner and either abjurer or cleric (of that settings god of tyranny), meaning communication is near instant, and yes, magic is used to sort some preset portals to frontier keeps, for the purpose of rapid deployment. This empire is where the game takes place, and it's intended as an "are we the baddies? maybe we should join the rebels" style of campaign

Most folks of means would probably carry some kind of document stating that anyone who finds their mortal remains and brings them to a temple for resurrection shall be reimbursed and rewarded.

If magic is common then anti magic would be used as well. The kings assassin was killed with a magical dagger or special spell that prevents resurrection

Just consider the impact of curing spells: there would be queues up and down the street and around the block of anyone known to have those abilities. No cleric would be able to get out the door "to go adventuring" without spending all their "spells" on all the massed sick and infirm. And when the cleric had used their "spells for the day", the mob would keep following them in the (vain) hope of being the first ones to be healed the next day.

I get the frustration with this kind of magic and the easy solution is to use a different system. I run a high magic campaign with all the bells and whistles and it works because lots of characters have access to them. The king can get rezzed, do can the players, but the baddies can as well.

Feeble Mind. It kinda got fixed in 5e, but I don't play 5e. In every other version, its just a "The Caster is useless" In every prior version, it required a higher level spell to remove the effect and was the ONLY spell like that. it might as well have been an instant death spell, with a -4 penalty for caters. If would be easier to access Raise Dead, than remove feeblemind requiringf a heal, limited wish, miracle, or wish to remove the effect, for a level FIVE spell in 3E

New campaign idea - in a world where resurrection requires some exotic mythical material that you can't just farm, the rich royalty have sent on an expedition to find it for them, and you're presented with the moral conundrum of what you actually want to do with this invaluable one-of-a-kind relic item that can undo death itself. Are you going to give it to the king so he can continue his decadent debauchery for eternity? Are you going to keep it for yourself? Are you going to play the bleeding-heart hero and use it to resurrect the poor farmgirl who died on your travels? *The drama*

Definitely some loopholes and crazy combos, but I love the way my players manipulate or perceive the system!

About communication magic. In 5E, remember, sending has a line that makes it even more stupid: "The spell enables creatures with Intelligence scores of at least 1 to understand the meaning of your message." You can actually use that spell to make yourself understood to otherwise creatures impossible to communicate with, like freakin gelatinous cubes.

We had something like this happen on Tuesday night. Our group is playing Pathfinder 1e and the GM is using a printed module. We're all 11th level. The first scenario of the night has a boy surrounded by jackals and other monsters with his injured mother lying prone on the ground. After the brief fight, the mother is found to be dead. It is meant to be a tragic moment where the characters have to figure out what to do with the boy. The Druid immediately says, a boy needs a mother, and casts Reincarnation, spending 1,000gp in rare ointments to perform the spell (she had enough to perform this task three times). 10 minutes later, the mom pops back up but is now an Elf. It is at this point, one of the players realized the horror that the Druid has caused. The mother, being an Elf, will live for hundreds of years watching her son, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and more grow old and die while she barely changes. Magic can huge impacts on the game when not used wisely.

I have been trying to find a series that goes into what spells to include in a low magic setting, how those spells fit into the setting and tone, etc. I absolutely agree resurrection should involve divine intervention or a trip to the afterlife to bargain with Hades, Davey Jones, etc.

One workaround to manage teleportation that I rather like is that you can't teleport at a whim. You basically need Stargates built at both ends of the teleportation, requiring exotic, costly materials in the construction, and if you try teleporting to a location without a gate in place, you might have a 1% chance to land in the correct location...

I added the first level spell eavesdrop. Magical communications are never secure. Resurrection requires the willing sacrifice of a non-suicidal person. Teleportation are reduced to line of sight, magical gates and teleportation circles require a human sacrifice to open.

Communication and teleportation spells are always a soft ban when I run fantasy games partially for the empire logistics mentioned in the video, but also because a group of heroes needs to be isolated to make decisions themselves, and it's really hard to put believable contrivances in place for why they can't just call for help whenever they want and act more like scouts who find trouble than people who act on it.

I like how Deadlands takes the “Pet Sematary” approach to resurrection. You come back, and you get supernatural powers, the bad news, depending on how you died you may still look clearly undead. you also have been possessed by a stubborn demon who is keeping you alive like the world’s angriest dialysis machine. Also this demon will not hesitate to give the GM control of your character at the worst possible time.

In my games, the problem with these crazy spells- is that I solved it by scaling the game down. Both the power available in this world, and the money. Very, very, very few people can even hit level 5 levels of power. Hence sending, revivify, and stuff like that is stuff that the high priest can give... So not only is it super expensive (I make gold pieces a really big deal), access to it is also super super rare because such individuals are also super rare. There cant be an industry on it if only like 5 people can do them throughout the region. If revivify is the best a powerful person can do, that means it only takes a minute to bring someone back. They just need to stall

Always prefer altering a spell to simply removing it. Some good options I've seen for raise dead/ressurection are having it cost 10% of the caster's lifespan (Bring back the king? Sure, he'll make me a noble! Bring back a random adventurer? Hardly.), the "plea to higher power and roll for it" that Mercer uses, or even the old-school permanent constitution loss or some other "this character will never be the same again" penalty.

In my campaign, reviving the dead can only be done by divine intervention, which requires the material component of the heart from a freshly slain god. This puts the component in a position where is is difficult for the players to access but also for powerful npcs to access in the setting, but possible for both.

Resurrection spells are fine. They already expensive. Anyone who can afford to kill a king, while set up curses, steal their soul or something along the lines, to stop or delay the resurrection. It even can be the whole campaign, recovering the soul from Hell 'cause the king was tricked beforehand. Another route is what Eberron did in 3.5, no (accesible) NPC was higher than level 13. The rest kinda agree, but if PCs can use 'em, NPCs can use em.

You are making the classic mistake of comparing the mundane with the magical (a king is assassinated, he is just rezzed!) when you should be comparing the magical with the magical (any assassination would be magically augmented to stop that resurrection). I see this all the time. "castles are useless because the attacker has magic/ dragons/ other!!!!" Well, so do the defenders. In reality, due to the arms race of magic that would exist between nations and factions it would probably end up being used sparingly. Magical messaging over long distances? Well, the spies of the world will develop magic to intercept that messaging. All of a sudden using the analogue method of a physical messenger becomes more preferable. Teleporting all over the place? Wait until your prized assets (adventurers) are snatched up mid teleport and dumped into a cell. See how fast using that unless it's absolutely necessary stops.

That dastardly sun! More evidence the D&D room needs curtains. I never really thought about the interaction between high-level spells (particularly end game resurrection magic) and the hyper-wealthy elite. You could build an entire world around the implications of that! But I'm lazy. I think my response (if it ever came up in a game) would be, "There's a very good reason why it doesn't work that way, but for the sake of brevity, let's just kill some dragons and pretend I've explained it."

The raise the dead! That is how I balance. A 5000gp diamond? That is a major undertaking to get one in my play. King assassinated? Well guess what? They stole that diamond that was in the royal vault as part of it. They had some cursed weapon that severs the soul so a simple spell will not work...

Awesome video, I love how the quick editing cuts really support your jokes. Not only informative but also entertaining!

Teleportation , phasing through matter, time travel, premonitions, mind reading, lie detection- all laden with problems

One of the solutions I have for ressurection shenanigans is that its a common practice in my world to behead the dead to protect them from necromancy. Nearly every fighting style teaches decapitating blows, and its a sign of respect and civic duty to behead fallen enemies to grant them proper rest. Most physical undead are the bodies of fallen warriors from eons ago, or reanimated monsters or animals. Then we have the powerful necromancers of ages past that capture the souls of those who are slain and make armies of ghosts. If people are slain as a ghost, their soul gets destroyed. They need to be freed from a necromancer's control as slaying them will mean they cease to exist, and therefore cannot be resurrected by any means.

You need the permission of the king or crown prince to resurrect nobles. The king is currently incommunicado, and the crown prince is in his seventies and tired of waiting to be king.

For resurrection, I say that coming back from the dead is an extreme ordeal for the soul. Mechanically, it remains the same, except most individuals don't want to be brought back to life. I personally include a way to prevent resurrections by taking small trophy from the victim so assassinations are still possible, albiet a little more complicated.

I figure an easy solution to the resurrection spell thing. Is every spell caster in the realm can only cast a resurrection spell once per x amount of time. Like say once per 5 years. That way an important person or character dies, would have to find a spell caster that can ressurect in time while also keeping the body from decomposing. And would be possible slot of spell casters are still in their null window for ressurecting someone that paid them or asked a year or 3 ago. And would be common that it can't be performed because of all the crossover, and by the time could find someone that can, it can be too late. I would exclude necromancy that makes one undead from this though.

Oh hey thanks for helping finish a new top henchman npc chronomancer assassin who uses his time dilation magic and quickly ages you to death and gets around the resurrection rule by making the target die of “old age” technically enough 😂

The Soul-for-soul method is cool and makes me think of consequences for not using the method (possibly unwittingly) and having to deal with an angry devil/archon who wants their souls back or an equivalent exchange 😀

Interesting video, I love spending time building characters that challenge my dm. Well done on the fitness thing by the way😎

The thing is every spell has been designed in a way that you can counter it or make it not as powerful as everyone likes to pretend they are. Wish for example. If you actually read the spell discription you quickly realize it just allows you to replicate any 8th level spell or lower. Doing anything outside of that is entirely DM fiat. Another one is simulacrum. A simple Dispel Magic deletes it. Clone. Components can become very rare. Also, there has to be a space to house the vessel. Sounds easy enough to infiltrate and sabotage for a high power BBG. Silvery Barbs? Sure it's annoying but I've seen it absolutely have no effect on the roll just as often as it changes it. Shield is way more powerful than Silvery Barbs is. I have yet to have a single spell come up that I haven't been able to work around or find it broken.

Wizards of the power creep understand very well how to sell new material.

Communication also breeds technological advancement as people exchange ideas. So how the heck is the world still medieval with scholars able to exchange ideas near instantly? Just think if the builder of the Crane engine from ancient Egypt could instantly communicate and exchange ideas with the Greeks who were building push carts on wooden rails.... We could have had steam driven trains in the classical age and then the changes to civilization is really off to the races.... People underestimate the power of communication. Though my biggest bugbear is 1000% resurrection.

I'd say most spells are kept in check by the requirement of having a sufficiently-powerful caster available in the first place, which simply is not feasible in most settings (a 5th level caster is already along the lines of an experienced nuclear physicist in terms of how common they are, and that doesn't take into account how much smaller the populations of D&D settings are (nor how much of their efforts have to be focused on survival and non-magic endeavors). As for the metagame magics - as a DM to a DM, I'd say "tough". If the players need to improv, so does the DM.

Even something as simple as a speak with dead spell can be game breaking. Takes all the tension out of murder mysterie unless the dm works overtime to find ways around this overpowder low level spell.

Maybe treat your players to a flashback to 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D 😈: Raise Dead is a 5th lvl Cleric spell, 9th+ level Clerics are few and far between. The recipient must succeed in a Con dependent roll for it to work ( e.g., 75% at Con 10, 80% at 11) - miss that, and the dead stays dead, no more retries _ever_. The dead comes back at 1 HP and in the state they died, so possibly still poisoned, missing limbs still gone,... Most importantly, they permanently lose 1 Con point, and their original score at creation is a hard limit to the number of times they can be raised. Not that there were many ways to raise Con by any way short of a Wish back then, mind... It also only works on those dead for less than (cleric level) days. Resurrection is 7th level, 14th+ level Clerics (who also need Wisdom 18, a rarity in times of rolled attributes without raises every 4 level!) may be one per kingdom if you're lucky. They can revive those dead up to 10 years per cleric level, and those are restored to full HP, but there is still the roll needed to not simply stay dead forever (which the GM is advised to make harder if less than the full body is available) and the permanent Con loss. In addition, _the caster_ needs a day of bed rest per level of the recipient and _ages by 3 years!_ The rules explicitly state that neither of them will work on recipients that died of old age. It was only 3rd Edition that took the sting off dying, as the Con loss was replaced with losing a level while you were higher than lvl 1 - xp _are_ a regrowing resource, after all. Since then, D&D has followed the Time Bandits quote: "Dead? No reason to shirk work!" 🙃

If resurrection spells have a component necessary, say like Diamonds in 5E, then I think having a faction that monopolizes those diamonds and people capable of resurrection is one way to go about it. Suddenly you have to deal with cynical profiteers (or moral guardians) that gate keep a miraculous spell. The healer of the party may be invited to join the faction, but be asked to leave the rest of the party behind. Perhaps even kidnapped or attempted snuffed out for not joining those that want exclusivity on this sort of magic.

Every spell should have an equivalent cost to the power level. You can make the most broken spell ever, end up being a really cool piece of the lore/setting/story/campaign.

Honestly, the single worst spell is Feeblemind. "Oh, you failed this save? Congrats, your character is now useless and you have nothing to do until the rest of your party gets you to someone capable of restoring you. I guess you can sit out until then and hope your character wasn't too important to whatever adventure you were involved in." Hopefully it wasn't the "healer" that was blasted...

Pocket magic mirrors are common magic items in my setting to give an idea of how vast communication is. And yes, near all the land is run by one of a few empires and it's very hard to get away with crime.

I checked a resurrection and teleport in B/X. They seem to be reasonably limited. I also subscribe to spells must cone from somewhere they don't just get them from the manual. Or they can research a new spell.

Critical Role’s smallish change to resurrection handles some of the implications of resurrection magic fairly neatly. The tldr on it is there’s a ritual involving a number of rolls to modify the DC culminating in a final pass/fail check that isn’t tied to any skills (so just a straight d20 roll that can’t really be manipulated). On a failure, that death is permanent, and the DC goes up every time someone dies, so the king might bounce back from assassination four or five times, more if he’s lucky, but sooner or later, he has to cash his frequent die-r miles in for a one way ticket to the afterlife. It strikes a neat balance between not blowing up the default fantasy worldbuilding because you pulled the string on a thoughtlessly included spell until the whole thing unraveled but also allowing resurrection to be present in their game, which considering how emotional those resurrection scenes typically are, was absolutely the only correct choice for their show.

"run back 200 years..." And there was no crime you committed!

The gripe i have with teleportation/instant communication is at times it can cut down tension I'm trying to build in a scenario. Perhaps its something like two events happening at two locations. The players have to be decisive. Do they split up or do they pick which to respond to? Or do they just say I'll cast a spell to warn or tell so and so to go to one place. Or do we just teleport over and then maybe to the other?

Instantaneous communication, but do you trust your Telepath’s Guild? Do you trust the Royal Psionic Society in London?

King gets assassinated and resurrected. The Prince whom is now king "to the dungeon."

Thorn in my side every time I run a Star Trek RPG: sensors and transporters. Basically "I win" spells. There are lots of ways of dealing with them, but I've found social contract the most effective.

A balance I have found to keep a lot of the magic issues well balanced is how limited they are. Sending Stones or Scrying Crystal Balls need to be specially made and can only communicate with their pair or require knowing certain set of runes. Long distance and teleportation requires long established teleportation circles and mages to keep them running. Two people might be able to communicate quickly across the world, but having that information trickle out to others who need to know about it, like town guards or soldiers, is the major limiting factor. And fast and/or mass transportation is very limited do to the limited number of established teleportation centers, which are usually in major cities and in well guarded/defensible locations. I haven't had to mess around with resurrections/reincarnation much yet, but I would have it be limited is not just have it be expensive to do, but have it depended if the soul is present or even accessible. Is the soul still lingering in the mortal plane? Or is it in an afterlife where it might feel content or where a more powerful being has ownership of the soul. If it is the Latter issue, you'd probably have to do some sort of exorbitant exchange for the soul of the person you want to bring back. It's much easier to bring someone back to life if their soul is present and their body is mostly intact. But if they have been dead for centuries you'll probably have to do an entire quest to even have the chance to bring back that person.

Narrative responses [assuming a standard D&D setting like FR] to overuse of resurrection (besides requiring rare and expensive spell components): 1. Magic-users powerful enough to cast such spells may just not be that common in your setting, and they typically have better things to do than be public resurrection machines. 2. Since resurrection is typically divine magic, the gods need to give the okay each time it happens. If the act would offend them for some reason, the spell becomes impossible to cast. 3. "A willing soul is needed.": In a world where every good person knows that they are destined for eternal bliss in the afterlife, it might not be so common for them to accept resurrection. Nobles - the ones most likely to have access to the spell components - might have laws in place stipulating that they should not be resurrected, since it is presumed that their nobility entitles them to a good afterlife, and their needs to be room for their progeny or other rulers to take over. If they are killed and their line stamped out before their time, people will tend to presume that it must have been the will of the gods. 4. Time constraints: If a soul is headed for the hells, they might be willing to return but they might have been converted into a demon themselves or some other unrecoverable form before anyone is able to resurrect them. Usually a powerful evil cleric allied with that villain would be needed to cast the spell and secure the components (i.e., the kind of person the heroes were likely to have dealt with on their way to dealing with the main villain). If that secondary villain is fine leaving the main villain to their fate, as villains often do, or if the heroes can stop the resurrection in time, the resurrection doesn't happen. Moreover, there might not reasonably even be any time at all; time works differently in the afterlife after all, and isn't predictable for the living. 5. Context-sensitive components/conditions: The resurrection spells available to players are not necessarily the same spells available to every powerful magic user. Diamonds might be components for resurrecting a hero because the gem is associated with purity. But maybe resurrecting a villain, along with needing the blessing of an evil god, requires mass human sacrifices or the like. Or maybe the ritual must be conducted during a rare celestial event when the power of the good gods to intervene is weakened, etc. And as others have mentioned, there may be ways to prevent souls from being able to be reached by resurrection magic, such as anti-magic, various forms of soul-trapping magic, etc. The above points plus rare spell components would be enough to make resurrection rare and unusual in a setting. However, let's look at the worst case scenario exception: An evil monarch with all the components and conditions available to them, a kabal of evil sycophantic lackey clerics who are powerful enough to resurrect them, and they happen to be the darling of an evil god. Well, then you've got a campaign on your hands. Removing the villain's functional immortality somehow would become the primary objective. But this should not be the sort of situation that is common-place.

I love all How to be a Great GM videos! Good work with this one. Lots of things that aren't thought of during world building. Newer editions of the worlds most popular role playing game have bloated that list of spells that are on your list, and made them cheaper and more readily available to be such a problem.

I banned 5E rope trick and leomund’s hut because i am doing closer to sword and sorcery

I agree with everything you said. I’ve seen resurrection and wish spells ruin good campaigns. When I started my 1st campaign I told my players that resurrection existed but “what comes back isn’t what was there before and they could play it but I would ultimately control its actions”! That was all well and good until they got to higher levels and the whining and complaining began! 😣 the campaign didn’t last long after that!

I cast “silvery barbs” on this video, I will also be using the lucky feat to roll for you.

I...... genuinely don't get the last complaint. Spells that affect.... the dice? Like, okay? The core of the game? So what we should ban any spell that gives any sort of bonus because it turns that 11 from a failure to a success?

All magic has the power to destroy any world building. Take create food and water from D&D. The D&D economy is a typical medieval style economy. It relies on farming, and about 90% of people are involved in farming (to some degree). So, what happens to that economy when you can magically create food, and all those farmers are now out of a job... 🤔😉😱 Ps: I had a character destroy kingdoms like that Made magic items that create food, and disrupted kingdoms by spreading them around. Magic items cost a lot, but not as much as fielding armies. 😁

I think you forgot about the most problematic spells of all: The ones who grind down games to a halt. Slow them down. Make combat or story boring and uninteresting. Mostly, these are spells that reroll things, screw around with time or give out information too freely. Its why Silvery Barbs is such a big offender for me, personally: Not (only) because it screws up a fundamental game mechanic, but because it stops the flow of combat and roleplay.

On a different note… I like your haircut!

Personally I prefer to restrict access to certain spells in various ways rather than outright banning any. Once players know a spell exist will want access to it, and that's ok in my book so long as placing appropriate restrictions (rarity, cost of materials, etc) can ameliorate spells that become OP.

I had a player ask me recently if he could take the Silvery Barbs spell with the magic initiate feat. I said: "Sure you can. But Silvery Barbs is like a war crime. If you take it, I'll start giving it to my caster enemies." He quickly backtracked. Similar thing happened when I had a druid player ask if he could Jerrymander his wall of fire spell. When they fought a dracolitch who Jerrymandered the wall of fire, the whole table started to panic.

There was a somewhat popular variant of D&D 3/3.5 called Epic 6th (or E6 for short) where leveling effectively stopped at 6th level, and power after that point was gained only with feats (existing, and a few new ones). I thought the base idea of cutting out all access to most spells level 5 or higher, and making having a single level 4 spell at all an investment (you usually needed to spend a feat or two in order to acquire it). Many of the problem spells mentioned here only come into play after that level (Teleport), or when a higher level allows you to have enough spell slots to start having story implications (sending, etc). There was a lot of weight of 3.5 that it was not able to fix, but it was a very interesting idea in the abstract.

I use resurrection spells but every time someone dies it gets harder to revive them. The dc starts at a 10 and goes up by 2 each time the entity being revived dies

I think the category of meta spells is kind of vague. The worse ones, I would say, are the ones that really don't have much in game explanation

I'm a bit curious on your thoughts on divination (the woe or weal type) spells. Half expected them to show up here, i haven't quite figured out how to incorporate them properly yet.

So, Silvery Barbs. Gotcha!

I haven't banned those sort of spells in my DnD 5e world because I would like to have them in my back pocket just in case. However, to prevent the ease of how to complete tasks as mentioned by Guy, I have altered them to have them restricted in some way. For teleporting, the person would need an eye or heart from an outer plane creature, ideally from the Far Realm. As summoning and hunting these creatures is not a good idea, those materials would be rare. Of course, because of money, there would be a lot out in the world, but the players would have some trouble to just span the teleporting. For resurrection, I went with a world building solution. It is well known that to bring someone back in my world, you would need a feather from a powerful celestial creature (given willingly) and the permission from a God. Even the, there are still consequences, the details are up to the DM, but usually means being hunted by otherworldly creatures to fix the error in the world. So someone could come back, but they are usually on borrowed time. Of course, there are always exceptions. In the case of a Royal Leader, I added another rule. Once a ruler dies, the next in line is the ruling person. At some point in the past, a previous king was brought back and a big civil war occurred leading to the deaths of many. Therefore, once a Ruler is killed, even if resurrected, they are effectively banned from any legitimacy for the crown, to prevent a repeat of the civil war.

For me, it's the lie detector spells and lie detector abilities that bug me most. May as well just say NPCs can never lie at that point.

Personally I love it when systems have fluid resources that allow players to make narrative declarations. The way I see it, this is not *my* scenario, it is *our* scenario. I am the director, that is true. But we are all the writers.

I prefer magic systems that do not impact food production, energy and labor productivity, transportation and trade, or state defense. Otherwise, magic will supersede geography, which means you’ll have to redo the entire world building.

For ressurecting spells i belive main problem are raise dead and ressurection rather than whole concept of those spell as a whole. Revivify is basicaly magically reinforced resuscitation that fails if body was dead for longer than minute or had damaged head/heart/ other organ necessary to living. True ressurection on the other hand is 9th level spell - how many characters in setting there are that can cast it? Price would be affordable by many, but first tey would need to find person capable and willing to do that. Raise dead and ressurection on the other hand have too few limitations, no time limitation (10 days is a lot of time to find someone to cast it, even without gentle repose. Not even going comment on ressurection's century), nor body damage (ressurection only), nor even being difficult to cast - 5th level spell is too commonly known and while rarer there are multiple archpriests that would be able to cast 7th level spells. Luckily there are some ways to prevet this - easiest is Hellfire weapon - uncommon magic item from Descent into Avernus. I kind of hate it due to how it interacts with whole concept of soul economy of nine hells, but it is official content. Those weapons make it so that souls of those killed by them are sent to nine hells and immediately tranformed into lemures - something reversible only with wish spell. In my games i would change them a little, like rather than sending souls to hells and transforming them into devils, they only send souls to Carceri, plane that has this interesting quirk that once you enter you cannot leave (by normal means at least) and so cannot be ressurected either since soul needs to be able to return. Other ways to prevent potential ressurection would be completly destroying corpse so that only thrue ressurection would work (easier said than done - it would need to be complete like with disintegrate spell, just burning would leave skeleton). You could also use imprisonment spell wich is 9th level spell so not really easy to get. If you wanted to reach into 3.5e sources there are much more ways to prevent it. Soul Bind (9th level spell for wizards and clerics), Trap the Soul (8th level spell for wizards), Imprison the soul (7th level cleric spell) all of those spell have their own limitations to make them work with Soul bind having least of them of course. In Book of Vile Darkness there is also magic item called Dark Altar Stone that costs 150 000gp and that cats trap the oul on any person killed on top of it and lastly said book introduced as well way to consume souls for powerwich destroys them forever obviously preventing any ressurections ever. Lastly there are also Inevitables - extremly powerful contructs tha safeguard basic laws of universe and would undoubtedly intervine if ressurections were becoming too common. In 3.5 Inevitables responsible for safeguarding inevitability of death were maruts, but 5e lore changed their role so you would need to use different one.

I thought I was the only person that hated “meta-gaming” spells and abilities, given their prevalence in 5e. Thank you for making me feel “normal”

While I understand that 5e is far from perfect, IMHO a DM who gets caught flat-footed by a PC's spell or ability hasn't done their homework. In Session Zero the DM should present the theme and style of the game he would like to run and allow the players to work out A) If they like those and B) What their characters should be. This should include ANY changes to the rules or anything that is banned or homebrewed. Many spells that aren't even high level give some DMs headaches and that's fair. I tossed a half a page of notes from an adventure because one of my players had taken the Teleport spell and I didn't realize that it was available to them yet. That's on me. A good DM HAS to be able to think on their feet. If your plotline involves the party going into the city to question someone, all well and good. But what if the party wants to stop and have a few ales first? What if you've already established that one of the PCs has a bounty on their head and you've already established that there have been assassins lurking in the city? I don't subscribe to allowing the players to utterly derail your campaign, but you have to give them some wiggle room or else you aren't running a game...you're helping a group co-author a book.

Save or die. I despise any spell/effect/trap that is make a simple saving throw or you die. It's the only thing worse than being too dangerous or too powerful. That is: it's BORING. Now, if the players CHOOSE to climb along the bottomless cliffs of no return, when instead there is a perfectly reasonable (albiet probably strewn with traps and monsters) trail I've placed for them RIGHT THERE, well, then its THEIR choice.

Yeah, I ran Pathfinder Kingmaker, and SWEET JESUS did my PCs learn alternate uses for magic. One of their first big "All-in" moments were Missive Stones. They set aside Build Points every month to be able to keep cranking them out. They literally did math on distances to build little way stations three miles apart with two of these at each one, specifically to build a communication network between their settlements. They did the math on this, and all you need is a single 3rd level caster with access to Whispering Wind, and Craft Wondrous Item. Their entire kingdom could know about an attack within MINUTES of something going down due to the chain effect. Then the Druid took some time to READ HIS SPELLS, and everything starts breaking down. He grabbed Leadership Feat, and very soon, the whole party was sitting on Leadership. Can't argue the purchase of the Feat, either, cause the game is KINGmaker, you are literally leading a nation. Okay, so here's a fun one for you: The secondary effect of Plant growth allows you to improve soil quality, granting a 33% yield to crops grown. How does this tie back to Leadership? Oh, because the Druid created their own Druidic circle, and put in for making a series of magical trinkets that would be able to cast SOLELY the secondary effect of Plant Growth 3 times per day. Again, they budgeted for this, and gives them out to their *hundreds* of followers, so that they can go around to the kingdom's farm every year to boost the crop growth. They trained their *followers* to take the Leadership Feat as well, and train *their* eventual followers in it as well. Oh, we've got refugees coming in? No worries, the Druid Army has goodberry. Then there was the Royal Air Force made out of wyverns that the party convinced over to their side, but that's sort of another story unto itself.

I actually love how magic completely change empires, societies and conflict. If, as a DM, have a mighty empire, it has a secret service with wizards and clerics scrying, ask the gods, if using other divination soells; there are almist unveatable hit squads, teleporting in, assassinating opponents and teleport out with the body so it can't be resurected etc. Then there is counter espionage to prevent a ruler from being spyed on or assassinated in this manner. I love it, but my players don't. 😅

I play on a westmarch and had a dm use a silvery barbs on literally every crit, passing saving throw etc that my character has. It was infuriating. I hate that spell

Your “soul for a soul” solution would create an interesting scenario for kingdoms to fold religion into governance entirely and create “god-kings / queens” who require continued sacrifices so they may continue there work on the mortal plane. Usurpers would be at a disadvantage in such a world without significant sycophants behind them.

These spells were never a problem for me

The ones that make combat stop for 20 mins trying to figure it out.

About the resurrection problem, most games have enough limitations for the points you brought up to be a problem. Taking D&D for the following examples. Mechanically, if the killer takes the king's head, then the only spells that can bring him back are either Reincarnate or some really high level ressurrection spells, and those might just not be avaliable because they're just that hard to come by., The soul also has to be willing AND ABLE, so if the soul has been trapped by a spell or taken by a god or a fiend that doesn't want to let it go, the king is not comming back regardless of what spells you use. Lastly, I'm pretty sure people killed by Hellfire Weapons can't be brought back since they're technically alive as a Lemure, so maybe use one of those

Sometimes, if you want to have game mechanics that are fun for your players, you have to all just kinda handwave away why this doesn't break the world's story. And when those get brought up, you can just handwave away why it doesn't work. "Oh, why aren't they reviving the slain king? Guess the assassin found a way to prevent that." "Oh, why isn't there a dedicated telecommunications network? They tried it. Then the Wizards Union began demanding succubi secretaries for their agents, and that ushered in the fourth age of darkness. So it's banned." "Why isn't X working? BECAUSE THE GOD(DESS) FORBIDS IT. NOW EITHER ROLL SOME DICE OR WE SKIP YOUR COMBAT TURN, JERRY."

Concerning Resurrection; just enforce the component cost and being realistic about their availability does wonders for viability. Sure, a 1000gp of diamond maybe possible for someone with wealth, but how many 1000gp Diamonds are there? Especially in a realm where it is known that it's necessary for bringing someone back from the dead, imagine the heist stories or exploration stories to acquire the gem to bring back the king, or the idea of the assassination plot being part of an extortion racket demanding a hundred times its value because all others are beyond the courts reach.

My main one is the wish spell I just don't feel like it's something you should be able to cast whenever you want it should be a reward like quest leads up to getting a wish

I can add a couple more types of spells or magical effects to the list. First is any creation effect which creates something from nothing or duplicates perfectly anything already existing. Those are an economic catastrophe waiting to happen or just a catastrophe, depending on what is actually created. Think what would happen if someone lost a decanter of endless water after having activated it (Waterworld scenario) or if you can just bring in existence materials that you can then sell. Similar to these are instantaneous transmutations, which can achieve the same nasty results. Back in third edition there was a spell that could irreversibly turn a creature into salt, and in no time someone posted the idea to buy a cow weighing around one ton for a few gold coins and turning it into around a ton of salt worth several tens of thousands of gold coins. Even an apparently innocent-looking item creation feat like Create Portal could have nasty hidden consequences. I could easily imagine the birth of a guild of the gates monopoly zing all the fast travel highways on the planet and beyond, with the same kind of power as the Spacefaring Guild of the Dune universe. No one could gain from trade without using the gates of the guild, or win a war without access to gates for moving troops around swiftly. It's a similar thing to the misuse of teleport spells, but on an incredibly vast scale. Such a thing could only work in Planescape because the only one capable of building portals was a goddess, which did so in a quite chaotic and unpredictable way, but if it was done by interested mortals, it would just have been a mess.

No one better cast create water at this table 😬

5:22 that ignores the problem of advisors being selfish. Sure in dnd magic can fix many problems but if the people in power don’t want those problems fixed they’re not going to be fixed. A selfish advisor who more than likely was the one that had the king killed is more likely to have the king heir instated as the new king to use as a puppet than he is to have revivify or true resurrection cast on the king. Wether or not magic can fix everything doesn’t matter what matters is if people are willing to indulge the ones that can use it and to what degree. Sure instant communication is a thing with magic but are is magic trusted enough for it to be taken advantage of? Hell people can be extremely distrustful of magic even in settings where it commonly exists. 7:26 is it though? Yes you plan out what’s going to happen next but saying *it’s my scenario* kinda sounds like you don’t want players having input. It sounds like you want to have the players follow the script you’ve set up and because the players at level 15 can escape capture and avoid the late game prison break arc you’re not happy. Improvisation and changes to the script should be embraced. The players can still end up at the BBEG fight you have planned they’re just following another path to it. Don’t get upset because the rail tracks you set were ignored.

About the resurrection and revival you can enforce the “if they are WILLING and able”. If the dead king is in a plane where the ruler of that plane (9 Hells) won’t allow that soul to leave. Or take the reverse if the are in like Elysium or heaven or whatever place where there is no physical, spiritual, or mental pain; why would they WANT to come back to the material plane where they can get hurt and killed again? “I cast the spell the raise that person back to life.” “Your spell fizzles out. You get the feeling that the soul does not want to come back and inhabit the mortal shell.”

I find a lot of these voio down to setting preference. Low magic settings focus on the back bone community / ranks. Compared to the high fanstay "death is fixed at Lv 5" books most of us pull from.

I can resurrection spells. I like death to be a real danger and permanent. I also ban or nerf Goodberry sometimes