Most useless spells?

[DavidBVal]

NWN2 has plenty of useless spells: contagion, animate undead/create undead, extract water elemental, etc.

but of particular note are a few spells that enhance a casters' melee stats, which are useless because the caster will still be extremely subpar in combat, and in many cases will lose his casting ability:iron body, Tenser's transformation.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Drain Mana

Can there be a more useless spell? Even as an enchantment it's almost completely useless, as enemies will die from being hit long before their mana is depleted. There is never a time in which a drain mana spell/enchantment is going to be better than the available alternatives.

It's actually one of the most useful spells or spell effects in Nocturne. Mana regenerating items are pretty rare so being able to regenerate between fights is useful. I remember having a Daisoujou who had a prayer spell which full healed all of the party members and removed statues and meditation which drained a bit of health and mana from the enemy. During the boss fights he would become a party-healing perpetum mobile.

 

[Nael]

NWN2 has plenty of useless spells: contagion, animate undead/create undead, extract water elemental, etc.

I actually like extract water elemental. You do damage AND get a pet for your efforts. Its not a totally useless spell. I think Contagion is there for roleplaying and dungeon masters to make use of in multiplayer modules.

but of particular note are a few spells that enhance a casters' melee stats, which are useless because the caster will still be extremely subpar in combat, and in many cases will lose his casting ability:iron body, Tenser's transformation.

Not useless if you're a fighter/mage, melee geared bard, or multi/prestige classed like RDD or Eldritch Knight.

 

[DavidBVal]

I actually like extract water elemental. You do damage AND get a pet for your efforts. Its not a totally useless spell.

The problem is, it needs to kill the target for the elemental to appear. IT does 70 damage on average and takes a save, and as the elemental is size-based, you get a medium one, providing you were lucky enough to use is at finishing blow. Isaac's Greater Missile Storm is much better for damage, and Bigby is much better to disable a caster. In pure terms of efficience, a Greater Heroism is even better, cast on the right melee.

I think Contagion is there for roleplaying and dungeon masters to make use of in multiplayer modules.

For roleplaying purposes, or used by enemy spellcasters, so you are forced to look for a cure disease, /agree

Not useless if you're a fighter/mage, melee geared bard, or multi/prestige classed like RDD or Eldritch Knight.

Yes, useless. Iron body is an 8th level spell... fighter/mages don't get many of those, one must select them carefully. You can easily attain the inmunities (best part of the spell) with stone body, 6th level. Being two levels below, you can cast it much more often. As a side note... a small trick. If you cast Freedom of Movement and Death Ward before casting Stone Body on yourself, you negate most of the penalties it gives.

Tenser is much worse, as it negates the use of any items, and we all know what does that mean in 3.5.

 

[laclongquan]

Wizards at base are just archers with special arrows and some buffs.

 

[Lhynn]

Wizards at base are just archers with special arrows and some buffs.

Nope, thats what they are being turned into tho.

 

[thesheeep]

Wizards at base are just archers with special arrows and some buffs.

Nope, thats what they are being turned into tho.

At least in almost all video games.
Must say I've rarely played D&D in pen and paper, but in DSA/RoA mages are extremely versatile, even if they do not have a single combat spell.

That is understandable, though.
What else are you going to do with a mage in a combat focused game?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I always found "False Coin" in U7 Pt 2 to be pretty useless - mostly because you're sitting on mountains of money anyway if you know what you're doing.

Then there's "Bounce" in Ultima Underworld 2 - pretty much guarantees injury, and greatly increases chances of random death. Good for a laugh, though.

I second Arcanum's spell range, almost all of the spells are either useless or require too much effort on behalf of the player to work properly.

I recently looked over the spells in the EotB trilogy, found some stinkers there:

# "Shocking Grasp" and "Cause Light Wounds" just cause too little damage to be ever worth a damn. Even "Cause Serious Wounds" has trouble being worth casting.
# "Magical Vestment" is never worth casting (at least "Armor" is useful in the early game).
# "Detect Invisibility" only works against a single monster in EotB3, so why have it in EotB2?
# "Protection From Evil ('10)" because Paladins come with it as a class ability and there's no reason NOT to have a Paladin in the party.
(From here on it's EotB3 only)
# "Death Spell" and "Power Word: Kill" barely affect anything due to the restrictions that make the spell work.
# "Resist Cold" and "Blessed Warmth" in a game half-full of Undead of which only one packs a cold-based attack.
# "Stone to Flesh" in a game with no petrifying monsters.
# "Sol's Searing Orb" for being bugged and only being capable of injuring the party.
# "Slow" - too little, too late.
# "Energy Drain" has got to be the clear winner for crappiness, though.

 

[deuxhero]

Morrowind's spell system is a mess.

Any spell that boosts or lowers derived stats costs as much or more than just raising the base attribute enough for the same bonus and other stuff (why raise an enemy's burden when you can lower their strength, lowing their max burden AND reducing damage?). Poison damage is the most resisted AND expensive (While the idea that fire and ice damage are cheap but resisted entirely by some common enemies while lightning is more expensive but has few things that resist it is actually surprisingly well thought out as far as mechanics in Morrowind went, there's no reason for Poison to be even more expensive than non-elemental damage). Disintegrate, like most spells, is caped at 100 damage to armor, but while enemy health only rarely exceeds 500, with only about 3 fights (who don't wear armor) exceeding 1000, armor quickly gets to tens of thousands of HP. It's pointless to have a lock spell with more than 1 magnitude (Lock itself isn't the best spell but it stops enemies from opening interior doors, which can easily be useful, and gives you some easy targets to lockpick for training). Weakness to common disease is only useful for casting on yourself (which requires a custom spell) when intentionally trying to contract vampirism, as only the player can actually get a disease.

Not useless if you're a fighter/mage, melee geared bard, or multi/prestige classed like RDD or Eldritch Knight.

Or you are a pure melee type with the UMD to use a scroll of it.

 

[Ulrox]

Rain of frogs from sacrifice.

 

[Matalarata]

PnP AD&D 2nd edition has "protection from cantrip" which is a 2nd level spell (iirc) that protects vs the dumbest 1st level spell ever. Basically all cantrip can do is pinch you, smear you or "boo" you. It can't cause damage or make a caster lose concentration, altough I've seen great players use a cantrip as a nice "one trick pony", I still fail to see the usefulness of P.f.C.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I'm replaying BG2 at he moment. Checking my spellbook with this thread in mind, I noticed that the third level mage spell "Spell thrust" is one I have never used, even once, in any of my numerous playthroughs.

 

[Alex]

PnP AD&D 2nd edition has "protection from cantrip" which is a 2nd level spell (iirc) that protects vs the dumbest 1st level spell ever. Basically all cantrip can do is pinch you, smear you or "boo" you. It can't cause damage or make a caster lose concentration, altough I've seen great players use a cantrip as a nice "one trick pony", I still fail to see the usefulness of P.f.C.

First edition had cantrips as a separate spell level (kinda like 0th level). With several different spells (includding summon bee, which was likely to disrupt spellcasting). Cantrips had a lot more potential for abuse back then, and if you found yourself nearby not so friendly apprentices, you could be sure they would pelt you with the worst kind of prank magic they could come up.

 

[MilesBeyond]

I'm replaying BG2 at he moment. Checking my spellbook with this thread in mind, I noticed that the third level mage spell "Spell thrust" is one I have never used, even once, in any of my numerous playthroughs.

IIRC it comes in handy in SCS where the AI is more likely to have Spell Immunities up. Far less so in the base game.

 

[Invictus]

Forget about useless spells I kept using magic missle and chromatic orb thoughout all the IE games; they made everything else pretty useless

 

[Matalarata]

First edition had cantrips as a separate spell level (kinda like 0th level). With several different spells (includding summon bee, which was likely to disrupt spellcasting). Cantrips had a lot more potential for abuse back then, and if you found yourself nearby not so friendly apprentices, you could be sure they would pelt you with the worst kind of prank magic they could come up.

Wut? Iirc first edition has no cantrip spell whatsoever, and for sure it had no level 0 spells, those are in 3rd /3,5 editions and pathfinder. Anyway, even if you summon a swarm of bees with a cantrip they are an illusion, cantrip CANNOT AFFECT another person, except for smearing/cleaning/pinching/making noise (no game effects, unless you're a Wu-Jen with a taboo for water, then you can use cantrip to wash yourself WOOT!)

fake edit: here http://pandaria.rpgworlds.info/cant/rules/adnd_spells.htm complete 1ed spell list.

Edit: wait, I found what you're talking about! Strange my DM never gave us those 0 level spell when we used to play 1st Ed. Still I don't see any useful effects, 2nd Ed. cantrip is much more powerful. Also 1st Ed had no protection from cantrip spell so my point stands

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Perhaps it was added so that the players wouldn't play pranks on important NPC during speeches and shit. I guess some DMs wouldn't like it if his favourite NPC had to stop a monologue DM was preparing for weeks because a hidden mage/thief decided to send some bees his way.

 

[Matalarata]

I assure you if an hidden mage/thief wants to disrupt your speech he'll find a way to do so, cantrip or not...

 

[Xathrodox86]

There was a spell in FATAL that let you elongate your nipples. I think that one takes the cake.

 

[SwiftCrack]

Stop/Doom/Death/X-Zone in a lot of Final Fantasy games because the hit chance is like 5% (except in like FF Tactics).

I almost never use status spells in Final Fantasy games/JRPGs in general either.


Also, Ultima in Final Fantasy 2 was borderline useless, but that was due to some grand Japanese trolling;

When Final Fantasy II was originally released on the Famicom, the Ultima spell, which was difficult to acquire, was practically useless. It was initially meant to increase its power relative to the level of other spells the caster had, but due to a bug, the spell did just around 500 damage at the most on a single target. Director Hironobu Sakaguchi has later told a humorous story relating to the bug: When Square tested the game and saw the bug, Sakaguchi asked for it to be fixed, but the person who programmed it replied that legendary stuff that dates back to an age before "proper techniques" would look inferior from present's point-of-view, explaining Ultima's weakness. He reasoned that the struggle to acquire it only to discover it's useless mirrors real life, and thus he was not going to fix the bug. Sakaguchi was irritated by the reply and tried to fix it himself, but the programmer had ciphered the source and Ultima was left the way it was.

 

[Damned Registrations]

ROFL. I had no idea the spell was made intentionally shitty by a douchey programmer. Awesome. And people blame the QA team for this shit every time, of course.

Most of the status spells in FF games actually end up being free kills on bosses, but you have no way of knowing which boss is weak to which status effect without obscene amounts of trial and error. And generally the games aren't difficult enough to warrant that unless you're making an arbitrary challenge for yourself, like playing with only 1 party member or fleeing from every fight to remain low leveled.

Speaking of trolling, EQ had some useless 'illusion' type spells that were just meant for flavour/amusement. One of them turned you into a rather large tree- large enough that you could block the entrances to important buildings or even entire cities with the help of a few players. Top notch trolling until they patched that shit.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I assure you if an hidden mage/thief wants to disrupt your speech he'll find a way to do so, cantrip or not...

Yeah but interrupting a speech with a magic missile lacks the humorous part.

 

[MrMarbles]

Conjure (...) elemental in BG2 (mage version) was beyond useless. Cast time was a massive 1 round, there were lots of summons that were more useful and worst of all you had to sit through a lengthy "mental battle" where your mage was a sitting duck and you could end up turning the summon against you.

Throw in the fact that it took up a pretty high spellslot (6) and you have, at best, a spectacular waste of time. In a solo game it was virtual suicide.

 

[laclongquan]

Are you there to kill that pixel figure or to play prank on his ass? Shiv him then go. Lots of other targets await~

 

[Average Manatee]

There was a spell in FATAL that let you elongate your nipples. I think that one takes the cake.

Are you sure that there isn't the possibility to try and rape something to death with your nipples? This is FATAL we're talking about, the system where you want to powergame a large anal circumference in order to stay alive.