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As the title suggests, what are some of your more particular nasty spell combos for you D&D games? I am currently playing an 11th Level wizard in a Pathfinder game. My recent combo is one that I have been wanting to do for awhile, but I just now was able to cast it.

First I use Summon Monster VI to summon a Succubus. Next I cast Suggestion on my target and tell him "She told me she wants you. Go hit is so hard, her daughter is born pregnant."

Needless to say I think I have made a new friend with the Succubus. The DM is going to make her a character.

A combo I used a while back was Hideous Laughter + Aqueous Orb. "Who's laughing now bitch?"

So do anyone else have any nasty spell combos?

Incindiary Slime + anything that makes a spark.

Animate Rope is amazing by itself if you think outside of the box.

Warp Wood + Ironwood, and if your DM will allow it, heat metal.

I always used to memorize "stone to flesh," ostensibly in case we ran into a basilisk, but it always got used when we were trapped in a prison with stone walls.

You can do a lot of mischief with audible glamour or another simple illusion and a Charm Person spell.

The beauty is one is a first level spell the other a cantrip.

Charm a victim and get the victim to play along with the illusion for the benefit of other victims.

If you add the message cantrip you can get your charmed victim to play to a loose script. Allow the victim to put what he is told into his own words, it will sound more authentic if you do. As the charmed victim is already plusible to his fellows it makes even a simple illusion such as dancing light or audible glamour a forshadowing of whatever terrifying arrival or simple misinformation you see fit.

With this simple combo you can misdirect or misinform a crowd. With more powerful illusions (still nothing required beyond a low-medium level spell) you could send a whole town into a panic, cause a rebellion or divert an army.

Moving thread to RPG Forum.

Shouldn't the title be "Nasty Pathfinder Spells and Combos? Last I checked Paizo doesn't publish D&D and I doubt [4e, 3.5 (they aren't actually the same, just similiar), 2e, 1e] advice is being solicited.

Good advice from similar games might translate, besides Pathfinder has a lot of cross continuity with older D&D editions. Asking Pathfinder only players will cut out 90% of those who could possibly help contribute meaningful suggestions.

Pathfinder has a lot of cross continuity with exactly one previous version of D&D. I doubt saying an orb of imposition used with Sleep is really nasty or that a Pathfinder Bard is anything like a 1st edition Bard. I have said before I have no problems with Pathfinder, but D&D and Pathfinder are not interchangeable terms. The people that know things that would cross between 3.5 and Pathfinder most likely would post here anyway and the people who don't play Pathfinder and come here for D&D info are going to be disappointed. I'm just asking for some truth in advertising and I don't think that is to much to ask for.

No one's stopping anyone from posting older stuff if they want to.

An obvious one is a quickened True Strike and Blade of Blood. Attack with +20 to hit doing an extra 3d6 damage? Kind of expensive but well worth it.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:No one's stopping anyone from posting older stuff if they want to.

So we can talk about Glimmer Boys from RIFTS since it doesn't matter what is in a title? They are pretty cool but I feel a bit unbalanced. How about GURPS? Anyone got any good advice for playing GURPS? I made a character in Champions but feel he might not be feasable, can someone in this thread help me out? Or perhaps we can compare GorkaMorka gang lists.

Not sure if this works in pathfinder or not, but my favorite combo is a an elf wizard wearing armour and cast only non-somatic spells (therefore no spell failure). Great having a high AC to protect your low hit points. To pull this off I recommend owning the PHB2 and the Spell Compendium as the added spells are useful.

I went one step further and took the Wizard's alternate abilities from the PHB2 that allowed you to swap out your familiar for a minor at will power. I chose the abjuration one that lets you throw up a +2 AC shield as a free action that lasts a turn, which is handy when you get up against a skilled melee or ranged opponent. I also took the Mad Achemist and Grenedier talents from the PHB2 allowing for some interesting low level combat. With all of these things you can create a wizard that is able to pass as anything but a magic user right up to the point where he breaks out the magic to destroy you.

Summary of advantages:
- Wear armour and take no spell check penelties since all your spells do not require somatic components
- Weild Long bows and long swords. (Get the Sonic Weapon spell once you can cast level 2 spells to do even more damage.)
- Use alchemy to great effect with grenedier. Make sure to take craft Alchemey to make more ammo yourself at 1/3 the cost.
- Use the bonus effects from mad alchemist to mess up enemy casters that try to use spells with somatic components while not effecting your own ability to cast. (see thunderstone bonus effect)
- Blend in with the rest of your group as a tough guy to prevent being picked on. After all you are wearing and wielding weapons just like them right.

Ahtman wrote:

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:No one's stopping anyone from posting older stuff if they want to.

So we can talk about Glimmer Boys from RIFTS since it doesn't matter what is in a title? They are pretty cool but I feel a bit unbalanced. How about GURPS? Anyone got any good advice for playing GURPS? I made a character in Champions but feel he might not be feasable, can someone in this thread help me out? Or perhaps we can compare GorkaMorka gang lists.

I am playing D&D with pathfinder rules.

Regardless I edited the title so the thread will not be degenerated into drivel about 4E vs. Pathfinder.

Pathfinder is another iteration of D&D. Rifts is not. Let's drop that subject, please.

Thanks to the OP for giving the thread a clearer title.

--------------------------

In 4E, I like Stinking Cloud + any Push/Slide effect.

Opponent eats damage whenever they enter the cloud, and whenever they start their turn in the cloud. Combine either with a Push or Slide spell or even just with teammates who have Push/Slide abilities (shield fighter with Tide of Iron for an At-Will, anyone?).

In 1E AD&D I love Slow + any spellcasting. One of the only ways to cast with relative safety in combat, since the enemy loses initiative each round automatically once they're slowed; fantastic protection from the usual easy spell disruption in 1E. Slow is just nasty.

Point is combos are based around complimenting effects not spell names. A spell combo that works for one system may well have parallels in a closely related system. The OP example of summoning a succubus followed by a Suggestion spell was a good one irregardless on how the spells are named. The basic principle is that you suggest something that part of you wants to do anyway, bed the succubus. The combo should effect a huge difficulty penalty to resist the spells concerned, much more than a similar combo to outstare a summoned basilisk.


Most of the best spell combos are based around psychological or deception. Which should be less suprising than it is. People think of the save or die spells or those that do lotsD6 damage. However wizards are supposed to be hyper intelligent and sorcerers are supposed to be 'people persons', yet too few engage in a good old fashioned bit of headfethery. Tolkien led the way with Gandalf and the three trolls, yet we have not learned much since. Gygax made most of the charm and misdirection spells cheap to cast wheras they are amongst the most powerful a mage can cast. Especially when you set up combos that make the most of psychological warfare.

This is not to say load up on charms and not on fireballs, being able to cast the impressive damage spells after all is part of what makes a magician feared, but its only one tool in the arsenal and actually the last resport rather than the opening gambit of a truly adept mage. The best wizards don't even let the enemy know they are beaten.

We've been driving our DM crazy in Essentials at our FLGS. We have two controllers in the party, so we generally have the option of casting Fountain of Flame most encounters. One of us does that, and I spend the rest of the encounter using my slide powers (which are enhanced due to being a Orb-wielding Enchanter) to keep sliding everything back into the flames so they take more and more damage.

On topic, I have been finding party optimization much more fun than previous editions. You can setup some truly nasty rounds of combat with a good party. Right now we're playing a 4 person game in Scale of War setting. Invoker, Goliath 2H Fighter, Rogue, Ardent. Goliath gathers and marks, I bomb AOE and add riders to increase hit/dam, Rogue picks nasty targets and debuffs or hurts them, Ardent makes that nasty Fighter swing again and again.

They FAQ'd it to remove the damage component, but there's the good ol' 4E Divine Regeneration (Demigod 26th Daily) + Seal of Binding (Cleric 25th Daily). Rather high level usage, but you remove any opponent from taking actions for an indefinite amount of time.

There are always the classics such as the Locate City Bomb Mage.

1: Take Locate City, a spell with a range of ten miles per level
2: Apply Snowcasting (Frostburn) to it, making it a [Cold] spell
3: Apply Flash Frost (PHBII) to it, making it deal 2 cold damage to everything in the area
4:Apply Energy Substitution (CArc) to it, making it an electric spell
5: Apply Born of the Three Thunders to it, allowing a reflex save to avoid the damage and changing the damage type
6: Apply Explosive Spell to it, forcing a second Reflex save to avoid being blasted to the edge of the area and 1d6 per ten feet traveled

I recently put together a 4E wizard with a nasty combo.

Feats: Arcane Fire (causes cold vulnerability 5 when dealing fire damage), Winter Touched (gains combat advantage against foes with cold vulnerability), Enlarge Spell (increase area by 1 with -2 to damage), Action Surge (+3 to attack when using an action point).

Throw down an enlarged Scorching Burst, action point and follow up with a nice AoE cold daily, with +5 to attack and +5 to damage on all targets. Pretty wicked, I think


Back in the day my dad had a wizard that used Shocking Grasp coupled with a metal hand grip on his sword. Quite effective.

Hehe. That's pretty similar to the "frostcheese" combo in 4E. Wintertouched and the other one I can't remember that gives Vuln 5 if you hit with Frost. Take a Frost weapon, use a high rate of attack striker (Spiked Chain Ranger). You just killed everything.

And I liked the City Bomb mage. 3E was broken like that though.

Ah here is one thanks to the Dragonborn book.

There was a power that allowed a Dragonborn Sorcerer to recharge their breath attack if they were hit with the same element that went along with their breath weapon.

So you make the breath lightning. You then have the At-Will that is roll to hit and do lightning damage and you select another target within range to take a set amount of damage. You hit a target with the attack and than targeted yourself for the secondary attack. Damage Reduction would reduce it to nothing and since the feat only said you had to be hit with the attack, not damaged it still counted. You take the Ranged beath feat to add utility.

In the end each round would go:

Minor Action: Breath Attack
Standard Action: Lighting Strike
Minor Action: Breath Attack

Repeat ad naseaum.

I'm probably missing a step or two since I don't have the books in front of me but that is the gist of it.

pretre wrote:Hehe. That's pretty similar to the "frostcheese" combo in 4E. Wintertouched and the other one I can't remember that gives Vuln 5 if you hit with Frost. Take a Frost weapon, use a high rate of attack striker (Spiked Chain Ranger). You just killed everything.

And I liked the City Bomb mage. 3E was broken like that though.

Hey... that IS what I just said... Though Arcane Fire, which gives the cold vulnerability, only works for cold damage from abilities, not from weapons.

City Bomb is ridiculous and I applaud the dastard that thought that up.

Prestidigitation makes poison look tasty. Charm Person if absolutely necessary.

Mannahnin wrote: Let's drop that subject, please.

I asked nicely earlier. Maybe it got missed because I didn't put the above in red originally. Thread pruned. Thanks for getting back on topic, guys.

Don't let your DM know what's going on before you do this. It is a one time only trick.

Ten or more sets of Explosive Runes (lvl 3) etched into a book, empowered (+2 lvl) if you care to.

Save for a fun time.

Throw book at person, then cast Amanuensis (lvl 1) + Reach (+1 lvl).

All the runes detonate at the person's foot.

60d6 (or more) empowered(?) force dmg.

No save, no resist.