Creeping Doom. Oh yeah, this is the Druid version I first knew. Completely broken powerful magic at high levels. Creeping doom is the best broken spell ever. I also love the flavor of plant door, pass plant, transport through plants.
BATTLE SCENE w/ Creeping Doom
Let's play one out b/c I'll never get to use it in a "real game". Well… never say never as a DM.
SCENE: The orcs and ogres have assembled a small army, perhaps 3,000 in number. Nasty, motley armored, and with a great many blades of steel, missiles, and weapons of war. They come, to press against the distant villages of man... they would come through His wood. They will not live to regret it, because the Druid knows they move today. The animals speak to him of it.
He is ready. He's watched the skies and feels a storm many leagues away, he shall draw it closer now; it begins. The orcs squinting upward think the darkening skies are a not a portent of doom, but a cloak of favor to hide the hateful sun. Oh how very wrong they are. The air veritably crackles with energy... the Druid feels the power swelling slowly as the clouds gather strength. Now from on high he sees the evil band of monsters far away on their approach. They march to their doom, he thinks to himself. Never again will they trample and tear at this blessed place as long ago they might. No, they mustn't; he will uphold his duty.
With the power of the living world around him he gathers his thoughts and reaches out to the primal forces of the elements. His mind becomes cold, focused, sharp,… like a clear shard of icicle on a cold winter’s morn his thoughts converge. Slowly he raises his hands towards the sky, then as blue-white power crackles between his fingers and from his eyes, he points now to the still distant horde. A blast of lightning erupts from the clouds in a crack and thunder, smiting a flank of monsters - burning, erupting, and charring them to pieces. And again lightning flashes, thunder pounds, and fell beings die. The creatures in great fear move away from the blasts, stupidly gathering closer together. Like flies to the biting plant they move.... or is it the other way around?
The Druid closes his eyes. He clenches his jaw and breathes in slowly, ... a moment passes and the air warms... a single wasp lands on his shoulder for another moment then flies away. Suddenly the man exhales in a roar like a hundred bears in a language much like the wrath of violent tempests, but others might simply call those words CREEPING DOOM!
In the meadows below, a green eldritch light shines down from the dark clouds. The dirt stirs from a million tiny legs, and the grasses blow from a million small wings. A magical swarm of hating, angry insects and small many-legged creatures shimmer into existence, some tiny, some giant. Like a vast muddy storm swollen river they writhe and crawl, quickly blanketing, biting, and stinging vast swathes of the evil horde. Eyes and ears fill with angry ants and tiny powdery moths. Orc necks swell as they choke on screams of hate and terror, mouths instantly filled with biting tiger beetles, running cockroaches, and stinging bees. Huge beetles bigger than the ogres’ own fists bite at the ugly creatures feet, monstrous centipedes crawl up legs stinging as they will, while giant wasps with a strike like a rogue’s poisoned dagger pierce the ogres faces, swelling them till they can no longer see, can no longer taste the sweet air. Scores of two-legged villains fall dying and dead.
Those horde’s soldiers with life yet slash at the small creatures vainly, for destroying one where a hundred take its place is hopeless. They are DOOMED.
The few of the horde at the rear flanks break away before they too are covered and bitten to grisly death. They run. The lucky few that abandon their plight might live to tell the tale… back to the dank caves from which they came, they run.
The front flanks break away too, but not so lucky, straight to their death as thunder bolts flash down from the darkened heavens to explode around them. More evil falls dead. Others feel the sting not of the wasp, but their own armor burning them like the burning of red magma from hell’s furnaces. They fall, sickly smoke rising from the carcasses.
A group of large orcs with tattered leathers and warpaint stained bows in hand make it past the milieu, hate in their red eyes, they see the druid on his perch high above them. Before they can knock a single vile black arrow, their bows glow with a purple and violet, then bend and twist and warp into useless sticks… strings falling away. Our druid points at the vile creatures, his mind reaching out, “Hunt, my friends!”.
And the wolves and bears from the forest do hunt. They track down every last black-hearted monster that remained and devour them. What the beasts leave behind, the raven and vulture peck, the maggot and worm gnaw, and soon enough there will be naught of the devastated horde but white bones that bleach in the coming suns. Then the druid and this forest realm are sated; calm returns.
... [to be finished in a bit. ]
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5Byz_06Okc , but mine would be named Brainy not Beardy, if we play his light-hearted game of names.
Even without that, I see now great combos (note, Rules Encyclopedia lists one extra spell per level than the Blue Companion set book)-
- Get a Ring of warmth (is there a ring of cool?) plus Control Temperature (50 degrees F up or down)… nobody could fight you in melee for long.
- Obscure… makes you invisible and more.. use with above rings and control temp to walk around battlefield
- Heat metal, incredible
- Warp wood… affects wands and staves too (saving roll)… all bows, arrows, etc destroyed (magic weapons save roll). Take out all ranged attacks from an army.
- Metal to wood. Similarly powerful (magic items have better saves than before). Take out an army.
- Summon weather plus call lightning plus obscure. Massive damage from afar and they don’t know it is you.
- Detect Danger spell, protects from traps, bad potions, hidden enemies, maybe hidden motives.
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