I'm sure Lesser Planar Binding wasn't meant to grant infinite free Wishes. Or Astral Projection at level 11. Or armies of thousands of solars and efreet and great wyrm gold dragons by that level, either.
I'm really not sure about this. Maybe it WAS supposed to give all that, because even after years and years where they could have revised it, they never did.
Polymorph wasn't meant to grant access to AP at level 7. Or 90% of the other things it's capable of granting. Like spellcasting from other classes.
Well, that one's a mess, for sure, but I still like it, though.
Astral Projection wasn't meant for permanent immunity to death while adventuring on the Material Plane.
I think it WAS meant for that, except they THOUGHT people would not want to leave their catatonic bodies lying around all the time.
Alter Self wasn't supposed to the best low-level buff spell in the game. It can grant half a dozen natural attacks, a whole bunch of natural armor, swim speeds, burrow speeds, improved overland speeds, and flight for 10 minutes per level (Invisibility, a level higher, is only 1 minute per level).
You know, I would tend to agree, but.... it's still in the frickin' game. It should just be used more by NPCs and it would totally lose it's overpoweredness.
Mount wasn't meant to be used to spring traps.
Nor was SX1
Or maybe actually it was. Who knows what was meant?
Silent Image wasn't meant as a 1st level Better-Than-Invisibility spell.
With certain downsides... and as with all illusions, it's a sandbox, and I think that's also the beauty of it: You leave effects undefined to give players FREEDOM rather than restriction. Isn't that really nice?
Locate City wasn't meant to blow a miles-wide crater in the ground. Nor was it meant to turn hundreds of thousands of people into a wightocalypse.
1HD commoners weren't good for nothing anyway. Just get rid of them
.
Explosive Runes wasn't meant to be able to blow up the moon and half the world, either. Nor was it meant to deal thousands of d6's of damage to a single creature, no save.
This one I've just never understood, really. There is actually no excuse for this one.
Shrink Item wasn't meant to be used to deal hundreds of thousands of points of damage with an orbital bombardment. Nor was it meant to be used in conjunction with Fabricate to Craft 4000x as much material per round. Nor was it meant to grant virtual immunity from Antimagic Fields.
But it's great, isn't it?
Genesis wasn't meant to grant access to planes made totally out of platinum. Or planes with the flowing time (fast) trait. Or funky-gravity setups that lead to infinite energy machines.
The trouble is, as always, that there are no physics inherent in the system.... if conservation of energy were an issue, then this all wouldn't work
.
Forcecage wasn't supposed to be teamed up with Dimensional Anchor, Cloudkill, and/or Acid Fog for certain death.
I would tend to disagree. I THINK they knew what they were doing when they wrote Forcecage...
Reverse Gravity wasn't supposed to be teamed up with Prismatic Sphere for near-certain death.
Solid Fog wasn't...actually, there's no excuse for Solid Fog.
How about... Solid fog is fine? The GAME WORLD was just never meant to make sense! If it's only the PCs and very few select NPCs wielding such dangerous fourth level spells... it's all FINE.
Nor Gate.
Gate has an XP cost for summoning. Noone would ever use it.... duh.
Nor Shapechange.
But the FUN that can be had with Shapechange is just... so.... FUN
.
Summon Nature's Ally wasn't supposed to be a better Cure spell than a Cure spell.
But Cure spells suck anyway, so....
Fireball wasn't supposed to be near-useless.
It's not, actually, if you fight a LOT of low-level mooks with poor ref saves. I remember in my first ever D&D campaign Fireball was GREAT. We were so in AWE at this massive killing power, because we were all puny beings who could deal 1d8+3 in melee
.
And even later, Fireball is still great, because if you randomly shoot it at a party of PCs, it'll ALWAYS kill the monk who will fail his Ref save with a natural 1. Seen it happen, countless times
.