Of all things: Warp Wood

[ScarfNinja]

Okay, I've been looking at this thing in the SRD for the last ten minutes pondering the implications of this little spell.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/warpwood.htm

And surprisingly enough, I couldn't find anything on it, other than the SRD itself. Reading the text, this spell can warp any wooden object, magical or otherwise, attended or not, and according to the short description in the spell lists, this includes: "(shaft, handle, door, plank)", and up to 1 object/level within a close, 20' burst, with a Will save for attended items.

So, I guess my questions are:

1: What can this affect?

The spell specifically mentions giving a -4 to hit on a warped melee weapon, but doesn't restrict melee weapon type, RAW, to any particular subset. I assume this covers automatically all clubs, polearms, staves, and other "items predominately made of wood". Does this spell work on axes? How about swords (many of which have wooden hilts)? Or weapons like maces and flails, which have wooden handles? What about wands, the vast majority of which are wooden? I assume it doesn't impact on wands or the like (which by RAW are unaffected even if warped so the business end points back towards the user), but if it can warp one plank in a collosal ship, surely it can warp a handle on a small-size sword?

2: Am I missing something?

For a 2nd level spell, this seems to have a lot of potential, depending on just what it effects. Any ranged weapon that contains wood (the full amount depends on the answer to question 1 I suppose), is rendered useless, a -4 to hit penalty to melee weapons that lasts forever, or at least until the target pays for another Warp Wood spell (which is one of the only ways to recover it). It has an acceptable area of effect, and can target 3 small or smaller objects minimum each casting (maybe I'm misunderstanding item size, and all these things mentioned are actually medium size items?), and can fix back what it destroys (without harming any magical item properties as far as I can tell) for later use or retail.

But... this spell isn't even mentioned in the Druid's handbook. A -4 to hit/destroyed ranged weapons and ammo sounds like it might be worth a mention, and it seems to dovetail nicely with Transmute Metal to Wood, for a grand total of -6 attack bonus permanently. It renders an awful lot of potentially enchanted arrows useless (and it allows you to select which objects in the area to target, no?), simply from the chance that one of the many target items will fail at least one save out of the lot.
This is all on top of any out of combat utility - effectively locking a door, or performing as a makeshift knock spell (it doesn't actually say what happens to any attending locks in a warp wood opened door), sabotaging a flight of wooden stairs or a floor, or all sorts of other uses with its open-ended wording of "permanently destroying straightness, form and strength". Or use it to simultaneously warp and unwarp objects within the 20' area of effect,

So yeah, I assume I'm missing something that makes the spell without value from a mechanical standpoint. Is it the close range that makes it undesirable? Did I miss a big limitation on the spell somewhere? Is it because the whole thing screams for DM adjudication to determine its out of (and potentially even in) combat effect? I'd really love to know.

[carnivore]

yes it is nice ... it can be used as an Alternative to a Knock spell ... since it ignores the Lock and simply can affect the wooden object so that it is now open(even though the lock is unaffected)

however .... most swords do not have Wooden handles(most are Leather or Cord or Wire or Stone) .... it would work on a variety of different weapons ..... the main Drawback .... attended objects do get a save to negate the effect ....

it can be very useful ..... especially vs Traps(since many have wooden parts) .... if it is made from wood, then this can be used against it(depending on size)

 

[rasmuswagner]

Its' kind of a corner case. Normally, a 2. level spell, with a will save, to disarm some opponents, would be trash. One opponent/CL is the saving grace of this trick.

[Benly]

It almost seems like a spell that would be better on a spontaneous caster. It's not really the best solution for most problems, but it's a pretty good utility in a variety of situations and a tolerable mass-disarm in a pinch. That kind of versatility is quite nice for spont-caster utility spells. On a prep caster, it feels more like "Knock plus it's not totally useless in a fight if you're almost out of spells".

[McPoyo]

Depending on how historically accurate your DM makes his games, sword sheathes were, at the least internally, made of wood, since it wouldn't hold water like leather does against the blade and cause premature rusting. If they follow realism in that no one would willingly do such a thing for a weapon designed to be wielded as a weapon (and not a showpiece), then it functions similarly to the Sovereign Glue + sheath/case/whatever trick to prevent the weapons from being pulled, except it can be used on enemies.

[veekie]

Well, you could warp it so that the bit holding the blade's tang is no longer holding it and it pops out next swing.

[McPoyo]

True that