Actually 9th level spells by default suck.
The sheer wrongness of that sentence is what made me register for these forums, congratulations.
Freedom: FoM is vastly superior.
Imprisonment: ANY Save of die is better, maybe a hit or two to the Save DC but Heighten fixes that. Consider this as there is a lot...
Agreed.
Mage’s Disjunction: Destroys your loot, falls short of Antimagic Field (saveless) and Antimagic Ray (single save).
It's the single best debuff in the game and with Sculpt Spell or Mastery of Shaping you can rip off the entire buff set of whatever you are facing without hitting any of your party. The loss of items is irrelevant, you can always use free Wish's to bring yourself back up to WBL if necessary.
Prismatic Sphere: Why not use Metamagic effects on Prismatic Wall?
Because you need both Sculpt Spell and Mastery of Shaping to fake a Prismatic Sphere and unless you are using tricks to get the meta without upping the level it takes a 9th level slot anyways, which also means a save that's 1 point lower.
Gate: Diplomacy with XP costs and pisses off the creature used!
That would be paying a thousand XP for a +5 Tome. And you can order a called creature to let it's self be killed. Gate is one of the most powerful spells in the game, even if you are better off using it with methods that avoid the XP cost.
Refuge: Teleport is better and pretty sure the MiC has some super cheap items for this.
Summon Monster IX: Total crap.
Mostly agreed. Refuge is situationally useful as it's a permanent duration spell and you can prepare multiple copies during down time.
Teleportation Circle: Meant for the DM to use, players simply hold hands and Teleport.
One of the best transport spells in the game. With this you can move an entire army across the plane with a single casting.
Foresight: Cunning is superior and you get it five to six levels sooner.
That requires explicit DM permission to either create your own legacy weapon or find Mau-Jehe. Foresight can be picked up from an Air Weird with Shapechange or just cast without any real cost except a spell slot.
Dominate Monster: List of better spells; dominate person (they may have class levels), animate dead, planar binding, diplomacy.
Hold Monster, Mass: Any area save-or-die is better, and points if it's not mind-affecting.
Power Word Kill: Magic Missile is better.
Crushing Hand: lol, enough said.
Meteor Swarm: It's proof Evocation sucks.
Agreed.
Shades: Shadow casters don't need anything other than Minor Image.
Not everyone plays Shadowcraft Mage's. And it's pretty much an entire school from one spell slot.
Weird: More shitty save-or-dies.
Astral Projection: See also friending a local high level Cleric and 50k donations or just plain Contingency(before I die do x).
Astral Projection let's you and your entire party all get +5 Inherent bonuses to every stat at no cost. It also saves you from having to be ressurected.
Energy Drain: Why is this even a spell? Worst way to bestow negative levels ever
Agreed.
Soul Bind: Even more shitty save-or-dies.
It's not a save or di, it's a save or never be resurrected again.
Wail of the Banshee: Do they ever end?
Etherealness: It does the exact same thing as Greater Planeshift, but limited to one plane.
Yep.
Shapechange: The best Polymorph 9th level spell ever, awesome!
One of the best spells in the game, let's you get every single other spell in the game (even leaving aside whether or not you pick up monsters casting abilities).
Time Stop: Great, until you consider double casting via Celerity, quad casting with Quicken, w/e 8 is with Shapechange, etc.
Celerity eats an immediate action and opens you up to being killed without a get out of jail free card, Quicken costs you a lot to use effective, Chronotyne is what gives you an entire second set of actions each round. Time Stop still beats them for spells cast per time invested.
Wish: Raw reality breaking power here. Limited by DM's call through.
No, it's not limited by the DM unless you try to go past the listed effects.
Mostly it's the whole 9th level Spell Slot that's awesome or Shapechange carrying the entire weight. There are a few gems in None-Core, like Ice Assassin and Iceberg, but that's just a hold over of Ice/Cold being over empowered to make up for being the least effective damage type.
You really, really, don't know what you are talking about.
Binding Chains of Fate: One of the more complete save or loose spells in the game.
Chain Contingency: Better Contingency.
Effulgent Epuration: The next 17+ spells that target you flat out fail unless you are fighting a deity, can be shared with your party.
Invoke Magic: Can cast on dead magic planes or inside AMF's.
Khelben's Dweomerdoom: You rip the highest level spell a creature knows from it with no save or no SR.
Mindrape: You learn everything that the target knows, viewing their every memory, and then get to rebuild them entirely from the ground up into whatever you want. And it's Instantaneous.
Planar Pocket: Let's you cast anywhere, regardless of a planes magic traits and lasts hours/level. Say that your home plane is a demiplane with enhanced magic and minor positive dominate, carry those effects with you wherever you go.
Srinshee's Spell Shift: Take over your enemies magic and redirect it to your own purposes.
Unname: Can destroy any artifact regardless of it's protections or abilities without any save.
Genesis: Create time manipulation planes.
Ninth level spells are far and away the most powerful non epic things in the entire game, and one of them is the single most powerful thing in the game after Manipulate Form and Illithid Savant (that would be Ice Assassin). Sure, it might be better to get the spells using methods besides your spell slots but that doesn't change the fact that the spells themselves are game breakingly, hideously, powerful and are more than capable of irrevocably altering an entire setting with even semi-competent use.
