If you’ve ever played a spell caster of any description, you know that spells with a range of personal tend to be more powerful spells for their level largely due to this huge limitation.
Short of multi-classing and sharing spells with animal companions or familiars, there’s very few ways to get these spells on other party members. Let’s look at one way to do so.
The Obvious
It’s important to note that one of the “easiest” ways to get these spells on someone other than yourself is to give a scroll of this item to someone with ranks in Use Magic Device. UMD is widely regarded as the single most powerful skill in the game (and rightly so).
The issue with UMD, of course, is that very few classes have access to it and it typically requires a huge commitment and investment in skills in order for it to work well and consistently.
But let’s ignore the very few characters that’ll have a maxed UMD skill. For the sake of argument, let’s say we want to get our fighter buffed.
One Solution
One thing that I think gets overlooked is the Ring of Spell Storing. Most times spell storing is brought up it’s in the context of a weapon with a spell storing enchantment on it and what offensive spells are most effective.
While rings of spell storing are rather expensive, they’re also very powerful. The ring of spell storing’s description doesn’t mention what sort of activation type it is. If we look to item activation types in the rules, we see that it says “If no activation method is suggested either in the magic item description or by the nature of the item, assume that a command word is needed to activate it.” This is good news.
As a command word activation, this allows our dumb but strong fighters to make full use of these items despite their complete inability to cast a single spell.
Using The Ring In Your Game
I think a major mistake in most campaigns is that when a ring of spell storing is encountered, the magic user tends to snatch it up. It’s understandable since they’re powerful items, but it may not be the most useful allocation of a party’s resources.
A spontaneous spellcaster with a ring of spell storing is stupid unless there’s another caster casting spells that the spontaneous caster doesn’t have access to into it. Spellcasters that memorize spells can make use of the ring, especially if the ring’s max spell level is close to the caster’s max spell level, but if they’re using the ring each day then they’re using that spell slot each day anyway – so there’s no net gain.
Since many spellcasters do at least some degree of buffing, why not share the most powerful buffing spells of a particular level with those that you’re buffing anyway?
Some of the best spells to buff a fighter come from the cleric’s spell lists. Bear’s Endurance, Bull’s Strength, Divine Power and Righteous Might to name a few.
Don’t forget that you can always mix and match divine and arcane spells in the ring and throw in spells that any fighter can take advantage of (truestrike pops to mind immediately).
It won’t be cheap, but it’s a great way to spread the wealth and put some very powerful options in the hands of those that’ll be doing some serious damage. At the very least, it’s one more round that a spellcaster won’t have to spend in combat buffing a fighter now that he can do it himself.