Hi!
Today I did some experiments on irresistible dance.
The way the spell should work in 3.5 is listed here: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Irresistible_Dance
This is a post in the same kind of balance question as the Mass Hold Person vs Illusionary Pit thread.
Mass Hold is Level 9
Irresistible Dance is Level 8
Illusionary Pit is Level 7
Irresistible Dance is supposed to:
A) Allow for no save, only spell resistance
B) Lower AC by 4 and remove shield bonus to AC entirely
C) Lower reflex save by 10
D) Make the subject paralyzed for 1d4+1 rounds (and thus vulnerable to sneak attacks), unable to take actions of any kind
E) Subject should provoke an attack of opportunity while dancing
Right now the spell lowers reflex save by 10 but does not lower AC at all. Subjects can still take action during it (both moving stuff around inventory, get, drop, etc, though someone crafting under the influence of it echo'd a successful craft but no craft item was made)
Subjects can still fully participate in combat while under the influence of the spell with no negative effects.
I understand that we can't replicate exactly what is in Dungeons and Dragons for all of these spells, but as it stands this spell is significantly weaker than it's described in the books and seems more in line with a spell like feeblemind in terms of level. It also seems like existing code snippets could be hijacked to make this work correctly.
I was wondering if we could make this spell more in line with what a level 8 spell of this power should do or maybe consider moving it down in level.
The balance, level wise, between these similar spells seems like it should be something like:
Mass Hold - freeze and no actions for one round per level, but with a will save possibility
Irresistible dance - for 1d4+1 round, no save, freeze and no actions with negative to AC, reflex, and remove shield AC
Illusionary Pit - freeze and paralyze until duration ends or attacked at which point it becomes one round of stun - negated by fly or will save.
That's all I've got! I'm going to continue testing some spells to see how they work, as they're all quite interesting and quite different.