Editing List of D&D Spells (section)

== Disintegrate ==
The iconic [[Save or Die]] spell, Disintegrate is a high medium/low high-level spell (typically around 6th level out of 9) where the [[wizard]] points or looks at whatever they don't like and turns it to dust. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Now, there are ''some'' restrictions to keep this ability from being completely broken, the ability to annihilate enemies in one shoot has driven more than one DM batty. You can generally tell a 3e DM has seen some shit if they start twitching at the sentence "Empowered Expanded Disintegrate" (or whatever the [[metamagic]] was that turned a single-target spell into an AoE spell). And if that's not enough, Disintegrate also works on inanimate materials, making it a great way to [[Dungeon Bypass]] by just burning a hole through solid stone. Or steel. Or anything that isn't magic resistant, really.

One of the ways older editions tried to discourage abuse of this spell, beyond boosting it to 6th level, is by giving it a pretty high if not automatic chance to also disintegrate most/all of the stuff that the target was carrying. Meaning any monster you killed with this spell ''didn't drop loot''. Of course, that angle was dropped from 3e onwards.

Traditionally, Disintegrate is an all-or-nothing spell and thus has no damage type. In 4th and 5th edition, it instead became "merely" an attack that does a pretty high amount of [[Elemental Damage Types|Necrotic]] damage. 4e did at least give it the "Ongoing" keyword, so it kept burning the foe with damage round after round until they made their saving throw.