Cure Monster Wounds: Cures 1d6 points of damage, but only on “monsters”. Presumably, this would use the D&D categorization of “monsters” vs. “persons” used in “Hold/Charm Person/Monster”, etc. It wasn’t until 3e that D&D had hit on the idea of categorizing monsters into types in their entries, such as “undead” or “humanoid”. This meant that it used to explicitly list which creatures were “persons”, even as the game exploded with new material. Yes, the DM could certainly grasp that “a person is a basically humanoid creature like an elf or orc”, but the edges got blurry. Were grimlocks “persons”? (Of course not, they were Cybertronians!) How about Aaracockra?

“People will just be reasonable! They don’t need explicit rules!” is “Tell me you’ve never met actual gamers without telling me you’ve never met actual gamers”. Because “Verb Monster” spells were usually much higher level than “Verb Person” spells, it was in the player’s interest to have as many things declared “persons” as possible. (We should recognize the progressiveness of those early gamers, who would enthusiastically demand recognition of the innate personhood and de-othering of any sapient creature, which was clearly based on the highest of moral principles and not because it would make it easier to charm, paralyze, etc., them.)

But anyway, back to the spell. Given the power level of this book in general, it is very surprising how amazingly wussy this is — it’s not even 1d6 per spell point or something, just 1d6, no scaling. Why? I’m sure there was, at the time, an exploit or ten involving healing “monsters”, but damned if I know what it is. This is particularly odd because, as far as I recall, the cure blah wounds spell line did not discriminate between “persons” and “monsters”. So this spell is less effective than any standard healing would be. Weird!

Ged’s Bloody Death: Sounds like a good fantasy curse. “Ged’s bloody death, man, ye’re a mess!” But while it sounds promising (“causes temporary hemophilia”) all it does is cause an extra point of “bleeding” damage for each point of normal damage. Not, near as I can tell, continuously, just at the point of damage assessment. So it’s “double damage”, which is nice, but “hemophilia” implies what we now call “damage over time”, where you keep taking damage. (And let’s not even mention all the arguments over which monsters can bleed. Orcs, yes. Golems, no. Demons? Maybe. What if the demon is, like, an ice demon, or something? Does it bleed liquid ice? (“You mean, water?”) And so on.)

Light of Day: This creates a large aura around the caster that grants “full daylight” and moves with the mage. Very useful, not sure if it’s worth being 4th level or not, unless it counts as actual daylight for purposes of things like vampires, in which case, it is quite potent. I’m sure reasonable people will just work it out.

Wall of Disguise: To my disappointment, this doesn’t create a wall covered with masks, makeup, hairpieces, and so on, following the incantation “Spiritus Halloweenus!” Rather, it creates a wall that looks like any of the other wall spells (..of Iron, of Fire, of Stone, of Plywood, of Fund-Raising Grift, etc.) It doesn’t have any of their other abilities, but it does knock anyone touching it back 10-60 feet. I guess the “looks like a different kind of wall” thing is a nice bit of fluff, but I’m not sure how much it adds to what is basically a “Wall of Repulsive Force”. OK, it could be fun to see a fireproof monster scoff at your “Wall of Fire”, then charge into it and go “kaboing”, but that’s a pretty narrow use case.

Resistant Spells: Grants resistance to a given damage type (each is a different spell, you must know resist fire, resist cold, etc.), taking half damage from that type… once. Then the spell expires. It lasts indefinitely until that happens, but most modern versions of this kind of spell will last a shorter, fixed, period of time and continue reducing damage, or last “until X points of damage have been absorbed”. Yet another example of the higher level spells being less effective than some of the lower level ones we’ve discussed.