Sometimes a spell is only meant to be cast on friendly creatures, with the green circle, or on anyone but enemies. The Target field has some filters I can use, but not quite enough, and their meaning is less than obvious. For example, does "Party" only include Players 1-6, or does it also include summoned and charmed creatures? What is the "Caster Group?" What is the "Target Group?" And how do you further filter effects application? When I want some creatures to be excluded from the effects of a spell, I usually put a Protection From Spell effect for 3 seconds in the beginning of that spell's list of effects, choose the creature type and enter that very spell's name there, so it makes these creatures immune to itself first thing. With this method, however, they also become immune to all consequent effects of the spell, to all other powers it triggers, which is not always what I want. In that case I have to either put the immunity in the middle of the effects list, after the ones I want to be universal but before the ones I want to be exclusive, or go a longer way - contain those extra effects in a different spell to be cast along with the first, or else delay them for a few seconds until the immunity runs out.
Another way I haven't tried yet would be to preface the effects in the Spell Ability with a combination of area-wide immunities from the Global effects list. For these I need to make sure the spell isn't Hostile, otherwise the whole map will rebel against me. But that means that if some of the effects are offensive after all, and I want the fact recognized, I have to make a further spell to be cast from within the first one, which only serves as a shell, and put all of the offense in that next spell. If you are thinking, why not use an Apply Effects List and choose who the spell will apply to there, then the answer is, usually I have to do a lot more excluding from effects than including in them, so things like applying the effect only to evil creatures or only to humanoids are too generic. The ready categories are strange, too. For example, effects that work on Humanoids don't work on Giant Humanoids, and while that follows the logic from pen-and-paper for spells like Hold Person, I can think of a lot of Enchantment spells that *should* work on giants just as well as halflings. Then, if I have a different class of creatures in mind I want my spell to affect, I have to do one of two things. The first option is to compile "lists" of eligible creatures, usually Races, and use Apply Effects List for each of them. That allows great customization, because you can also enter saving throw adjustments for each, but it's a huge drag. The other possibility is to exclude a few Races or other groups by giving them an immunity, and I found this to be much faster, but with the drawbacks described above.
These options sometimes do just what I want in the end. For instance, my Taunt spell is not even supposed to anger inhuman creatures like elementals or undead, so it has no Hostile check set, and they are excluded from its effects by an immunity early in the list. Taunt a group of them as much as you like, no one will even have to make a saving throw or turn red. But a second spell cast from the bottom of the list is Hostile, and that one gets through to the appropriate creatures in a mixed group. So that works rather nicely. On the whole, however, these are all very awkward ways of filtering, and I have to puzzle over this every time I start something new. If you have better methods of quickly weeding out creatures that you use, what are they? Maybe a tried-and-true combination of Global effects and effects in the Spell Ability?
