I was going through IWD2 with a Stormlord of Talos (and having lots of fun with Domain Spells). I picked her Chaotic Neutral so I could spontaneously cast Cure spells (and because it fits my image of her and my Chaotic Neutral Sorcerer forming a rather interesting couple bent on utter anarchy). Now I've got level 5 spells, checked that the Cure spell is Healing Circle. So I memorised Flame Strike, and then used it to spontaneously cast... Cure Critical Wounds.

Surprised by this, I checked SPONCAST.2DA and found that ALL spontaneous castings above level 5 are limited to the level 4 spell, for both Cure and Inflict spells.

I decided to take matters in my own hand, and rewrite the 2DA file to include the appropriate Cure/Inflict spell. It didn't take me long before I ran into a problem: there is no Cure spell for level 9, and no Inflict spells for levels 8 and 9. I also had to be a bit liberal with previous level s (Resurrection at level 7), but I think this is much closer to the way Spontaneous Casting really works. Besides there is no mention of limiting Spontaneous Casting anywhere in the manual.

Ziad, I agree with your general theme here. I wouldn't use Healing Circle (or Mass heal) for spontaneous casting myself. I'd limit it strictly to spells that are targetted on a single target. That said, Heal (or Harm) should be the spontaneous spell as soon as it's available.

Ziad, the normal game behavior is _not_ a bug or oversight. It's the way 3E rules work; they didn't want spontaneous casting to be "too good".

I don't remember Spontaneous Casting being limited to level 5 in the 3E handbook, so I assumed it was a problem with the game. Oh well, I guess I'll revert back to the original 2DA then... Thanks for clearing this up.

this is a little more concrete in 3.5 as there is a cure spell for every level thru mass cures thus making it odvoius but since this is 3.0 choices are a little bit more limited.

Yeah, it says, 'a cure spell is any spell with “cure” in its name'. And in 3.5E those do:
1d8
2d8
3d8
4d8
1d8, mass
2d8, mass
3d8, mass
4d8, mass
and there is no 9th level cure spell

Interestingly enough, Healing Circle in 3E became Mass Cure Light Wounds in 3.5E. So a mod to make that work seems fair, because it is clearly a reasonable improvement. But spontaneous Heal or Resurrection would be overbalanced..

Also interestingly, Mass Heal is level 9 in 3.5E. Since people complain about not enough 9th level Cleric spells, that might be a fun change to implement.