Hmm for many of them that would be basically impossible without making at least one and maybe more than one levelled spell equivalent irrelevant. Perhaps those ones can scale in Eldritch blast style and just happen more times per casting. But as many of the non-damaging cantrip are the sort you won't tend to use in combat anyway scaling them that way becomes relatively pointless. And Guidance scaling would be hell on the DM in general - assume it now effects the whole party and it is not so bad being only a D4, but getting bigger or more die would really bork the check DC's - I'd have to set every DC up in the 30's to pose any problems at all. But what happens when your thief is now trying to disarm some trap solo, suddenly it might well be just natural 20 only for success.
I use Leomunds Secret Chest with my necromancer! I cram my undead in the boxes and then summon them with the little chest charms on my bracelet! Its a great way to sneak your undead army around. Also, its so damn thematic to pull a charm off a piece of jewelry and say, 'just wait tell you see what I summon next!"
I changed truestrike to be a BA to cast, you target friendlies or yourself and the next attack the target makes can ignore anything causing disadvantage on the roll. It means you can help allies get a good hit in, or if you have a rogue that has a source of advantage, but has disadvantage from something else, you can cancel out the disadvantage and the rogue can keep their advantage. It means that it's good, but it's not used all the time, but when it does come up it makes a difference. EDIT* Added the text that we've been using below: True Strike - Revamped Casting Time: 1 Bonus Action Range/Area: 60 ft Components: S Duration: 1 Round You grant one creature (including possibly yourself) within range a brief moment of clarity, drowning out any distractions. On the next attack made by the creature before the start of your next turn, they can ignore any effect which would cause disadvantage on the attack.
Neat fix that gives it a unique niche to fill. Only even potentially sketchy thing to come up that I can think of is removing long range shots, and even then....yeah, aiming should do that.
That really works well IMO. I'd suggest perhaps addiing 'If cast as an action you can give the creature advantage on a melee attack' That would really reward some team play in niche situations, but I can't see how it would break anything - there are lots of ways that advantage can be gained and really its only the martial and in particular the Rouge that will gain much. But the cost of doing so being your action is very significant.
situational, but that at least gives it a useful niche without trivializing arcane trickster features. This could be incorporated into the reaction version.
I'd rather see it turn into a bonus action per round requirement and force the target to spend their reaction to make a melee attack a target chosen by the caster. It seems too powerful to have them use their action to attack themselves each round.
@@andrewshandle in this case I would make it occur as a reaction on the casters turn when they spend the bonus action. That way there's a bit of counterplay if the target can use their reaction on SOMETHING before the casters turn. I would also allow the spell to continue on the next round even if the caster did not spend the bonus action to do so (or if the reaction was already spent).
I think CoM is much maligned simply because of the poor wording where it says the target 'can act normally', so DMs might act like the spell is doing nothing. The target is still charmed by you. His friends presumably see the crazy look in his eyes, and saw he attacked his friends. With a little roleplaying, you should often be able to get the other enemies to turn on the target, then convince the target to do what you want. It could be better, sure, but it's only bad if your DM's mean about it.
The interesting thing is that it doesn't seem like anything prevents it from being combined with Frightened (maybe from a conquest pally's Conquering Presence, which doesn't cost concentration) so a target hit with both is stuck circling the paladin and giving the paladin absolute distance control for a chosen enemy.
@@PlehAP This would be strong lockdown in melee vs melee, but wouldn't do much vs an enemy with reach or ranged options aside from force disadvantage. Still good and, honestly, a concession I'm more than willing to make considering the spell is basically Paladin-exclusive and spell lists are separate again (with Fear options being somewhat limited option for those same Paladins outside of Conquest Pallys and Oathbreakers). With Paladins being a mostly martial class and this option only really boosting them and not giving full casters another abuse case, I'm willing to accept it.
Compelled Duell: Not being able to move away really hurts ranged enemies and casters, so it's actually super strong with that effect alone. I'd probably just keep it very simple: You AND the target have disadvantage against other targets. Can repeat the wis saving throw at the end of their turn. No concentration. 1 Minute.
Lightning bolt fix: In earlier editions, you could choose to either shoot a single 30 ft long bolt or 2 15 ft long bolts in different directions. I don't know why they removed that. But that would make it a lot easier to aim.
Going way back, the caster could actually choose the point of origin for the bolt as well. "The bolt begins at a range and height decided by the caster and streaks outward in a direct line from the casting wizard (for example, if a 40-foot bolt was started at 180 feet from the wizard, the far end of the bolt would reach 220 feet (180 + 40)." For context, the minimum length of the bolt was 40 and it gained 10 feet for ever caster level (example: 100 ft long bolt at level 6) This stacking property made it one of the longest range spells in the game.
Your fix to Geas makes sense, and I would be happy with that change. Personally, I add a point of Exhaustion that cannot be removed while the spell is active. This lines up with how it used to work in previous editions, a stacking penalty that eventually kills you. But unfortunately it does still allow the target to disobey you without consequence for the rest of the day, so maybe your version is better.
why not both? replace the damage with exhaustion and the fix to increse the frequency you gain penalties. Your target can still die and its not hitpoint dependent
Another spell that could be buffed is Immolation. It's based on the same saving throw (Dexterity) as Fireball, but it's a single-target spell. To deal an extra 2d6 fire damage compared to an upcasted lv5 Fireball to a single target, the target needs to fail two consecutive saving throws and the caster needs to maintain concentration for a whole round. I would add that a burning target has disadvantage on all attack rolls, and if the target is killed while the spell is active, it turns to dust (instead of just when it is killed by the spell's damage)
For quite a few of these, like grasping vine, I honestly think they'd be fine if you just removed concentration. I don't think a lot of spells need concetration, even when they last longer, and I think it allows more interesting combos. Obviously some spells would be too powerful without concentration, but I do think it's a major area to free up.
I believe the corrected grasping vine would hinder grapplers, as no player has to lose any actions to do what a grappler does (and with no risks to their own Hp). So by removing concentration, grasping vine is just plain better than a grappler.
@@magnumpiorizanni4413 The current form of grasping vine is way weaker than a grapple though, which is what I was saying would work fine if you just got rid of concentration
True Strike: a benefit of making it usable for other players is that it would completely change the landscape with other reaction-based spells (Shield, Silvery Barbs, Counterspell, etc.) because suddenly the caster has to make a choice: is adding a d4 to the Rogue's attack (potentially giving them a Sneak Attack on this enemy) worth giving up my opportunity to block the BBEG's next round of ranged attacks against me, or prevent the enemy caster from Fireballing us?
It also adds another interesting element to tactical positioning. Having the Sorcerer hang way back to spam Fire Bolt may now be less appealing. I've been playtesting this version of True Strike for months, and I find that the additional tradeoffs for reaction usage and positioning both add fun and interesting elements to combat.
Since they changed guidance and resistance in the playtest, I have actually been laying around with True Strike, Guideance, and Resistance as 30 foot range reactions. So far (after about 10 sessions), it has been pretty good!
and the detriment of it is every caster being able to further interrupt the pacing between rounds, sure it may sound like it's nothing at all but it kills the pacing, I'm against most combat reaction features that doesn't directly affect your character.
Treant I'm interested in knowing what your "north star" mechanic is in terms of balance. What spell/ability do you believe is the best balanced ability in the game what should be used as the standard for judging whether something is undertuned or overtuned?
@@wassentme1891That sort of limitation would be far more reasonable than asking for a _single_ "North Star" for the whole game, considering all the various gameplay features and aspects of play. Really, this would be somewhat tough and arbitrary regardless. It would be easier to merely provide some "good examples."
Whether something is "balanced" depends on what we're comparing against. So you almost need to have two options to compare which are balanced against each other. If Slow is well-balanced (and I think it is), what are we comparing it to that makes us go, "Hmm... it is hard to choose which of these is _better_ because they are so balanced"? Counterexamples would then be interesting to set in contrast. That would be a cool video, though the focus should probably be on the balanced spells, to avoid being too similar to the existing Outliers video.
I would make Find Traps work like many people play Detect Magic. You see an unnatural glow, and as you study it on subsequent turns, you get more information. Or, if the spell was left as-is, I’d make it last for hours without concentration, since all it’s telling you is “the rogue needs to take a closer look”. Then then you just keep searching until you find something.
Hail of Thorns should deal MORE damage than Ice Knife. Ice knife makes an attack as part of the spell, Hail of Thorns needs you to use a bonus action *and* make an attack. I think 2d8 in a 10ft radius would be fair, as a kind of ranged Burning Hands.
This does make me think though: Sorcerers should absolutely have a Cantrip Smite spell. I.e. When you hit a creature with an attack cantrip, you can cast this 1st level spell as a bonus action to add something extra - possibly extra damage and an effect, otherwise a little AoE like Hail of Thorns.
No Hail of Thorns is better than Ice Knife already, because if you cast Ice Knife then that's all your doing that turn, whereas you can combine Hail of Thorns with multiple attacks with a bow, and it also upcasts really well. I have played a multiclassed ranger/cleric before who was doing basically bonus action fireballs with upcasted hail of thorns in addition to her sharpshooter attacks with a longbow. I am fine with increaseing the radius to 10ft, and giving it the smite treatment of removing concentration and making it bonus action you cast when you hit, but you shouldn't nerf the damage to d8s.
For several reasons no Try not to think of hail thorns as requiring an attack as much as it is allowing you to make one. All output is desired and as a ranger, you're probably going to be attacking most of the time anyway. That you can use the attack action alongside the spell is part of the spell and the attacks of a ranger with an action already significantly more powerful than the D10 plus nothing attack roll that ice knife makes.
I actually think incendiary cloud has that language for the niche case where you cast it on top of yourself. Then ever direction is directly away from you.
That’s a good point. I suspect they also meant that on a grid, there could theoretically be multiple spaces “directly” away from you if you aren’t on the same row.
Nah, I think it's just a "typo". They probably considered two versions (either directly away or in your chosen direction) and then someone simply forgot to pick one for the final print
A minor buff I'd additionally give to Produce Flame is to let you choose up to 30 feet of bright light, and an equivalent amount of dim light. So you could do 5/5, or 10/10, or 30/30, in case you wanted to be a little stealthier and not carry a giant lantern, but still wanted a little light to see by. I'd give the same buff to Light, Dancing Lights, etc. Funny story about Color Spray: when my partner was newer to D&D and playing in one of their first campaigns, they proudly messaged me to share they had done 44 damage! I was like, cool, Fireball? No, color spray. I was like, ah, cool, though you didn't mean damage, right? 6d10 damage on a first level spell would be broken. Somehow their DM and whole party, who were not new to D&D btw, thought that Color Spray did damage and that 6d10 was fine for a first level spell. That was quite the unfortunate mistake! Anyways, buff Color Spray by having it do 6d10 damage. I can think of all sorts of little fun additions to Witch Bolt to make it better - basically by making it more like force lightning. I think there is concern about Find Traps trivializing certain "encounters" by showing you every trap within 120 feet, which could be a whole dungeons worth, especially if the spell works vertically. I definitely think the changes should occur so that the spell actually finds traps, but maybe reduce the range? I have fond memories of Phantasmal Killer, and am excited at the prospect of it being buffed. I was once in a mini campaign where everyone was playing a spellcaster, but we started imprisoned, with all our items taken away from us. I chose as many material-free spells as possible, with a couple little clever caveats (like I had a tiny diamond ear stud that wasn't confiscated by our Giant captors, that my character crushed for Wall of Force), and as a result I ended up choosing and casting Phantasmal Killer. It ended up working quite well for causing one of the giant guards to flee in another direction while taking damage each turn. They didn't have great wisdom saves, though. I think Geas is meant to be cast on like, normal NPCs, for which 5d10 damage is almost always certain death. The 1/day limitation would be there so it's not "abused" by being cast on high level targets, who can choose to take the damage. Maybe 1/minute would still be fine, but a 5th level spell to bring someone under your command for 30 days after just one saving throw with no way to break it... it's quite good, I don't know. Most of my additional changes are ones I adopted from the TMV. Identify should be fixed so that it does something. In the TMV you made it 1 action and a ritual. It should also indicate that it doesn't detect curses, instead of that being hidden in the DMG. In fact, I think the rules for identifying a magic item by touching it throughout a short rest is also in the DMG, so include that in the 2024 PHB as well. It's a player option! Vicious Mockery should scale the disadvantage, instead of or in addition to the damage. Burning Hands... buff the damage. Locate Object... you've previously suggested increasing the range to 5 miles, which I thought was extreme, but 1000 feet is too small. I remember a few years ago I was trying to find an object in a city and used all my spell slots for the day just doing rounds of the city... it seemed silly. Maybe just 1 mile? The square footage covered is an order of magnitude higher still; 3,140,000 sqft vs 87,600,000 sqft. Cure Wounds is not seen as a problem by many - you buffed it to 2d6 in the TMV, with 2d6 more on upcast. My tables do 2d8, still with 1d8 more on upcast. We also do 2d4 for Healing Word, which is arguably less necessary. Same with MCW, MHW. Daylight needs to be Daylight or be renamed, either are fine. Vampiric Touch needs buffed. Creation can probably have its initial size and duration for each material buffed. There's lots of cheese out there for using this spell to drop a giant block of adamantine on creatures who aren't expecting it, but the circumstances in which to set that up in a minute without the creature knowing are pretty extreme. Instant Summons should either have its cost reduced or let you snatch your item back from others. Hells - give both options! The cost of the material component determines part of the effect. I think for once, material component cost *can* be a decent balance to this ritual spell. Some not in the TMV: Continual Flame... it's a cantrip that costs a second level slot and 50 gold! If you upcast it to third level, you have created a tool to cut through magical darkness as created by the Darkness spell, and arguably a tool to cut through magical darkness in general at 2nd level. So maybe you can cast it once, then basically have a magic item for the rest of the campaign. I'll probably prepare this at some point on my artificer in down time to cast it once, but... it should really have some kind of other benefit. And reduce the gold cost! To see the return on using this instead of a 5sp lamp and 1sp/flash lamp oil, you'd need to use it for a total of 270 hours. Sending should be a ritual, but you can only target a creature with it 1/day when cast as a ritual. Bestow Curse needs buffed or reworked. Faithful Hound needs buffed. Immolation isn't a PHB spell, but oh my god it needs to be mentioned. These were just some off the top of my head.
Your suggestion to Produce Flame should probably be something done to the Light cantrip instead. Alternatively, the area affected by Light could be selected upon casting: either a radius or a cone. We don't want to make Light or Produce Flame a clearly better option in all situations than a Hooded or Bullseye Lantern. They should all have their value.
@@tantalus_complex Light can produce brighter light, and the item can be passed around and moved in ways Produce Flame cannot. Never underestimate the ability to cast Light on a copper coin and throw it to illuminate the darkness.
@@godminnette2 That's true, but Produce Flame gets a lot more use because it not only provides a light source (which is good both in and out of combat) but it also fills the spell attack cantrip niche. While the Light cantrip _does_ have an aggressive feature designed to be cast while in combat, its usefulness is so situational (and iffy) as to be almost non-existent. So in my mind, Light could use more utility. Produce Flame could use some love, too. But Light being dimmable would elevate it to the level of making it a competitive selection among other great choices, while Produce Flame getting that ability might make the best-in-slot choice - too strong.
1 per hour would work for geass, or alternatively 1/h and first time you resist you take dmg the next you take a lvl of exhaustion. That way you have 6h to find a spellbreaker every day.
about true strike: Why not use the solution presented in BG3? true strike gives advantage to "the next attack roll against the target" instead of "YOUR next attack roll". That way, it can be used as a setup for crit fishing or sneak attack fishing,
Even in BG3 it isn't worth taking. I've tried loving it and tried my damnedest to have it work for me, but even Larian's "fix" doesn't work. Also true strike only affects the caster's attacks.
I cant try it in my current playthrought, but, I think (by te technical limitations of the videogame) true strike doesnt buff your attack, but debuffs the defense of the enemy. Since, any attack, yours or not triggers the effect. Wiki comments seem to agree with it.@@christopherjones7191
I mean for sure, it wont be the optimal cantrip 99% if not 100% of the time, but sometimes I would like to deep dive in the support caster fantasy, instead of casting my 20th chill touch of the night, allowing my heavy hitter melee to have his big killing blow
I think lightning arrow already works the way you suggested for damage dice. "instead of the WEAPONS normal damage" indicates you do 4d8 lightning + modifiers instead of 1d8 piercing for a longbow. Unless there's an errata or sage advice I missed.
I like the buffs to weird but I'd also add that it applies the frightened condition to all targets that fail their save, even if they are immune to that condition. This is a 9th level spell drawing on a creatures deepest fears. Frightening even those immune to the frightened condition seems appropriate.
I'll throw my hat in for Poison Spray. Cantrip, single target, 10 foot range, CON saving throw or takes 1d12 poison damage. The range, con save, and damage type all fit the theme of the spell. But it being single target does not fit the theme (or name) of the spell. My proposed fix: Considering the other two "___ Spray" spells are a cone, change the range of Poison Spray to be Self (10-foot-cone). All targets within the cone must make a CON save or take the spell's damage. I would accept reducing the damage die to 1d10 or 1d8 in this case if necessary but I'd rather it not considering how often creatures are flat out immune to poison damage. A 10 foot cone would get at most three small or larger enemies (more tiny enemies if they're tightly packed but that seems very unlikely) but to get more than two enemies you'd basically need to be putting yourself in melee. Alternately, I can see it operating similar to acid splash where you can target one additional creature within 5 feet of the target, but seeing as acid splash has a range of 60 feet Poison Spray should still retain a higher damage die.
Remember in fourth editing, for these once per long rest spells, if you failed to hit, you either did half damage or you got the spell back to try to use it again. Generally you either got some effect, or you didn't waste it. In fifth edition that design space isn't explored, so it's generally half damage, or some real powerful save or nothing spells (for those wisdom type effect ones).
As someone that has played 2 campaigns with that exact true strike buff, it isn't broken but it is a good cantrip. My paladin that has it, and my wizard aren't usually within range to add it to their friends and a d4 is enough to turn a close miss into a hit reliably but not substantial enough to turn a bad roll into a good one. Also as it's only 1 reaction and not even a guarantee to succeed sometimes it still isn't enough. It's good like this, I like it and will probably keep it like this in my future campaigns. Good enough to take and make a difference, not good enough to be a must have in every situation
One interesting thing I think could be added onto Control Weather is something I was inspired by when watching Fellowship of the Ring. Make it a 5 mile radius with a range of sight, meaning that you could affect someone with a blizzard very far away while sitting comfortably in a lawn chair sipping lemonade.
Something I think would make Compelled Duel pretty fun: Introduce a Sanctuary-like mechanic. Here's a rough example of how I think it could work: While under the effects of the spell, the compelled creature must make a Wisdom saving throw whenever they attempt to target a creature other than you with an attack or a harmful effect. On a failure, they must instead target you, otherwise it fails. If the compelled creature succeeds on the save, they can target their original target, but any attack roll is rolled with disadvantage, and saving throws made by their target are rolled with advantage. These restrictions and penalties do not apply to area effects like the Fireball spell if you (the caster) are within the area being targeted. If a creature other than you attacks the target of this spell, or forces them to make a saving throw, the compelled creature can directly target that particular creature with attacks and harmful effects without penalty and without having to make a save for the remaining duration of the spell. You can use a bonus action on your turn to force the compelled creature to make a Wisdom saving throw, and on a failure the restrictions and penalties for targeting any creatures other than you are reapplied. You (the caster) can attack creatures other than the target, but doing so allows the compelled creature to attempt a Wisdom saving throw to end the spell. However, like the restrictions to the compelled creature's attacks, this restriction does not apply to any area effects, like the Fireball spell, that you use so long as the compelled creature is within the area you are targeting with the effect.
They also need to add the change to the tasha summon spells to give them hit dice like the draconic spirit does, feels bad for a shepherd druid to not get extra hit points on summon beast/fey
Wish - the listed additional effects that don't duplicate spells should be safe casting as well. It should also be safe casting when using Wish to remove a condition/affliction that says WIsh can be used to remove it. Limit the 25,000 gp item to once per every 30 days (for safe casting) and the resistance to damage type to 1 hour.
I assume the way Leomund’s secret chest is worded is in case you die or are imprisoned, the stuff in the chest doesn’t hang out waiting for you forever. For me the fix seems easy: when the spell ends, the chest reappears on the groun where it was last present. As for grasping fine, this seems like a great chance to add an upcast option targeting multiple creatures, and create a new Twin Spell candidate!
These are very good! I quite loke your channel. This is a bit of a tangent, but my reaction to Control Weather was "wow, you look young for being in your 50's!" I genuinely had you pegged for mid 40's or so. Do please keep up the great work!
For lightning arrow, I might add that any Target on a line between you and the intended target of the spell must make a dexterity saving throw or take the lightning damage, or half on a success.
I commented a similar thing on your spell nerfing video, but I am personally missing some "metric" to figure out whether or not your spell changes work. Basically, I wish there had been a couple spells of each level for each pillar of play that you had suggested were the approximate power level that you were going for. It's hard to judge whether the changes to Hypnotic Pattern and Lightning Arrow successfully fix the spell when I'm not sure what you consider to be a well-balanced 3rd level combat spell, if that makes sense? Otherwise, I think this is another great video with a very good analysis, as always!
Man even if Find Traps gave you the special vision that many videogames have where useful parts of the environment are highlighted like they were on fire, it would still be a spell that not everyone takes.
Produce Flame having a 60 ft thrown range makes sense (same as eg a thrown dagger), but it shouldn't produce more light than the dedicated Light Cantrip (which is 20 feet bright + 20 dim).
honestly they should get rid of produce flame and roll its secondary effect (holding it to produce light) into firebolt (and increase the light distance im ok with it going away after used). theres no real reason to have two very similar damaging cantrips like this. as for truestrike, i'd make it more like a smite (cast the spell causing you to make an attack with uts effect) though i feel giving advantage might be too strong on a cantrip if it worked that way. instead i'd garentee crit damage when using it. maybe if they're willing to bump to bump it to first level than they could have the advantage and crit damage. compell duel: make it an actual duel. wis save when cast only. 3 turns, no concentration. you and the target cannot move further than 30 feet apart from the location you were when you cast the spell. neither you or the target may attack or damage anyone else. neither you or the target can be attacked or damaged by anyone else. upcasting allows to target one additional enemy and one ally per spell level. my crown of madness fix would be: wis save at the start of its turn. before the creature can do its turn as normal it must attack the closest target. if it cant hit the target it must use its movement to move towards the closest target. if it still cant attack when it moves then at the end of its turn it takes (x)d6 psychic damage (where x is the level of the spell slot used in casting) and may make another wis save.
I like a lot of these changes. I noticed one hiccup with prismatic spray. By making it 2d6 and only allowing violet on doubles, you have made it the rarest option, roughly half as likely to show up. An easy fix is 2d8, with 8 being choose one, although I acknowledge that this makes the spell even better.
For witch bolt, I make it work best for Warlocks. In addition to the damage, it can make the target fall prone (it’s like Palpatine’s force lightning) so it’s harder for the target to ‘break the circuit’ by moving away. You might also leave the initial damage 1d12, but in further rounds, it adds a d6 for every round the damage continues. Or, Witch Bolt could stay as it is and become a cantrip. Upcasting would need to be replaced by the usual cantrip damage progression, of course.
I think you underbuffed flame blade, for me the mandatory change should have been to align it on shadowblade (even if it's not a perfect spell either), so it gives something like that : "You evoke a fiery blade in your free hand. The blade is similar in shape to _a longsword, you are proficient with it_ and it lasts for the duration. If you let go of the blade, it disapears, but you can evoke the blade again as a bonus action. _When you attack with the weapon, it deals 3d6 fire damage, and you can use your spellcasting modifier instead of your Strenght modifier on hit and damage rolls. When wielded with two hands, this blade damage die become 3d8 instead._ The flaming blade sheds bright light in a 10-foot radius and dim light for an aditionnal 10 feet. At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage increases by _one die_ for every two slots levels above 2nd."
So to explain my train of thought, it's to make it the heavier bright light pendant of the finesse and throwable shadowblade (by the way i would make shadowblade 10 minutes for consistency), and trade the capacity of the shadowblade to get conststent advantage with the fact that you can use your spellcasting ability modifier with the flame blade, and the the bigger damage die is to compensate the lack of any property on the fire blade (it gives it kind of polyvalent). Then just permit to use it with every attack you make, and not simply an action on your turn, to make it a correct weapon spell, and not just a spell nobody use. Thanks for reading !
I think Produce Flame should let you use a bonus action to fire the bolt, ending the spell. Now you can stock it up as a prefight buff, then either keep recasting as an action, or using an action to store it so you can release as a bonus action later.
The dancing lights cantrip needs to have a longer duration and not use concentration. It's even worse than produce flame for illuminating an area, which is basically all it does. Just add the restriction that if you cast it again, the existing lights disappear.
Ray of enfeeblement is great with giant monsters. Such as giants, who do one or two big hits. I would just make it so that any weapon attack does half damage, instead of Strength attacks.
I would also like to keep the half-damage instead of disadvantage. There are not many effects in the game causing this kind of effect, and there are many effects imposing disadvantage. I enjoy that it's something different. I do agree that it's necessary to change the wording of the spell so that the DM does not need to figure out if the attacks are based on strength or not.
I like the idea of Witch Bolt providing Dazed. I had always envisioned it as better scaling and a chance to repeat the attack against other targets if the original fled: A beam of crackling energy strikes a creature within range, forming a sustained connection between you and the target. Make a ranged spell attack against the target - on a hit, the target takes D12 lighting damage. While concentrating, you can use your action to automatically deal d12 damage to the same target. If the target leaves the range while you are concentrating, you can use your action to repeat the attack action on a target within range. The spell ends early if you miss an attack with it, or if you use your action to do anything else. At Higher Levels - When you cast this spell with a spell slot of 2nd level or higher: the range increases by 5ft ranged attack damage increases by 1d12 and automatic damage increases by d6 for each slot above 1st. I feel like it always had short range so that things could escape you with Dash and waste their action to avoid it, unless they had a higher speed. I also think that the automatic damage never scaling meant there was never a reason to do it.
Lightning arrow damage does include modifiers from dex and sharpshooter already RAW. It replaces the weapon damage, the language is just a bit clunky. "instead of the weapon's normal damage" is the key here.
I will say that dream as a ritual would be nice. I already have it on my warlock and it has been a wonderful tool to long distance communication and helping me with political intrigue. As a note though, dream (nightmare) only is capped at once per sleep if they fail from what I can tell. It does say on a failed save "lasts the duration of the target's sleep.." but doesn't state if the spell ends after the 10 word message on a successful save. The way it's worded I interpret it is that the spell ends on a successful save and you can try again if it does so since it's not under the effects of the spell. If it was redone, it should add "On a successful save, the target isn’t affected, and you can’t use this spell against it in this manner again for 24 hours." similar to scrying.
There's really only two situations where Stinking Cloud really shines as a spell, because it's unique combination of effects has a bad habit of being more detrimental than helpful in a lot of cases. Ideally with Stinking Cloud you're going to want to use it on enemies who you want to approach the party, forcing them out of an advantageous position. If they retreat *away* from the party then their line of sight will still be obstructed by the cloud, and if they exit the cloud toward your party then your party can deal with them more easily because you've forced them out of cover, or closer to your party, or whatever else you've done. The other situation where it might be worth it is when your allies are immune to poison or don't have to breathe (Such as a Warforged). You can use it like Fog Cloud to dip in and out of for cover against spells and ranged attacks, but it carries the added benefit of being extra punishing for melee combatants who want to take the fight to you in the cloud. Naturally this isn't valid for most parties. The big problem with Stinking Cloud is that Fog Cloud effects are generally better when used defensively, but Stinking Cloud is almost exclusively an offensive spell: with Fog Cloud if you cast it on enemies then they can just dip in and out of the fog every turn to take advantage of the concealment, but Stinking Cloud prevents this... but if you're looking for area lockdown with a level 2 spell, honestly just take Web. It's much more useful in almost every situation except those two extremely specific cases I just laid out.
I know WotC said they’re doing away with disease, but I really feel like Contagion is a missed opportunity. A 5th level spell that inflicts poisoned on a hit and requires the target to fail 3 out of 5 saves to take effect. The following rework comes from homebrewer *somanyrobots* in his work “Spells That Don’t Suck”, which I’ve summarized here: it’s no longer reliant on poisoned (unlikely with 5.5e), can only be cured by Heal or equivalent magic, they’re affected by the disease immediately, effects are suppressed for a round on a success, and effects were either buffed or nerfed to put them in line with each other.
I love the idea of adding Scaling options to most spells. Mage Armor (increasing 1 ac per short rest but at 14ac it has the rules of medium armor and at 17 it has the rules of heavy. Enlarge (increase another size for every two levels, increase the d4 damage) Shield (add 1 ac per spell slot) Misty Step (increase teleport range by 20 feet per level)
Your Compelled Duel fix is something I could get behind. I might want to take it sometimes, and I would want to build around it with particular characters.
I changed True Strike for my table and it's worked out pretty well. It's situational, but can be very useful for landing a strong hit against a shifty foe: True Strike Casting Time: Reaction, when you or an ally attacks a creature with disadvantage on the roll Range: 30 feet Components: S Duration: Instantaneous Choose a friendly creature within range that is making an attack roll at disadvantage. Your magic grants the creature a brief insight into their opponent's defenses. The attacker ignores disadvantage on this attack.
Wow, I'm so impressed with your clean and elegant fixes here. Your insight in the rules really shines through and I'm inclined to just use them automatically, hats off to you! But let's see what WotC will come up with. Jeremy mentioned in his latest One D&D vid they are planning to update or upcast a lot of spells but maybe this we won't see any of these. Basically the weak spells will get buffed but we're not aware of it and we won't see it before the 2024 PHB comes out and we'll only see the outlier spells get nerfed or taken down in the UA playtests?
I think Weird needs to be redesigned entirely. The 2nd edition Weird is the coolest spell ever, but it’s not table friendly since it slows down combat a lot. Forcing your opponent to fight a mental doppelgänger though is suuuuuch a cool idea, so I would love for them to go with that. Oddly enough, maybe they can make it a combination of a summoning spell and a compelled duel. 1 minute, a summon template that takes some traits from the opponent (hit points? AC? Ability scores and saving throws?), and then the opponent can only attack that doppelgänger for 1 minute. That sounds like a pretty cool 9th level spell.
I think spare the dying needs improvement- it doesn't do much of anything if you have a healer's kit, or if you are good at Medicine. Bonus action and range 30' would be a good fix IMHO.
To fix True Strike all you need to do is change range from self to Touch. There you now have a cantrip that can be used to give someone advantage on their next attack. It doesn't make it over powered. Doesn't make it a must have or must use. But now it is useable and can give the flavour of a 'tactical genius' sort of play, guiding a martial class for that sure fired strike, with proper planning. I've been HB'ing it was a range of touch now for several years in my game with a wizard and rogue and its works. Doesn't over power anyone and gives some great moments of in combat RP as the classes and players work together.
Suggestion for Compelled Duel: Give them an initial saving throw and they can make an additional saving throw if they take damage from another enemy creature other than the caster. That way it forces aggro on the initial failed save, but others can "steal aggro" if they hit it.
We're playing Netherdeep right now and a friend was asking my wizard to take Legend Lore to learn more about some campaign lore. I negotiated one of the factions to get a scroll and copy the spell so I didn't have to use one of my regular spell learning slots on it lol
I like the Pathfinder version of produce flame a lot. Cast as an action and spend 1 minute of the duration to make a Melee or Ranged spell attack. Also just make ALL the BA concentration "on your next attack" Smite type spells work like Smite. I can't really think of that I need that shouldn't work like that
Crown of Madness attacking itself is inspired, I wouldn't have thought of that, but in my opinion it does change the spell too much from its intended use. Really the issue is that the attack occurs before the movement. Personally I just give the caster control over the target's movement as well as their attack action (maybe include a Command-style restriction against moving into dangerous terrain). It's basically Dominate Person lite, and the action cost is more than enough to make up for it. As it stands, Crown of Madness is arguably weaker than Command, depending on how creative you can be with a one-word command.
The "fixed" version of Produce Flame just ends up being a far better option than the other light producing cantrips Light and Dancing Lights. A range of 15+15 feet of light and 30 feet for the attack would at least make Light a slightly better option for light while still keeping this as a good versatile cantrip.
Most cantrips should get flexible progression. When you cast a cantrip after lvl 5 you should get two choices, increase damage dice on default target OR target an additional creature in same way eldritch blast does. I'd go as far as offer the single target a damage boost by letting you add you casting mod to keep it competitive as a choice against multiple target. This will bring a whole bunch of neglected cantrips back into circulation. Imagine viscously mocking two or three people with one action, feels a lot better than an extra D4
I did enjoy the concept of fear paralyzing the target that you've suggested for Weird in 9th level TM variant, as well as having Time Stop as a reaction. Though my favorite here is self-only truestrike as a reaction. I've tried it as something similar in the past but never considered it as a reaction- action economy among other things has just been the enemy of that poor cantrip.
We use a True Strike variant in my campaigns... it's pretty much the same as the rogue class ability, Steady Aim. You can use a reaction to cast True Strike with a range of SELF (can't cast on others) and gain advantage on your next attack, as long as it's before the end of your next turn. The caveat is that casting this cantrip reduces your movement to 0 for the rest of the turn, and you can't cast the cantrip if you have moved at all this turn. So, that's the restriction for it, and as a cantrip selection it matches a 3rd-level class ability that can be used at will. Not bad for a cantrip when you consider that most characters will never have more than 4 or 5 cantrips.
I really like all of these, and you are right that people get SO much more worked up about nerfs rather than buffs. The comment section prior to the previous video going live was a bit ugly. I must admit though I thought of the Wesley Snipes crying gun meme when you suggested nerfing Hypnotic Pattern. That’s my favorite spell LOL.
I know they aren't going to do this, but many spells that require concentration could just not and that would be a sizable buff. Its frustrating to see spells that effectively add 1 dice to a damage roll clog up your concentration when there's obviously better spells to concentrate on. Spiritual Weapon needing concentration just means you're never going to see it after level 5.
Got my survey in! My big final requests were: "1. Please don't require "If all your spell slots are expended" restrictions as we see in Sorcerous Recovery and Magical Cunnings. These encourage spell slot dumping and other unwanted metagame behaviours." & "2. Please give the Brawler and the Monk Unarmed Weapon Masteries - Slow, Nick, Sap, Vex; & 3. "Please give Monks Martial Fighting Styles that grant Unarmed access to Weapon Masteries (e.g. Thundering Blows = Push & Topple).
I went a different way with Flame Blade. I changed it to: you do 3d6 + your spellcasting ability modifier fire damage for a melee spell attack as your Bonus Action. You can then use your action for a cantrip or other non-concentration spell.
Tree, I think you overbuffed Phantasmal Killer. Look at Blight. It's 8d8 initial damage with no continuing damage and no frightened condition. So 6d10 on the first round + the frightened condition is already better than Blight without any continuing damage. I'd say 4d10 on the initial round (save for half + no continuing damage) and 4d10 each round thereafter (save ends). 2 rounds and you have the damage you should be doing. A lot of the problem is that 3rd level spells are slightly more powerful than they should be and set a standard that's too high for later spells.
CANTRIPS: -Mending. Change casting time from one minute to one action. -Acid Splash. Change damage to 2d4. Change target to one creature, plus any creature within 5ft of that creature takes 1d4 dmg. Dex save, half damage if successful. -also, let's give Clerics more cantrip options. LEVEL 1. -Identify. Spell remains tge same, but remove the rule that allows any character to identify a magic item on a short rest that makes this spell mostly irrelevant. -Cure Wounds. Buff the healling to 3d10. Thats the amount of damage that Inflict Wounds causes. If 3d10 seems like too much healing, then nerf Influct Wounds. These two spells should inflict/cure the same amount of damage. LEVEL 2. -Locate Object. Give it the ritual tag. -Barkskin. Change it to a +2 to AC that stacks with any armor worn. Upcasting adds an additional +1 for every 2 spell levels above 2nd. -Cloud of Daggers. Allow the cloud to be moved by the caster 20ft with a bonus action. -Darkvision. Make upcastable to affect multiple creatures. -Dust Devil. Increase damage to 3d8. -Enlarge/Reduce. Make upcastable to level 5 & level 8. Increase size category by 1 tier for level 5 (for +2 size tiers total) and by 2 tiers for level 8 (for +3 size tiers total). Damage bonus increases to 1d8 at 5th level, 2d8 at 8th level. Reducing has opposite effect, so 1d8 or 2d8 damage penalty. If size is reduced below Tiny, object or creature becomes insect sized. (I really want this to be the "Ant-man" spell... 🤞🏼) -Maximillians Earthen Grasp. Increase damage to 4d6. Or, keep damage at 2d6, but change ongoing uses to a Bonus Action, instead of an Action. -Snillocs Snowball Swarm. Add a movement penalty of 10 feet if they fail the save. LEVEL 3. -Conjure Barrage. Increase damage to 6d8. -Flame Arrows. Remove the number of ammunition limitation. It needlessly complucates the spell. Change duration from 1 hr to 1 minute, but increase damage from 1d6 to 3d6, upcast adds a d6 per every 2 spell levels. (1d6 additional damage is the same as Hunters Mark, a 1st level spell. This needs to be better to justify a 3rd level slot. Especially for a Ranger. In fact, this could probably be a Ranger exclusive spell.) -Haste. Make upcastable to affect multiple creatures. -Lightning Arrow. Increase primary damage to 6d8 & secondary damage to 4d8. - Intellect Fortress. Remove concentration. - Tongues. Give it the ritual tag. LEVEL 4 -Fabricate. Give it the ritual tag. -Ice Storm. Increase the Bludgeoning damage to 4d6. -Locate Creature. Give it the ritual tag. -Death Ward. Make it upcastable to affect multiple creatures. -Freedom of Movement. Make it upcastable to affect multiple creatures. LEVEL 5 -Cloudkill. Increase damage to 8d8. -Conjure Volley. Increase damage to 10d10. -Mass Cure Wounds. Increase healing to 6d8. -Contagion. Not sure how or if this spell will change, because the designers are moving away from disease as part if the game. LEVEL 6 -Blade Barrier. Increase damage to 10d10. - Find the Path. Give it the ritual tag. - Chain Lightning. Remove the number of creatures restriction. Make it an actual chain: hit 1st creature within range, then continues to jump to another creature, as long as they are within 30 ft of the last creature affected. Should make for some fun strategizing on the map. LEVEL 7 -Project Image. Make the illusion immune to all damage, so that the spell does not end if it takes damage. Allow the caster to use BOTH their own senses and the illusion's senses. Allow the caster to cast spells from the illusion's location, using their senses. (These will be limited to non-concentration spells, of course.) Reduce the range to 60 ft. 500 miles is bonkers. Reduce the duration to 1 hour. -Regenerate. If there are spells to regrow missing limbs (or features such as the Armorer Artificer's suit of armor), then there should be explicit rules as to how a creature (player or otherwise) can lose a limb. Something more than just an optional rule in the DMG that basically says the DM can arbitrarily make this call. If not- then remove that part of the spell, and increase the healing to 4d8 (but lose the +15) on every turn for 1 minute. Add concentration. LEVEL 9 Not any specific changes to any spells. However, I'd suggest throwing Clerics a bone, and give them more than just four 9th level spell options. Foresight, Imprisonment, and Invulnerability all seem like they could be Cleric Spells.
For witch bolt in my games we changed the secondary damage to 4d4 and for every lvl upcast add 1d4 we also added if target leaves the spells range they take 2d12 .goes great with quickend spell to get your initial damage and secondary damage in the same turn and you don't need to hold concentration after .
True Strike Reaction, which you take in response if you miss with an attack roll against a target that's within 30ft of you.) You channel magical guidance to your attack that missed its target. You roll a d4 and add the rolled number to your attack roll, potentially turning a miss into a hit.
Produce Flame: So, the thing with this spell is that it's Light and Firebolt, rolled into one cantrip, and is worse than both of them. Considering that the druid doesn't have onboard access to either of those spells, I don't see a good reason not to make it so it matches both of them in terms of damage and utility. True Strike: I still truly believe that True Strike would be much more useful, as-is, if there were good, high-level spells that made an attack roll; maybe make it so it doesn't eat your concentration, too. The problem with your suggested fix is the same as the problem I have with making it a bonus action; This just makes it so the character with true strike, unless they have something else compelling to hold their reaction for, just has an extra d4 on their attacks all the time. Compelled Duel: This one's a little tricky. I can understand why they wouldn't have wanted to put a literal hard taunt in the game, but this needs to be harder then the vague suggestion of a taunt that it currently is. I like the idea of this being kind of a reverse fear affect, where the creature cannot willingly move further away from you than it is at the start of its turn. I think I would also add that if the creature were the cast a spell, it must target you; if it could target multiple creatures, one of those targets must be you, or you must be included in the AoE. Also, how about making it so the creature gets to repeat its save (or the spell ends entirely) if, at the start of its turn, you didn't damage it since the end of its last turn? Again, the idea isn't to just have a taunt, you are SUPPOSED to be dueling this creature. Ray of Sickness: Honestly? The thing with poison damage is that it's typically disproportionately high compared to other damage types of the same level, specifically because it's so commonly resisted and immune. Like... change this to 3d10 or 12. The creature being poisoned for a round isn't terrible, but like... it's a con save after you've hit with the spell to begin with. The kind of creature this is commonly going to work against is also the kind of creature that probably doesn't care that it's poisoned. Witchbolt: See, the conventional wisdom with Witch Bolt is that it's bad because the creature can just move to break LoS, move out of range, or walk up and slap you. The thing about that is, what if those are things that you _want_ the monster to do? It works as a great soft taunt if you're an E.Knight or Abjurer. Now, granted, the scaling is bad, and it's kind of bullshit that the spell _ends altogether_ if you whiff the target, so I would make it so the spell can only end if it's already attached to a target, and make it so the residual damage scales if you cast the spell with a 3rd, 6th, or 9th level spell (So it _at least_ outpaces cantrip damage). Also, maybe increase the range to at least 40 feet so the creature has to give ground if it wants to just walk out of range. Crown of Madness: So, the fantasy with this spell is that you put it on a guy, and he proceeds to go mad and attack his nearby allies, right? The thing is, is that the spell doesn't deliver on that fantasy. I would say, remove the humanoid restriction, and make it so creature moves to and attacks the closest creature on its turns (That isn't the caster, since the caster has it charmed), and even dashes if it must. Find Traps: So, consider; A solid perception or investigation check currently does everything this spell does and more. I think I might even add that it gives your party advantage on checks to disable the trap, or advantage on saves against the trap's harmful effect, or both. Flame Blade: I disagree that the problem with Flame Blade is that it doesn't deal enough damage; Flame blade's damage is actually comparable to similar spell Shadow Blade. Flame Blade's main problem is that it doesn't actually support any kind of gishing; Making an attack with the blade isn't an attack action, so it doesn't trigger anything that keys off performing that action, like extra attack. Also, the classes that get this spell, druid and sorcerer, don't have any support for a gish playstyle built into them. What I would change about this spell is just make it so it behaves more like shadow blade; you get a weapon with the light and finesse properties, but instead of being able to throw it and getting advantage in dim light or darkness, you get to use your spell mod for attack and damage. -Milf's- Melf's Acid arrow: See, this one is where the solution is to obviously just buff the damage. Like you pointed out, even if the spell _hits,_ it doesn't necessarily do more damage than magic missile cast at second level; and even as you upcast it, I don't think it ever significantly outpaces Magic Missile cast at the same level. Ray of Enfeeblement: I'd argue that half damage on all attacks isn't a mild debuff; Yeah, it might not mean much against a 1st level guard that's throwing like six damage at you, but what if you nail an ancient red dragon with it? All of the sudden, it's routine is going from over sixty damage to closer to thirty. Yeah, it'll probably make its save, but it doesn't _get_ that save until the end of its next turn. Finally, it doesn't slow the game down any more than resistance to a damage type would; The DM tells the player the full damage, reminds them that it's halfed from Ray, and lets the player do the math while he moves on. Summon Beast: I agree with your changes. Also, the material component for all of the summon X spells from Tashas are pokeballs. 200 gold isn't that bad, and it's not like the spell consumes it. Stinking Cloud: I dunno, like... you can just walk out of the area of Cloudkill, too. These spells aren't great if you use them in a situation where the enemy can just walk out, they're great in a situation where the enemy _can't_ just walk out, or if you've got a lot of things on your team that let you push the enemies back in after they walk out. Secret Chest: This is one of those spells which is really more meant to be used by the DM, I think. That said, like... why on the losing things? Phantasmal Killer: This spell should mechanically enforce the creature seeing the "manifestation of its deepest fears" somehow. Also, it should do its damage from the first failed save, and then subsequent saves half the damage, but don't end the effect. Stoneskin: So, the thing about the component; 100 gold isn't all that much, especially when you're level 7+, but it's enough to make players never want to cast the damn spell. I think it should have a component that it consumes, so the players only have so many casts of this for a protracted dungeon crawl, but 100 gold is too much of a system shock. Also, I agree that it should just give resistance to BPS; enemies having magical BPS doesn't come up very often, but man does it suck when they do. Legend Lore: So, the thing with wishy-washy restrictions like that is that it gives the DM a solid rules reason to just tell the player "no." With no restrictions in place, Legend Lore will _frequently_ be cast on Tom the Baker's Potato Garden, for no better reason than because it's got a nice sign on it, or some other unusual detail, or even because the DM accidentally called too much attention to it ("It is a chair"). With the "Must be of legendary importance" restriction, even if it's ill defined, it will keep players largely only pointing the spell at things that _might_ be important; and in that case, even finding out that they aren't is valuable information. Mordenkainen's Sword: I mean, you could also just buff the damage up to like 5d10+Mod. It's fine if it's only on pace with spiritual weapon cast at the same level, since no class gets both, and even if you multiclass, you'll want one or the other anyway. Prismatic Spray: I mean, is probably 20d6 save halves in a really big AOE okay for a 7th level spell? That's like 70 damage. Finger of Death probably deals like 60, to one target. Disintegrate cast at 7th deals like 85, to ONE target, and it does nothing if the target saves. It seems your change would make prismatic spray the Best Blasting spell by a big margin. Maybe the fact that it's two damage types, and they're selected at random balances it out, but I'm not convinced. Incendiary Cloud: It may be more useful to compare this spell to cloudkill than wall of fire, which this spell is... just better than cloudkill. Fire is a more reliable damage type than poison, it does more damage than cloudkill cast at eighth level, targets a slightly less powerful save, the range is better, and you're able to push the incendiary cloud up a hill, which you cannot do with cloudkill. Granted, Cloudkill lasts longer, but does that matter?
Divine favor needs litterally any form of up scaling either die size per spell level or duration per level, either would be great. Or better yet chose on casting duration up or die size up or even mix and match, id happily blow a third level spell slot for a d6 damage on hit for 10 minutes no bonus action required.
I'm going to be that guy and defend color spray. Is it a good spell? No. Is it unuseably bad? No. The problem with Color Spray is that people see that it functions like the Sleep spell and then try to *use* it like the sleep spell, but that's really not what it's good for. In my experience, color spray is best used against a single large target rather than a group of small targets. That being said, my experience is not normal here: I negotiated with my game master to allow me to use Empowered Spell with color spray (normally you can't since Empowered spell requires "damage" dice), and my game master calls out when a creature is at half health (bloodied). If you're aware that your target has roughly 30 HP left, blinding them for a single round can accelerate the rest of your party's ability to take them down and make it that much more difficult for that enemy to defend themselves. The lack of saving throw means no legendary resistance or magic resistance, either... and blind is a powerful condition! Many of the most dangerous spells in the game rely on sight, on top of everyone having advantage on their attack rolls against the target, and the target having disadvantage on their own attacks. IMO the biggest flaw with Color Spray is that 6d10, that's just a level of variance that I don't like seeing in my spells, I would much rather see 10d6 than 6d10... Hell, I might even take 9d6 over 6d10 even if it's lower on average because it's more consistent.
For Prismatic Spray, here's where they should have added exploding dice. When you roll doubles, add one additional ray for the corresponding color and re-roll two dice. If you land on a color already selected, then you get a second instance of the ray, and you do not re-roll.
Enlarge/resuce needs upcasting. Die size and increase the size change by an additional size every lets say 3 levels up so you grow ir shrink 2 sizes as a 5th level slot or 3 sizes with a 8th level slot
@@ilovethelegend that makes a lot of assumptions. Sure if your DM lets you have any magic item you want and would let those plusses bleed through to the cantrip but that's not a guarantee. Letting the spell scale doesn't remove your option but now people can rely on getting a weapon that uses the casting mod they want for attack and damage rolls in most campaigns.
@@ryanscanlon2151 A +x magic weapon is not a huge ask. Plus, shelly changes your weapon's damage die and what stat you can use for it. There's no reason a +X weapon wouldn't apply it's bonus, because you're still making an attack with the weapon, not shelly.
great series! I and most likely many more would like to hear your thoughts on all the other spells being badly worded/too weak or too strong who are getting no reprint in the new PHB
Cantrips: Produce Flame: How about the secondary effect is something like a ray that you can throw up to 600 ft away and it lights up the path. So you trade your action and your position against knowledge about your surrounding. And of course the range increase to 60 ft. True strike: Remove concentration; until the end of your next turn you have advantage of all your attacks; range self, components S. Lvl 1: Color spray: Instead of the Hp a creature makes a CON-Save. If the target isn’t at full health it has disadvantage on the save. Upcast removed. Witch bolt: Remove the action required to keep the spell up. Thats it. Lvl 2: Alter Self: I thought this spell has the benefit that the change is physical so I don’t think this is a bad spell. Ray of Enfeeblement: Autohit but keep the spell effect. Lvl 5: Dream: If you make this a ritual this spell becomes spamable. If you really wanna change the effect you can make it a lingering effect. But I don’t think this is necessary. Geas: I wouldn’t change that either. You run in the same problem if you change the damage interval. 5d10 damage average 27.5 damage. This is enough to nearly kill something like a dragon wyrmling. If you torment it long enough you will end up with something like the bewilder beast from dragons. This is a Dm spell and it should be a Dm spell even today. Control weather: One step every 10 min in one of the tables. You actively fight against nature with arcane magic. You can add an addition when a druid cast this they can change up to 3 layers on any table. Or make it an upcast option. Thats all the changes I would have made to the list of trentmonktemple. Now to the spells he might missed: I personally think the power words (and as such divine word) are poorly designed spells. And I also don’t really know how to fix them without making them Op (especially powerword kill as it is in the arsenal of orcus who can dish it out like 3 times a round). Thank you for your time Have a nice day AEther
How I fixed True Strike and Swift quiver at my table: The caster, as part of a casting of the spell/ cantrip, makes an attack as part of the casting. For true strike: if the caster has access to the extra attack feature, all attacks can be applied. (So that niche case where An Eldritch Knight has wizard levels has a damaging cantrip that scales with the class) For Swift quiver: it's 2 attacks, as alloted in the spell.
Small suggestion on Swift Quiver: The range for Swift Quiver is touch, not self. If we are providing two ranged attacks on the turn we cast the spell, this will require a range of self or some wording to prevent odd situations. Bit of a bummer though. I honestly liked taking this spell on a Bard's magical secrets and casting it on the party ranger to make them feel awesome, because nobody's making it to 17th level.
9:43 ... I believe that the Concentration requirement on Hail of Thorns is specifically there to keep casters from stacking Hunter's Mark with Hail of Thorns. Definitely need to keep Concentration for this spell! The problem with Hail of Thorns isn't concentration... it's pathetic damage. 1d10 with a save for half dmg, is just +5.5 damage, or ~+3 on a successful save. Not worth a spent spell slot! I feel this spell would be best improved by instead changing the radius to 10 feet instead of 5 ft, and increasing the damage to 2d8 instead of 1d10. This would increase the additional damage to an average of 9 damage, instead of 5. Also I would not allow the target of the spell to save for half, but would only extend that courtesy to others caught within the 10-ft. radius of the target. Upcasting would add one additional d8 to damage.
I sometimes have merchants that try to scam the players by selling them spell scrolls of find traps or true strike. I do love my Skywrite though. No better way to shittalk the enemy. It's not about power, it's about sending a message... literally.
I'd like to have seen something about Tenser's transformation. You've mentioned a couple times before that the spell isn't great so would be cool to know how it could actually become of good use
Let you don armor you are carrying as a part of casting and either increase your strength or let you use your spellcasting modifier. Remove concentration on it and exhaustion.
The Bonus UA that just came out adresses both cantrips Treantmonk talks about in this video (and a couple more, obviously). So how did Wizards approach the problems, what did they change? Produce Flame: Range was indeed increased to 60 feet, exactly as suggested here. Dim/bright light radius was increased to 20 feet (instead of 30 as per Treant). The spell is now a Bonus Action to cast (still action throw), which *kinda sorta* allows you to keep it going, by immediately recasting it after throwing. Technically, all three critique points were adressed. True Strike: Apparently considered unsalvageable(?) and was completely changed. It's now effectively a blade cantrip, with the basic effect of making the melee attack use your spellcasting stat. It scales with an extra d6 Radiant damage at the usual levels (so up to +3d6) and allows you to change the base damage to Radiant as well. Very different from the original intent. Also means that every single class in the game has some form of weapon scaling now...which is really weird.
i found that a perfectly serviceable way to buff Witch Bolt was to simply make it 2d12 damage, and have both damages scale every other level. someone did some math and found that casting witch bolt is likely to give a little bit more average expected damage over 3 rounds as magic missile + 2 fire bolts, but it has a much wider standard deviation (and is a better choice if you get advantage). it might be shorter range and everything but considering the nature of d12’s and all it’s meant to be a high risk, high reward spell.
I'd really love to see all cantrips scaling not just the damaging ones
Hell, yeah!
Hmm for many of them that would be basically impossible without making at least one and maybe more than one levelled spell equivalent irrelevant. Perhaps those ones can scale in Eldritch blast style and just happen more times per casting. But as many of the non-damaging cantrip are the sort you won't tend to use in combat anyway scaling them that way becomes relatively pointless.
And Guidance scaling would be hell on the DM in general - assume it now effects the whole party and it is not so bad being only a D4, but getting bigger or more die would really bork the check DC's - I'd have to set every DC up in the 30's to pose any problems at all. But what happens when your thief is now trying to disarm some trap solo, suddenly it might well be just natural 20 only for success.
Not all damaging cantrip scales. Magic stone for example?
That would be so cool. Or have it scale or change if you spend a spell slot on it.
Super Mending!
I use Leomunds Secret Chest with my necromancer! I cram my undead in the boxes and then summon them with the little chest charms on my bracelet! Its a great way to sneak your undead army around. Also, its so damn thematic to pull a charm off a piece of jewelry and say, 'just wait tell you see what I summon next!"
I'm loving this series! Honestly really solid ideas of how to fix spells and make it so every wizard doesn't basically have the same spell book.
I'm honestely very excited to see people using different spells
I changed truestrike to be a BA to cast, you target friendlies or yourself and the next attack the target makes can ignore anything causing disadvantage on the roll. It means you can help allies get a good hit in, or if you have a rogue that has a source of advantage, but has disadvantage from something else, you can cancel out the disadvantage and the rogue can keep their advantage.
It means that it's good, but it's not used all the time, but when it does come up it makes a difference.
EDIT* Added the text that we've been using below:
True Strike - Revamped
Casting Time: 1 Bonus Action
Range/Area: 60 ft
Components: S
Duration: 1 Round
You grant one creature (including possibly yourself) within range a brief moment of clarity, drowning out any distractions. On the next attack made by the creature before the start of your next turn, they can ignore any effect which would cause disadvantage on the attack.
Neat fix that gives it a unique niche to fill. Only even potentially sketchy thing to come up that I can think of is removing long range shots, and even then....yeah, aiming should do that.
Yeah pretty cool. Prevents disadvantage. Nice fix
This is one of the most interesting and serviceable alterations to the spell that I've seen. I'd love to have this on the books!
That really works well IMO. I'd suggest perhaps addiing 'If cast as an action you can give the creature advantage on a melee attack'
That would really reward some team play in niche situations, but I can't see how it would break anything - there are lots of ways that advantage can be gained and really its only the martial and in particular the Rouge that will gain much. But the cost of doing so being your action is very significant.
situational, but that at least gives it a useful niche without trivializing arcane trickster features. This could be incorporated into the reaction version.
Not only is the Crown of Madness fix easy, it thematically fits the spell name.
I'd rather see it turn into a bonus action per round requirement and force the target to spend their reaction to make a melee attack a target chosen by the caster. It seems too powerful to have them use their action to attack themselves each round.
@@Ahvrym or let them move first, but attacking themselves at least fits the theme of the spell
@@andrewshandle in this case I would make it occur as a reaction on the casters turn when they spend the bonus action. That way there's a bit of counterplay if the target can use their reaction on SOMETHING before the casters turn. I would also allow the spell to continue on the next round even if the caster did not spend the bonus action to do so (or if the reaction was already spent).
I think CoM is much maligned simply because of the poor wording where it says the target 'can act normally', so DMs might act like the spell is doing nothing. The target is still charmed by you. His friends presumably see the crazy look in his eyes, and saw he attacked his friends. With a little roleplaying, you should often be able to get the other enemies to turn on the target, then convince the target to do what you want. It could be better, sure, but it's only bad if your DM's mean about it.
I like the idea of Compelled Duel as like a reverse frightened condition.
Can't move away, possibly disadvantage to attack creatures other than you.
Basically a fighter's mark from 4e
The interesting thing is that it doesn't seem like anything prevents it from being combined with Frightened (maybe from a conquest pally's Conquering Presence, which doesn't cost concentration) so a target hit with both is stuck circling the paladin and giving the paladin absolute distance control for a chosen enemy.
@@PlehAP This would be strong lockdown in melee vs melee, but wouldn't do much vs an enemy with reach or ranged options aside from force disadvantage. Still good and, honestly, a concession I'm more than willing to make considering the spell is basically Paladin-exclusive and spell lists are separate again (with Fear options being somewhat limited option for those same Paladins outside of Conquest Pallys and Oathbreakers). With Paladins being a mostly martial class and this option only really boosting them and not giving full casters another abuse case, I'm willing to accept it.
@@Mrryn Ah, I see you too subscribe to the "as long as it helps martials more than casters" school of hombrew. :P
@@MumboJ I mean, is it wrong to think that, in the game of D&D, that martials need more help to stay relevant especially from around level 5+? lol
Compelled Duell: Not being able to move away really hurts ranged enemies and casters, so it's actually super strong with that effect alone. I'd probably just keep it very simple: You AND the target have disadvantage against other targets. Can repeat the wis saving throw at the end of their turn. No concentration. 1 Minute.
Lightning bolt fix: In earlier editions, you could choose to either shoot a single 30 ft long bolt or 2 15 ft long bolts in different directions. I don't know why they removed that. But that would make it a lot easier to aim.
and also remove self, you can place the line between any two points.
Going way back, the caster could actually choose the point of origin for the bolt as well.
"The bolt begins at a range and height decided by the caster and streaks outward in a direct line from the casting wizard (for example, if a 40-foot bolt was started at 180 feet from the wizard, the far end of the bolt would reach 220 feet (180 + 40)."
For context, the minimum length of the bolt was 40 and it gained 10 feet for ever caster level (example: 100 ft long bolt at level 6)
This stacking property made it one of the longest range spells in the game.
Your fix to Geas makes sense, and I would be happy with that change.
Personally, I add a point of Exhaustion that cannot be removed while the spell is active.
This lines up with how it used to work in previous editions, a stacking penalty that eventually kills you.
But unfortunately it does still allow the target to disobey you without consequence for the rest of the day, so maybe your version is better.
why not both? replace the damage with exhaustion and the fix to increse the frequency you gain penalties. Your target can still die and its not hitpoint dependent
@@PirateTrowel85 Exhaustion per minute seems excessive, but i suppose you could do.
Yay, Treantmonk's Spells Variant are back! But seriously it was one of my favorite series and seeing something even remotely similar is so nice
Another spell that could be buffed is Immolation. It's based on the same saving throw (Dexterity) as Fireball, but it's a single-target spell. To deal an extra 2d6 fire damage compared to an upcasted lv5 Fireball to a single target, the target needs to fail two consecutive saving throws and the caster needs to maintain concentration for a whole round. I would add that a burning target has disadvantage on all attack rolls, and if the target is killed while the spell is active, it turns to dust (instead of just when it is killed by the spell's damage)
For quite a few of these, like grasping vine, I honestly think they'd be fine if you just removed concentration. I don't think a lot of spells need concetration, even when they last longer, and I think it allows more interesting combos. Obviously some spells would be too powerful without concentration, but I do think it's a major area to free up.
I believe the corrected grasping vine would hinder grapplers, as no player has to lose any actions to do what a grappler does (and with no risks to their own Hp).
So by removing concentration, grasping vine is just plain better than a grappler.
@@magnumpiorizanni4413 The current form of grasping vine is way weaker than a grapple though, which is what I was saying would work fine if you just got rid of concentration
True Strike: a benefit of making it usable for other players is that it would completely change the landscape with other reaction-based spells (Shield, Silvery Barbs, Counterspell, etc.) because suddenly the caster has to make a choice: is adding a d4 to the Rogue's attack (potentially giving them a Sneak Attack on this enemy) worth giving up my opportunity to block the BBEG's next round of ranged attacks against me, or prevent the enemy caster from Fireballing us?
It also adds another interesting element to tactical positioning. Having the Sorcerer hang way back to spam Fire Bolt may now be less appealing. I've been playtesting this version of True Strike for months, and I find that the additional tradeoffs for reaction usage and positioning both add fun and interesting elements to combat.
Since they changed guidance and resistance in the playtest, I have actually been laying around with True Strike, Guideance, and Resistance as 30 foot range reactions. So far (after about 10 sessions), it has been pretty good!
and the detriment of it is every caster being able to further interrupt the pacing between rounds, sure it may sound like it's nothing at all but it kills the pacing, I'm against most combat reaction features that doesn't directly affect your character.
I actually really like the witch bolt change. Excellent video
Yeah, it sounds pretty great. Especially if a Sorcerer Twinspells or extended ranged it.
Perfect change, honestly
Treant I'm interested in knowing what your "north star" mechanic is in terms of balance. What spell/ability do you believe is the best balanced ability in the game what should be used as the standard for judging whether something is undertuned or overtuned?
I expect he has enough experience to compare it as a collective for each level.
Bigby's Hand.
Fist of the North Star.
The first thing that comes to mind is the slow spell.
@@wassentme1891That sort of limitation would be far more reasonable than asking for a _single_ "North Star" for the whole game, considering all the various gameplay features and aspects of play.
Really, this would be somewhat tough and arbitrary regardless. It would be easier to merely provide some "good examples."
Whether something is "balanced" depends on what we're comparing against. So you almost need to have two options to compare which are balanced against each other.
If Slow is well-balanced (and I think it is), what are we comparing it to that makes us go, "Hmm... it is hard to choose which of these is _better_ because they are so balanced"?
Counterexamples would then be interesting to set in contrast.
That would be a cool video, though the focus should probably be on the balanced spells, to avoid being too similar to the existing Outliers video.
I would make Find Traps work like many people play Detect Magic. You see an unnatural glow, and as you study it on subsequent turns, you get more information.
Or, if the spell was left as-is, I’d make it last for hours without concentration, since all it’s telling you is “the rogue needs to take a closer look”. Then then you just keep searching until you find something.
Hail of Thorns should deal MORE damage than Ice Knife. Ice knife makes an attack as part of the spell, Hail of Thorns needs you to use a bonus action *and* make an attack.
I think 2d8 in a 10ft radius would be fair, as a kind of ranged Burning Hands.
This does make me think though: Sorcerers should absolutely have a Cantrip Smite spell.
I.e. When you hit a creature with an attack cantrip, you can cast this 1st level spell as a bonus action to add something extra - possibly extra damage and an effect, otherwise a little AoE like Hail of Thorns.
No Hail of Thorns is better than Ice Knife already, because if you cast Ice Knife then that's all your doing that turn, whereas you can combine Hail of Thorns with multiple attacks with a bow, and it also upcasts really well. I have played a multiclassed ranger/cleric before who was doing basically bonus action fireballs with upcasted hail of thorns in addition to her sharpshooter attacks with a longbow. I am fine with increaseing the radius to 10ft, and giving it the smite treatment of removing concentration and making it bonus action you cast when you hit, but you shouldn't nerf the damage to d8s.
For several reasons no
Try not to think of hail thorns as requiring an attack as much as it is allowing you to make one. All output is desired and as a ranger, you're probably going to be attacking most of the time anyway. That you can use the attack action alongside the spell is part of the spell and the attacks of a ranger with an action already significantly more powerful than the D10 plus nothing attack roll that ice knife makes.
I actually think incendiary cloud has that language for the niche case where you cast it on top of yourself. Then ever direction is directly away from you.
That’s a good point. I suspect they also meant that on a grid, there could theoretically be multiple spaces “directly” away from you if you aren’t on the same row.
That might have been the original intent, sure. But it's still murky, and it can be easily fixed by "it moves in a direction you choose."
Nah, I think it's just a "typo". They probably considered two versions (either directly away or in your chosen direction) and then someone simply forgot to pick one for the final print
A minor buff I'd additionally give to Produce Flame is to let you choose up to 30 feet of bright light, and an equivalent amount of dim light. So you could do 5/5, or 10/10, or 30/30, in case you wanted to be a little stealthier and not carry a giant lantern, but still wanted a little light to see by. I'd give the same buff to Light, Dancing Lights, etc.
Funny story about Color Spray: when my partner was newer to D&D and playing in one of their first campaigns, they proudly messaged me to share they had done 44 damage! I was like, cool, Fireball? No, color spray. I was like, ah, cool, though you didn't mean damage, right? 6d10 damage on a first level spell would be broken. Somehow their DM and whole party, who were not new to D&D btw, thought that Color Spray did damage and that 6d10 was fine for a first level spell. That was quite the unfortunate mistake! Anyways, buff Color Spray by having it do 6d10 damage.
I can think of all sorts of little fun additions to Witch Bolt to make it better - basically by making it more like force lightning.
I think there is concern about Find Traps trivializing certain "encounters" by showing you every trap within 120 feet, which could be a whole dungeons worth, especially if the spell works vertically. I definitely think the changes should occur so that the spell actually finds traps, but maybe reduce the range?
I have fond memories of Phantasmal Killer, and am excited at the prospect of it being buffed. I was once in a mini campaign where everyone was playing a spellcaster, but we started imprisoned, with all our items taken away from us. I chose as many material-free spells as possible, with a couple little clever caveats (like I had a tiny diamond ear stud that wasn't confiscated by our Giant captors, that my character crushed for Wall of Force), and as a result I ended up choosing and casting Phantasmal Killer. It ended up working quite well for causing one of the giant guards to flee in another direction while taking damage each turn. They didn't have great wisdom saves, though.
I think Geas is meant to be cast on like, normal NPCs, for which 5d10 damage is almost always certain death. The 1/day limitation would be there so it's not "abused" by being cast on high level targets, who can choose to take the damage. Maybe 1/minute would still be fine, but a 5th level spell to bring someone under your command for 30 days after just one saving throw with no way to break it... it's quite good, I don't know.
Most of my additional changes are ones I adopted from the TMV.
Identify should be fixed so that it does something. In the TMV you made it 1 action and a ritual. It should also indicate that it doesn't detect curses, instead of that being hidden in the DMG. In fact, I think the rules for identifying a magic item by touching it throughout a short rest is also in the DMG, so include that in the 2024 PHB as well. It's a player option!
Vicious Mockery should scale the disadvantage, instead of or in addition to the damage.
Burning Hands... buff the damage.
Locate Object... you've previously suggested increasing the range to 5 miles, which I thought was extreme, but 1000 feet is too small. I remember a few years ago I was trying to find an object in a city and used all my spell slots for the day just doing rounds of the city... it seemed silly. Maybe just 1 mile? The square footage covered is an order of magnitude higher still; 3,140,000 sqft vs 87,600,000 sqft.
Cure Wounds is not seen as a problem by many - you buffed it to 2d6 in the TMV, with 2d6 more on upcast. My tables do 2d8, still with 1d8 more on upcast. We also do 2d4 for Healing Word, which is arguably less necessary. Same with MCW, MHW.
Daylight needs to be Daylight or be renamed, either are fine.
Vampiric Touch needs buffed.
Creation can probably have its initial size and duration for each material buffed. There's lots of cheese out there for using this spell to drop a giant block of adamantine on creatures who aren't expecting it, but the circumstances in which to set that up in a minute without the creature knowing are pretty extreme.
Instant Summons should either have its cost reduced or let you snatch your item back from others. Hells - give both options! The cost of the material component determines part of the effect. I think for once, material component cost *can* be a decent balance to this ritual spell.
Some not in the TMV:
Continual Flame... it's a cantrip that costs a second level slot and 50 gold! If you upcast it to third level, you have created a tool to cut through magical darkness as created by the Darkness spell, and arguably a tool to cut through magical darkness in general at 2nd level. So maybe you can cast it once, then basically have a magic item for the rest of the campaign. I'll probably prepare this at some point on my artificer in down time to cast it once, but... it should really have some kind of other benefit. And reduce the gold cost! To see the return on using this instead of a 5sp lamp and 1sp/flash lamp oil, you'd need to use it for a total of 270 hours.
Sending should be a ritual, but you can only target a creature with it 1/day when cast as a ritual.
Bestow Curse needs buffed or reworked.
Faithful Hound needs buffed.
Immolation isn't a PHB spell, but oh my god it needs to be mentioned.
These were just some off the top of my head.
Your suggestion to Produce Flame should probably be something done to the Light cantrip instead.
Alternatively, the area affected by Light could be selected upon casting: either a radius or a cone.
We don't want to make Light or Produce Flame a clearly better option in all situations than a Hooded or Bullseye Lantern. They should all have their value.
@@tantalus_complex Light can produce brighter light, and the item can be passed around and moved in ways Produce Flame cannot. Never underestimate the ability to cast Light on a copper coin and throw it to illuminate the darkness.
@@godminnette2 That's true, but Produce Flame gets a lot more use because it not only provides a light source (which is good both in and out of combat) but it also fills the spell attack cantrip niche.
While the Light cantrip _does_ have an aggressive feature designed to be cast while in combat, its usefulness is so situational (and iffy) as to be almost non-existent.
So in my mind, Light could use more utility.
Produce Flame could use some love, too. But Light being dimmable would elevate it to the level of making it a competitive selection among other great choices, while Produce Flame getting that ability might make the best-in-slot choice - too strong.
1 per hour would work for geass, or alternatively 1/h and first time you resist you take dmg the next you take a lvl of exhaustion. That way you have 6h to find a spellbreaker every day.
about true strike: Why not use the solution presented in BG3? true strike gives advantage to "the next attack roll against the target" instead of "YOUR next attack roll". That way, it can be used as a setup for crit fishing or sneak attack fishing,
Even in BG3 it isn't worth taking. I've tried loving it and tried my damnedest to have it work for me, but even Larian's "fix" doesn't work. Also true strike only affects the caster's attacks.
I cant try it in my current playthrought, but, I think (by te technical limitations of the videogame) true strike doesnt buff your attack, but debuffs the defense of the enemy. Since, any attack, yours or not triggers the effect. Wiki comments seem to agree with it.@@christopherjones7191
I mean for sure, it wont be the optimal cantrip 99% if not 100% of the time, but sometimes I would like to deep dive in the support caster fantasy, instead of casting my 20th chill touch of the night, allowing my heavy hitter melee to have his big killing blow
@@kairosDM666 I suppose you could then reword true strike as a 30ft help action?
I think lightning arrow already works the way you suggested for damage dice. "instead of the WEAPONS normal damage" indicates you do 4d8 lightning + modifiers instead of 1d8 piercing for a longbow. Unless there's an errata or sage advice I missed.
It is intended to work the way he suggested, there is a Jeremy Crawford tweet that supports this.
Yeah, it was confirmed that it works the way you said
You beat me to this! You are 100% correct
Prismatic Spray's fix is very elegant. Pretty nice fixes all around!
I like the buffs to weird but I'd also add that it applies the frightened condition to all targets that fail their save, even if they are immune to that condition.
This is a 9th level spell drawing on a creatures deepest fears. Frightening even those immune to the frightened condition seems appropriate.
I'll throw my hat in for Poison Spray.
Cantrip, single target, 10 foot range, CON saving throw or takes 1d12 poison damage.
The range, con save, and damage type all fit the theme of the spell. But it being single target does not fit the theme (or name) of the spell.
My proposed fix: Considering the other two "___ Spray" spells are a cone, change the range of Poison Spray to be Self (10-foot-cone). All targets within the cone must make a CON save or take the spell's damage. I would accept reducing the damage die to 1d10 or 1d8 in this case if necessary but I'd rather it not considering how often creatures are flat out immune to poison damage.
A 10 foot cone would get at most three small or larger enemies (more tiny enemies if they're tightly packed but that seems very unlikely) but to get more than two enemies you'd basically need to be putting yourself in melee.
Alternately, I can see it operating similar to acid splash where you can target one additional creature within 5 feet of the target, but seeing as acid splash has a range of 60 feet Poison Spray should still retain a higher damage die.
For your modified true strike, maybe make the die increase at the usual scaling levels.
Remember in fourth editing, for these once per long rest spells, if you failed to hit, you either did half damage or you got the spell back to try to use it again. Generally you either got some effect, or you didn't waste it. In fifth edition that design space isn't explored, so it's generally half damage, or some real powerful save or nothing spells (for those wisdom type effect ones).
As someone that has played 2 campaigns with that exact true strike buff, it isn't broken but it is a good cantrip. My paladin that has it, and my wizard aren't usually within range to add it to their friends and a d4 is enough to turn a close miss into a hit reliably but not substantial enough to turn a bad roll into a good one. Also as it's only 1 reaction and not even a guarantee to succeed sometimes it still isn't enough. It's good like this, I like it and will probably keep it like this in my future campaigns. Good enough to take and make a difference, not good enough to be a must have in every situation
One interesting thing I think could be added onto Control Weather is something I was inspired by when watching Fellowship of the Ring. Make it a 5 mile radius with a range of sight, meaning that you could affect someone with a blizzard very far away while sitting comfortably in a lawn chair sipping lemonade.
Something I think would make Compelled Duel pretty fun: Introduce a Sanctuary-like mechanic. Here's a rough example of how I think it could work:
While under the effects of the spell, the compelled creature must make a Wisdom saving throw whenever they attempt to target a creature other than you with an attack or a harmful effect. On a failure, they must instead target you, otherwise it fails. If the compelled creature succeeds on the save, they can target their original target, but any attack roll is rolled with disadvantage, and saving throws made by their target are rolled with advantage. These restrictions and penalties do not apply to area effects like the Fireball spell if you (the caster) are within the area being targeted.
If a creature other than you attacks the target of this spell, or forces them to make a saving throw, the compelled creature can directly target that particular creature with attacks and harmful effects without penalty and without having to make a save for the remaining duration of the spell. You can use a bonus action on your turn to force the compelled creature to make a Wisdom saving throw, and on a failure the restrictions and penalties for targeting any creatures other than you are reapplied.
You (the caster) can attack creatures other than the target, but doing so allows the compelled creature to attempt a Wisdom saving throw to end the spell. However, like the restrictions to the compelled creature's attacks, this restriction does not apply to any area effects, like the Fireball spell, that you use so long as the compelled creature is within the area you are targeting with the effect.
They also need to add the change to the tasha summon spells to give them hit dice like the draconic spirit does, feels bad for a shepherd druid to not get extra hit points on summon beast/fey
Wish - the listed additional effects that don't duplicate spells should be safe casting as well. It should also be safe casting when using Wish to remove a condition/affliction that says WIsh can be used to remove it. Limit the 25,000 gp item to once per every 30 days (for safe casting) and the resistance to damage type to 1 hour.
I assume the way Leomund’s secret chest is worded is in case you die or are imprisoned, the stuff in the chest doesn’t hang out waiting for you forever. For me the fix seems easy: when the spell ends, the chest reappears on the groun where it was last present.
As for grasping fine, this seems like a great chance to add an upcast option targeting multiple creatures, and create a new Twin Spell candidate!
These are very good! I quite loke your channel.
This is a bit of a tangent, but my reaction to Control Weather was "wow, you look young for being in your 50's!" I genuinely had you pegged for mid 40's or so.
Do please keep up the great work!
For lightning arrow, I might add that any Target on a line between you and the intended target of the spell must make a dexterity saving throw or take the lightning damage, or half on a success.
I commented a similar thing on your spell nerfing video, but I am personally missing some "metric" to figure out whether or not your spell changes work. Basically, I wish there had been a couple spells of each level for each pillar of play that you had suggested were the approximate power level that you were going for. It's hard to judge whether the changes to Hypnotic Pattern and Lightning Arrow successfully fix the spell when I'm not sure what you consider to be a well-balanced 3rd level combat spell, if that makes sense? Otherwise, I think this is another great video with a very good analysis, as always!
Man even if Find Traps gave you the special vision that many videogames have where useful parts of the environment are highlighted like they were on fire, it would still be a spell that not everyone takes.
Produce Flame having a 60 ft thrown range makes sense (same as eg a thrown dagger), but it shouldn't produce more light than the dedicated Light Cantrip (which is 20 feet bright + 20 dim).
I think making it brighter than the light cantrip helps make up for the fact that you have to have an open hand available
honestly they should get rid of produce flame and roll its secondary effect (holding it to produce light) into firebolt (and increase the light distance im ok with it going away after used). theres no real reason to have two very similar damaging cantrips like this.
as for truestrike, i'd make it more like a smite (cast the spell causing you to make an attack with uts effect) though i feel giving advantage might be too strong on a cantrip if it worked that way. instead i'd garentee crit damage when using it. maybe if they're willing to bump to bump it to first level than they could have the advantage and crit damage.
compell duel: make it an actual duel. wis save when cast only. 3 turns, no concentration. you and the target cannot move further than 30 feet apart from the location you were when you cast the spell. neither you or the target may attack or damage anyone else. neither you or the target can be attacked or damaged by anyone else. upcasting allows to target one additional enemy and one ally per spell level.
my crown of madness fix would be: wis save at the start of its turn. before the creature can do its turn as normal it must attack the closest target. if it cant hit the target it must use its movement to move towards the closest target. if it still cant attack when it moves then at the end of its turn it takes (x)d6 psychic damage (where x is the level of the spell slot used in casting) and may make another wis save.
I like a lot of these changes. I noticed one hiccup with prismatic spray. By making it 2d6 and only allowing violet on doubles, you have made it the rarest option, roughly half as likely to show up. An easy fix is 2d8, with 8 being choose one, although I acknowledge that this makes the spell even better.
For witch bolt, I make it work best for Warlocks. In addition to the damage, it can make the target fall prone (it’s like Palpatine’s force lightning) so it’s harder for the target to ‘break the circuit’ by moving away. You might also leave the initial damage 1d12, but in further rounds, it adds a d6 for every round the damage continues.
Or, Witch Bolt could stay as it is and become a cantrip. Upcasting would need to be replaced by the usual cantrip damage progression, of course.
I think you underbuffed flame blade, for me the mandatory change should have been to align it on shadowblade (even if it's not a perfect spell either), so it gives something like that :
"You evoke a fiery blade in your free hand. The blade is similar in shape to _a longsword, you are proficient with it_ and it lasts for the duration. If you let go of the blade, it disapears, but you can evoke the blade again as a bonus action.
_When you attack with the weapon, it deals 3d6 fire damage, and you can use your spellcasting modifier instead of your Strenght modifier on hit and damage rolls. When wielded with two hands, this blade damage die become 3d8 instead._
The flaming blade sheds bright light in a 10-foot radius and dim light for an aditionnal 10 feet.
At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage increases by _one die_ for every two slots levels above 2nd."
So to explain my train of thought, it's to make it the heavier bright light pendant of the finesse and throwable shadowblade (by the way i would make shadowblade 10 minutes for consistency), and trade the capacity of the shadowblade to get conststent advantage with the fact that you can use your spellcasting ability modifier with the flame blade, and the the bigger damage die is to compensate the lack of any property on the fire blade (it gives it kind of polyvalent).
Then just permit to use it with every attack you make, and not simply an action on your turn, to make it a correct weapon spell, and not just a spell nobody use.
Thanks for reading !
I think Produce Flame should let you use a bonus action to fire the bolt, ending the spell. Now you can stock it up as a prefight buff, then either keep recasting as an action, or using an action to store it so you can release as a bonus action later.
The dancing lights cantrip needs to have a longer duration and not use concentration. It's even worse than produce flame for illuminating an area, which is basically all it does. Just add the restriction that if you cast it again, the existing lights disappear.
Ray of enfeeblement is great with giant monsters. Such as giants, who do one or two big hits. I would just make it so that any weapon attack does half damage, instead of Strength attacks.
I would also like to keep the half-damage instead of disadvantage. There are not many effects in the game causing this kind of effect, and there are many effects imposing disadvantage. I enjoy that it's something different. I do agree that it's necessary to change the wording of the spell so that the DM does not need to figure out if the attacks are based on strength or not.
Thanks for this video, didn't even know what some of these spells did since no one ever uses them or recommends them.
I like the idea of Witch Bolt providing Dazed. I had always envisioned it as better scaling and a chance to repeat the attack against other targets if the original fled:
A beam of crackling energy strikes a creature within range, forming a sustained connection between you and the target.
Make a ranged spell attack against the target - on a hit, the target takes D12 lighting damage.
While concentrating, you can use your action to automatically deal d12 damage to the same target.
If the target leaves the range while you are concentrating, you can use your action to repeat the attack action on a target within range.
The spell ends early if you miss an attack with it, or if you use your action to do anything else.
At Higher Levels - When you cast this spell with a spell slot of 2nd level or higher:
the range increases by 5ft
ranged attack damage increases by 1d12
and automatic damage increases by d6 for each slot above 1st.
I feel like it always had short range so that things could escape you with Dash and waste their action to avoid it, unless they had a higher speed. I also think that the automatic damage never scaling meant there was never a reason to do it.
Lightning arrow damage does include modifiers from dex and sharpshooter already RAW. It replaces the weapon damage, the language is just a bit clunky. "instead of the weapon's normal damage" is the key here.
I will say that dream as a ritual would be nice. I already have it on my warlock and it has been a wonderful tool to long distance communication and helping me with political intrigue. As a note though, dream (nightmare) only is capped at once per sleep if they fail from what I can tell. It does say on a failed save "lasts the duration of the target's sleep.." but doesn't state if the spell ends after the 10 word message on a successful save. The way it's worded I interpret it is that the spell ends on a successful save and you can try again if it does so since it's not under the effects of the spell. If it was redone, it should add "On a successful save, the target isn’t affected, and you can’t use this spell against it in this manner again for 24 hours." similar to scrying.
There's really only two situations where Stinking Cloud really shines as a spell, because it's unique combination of effects has a bad habit of being more detrimental than helpful in a lot of cases.
Ideally with Stinking Cloud you're going to want to use it on enemies who you want to approach the party, forcing them out of an advantageous position. If they retreat *away* from the party then their line of sight will still be obstructed by the cloud, and if they exit the cloud toward your party then your party can deal with them more easily because you've forced them out of cover, or closer to your party, or whatever else you've done.
The other situation where it might be worth it is when your allies are immune to poison or don't have to breathe (Such as a Warforged). You can use it like Fog Cloud to dip in and out of for cover against spells and ranged attacks, but it carries the added benefit of being extra punishing for melee combatants who want to take the fight to you in the cloud. Naturally this isn't valid for most parties.
The big problem with Stinking Cloud is that Fog Cloud effects are generally better when used defensively, but Stinking Cloud is almost exclusively an offensive spell: with Fog Cloud if you cast it on enemies then they can just dip in and out of the fog every turn to take advantage of the concealment, but Stinking Cloud prevents this... but if you're looking for area lockdown with a level 2 spell, honestly just take Web. It's much more useful in almost every situation except those two extremely specific cases I just laid out.
You are the first person I heard to pronounce geas right.
Does he say "ger-sha"? I'm excited.
I feel obligated to say “geese” now
You mean how they say it in Code Geas isn’t right???? 😱😱😱
Gesh? First time I've ever heard that. Made me look it up.
Code Geass ruined a lot of people
I know WotC said they’re doing away with disease, but I really feel like Contagion is a missed opportunity. A 5th level spell that inflicts poisoned on a hit and requires the target to fail 3 out of 5 saves to take effect.
The following rework comes from homebrewer *somanyrobots* in his work “Spells That Don’t Suck”, which I’ve summarized here: it’s no longer reliant on poisoned (unlikely with 5.5e), can only be cured by Heal or equivalent magic, they’re affected by the disease immediately, effects are suppressed for a round on a success, and effects were either buffed or nerfed to put them in line with each other.
I love the idea of adding Scaling options to most spells.
Mage Armor (increasing 1 ac per short rest but at 14ac it has the rules of medium armor and at 17 it has the rules of heavy.
Enlarge (increase another size for every two levels, increase the d4 damage)
Shield (add 1 ac per spell slot)
Misty Step (increase teleport range by 20 feet per level)
Your Compelled Duel fix is something I could get behind. I might want to take it sometimes, and I would want to build around it with particular characters.
I changed True Strike for my table and it's worked out pretty well. It's situational, but can be very useful for landing a strong hit against a shifty foe:
True Strike
Casting Time: Reaction, when you or an ally attacks a creature with disadvantage on the roll
Range: 30 feet
Components: S
Duration: Instantaneous
Choose a friendly creature within range that is making an attack roll at disadvantage. Your magic grants the creature a brief insight into their opponent's defenses. The attacker ignores disadvantage on this attack.
For Weird, since it’s 9th level, make a successful save not end the spell on the creature, but force them to keep saving for the full minute.
Wow, I'm so impressed with your clean and elegant fixes here. Your insight in the rules really shines through and I'm inclined to just use them automatically, hats off to you!
But let's see what WotC will come up with. Jeremy mentioned in his latest One D&D vid they are planning to update or upcast a lot of spells but maybe this we won't see any of these. Basically the weak spells will get buffed but we're not aware of it and we won't see it before the 2024 PHB comes out and we'll only see the outlier spells get nerfed or taken down in the UA playtests?
I think Weird needs to be redesigned entirely. The 2nd edition Weird is the coolest spell ever, but it’s not table friendly since it slows down combat a lot. Forcing your opponent to fight a mental doppelgänger though is suuuuuch a cool idea, so I would love for them to go with that.
Oddly enough, maybe they can make it a combination of a summoning spell and a compelled duel. 1 minute, a summon template that takes some traits from the opponent (hit points? AC? Ability scores and saving throws?), and then the opponent can only attack that doppelgänger for 1 minute. That sounds like a pretty cool 9th level spell.
Find Traps actually finds traps? Inconceivable! 😊
I think spare the dying needs improvement- it doesn't do much of anything if you have a healer's kit, or if you are good at Medicine. Bonus action and range 30' would be a good fix IMHO.
To fix True Strike all you need to do is change range from self to Touch.
There you now have a cantrip that can be used to give someone advantage on their next attack. It doesn't make it over powered. Doesn't make it a must have or must use. But now it is useable and can give the flavour of a 'tactical genius' sort of play, guiding a martial class for that sure fired strike, with proper planning.
I've been HB'ing it was a range of touch now for several years in my game with a wizard and rogue and its works. Doesn't over power anyone and gives some great moments of in combat RP as the classes and players work together.
Love it! They really need to buff the useless spells like you said, this will bring so much more variety
Suggestion for Compelled Duel: Give them an initial saving throw and they can make an additional saving throw if they take damage from another enemy creature other than the caster. That way it forces aggro on the initial failed save, but others can "steal aggro" if they hit it.
We're playing Netherdeep right now and a friend was asking my wizard to take Legend Lore to learn more about some campaign lore. I negotiated one of the factions to get a scroll and copy the spell so I didn't have to use one of my regular spell learning slots on it lol
I like the Pathfinder version of produce flame a lot.
Cast as an action and spend 1 minute of the duration to make a Melee or Ranged spell attack.
Also just make ALL the BA concentration "on your next attack" Smite type spells work like Smite. I can't really think of that I need that shouldn't work like that
Crown of Madness attacking itself is inspired, I wouldn't have thought of that, but in my opinion it does change the spell too much from its intended use.
Really the issue is that the attack occurs before the movement. Personally I just give the caster control over the target's movement as well as their attack action (maybe include a Command-style restriction against moving into dangerous terrain).
It's basically Dominate Person lite, and the action cost is more than enough to make up for it.
As it stands, Crown of Madness is arguably weaker than Command, depending on how creative you can be with a one-word command.
The "fixed" version of Produce Flame just ends up being a far better option than the other light producing cantrips Light and Dancing Lights. A range of 15+15 feet of light and 30 feet for the attack would at least make Light a slightly better option for light while still keeping this as a good versatile cantrip.
It's worth noting that Produce Flame is Druid-only and Druids do not naturally have access to Light anyway.
Light still has the added versatility of being able to be cast on a rock or the frontliner's shield
Most cantrips should get flexible progression. When you cast a cantrip after lvl 5 you should get two choices, increase damage dice on default target OR target an additional creature in same way eldritch blast does.
I'd go as far as offer the single target a damage boost by letting you add you casting mod to keep it competitive as a choice against multiple target. This will bring a whole bunch of neglected cantrips back into circulation. Imagine viscously mocking two or three people with one action, feels a lot better than an extra D4
I did enjoy the concept of fear paralyzing the target that you've suggested for Weird in 9th level TM variant, as well as having Time Stop as a reaction.
Though my favorite here is self-only truestrike as a reaction. I've tried it as something similar in the past but never considered it as a reaction- action economy among other things has just been the enemy of that poor cantrip.
Thank you for this well thought out video.
We use a True Strike variant in my campaigns... it's pretty much the same as the rogue class ability, Steady Aim. You can use a reaction to cast True Strike with a range of SELF (can't cast on others) and gain advantage on your next attack, as long as it's before the end of your next turn. The caveat is that casting this cantrip reduces your movement to 0 for the rest of the turn, and you can't cast the cantrip if you have moved at all this turn. So, that's the restriction for it, and as a cantrip selection it matches a 3rd-level class ability that can be used at will. Not bad for a cantrip when you consider that most characters will never have more than 4 or 5 cantrips.
I really like all of these, and you are right that people get SO much more worked up about nerfs rather than buffs. The comment section prior to the previous video going live was a bit ugly.
I must admit though I thought of the Wesley Snipes crying gun meme when you suggested nerfing Hypnotic Pattern. That’s my favorite spell LOL.
I know they aren't going to do this, but many spells that require concentration could just not and that would be a sizable buff. Its frustrating to see spells that effectively add 1 dice to a damage roll clog up your concentration when there's obviously better spells to concentrate on. Spiritual Weapon needing concentration just means you're never going to see it after level 5.
Got my survey in! My big final requests were:
"1. Please don't require "If all your spell slots are expended" restrictions as we see in Sorcerous Recovery and Magical Cunnings. These encourage spell slot dumping and other unwanted metagame behaviours."
& "2. Please give the Brawler and the Monk Unarmed Weapon Masteries - Slow, Nick, Sap, Vex;
& 3. "Please give Monks Martial Fighting Styles that grant Unarmed access to Weapon Masteries (e.g. Thundering Blows = Push & Topple).
I went a different way with Flame Blade. I changed it to: you do 3d6 + your spellcasting ability modifier fire damage for a melee spell attack as your Bonus Action. You can then use your action for a cantrip or other non-concentration spell.
Tree, I think you overbuffed Phantasmal Killer. Look at Blight. It's 8d8 initial damage with no continuing damage and no frightened condition. So 6d10 on the first round + the frightened condition is already better than Blight without any continuing damage. I'd say 4d10 on the initial round (save for half + no continuing damage) and 4d10 each round thereafter (save ends). 2 rounds and you have the damage you should be doing. A lot of the problem is that 3rd level spells are slightly more powerful than they should be and set a standard that's too high for later spells.
CANTRIPS:
-Mending. Change casting time from one minute to one action.
-Acid Splash. Change damage to 2d4. Change target to one creature, plus any creature within 5ft of that creature takes 1d4 dmg. Dex save, half damage if successful.
-also, let's give Clerics more cantrip options.
LEVEL 1.
-Identify. Spell remains tge same, but remove the rule that allows any character to identify a magic item on a short rest that makes this spell mostly irrelevant.
-Cure Wounds. Buff the healling to 3d10. Thats the amount of damage that Inflict Wounds causes. If 3d10 seems like too much healing, then nerf Influct Wounds. These two spells should inflict/cure the same amount of damage.
LEVEL 2.
-Locate Object. Give it the ritual tag.
-Barkskin. Change it to a +2 to AC that stacks with any armor worn. Upcasting adds an additional +1 for every 2 spell levels above 2nd.
-Cloud of Daggers. Allow the cloud to be moved by the caster 20ft with a bonus action.
-Darkvision. Make upcastable to affect multiple creatures.
-Dust Devil. Increase damage to 3d8.
-Enlarge/Reduce. Make upcastable to level 5 & level 8. Increase size category by 1 tier for level 5 (for +2 size tiers total) and by 2 tiers for level 8 (for +3 size tiers total). Damage bonus increases to 1d8 at 5th level, 2d8 at 8th level. Reducing has opposite effect, so 1d8 or 2d8 damage penalty. If size is reduced below Tiny, object or creature becomes insect sized. (I really want this to be the "Ant-man" spell... 🤞🏼)
-Maximillians Earthen Grasp. Increase damage to 4d6. Or, keep damage at 2d6, but change ongoing uses to a Bonus Action, instead of an Action.
-Snillocs Snowball Swarm. Add a movement penalty of 10 feet if they fail the save.
LEVEL 3.
-Conjure Barrage. Increase damage to 6d8.
-Flame Arrows. Remove the number of ammunition limitation. It needlessly complucates the spell. Change duration from 1 hr to 1 minute, but increase damage from 1d6 to 3d6, upcast adds a d6 per every 2 spell levels. (1d6 additional damage is the same as Hunters Mark, a 1st level spell. This needs to be better to justify a 3rd level slot. Especially for a Ranger. In fact, this could probably be a Ranger exclusive spell.)
-Haste. Make upcastable to affect multiple creatures.
-Lightning Arrow. Increase primary damage to 6d8 & secondary damage to 4d8.
- Intellect Fortress. Remove concentration.
- Tongues. Give it the ritual tag.
LEVEL 4
-Fabricate. Give it the ritual tag.
-Ice Storm. Increase the Bludgeoning damage to 4d6.
-Locate Creature. Give it the ritual tag.
-Death Ward. Make it upcastable to affect multiple creatures.
-Freedom of Movement. Make it upcastable to affect multiple creatures.
LEVEL 5
-Cloudkill. Increase damage to 8d8.
-Conjure Volley. Increase damage to 10d10.
-Mass Cure Wounds. Increase healing to 6d8.
-Contagion. Not sure how or if this spell will change, because the designers are moving away from disease as part if the game.
LEVEL 6
-Blade Barrier. Increase damage to 10d10.
- Find the Path. Give it the ritual tag.
- Chain Lightning. Remove the number of creatures restriction. Make it an actual chain: hit 1st creature within range, then continues to jump to another creature, as long as they are within 30 ft of the last creature affected. Should make for some fun strategizing on the map.
LEVEL 7
-Project Image. Make the illusion immune to all damage, so that the spell does not end if it takes damage. Allow the caster to use BOTH their own senses and the illusion's senses. Allow the caster to cast spells from the illusion's location, using their senses. (These will be limited to non-concentration spells, of course.) Reduce the range to 60 ft. 500 miles is bonkers. Reduce the duration to 1 hour.
-Regenerate. If there are spells to regrow missing limbs (or features such as the Armorer Artificer's suit of armor), then there should be explicit rules as to how a creature (player or otherwise) can lose a limb. Something more than just an optional rule in the DMG that basically says the DM can arbitrarily make this call. If not- then remove that part of the spell, and increase the healing to 4d8 (but lose the +15) on every turn for 1 minute. Add concentration.
LEVEL 9
Not any specific changes to any spells. However, I'd suggest throwing Clerics a bone, and give them more than just four 9th level spell options. Foresight, Imprisonment, and Invulnerability all seem like they could be Cleric Spells.
For witch bolt in my games we changed the secondary damage to 4d4 and for every lvl upcast add 1d4 we also added if target leaves the spells range they take 2d12 .goes great with quickend spell to get your initial damage and secondary damage in the same turn and you don't need to hold concentration after .
Love the true strike version!
I fully agree with Chris on actual weather versus Control Weather (and yes, I am also a 50-year-old prairie boy).
True Strike
Reaction, which you take in response if you miss with an attack roll against a target that's within 30ft of you.)
You channel magical guidance to your attack that missed its target. You roll a d4 and add the rolled number to your attack roll, potentially turning a miss into a hit.
Thats some work! Nicely done!!!
Produce Flame: So, the thing with this spell is that it's Light and Firebolt, rolled into one cantrip, and is worse than both of them. Considering that the druid doesn't have onboard access to either of those spells, I don't see a good reason not to make it so it matches both of them in terms of damage and utility.
True Strike: I still truly believe that True Strike would be much more useful, as-is, if there were good, high-level spells that made an attack roll; maybe make it so it doesn't eat your concentration, too. The problem with your suggested fix is the same as the problem I have with making it a bonus action; This just makes it so the character with true strike, unless they have something else compelling to hold their reaction for, just has an extra d4 on their attacks all the time.
Compelled Duel: This one's a little tricky. I can understand why they wouldn't have wanted to put a literal hard taunt in the game, but this needs to be harder then the vague suggestion of a taunt that it currently is. I like the idea of this being kind of a reverse fear affect, where the creature cannot willingly move further away from you than it is at the start of its turn. I think I would also add that if the creature were the cast a spell, it must target you; if it could target multiple creatures, one of those targets must be you, or you must be included in the AoE. Also, how about making it so the creature gets to repeat its save (or the spell ends entirely) if, at the start of its turn, you didn't damage it since the end of its last turn? Again, the idea isn't to just have a taunt, you are SUPPOSED to be dueling this creature.
Ray of Sickness: Honestly? The thing with poison damage is that it's typically disproportionately high compared to other damage types of the same level, specifically because it's so commonly resisted and immune. Like... change this to 3d10 or 12. The creature being poisoned for a round isn't terrible, but like... it's a con save after you've hit with the spell to begin with. The kind of creature this is commonly going to work against is also the kind of creature that probably doesn't care that it's poisoned.
Witchbolt: See, the conventional wisdom with Witch Bolt is that it's bad because the creature can just move to break LoS, move out of range, or walk up and slap you. The thing about that is, what if those are things that you _want_ the monster to do? It works as a great soft taunt if you're an E.Knight or Abjurer. Now, granted, the scaling is bad, and it's kind of bullshit that the spell _ends altogether_ if you whiff the target, so I would make it so the spell can only end if it's already attached to a target, and make it so the residual damage scales if you cast the spell with a 3rd, 6th, or 9th level spell (So it _at least_ outpaces cantrip damage). Also, maybe increase the range to at least 40 feet so the creature has to give ground if it wants to just walk out of range.
Crown of Madness: So, the fantasy with this spell is that you put it on a guy, and he proceeds to go mad and attack his nearby allies, right? The thing is, is that the spell doesn't deliver on that fantasy. I would say, remove the humanoid restriction, and make it so creature moves to and attacks the closest creature on its turns (That isn't the caster, since the caster has it charmed), and even dashes if it must.
Find Traps: So, consider; A solid perception or investigation check currently does everything this spell does and more. I think I might even add that it gives your party advantage on checks to disable the trap, or advantage on saves against the trap's harmful effect, or both.
Flame Blade: I disagree that the problem with Flame Blade is that it doesn't deal enough damage; Flame blade's damage is actually comparable to similar spell Shadow Blade. Flame Blade's main problem is that it doesn't actually support any kind of gishing; Making an attack with the blade isn't an attack action, so it doesn't trigger anything that keys off performing that action, like extra attack. Also, the classes that get this spell, druid and sorcerer, don't have any support for a gish playstyle built into them. What I would change about this spell is just make it so it behaves more like shadow blade; you get a weapon with the light and finesse properties, but instead of being able to throw it and getting advantage in dim light or darkness, you get to use your spell mod for attack and damage.
-Milf's- Melf's Acid arrow: See, this one is where the solution is to obviously just buff the damage. Like you pointed out, even if the spell _hits,_ it doesn't necessarily do more damage than magic missile cast at second level; and even as you upcast it, I don't think it ever significantly outpaces Magic Missile cast at the same level.
Ray of Enfeeblement: I'd argue that half damage on all attacks isn't a mild debuff; Yeah, it might not mean much against a 1st level guard that's throwing like six damage at you, but what if you nail an ancient red dragon with it? All of the sudden, it's routine is going from over sixty damage to closer to thirty. Yeah, it'll probably make its save, but it doesn't _get_ that save until the end of its next turn. Finally, it doesn't slow the game down any more than resistance to a damage type would; The DM tells the player the full damage, reminds them that it's halfed from Ray, and lets the player do the math while he moves on.
Summon Beast: I agree with your changes. Also, the material component for all of the summon X spells from Tashas are pokeballs. 200 gold isn't that bad, and it's not like the spell consumes it.
Stinking Cloud: I dunno, like... you can just walk out of the area of Cloudkill, too. These spells aren't great if you use them in a situation where the enemy can just walk out, they're great in a situation where the enemy _can't_ just walk out, or if you've got a lot of things on your team that let you push the enemies back in after they walk out.
Secret Chest: This is one of those spells which is really more meant to be used by the DM, I think. That said, like... why on the losing things?
Phantasmal Killer: This spell should mechanically enforce the creature seeing the "manifestation of its deepest fears" somehow. Also, it should do its damage from the first failed save, and then subsequent saves half the damage, but don't end the effect.
Stoneskin: So, the thing about the component; 100 gold isn't all that much, especially when you're level 7+, but it's enough to make players never want to cast the damn spell. I think it should have a component that it consumes, so the players only have so many casts of this for a protracted dungeon crawl, but 100 gold is too much of a system shock. Also, I agree that it should just give resistance to BPS; enemies having magical BPS doesn't come up very often, but man does it suck when they do.
Legend Lore: So, the thing with wishy-washy restrictions like that is that it gives the DM a solid rules reason to just tell the player "no." With no restrictions in place, Legend Lore will _frequently_ be cast on Tom the Baker's Potato Garden, for no better reason than because it's got a nice sign on it, or some other unusual detail, or even because the DM accidentally called too much attention to it ("It is a chair"). With the "Must be of legendary importance" restriction, even if it's ill defined, it will keep players largely only pointing the spell at things that _might_ be important; and in that case, even finding out that they aren't is valuable information.
Mordenkainen's Sword: I mean, you could also just buff the damage up to like 5d10+Mod. It's fine if it's only on pace with spiritual weapon cast at the same level, since no class gets both, and even if you multiclass, you'll want one or the other anyway.
Prismatic Spray: I mean, is probably 20d6 save halves in a really big AOE okay for a 7th level spell? That's like 70 damage. Finger of Death probably deals like 60, to one target. Disintegrate cast at 7th deals like 85, to ONE target, and it does nothing if the target saves. It seems your change would make prismatic spray the Best Blasting spell by a big margin. Maybe the fact that it's two damage types, and they're selected at random balances it out, but I'm not convinced.
Incendiary Cloud: It may be more useful to compare this spell to cloudkill than wall of fire, which this spell is... just better than cloudkill. Fire is a more reliable damage type than poison, it does more damage than cloudkill cast at eighth level, targets a slightly less powerful save, the range is better, and you're able to push the incendiary cloud up a hill, which you cannot do with cloudkill. Granted, Cloudkill lasts longer, but does that matter?
Divine favor needs litterally any form of up scaling either die size per spell level or duration per level, either would be great. Or better yet chose on casting duration up or die size up or even mix and match, id happily blow a third level spell slot for a d6 damage on hit for 10 minutes no bonus action required.
I'm going to be that guy and defend color spray. Is it a good spell? No. Is it unuseably bad? No. The problem with Color Spray is that people see that it functions like the Sleep spell and then try to *use* it like the sleep spell, but that's really not what it's good for. In my experience, color spray is best used against a single large target rather than a group of small targets. That being said, my experience is not normal here: I negotiated with my game master to allow me to use Empowered Spell with color spray (normally you can't since Empowered spell requires "damage" dice), and my game master calls out when a creature is at half health (bloodied). If you're aware that your target has roughly 30 HP left, blinding them for a single round can accelerate the rest of your party's ability to take them down and make it that much more difficult for that enemy to defend themselves. The lack of saving throw means no legendary resistance or magic resistance, either... and blind is a powerful condition! Many of the most dangerous spells in the game rely on sight, on top of everyone having advantage on their attack rolls against the target, and the target having disadvantage on their own attacks.
IMO the biggest flaw with Color Spray is that 6d10, that's just a level of variance that I don't like seeing in my spells, I would much rather see 10d6 than 6d10... Hell, I might even take 9d6 over 6d10 even if it's lower on average because it's more consistent.
Stoneskin I think could have an upcast option as well: affects 1 additional creature for each additional level above 4th.
For Prismatic Spray, here's where they should have added exploding dice. When you roll doubles, add one additional ray for the corresponding color and re-roll two dice. If you land on a color already selected, then you get a second instance of the ray, and you do not re-roll.
Enlarge/resuce needs upcasting. Die size and increase the size change by an additional size every lets say 3 levels up so you grow ir shrink 2 sizes as a 5th level slot or 3 sizes with a 8th level slot
LOL when YT plays a Febreze ad right after mentioning Stinking Cloud
Shalieghliegh (and magic stone) need to get scaling, making the weapon a +1 magic weapon at level 5 +2 at 11 and +3 at 17
You could just pick up a +1/2/3 club.
@@ilovethelegend that makes a lot of assumptions. Sure if your DM lets you have any magic item you want and would let those plusses bleed through to the cantrip but that's not a guarantee. Letting the spell scale doesn't remove your option but now people can rely on getting a weapon that uses the casting mod they want for attack and damage rolls in most campaigns.
@@ryanscanlon2151 A +x magic weapon is not a huge ask. Plus, shelly changes your weapon's damage die and what stat you can use for it. There's no reason a +X weapon wouldn't apply it's bonus, because you're still making an attack with the weapon, not shelly.
@@ilovethelegend depends on the table, I play at tables where magic items are very scarce.
Love in output; love the input.
great series! I and most likely many more would like to hear your thoughts on all the other spells being badly worded/too weak or too strong who are getting no reprint in the new PHB
Cantrips:
Produce Flame:
How about the secondary effect is something like a ray that you can throw up to 600 ft away and it lights up the path.
So you trade your action and your position against knowledge about your surrounding. And of course the range increase to 60 ft.
True strike: Remove concentration; until the end of your next turn you have advantage of all your attacks; range self, components S.
Lvl 1:
Color spray: Instead of the Hp a creature makes a CON-Save. If the target isn’t at full health it has disadvantage on the save. Upcast removed.
Witch bolt: Remove the action required to keep the spell up. Thats it.
Lvl 2:
Alter Self: I thought this spell has the benefit that the change is physical so I don’t think this is a bad spell.
Ray of Enfeeblement: Autohit but keep the spell effect.
Lvl 5:
Dream: If you make this a ritual this spell becomes spamable. If you really wanna change the effect you can make it a lingering effect. But I don’t think this is necessary.
Geas: I wouldn’t change that either. You run in the same problem if you change the damage interval. 5d10 damage average 27.5 damage. This is enough to nearly kill something like a dragon wyrmling. If you torment it long enough you will end up with something like the bewilder beast from dragons. This is a Dm spell and it should be a Dm spell even today.
Control weather: One step every 10 min in one of the tables. You actively fight against nature with arcane magic. You can add an addition when a druid cast this they can change up to 3 layers on any table. Or make it an upcast option.
Thats all the changes I would have made to the list of trentmonktemple.
Now to the spells he might missed:
I personally think the power words (and as such divine word) are poorly designed spells. And I also don’t really know how to fix them without making them Op (especially powerword kill as it is in the arsenal of orcus who can dish it out like 3 times a round).
Thank you for your time
Have a nice day
AEther
How I fixed True Strike and Swift quiver at my table:
The caster, as part of a casting of the spell/ cantrip, makes an attack as part of the casting.
For true strike: if the caster has access to the extra attack feature, all attacks can be applied. (So that niche case where An Eldritch Knight has wizard levels has a damaging cantrip that scales with the class)
For Swift quiver: it's 2 attacks, as alloted in the spell.
Small suggestion on Swift Quiver: The range for Swift Quiver is touch, not self. If we are providing two ranged attacks on the turn we cast the spell, this will require a range of self or some wording to prevent odd situations. Bit of a bummer though. I honestly liked taking this spell on a Bard's magical secrets and casting it on the party ranger to make them feel awesome, because nobody's making it to 17th level.
9:43 ... I believe that the Concentration requirement on Hail of Thorns is specifically there to keep casters from stacking Hunter's Mark with Hail of Thorns. Definitely need to keep Concentration for this spell!
The problem with Hail of Thorns isn't concentration... it's pathetic damage. 1d10 with a save for half dmg, is just +5.5 damage, or ~+3 on a successful save. Not worth a spent spell slot! I feel this spell would be best improved by instead changing the radius to 10 feet instead of 5 ft, and increasing the damage to 2d8 instead of 1d10. This would increase the additional damage to an average of 9 damage, instead of 5. Also I would not allow the target of the spell to save for half, but would only extend that courtesy to others caught within the 10-ft. radius of the target.
Upcasting would add one additional d8 to damage.
I sometimes have merchants that try to scam the players by selling them spell scrolls of find traps or true strike.
I do love my Skywrite though. No better way to shittalk the enemy. It's not about power, it's about sending a message... literally.
26:00 would you consider doing one of these type videos to remove gold costs from spells?
I'd like to have seen something about Tenser's transformation. You've mentioned a couple times before that the spell isn't great so would be cool to know how it could actually become of good use
Let you don armor you are carrying as a part of casting and either increase your strength or let you use your spellcasting modifier. Remove concentration on it and exhaustion.
The Bonus UA that just came out adresses both cantrips Treantmonk talks about in this video (and a couple more, obviously). So how did Wizards approach the problems, what did they change?
Produce Flame: Range was indeed increased to 60 feet, exactly as suggested here.
Dim/bright light radius was increased to 20 feet (instead of 30 as per Treant).
The spell is now a Bonus Action to cast (still action throw), which *kinda sorta* allows you to keep it going, by immediately recasting it after throwing.
Technically, all three critique points were adressed.
True Strike: Apparently considered unsalvageable(?) and was completely changed.
It's now effectively a blade cantrip, with the basic effect of making the melee attack use your spellcasting stat.
It scales with an extra d6 Radiant damage at the usual levels (so up to +3d6) and allows you to change the base damage to Radiant as well.
Very different from the original intent. Also means that every single class in the game has some form of weapon scaling now...which is really weird.
i found that a perfectly serviceable way to buff Witch Bolt was to simply make it 2d12 damage, and have both damages scale every other level. someone did some math and found that casting witch bolt is likely to give a little bit more average expected damage over 3 rounds as magic missile + 2 fire bolts, but it has a much wider standard deviation (and is a better choice if you get advantage). it might be shorter range and everything but considering the nature of d12’s and all it’s meant to be a high risk, high reward spell.
I didn't realize how trash these original spells were.
You got some good practical fixes.