Progress report on my mission to watch EVERY build video from your playlists: I am almost finished the Evoker pt 3, and I found out that your first Ultimate Archer is when you began your classic sign off of "I'm gonna sit back, relax, and have some fun. Because D&D is for everyone." (I could be further but my terrible memory gave me a week or so of completely spacing on my mission 😅) Keep up the great work! Thank you for the many many hours of content keeping me sane at work!💜 Edit side note: anyone else just really happy that the avg damage equates to 1 damage per foot they move in spike growth?
Pretty sure I've watched every video at least once, and some of them multiple times. It's been cool to see the way things have evolved since the chatroom typed wizard guides to now.
If you’re alright with Whiteboard Math, technically Storm of Vengeance is the most damaging spell. To do this, you need to go to Sprite-fest (the largest music festival in the Feywild) where every 5 foot cube from here to everywhere is packed with 8 sprites each. You then cast Storm of Vengeance, which catches ~165.9 million sprites in its area and deals 331,776,000d6 Thunder damage (no save assuming your DC is >20). Granted, assuming circles to be circles, the number is much lower: ~130.3 million sprites or 260,576,000d6 Thunder damage. Many thanks to Pez1870 for the fact check!
Id like to see your calculations because I got a different result. the area of a circle that has a 360ft radius is 129,600π, ≈ 407,150ft² now we need to know how many 5ft squares can fit inside that circle, so we devide by 25ft². we get 5184π. and with 8 sprites in each tile thats 41472π or around 130,288. a big number but nowhere near yours. now at this point i remembered the "circles are squares" theorem so i applied it here aswell. that would give our "circle" an area of 518,400. and then we need to devide by 25 and multiply by 8 and we get 165,888 sprites. again, big number but nowhere near yours. EDIT: if you concentrate for the full time you get 16d6 per creature not 2d6 so that give us 2,654,208d6. ≈ 9,289,728 damage total. and if you roll max damage and everyone fails their save thats 15,925,248. even this number isnt close to your original 41.5 million.
@@pez1870 Storm of Vengeance has a height of 5,000 feet, though you raise a good point about assuming circles to be squares which I had done. Additionally, I’d mistakenly used 360’ as the diameter. I will adjust my comment accordingly. Much appreciated!
Spike growth moon druid was my first fully optimized 5e build. With longstrider, I would turn into an air elemental, and my DM allowed my Firbolg's Powerful Build to apply to my wildshape. So I was huge for determining grapples, meaning I could move at full speed with a medium sized target, and had 100 movement speed, and could fly. So I would grapple a creature and drag them through the spike growth until it died. Sometimes I managed to do two creatures in one turn, since my DM ruled that a grapple check could replace any attack as part of a monster's Multiattack. But otherwise I could usually fly up out of range of any melee attackers before my turn ended. Good times.
@@Klaital1 not necesarily. Moving a Grappled Creature: When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you. The powerful build feature states: "You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift." Although not reflexively part of the description of 'Moving a grappled creature' it does state that the movement slowed while dragging is tight to creature size. And powerful build states that you count as one size larger for dragging. So although this is a classic case of '5e ambiguity' the case here is clear that, if you are large with a powerful build, you count as huge for the purpose of dragging.
@@wollf92 The problem is this doesn't interact with the 'weight' of a creature you can drag. If someone animates a five by five (Thus size medium) cube of lead, Over 3,500 lbs. Rules as written, any D&D character can drag that creature in a grapple, carrying capacity is never said to figure into combat. Now as a DM of course I'm going to say no, but rules as written that's a medium creature, the weight is unrelated to that. Powerful Build doesn't interact with being able to move the animated lead block with a grapple. I'd be willing to rule it applies if it makes up the dragging weight difference, but that's it.
@@Klaital1DM also ruled they could make 2 grapples with multiattack knowing that's not how things work RAW, that you have to use extra attack The DM however, is a human, and can be persuaded with pizza
If they are smart, your DM will not allow your character to pretend a Dao Genie Tabaxi with haste has the 9th level “time stop” spell grafted onto their movement abilities. Also good luck finding RAR that force a DM to allow stacking of all these movement rates. You get to pick one: haste, boots, or character movement. Also boots of speed will not function more than once per turn, meaning action surge will not re-activate boots or other magical effects.
@@jacobgonzalez1386 Exactly! If your character has been given that kind of power by their patron, they should be given proportionate objectives and limits by the patron, which shouldn't necessarily match with the party's goals.
I appreciate you getting to the point within a few seconds of the video! It's this type of integrity that makes me watch the whole video, ads included.
The other thing about the average dice roll is that d4 dice have a very low deviation, so their rolls are going to be the closest to the average compared to any other dice roll
This strat is really fun for things like 1 shots. I don’t think I would recommend it for a full campaign unless it is just a sometimes trick in the bag
@TreantmonksTemple it isn't if you have a creative DM who is willing to deviate from the assigned stat blocks in the module or is willing to pick his enemies with care. Incorporeal, immune to grapple, flyers and particularly large creatures all hard counter grappler builds. I loved my grappler (and my good friend, our druid), but there are weaknesses to the build. For the DMs out there, you need to let your characters do what their build is designed to do. It makes them feel empowered and possessing of agency. You also need to subvert those skills in ways where they feel threatened to keep the feeling of risk in the game. I have no doubts that TM knows this. Im not preaching :)
I mostly agree, though if my players want to run a long campaign like that I'm down for it. They will just know I'll be pulling out some of the many counter moves as often as it makes sense. And I'm not sitting around for you figure out how many D4 you need to roll and rolling them this time... The super speed shredding would still potentially be able to work, especially if you do the scouting or prep work to counter their counters, or surprise them. But every now and then the NPC should be prepared - so the grappler will find the creature can't be moved, or can't actually be caught up to with enough movement left to really grapple (you can have haste etc no reason the NPC can't), or they are holding an object with a warded spell etc. Or the support characters will find themselves unable to cast, dispelled etc.
The only rule I have about broken builds, is once you put them on the table they are fair game. Enemies will escape, spys will report to superiors, and the party can be scryed on, eventually your secrets will be out and someone else will figure out what you did and possibly use it on you. My current BBEG has control of a ruby mine and is abusing simulacrum right now.
One thing you didn't mention is that you need to be huge size to guarantee all this in order to grapple gargantuan creatures. This isn't hard especially since eve n if you don't include magic items, take a 3rd level in fighter for rune knight then have a 4th person cast enlarge/reduce. There's a ton of ways especially if you include magic items, but it is worth mentioning.
Maybe. But what if you were considered one size larger for what you could carry, push, DRAG, or lift? Like say, a Goliath? I would argue that it applies to dragging an ALREADY grappled creature. And lets say that Goliath was a Divine Soul Sorcerer with Enlarge/Reduce, Cloud of Daggers, and Spirit Guardians, and also had a few levels in Rune Knight as well? Yeah you can only have one concentration spell up at a time, so you can only benefit from one of those spells, but you have the versatility. Now you can pull off this same grappling tactic in a small room using Cloud of Daggers where you couldn't use Spike Growth, or you could have Spirit Guardians up while you are grappling, or you could cast Enlarge on yourself while you have Giants Might up... The Goliath from MOM also gets Proficiency in Athletics, and the Frost Rune gives a +2 bonus to Strength and Con saves AND checks. Oh, and your size affects how many five foot squares Spirit Guardians covers, 49 for a small or medium, 64 on a large and 81 squares on a huge sized creature... The thing is though, the REAL most broken thing in D&D is a party actually working together...
@@anonymouse2675 Cloud of daggers wouldn't work for this. "takes 4d4 slashing damage when it enters the spell’s area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there." And it's only a 5' cube, so you can't drag someone around the periphery in any case. So max damage from CoD on a turn is only 4d4 (times whatever multipliers you can finagle, but a grapple-drag tactic won't work.) (Note: originally I entered "for the first time on a turn" bolded and YT seems to have hidden or deleted the text. Restored here.).
@@ronnycook3569 You don't drag them around the periphery, they start their turn there, and you drag them out and then right back in. They take damage for starting their turn in it, then again when you drag them back into it and it enter the area again. Total movement is ten feet. Cloud of Daggers is a second level spell and Upcasts for an additional 2d4 per spell slot level, so 6d4 for a third level slot, 8d4 for a fourth, etc... Times Two. Is it as good as Spiked Growth? No. Can you do this in a small area like a bedroom? Yes.
@@anonymouse2675 The spell text is "A creature takes 4d4 slashing damage when it enters the spell’s area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there." in my original text I had "for the first time on a turn" bolded but for some reason YT hid the text instead. Check the PHB, page 222. So dragging somebody out then in again repeatedly will only damage them once.
All of this depends on rule and player abuse. First, presuming humanoids - 1) When attacker succeeds it moves onto the defenders grid (replace both with a token). Since the attacker moved the attacker takes damage. 2) It's difficult terrain AND grappling halves as well so 1/4 movement not 1/2. 3) When applying a forced move it's still difficult terrain so that's halved as well. 4) The spell uses the phrase "MOVES INTO OR WITHIN". In DnD terms this is a voluntary motion as opposed to "ENTERS" which may be involuntary. Thus a creature being forced does not take damage. Remember that there are ways to get a creature to "Move" without it being forced. Fear is one such example. The target uses its own action to move.
When it comes to WOTC rebalancing spells for the 2024 PHB, I would not be at all surprised if they nerf Spike Growth so the damage is not dealt by forced movement. Something like "When a creature uses its movement to move into or within the area, it takes 2d4 damage for every 5 feet it moves." The spell would still be good, and pair well with forced movement to keep enemies within the area, but it would become a lot less exploitable.
While it probably does need to happen, I also have a fear that they're essentially just removing all the best interactions in the game due to balance. Which would leave us with a game that no longer has many interesting interactions.
@@Byssbod The first time a weird combo is done, that is interesting. Simply copying what someone else did ad nauseam is neither interesting nor inventive anymore, it is now passe.
simple. forced movement does not imply feet willfully touching the ground. odds are you are being thrown/jolted against your will. if the spell says makes you prone then sure you can be dragged through the growth for imba damage just like being drawn by chariot/horse. only those making a willful resistance against the push would be upright on their feet. the spike growth only damages WALKING movement you CHOOSE to move through the growth with. people do not appreciate the power of jumping/vaulting enough.
If I were to house rule the current version of Spike Growth, I'd make it that once a character has been forced through a 5ft section that area no longer applies damage.
I love spike growth, and have it prepared pretty much all the time (unless we're in a very urban setting, or inside a castle where you don't have ground but more of stone floor). My DM allows stacking plant growth with spike growth, which becomes crazy .
I mean... Any DECENT DM, bans this combo the session after it happens. And any DECENT group of PCs, would completely understand, shake the DMs hand, and have a good laugh together.
At the end of the druids turn, Graz'zt uses a legendary action to teleport 120ft, probably to a surface that is difficult to reach. Or he might use spellcasting if he's confident he wont be Counterspelled, either to Dispel the Spike Growth or Dominate Person the Tabaxi. But for MOST enemies, yeah that could work.
As a DM, my simple way to stop this - if a grappler wants to drag their grappled target through a damaging space, they take the same damage. You're wrestling them, not dangling them out at arm's length.
As a DM that could work as we are the masters of the rules but I don't think it's a good solution. Generally I would make the number of enemies plentiful (only one can be grappled at a time) or have spellcasters who could dispell haste/spike growth or have good ranged attacks or have the enemies use their spike growth against them. There are many rules valid ways to deal with this. Changing the rules to nerf not only a player but multiple players teamwork / build I feel is adversarial. Instead let them do their cool thing but work on how the bad guys can counter it.
Exactly. I would say that you can only drag something through a space that YOU were just in. If you find a way to get immunity to magical piercing damage, more power to you!
I would broadly agree. This situation is physically and narratively implausible for multiple reasons. It leads to broken results do to exploiting simplifications that the rules make for ease.
You shouldn't even need that. When I used this strategy in the one shot, I had a conversation with the DM before we ever made our characters to make sure they were OK with the strategy, and if they weren't, we would have not done it.
One thing to consider with Spike Growth: *Please* discuss with your party where you actually cast it. I've had more than one situation in an adventure I was in with a party where the Druid ran around a corner, Spike Growth'd an entire area so that enemies (and conversely other party members) couldn't see past a certain point to aim, and ran back. Sure, the flying archer was fine, but the grounded support Sorcerer (I, a forever DM), and *especially* the Paladin (another forever DM) just had to sit and watch as people spec'd hard into ranged combat got to play the game for 15-20 minutes. Because if we ever got into shooting range, we'd be stranded, and less effective than the bad guys (Paladin had low Dex, I was pretty squishy as a caster at level 3 or 4.) And if we cheesed over the Spike Growth somehow, we'd have made the Druid waste a spell slot (his words, not ours.)
I have a feeling that this strategy wont be working anymore when the new phb comes out, as not only is grappling being changed to be a saving throw, but they are probably getting rid of the distinction between magical and non-magical b/p/s, so creatures will probably just have resistance/immunity to piercing damage, period. And that is all still assuming that Spike Growth itself doesn't get changed in any dramatic way.
@@connordarvall8482 Yes, and all features that used to give you magical whatever, now just change your damage to a different type, like monks do force damage with their unarmed strikes, moon druids do radiant damage with their wild shape attacks, etc. The thing is, resistance to nonmagical b/p/s basically does nothing since everyone has a magical weapon by turn 5 at the latest. With this change, what weapon you use actually matters, and resistances actually do something.
@@Klaital1 not really though, all it does is mean magical weapons will be nerfed or have to do some weird damage type, while all the spells that do force damage will be even more favoured than they already are.
I always knew grappling + _spike growth_ could lead to crazy damage but never thought it'd be possible to take it this far. god, I'm so glad stuff like this isn't possible in Pathfinder 2e.
Weird comment, since it's ultimately up to the dm and his players. I'm pretty sure If I did this spike growth trick a few times, my dm would call aside for a little talk
@@exilenl A lot of spells in D&D 5e are broken or have broken combinations and while it can be fun pushing the game to its limits in a one-shot or something (I've definitely had that kind of fun myself), during regular play, it can be kind of exhausting to deal with as a player after a while. And yes, it is technically up to the DM on whether or not to allow that, I personally would rather not have to deal with that kind of stuff in the first place. I like running the game as close to Rules as Written as possible and I don't want to have to make house rules just to patch the game or ask my players "hi, could you please not do this thing that can break the game?" I certainly had to when I was DMing (and my players were very understanding and cooperative) and it's just frustrating. I'd rather be able to rely on a system being balanced without having to put my game designer hat on, which is why I made the comparison to Pathfinder 2e, a system which I'm moving my table to. Sorry if it came off as weird or rude, I've just had a lot of frustrations with D&D 5e and this kind of thing is one of them.
This is why I like porting over the damage resistance feature from pathfinder to my 5e game. If you have physical damage resistance of 5, then 2d4 isn't doing much damage.
@@apollosungod6673 Or: I ducked behind cover to break line of sight, used the ready action to cast spike growth while in cover and set the reaction to be "when I can see this point on the ground (indicating the target point) then step back out from cover. The point on the ground comes into view, my reaction triggers (still on my turn, no turn order optimization necessary), the already cast spell can't be counterspelled because I cast it while out of view and am just releasing it. "That's cheesy!" It's just basic cover mechanics, one of the few times 5e incentivizes using them.
These is no reason to that just add the word - ''base'' movement to all the effects and spells and abilities that grand any kind of movement speed increase, it stop the wonky abuse of speed stacking.
Hi Chris. Great video as always, thanks. I came up with an optimised Spike Growth grappler build around a year ago after watching Colby’s Cheesegrater and Bard Grappler videos (I dubbed it Fluffy the Ferocious Feline in some 1-shots I played). I tried to get in touch with Colby at the time to suggest the build, but he was a hard man to reach! Anyway, I think it’s possible to run this build for huge damage without a party of companions: - Druid 8 (Moon Druid), Rogue 3 (Bonus Action dash and Skirmisher), Fighter 7 (for Action Surge and Psi Leap) - Race = Tabaxi (Feline Agility) - Feats = Mobile - Move speed = Wild Shape into Quetzalcoathus (Huge for Grappling) for 80ft flying speed + 10ft Longstrider + 10ft Mobile = 100ft - Psi Leap (may need to use Moorbounder depending on DM) to double speed to 200ft - X2 Feline Agility = 400ft - On turn, move 400ft, Action dash 400ft, Action Surge Dash 400ft, Reaction 0.5x movement (Skirmisher) at 200ft = 1,400ft - Damage against a Large or larger enemy = 700dpr - Damage against a medium or smaller enemy = 1,400dpr Then you can add magical items to this, for example in a level 20 one shot: - Hasted speed doubles = 800ft - Boots of Speed x2 = 1,600ft - Potion of Haste - adds another dash action (+400ft) - On turn, move 1,600ft, Action dash 1,600ft, Action Surge Dash 1,600ft, hasted action dash 1,600ft, Reaction 0.5x movement (Skirmisher) at 800ft = 7,200ft - Damage against a Large or larger enemy = 3,600dpr!! - Damage against a medium or smaller enemy = 7,200dpr!! Please check my workings as I did rather rush this post!
Skirmisher doesn't proc here, as you have to use it as a reaction to an enemy ending their turn within 5 ft of you. In totality of a round, you MIGHT be able to proc it, but not on your turn. And, since you can't bonus action dash, you may get more use out of a couple levels of monk instead of rogue. You could add 80 ft movement to each of your moves with 3 levels in monk. If you go Moorbounder, which makes more sense than the Quetz. You'd only need 3 levels of Moon Druid here. Add 2 levels of Bladesinger, to add 10 more ft of movement. 3 levels of Astral Self Monk gets you 10 ft of movement, 5 levels of any Barbarian adds another 10 ft. Then your 7 levels of Psi Warrior for the Psi Leap. Take Mobile and Martial Adept (Grappling Attack) feats. This needs a few rounds of setup, which is the only downfall to this build(other than if your DM allows the boots to be worn by a Moorbounder), but either your version or this one needs the same amount. You also only get to large this route. Cast Longstrider at some point. Cast Spike Growth, summon your astral arms. To start combat, drink the potion of haste and click the boots one round, next round wild shape and bladesong. 3rd round, attack and grapple as bonus action, drag them into or near the spike growth. Next Round Psi Leap, feline agility. Grind them into the dirt. 70 ft movement, +30 ft for class features. So you're at 100 here. Boots double to 200, haste doubles to 400, psi leap doubles that to 800, feline agility makes the 1600. You still get Movement, Action, Action Surge, Hasted Action. You lose out on the reaction, but we can't count on that with this for sure anyways. 1600 * 4 = 6400 ft of movement, for 3200 damage on a Medium - huge enemy, and 6400 on a small or smaller.
@@ariahamilton8194 Thanks Aria. How about this then? (I am retaining Skirmisher - move speed is reduced per your comments, but with Athletics we might reasonably expect to retain the grapple, though it isn't hugely significant tot he damage numbers). Wild Shape into Moorbounder - Druid 3 (Moon Druid), Rogue 3 (Bonus Action dash and Skirmisher), Fighter 7 (for Action Surge and Psi Leap), Wizard 2 (Bladesinger +10ft), Monk 2 (+10ft move speed) - Race = Tabaxi (Feline Agility) - Feats = Mobile - Move speed = Wild Shape into Moorbounder for 70ft speed + 10ft Longstrider + 10ft Mobile + 10 ft Bladesinger + 10 ft Monk = 110ft - X2 Psi Leap = 220ft - X2 Feline Agility = 440ft - On turn, move 440ft, Action dash 440ft, Action Surge Dash 440ft, Reaction 0.5x movement (Skirmisher, no feline agility) at 55ft = 1,375ft - Damage against a Large or larger enemy = 687dpr - Damage against a medium or smaller enemy = 1,375dpr Then you can add magical items to this, for example in a level 20 one shot. For the Moorbounder: - Potion of Speed (Haste) doubles speed = 880ft - Potion of Haste - adds another dash action (+880ft) - On turn, move 880ft, Action dash 880ft, Action Surge Dash 880ft, hasted action dash 880ft, Reaction 0.5x movement (Skirmisher) at 100ft = 3,620ft - Damage against a Large or larger enemy = 1,810dpr!! - Damage against a medium or smaller enemy = 3,620dpr!! - If Boots of Speed can be worn in Wild Shape then you can double all damage above!
For those that want even more damage (on a single target) with spike growth, Druid3/hexblade1, nature cleric3/hex1, and swarmkeeper5/hex1 can all use their hexblade's curse on a target to add their proficiency bonus to every 2d4 rolled which is nearly doubling the damage with a +2 proficiency bonus (again, with the caveat of being single target, once per short rest.)
I actually came up with this very same combo with a friend, but we used a few different things for our setup which actually deals even more damage, allowing you to reach way higher damage even without boots of speed. Basically, with a few levels in monk you can get +10 (which multiplied times all the dashes brings it up way higher). Also, you can cast enlarge and be path of the giants barbarian (or any class that can make you bigger) allowing for you to be two sizes larger than most enemies. Its also important to make the levels in rogue take expertise on athletics. Taking the mobile feet adds another 10 ft, and idk there were some other optimizations i dont really remember rn, but yeah the bard thing, i did not even consider but this could theoretically go up much more, but then again why the hell would you want more than 500 damage xD. Great video!
I see what you're saying, but I feel like Graz'zt is a bad example for this, since a lot of what you're talking about is presuming Graz'zt just... sits there and lets the party do that. The stat block you're using has a counterspell on-tap that isn't a spell and therefore can't be countered in return; so he can stop you from casting spike growth in the first place. Yeah, that probably stops him from countering other powerful effects for a few turns, but those other powerful effects have saving throws attached to them that his huge saves, MR and LRs can help with. And yeah, the caster can also just cast spike growth again on their next turn, but this has still given Graz'zt at least a whole round to act before the cheese grater switches on. He also has an at-will teleport that he can also use as a legendary action to just poof out of the spike growth or out of the fighter's grapple, which also isn't a spell so it can't be countered. The MtG player in me says that there's ways to sequence this so it doesn't matter, but it'd be too awkward for me to comfortably say it's something you could do consistently. He has dispel magic at will, and can also cast it with a legendary action, so he can dispel haste or spike growth by simply doing so after the other caster has burned their reaction countering something like Dominate Person or an earlier casting of dispel magic, and in that case I don't care even if your caster has a thing that says "My concentration cannot be broken by any means", haste is _going down._ In fact, also against Graz'zt in particular, this strat has a chance to _tremendously backfire_ if Graz'zt is able to land a charm effect on the hasted character, because then at the end of any other creature's turn, he can have them run _themselves_ into the cheese grater. TL:DR There ARE certainly a subset of monsters that this strategy could be completely broken against, but I don't feel like Graz'zt is one of them, since he has tools available that he could use to stop the players from doing this.
Lots of times you could outrange or ready/action trick the counterspell just like any other counterspell. I think you are right on the Dispel, would likely have to do tricks to ready the 2 casts to go off when the grapple is initiated
12:05 actually, you don’t have to rely the DM giving you magic items if you have an artificer in your party! If you make it to level 14, they can take the replicate magic item infusion and just make the Boots of Speed 😅
While the rules don’t define “dragging”, the movement you show looks more like “moving while shoving along a parallel vector” than dragging. My definition for dragging in 5e is that when the grappler moves one square, the grappled creature moves to occupy the square (or squares) the grappler moved out of. This would mean this Spike Growth strategy can still be used with some changes, but dragging an equal sized creature requires moving through the spikes yourself.
Randomly showed up in my recommendations, havent seen anything from you since probably...min/max boards or gdocs for Pathfinder 1e. Glad to see you're still pumping out math and fun ideas, even if i have no love for 5th Edition 😅
7:04 Dragging the target back and forth like that works (I call that "cheese grating"), but I'm tickled by the idea of just going around the Spike Growth ("ring around the (thorny) rosies, pocket full of magical piercing damage").
It never ceases to amaze me how many folks playing modern D&D (3e and later) get so many jollies from maxing DPR. As a 1e guy back in the day and a lover of the OSR today it seems so not fun to just get kicks this way. I guess I’m just getting old lolz. To each their own. 😊
In Curse of Strahd our DM buffed up the giant goat and was so excited to unleash it on us on the mountain side. We ended up covering the map with spiked growth and proceeded to Chain movement effects like repelling blast and lightning lasso dragging it back and forth across the growth and also preventing it to ram us.
And if you replace the levels in Rogue with Monk and take 18 of those levels, you get another +30ft movement speed boost and you have step of the wind to still bonus action dash.
I made a centaur Rune Knight/Stars Druid/Monk/Rogue that could drop his own Spike Growth with conc protection, Grapple with Advantage, and then with Rune Knight, a growth potion, equine build, mobile feat, and Longstrider could grapple gargantuan creatures with 70ft base movement. I decided with base move 40ft it was more reliable than the Tabaxi in nights with multiple enemies when I was entering a 1-shot without know the rest of the party. It worked really well!
Had exactly that Tabaxi fighter, rogue in a lvl 1-20 campaign. But not the other 2 members of S.A.U.C.E. seems we missed out on some easy victories! Great video as always
One of my most fun sessions ever was playing as a barbarian, when the Druid cast spike growth, and I ran around, picking up enemies and chucking them into the spikes. Unlike some of the old, summoning spells, spike growth, feels like a really table friendly spell because the rest of the party can get in on the action!
Just a few things to add to the movement speed even more: - Mobile feat to increase movement by 10 - 2 levels in Monk for +10 movement from Unarmored Movement - 7 levels in Psi Warrior Fighter to replace the Rouge levels because now you us your bonus action to double your movement speed and get a flying speed Assuming we also have the Boots of Speed, this would give a bast movement speed of 1,120, so if we use our normal movement and then dash as an action, dash with the Haste action, and dash with Action Surge, it would be a total of: = 4,480 feet of movement; 2240 damage EDIT: This comes out to 747 feet/second or 509 miles/hour
One problem with this... If you are grappling something in the spike growth, then I can see that you are partially in the spike growth, so you would take at least half the damage if you were running or flying around the edge dragging said creature through the spike growth.
One thing about the initial spike growth discussion, is you need to be aware of jumping. That bugbear could reduce the damage it takes with a running jump.
You can double your average damage: the druid take a level of hexblade to add another up to 5 damage per 5 feet of movement, as every 5 foot counts as a separate instance of damage. So, 400d4+1000 damage (2000 average).
So note to self in any highly optimised game make sure Immoveable object spell is cast on the armour of the BBEG - they can still move normally, but can only be moved 10' by anybody but their 'named creatures' and only on a successful strength check.
In fairness to meteor swarm, when you optimize for it with a tempest cleric 2 scribes wizard, you can make it do 240 on a failed save and 120 on a success by turning the damage type to lightning and using channel divinity.
The thing is: if carrying capacity rules are in play (doesn't matter basic/advanced) you can't actually drag the creatures larger then you more than 5 feet - due to their weight being too heavy to drag. Unless you are a heavy build race with some 20~ish strength. It works on medium creatures though.
Carrying Capacity. Your carrying capacity is your Strength score multiplied by 15. While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet. Variant: Encumbrance If you carry weight in excess of 10 times your Strength score, up to your maximum carrying capacity, you are instead heavily encumbered, which means your speed drops by 20 feet and you have disadvantage on ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws that use Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution. Its 300 for the former method or 200 for the latter -but still the large creature weight around 500 kg, like a horse. And the huge is few ~3 tonns - like an elephant. And gargantuan tarrasque?..
a problem I'm spotting is that moving a grappled target halves your movement + you're dragging a creature that is currently in difficult terrain, which I as a DM would rule halves doubles the amount of movement needed. you end up with 1/4 movement. you could still do a lot of damage with Tabaxi+Haste+Longstrider+Expeditious Retreat though
Am I missing some technicality? Why does the grappler not also take the damage? Nothing says that only enemies take damage, and even the caster seems to do so.
The grappler is outside the spike growth the whole time, dragging the target back and forth. They don't enter the same space for a grapple so as long as the grappler moves around in the space adjacent to the spell with the target just on the inside of the damage area it will be safe for them
Even crazier if your grappler is primarily a class that gives increased movement like barbarian or monk. A monk doesn't even need the rogue dip to get dash as a bonus action.
This video might need a update with the One DnD/2024 rules. The UAs the Grappler feat lets you drag creatures without spending extra movement could drastically increase the damage. However, it seems like the rules will be updated to use a saving throw to avoid being initially grappled (with an ability check against a saving throw to end the grapple on subsequent turns) so it might be harder to initiate the grapple against creatures with Legendary Resistances.
You put your hands or body part in the area if you are grappling the enemy, taking damage too also, you can simply houserule that the spell work ONLY on the enemies' turn, when they enter a area by moving, or if anything, something push them during their turn limiting the abuse with aim to break the game. if not, you run the risk to get a Moon Totem (druid barbarian) just doing that until the end of the game. They can already take so much damage, add fire shield to that setup and they can also break the game via this type of combo.
Turn the floor into sandpaper, grapple enemy, apply their forehead directly to the sandpaper, and vibrate back and forth in a 20 ft line until you travel 450 feet in 6 seconds. Don't forget to say "When" when you're finished shredding that cheese.
Imagine being a villain who's schemed for years, perhaps millenia, who's done dark things for power, and then a bunch of adventurers break in and one of them goes "Put him through the cheese grater"
Even jumping may not be enough if some cases. A creature that jumps and lands in difficult terrain must make a DC 10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check or land prone (Losing half movement when standing up again). While most monsters may be able make this check enough times to escape, the odds of any given monster rolling low and failing increase if there are multiple creatures attempting to jump out of the spike growth. Coupled with the variety of pushing and pulling options players have, many monsters find themselves in a quite sticky situation. I 100% agree with running these strategies by your DM before committing.
That is true, but with 10 feet horizontal jumps being common, the DM could rule they have enough to land in safe areas. If the ruling is set because they’re jumping out of difficult terrain, I believe it could be athletics or acrobatics (DM discretion). It’s not full proof or intended to negate all damage from spike growth, but a lot of new DMs don’t know or some intermediate DMs forget that they could maintain some threat instead of wasting a turn dashing when that might not be necessary. A well-placed, well-timed spike growth deserves to take out a horde, but if there is no need to walk your monsters to death, then don’t is all I’m saying.
Due to the broken nature this combo i have made some adjustments to dragging on my table when you dragging someone they end up behind you changing a targets orientation compared to you takes movement 5ft per square have see dms use ability to drag as well
I just changed the way the spell work to : when the enemies' move on their turns they take damage. That it! (When a creature moves into or within the area, it takes 2d4 piercing damage for every 5 feet it travels.) so no drag possible
I always thought spike growth to be useful sometimes, but most the times enemies would just jump out of it for little to no damage. So a 16 Str enemy is suddenly in the center of a spike growth, ok, they standing jump 8 feet, move 2 feet (costing 4 feet), then long jump 16 feet for a total of 28 feet of movement and they're out of the area of effect without taking any damage (only moved 2 feet on the ground which is less than 5). You would have to make a DC 10 Acrobatics check after the first jump, but that's not that hard. Forced movement can work, but is tricky and you have to spend a lot of your build becoming almost a 1 trick pony. But I would never count on the enemy moving inside it on their own.
Thank you for proving, once again, that 5e is the most broken TTRPG to date. I am not writing from a perspective of rules as written. Proverbial monkeys banging on typewriters could write more coherent and logical rules than the WotC staff. I am writing from the perspective of verisimilitude, which is not "realism" but rather "rational within the accepted framework." Unfortunately, 5e lacks a functional framework. Graz'zt is a "large" creature. The concept of "large" in 5e is deliberately vague. What height or weight qualifies as large? In previous editions, size categories were delimited by a doubling of dimension. Which is ridiculous, encompassing an eight-fold range of volume or mass. That would mean a medium creature could be a mere 60 lb first grader or a 480 lb sumo wrestler. That sumo could qualify as the bottom of large range, but a 3840 lb rhinocerous would also be large. 5e size rules only work when size is left vague. As soon as we put numbers down, the rules stop making sense. Graz'zt is 9 feet tall. By proportion to a trim male human, he should weigh about 600 lb. If more muscular, add about 120 lb. Graz'zt is going to laugh off your character's feeble attempt to push him around. Now let us look at the grappling rules. 3e gave a minimal nod of acknowledgement toward size differences. Grapple actions against a larger foe are penalized (-4), while those against a smaller foe are enhanced (+4). Where did this minimally adequate rule go in 5e? Let us back away from the specific example of Graz'zt. You are grappling a foe, attempting to drag that foe in a particular direction. "When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you." But let us look at what the movement rules say: "You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your Strength score). While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet." 5e seems to be math-averse, but let us state that a typical adventurer, armed and armored, adding the weight of the armed and armored foe, is surely going to be "in excess of carrying capacity." Therefore, any attempt to carry or drag the foe will be limited to 5 feet. Now let us look at other special abilities or features. Doubling movement would generally not be cumulative. You either get a doubling or not, unless each condition specifies that it can be cumulative. In the brief citations you quoted there is no mention of cumulative effects. Likewise for dash actions. Where a dash action is granted, nowhere do those citations indicate cumulative effect. So, with dragging movement limited to 5 feet, doubled for a single, non-cumulative speed bonus, and a single dash action applied, also limited to 5 feet by encumbrance, but not doubled (since the effects are not described as cumulative), you get to force your target through 15 feet of spike terrain.
Regardless of the DM you can guarantee the Boots of Speed by level 14 with Artificer who also has Haste, Enlarge/Reduce, Fly, winged boots, flash of genius, amor of magical strength.. lots of nice things for this combo as a possible replacement for the Haste Caster or as a 4th - if you are going to be playing a higher level 1 shot or something
Rather than two levels of Rogue for Cunning Action you could take two levels of Monk. Now you get a plus 10 to your movement and can spend a ki point to dash as a bonus action. If you then take 18 levels of Monk that gives you a plus 30 to your base speed and leaves you two levels to get Action Surge from a Fighter dip.
I remember having a player do something very similar to this in a game (he was always trying to bend the rules) and it was great fun in the moment and I let it happen; but I told the players that going forward that if it happened organically I would continue to allow it but if this became the go to strategy for bosses that my monsters would start doing things very similar to the party (abusing Spike Growth, Heat Metal, fall damage, etc) using the same premise as the players were arguing - it is not against the rules and dont penalize me for thinking creatively. The party as a whole, not that one player (he was a good guy but a bit toxic) - decided they wanted to play D&D and not have this arms race of rule one-upmanship; even though in the real world spells and abilities world would be abused because nature abuses the rules already (ie: eagles picking up prey and flying high and just dropping it - abusing fall damage).
"Resistances don't come into play because the damage is magical." _Is it,_ though? The terrain is _transmuted_ by magic. There is however nothing in the spell description that implicitly states that the transmuted matter is itself imbued with magic and counts as such for the purposes of DR/Immunity. Game halting rules lawyering aside, We love it. It takes us back to the halcyon days of the irridium spehere wielding Hulking Hurler.
Only issue is with how you read "when a creature moves" in the spell. If that means being moved by something else, this works. If it means only when the creature uses its own movement, this doesn't.
I could have sworn that multiple instances of 'doubling' were additive instead of multiplicative. IIRC it was that way in 3.5e, I thought it was still the same in 5e. The old ruling was along the lines of, Ex: Your Speed is 30ft. Doubling is your speed is another +30ft, so 60 total. But Doubling your speed twice is only +30ft twice. So 90ft total.
The text says 20 foot radius. It's a circle, not a square. Beyond even has the picture of a sphere in the range to make it clear. But if the DM wants to give me 344 extra square feet of extra effect for free ehy I won't say no!
There is a strong argument towards the movement speed increase being additive not multiplicative. Meaning when haste says it doubles your base speed it means your base speed, so you would gain 30 from it. Even if you had longstrider up it would still just give you 30 speed. Dash should also be your base movement speed, as is the tabaxi racial. Meaning you get 30 base +10 from longstrider + 30 from dash +30 from tabi + 30 from haste. Its still a lot but its not a game breaking amount. This video is simply wrong and should really look up how movement has been updated over the years. In short when ever something says it gives you a buff to your speed it means your characters base movement speed. As a DM I and most other DM's only allow the dash action to be used once per turn, this prevents players from crossing the world at speeds faster than a jet plane and resolves many other wize game breaking exploits. Irrepressible Dance dose not increase base move speed by 10 feet at all, it just gives the creature 10 move speed, there is a big difference.
The only questionable aspect of the build, besides realism(ick, in my D&D game?) is that I'm pretty sure there is a rule against grappling enemies that are too large for your character. I know there was an errata about advantage for/against grappling, if my memory serves. But the main issue RAW is the push/drag weight carrying capacity of the character. Even using the basic increasing modifier provided by enlarge/reduce, a 200 lbs person(w/o gear) would weigh up to 1600 lbs. The (normal) push/drag weight of a 20 STR character is 600 lbs. Even doubled, you'd be in trouble. Frankly, it only makes sense to drag something that big if you can also increase your size.
I was wondering with some extra movement you can get Could you add the monk/barbarian extra movement? If so you'd have +20, right? Could you double dash on thief? This is such a cool combination and I'm itching to find more damage
"In an actual game you shouldn't expect it". But for our one test it went perfectly every time... Very true. Just waiting for the time somebody tries this and the spike growth is down again by the time the grappler gets a go, or worse ooze in their box does get dealt with so haste is lost. Also more die = more chance to get a result centred around the average, but it doesn't mean you WILL get closer to the average. Technically - every time you roll your 100 die you can still get that roll of all 4's or 1's or any other combination, the full range of results is still possible. It is just getting more and more likely to hit the average.
Huh. My interpretation as a DM has always been that when you drag someone they are placed in the square you just left but i realized that is actaully not explicitly stated in the rules. However, I do recommend this ruling for fellow DMs since the alternative makes grappling cray good, not only with spike growth but any kind of hazardus terrain.
As this is a very strong spell, you should try this with Advanced D&D 5e Level Up system by EN Publishing. The spike growth spell damage is potentially greater and can get really insane!
For those wondering about exactly how close to 1000 damage you would get: In roughly 2/3 cases, you're going to get within 22 points of 1000 or between 978 and 1022 With a roughly 95% chance, you'll get between 956 and 1044, and with a probablility of 99.7%, you're going to get a total between 934 and 1066
Once , preparing defenses for a fortress, I cast plant growth to create a wall of trees labyrinth and then cast spike growth within the labyrinth so all the troops got bottlenecked through it.
Progress report on my mission to watch EVERY build video from your playlists: I am almost finished the Evoker pt 3, and I found out that your first Ultimate Archer is when you began your classic sign off of "I'm gonna sit back, relax, and have some fun. Because D&D is for everyone." (I could be further but my terrible memory gave me a week or so of completely spacing on my mission 😅)
Keep up the great work! Thank you for the many many hours of content keeping me sane at work!💜
Edit side note: anyone else just really happy that the avg damage equates to 1 damage per foot they move in spike growth?
You have a lot of patience. Those old vids are hard watches for me.
@@TreantmonksTemple No they're not. They're the reason why I started optimizing in 5th ed. I love them.
@@TreantmonksTemple I think that's a good thing though! It means you're growing and getting even better as a creator!
Pretty sure I've watched every video at least once, and some of them multiple times. It's been cool to see the way things have evolved since the chatroom typed wizard guides to now.
Chris, famous actors, also have a hard time watching their own movies😂
If you’re alright with Whiteboard Math, technically Storm of Vengeance is the most damaging spell. To do this, you need to go to Sprite-fest (the largest music festival in the Feywild) where every 5 foot cube from here to everywhere is packed with 8 sprites each. You then cast Storm of Vengeance, which catches ~165.9 million sprites in its area and deals 331,776,000d6 Thunder damage (no save assuming your DC is >20).
Granted, assuming circles to be circles, the number is much lower: ~130.3 million sprites or 260,576,000d6 Thunder damage.
Many thanks to Pez1870 for the fact check!
Id like to see your calculations because I got a different result.
the area of a circle that has a 360ft radius is 129,600π, ≈ 407,150ft²
now we need to know how many 5ft squares can fit inside that circle, so we devide by 25ft². we get 5184π. and with 8 sprites in each tile thats 41472π or around 130,288. a big number but nowhere near yours.
now at this point i remembered the "circles are squares" theorem so i applied it here aswell. that would give our "circle" an area of 518,400. and then we need to devide by 25 and multiply by 8 and we get 165,888 sprites. again, big number but nowhere near yours.
EDIT: if you concentrate for the full time you get 16d6 per creature not 2d6 so that give us 2,654,208d6. ≈ 9,289,728 damage total. and if you roll max damage and everyone fails their save thats 15,925,248. even this number isnt close to your original 41.5 million.
@@pez1870 Storm of Vengeance has a height of 5,000 feet, though you raise a good point about assuming circles to be squares which I had done. Additionally, I’d mistakenly used 360’ as the diameter. I will adjust my comment accordingly. Much appreciated!
@@Trafoder ohhhh, i wasnt thinking of the height!
Spike growth moon druid was my first fully optimized 5e build. With longstrider, I would turn into an air elemental, and my DM allowed my Firbolg's Powerful Build to apply to my wildshape. So I was huge for determining grapples, meaning I could move at full speed with a medium sized target, and had 100 movement speed, and could fly. So I would grapple a creature and drag them through the spike growth until it died. Sometimes I managed to do two creatures in one turn, since my DM ruled that a grapple check could replace any attack as part of a monster's Multiattack. But otherwise I could usually fly up out of range of any melee attackers before my turn ended.
Good times.
Powerful Build has no interaction with grappling, it only makes you count as one size larger for purposes of carrying capacity.
@@Klaital1 their DM determined otherwise, rule 0 applies here
@@Klaital1 not necesarily.
Moving a Grappled Creature: When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you.
The powerful build feature states: "You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift."
Although not reflexively part of the description of 'Moving a grappled creature' it does state that the movement slowed while dragging is tight to creature size. And powerful build states that you count as one size larger for dragging.
So although this is a classic case of '5e ambiguity' the case here is clear that, if you are large with a powerful build, you count as huge for the purpose of dragging.
@@wollf92 The problem is this doesn't interact with the 'weight' of a creature you can drag. If someone animates a five by five (Thus size medium) cube of lead, Over 3,500 lbs. Rules as written, any D&D character can drag that creature in a grapple, carrying capacity is never said to figure into combat. Now as a DM of course I'm going to say no, but rules as written that's a medium creature, the weight is unrelated to that. Powerful Build doesn't interact with being able to move the animated lead block with a grapple. I'd be willing to rule it applies if it makes up the dragging weight difference, but that's it.
@@Klaital1DM also ruled they could make 2 grapples with multiattack knowing that's not how things work RAW, that you have to use extra attack
The DM however, is a human, and can be persuaded with pizza
I swear, when I wake up and there is a new Treantmonk video, it just brightens my whole day!
Thank you!
@@TreantmonksTemple Its a party!
my DM is learning what a Dao Genie Warlock with all of the movement options on eldritch blast can do solo.
my absolutely favorite build in all dnd. Its so versatile, and not with just spike growth, but any hazardous terrain or spell..
If they are smart, your DM will not allow your character to pretend a Dao Genie Tabaxi with haste has the 9th level “time stop” spell grafted onto their movement abilities. Also good luck finding RAR that force a DM to allow stacking of all these movement rates. You get to pick one: haste, boots, or character movement. Also boots of speed will not function more than once per turn, meaning action surge will not re-activate boots or other magical effects.
lol - you’ll have to forgive me for defending all the DMs out there against “white board optimizing” antics that only seek to wreck the game.
@@roberttschaefer A real smart DM will start thinking about those Warlock Patrons that nearly every optimized build seems to rely on.
@@jacobgonzalez1386 Exactly! If your character has been given that kind of power by their patron, they should be given proportionate objectives and limits by the patron, which shouldn't necessarily match with the party's goals.
I appreciate you getting to the point within a few seconds of the video! It's this type of integrity that makes me watch the whole video, ads included.
The other thing about the average dice roll is that d4 dice have a very low deviation, so their rolls are going to be the closest to the average compared to any other dice roll
This strat is really fun for things like 1 shots. I don’t think I would recommend it for a full campaign unless it is just a sometimes trick in the bag
It would become soooo boring eventually.
@TreantmonksTemple it isn't if you have a creative DM who is willing to deviate from the assigned stat blocks in the module or is willing to pick his enemies with care. Incorporeal, immune to grapple, flyers and particularly large creatures all hard counter grappler builds.
I loved my grappler (and my good friend, our druid), but there are weaknesses to the build.
For the DMs out there, you need to let your characters do what their build is designed to do. It makes them feel empowered and possessing of agency. You also need to subvert those skills in ways where they feel threatened to keep the feeling of risk in the game.
I have no doubts that TM knows this. Im not preaching :)
I mostly agree, though if my players want to run a long campaign like that I'm down for it. They will just know I'll be pulling out some of the many counter moves as often as it makes sense. And I'm not sitting around for you figure out how many D4 you need to roll and rolling them this time...
The super speed shredding would still potentially be able to work, especially if you do the scouting or prep work to counter their counters, or surprise them. But every now and then the NPC should be prepared - so the grappler will find the creature can't be moved, or can't actually be caught up to with enough movement left to really grapple (you can have haste etc no reason the NPC can't), or they are holding an object with a warded spell etc. Or the support characters will find themselves unable to cast, dispelled etc.
The counter rmeasure for class based foes are few: fey warlock Misty escape or pole arm master/sentinel feats combo i'm not able see any others...
It's a good way to get your DM to quit and never run 5E again. lol.
The only rule I have about broken builds, is once you put them on the table they are fair game. Enemies will escape, spys will report to superiors, and the party can be scryed on, eventually your secrets will be out and someone else will figure out what you did and possibly use it on you. My current BBEG has control of a ruby mine and is abusing simulacrum right now.
One thing you didn't mention is that you need to be huge size to guarantee all this in order to grapple gargantuan creatures. This isn't hard especially since eve n if you don't include magic items, take a 3rd level in fighter for rune knight then have a 4th person cast enlarge/reduce. There's a ton of ways especially if you include magic items, but it is worth mentioning.
The S.A.U.C.E. takes care of this.
Maybe. But what if you were considered one size larger for what you could carry, push, DRAG, or lift? Like say, a Goliath? I would argue that it applies to dragging an ALREADY grappled creature. And lets say that Goliath was a Divine Soul Sorcerer with Enlarge/Reduce, Cloud of Daggers, and Spirit Guardians, and also had a few levels in Rune Knight as well? Yeah you can only have one concentration spell up at a time, so you can only benefit from one of those spells, but you have the versatility. Now you can pull off this same grappling tactic in a small room using Cloud of Daggers where you couldn't use Spike Growth, or you could have Spirit Guardians up while you are grappling, or you could cast Enlarge on yourself while you have Giants Might up... The Goliath from MOM also gets Proficiency in Athletics, and the Frost Rune gives a +2 bonus to Strength and Con saves AND checks. Oh, and your size affects how many five foot squares Spirit Guardians covers, 49 for a small or medium, 64 on a large and 81 squares on a huge sized creature...
The thing is though, the REAL most broken thing in D&D is a party actually working together...
@@anonymouse2675 Cloud of daggers wouldn't work for this. "takes 4d4 slashing damage when it enters the spell’s area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there." And it's only a 5' cube, so you can't drag someone around the periphery in any case. So max damage from CoD on a turn is only 4d4 (times whatever multipliers you can finagle, but a grapple-drag tactic won't work.) (Note: originally I entered "for the first time on a turn" bolded and YT seems to have hidden or deleted the text. Restored here.).
@@ronnycook3569 You don't drag them around the periphery, they start their turn there, and you drag them out and then right back in. They take damage for starting their turn in it, then again when you drag them back into it and it enter the area again. Total movement is ten feet. Cloud of Daggers is a second level spell and Upcasts for an additional 2d4 per spell slot level, so 6d4 for a third level slot, 8d4 for a fourth, etc... Times Two.
Is it as good as Spiked Growth? No. Can you do this in a small area like a bedroom? Yes.
@@anonymouse2675 The spell text is "A creature takes 4d4 slashing damage when it enters the spell’s area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there." in my original text I had "for the first time on a turn" bolded but for some reason YT hid the text instead. Check the PHB, page 222.
So dragging somebody out then in again repeatedly will only damage them once.
All of this depends on rule and player abuse. First, presuming humanoids - 1) When attacker succeeds it moves onto the defenders grid (replace both with a token). Since the attacker moved the attacker takes damage. 2) It's difficult terrain AND grappling halves as well so 1/4 movement not 1/2. 3) When applying a forced move it's still difficult terrain so that's halved as well. 4) The spell uses the phrase "MOVES INTO OR WITHIN". In DnD terms this is a voluntary motion as opposed to "ENTERS" which may be involuntary. Thus a creature being forced does not take damage.
Remember that there are ways to get a creature to "Move" without it being forced. Fear is one such example. The target uses its own action to move.
This has been my favorite spell for a while now
When it comes to WOTC rebalancing spells for the 2024 PHB, I would not be at all surprised if they nerf Spike Growth so the damage is not dealt by forced movement. Something like "When a creature uses its movement to move into or within the area, it takes 2d4 damage for every 5 feet it moves." The spell would still be good, and pair well with forced movement to keep enemies within the area, but it would become a lot less exploitable.
I share that prediction.
While it probably does need to happen, I also have a fear that they're essentially just removing all the best interactions in the game due to balance. Which would leave us with a game that no longer has many interesting interactions.
@@Byssbod The first time a weird combo is done, that is interesting. Simply copying what someone else did ad nauseam is neither interesting nor inventive anymore, it is now passe.
simple. forced movement does not imply feet willfully touching the ground. odds are you are being thrown/jolted against your will. if the spell says makes you prone then sure you can be dragged through the growth for imba damage just like being drawn by chariot/horse. only those making a willful resistance against the push would be upright on their feet. the spike growth only damages WALKING movement you CHOOSE to move through the growth with. people do not appreciate the power of jumping/vaulting enough.
If I were to house rule the current version of Spike Growth, I'd make it that once a character has been forced through a 5ft section that area no longer applies damage.
10:29 "You don't even need to roll!"
"You would dare deny me my birthright...?"
I love spike growth, and have it prepared pretty much all the time (unless we're in a very urban setting, or inside a castle where you don't have ground but more of stone floor). My DM allows stacking plant growth with spike growth, which becomes crazy .
FYI plant growth and difficult terrain are both mobility limitations they do not stack
Ramen Goblin!! Glad to see he's involved, loved his double phantom build you highlighted here. Fun vid, thanks Treantmonk!
🍜👺❤
I mean... Any DECENT DM, bans this combo the session after it happens. And any DECENT group of PCs, would completely understand, shake the DMs hand, and have a good laugh together.
You don't have to ban it, just have every spellcaster they come across know the 3rd level spell Dispel Magic and the problem fixes itself.
At the end of the druids turn, Graz'zt uses a legendary action to teleport 120ft, probably to a surface that is difficult to reach. Or he might use spellcasting if he's confident he wont be Counterspelled, either to Dispel the Spike Growth or Dominate Person the Tabaxi.
But for MOST enemies, yeah that could work.
I don't really deep dive into initiative order in this video, but yeah, it's very relevant.
@@TreantmonksTemple Or he just uses his reaction to kill the spell as it's cast
the presentation style was especially good in this video!
Completely unrelated to the topic of the vid, but I really like the thumbnail! And the font on your logo is amazing
Thank you!
As a DM, my simple way to stop this - if a grappler wants to drag their grappled target through a damaging space, they take the same damage. You're wrestling them, not dangling them out at arm's length.
Agreed
As a DM that could work as we are the masters of the rules but I don't think it's a good solution.
Generally I would make the number of enemies plentiful (only one can be grappled at a time) or have spellcasters who could dispell haste/spike growth or have good ranged attacks or have the enemies use their spike growth against them.
There are many rules valid ways to deal with this. Changing the rules to nerf not only a player but multiple players teamwork / build I feel is adversarial. Instead let them do their cool thing but work on how the bad guys can counter it.
Exactly. I would say that you can only drag something through a space that YOU were just in. If you find a way to get immunity to magical piercing damage, more power to you!
I would broadly agree. This situation is physically and narratively implausible for multiple reasons. It leads to broken results do to exploiting simplifications that the rules make for ease.
You shouldn't even need that. When I used this strategy in the one shot, I had a conversation with the DM before we ever made our characters to make sure they were OK with the strategy, and if they weren't, we would have not done it.
One thing to consider with Spike Growth: *Please* discuss with your party where you actually cast it. I've had more than one situation in an adventure I was in with a party where the Druid ran around a corner, Spike Growth'd an entire area so that enemies (and conversely other party members) couldn't see past a certain point to aim, and ran back.
Sure, the flying archer was fine, but the grounded support Sorcerer (I, a forever DM), and *especially* the Paladin (another forever DM) just had to sit and watch as people spec'd hard into ranged combat got to play the game for 15-20 minutes. Because if we ever got into shooting range, we'd be stranded, and less effective than the bad guys (Paladin had low Dex, I was pretty squishy as a caster at level 3 or 4.) And if we cheesed over the Spike Growth somehow, we'd have made the Druid waste a spell slot (his words, not ours.)
Clearly the Paladin should have lifted you onto their shoulders for a height advantage. Totally a valid strategy
the grapple squad 2.0 with improved clickbait lol
Improved clickbait is my favorite feat
Spike Growth aka the grate of annihilation. A way to translate move speed into damage
Monk: Finally, a way to become slightly useful
I have a feeling that this strategy wont be working anymore when the new phb comes out, as not only is grappling being changed to be a saving throw, but they are probably getting rid of the distinction between magical and non-magical b/p/s, so creatures will probably just have resistance/immunity to piercing damage, period. And that is all still assuming that Spike Growth itself doesn't get changed in any dramatic way.
Very true. Use it while you can!
Get rid of magical b/p/s? Wasn't part of the intention of a new version to REDUCE the gap between spellcasters and martials?
@@connordarvall8482 Yes, and all features that used to give you magical whatever, now just change your damage to a different type, like monks do force damage with their unarmed strikes, moon druids do radiant damage with their wild shape attacks, etc. The thing is, resistance to nonmagical b/p/s basically does nothing since everyone has a magical weapon by turn 5 at the latest. With this change, what weapon you use actually matters, and resistances actually do something.
@@Klaital1 not really though, all it does is mean magical weapons will be nerfed or have to do some weird damage type, while all the spells that do force damage will be even more favoured than they already are.
I always knew grappling + _spike growth_ could lead to crazy damage but never thought it'd be possible to take it this far. god, I'm so glad stuff like this isn't possible in Pathfinder 2e.
Weird comment, since it's ultimately up to the dm and his players. I'm pretty sure If I did this spike growth trick a few times, my dm would call aside for a little talk
@@exilenl A lot of spells in D&D 5e are broken or have broken combinations and while it can be fun pushing the game to its limits in a one-shot or something (I've definitely had that kind of fun myself), during regular play, it can be kind of exhausting to deal with as a player after a while. And yes, it is technically up to the DM on whether or not to allow that, I personally would rather not have to deal with that kind of stuff in the first place. I like running the game as close to Rules as Written as possible and I don't want to have to make house rules just to patch the game or ask my players "hi, could you please not do this thing that can break the game?" I certainly had to when I was DMing (and my players were very understanding and cooperative) and it's just frustrating. I'd rather be able to rely on a system being balanced without having to put my game designer hat on, which is why I made the comparison to Pathfinder 2e, a system which I'm moving my table to.
Sorry if it came off as weird or rude, I've just had a lot of frustrations with D&D 5e and this kind of thing is one of them.
Every BBEG and monster above CR20 is going to need the Rakshasa’s Limited Magic Immunity feature from now on
Spike Growth just grooms their fur as they're dragged over it.
*after being unaffected by hundreds of points of damage*
"Thanks I've been trying to scratch that damn itch for a month"
This is why I like porting over the damage resistance feature from pathfinder to my 5e game. If you have physical damage resistance of 5, then 2d4 isn't doing much damage.
Cat recognizes cat
another "congratulations, now all monsters have counterspell" moment
Congratulations, I used subtle spell metamagic 😂
@@apollosungod6673 Or: I ducked behind cover to break line of sight, used the ready action to cast spike growth while in cover and set the reaction to be "when I can see this point on the ground (indicating the target point) then step back out from cover. The point on the ground comes into view, my reaction triggers (still on my turn, no turn order optimization necessary), the already cast spell can't be counterspelled because I cast it while out of view and am just releasing it.
"That's cheesy!" It's just basic cover mechanics, one of the few times 5e incentivizes using them.
Naw, just give them flight + hover, or Freedom of Movement.
These is no reason to that just add the word - ''base'' movement to all the effects and spells and abilities that grand any kind of movement speed increase, it stop the wonky abuse of speed stacking.
CMCC builds: "hey, we made this brand new, super tough gauntlet, now for whole teams of players!
Treantmonk & Friends: Hold my SAUCE
Lol!
We love breaking gauntlets :)
That sounds dirty
@@TreantmonksTemple haha!
Hi Chris. Great video as always, thanks. I came up with an optimised Spike Growth grappler build around a year ago after watching Colby’s Cheesegrater and Bard Grappler videos (I dubbed it Fluffy the Ferocious Feline in some 1-shots I played). I tried to get in touch with Colby at the time to suggest the build, but he was a hard man to reach! Anyway, I think it’s possible to run this build for huge damage without a party of companions:
- Druid 8 (Moon Druid), Rogue 3 (Bonus Action dash and Skirmisher), Fighter 7 (for Action Surge and Psi Leap)
- Race = Tabaxi (Feline Agility)
- Feats = Mobile
- Move speed = Wild Shape into Quetzalcoathus (Huge for Grappling) for 80ft flying speed + 10ft Longstrider + 10ft Mobile = 100ft
- Psi Leap (may need to use Moorbounder depending on DM) to double speed to 200ft
- X2 Feline Agility = 400ft
- On turn, move 400ft, Action dash 400ft, Action Surge Dash 400ft, Reaction 0.5x movement (Skirmisher) at 200ft = 1,400ft
- Damage against a Large or larger enemy = 700dpr
- Damage against a medium or smaller enemy = 1,400dpr
Then you can add magical items to this, for example in a level 20 one shot:
- Hasted speed doubles = 800ft
- Boots of Speed x2 = 1,600ft
- Potion of Haste - adds another dash action (+400ft)
- On turn, move 1,600ft, Action dash 1,600ft, Action Surge Dash 1,600ft, hasted action dash 1,600ft, Reaction 0.5x movement (Skirmisher) at 800ft = 7,200ft
- Damage against a Large or larger enemy = 3,600dpr!!
- Damage against a medium or smaller enemy = 7,200dpr!!
Please check my workings as I did rather rush this post!
Skirmisher doesn't proc here, as you have to use it as a reaction to an enemy ending their turn within 5 ft of you. In totality of a round, you MIGHT be able to proc it, but not on your turn. And, since you can't bonus action dash, you may get more use out of a couple levels of monk instead of rogue. You could add 80 ft movement to each of your moves with 3 levels in monk. If you go Moorbounder, which makes more sense than the Quetz.
You'd only need 3 levels of Moon Druid here. Add 2 levels of Bladesinger, to add 10 more ft of movement. 3 levels of Astral Self Monk gets you 10 ft of movement, 5 levels of any Barbarian adds another 10 ft. Then your 7 levels of Psi Warrior for the Psi Leap.
Take Mobile and Martial Adept (Grappling Attack) feats.
This needs a few rounds of setup, which is the only downfall to this build(other than if your DM allows the boots to be worn by a Moorbounder), but either your version or this one needs the same amount. You also only get to large this route.
Cast Longstrider at some point. Cast Spike Growth, summon your astral arms. To start combat, drink the potion of haste and click the boots one round, next round wild shape and bladesong. 3rd round, attack and grapple as bonus action, drag them into or near the spike growth. Next Round Psi Leap, feline agility. Grind them into the dirt.
70 ft movement, +30 ft for class features. So you're at 100 here. Boots double to 200, haste doubles to 400, psi leap doubles that to 800, feline agility makes the 1600.
You still get Movement, Action, Action Surge, Hasted Action. You lose out on the reaction, but we can't count on that with this for sure anyways. 1600 * 4 = 6400 ft of movement, for 3200 damage on a Medium - huge enemy, and 6400 on a small or smaller.
@@ariahamilton8194 Thanks Aria. How about this then? (I am retaining Skirmisher - move speed is reduced per your comments, but with Athletics we might reasonably expect to retain the grapple, though it isn't hugely significant tot he damage numbers).
Wild Shape into Moorbounder
- Druid 3 (Moon Druid), Rogue 3 (Bonus Action dash and Skirmisher), Fighter 7 (for Action Surge and Psi Leap), Wizard 2 (Bladesinger +10ft), Monk 2 (+10ft move speed)
- Race = Tabaxi (Feline Agility)
- Feats = Mobile
- Move speed = Wild Shape into Moorbounder for 70ft speed + 10ft Longstrider + 10ft Mobile + 10 ft Bladesinger + 10 ft Monk = 110ft
- X2 Psi Leap = 220ft
- X2 Feline Agility = 440ft
- On turn, move 440ft, Action dash 440ft, Action Surge Dash 440ft, Reaction 0.5x movement (Skirmisher, no feline agility) at 55ft = 1,375ft
- Damage against a Large or larger enemy = 687dpr
- Damage against a medium or smaller enemy = 1,375dpr
Then you can add magical items to this, for example in a level 20 one shot. For the Moorbounder:
- Potion of Speed (Haste) doubles speed = 880ft
- Potion of Haste - adds another dash action (+880ft)
- On turn, move 880ft, Action dash 880ft, Action Surge Dash 880ft, hasted action dash 880ft, Reaction 0.5x movement (Skirmisher) at 100ft = 3,620ft
- Damage against a Large or larger enemy = 1,810dpr!!
- Damage against a medium or smaller enemy = 3,620dpr!!
- If Boots of Speed can be worn in Wild Shape then you can double all damage above!
For those that want even more damage (on a single target) with spike growth, Druid3/hexblade1, nature cleric3/hex1, and swarmkeeper5/hex1 can all use their hexblade's curse on a target to add their proficiency bonus to every 2d4 rolled which is nearly doubling the damage with a +2 proficiency bonus (again, with the caveat of being single target, once per short rest.)
Liked and subscribed just because you didn't hide the spell name til halfway into the video. Cheers.
I actually came up with this very same combo with a friend, but we used a few different things for our setup which actually deals even more damage, allowing you to reach way higher damage even without boots of speed. Basically, with a few levels in monk you can get +10 (which multiplied times all the dashes brings it up way higher). Also, you can cast enlarge and be path of the giants barbarian (or any class that can make you bigger) allowing for you to be two sizes larger than most enemies. Its also important to make the levels in rogue take expertise on athletics.
Taking the mobile feet adds another 10 ft, and idk there were some other optimizations i dont really remember rn, but yeah the bard thing, i did not even consider but this could theoretically go up much more, but then again why the hell would you want more than 500 damage xD. Great video!
Ramen Goblin: 960ft of movement... in a... in a single turn... Is this right?
Treantmonk: No... Double it!
I see what you're saying, but I feel like Graz'zt is a bad example for this, since a lot of what you're talking about is presuming Graz'zt just... sits there and lets the party do that.
The stat block you're using has a counterspell on-tap that isn't a spell and therefore can't be countered in return; so he can stop you from casting spike growth in the first place. Yeah, that probably stops him from countering other powerful effects for a few turns, but those other powerful effects have saving throws attached to them that his huge saves, MR and LRs can help with.
And yeah, the caster can also just cast spike growth again on their next turn, but this has still given Graz'zt at least a whole round to act before the cheese grater switches on.
He also has an at-will teleport that he can also use as a legendary action to just poof out of the spike growth or out of the fighter's grapple, which also isn't a spell so it can't be countered. The MtG player in me says that there's ways to sequence this so it doesn't matter, but it'd be too awkward for me to comfortably say it's something you could do consistently.
He has dispel magic at will, and can also cast it with a legendary action, so he can dispel haste or spike growth by simply doing so after the other caster has burned their reaction countering something like Dominate Person or an earlier casting of dispel magic, and in that case I don't care even if your caster has a thing that says "My concentration cannot be broken by any means", haste is _going down._
In fact, also against Graz'zt in particular, this strat has a chance to _tremendously backfire_ if Graz'zt is able to land a charm effect on the hasted character, because then at the end of any other creature's turn, he can have them run _themselves_ into the cheese grater.
TL:DR There ARE certainly a subset of monsters that this strategy could be completely broken against, but I don't feel like Graz'zt is one of them, since he has tools available that he could use to stop the players from doing this.
Lots of times you could outrange or ready/action trick the counterspell just like any other counterspell. I think you are right on the Dispel, would likely have to do tricks to ready the 2 casts to go off when the grapple is initiated
I liked the video just because you only took 8 seconds to name the spell, much appreciated!
12:05 actually, you don’t have to rely the DM giving you magic items if you have an artificer in your party! If you make it to level 14, they can take the replicate magic item infusion and just make the Boots of Speed 😅
While the rules don’t define “dragging”, the movement you show looks more like “moving while shoving along a parallel vector” than dragging. My definition for dragging in 5e is that when the grappler moves one square, the grappled creature moves to occupy the square (or squares) the grappler moved out of. This would mean this Spike Growth strategy can still be used with some changes, but dragging an equal sized creature requires moving through the spikes yourself.
Add a Chronolometer to possibly add an additional Action.
Randomly showed up in my recommendations, havent seen anything from you since probably...min/max boards or gdocs for Pathfinder 1e. Glad to see you're still pumping out math and fun ideas, even if i have no love for 5th Edition 😅
7:04 Dragging the target back and forth like that works (I call that "cheese grating"), but I'm tickled by the idea of just going around the Spike Growth ("ring around the (thorny) rosies, pocket full of magical piercing damage").
Thanks Chris, awesomeness as always!
It never ceases to amaze me how many folks playing modern D&D (3e and later) get so many jollies from maxing DPR. As a 1e guy back in the day and a lover of the OSR today it seems so not fun to just get kicks this way. I guess I’m just getting old lolz. To each their own. 😊
In Curse of Strahd our DM buffed up the giant goat and was so excited to unleash it on us on the mountain side. We ended up covering the map with spiked growth and proceeded to Chain movement effects like repelling blast and lightning lasso dragging it back and forth across the growth and also preventing it to ram us.
congratulations you just super sayan'd the cheese grater, with the power of friendship
And if you replace the levels in Rogue with Monk and take 18 of those levels, you get another +30ft movement speed boost and you have step of the wind to still bonus action dash.
I made a centaur Rune Knight/Stars Druid/Monk/Rogue that could drop his own Spike Growth with conc protection, Grapple with Advantage, and then with Rune Knight, a growth potion, equine build, mobile feat, and Longstrider could grapple gargantuan creatures with 70ft base movement.
I decided with base move 40ft it was more reliable than the Tabaxi in nights with multiple enemies when I was entering a 1-shot without know the rest of the party. It worked really well!
I would like to add that if you have an eagle whistle, you can fly at double your walk speed. So up the damage even more.
Had exactly that Tabaxi fighter, rogue in a lvl 1-20 campaign. But not the other 2 members of S.A.U.C.E. seems we missed out on some easy victories! Great video as always
One of my most fun sessions ever was playing as a barbarian, when the Druid cast spike growth, and I ran around, picking up enemies and chucking them into the spikes. Unlike some of the old, summoning spells, spike growth, feels like a really table friendly spell because the rest of the party can get in on the action!
The new gauntlet video really helped with guessing what this video is going to be about.
Just a few things to add to the movement speed even more:
- Mobile feat to increase movement by 10
- 2 levels in Monk for +10 movement from Unarmored Movement
- 7 levels in Psi Warrior Fighter to replace the Rouge levels because now you us your bonus action to double your movement speed and get a flying speed
Assuming we also have the Boots of Speed, this would give a bast movement speed of 1,120, so if we use our normal movement and then dash as an action, dash with the Haste action, and dash with Action Surge, it would be a total of:
= 4,480 feet of movement; 2240 damage
EDIT: This comes out to 747 feet/second or 509 miles/hour
One problem with this... If you are grappling something in the spike growth, then I can see that you are partially in the spike growth, so you would take at least half the damage if you were running or flying around the edge dragging said creature through the spike growth.
One thing about the initial spike growth discussion, is you need to be aware of jumping.
That bugbear could reduce the damage it takes with a running jump.
You can double your average damage: the druid take a level of hexblade to add another up to 5 damage per 5 feet of movement, as every 5 foot counts as a separate instance of damage. So, 400d4+1000 damage (2000 average).
Love the video. After, the DM is like, so you’ll be fighting Rakshasas from now on. These kitten Rakshasa warriors are immune to…
If I’m not mistaken, boots of speed and cunning action both use your bonus action, so unless I missed something I don’t believe they stack
So note to self in any highly optimised game make sure Immoveable object spell is cast on the armour of the BBEG - they can still move normally, but can only be moved 10' by anybody but their 'named creatures' and only on a successful strength check.
Why doesnt the grappler take dmg from spike growth?
In fairness to meteor swarm, when you optimize for it with a tempest cleric 2 scribes wizard, you can make it do 240 on a failed save and 120 on a success by turning the damage type to lightning and using channel divinity.
You can definitely optimize Meteor Swarm. Ideally you aren't casting it on a single target either, just used for comparison here.
The thing is: if carrying capacity rules are in play (doesn't matter basic/advanced) you can't actually drag the creatures larger then you more than 5 feet - due to their weight being too heavy to drag. Unless you are a heavy build race with some 20~ish strength. It works on medium creatures though.
Carrying Capacity. Your carrying capacity is your Strength score multiplied by 15.
While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet.
Variant: Encumbrance
If you carry weight in excess of 10 times your Strength score, up to your maximum carrying capacity, you are instead heavily encumbered, which means your speed drops by 20 feet and you have disadvantage on ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws that use Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.
Its 300 for the former method or 200 for the latter -but still the large creature weight around 500 kg, like a horse. And the huge is few ~3 tonns - like an elephant. And gargantuan tarrasque?..
This severely wants powerful build, enlarge effects and whatnot to make the speed not halved during a grapple for most creatures. Insane.
a problem I'm spotting is that moving a grappled target halves your movement + you're dragging a creature that is currently in difficult terrain, which I as a DM would rule halves doubles the amount of movement needed. you end up with 1/4 movement. you could still do a lot of damage with Tabaxi+Haste+Longstrider+Expeditious Retreat though
Not with ways of increasing your size to Huge!
Am I missing some technicality? Why does the grappler not also take the damage? Nothing says that only enemies take damage, and even the caster seems to do so.
You run along the border of the Spike Growth--you outside, your grappled opponent inside. Grappled foes don't occupy the same square as the grappler.
The grappler is outside the spike growth the whole time, dragging the target back and forth. They don't enter the same space for a grapple so as long as the grappler moves around in the space adjacent to the spell with the target just on the inside of the damage area it will be safe for them
Even crazier if your grappler is primarily a class that gives increased movement like barbarian or monk. A monk doesn't even need the rogue dip to get dash as a bonus action.
This video might need a update with the One DnD/2024 rules.
The UAs the Grappler feat lets you drag creatures without spending extra movement could drastically increase the damage. However, it seems like the rules will be updated to use a saving throw to avoid being initially grappled (with an ability check against a saving throw to end the grapple on subsequent turns) so it might be harder to initiate the grapple against creatures with Legendary Resistances.
a LOT of my videos will need an update
You put your hands or body part in the area if you are grappling the enemy, taking damage too
also, you can simply houserule that the spell work ONLY on the enemies' turn, when they enter a area by moving, or if anything, something push them during their turn limiting the abuse with aim to break the game.
if not, you run the risk to get a Moon Totem (druid barbarian) just doing that until the end of the game. They can already take so much damage, add fire shield to that setup and they can also break the game via this type of combo.
Turn the floor into sandpaper, grapple enemy, apply their forehead directly to the sandpaper, and vibrate back and forth in a 20 ft line until you travel 450 feet in 6 seconds. Don't forget to say "When" when you're finished shredding that cheese.
you can wild shape or polymorph rogue to a Quetzalcoatlus which can fly at 80 and it's huge so may drag in full speed =P
Imagine being a villain who's schemed for years, perhaps millenia, who's done dark things for power, and then a bunch of adventurers break in and one of them goes
"Put him through the cheese grater"
With all that shredding that is some parmesan cheese level of cheese right there.
For any frustrated DMs out there, Dont forget you can always use the jump mechanic to escape the difficult terrain faster.
And for players out there, always discuss this type of thing with your DM before committing to it (we did)
Even jumping may not be enough if some cases. A creature that jumps and lands in difficult terrain must make a DC 10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check or land prone (Losing half movement when standing up again). While most monsters may be able make this check enough times to escape, the odds of any given monster rolling low and failing increase if there are multiple creatures attempting to jump out of the spike growth. Coupled with the variety of pushing and pulling options players have, many monsters find themselves in a quite sticky situation. I 100% agree with running these strategies by your DM before committing.
That is true, but with 10 feet horizontal jumps being common, the DM could rule they have enough to land in safe areas. If the ruling is set because they’re jumping out of difficult terrain, I believe it could be athletics or acrobatics (DM discretion).
It’s not full proof or intended to negate all damage from spike growth, but a lot of new DMs don’t know or some intermediate DMs forget that they could maintain some threat instead of wasting a turn dashing when that might not be necessary.
A well-placed, well-timed spike growth deserves to take out a horde, but if there is no need to walk your monsters to death, then don’t is all I’m saying.
Im currently enjoying my moon druid build, and suggest wild shaping into a frogoliath after setting up spikes
Due to the broken nature this combo i have made some adjustments to dragging on my table
when you dragging someone they end up behind you changing a targets orientation compared to you takes movement 5ft per square
have see dms use ability to drag as well
I just changed the way the spell work to : when the enemies' move on their turns they take damage. That it! (When a creature moves into or within the area, it takes 2d4 piercing damage for every 5 feet it travels.) so no drag possible
I always thought spike growth to be useful sometimes, but most the times enemies would just jump out of it for little to no damage. So a 16 Str enemy is suddenly in the center of a spike growth, ok, they standing jump 8 feet, move 2 feet (costing 4 feet), then long jump 16 feet for a total of 28 feet of movement and they're out of the area of effect without taking any damage (only moved 2 feet on the ground which is less than 5). You would have to make a DC 10 Acrobatics check after the first jump, but that's not that hard.
Forced movement can work, but is tricky and you have to spend a lot of your build becoming almost a 1 trick pony. But I would never count on the enemy moving inside it on their own.
Great video name! I hope GDS, or SAUCE, receives the attention it deserves!
Thank you for proving, once again, that 5e is the most broken TTRPG to date. I am not writing from a perspective of rules as written. Proverbial monkeys banging on typewriters could write more coherent and logical rules than the WotC staff.
I am writing from the perspective of verisimilitude, which is not "realism" but rather "rational within the accepted framework." Unfortunately, 5e lacks a functional framework.
Graz'zt is a "large" creature. The concept of "large" in 5e is deliberately vague. What height or weight qualifies as large? In previous editions, size categories were delimited by a doubling of dimension. Which is ridiculous, encompassing an eight-fold range of volume or mass. That would mean a medium creature could be a mere 60 lb first grader or a 480 lb sumo wrestler. That sumo could qualify as the bottom of large range, but a 3840 lb rhinocerous would also be large.
5e size rules only work when size is left vague. As soon as we put numbers down, the rules stop making sense. Graz'zt is 9 feet tall. By proportion to a trim male human, he should weigh about 600 lb. If more muscular, add about 120 lb. Graz'zt is going to laugh off your character's feeble attempt to push him around.
Now let us look at the grappling rules. 3e gave a minimal nod of acknowledgement toward size differences. Grapple actions against a larger foe are penalized (-4), while those against a smaller foe are enhanced (+4). Where did this minimally adequate rule go in 5e?
Let us back away from the specific example of Graz'zt. You are grappling a foe, attempting to drag that foe in a particular direction. "When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you." But let us look at what the movement rules say: "You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your Strength score). While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet."
5e seems to be math-averse, but let us state that a typical adventurer, armed and armored, adding the weight of the armed and armored foe, is surely going to be "in excess of carrying capacity." Therefore, any attempt to carry or drag the foe will be limited to 5 feet.
Now let us look at other special abilities or features. Doubling movement would generally not be cumulative. You either get a doubling or not, unless each condition specifies that it can be cumulative. In the brief citations you quoted there is no mention of cumulative effects. Likewise for dash actions. Where a dash action is granted, nowhere do those citations indicate cumulative effect.
So, with dragging movement limited to 5 feet, doubled for a single, non-cumulative speed bonus, and a single dash action applied, also limited to 5 feet by encumbrance, but not doubled (since the effects are not described as cumulative), you get to force your target through 15 feet of spike terrain.
Regardless of the DM you can guarantee the Boots of Speed by level 14 with Artificer who also has Haste, Enlarge/Reduce, Fly, winged boots, flash of genius, amor of magical strength.. lots of nice things for this combo as a possible replacement for the Haste Caster or as a 4th - if you are going to be playing a higher level 1 shot or something
Rather than two levels of Rogue for Cunning Action you could take two levels of Monk. Now you get a plus 10 to your movement and can spend a ki point to dash as a bonus action. If you then take 18 levels of Monk that gives you a plus 30 to your base speed and leaves you two levels to get Action Surge from a Fighter dip.
I remember having a player do something very similar to this in a game (he was always trying to bend the rules) and it was great fun in the moment and I let it happen; but I told the players that going forward that if it happened organically I would continue to allow it but if this became the go to strategy for bosses that my monsters would start doing things very similar to the party (abusing Spike Growth, Heat Metal, fall damage, etc) using the same premise as the players were arguing - it is not against the rules and dont penalize me for thinking creatively. The party as a whole, not that one player (he was a good guy but a bit toxic) - decided they wanted to play D&D and not have this arms race of rule one-upmanship; even though in the real world spells and abilities world would be abused because nature abuses the rules already (ie: eagles picking up prey and flying high and just dropping it - abusing fall damage).
"Resistances don't come into play because the damage is magical." _Is it,_ though? The terrain is _transmuted_ by magic. There is however nothing in the spell description that implicitly states that the transmuted matter is itself imbued with magic and counts as such for the purposes of DR/Immunity.
Game halting rules lawyering aside, We love it. It takes us back to the halcyon days of the irridium spehere wielding Hulking Hurler.
As a forever DM who likes using groups of enemies, this is going to make my kobold combat groups even more lethal
Only issue is with how you read "when a creature moves" in the spell.
If that means being moved by something else, this works.
If it means only when the creature uses its own movement, this doesn't.
I could have sworn that multiple instances of 'doubling' were additive instead of multiplicative. IIRC it was that way in 3.5e, I thought it was still the same in 5e. The old ruling was along the lines of, Ex: Your Speed is 30ft. Doubling is your speed is another +30ft, so 60 total. But Doubling your speed twice is only +30ft twice. So 90ft total.
I know not what the official ruling is, but this is how I rule it.
The text says 20 foot radius. It's a circle, not a square. Beyond even has the picture of a sphere in the range to make it clear. But if the DM wants to give me 344 extra square feet of extra effect for free ehy I won't say no!
There is a strong argument towards the movement speed increase being additive not multiplicative. Meaning when haste says it doubles your base speed it means your base speed, so you would gain 30 from it. Even if you had longstrider up it would still just give you 30 speed. Dash should also be your base movement speed, as is the tabaxi racial. Meaning you get 30 base +10 from longstrider + 30 from dash +30 from tabi + 30 from haste. Its still a lot but its not a game breaking amount. This video is simply wrong and should really look up how movement has been updated over the years. In short when ever something says it gives you a buff to your speed it means your characters base movement speed.
As a DM I and most other DM's only allow the dash action to be used once per turn, this prevents players from crossing the world at speeds faster than a jet plane and resolves many other wize game breaking exploits.
Irrepressible Dance dose not increase base move speed by 10 feet at all, it just gives the creature 10 move speed, there is a big difference.
15 seconds in and i guessed it.
Cant wait for the rest of the video
Hillarious. I imagine the players grinding his face into the spikes as they abuse him left right and centre
Love it! Room for the Mobile feat on that Tabaxi?
yep Chris missed it on this video
Remember that if you are a Monk, your movement is increased even further. An Astral Self Monk can even grapple from distance.
The only questionable aspect of the build, besides realism(ick, in my D&D game?) is that I'm pretty sure there is a rule against grappling enemies that are too large for your character. I know there was an errata about advantage for/against grappling, if my memory serves.
But the main issue RAW is the push/drag weight carrying capacity of the character. Even using the basic increasing modifier provided by enlarge/reduce, a 200 lbs person(w/o gear) would weigh up to 1600 lbs. The (normal) push/drag weight of a 20 STR character is 600 lbs. Even doubled, you'd be in trouble.
Frankly, it only makes sense to drag something that big if you can also increase your size.
I was wondering with some extra movement you can get
Could you add the monk/barbarian extra movement? If so you'd have +20, right?
Could you double dash on thief?
This is such a cool combination and I'm itching to find more damage
"In an actual game you shouldn't expect it". But for our one test it went perfectly every time...
Very true. Just waiting for the time somebody tries this and the spike growth is down again by the time the grappler gets a go, or worse ooze in their box does get dealt with so haste is lost.
Also more die = more chance to get a result centred around the average, but it doesn't mean you WILL get closer to the average. Technically - every time you roll your 100 die you can still get that roll of all 4's or 1's or any other combination, the full range of results is still possible. It is just getting more and more likely to hit the average.
Huh. My interpretation as a DM has always been that when you drag someone they are placed in the square you just left but i realized that is actaully not explicitly stated in the rules. However, I do recommend this ruling for fellow DMs since the alternative makes grappling cray good, not only with spike growth but any kind of hazardus terrain.
Same that’s how I ruled grapple at my table. The players agreed that it made sense.
As this is a very strong spell, you should try this with Advanced D&D 5e Level Up system by EN Publishing. The spike growth spell damage is potentially greater and can get really insane!
Have your grappler take the mobile feet. You gain 10 movement to your base speed, and when dashing you ignore difficult terrain.
The counter to this entire strategy is Globe of Invulnerability or other "cannot be affected by spells of X level or lower" effects.
For those wondering about exactly how close to 1000 damage you would get:
In roughly 2/3 cases, you're going to get within 22 points of 1000 or between 978 and 1022
With a roughly 95% chance, you'll get between 956 and 1044,
and with a probablility of 99.7%, you're going to get a total between 934 and 1066
Once , preparing defenses for a fortress, I cast plant growth to create a wall of trees labyrinth and then cast spike growth within the labyrinth so all the troops got bottlenecked through it.
Why do I love your naming sense so much?! 😂😂😂