Spirit Guardians - Does it break your games?

[Sooth]

Hello friends,

I'm playing a 6th level Death Domain cleric. It's a west marches style game - meaning, there are at least several players, it's an open sandbox adventuring world, and we don't all play in the same group every session. There are a number of other house rules and variants used in this game, but they're not terribly important to what I've decided to share.

For the first few battles I used Spirit Guardians, it pretty much single-handedly trivialized the encounter because of the large number of weak enemies it was able to damage. To be fair, a Fireball would have achieved nearly the same effect and sooner, so hey, whatever, we move on.

Soon we stopped fighting hordes and have been fighting modest numbers (like 5-8) of tough creatures which attack us from multiple sides. I soon realized that even consistently damaging 3 of them with 3d8 per round was easily worth the spell slot, so I did it. And, because Spirit Guardians is ally-friendly, I maneuvered around the battlefield to spread the love while also occasionally preventing foes from closing in due to the speed effect.

The GM must have decided he'd had it with my ****, because as soon as the damage ticked on a group of ghouls, every single foe on the battlefield made it their sole purpose to destroy me. I took the Dodge action, becoming infeasible to hit with 20 AC. With Spiritual Weapon and Death Touch channeling through it, I could even make attacks of appreciable damage while Dodging every turn. Attacking me became as much a tactical error as attacking anyone else, and in a way, drawing their attention resulted in even more battlefield control.

By now, the GM has come to count on the fact that I will pop Spirit Guardians on difficult fights, so he's made the fights even harder. Yesterday, we fought 8 CR 2 Grells with our humble party of...
two Level 6 characters, one Level 5 and one Level 4. We should have gotten wrecked (and we nearly did). But somehow, we managed to contain one side with our frontline and... well, you get the idea. We even managed to win without anybody going KO or expending all our resources.

3d8 damage procing on even 4-5 creatures every single turn is easily more damage than anyone else can contribute, and Dodging so that I can maintain that damage has been shown to be the most advantageous thing I can do. Throw like, a Sanctuary spell (non-concentration) on top of that, and hitting my cleric with attacks is almost just not going to happen.

Now, in many hard fights (which are most fights), I end up abusing the spell and every opportunity to maximize its effectiveness because if I don't (or if I lose the spell early or fail to get it off, etc), frankly, we're going to get TPKed. Meanwhile the GM laments quietly about how we just seem to steamroll every battle we come across.

What do you folks make of this? Did I create this situation by going too trigger-happy with this spell, or did the GM create it by making most fights tactically straightforward encounters against melee brutes, or perhaps a bit of both? My concern lies in what's going to happen if I change characters, don't get the spell off for some reason, or even if a session goes by that I'm not in.

And what experiences do you have with the Spirit Guardians spell?

[rudy]

It is most definitely a very powerful and versatile spell. A quick clarification, though: you keep saying 3d8. Your DM *is* remembering to give the baddies their saving throws, though, right?

Second, you should only be able to use Death Touch once (or twice if you are level 6+) per rest, so that's not an infinite resource.

Really your DM needs to throw some reflex save spell damage at you, specifically.

[Giant2005]

I'd be more concerned about how adversarial your DM sounds. It sounds like he desperately wants to kill you guys and that never ends well.
As for Spirit Guardians itself, for me it is usually a good spell to be using but I rarely get the sort of mileage that you are getting out of it. Our encounters tend to be a fair bit smaller due to my DM being less willing to deal with so many NPCs simultaneously.

[Alejandro]

It sounds like your GM just needs to use difficult terrain and enemies with ranged weapons.

[Isidorios]

The GM must have decided he'd had it with my ****, because as soon as the damage ticked on a group of ghouls, every single foe on the battlefield made it their sole purpose to destroy me.

Yes, intelligent enemies would no doubt concentrate their attacks on the shimmering fountain of continual damage. That just makes sense. If you had a ranger laying down AOE magic arrow attacks on them, they'd be wise to do the same thing. It's what your party would be wise to do against a mixed group of enemies, and one of them is raining down continual hurt on the group. I fail to see the "persecution" here.


By now, the GM has come to count on the fact that I will pop Spirit Guardians on difficult fights, so he's made the fights even harder. Yesterday, we fought 8 CR 2 Grells with our humble party of...
two Level 6 characters, one Level 5 and one Level 4. We should have gotten wrecked (and we nearly did). But somehow, we managed to contain one side with our frontline and... well, you get the idea. We even managed to win without anybody going KO or expending all our resources.

Yes, it's the DMs job to balance difficult fights so that they are "difficult". You got the thrill of clobbering two Grells, without much damage to you at all, sounds like. You simply had to fight tactically and got the thrill of killing two higher-level monsters for good XP.
I fail to see the problem here. Sounds like a good DM, maybe you just have a thin skin.

[MrStabby]

It is a great spell and it is doubly great if you play smart but it isn't usually this problematic.

There are a few things that might be happening by the sound of things:

1) Not up against casters/defensive magic. Dispel magic, counterspell etc. will often just stop the spell.
2) Enforcing concentration saves. Sure, the dodge action will stop you being hit in melee but a fireball will still force a save
3) Not matching the expected number of encounters per day. At six to eight encounters per day, as recommended, you can't solve all of them with spirit guardians.
4) no attempt at battlefield control on the enemies part. If you are never within 15ft of an enemy then the spell is pretty useless.
5) Giving no enemies ranged options. Even something simple like saying that a bunch of orcs each caries two javelins in addition to an axe can make a big difference.


If the DM is new, they will find ways to make encounters work in time, and to do so without specifically targeting the spell. Also bear in mind that this is your highest level spell at level 6 so it should be powerful.

[Isidorios]

I like this Mr Stabby guy, his squiddy head is on straight.

[Finieous]

It's a great spell! As DM, I especially love multiple priests creating Venn diagrams of death.

[Foxhound438]

It is a great spell and it is doubly great if you play smart but it isn't usually this problematic.

There are a few things that might be happening by the sound of things:

1) Not up against casters/defensive magic. Dispel magic, counterspell etc. will often just stop the spell.
2) Enforcing concentration saves. Sure, the dodge action will stop you being hit in melee but a fireball will still force a save
3) Not matching the expected number of encounters per day. At six to eight encounters per day, as recommended, you can't solve all of them with spirit guardians.
4) no attempt at battlefield control on the enemies part. If you are never within 15ft of an enemy then the spell is pretty useless.
5) Giving no enemies ranged options. Even something simple like saying that a bunch of orcs each caries two javelins in addition to an axe can make a big difference.


If the DM is new, they will find ways to make encounters work in time, and to do so without specifically targeting the spell. Also bear in mind that this is your highest level spell at level 6 so it should be powerful.

pretty much all of this. Particularly in the case of concentration checks.

Compared to other 3rd level spells, it's pretty far up there in power level, but case-by-case it'll end up being sometimes better and sometimes worse than something like fireball or haste.

Also, killing 8 CR 2 enemies with a party of 6, 6, 5, 4 is not all that impressive, especially considering the variance seen between creatures of the same CR.

[Slipperychicken]

The GM must have decided he'd had it with my ****, because as soon as the damage ticked on a group of ghouls, every single foe on the battlefield made it their sole purpose to destroy me. I took the Dodge action, becoming infeasible to hit with 20 AC. With Spiritual Weapon and Death Touch channeling through it, I could even make attacks of appreciable damage while Dodging every turn. Attacking me became as much a tactical error as attacking anyone else, and in a way, drawing their attention resulted in even more battlefield control.


My DM did the same thing when I played a cleric. I think it's more an attempt to break concentration on such a terrifying spell.


If you think about it, spirit guardians really does make you the scariest thing in the room. You stand at the center of a 30 foot diameter tornado of furious howling ghosts that annihilate anyone that dares get near it.

[NNescio]

My DM did the same thing when I played a cleric. I think it's more an attempt to break concentration on such a terrifying spell.


If you think about it, spirit guardians really does make you the scariest thing in the room. You stand at the center of a 30 foot diameter tornado of furious howling ghosts that annihilate anyone that dares get near it.

My DM did something similar, siccing more (low CR and conveniently melee-based) undead at me "because they can detect my holy energies and deem them to be the strongest threat".

I just slapped Sanctuary on top of Dodge to blinktank them.

He decided to dogpile me with more undead.

I dusted half of the weaker ones with a well-placed Turn Undead and sent half of the higher CR ones fleeing (proccing Spirit Guardians again).

[Mandragola]

To be honest I do think Spirit Guardians is too powerful. It does trivialise a lot of monsters, essentially thinning down the MM from a DM's perspective. There are quite a lot of monsters that there's no point using.

Our first experience of the spell as a group was actually when a hostile cleric used it on us in HoTDQ. To be fair, that adventure has a lot of horribly unbalanced encounters. But there we were fighting the dragonborn fighter guy, when his friend the level 5 cleric turned up. She walked along and just erased our party like we were nothing, passing a couple of concentration checks along the way. TPK.

Our new party is now level 11 and features a spirit guardians specialist. He went war cleric 5 to start and has now added 6 EK fighter levels. He's picked up warcaster and (I think) resilient constitution along the way. In hard fights he sticks up spirit guardians, action surges to dodge, then uses his EK shield spells to protect him if anything does get close. I don't remember the last time he failed concentration - maybe this one time we got hit by a cone of cold.

And even at level 11, spirit guardians is still a good option. The 3rd level slot isn't so important at high levels. It might be interesting to try encounters against hordes of stuff, but we simply can't because there'd be no point.

Oh and check the duration. This isn't a single-encounter spell. In dungeons you can often keep it running across encounters. It's a good enough spell that you'll actually roll on to keep it going, then go back to loot at the end. That's the real difference with this and something like a fireball.

[Maxilian]

It's a great spell! As DM, I especially love multiple priests creating Venn diagrams of death.

Thanks, now i know what's going to be my next players encounter :D

[Dalebert]

15 ft radius ain't much. You do have to get fairly close to harm things and that's always enough that if a tank has engaged something, it can go around him and reach you without provoking AoO. And of course there are ranged attacks. It helps a lot to have help concentrating, obviously.

That said, it's great when used smartly. We used it as a check for hidden threats as we were exploring a bunch of tombs. We'd open the tomb with my character nearby and see what started burning. We worked quickly and decided not to waste any time searching until after so we could milk the 10 min duration.

It's actually not a lot of damage and creatures don't take it until their turn. We've had fights where the things are dead before it can hurt them, either because I couldn't close fast enough or simply because the others killed it first. The point is it's some automatic radiant which is fantastic when you desperately NEED to do radiant every round, like vampires and their spawn. Those things regeneration like crazy if they don't continually take radiant damage somehow.

[RulesJD]

*sigh*

This is a case of a hugely powerful spell meeting a DM that has no idea how the mechanics of 5e works.


Oh, you're Dodging to avoid getting hit?

That's cool, make 5+ contested Athletics or Acrobatics checks. Fail 1 = you're Grappled, which means your Speed = 0, which means you aren't Dodging anymore. Proceed to beat on Cleric until Concentration is broken.

Alternatively, enemy spellcaster with 1 Dispel Magic prepared. Poof, bye Spirit Guardians. Or any Con/Int/Dex saves (Clerics weak in those) that does damage (Concentration) or imparts the Incapacitated/Paralyzed/Stunned/whatever condition that automatically breaks Concentration.




Yes, SG is tremendously powerful and I love the spell. It's one of the best spells in 5e. But all it requires is a semi-intelligent DM and it quickly comes back in-line.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

I absolutely love the Nature Cleric...

Round 1
Action: Spirit Guardians
Bonus Action: None

Round 2
Action: Thorn Whip
Bonus Action: Sanctuary


The Spirit Guardians don't trigger the clause in Sanctuary as I'm not casting a spell or attacking a creature while under the effects of Sanctuary.

Round 3+
Action: Help

[Dalebert]

The Spirit Guardians don't trigger the clause in Sanctuary as I'm not casting a spell or attacking a creature while under the effects of Sanctuary.

Round 3+
Action: Help

Seems to work. Get the Healer feat and you're an amazing support character. Thanks for this idea. I was wanting ways to help maintain concentration while this spell is going!

I work with a similar idea with my monklock. I cast a Silent Image of myself, then use shadow monk ability to turn invisible (no concentration). Now I can control the Silent Image with an action, no problem. It's effectively displacement. I send it ahead of me when I'm scouting so monsters attack it and reveal themselves to me.

[Vogonjeltz]

I'd be more concerned about how adversarial your DM sounds. It sounds like he desperately wants to kill you guys and that never ends well.
As for Spirit Guardians itself, for me it is usually a good spell to be using but I rarely get the sort of mileage that you are getting out of it. Our encounters tend to be a fair bit smaller due to my DM being less willing to deal with so many NPCs simultaneously.

Also concerned about that; if your DM wants to present a variety of challenges, maybe they should consider throwing spell casters at you as well (a dispel magic or counterspell at the right time can really upend a strategy as you've outlined, as could anything that forces concentration saves).

[MrStabby]

I absolutely love the Nature Cleric...

Round 1
Action: Spirit Guardians
Bonus Action: None

Round 2
Action: Thorn Whip
Bonus Action: Sanctuary


The Spirit Guardians don't trigger the clause in Sanctuary as I'm not casting a spell or attacking a creature while under the effects of Sanctuary.

Round 3+
Action: Help

I have been using a similar trick with call lightening. Sitting there untouched whilst blasting away is pretty cool. Add in some bonus action healing words and you can really be a pain.

[Foxhound438]

Oh, you're Dodging to avoid getting hit?

That's cool, make 5+ contested Athletics or Acrobatics checks. Fail 1 = you're Grappled, which means your Speed = 0, which means you aren't Dodging anymore. Proceed to beat on Cleric until Concentration is broken.


Man, I consider myself a rules junkie and even I didn't know that one off hand.

good to know.

[Dalebert]

It's true that smart, or even not completely stupid enemies will tend to want to target the caster. It's easy to say "This is what they would do." The reality is generally more complicated. How many opportunity attacks do they have to eat to get to him? Or will they have to take the disengage action to reach him and not start attacking until next round? Will they be dead by then now that they've immersed themselves inside enemy lines? Will they use possibly far less efficient ranged attacks and possibly at disadvantage because the party's meleers have closed? How often do enemies have a caster and if so, do they even have Dispel Magic? What powerful attack spell are they giving up to dispel it? Heck, it's practically acting as a Counterspell if that's the case, using up a spell and action of the enemy--still a win-win.

Point is it's very contextual. Remember that enemies have to make all the same tough choices and pay all the same opportunity costs that PCs do.

It's not broken. It's just a good spell. I've had very mixed results with it depending on context and I've had plenty of battles in which I realized it was just not going to be very helpful for some reason or other.

[Mellack]

Oh, you're Dodging to avoid getting hit?

That's cool, make 5+ contested Athletics or Acrobatics checks. Fail 1 = you're Grappled, which means your Speed = 0, which means you aren't Dodging anymore. Proceed to beat on Cleric until Concentration is broken.


.


I am AFB right now, but where does it say Dodge requires a movement speed? I thought that it did not cause you to leave your square.

[Dalebert]

I am AFB right now, but where does it say Dodge requires a movement speed? I thought that it did not cause you to leave your square.

I wasn't aware of such a rule either, i.e. if your speed is 0 you can't dodge. I'm sure we will get a reference for it. I'm picturing the gang knife fights where they tie their left hands together. Seems like they manage to dodge around quite a bit.

[Foxhound438]

I am AFB right now, but where does it say Dodge requires a movement speed? I thought that it did not cause you to leave your square.

right under the dodge action, "you lose this benefit if you're incapacitated or your speed becomes 0"

[Finieous]

I am AFB right now, but where does it say Dodge requires a movement speed? I thought that it did not cause you to leave your square.

SRD page 93. You lose the benefit if you're incapacitated or your speed drops to 0.

[Mellack]

SRD page 93. You lose the benefit if you're incapacitated or your speed drops to 0.

Cool, thanks.

[Sooth]

Yes, intelligent enemies would no doubt concentrate their attacks on the shimmering fountain of continual damage. That just makes sense. If you had a ranger laying down AOE magic arrow attacks on them, they'd be wise to do the same thing. It's what your party would be wise to do against a mixed group of enemies, and one of them is raining down continual hurt on the group. I fail to see the "persecution" here.

Yes, it's the DMs job to balance difficult fights so that they are "difficult". You got the thrill of clobbering two Grells, without much damage to you at all, sounds like. You simply had to fight tactically and got the thrill of killing two higher-level monsters for good XP.
I fail to see the problem here. Sounds like a good DM, maybe you just have a thin skin.

I appreciate the candid response but whoah, man. When I said "tired of my ****", I was just being cheeky. I'm actually having a tremendous amount of fun in the game, challenges and all, and under no circumstance do I feel persecuted. (I'm not even sure why that word is in quotes; I didn't use it.) Perhaps I failed to convey that and came off as sounding like a victim instead, and my bad for doing so, but that sort of response seems unnecessary.

I'm concerned about what's going to happen in the event of A, B, or C --- because the GM is, according to their own model, going to run these same adventuring locales for different parties. It's West Marches, and the GM has specifically made the expectation that if 4 *other* PCs go into the same area with a different party make-up, they are also going to encounter eight Challenge Rating 2 Grells or an equivalent fight. So I'm wondering if the perfect storm of my optimizing Spirit Guardians + the GM designing encounters based off of our steamrolling encounters, is going to be detrimental to the game at some point, and that it's a cycle that sort of feeds into itself.

So far as encounter design goes, I get it. I'd make fights hard for my party, too. I'm interested in knowing if people think that Spirit Guardians is an imbalancing factor here. Again, perhaps I should have prefaced how "West Marches" changes the expectations a little, and not doing so may have resulted in this miscommunication.


It is a great spell and it is doubly great if you play smart but it isn't usually this problematic.

There are a few things that might be happening by the sound of things:

1) Not up against casters/defensive magic. Dispel magic, counterspell etc. will often just stop the spell.
2) Enforcing concentration saves. Sure, the dodge action will stop you being hit in melee but a fireball will still force a save
3) Not matching the expected number of encounters per day. At six to eight encounters per day, as recommended, you can't solve all of them with spirit guardians.
4) no attempt at battlefield control on the enemies part. If you are never within 15ft of an enemy then the spell is pretty useless.
5) Giving no enemies ranged options. Even something simple like saying that a bunch of orcs each caries two javelins in addition to an axe can make a big difference.

If the DM is new, they will find ways to make encounters work in time, and to do so without specifically targeting the spell. Also bear in mind that this is your highest level spell at level 6 so it should be powerful.

There are a lot of similar and good responses here but I chose to quote this one for how comprehensive it was.

Yes, Concentration is a big issue. The reason I Dodge is because it seems to me that keeping the spell up is more decisive toward our party's victory than anything else I could do with my regular action. If the GM found some way to damage me and force Concentration Dodge or no Dodge, it would pretty much end the effectiveness of things, whether the spell is overpowered or not.

EDIT: The encounters thing is significant as well. The GM may have boxed themselves into a corner in that regard, because he wants every session to end with our return to town. So we will almost never have more encounters in an adventuring week than we will be able to cram into a single 3-5 hour session. He also uses the variant where Long Rests take 24 hours, so those at least only happen when we get back to town.



Also, killing 8 CR 2 enemies with a party of 6, 6, 5, 4 is not all that impressive, especially considering the variance seen between creatures of the same CR.

Ah man, and here I was under the impression we had attained a momentous victory :P Good to know.

[Sooth]

It's true that smart, or even not completely stupid enemies will tend to want to target the caster. It's easy to say "This is what they would do." The reality is generally more complicated. How many opportunity attacks do they have to eat to get to him? Or will they have to take the disengage action to reach him and not start attacking until next round? Will they be dead by then now that they've immersed themselves inside enemy lines? Will they use possibly far less efficient ranged attacks and possibly at disadvantage because the party's meleers have closed? How often do enemies have a caster and if so, do they even have Dispel Magic? What powerful attack spell are they giving up to dispel it? Heck, it's practically acting as a Counterspell if that's the case, using up a spell and action of the enemy--still a win-win.

Yep, I think it makes sense that I'd get focused from an IC perspective. Even unintelligent monsters can tell the difference between two big dumb fighters with polearms and one obvious magic-person. I am the only primary caster in the entire extended group (no Wizards, Druids, or other Clerics to be found), and it doesn't help that everything about my character's aesthetic screams "evil death priest."

From a tactical perspective, it actually seems to lopside the fight in our favor. The ghouls *did* have to get through two Fighters, and eat opportunity attacks, and they stood an infeasible chance of hitting me anyway. They completely avoided squishier characters, and, in short, I was Tanking successfully. Given the monsters' limited tactical options, I see them as being in a lose lose situation, whether they focused me or not.

Dispel Magic though? Counterspells? If only. I *wish* we would run into enemy spellcasters. Would be quite interesting.