Doomspeak

[Biggus]

Has the feat Doomspeak (Champions of Ruin p.20) ever been errata'd? As written, it has a save DC of 10 + character level + Cha modifier, and inflicts a -10 penalty to attack rolls, saves, ability checks, and skill checks for 1 round if you fail to save. As far as I can see, at high levels this basically makes it a win button if anyone else in the party has any save or die/suck spell or ability.

I'm fairly sure the "+ character level" part is a typo and should read "+ 1/2 character level" but even with that change, it's still a pretty awesome ability: high-level Bards have plenty of bardic music uses to spare and this allows them to be used as effectively a save-or-die.

There are some restrictions on it: it doesn't work on creatures which don't understand the language you're using, but as Tongues is a 2nd-level Bard spell with a long duration that means it only effectively excludes creatures which don't understand language at all.

Also, it seems pretty clear that it's a mind-affecting ability, but it's not listed as such.

Am I missing something here? Is this feat as overpowered as it seems? Do you allow at as written, and if not what changes to you make?

[Tvtyrant]

Has the feat Doomspeak (Champions of Ruin p.20) ever been errata'd? As written, it has a save DC of 10 + character level + Cha modifier, and inflicts a -10 penalty to attack rolls, saves, ability checks, and skill checks for 1 round if you fail to save. As far as I can see, at high levels this basically makes it a win button if anyone else in the party has any save or die/suck spell or ability.

I'm fairly sure the "+ character level" part is a typo and should read "+ 1/2 character level" but even with that change, it's still a pretty awesome ability: high-level Bards have plenty of bardic music uses to spare and this allows them to be used as effectively a save-or-die.

There are some restrictions on it: it doesn't work on creatures which don't understand the language you're using, but as Tongues is a 2nd-level Bard spell with a long duration that means it only effectively excludes creatures which don't understand language at all.

Also, it seems pretty clear that it's a mind-affecting ability, but it's not listed as such.

Am I missing something here? Is this feat as overpowered as it seems? Do you allow at as written, and if not what changes to you make?

It's not that amazing. It trades your action to make an enemy possibly more vulnerable to the next ability. Compare Stun Ray which works automatically, or any effect which just kills them.

It is a neat effect, but not broken at all.

[Piggy Knowles]

I also think the DC is a typo.

It's single target, has a save to negate and only lasts a round. It can certainly be a potent way to debuff foes before a save-or-die, but that means either coordinating between two party members and giving up your own action or taking two rounds to do anything.

If you fixed the DC to be 1/2 character level, putting it in line with pretty much every other similar ability, it remains very good but way less gamebreaking in my experience. It's a very good debuff, but short duration, single target, language dependent and Will negates all combine to keep it from getting overwhelming.

With the DC seriously out of line with typical saving throw progression, though, it really does just become a kill-shot.

[Biggus]

It's not that amazing. It trades your action to make an enemy possibly more vulnerable to the next ability. Compare Stun Ray which works automatically, or any effect which just kills them.

It is a neat effect, but not broken at all.

As written, at high levels very few creatures are going to make the save except on a natural 20, so it's more "almost certainly" than "possibly". And stun ray requires you to succeed on a ranged touch attack, so it's not true to say it works automatically.


I also think the DC is a typo.

It's single target, has a save to negate and only lasts a round. It can certainly be a potent way to debuff foes before a save-or-die, but that means either coordinating between two party members and giving up your own action or taking two rounds to do anything.

If you fixed the DC to be 1/2 character level, putting it in line with pretty much every other similar ability, it remains very good but way less gamebreaking in my experience. It's a very good debuff, but short duration, single target, language dependent and Will negates all combine to keep it from getting overwhelming.

With the DC seriously out of line with typical saving throw progression, though, it really does just become a kill-shot.

Agreed that it's not gamebreaking without the inflated DC. I'm struggling to think of anything else which inflicts such a large penalty not just to saves but several other things too though.

[Zaq]

It's a poor way of balancing and I don't think it's actually INTENDED to be a balance point, but I will point out that it's actually really obnoxious to take the feat as written, since bards don't get Intimidate in-class and few other classes give you a meaningful number of uses of bardic music per day.

I don't think WotC did that on purpose and, even if they did, "this feat has obnoxious prereqs but then is OP" is bad design anyway. But it is, perhaps, worth mentioning.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Regarding whether Doomspeak was intended to work like that, I'm inclined to say that yeah, Doomspeak's DC is not a typo and the one-two punch usage was probably what it was intended to do.

Compare Doomspeak with mind fog. Mind fog imposes a whopping -10 penalty to Will saves in a large area for a long time, and is obviously intended to be used to soften up enemies for later Will saves...but you practically never see anyone cast it, because if someone could fail the initial Will save against a 5th-level spell to make it harder for them to save against your dominate person (or whatever) in the next round, then they could have just straight-up failed the same save against the 5th-level dominate person in the first place.

Doomspeak, meanwhile, has a higher DC than any other effects so using it to soften up enemies for your other spells actually works. At 13th level, the first level at which a bard can take Doomspeak if they just sink cross-class skill points into Intimidate (and, coincidentally, the same level they get access to 5th-level spells like mind fog), the difference between Doomspeak's DC and a 5th-level spell's DC is 8 points, enough to make up the difference between a good save and a poor save and keep going. (You don't get a feat at 13th level, of course, but you can pick it up at 12th or earlier with a dip pretty easily.)

Looking at common foes around that level, the CR 13 Gelugon and CR 14 Nalfeshnee both have a +15 Will save; given a bard 13 with 22 Cha, either of the fiends would have only a 30% chance to fail a save against a 5th-level spell, but would have a 70% chance to fail a save against Doomspeak (and then an 80% chance to fail a save against a 5th-level spell, or a 90% chance to fail a save against a full caster PC's 7th-level spell, in the next round). Definitely a powerful option, but not necessarily something the designers would find unreasonable: Keeping in mind that the designers mostly balanced around wizards and clerics with core feats as the gold standard, a plain ol' wizard 13 with 22 Int could throw out two 7th-level spells and the fiends would have a 65% chance to fail at least one of them, which seems pretty comparable given the lack of feat investment needed for that.

And if the bard got Intimidate as a class skill early on and managed to pick up Doomspeak at 6th level? Well, that's a 4-point difference in save DC between Doomspeak and a 2nd-level spell, and a 6th-level wizard with the prereq-less Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus feats can reach the same numbers with his 3rd-level spells, again a pretty even comparison.


Regarding whether the feat is overpowered as actually played, though, it really depends. If the party mostly faces singular slightly-higher-level enemies, then it's definitely on the powerful end but the party already has a four (or more) to one turn advantage and Doomspeak isn't at all alone in its combo potential; if they mostly face large groups of even-level-or-slightly-below enemies, being able to easily take out just one enemy isn't much to write home about. In a high-op group, it's pretty sweet but isn't unique in its save-debuffing potential (a paladin of tyranny 4/hexblade 4/binder 3 only imposes a -6 penalty, but it comes online earlier and imposes its penalty at all times to multiple nearby enemies for free) and isn't the bard's only awesome trick (a DFI bard adding 8d6 to every melee attack made by the party is nothing to sneeze at). I'd rate it a highly-desirable option for high-level bards, but not enough of a must-have to warrant banning or nerfing.

[Biggus]

It's a poor way of balancing and I don't think it's actually INTENDED to be a balance point, but I will point out that it's actually really obnoxious to take the feat as written, since bards don't get Intimidate in-class and few other classes give you a meaningful number of uses of bardic music per day.

I don't think WotC did that on purpose and, even if they did, "this feat has obnoxious prereqs but then is OP" is bad design anyway. But it is, perhaps, worth mentioning.

That is a good point, I hadn't noticed that Bards don't get Intimidate. If it's intended to be a balancing point though, it is indeed poor as Doomspeak doesn't become seriously overpowered until high levels. It does mean they have to waste 16 skill points which is not trivial I guess.


Regarding whether Doomspeak was intended to work like that, I'm inclined to say that yeah, Doomspeak's DC is not a typo and the one-two punch usage was probably what it was intended to do.

Compare Doomspeak with mind fog. Mind fog imposes a whopping -10 penalty to Will saves in a large area for a long time, and is obviously intended to be used to soften up enemies for later Will saves...but you practically never see anyone cast it, because if someone could fail the initial Will save against a 5th-level spell to make it harder for them to save against your dominate person (or whatever) in the next round, then they could have just straight-up failed the same save against the 5th-level dominate person in the first place.

Doomspeak, meanwhile, has a higher DC than any other effects so using it to soften up enemies for your other spells actually works. At 13th level, the first level at which a bard can take Doomspeak if they just sink cross-class skill points into Intimidate (and, coincidentally, the same level they get access to 5th-level spells like mind fog), the difference between Doomspeak's DC and a 5th-level spell's DC is 8 points, enough to make up the difference between a good save and a poor save and keep going. (You don't get a feat at 13th level, of course, but you can pick it up at 12th or earlier with a dip pretty easily.)

Looking at common foes around that level, the CR 13 Gelugon and CR 14 Nalfeshnee both have a +15 Will save; given a bard 13 with 22 Cha, either of the fiends would have only a 30% chance to fail a save against a 5th-level spell, but would have a 70% chance to fail a save against Doomspeak (and then an 80% chance to fail a save against a 5th-level spell, or a 90% chance to fail a save against a full caster PC's 7th-level spell, in the next round). Definitely a powerful option, but not necessarily something the designers would find unreasonable: Keeping in mind that the designers mostly balanced around wizards and clerics with core feats as the gold standard, a plain ol' wizard 13 with 22 Int could throw out two 7th-level spells and the fiends would have a 65% chance to fail at least one of them, which seems pretty comparable given the lack of feat investment needed for that.

And if the bard got Intimidate as a class skill early on and managed to pick up Doomspeak at 6th level? Well, that's a 4-point difference in save DC between Doomspeak and a 2nd-level spell, and a 6th-level wizard with the prereq-less Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus feats can reach the same numbers with his 3rd-level spells, again a pretty even comparison.


Regarding whether the feat is overpowered as actually played, though, it really depends. If the party mostly faces singular slightly-higher-level enemies, then it's definitely on the powerful end but the party already has a four (or more) to one turn advantage and Doomspeak isn't at all alone in its combo potential; if they mostly face large groups of even-level-or-slightly-below enemies, being able to easily take out just one enemy isn't much to write home about. In a high-op group, it's pretty sweet but isn't unique in its save-debuffing potential (a paladin of tyranny 4/hexblade 4/binder 3 only imposes a -6 penalty, but it comes online earlier and imposes its penalty at all times to multiple nearby enemies for free) and isn't the bard's only awesome trick (a DFI bard adding 8d6 to every melee attack made by the party is nothing to sneeze at). I'd rate it a highly-desirable option for high-level bards, but not enough of a must-have to warrant banning or nerfing.

I did specify that it becomes overpowered at high levels, I was thinking levels 16+.

The difference with Mind Fog is that that only softens you up for the same kind of save it requires itself, whereas this is a Will save to avoid a -10 penalty to all saves, and most save-or-die/suck effects are Fort saves.

Fair point about it not being so useful against larger groups of roughly equal-CR enemies, in my experience quite a lot of encounters are either one or two monsters or have one antagonist who's clearly stronger than the others but that may not be the case for everyone.

[Zombimode]

Fair point about it not being so useful against larger groups of roughly equal-CR enemies, in my experience quite a lot of encounters are either one or two monsters or have one antagonist who's clearly stronger than the others but that may not be the case for everyone.

That may be true, but this would just be a case of bad/lazy GMing.

In general the game works MUCH better when the norm are group of mixed enemies instead of single entities.


Personally I don't see a problem with Doomspeak. It is not a generally available feat and comes with significant strings attached. It is one of the very few cases where the trope of "pledge yourself to dark forces for great power" actually works in D&D.

I'm also a fan of flashy abilities in contrast to marginal but "balanced" abilities. D&D is not a competetive multiplayer game, so balance is not a top priority in my book.

[zfs]

Regarding whether the feat is overpowered as actually played, though, it really depends. If the party mostly faces singular slightly-higher-level enemies, then it's definitely on the powerful end but the party already has a four (or more) to one turn advantage and Doomspeak isn't at all alone in its combo potential; if they mostly face large groups of even-level-or-slightly-below enemies, being able to easily take out just one enemy isn't much to write home about. In a high-op group, it's pretty sweet but isn't unique in its save-debuffing potential (a paladin of tyranny 4/hexblade 4/binder 3 only imposes a -6 penalty, but it comes online earlier and imposes its penalty at all times to multiple nearby enemies for free) and isn't the bard's only awesome trick (a DFI bard adding 8d6 to every melee attack made by the party is nothing to sneeze at). I'd rate it a highly-desirable option for high-level bards, but not enough of a must-have to warrant banning or nerfing.

Heck, make that character a Winter Unseelie Fey and they're likely matching that -10 at all times, though only to things within 5 feet. And once per day as a free action you can try to up it to -12 - yeah, Hexblade's Curse isn't very good, but it's much easier to hit things with it when you're already nuking their saves. It is, of course, DragMag content, and it's a cheddar-rich build.

Edit: I'm not sure that Unseelie Fey and Paladin of Tyranny stack - I believe both are morale penalties, on second look - but Blackguard gets a similar ability at Level 3 which is typeless. So it could potentially come online at Level 10, but you'll need some additional cheese of some sort for those 5 ranks in Hide.

[Biggus]

That may be true, but this would just be a case of bad/lazy GMing.

In general the game works MUCH better when the norm are group of mixed enemies instead of single entities.

If you prefer to fight entirely or almost entirely groups, fair enough, but in my experience that's not how the game is usually played. A fair few creatures have "solitary" listed under organisation, so I don't think that's how it's intended to be played either.


Personally I don't see a problem with Doomspeak. It is not a generally available feat and comes with significant strings attached. It is one of the very few cases where the trope of "pledge yourself to dark forces for great power" actually works in D&D.


What do you mean? It's not a vile feat or an initiate feat, as far as I can see any Bard can take it.


Heck, make that character a Winter Unseelie Fey and they're likely matching that -10 at all times, though only to things within 5 feet. And once per day as a free action you can try to up it to -12 - yeah, Hexblade's Curse isn't very good, but it's much easier to hit things with it when you're already nuking their saves. It is, of course, DragMag content, and it's a cheddar-rich build.


I'm not familiar with Winter Unseelie Fey, what issue of Dragon is that from?

[animewatcha]

dragon magazine compendium for the unseelie fey. One thing I always wondered, is doomspeak considered a bardic music for purposes like harmony/singing sword ( extends rounds and switches to new bardic music when you use another one )?

[SirNibbles]

If you prefer to fight entirely or almost entirely groups, fair enough, but in my experience that's not how the game is usually played. A fair few creatures have "solitary" listed under organisation, so I don't think that's how it's intended to be played either.



What do you mean? It's not a vile feat or an initiate feat, as far as I can see any Bard can take it.



I'm not familiar with Winter Unseelie Fey, what issue of Dragon is that from?

Dragon Magazine #304, page 66/Dragon Compendium Volume I, page 223. All Unseelie Fey are related to one of the seasons and gain a special power based on that.





"Winter Chill (Su): ...living, nonfey creatures within 5 feet of her... suffer a morale penalty on saves equal to the unseelie fey's Charisma bonus (minimum 1)."


Dragon Magazine #304, page 66/Dragon Compendium Volume I, page 223

[Biggus]

Dragon Magazine #304, page 66/Dragon Compendium Volume I, page 223. All Unseelie Fey are related to one of the seasons and gain a special power based on that.





"Winter Chill (Su): ...living, nonfey creatures within 5 feet of her... suffer a morale penalty on saves equal to the unseelie fey's Charisma bonus (minimum 1)."


Dragon Magazine #304, page 66/Dragon Compendium Volume I, page 223


Thank you. That penalty is uncapped? Yikes. I know its range is only 5 ft but still...

[Unavenger]

While we're counting other things that do this, there's a similar ability in the reversed version of mystic rampart, which allows no save at all but the penalty is only -5 and it requires you to be a high-level truenamer. Still, it's notable for the fact that it can be used as a swift action and is generally one of the better high-level utterances. You can even put it on multiple enemies by that point.

I don't think the ability (Doomspeak or RMR) is amazingly powerful, but it is pretty decent.

[zfs]

It's worth nothing that I'm pretty sure the Doomspeak -10 is untyped, so there's no reason it wouldn't stack with the whole "uber debuffer" build. It actually just makes it easier to apply - Doomspeak already has a really high DC, how many enemies are going to make it with a -10 to their saves already? So for one turn, something next to your Unseelie Fey has a -20 or so to saves.

[Hiro Quester]

Since Bards don't get intimidate, you really can't take it as a feat until high levels (15+).

I played a bard with it, and used it to good effect when combined with Mind Fog (using a belt of battle or rod of quicken spell to get an extra spell off that round).

[SirNibbles]

Since Bards don't get intimidate, you really can't take it as a feat until high levels (15+).

I played a bard with it, and used it to good effect when combined with Mind Fog (using a belt of battle or rod of quicken spell to get an extra spell off that round).

Or you can burn a feat to add Intimidate to your class skills, allowing you to take Doomspeak at 6th level.

__

The biggest shortcoming of the feat is probably the fact that the enemy needs to 'hear and comprehend' you, meaning you'll need to speak a language they know.