Are enchanters gimped in this edition like previous ones?

[Heavenblade]

In previous editions, it was TOUGH to be an enchanted. The moment you passed the lowest levels, there were more monsters immune to your mind whammie than you could shake your gold gilded stick at! (Or at least, more than you could ask your mind controlled servant to shake said stick at)


Recent experience at a one shot made me want to play a polite fey courtier of some sort - pact of the chain feylock with a spritw as "emotion spy", mask of many faces+misty visions+beguiling influence invocations, and probably the ones that let me speak with dead people and animals too.
Focusing exclusively on enchantment spells for my pact magic.


Would that work in an actual game? Or would there still be a ton of monsters straight up immune to this kind of spells/skills?

[Deathtongue]

Ehhhhh.

On one hand, a lot fewer monsters have blanket immunity to charm. It's still fairly common, but 5E D&D doesn't go nuts with it like 3E did. It's slightly more prevalent than in 4E D&D.

On the other hand, Enchantment is still probably a questionable school as your go-to, for two reasons. The first is that Magic Resistance is a very common trait. The second is that a lot of monsters CR5 and have WIS saving throw proficiency. Every proficiency bump a monster gets another saving throw proficiency, and by CR9 a lot of those are going to be WIS. Most of the good Enchantment attack spells run on WIS and there aren't a lot of Enchantment buffs.

The school still has some bangers in it like Mind Thrust, Suggestion, Charm Monster, and Mass Suggestion. And a lot of 'crush the minds of other creatures' spells reside in other schools, like Phantasmal Force and Fear and Hypnotic Pattern. And the School of Enchantment subclass is comfortably mid-tier in utility.

The upshot is that you can play a lowercase-e enchanter quite readily in 5E D&D if you're willing to be flexible with your definition of enchanter. A capital-E Enchanter is much dicier.

[Xervous]

GM favor is still a factor in determining how far you can go with various schemes so I’d say not a ton has changed. Hypothetical ways exist to break stuff, but you only get to work with what you’re given.

[firelistener]

Short answer, yes. Long answer, no but they're not amazing either.

First, spells are bound to specific classes now instead of just being Arcane/Divine in 5e (like 4e, if you're already familiar with it). I mention this because when you say "enchanter", that is usually going to mean a Wizard with the "School of Enchantment" subclass. This isn't a new thing, but the new 5e part is what being an "Enchanter" means versus being some other class and using Enchantment spells. Enchanters no longer have to give up a school as part of their specialization, and the subclasses mostly just give you fun bonus features to boost the school you chose. The enchanter's Hypnotic Gaze is a pretty good one, although it requires being in melee range. When you have Shield prepared, that can be well worth the risk to incapacitate an enemy.

You mentioned feylocks, so I'll refocus there for the rest of my answer. Warlocks don't get as many spell slots as Wizards, and in 5e they also don't have access to as many spells because of the different class spell lists. Because of this, you'll find yourself relying more on weapons or cantrips, which can be frustrating if you're going for more of a caster feel. However, you get those slots back on a short rest so you don't need to worry about spamming high-risk spells in combat.

Overall, I would say that enchantment in general still isn't great. It's difficult to reliably get things to fail the saving throws, lower level spells often wear off to let the target know you beguiled them, and a good chunk of monsters are immune to Fear or Charm. That last one is the main reason that going for pure damage is pretty much always going to be far superior if you just compute it by the numbers. However, there are enough good features to supplement your enchantments that it will always mean, in 5e, that you aren't completely useless.

[MaxWilson]

Would that work in an actual game? Or would there still be a ton of monsters straight up immune to this kind of spells/skills?

A lot of monsters are immune (maybe as much as 30% at high levels?) but even more are not. You may want to play around with these graphs: https://maxwilson.github.io/Simple-SavingThrowGraphsFor5E/

Just choose the ability score your spell works against (probably Wis, sometimes Cha or Int) and then under Effects choose Charmed to exclude monsters who are immune to charm spells.

https://i.postimg.cc/T1qKV89y/Capture.png (https://postimg.cc/RJhCmD29)

When you do this you'll see the average effectiveness tick down for the immune monsters, but there's still tons of monsters that aren't. The real question is whether your DM is the type to get upset when you Charm Monster/Suggestion a bad guy into joining your team and fighting the other bad guys with you, or if he just shrugs and plays it out. If the DM views his encounter as a series of tactical puzzles they're more likely to get upset when you use one puzzle to beat the following puzzles, but if the DM views the adventure as a connected whole there's less likely to be a problem. Sometimes this divide is referred to as Combat As Sport vs. Combat As War. ("All's fair in love and war.")

[sophontteks]

In previous editions, it was TOUGH to be an enchanted. The moment you passed the lowest levels, there were more monsters immune to your mind whammie than you could shake your gold gilded stick at! (Or at least, more than you could ask your mind controlled servant to shake said stick at)


Recent experience at a one shot made me want to play a polite fey courtier of some sort - pact of the chain feylock with a spritw as "emotion spy", mask of many faces+misty visions+beguiling influence invocations, and probably the ones that let me speak with dead people and animals too.
Focusing exclusively on enchantment spells for my pact magic.


Would that work in an actual game? Or would there still be a ton of monsters straight up immune to this kind of spells/skills?
Its stronger then it's ever been. I recommend you pick up actor fear and take a imp familiar to help scout disguises.

Glamour bards are also ridiculously strong enchangers.

[Chugger]

I think it very much depends on your DM and the style of campaign. You can in theory get away with a lot of enchanting of NPCs who otherwise would have been in your way - make them help you - and they don't remember you charmed or enchanted them. Would the DM let you charm or enchant a somewhat useful or even powerful NPC or monster and get them to fight for your party? That would make enchanter pretty good. Will the DM fight you at ever turn in every possible way? That would be a nightmare.

They get a low level, short-range mesmerize ability that's actually very useful at the low levels, not so much in the mid-levels on. You stare at a creature and try to hypnotize it, and if it fails you can round after round use your action to maintain the hypnosis - and your victim just stands there incapacitated.

So let's say party is under lvl 5 and fighting 2 wererats - party has some silver weapons - and they are focused on rat A. You are out of slots. Normally you'd only be able to firebolt, but you can step up and try to hypno-gaze it - it fails ST - you have removed it from combat. Party can finish off rat A, then everyone kills rat B. The main problem, obviously, is that this robs your action - unlike using a spell to control - but it is a nice option.

The level 6 ability is meh - I'd much rather Shield and have high AC for the next turn.

Lvl 10 is okay - double enchantments - it's not bad.

Lvl 14 is either great, if DM will allow you to be creative - or garbage.

The thing is, you could be an illusionist and make your illusions real by lvl 14. You could be a Diviner and cause things to auto-fail their ST - guaranteed banishment, say, unless it has Legendary saves. You could drop fireballs right on the party as they're swarmed by monsters but only hurt the monsters - evoker. War Wiz has a big initiative boost and can add +4 to a ST he thinks he's just failed and try to pass it. Bladesinger is ridiculously good - I wouldn't melee - I'd just use it for the defensive stuff - the great ac - great chance to save on concentration STs - and then just be a wiz. So unless you have a great plan for charming minions and being amazing - and DM will allow it - I'd be wary of enchanter. For a short campaign it's not bad - being able to Hypno-Gaze at will is powerful at lower levels.

[Vogie]

Enchanters are only as gimped as the party-DM dynamic require.

For example, my parties would and will start every single fight with Hypnotic Pattern once they reach the appropriate level. Since it's merely available to all Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks, Wizards, ATs, EKs, and Redemption Paladins... there's usually two players that have access to it in my parties of 4-6 players. Thus, I personally have to design my encounters around that spell by either making waves of enemies or, more usually, creatures with immunity to charm (either by selection or by just giving them to it).

Note: this isn't a problem with 5e as a whole, nor enchanters, but rather the design decision of making Hypnotic Pattern a save & suck vs a dice-based effect as it was in previous editions, which was similar to 5e's Sleep or Color Spray.

That being said - if you are the SOLE source of enchantment in the party, and you're not making your DM crazy to the level I am, you should be fine.

[Petrocorus]

Now that i think about it, a good way to be an "enchanter" in 5E would be to actually be a Diviner focusing on enchantment spells and using portent to have the foes fail their saves.

You can also do this with a Sorcerer with Heightened Spell and Twinned Spell.


https://maxwilson.github.io/Simple-SavingThrowGraphsFor5E/

Just choose the ability score your spell works against (probably Wis, sometimes Cha or Int) and then under Effects choose Charmed to exclude monsters who are immune to charm spells.


This is properly amazing. I'm saving this link.

[Sigreid]

IMO the most powerful enchanter ability is the 14th level power(I think) to rewrite their memory of the time they were under the influence of your spell. Given a reasonable DM, and some patience and exposure you could build a network of "memories" over time and program them to believe what you want them to believe over time.

[Kurt Kurageous]

FWIW I agree Enchanter as a school is not a top choice.

I've had more luck using diviner and using low portent roll to guarantee the mind control thing works. There's nothing that can guarantee Enchanter that success with the same spells.

For this reason, I prefer low portent rolls to high ones. Yes, its harder with magic resistance, but the Diviner cancels the resistance with a low portent.

I feel that the Diviner is more powerful than the Enchanter for this reason.