Is spell dmg worth at high levels?

[Selion]

I like 5e, maybe I like it more than any other d20 system I played (with pathfinder 1e as a close second), but i think something is off in characters' DPR progression in respect to their HP, and wizards are not exceptions

Let's take as an example the iconic fireball. It comes in line at 5th level with 8 dice of dmg, when you upcast it at higher level you increase by 1 die per spell-level, so 1 die every 2 character levels, while the hp progression increases by 1 die per character level.
Clearly fireball is not the best spell to upcast, but higher level spells dmg is somewhat close to that of a fireball upcast to that level, with a few notable exceptions, like disintegrate and animate objects (which is not direct dmg btw)
Things change dramatically only with 9th level spells: prismatic wall, blade of disaster and meteor swarm

You can still increase your dps combining different effects, like using bigby hand or combining blasts with summoning, but still, is there any reason to stick with damage dealing spells in tier 3 adventures?

[LudicSavant]

You can still increase your dps combining different effects, like using bigby hand or combining blasts with summoning, but still, is there any reason to stick with damage dealing spells in tier 3 adventures?

A recent and relevant thread:
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?630103-How-to-make-a-mailman

Anyways, AoE damage spells are amazing... when you're hitting multiple targets. If you want a spellcaster to be good at single target damage, then you're going to want things like synergistic Magic Missile or Scorching Ray combos, or DoTs, or summons, or various other concentration effects (like Bigby's or Melf's), or retributive effects (like AoA or Hellish Rebuke), or Crown of Stars, or gish buff combos, or action economy boosters, or some combination thereof. Helps to have certain subclasses, too.

There's a lot of potential there, it's just not quite as obvious as just casting Fireball.

[Man_Over_Game]

It's worth noting that a Fireball without upcasting deals an average of 21 damage per target when assuming a 50% hit chance.

Compare that to a Barbarian with a 2d6 weapon, 2 attacks, +5 mod, +3 Rage bonus, no feats, he's dealing 15 damage on a single target when assuming a 50% hit chance.

Fireball hits an 8x8 square on your map.

I think you'll be fine.

[Hael]

A recent and relevant thread:
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?630103-How-to-make-a-mailman


The 3 tiny servant ba magic stone spam starts adding up when you combine it with spells like animate object. Classes like the chronurgist can have summon demon up simultaneously as well (some of which have darkness spell).. since tiny servant and the animate objects all have blindsight, the dpr starts really ramping up over long fights.

[Witty Username]

Depends on the high levels. Meteor swarm, hard yes. I do think there is a bit of a gap to bridge, about 6-8th level where it gets fuzzy but there is still good to be had.
Fireball, good. Freezing sphere, good. Scnaptic static, also good. Depends a bit on what you mean by high level I guess.

[MrStabby]

I like 5e, maybe I like it more than any other d20 system I played (with pathfinder 1e as a close second), but i think something is off in characters' DPR progression in respect to their HP, and wizards are not exceptions

Let's take as an example the iconic fireball. It comes in line at 5th level with 8 dice of dmg, when you upcast it at higher level you increase by 1 die per spell-level, so 1 die every 2 character levels, while the hp progression increases by 1 die per character level.
Clearly fireball is not the best spell to upcast, but higher level spells dmg is somewhat close to that of a fireball upcast to that level, with a few notable exceptions, like disintegrate and animate objects (which is not direct dmg btw)
Things change dramatically only with 9th level spells: prismatic wall, blade of disaster and meteor swarm

You can still increase your dps combining different effects, like using bigby hand or combining blasts with summoning, but still, is there any reason to stick with damage dealing spells in tier 3 adventures?

So at 5th level when fireball comes on line, how many ogres will there be in an ogre encounter and how many will fit inside the fireball radius? At 14th level how many ogres will there be in an ogre encounter and how many will fit into its radius?

Encounters scale by HP increase but it isn't just each creature has more HP; your XP budget for a fight can also include more bodies. As you get more bodies you are more likely to get more enemies you can catch inside an area of effect spell. So options like scorching ray that are single target do drop off a bit (a lot) but spells like fireball don't in the same way. They get more situational - they are the answer to a lower proportion of fights each day for sure, and they way you use them changes: you still probably want them as 3rd level spells when you are unwilling to commithigher level resources rather than you primarily being a damage dealer as a character... but I think that fireball stays good a lot longer than it is sometimes given credit for.

[MaxWilson]

So at 5th level when fireball comes on line, how many ogres will there be in an ogre encounter and how many will fit inside the fireball radius? At 14th level how many ogres will there be in an ogre encounter and how many will fit into its radius?

Encounters scale by HP increase but it isn't just each creature has more HP; your XP budget for a fight can also include more bodies. As you get more bodies you are more likely to get more enemies you can catch inside an area of effect spell. So options like scorching ray that are single target do drop off a bit (a lot) but spells like fireball don't in the same way. They get more situational - they are the answer to a lower proportion of fights each day for sure, and they way you use them changes: you still probably want them as 3rd level spells when you are unwilling to commithigher level resources rather than you primarily being a damage dealer as a character... but I think that fireball stays good a lot longer than it is sometimes given credit for.

Agreed. I see people scoffing at Elemonk's 2 Fireballs power short rest at level 11 (and three at 12) by noting that the wizard has been doing that since level 5. I mean, yes, that's true, and one Fireball from a level 5 wizard will inflict 140ish damage on a dozen CR 1/2 orcs... but it won't do much at all to a dozen CR 4 Ettins. Nor will an upcast Fireball VII. At higher levels, more Fireballs are needed.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Another consideration: most of the non damage spell things you can do are concentration. So unless you gosh, you're going to have a fair amount of time spent with a concentration spell up and not all that much you can do that isn't some form of damage.

Casters do area blasting and control better than martials. In return, their default single target damage (unless specially built for) isn't as impressive. 5e is built around preferring more, weaker monsters to fewer, bigger ones.

[MaxWilson]

Another consideration: most of the non damage spell things you can do are concentration. So unless you gosh, you're going to have a fair amount of time spent with a concentration spell up and not all that much you can do that isn't some form of damage.

Casters do area blasting and control better than martials. In return, their default single target damage (unless specially built for) isn't as impressive. 5e is built around preferring more, weaker monsters to fewer, bigger ones.

I like to throw nets as a Skulker Goblin Hexvoker. Due to how the rules are written, being unseen is one of the few ways to avoid disadvantage with nets (you have disadvantage on ranged attacks if a hostile non-incapacitated creature THAT CAN SEE YOU is within 5', but being hidden is being unseen and unheard) and can even theoretically let you gain advantage on them. It's not necessarily better than cantrips, but sometimes it's more party-friendly because you're granting others advantage AND denying the enemy actions, and it's nice to have the option.

Another non-concentration thing you can do is control Unseen Servants, Tiny Servants, and animated undead. Have them drop caltrops, Shove enemies prone, grapple, attack, Dodge and threaten opportunity attacks, and / or just get in the way of Large monsters (occupy chokepoints, prevent them from getting within 5' of PCs you want to protect).

I heartily second the recommendation to use large numbers of "weaker" monsters frequently.

[Kane0]

Area blasts are generally pretty good, single target blasts tends to fall off sharply as you gain spell levels unless you’re specifically looking to improve them.

[SharkForce]

I mean, if you're talking about single-target damage, I'm not sure spell damage is worth it at lower levels either, as a rule. I mean, there are exceptions (warlocks for example, and certain magic missile builds that combine a lot of stuff to make it worthwhile). for the most part, spellcasters aren't really great at single-target damage, and I suspect that is largely by design.

[LudicSavant]

Good single target damage for casters tends to come from buffs (like Hex, Holy Weapon, etc), minionmancy (like familiars or Summon Celestial, Animate Objects, Animate Dead, etc), action economy efficiency (like Crown of Stars, Spiritual Weapon, Concentration spells, Simulacrum, etc), combos with things that can hit multiple times (like Create Bonfire, Magic Missile, Scorching Ray, Cloud of Daggers, Sickening Radiance, Wall of Ice, Spirit Guardians, etc), and/or features that enhance spell damage (like Empowered Evocation, Agonizing Blast, Empowered Spell, Quicken Spell, Hexblade's Curse, Potent Cantrip, Arcane Abeyance, etc).

What really makes caster damage dangerous is that you can combine a bunch of these at the same time. This is also what makes people underestimate it on paper, since people are often stuck in the mindset of guides that color-code individual spells or features in a vacuum, without focusing on how those tools can combine. They don't put all the moving parts together at the same time. All those little bits add up, your Familiar using Help and all that other stuff.

Like, you usually don't want to actually just straight-cast Disintegrate at someone unless you're getting something else to go with it (e.g. you're bypassing a death gate, or they're stunned and auto-fail, or something). Usually the #1 reason I prep Disintegrate is "break glass in case of force walls."

[Sigreid]

Pretty much caster trying to take a main level opponent down with spells is going to burn up all his potential for the day really quickly. It's not a good use of their spells. What is a good use of their spells is wiping out groups of lesser mobs and control and utility. Let the martials deal the direct damage to the big opponents. Just make sure they don't have to worry about the lesser ones.

[LudicSavant]

Pretty much caster trying to take a main level opponent down with spells is going to burn up all his potential for the day really quickly. It's not a good use of their spells.

Not if you're picking the right stuff. Summon Celestial lasts a whole hour and is very good damage output (like, comparable to some entire martial PCs). Crown of Stars is also very good, and is worth about as much as 14 SP worth of quickens (or more at tier 3) -- not bad at all for one slot. Create Bonfire and Eldritch Blast are just cantrips. And so forth.

You can absolutely play a high single target damage caster in games that have 6+ Deadly encounters a day. I've done it plenty of times.


Let the martials deal the direct damage to the big opponents.

Why? Their resources don't last for more encounters than yours do, Action Surges and Rages and such get used up.

[Sigreid]

Not if you're picking the right stuff. Summon Celestial lasts a whole hour and is very good damage output (like, comparable to some entire martial PCs). Crown of Stars is also very good, and is worth about as much as 14 SP worth of quickens (or more at tier 3) -- not bad at all for one slot. Create Bonfire and Eldritch Blast are just cantrips. And so forth.

You can absolutely play a high single target damage caster in games that have 8+ encounters a day. I've done it plenty of times.

I was, of course referring to the higher level spells as that seemed to be the crux of the question. Yes, they can do nice damage, but IMO the opportunity cost is pretty high to do the damage necessary to take down a high CR opponent with direct damage.

[LudicSavant]

I was, of course referring to the higher level spells as that seemed to be the crux of the question. Yes, they can do nice damage, but IMO the opportunity cost is pretty high to do the damage necessary to take down a high CR opponent with direct damage.

And yet you don't think this for martial characters? Seems like a bit of a double standard to me.

[Sigreid]

And yet you don't think this for martial characters? Seems like a bit of a double standard to me.

Martials tend to not have to spend daily resources to do significant damage. I my game experience (one table, 5 people) it almost seems that the game design is for the martial to focus on removing hp from high CR opponents and casters to give them the breathing room to do it through clearing the ground of other opponents, controlling the field and buffing them up.

But that's just my observation based on one table.

[LudicSavant]

Martials tend to not have to spend daily resources to do significant damage.

Which is irrelevant if you can still outpace their damage over the course of a long adventuring day.

Also, casters can often do good damage without spending any slots, too. Bladesingers, for example. But of course at high levels they have enough resources that they can be spending stuff every single encounter even if you're playing a large number of encounters a day.

[Sigreid]

Which is irrelevant if you can still outpace their damage over the course of a long adventuring day.

I disagree. It's great for classes to have different areas of expertise as it were. Yes, Jo Fighter may not do as much HP damage over the day when the wizard or sorcerer can wipe out half the kobold tribe with a single fireball. But that same fireball barely rates an ouch when used against the big bad boss.

[LudicSavant]

I disagree. It's great for classes to have different areas of expertise as it were. Yes, Jo Fighter may not do as much HP damage over the day when the wizard or sorcerer can wipe out half the kobold tribe with a single fireball. But that same fireball barely rates an ouch when used against the big bad boss.

I'm not talking about Fireball, Sigreid. I'm talking about single target damage. I am talking about the big bad boss.

[Sigreid]

I'm not talking about Fireball, Sigreid. I'm talking about single target damage. I am talking about the big bad boss.

I'm aware. We just differ on how worth the slot it is to do that to the big boss as opposed to something else.

[LudicSavant]

I'm aware. We just differ on how worth the slot it is to do that to the big boss as opposed to something else.

Then why are you bringing up Fireball? We're just back to what I said in post #19.

If X output over Y encounters is good enough for a martial character to fill a party role, it's good enough for anyone else to fill that role, too.

[MaxWilson]

I'm not talking about Fireball, Sigreid. I'm talking about single target damage. I am talking about the big bad boss.

Maybe a specific scenario would help. Combat Challenge time!

12th level party, 4 PCs, any builds allowed by your actual play group. (E.g. no Lore Wizards unless your DM permits them in actual play. My way of cutting down on probably-OP content.)

Don't look at the spoiler until after you post a party.

The adventure is a multidimensional labyrinth, and it just so happens that today

they stumble across the following monsters in order, with short rests in between.

1) Beholder at the bottom of a trap chute. 1-4 PCs (your choice based on how many you think would jump down to help the first guy) are trapped inside a kidney-shaped demiplane 40' in length and 20' wide and high. A beholder is here too, floating 10' up, and because this is a combat challenge all it will do is fight. When the beholder is dead the demiplane collapses and puts you back at the top of the chute.

2) A Nycaloth and a Glabrezu, also in a demiplane of the same size (for simplicity of the challenge).

3) Adult White Dragon, same.

4) Abominable Yeti and two Chasmes.

5) A Death Knight.

6) A Giant Ape with human-level tactical intelligence (knows about focusing casters, etc.) and a dozen Skulks.

7) Four Neogi Masters leveraging Hold Person and Charm plus Eldritch Blast, and two Star Spawn Manglers focus firing on paralyzed targets.

8) A Mind Flayer Arcanist and a creature indistinguishable from a Githyanki Supreme Commander (yes, allied!).

Then they find the exit and escape the labyrinth with the Tablets of the Gods which they stole last season and which they need to banish the influence of Ghroth the Harbinger, save life as we know it, and reach 13th level.


After seven short rests and eight encounters over a period of about ten hours, is your party still alive?

[LudicSavant]

Maybe a specific scenario would help. Combat Challenge time!

12th level party, 4 PCs, any PHB/Xanathar's/Volo's builds allowed.

Don't look at the spoiler until after you post a party.

The adventure is a multidimensional labyrinth, and it just so happens that today

they stumble across the following monsters in order, with short rests in between.

1) Beholder at the bottom of a trap chute. 1-4 PCs (your choice based on how many you think would jump down to help the first guy) are trapped inside a kidney-shaped demiplane 40' in length and 20' wide and high. A beholder is here too, floating 10' up, and because this is a combat challenge all it will do is fight. When the beholder is dead the demiplane collapses and puts you back at the top of the chute.

2) A Nycaloth and a Glabrezu, also in a demiplane of the same size (for simplicity of the challenge).

3) Adult White Dragon, same.

4) Abominable Yeti and two Chasmes.

5) A Death Knight.

6) A Giant Ape with human-level tactical intelligence (knows about focusing casters, etc.) and a dozen Skulks.

7) Four Neogi Masters leveraging Hold Person and Charm plus Eldritch Blast, and two Star Spawn Manglers focus firing on paralyzed targets.

8) A Mind Flayer Arcanist and a creature indistinguishable from a Githyanki Supreme Commander (yes, allied!).


After seven short rests and eight encounters, is your party still alive?

I'd be unlikely to have time to get into some extended play by post thing, even if I wasn't scheduled to play D&D today (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618967-Art-of-my-Saturday-Campaign-s-Party).

That said, the unusual volume and density of forced short rests (7 hours worth! Nearly quadruple what the DMG says is average for a 6-8 encounter day!) is gonna make this a super skewed case. Like, a Barbarian is going to run out of Rages and is going to be reduced to no better than Bladesinger or Eldritch Blast cantrips/invocations for nearly half the day. Meanwhile a Warlock is going to have a staggering 21 fifth level spells that day, allowing them 2-3 slots per encounter, plus a Mystic Arcanum in one. Why choose such a skewed number of short rests? Like, it's kinda weird to get an hour break between every labyrinth room.

We're also not gonna get to talk about an awful lot of high level spells (the topic of the thread) since you set it at 12 for some reason, so we don't get to talk about 7th and 8th spells, which are very pertinent to what the OP was asking about.

[MaxWilson]

I'd be unlikely to have time to get into some extended play by post thing, even if I wasn't scheduled to play D&D today (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618967-Art-of-my-Saturday-Campaign-s-Party).

That said, the unusual volume and density of forced short rests (7 hours worth! Nearly quadruple what the DMG says is average for a 6-8 encounter day!) is gonna make this a super skewed case. Like, a Barbarian is going to run out of Rages and is going to be reduced to no better than Bladesinger or Eldritch Blast cantrips/invocations for nearly half the day. Meanwhile a Warlock is going to have a staggering 21 fifth level spells that day, allowing them 2-3 slots per encounter, plus a Mystic Arcanum in one. Why choose such a skewed number of short rests? Like, it's kinda weird to get an hour break between every labyrinth room.

We're also not gonna get to talk about an awful lot of high level spells (the topic of the thread) since you set it at 12 for some reason, so we don't get to talk about 7th and 8th spells, which are very pertinent to what the OP was asking about.

I'm not asking for play by post. Just report results in whatever form you want. Or propose your own so that we can see what your idea is of a scenario where casters excel at single target damage compared to warriors. This isn't a competition, it's a discussion group.

My idea of labyrinths is that it ISN'T weird to get a one hour break if you want one but it is weird to get a 24 hour break. E.g. in Labyrinth, the movie, Sarah has hours but not days to beat the labyrinth. It would be weird to treat the whole labyrinth as a speed run and not rest after a tough fight if you need it, but going to bed in the midafternoon and giving up for today is also weird, so assuming a ten hour timespan (plenty of time for seven short rests) is what I picked for this challenge. Attempt this one (feel free to skip rests if you want) or propose your own.

I picked 12 partly because most people cease play around there, and partly because I didn't want to argue with anybody about how broken RAW Simulacrum is. Any argument which boils down to "casters are better at single target damage because even if martials were better, casters can just make a Simulacrum of a martial" isn't something I want to deal with right now.

[LudicSavant]

I'm not asking for play by post. Just report results in whatever form you want. Okay, fair enough. That's slightly more doable, time-wise.


My idea of labyrinths is that it ISN'T weird to get a one hour break if you want one but it is weird to get a 24 hour break. E.g. in Labyrinth, the movie, Sarah has hours but not days to beat the labyrinth. It would be weird to treat the whole labyrinth as a speed run and not rest after a tough fight if you need it, but going to bed in the midafternoon and giving up for today is also weird, so assuming a ten hour timespan (plenty of time for seven short rests) is what I picked for this challenge. Attempt this one (feel free to skip rests if you want) or propose your own.

I haven't seen the movie, so I'll take your word for it.

So for your scenario, we're talking about at most a couple hours of actual dungeoneering, with room for a ton of short rests.

The density of short rest opportunities in this campaign makes me tempted to bring an all Warlock party.

All DPR figures are vs AC 17 (since that's the DMG-stated average for CR12). All results account for crit chance, accuracy, etc etc, and all decimal results are rounded to the nearest tenth.

For perspective, the resourceless damage of a GWM/PAM Battle Master (against the same AC) is just ~32.7. Their AC is 19 (18 if they don't take Defense), and their hp is 100 (with Con 14) or 112 (with Con 16).

So let's introduce our first party member.

Yamara d'Jorasco
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/834358053746769940/834358114983215104/e_Ppe_Hi_H.jpg
Mark of Healing Halfling Celestial Pact of the Chain Warlock 11 / Life Cleric 1.

Them Heals
Let's take a look at just how powerful our healing is as a result of Jorasco + Life dip + Celestial. For perspective on the sheer quantity of hp value we're talking about here, a level 12, 14 Con Barbarian has 113 hit points at this level.

Celestial Resilience alone will generate 16 temp hp for you, plus 10 temp hp per character (for 5 characters other than you, meaning 3 party members + familiars), per short rest (for a grand total of up to (8*16)+(8*10*5) = 528 temp hp generated in MaxWilson's scenario).

Our Healing Light feature gives us 12 d6s we can hand out as we please using bonus actions, for a grand total of 42 hp value.

A slot spent on Aura of Vitality is worth ((2d6+7)*10)= 140 hp of non-combat healing per slot.

A slot spent on Cure Wounds is worth 5d8+12 = 34.5 hp of burst healing. Notably, you can combine this with your Healing Light on the same turn to burst for 52.5 hp healing, nearly the burst of a level 6 Heal spell.

A slot spent on Mass Healing Word is worth 3d4+12 = 19.5 hp of healing per party member (for a total of 78 hp value), as a mere bonus action. Notably, you can do this on the same turn that you, say, Eldritch Blast something.

In short, you have so much damn healing that the party can be expected to enter every single combat with full hit points, and Team Monster would have to do seriously fast burst in order to actually take anyone down.

And then, after all this, we take Gift of the Ever-Living Ones.

___

Teh Damagez
Now, let's take a look at our damage. All DPR figures are vs AC 17 (since that's the DMG-stated average for CR12). All results account for crit chance, accuracy, etc etc, and all decimal results are rounded to the nearest tenth. For perspective, the resourceless damage of a GWM/PAM Battle Master (against the same AC) is just ~32.7.

I even accounted for the effects of the Halfling "Lucky" feature in my math.

If we are concentrating on Spirit Shroud, our Eldritch Blast does 2d8+1d10+5 damage per ray (and an extra +5 damage on the first ray, from the 'Radiant Soul' feature, since Spirit Shroud does Radiant damage). This is worth ~47 DPR, ~52.1 DPR if our Familiar helps us, or ~62 DPR if we're standing inside of a Darkness.

Spirit Shroud is only a bonus action to activate, and has the duration to lasts for an entire encounter. Even if we only had 2 short rests instead of Max's 7, we would be able to do this for every encounter for 9 encounters, outdamaging standard GWM/PAM Fighters throughout, and still bringing the value of Celestial Resilience, Invocations, Healing Light, and a 6th level spell to the party.

What else do we have for damage options? Let's see. There's "Summon Fiend" for a Mystic Arcanum, which has 3 attacks for 2d6+9 each, and it has Devil's Sight so it can benefit from this party of Warlocks spamming Darkness. This means it has 32.3 DPR vs AC 17, or 44.7 DPR in Darkness. Notably, this is in addition to your regular Eldritch Blast DPR, which (without Spirit Shroud) is 22.4 DPR / 30 DPR with Advantage. For a grand total of 54.7 DPR / 74.7 DPR for an hour. Plus your Familiar can still Help someone for a bit more DPR!

There's also alternative damage options for our level 5 slot. If we're up against a group, Synaptic Static is really good, dealing damage like a Fireball, except with a much better damage type (Psychic), a much better saving throw (Intelligence), and carrying a strong non-Concentration debuff with it.

That debuff grants -1d6 to attack rolls, which is a strong defensive benefit to the party in general (it's like having ~70% of the value of the Shield spell for the whole party). It also grants -1d6 to ability checks, which can combo with a teammate's Hex to just completely hose someone's ability checks and leave them hyper-vulnerable to spells that use ability checks instead of saves, or just plain grappling or the like.

Another great aspect of it reduces ability checks is that it helps screw over Counterspell and Dispel Magic.

There's Wall of Fire, which deals 6d8+5 (32)/save for half AoE damage when it appears, then another 6d8 (27) true DPR with no save each time they end their turn on the wrong side, or try to pass through it. And it's really, really easy to get multiple procs on Wall of Fire on multiple creatures with Repelling Blast.

There's Armor of Agathys, which allows us to deal 25 true DPR (e.g. it can't miss) per melee hit that strikes us, until it breaks.

There's Cloud of Daggers, which deals 25 true DPR (e.g. it too cannot miss) per tick, and it's really easy to activate it multiple times by pinballing people around with Repelling Blast from multiple Warlocks. Like it's very feasible for this to put out 100 damage in a round to a creature. And it can affect multiple creatures.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/834358053746769940/834379125769633812/unknown.png

There's Darkness, which basically gives you Advantage on all your (and your allies') Eldritch Blasting for 10 entire minutes (which means damage), plus gives many enemies Disadvantage to hit you, plus disables any enemy abilities that require them to see the target.

There's Hellish Rebuke, which deals a very respectable 6d10+5 (38)/save for half burst damage without even using your Action or Bonus Action, so that's stacking right on top of your Spirit Shroud + Eldritch Blast or whatever. And half of that damage is unmissable.

There's Summon Undead, Summon Fey, Summon Greater Demon, Summon Aberration, Summon Shadowspawn, and Summon Lesser Demons, all of which deal respectable damage over generous durations. I can't be bothered to go over every single one of those here, just think of it as a one-step-lower version of what I said about Summon Fiend. Summon Undead is really good at applying fear, Summon Shadowspawn is really good for denying movement, summon aberration can give a minion with regeneration, summon fey can create darkness squares for allies to abuse, give advantage, or wield shortswords. All of them offer different damage types for bypassing resistances, and Aberration/Undead can do ranged attacks.

And there's Thunder Step which does 5d10 (27.5) / save for half AoE damage in a 25-foot diameter, which is close to the damage of a Synaptic Static or Fireball but in a smaller area. The upshot is that you do this while simultaneously moving yourself and an ally up to 90 feet!

There's Guardian of Faith, which is basically a non-Concentration hazard that dishes out up to 60 damage.

There's Sickening Radiance, which covers a huge 60 foot diameter AoE and builds up exhaustion stacks as you bounce people in and out of it (on top of 4d10 damage on each failed Con save).

All of these are Nice Things. So grab up a few of these.

Cleric Spells
You get 2 extra spell slots as a result of your Cleric dip. You can use them for a boosted 1d4+8 (10.5) hp Healing Word, Bless, Command, Sanctuary, or Protection from Evil and Good (e.g. 1st level spells that retain their relevance at all levels).

Invocations!
We get 5 of these. We'll take Devil's Sight, Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Eldritch Mind, and Gift of the Ever-Living Ones (which will take our healing from "really good" to "why yes, I can in fact restore my entire health bar in a turn, you squishy Barbarian").

ASIs
Tasha's race variant. Fey-Touched (+1 Cha) and +2 Cha. Take "Gift of Alacrity" as our Fey-Touched spell.

___


The Labyrinth
Now, I was going to take the time to make 4 of these Warlocks each taking complementary abilities making them more than the sum of their parts, but I realize I'm already running out of time to write stuff today, and Yamara is versatile enough (despite Celestial Resilience not stacking) that I bet 4 of him would do alright anyways (even though he's the healer of the party, and other folks like the party Hexblade can do waaaaay more damage, Yamara already can outdamage many martials). I call the Celestial Warlock a generalist for a reason, after all.

Team Yamara's "default" tactic will be for one of them to have Darkness up at any given time, while the other Yamaras open a fight with Spirit Shroud and Eldritch Blast @#$% into oblivion. Possibly with one or more of them dropping a hazard for the others to pinball people through. Alternatively they could use a summon instead of a Spirit Shroud. They drop fat heals (seriously, they can burst heal each other from 0-100 in a turn) as needed, or simply heal to full after each fight.

In fights 5, 6, 7, and 8, one of the Yamaras will have a fiend summoned via Mystic Arcanum. Each Yamara will be given Gift of Alacrity from Fey-Touched.

They will also hand the fiend a healing potion, just in case it wants to pick someone up off the death gate. They'll do the same for their Chain Pact familiars. Yamaras can produce healing potions themselves using their high (Jorasco-boosted) Herbalism skill, or just spend some of that massive wad of cash they saved by wearing medium rather than heavy armor (specifically, 4 half-plates instead of 4 full plates means 3000 gold to toss around). These can actually heal a full 10 hit points per potion, thanks to Gift of the Ever-Living Ones. Using your familiar's action, not yours. And there are 4 of those familiars, so... yeah.

I will solve problems using damage spells. Even my control spells will be damage spells (e.g. Synaptic Static, Repelling Eldritch Blast, Wall of Fire, etc).

Sound good? Good! I'm gonna take a peek at what's hidden in that spoiler block now, and see if Yamara holds up. Maybe I'll be surprised?

1) Okay... first fight is a Beholder in a tight space? Well the Beholder has a big problem, namely that it can't target people it can't see with eye rays, and while it can suppress Darkness with its antimagic cone, it can't fire eye rays at people while said cone is active. And its bite attack is peanuts. I suspect this is a stomp for Team Yamara with barely any resource expenditures.

2) Nycaloth and Glabrezu can both see through the Darkness, both have Dispel Magic, and the Glabrezu can cast Power Word Stun. They can certainly put up more of a fight than the Beholder can. However, their many resistances, including Magic Resistance, are all useless as a defense against Eldritch Blast + Spirit Shroud. And if they're using Dispel Magic on Spirit Shroud, they're not attacking and dealing damage, and they're only affecting 1 party member at a time (if they succeed on a casting check), and they're only reducing their damage rather than eliminating it, and they can just re-cast it as a bonus action anyways.

The fact that we're in a small demiplane is advantageous to the pair, since it makes it easier for them to actually get in range and attack the teleport-capable Repelling Blasters, but they don't really have the defenses to last for more than a coupla rounds, nor the offense to really threaten people as tanky as Yamara. Especially the Nycaloth (whose wounding ability is basically hard countered by Celestial Warlocks for barely any resources). The Glabrezu's grapples basically don't matter because of Repelling Blasts coming in from all sides. Team Yamara focuses down the Glabrezu first just because it seems like it does more damage (both with its attacks and spells), and because the Nycaloth presumably would be starting with Mirror Image and Invisibility.

3) This is Yamara's biggest threat so far -- the dragon can do meaningful damage while debuffing attack rolls with Frightful Presence. Thankfully, Team Yamara is proficient in Wisdom saves, has Advantage against fear, halfling luck, and can do plenty of damage even if most of their attacks miss (or even if they don't use attack rolls at all), so the fear's not a big deal.

Yamara also notices that it can't burrow because of the limits of the demiplane, as surely as it prevents Team Yamara from kiting with a staggering 120 feet worth of knockback. So he takes advantage of this with Wall of Fire, so that the creature has to approach them if it wants to use its melee options, and proceeds to pinball the dragon through hazards with Repelling Blast until it dies from massive damage. Remember that Wall of Fire does not offer saving throws for Legendary Resistance, beyond its initial appearance. So that's just 6d8 each time it enters the wall, and 6d8 each time it ends its turn in a position to actually hit the PCs. That's gonna add up awfully quick.

The damage from the breath weapons and melee attacks gets healed up as necessary, likely mostly with bonus actions or post-battle healing.

4) Accounting for their (low) Int saving throws, Synaptic Statics deal over 75 average damage each (between the 3 of them), plus totally screwing the attack rolls of these melee-reliant foes. Wall of Fire is also effective here, dealing 6d8 per tick (with those ticks racking up real quick thanks to them A) the narrow quarters of the demiplane, B) the monsters relying on melee range for their attacks and C) Repelling Blast). The Yeti even has a Fear of Fire disadvantage. The Chasmes are resistant to fire, but with no saving throw and multiple ticks, it's still a real threat to their low hit points. Basically, these monsters are gonna get wrecked.

The Abominable Yeti has a breath weapon, but it's likely to only get to use it once during the fight (because it only recharges on a 6).

Chasmes have a 37% chance to knock someone unconscious with their droning, but you can just have your familiars wake you up, or even have an ally poke you with one of the rays of their Eldritch Blasts (and still direct the rest of the rays at the enemy). After which you're immune to the Chasme's droning for 24 hours.

Chasmes also have the potential to reduce maximum hit points, but Yamara can undo this with Greater Restoration after the fight if it happens. Which it might not (because of Wall of Fire and Synaptic Static and Yamara's solid AC and Con save).

5) Ah, the Death Knight, an otherwise fearsome CR17 creature that's helpless against Forcecage. Thankfully for the Death Knight, Yamara doesn't have that spell quite yet, so Death Knight gets to actually play the game.

Mr. Death Knight does not have the ability to see through Darkness, so he's going to make all of his attacks at Disadvantage, while the Yamaras get to make their attacks at Advantage. It also means he can't use any of the "creature he can see" spells. This means Mr. Death Knight is probably going to rely on his AoE attacks, like Hellfire Orb or Destructive Wave.

Yes, he could use Dispel Magic on Darkness, but that's just exchanging his entire turn for a chance to remove 1/4th of the party's Actions (which they spend to simply re-cast it). Not a good deal for Mr. Death Knight. In fact he's better off tossing a Hellfire Orb and hoping someone loses Concentration.

Yamara can counteract the effects of these AoEs through his own AoE healing, or via Counterspells.

Team Yamara is also going to burn the Death Knight's hit points pretty fast since Darkness is working at full strength here. The Yamaras with Spirit Shroud are going to be burning through his 20 AC at a rate of 54.6 DPR each (and the one with Summon Fiend does considerably more). And Yamaras have an initiative roll advantage thanks to Gift of Alacrity, of course. These two things together means he might not even see more than 1 turn. Parry hardly even helps because it only blocks 1 ray.

Magic Resistance, as usual, continues to be an ineffective deterrent against magic and does not affect the fight at all.

Overall this is one of the more taxing encounters to Team Yams resources thus far, simply because Mr. Death Knight's AoEs are big and fat and do enough damage to actually break Concentration and cause re-casting, but it's nowhere close to making them actually run out.

6) One well-placed Synaptic Static can basically reduce this encounter to mush.

The Skulks are basically going to evaporate as soon as Synaptic Static hits. Even if they somehow don't, they are melee-attack based with a low attack bonus against characters with good AC, so... yeah.

The giant ape has no ability to deal with Darkness, so it's going to be plugging away at a paltry ~13.7 DPR. Once the first Synaptic Static falls (since this is an enemy group with low Int, so it's AoE-o-clock), it's going to see that plummet to a pathetic 6.7 DPR.

There's also gonna be a summoned fiend in the mix here, making Team Yams damage even higher.

The best chance Team Monster has is probably taking spread out positions surrounding the party to make it harder for them to AoE, but this is unlikely to work given Yamara's high initiative and mobility options. Even if they do avoid getting AoEed, they still have the problem that they can't do good damage

7) Interesting one!

Neogi Masters are surprisingly threatening for their CR. Their vision pierces Magical Darkness, and they have Counterspell (though their Counterspell has only a 50% chance of making the casting check to eat a Warlock slot), and they have mind control shenanigans. Not to mention that those Manglers do serious burst damage if they get their hands on a paralyzed PC.

Thankfully, our Lucky Halflings have a high (67%, or ~76% with Bless) chance of resisting their influence, but that's definitely not 100%.

The good news is that they don't have a lot of hit points or defenses, nor are they good at keeping their Concentration in the face of the high damage of Team Yams (especially since they have a fiend out for this fight). And the high number of creatures in this encounter means AoEs will be effective. And as always Team Yams has an initiative advantage and has a good chance of killing some of them (potentially even all of them via AoEs) before they get a turn.

Also, while they can see through Darkness, they can't see through, say, a Wall of Fire. Once Team Neogi's vision is blocked, they can't target Hold Persons or Counterspells. So you only really need to get off one spell (you can Counterspell their Counterspells if you have to), then clean them up with raw damage. Even if they manage to get a status effect on someone, you can get rid of that effect just by hitting the Neogis hard enough that they either A) lose Concentration or B) die.

Another thing the Neogis have to worry about is that Hold Person gets countered by Lesser Restoration, which every single Yamara can cast as a racial spell and as a Warlock spell.

But what about the worst case scenario? Even if the Neogis actually manage to paralyze someone and their Manglers actually start dishing out massive damage before it gets removed, the healing power of Team Yams is so high that they can pop that PC right back up to full. Heck, even if they literally kill the character, they can Revivify them and pick them back up to full hp.

So yeah, I'm expecting this one to involve an initial exchange of counterspells fighting over getting a vision blocker up, followed by rapid death of Neogi and Manglers once the vision blocker is established, with many either dying outright or dying as they try to flee the Wall of Fire death zone (the only way out is through the fire).

8) Oh snap, the plot twist! Githyanki and Mind Flayers working together! Cue boss music.

Now, the Githyanki Supreme Commander is mostly just another strong beatstick that Team Yams can run over -- it can't even see through Darkness or anything. The problem is the Mind Flayer Arcanist.

The Mind Flayer is very dangerous, as it actually targets one of Yamara's few weaknesses (his garbage Intelligence saving throw) with a really devastating status effect. I often specifically put something to deal with deadly Int saves in my parties (it's on my checklist of stuff to be prepped for, as some Int saves are party killers), but Team Yams doesn't have that because I just cloned one character 4 times for lack of time. So this will be a test of Yamara's ability to adapt.

Mind Blast has a whopping 73.75% chance of working on Yamara despite his Halfling luck, and stunning him for a duration. On average, Mind Blast will stun a Yamara for ~2.8 rounds. You can't even remove the stun with Lesser or Greater Restoration. That's bad.

Likewise, if it succeeds, it disables Darkness and gives Advantage to hit, meaning the Supreme Commander suddenly starts hitting for a whopping ~93 DPR (including their Legendary Actions), and helping the Mind Flayer get extra attempts to grapple/extract brain (it actually has a >30% chance to miss even with Advantage, and takes multiple actions to attempt to Extract Brain).

There are a few things that Team Yams can do about this.

- The first is that if their Chain Pact familiars manage to scout the fight, they can pre-buff with Bless and Protection from Evil using their Cleric slots, considerably raising their chances. They can also cast Aura of Purity from the Mark of Healing Halfling list. A halfling with Bless and Aura of Purity character only has a 37.2% chance of failing a Mind Blast, even with -1 Int. Concentration on PFG&E may lower their damage output, but it'll still be enough -- Mind Flayer Arcanist is a doom machine, but a squishy doom machine.

- The second is that with +2+1d8 (from Gift of Alacrity) to initiative vs the Mind Flayer's +1, there's a strong chance that one or more Yamaras will go before it does. And if they do, the plan is nova that @#$%er right @#$%ing now before he gets a turn. With only 15 AC and 71 hit points, the Mind Flayer Arcanist can be killed by one or two Yamaras going before him.

The Yamara using Summon Fiend has an average DPR of 31.7 (from their EB) + ~47 (from their fiend) for a total of ~78.8. One using Spirit Shroud has 65.5 DPR That's including the benefit of Halfling Lucky, Advantage from being in Darkness, and the level 6 ability of Celestial-lock applying to the first ray that hits.

Yes, the Mind Flayer can Shield, but they can (and should) just Counterspell that -- this is the encounter where they should nova and not conserve resources.

- The third is that they can try to spread out so that they don't all get caught in a cone shape.

- The fourth is that even if you get unlucky and all the @#$% hits the fan, if even one Yamara is up after the Mind Blast, they can keep blasting away at the squishy Mind Flayer, and it's not going to get to Mind Blast again immediately. They can also drop 24 hp AoE heals or 30 hp single target heals as a bonus action (thanks, Gift of the Ever-Living Ones), making it a lot harder to actually finish off their allies.

Notably, Repelling Blast breaks grapples, so you can save people from getting their brains eaten so long as even one character is up in time.

Even if every single party member and all their familiars get Mind Blasted, there's a chance of it wearing off every round, and it's gonna take a bit for the Supreme Commander and Mind Flayer to actually chew through the 103 hp, 19 AC Yamaras. And once they start getting up, they can start burst healing + doing reliable damage to the Mind Flayer. Even if someone died, if they didn't die specifically from Extract Brain, you can Revivify them + heal them to a respectable 38 hp in one turn. Basically the bounceback potential of Team Yams is very high.

Once the Mind Flayer is dead, the Supreme Commander's ability to kill them through the death gate basically evaporates and it's just a matter of time.

__

Note the Mind Flayer can also try to cast spells instead of just trying to mind blast + eat brains, but doing so opens it up to Counterspells, Dispels, and/or having its Concentration broken -- ultimately, it has less actions to cast spells than Team Yams does. And stuff like Wall of Force won't actually impede a Yamara that much because they're Fey-Touched. I'd say it's more dangerous with the Mind Blasting.

Okay, but what if there were a lot less short rests than Max's scenario?
Then I would probably have actually bothered to take the time to write up my full party rather than just clone Mr. d'Jorasco there, but let's say we had 2 short rests instead, and stuck with just Team Yams. That gives us (between the entire party), 4 L6 slots, 36 L5 slots, 8 L1 slots, 288 hp worth of Healing Light (thanks to Gift of the Ever-Living Ones), 64 hp of cures from the Jorasco racial feature, plus 4x Lesser Restoration from the Jorasco racial feature, plus 4x Gift of Alacrity and 4x Misty Step from Fey-Touched, and then our Pact of the Chain familiars.

That's a lot of stuff. You could clear the 8 encounters above with that using a similar methodology to the one I already described -- I was intentionally holding back, and having tons of resources left over after each fight!

So, from the "entire party" perspective, we can straight up be using 6 spells per encounter over 8 encounters. Plus racial spells, Fey-Touched spells, Pact of the Chain familiars, cantrip combos, Healing Light, and Celestial Resilience. Plus the fact that some of those spell slots have long durations, and are going to last for multiple encounters!

____

Whew. Hopefully I didn't miss anything as I kind of had to hurry up as this took even longer than anticipated. Please correct me if I did.

[MaxWilson]

Whew. Hopefully I didn't miss anything as I kind of had to hurry up as this took even longer than anticipated. Please correct me if I did.

Thanks, that was a good writeup. (As the author of the challenges I found your implied emotional reaction to 7 and 8 perfect, exactly what I'd hope for as a DM: a dawning realization that this fight might be real trouble, followed by a second realization that there's a solution. I found reading that immensely pleasurable.)

I think you made a good implicit case for why a Team Fighter cannot outperform Team Mark of Healing Warlock (too much resilience via Revivify/Aura of Vitality/etc.), which I believe is the subject under dispute. However, sometimes examples surprise us.

I'll roll up a Team Fighter-ish and edit their results into this post when I've got them. Edit: I put them in a separate post here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25016208&postcount=38).


That's a lot of stuff. You could clear the 8 encounters above with that using a similar methodology to the one I already described -- I was having tons of resources left over after each fight!


I think the key issue you'd run into is that you don't have access to all those resources at once, and you can't predict exactly when you'll need them. With only two short rests, what happens if you walk into the neogis when you're down 4 of 12 spell slots (since you're routinely spending a Darkness spell every ten minutes of travel, or perhaps first thing in every encounter)? Now you've only got parity with the Neogi's 8 slots (Hold Person IV vs. Counterspell V vs Counterspell IV) but they still have Charm spells and can Counterspell your attempts to block vision with Wall of Fire V (although their Counterspells aren't 5th level so can fail), complicating your attempt to quickly take down the Manglers and not leaving you any slots for Revivify. The danger quotient in this adventure is already pretty high with full resources; going in with merely slot parity makes it a potential permakill for at least one warlock (more than half the time I bet), maybe a TPK (on the order of 10% probability, is my guesstimate). Going from this encounter to the Githyanki without a short rest is also very dangerous.

I don't think looking at the average resources left over after most fights gives a true idea of the actual danger level for warlocks. Warlocks are swingy.

There's a reason I didn't want to rush PCs through this hypothetical labyrinth in only 3-4 hours. It feels unfair to me, more difficulty than I intended.

[DwarfFighter]

Let's take as an example the iconic fireball. It comes in line at 5th level with 8 dice of dmg, when you upcast it at higher level you increase by 1 die per spell-level, so 1 die every 2 character levels, while the hp progression increases by 1 die per character level.

This observation is true, but is it relevant? You are comparing a spell cast by player characters with the character's hit points. The fireball starts out at 8d6 damage cast by a 5th level Wizard or Sorcerer at 5d6 HD, meaning it doesn't really start with any obvious relation to the caster's HD. Constitution modifiers to hp also come into play, making for even more variation between characters of the same class and same level.

You will probably find that the gains of up-casting a spell scales poorly with the spell slot cost. This is likely by design since it makes little sense to have high-level spells when you can cast your first-level spell with the same effect without making the investment of learning a new spell!

However, poor scaling obviously doesn't mean up-casting is worthless. As you play the game and start balancing your spell resources you will find them occasionally useful. Sometimes you have spent all your matching level spell slots and have only a higher slot available to cast the spell. Sometimes you need to prepare your spells to cover more situations, leaving you with lower-level spells that suddenly become relevant. And so on.

-DF

[LudicSavant]

Thanks, that was a good writeup.

https://forums.giantitp.com/images/sand/icons/icon_thumbsup.png


what happens if you walk into the neogis when you're down 4 of 12 spell slots

Now you've only got parity with the Neogi's 8 slots

I feel 8 party slots is more than you need to deal with the Neogis. They only have 4 Counterspells, and each of those Counterspells has a 50% chance to fail, meaning they're likely to run out quick if they try to Counterspell everything you cast. The worst case scenario (e.g. "RNGesus is trying his best to kill you") is that it takes 5 casts to get your Wall of Fire up, but it'll likely take less.

After that, they're pinballs for Repelling Blast, or easy victims for an AoE like Synaptic Static.

The manglers aren't very worrying unless someone's actually paralyzed (their 6 attack flurry only does ~10.4 DPR through Disadvantage. Disadvantage + decent AC is seriously strong vs swarm attacks). And that paralysis has a low chance of success, and, even if it is successful, can be removed by the racial spell of anyone in the party.

Side note: I basically skipped over talking about the Pact of the Chain familiars much to save time (that post took me a while as it was!) If I made good use of the scouts, then the Warlocks would get to use their resources even more efficiently due to extra information (unless the Labyrinth is somehow set up to make scouting not work). They also would have done things like, say, making Repelling Blast more impactful by dropping ball bearing and caltrops and oil.

Or, I could even just have them fly a bedsheet between two of them, drape it in front of the casters to hide them from the line of sight of Counterspellers (it requires a target you can see), and get that Wall of Fire up in just one slot.

[MaxWilson]

https://forums.giantitp.com/images/sand/icons/icon_thumbsup.png

I feel 8 party slots is more than you need to deal with the Neogis. They only have 4 Counterspells, and each of those Counterspells has a 50% chance to fail, meaning they're likely to run out quick if they try to Counterspell everything you cast. The worst case scenario (e.g. "RNGesus is trying his best to kill you") is that it takes 5 casts to get your Wall of Fire up, but it'll likely take less.

After that, they're pinballs for Repelling Blast, or easy victims for an AoE like Synaptic Static.

The manglers aren't very worrying unless someone's actually paralyzed (their 6 attack flurry only does ~10.4 DPR through Disadvantage. Disadvantage + decent AC is seriously strong vs swarm attacks). And that paralysis has a low chance of success, and, even if it is successful, can be removed by the racial spell of anyone in the party.

Side note: I basically skipped over talking about the Pact of the Chain familiars much to save time (that post took me a while as it was!) If I made good use of the scouts, then the Warlocks would get to use their resources even more efficiently due to extra information (unless the Labyrinth is somehow set up to make scouting not work). They also would have done things like, say, making Repelling Blast more impactful by dropping ball bearing and caltrops and oil.

Or, I could even just have them fly a bedsheet between two of them, drape it in front of the casters to hide them from the line of sight of Counterspellers (it requires a target you can see), and get that Wall of Fire up in just one slot.

4 Counterspells per round you mean? 8 total, plus any they get by Charming a PC.

The Manglers have advantage on round 1 against anyone who hasn't taken a turn yet, to offset the disadvantage from Darkness, and enough HP to make it through the Wall of Fire. If the guy concentrating on Darkness happens to roll low on initiative, that Darkness might pop--yet another threat vector to worry about while the Counterspell war is raging.

BTW I don't think Synaptic Static's d6 penalty stacks with itself. "During that time, it rolls a d6 and subtracts the number rolled from all its attack rolls and ability checks, as well as its Constitution saving throws to maintain concentration."

RE: familiars, the notional labyrinth isn't intended to be susceptible to scouting. It's all riddles and chutes into cage fights, because I wanted to keep the comparison simple and Combat As Sport-based, not Combat As War-ish. In a real game of course recon is vital but this is just a thought experiment about endurance.

BTW I rolled up my stats for the Fighter-ish party and wouldn't you know, they are perfect caster party stats! One of them is 17 18 10 18 15 12!! Ideal for a MAD caster like a Goblin Shepherd Druid 10/Hexblade 2. (Sigh.) I was originally intending that spot to go to an Arcane Archer but I made it a Warbearian so the stats wouldn't go completely to waste. Wound up with a Battlemaster, Arcane Archer, Celestial Warbearian, and Moon Druid (11 10 13 8 10 12).

[Dork_Forge]

Maybe a specific scenario would help. Combat Challenge time!

12th level party, 4 PCs, any builds allowed by your actual play group. (E.g. no Lore Wizards unless your DM permits them in actual play. My way of cutting down on probably-OP content.)

Don't look at the spoiler until after you post a party.

The adventure is a multidimensional labyrinth, and it just so happens that today

they stumble across the following monsters in order, with short rests in between.

1) Beholder at the bottom of a trap chute. 1-4 PCs (your choice based on how many you think would jump down to help the first guy) are trapped inside a kidney-shaped demiplane 40' in length and 20' wide and high. A beholder is here too, floating 10' up, and because this is a combat challenge all it will do is fight. When the beholder is dead the demiplane collapses and puts you back at the top of the chute.

2) A Nycaloth and a Glabrezu, also in a demiplane of the same size (for simplicity of the challenge).

3) Adult White Dragon, same.

4) Abominable Yeti and two Chasmes.

5) A Death Knight.

6) A Giant Ape with human-level tactical intelligence (knows about focusing casters, etc.) and a dozen Skulks.

7) Four Neogi Masters leveraging Hold Person and Charm plus Eldritch Blast, and two Star Spawn Manglers focus firing on paralyzed targets.

8) A Mind Flayer Arcanist and a creature indistinguishable from a Githyanki Supreme Commander (yes, allied!).

Then they find the exit and escape the labyrinth with the Tablets of the Gods which they stole last season and which they need to banish the influence of Ghroth the Harbinger, save life as we know it, and reach 13th level.


After seven short rests and eight encounters over a period of about ten hours, is your party still alive?

Oh now this seems interesting! Just to clarify, you specified PHB/Volo's/XGTE, but then the only entrant so far is entirely comprised of an Eberron race option. I know that in general you aren't a fan of Tasha's, does that extend to the whole book? Just the optional rules?

I'd like to throw some martials in, but am eyeing Tasha's subclasses so was just curious.

[MaxWilson]

Oh now this seems interesting! Just to clarify, you specified PHB/Volo's/XGTE, but then the only entrant so far is entirely comprised of an Eberron race option. I know that in general you aren't a fan of Tasha's, does that extend to the whole book? Just the optional rules?

I'd like to throw some martials in, but am eyeing Tasha's subclasses so was just curious.

I initially specified PHB/Volo's/XGTE but then almost immediately changed my mind and edited it. In the version that you quoted I just said use whatever your actual, real life group would allow. There's no need to be overly restrictive, since this is a discussion, not a competition.

[LudicSavant]

4 Counterspells per round you mean? Yes, because that's the threshold I care about -- how much it takes us to get out a Wall of Fire.

The ideal number for that is "1 slot" using the familiar method I described. The maximum (e.g. least efficient strategy + unlucky rolls) for that is 5 slots.


The Manglers have advantage on round 1 against anyone who hasn't taken a turn yet, to offset the disadvantage from Darkness, and enough HP to make it through the Wall of Fire. If the guy concentrating on Darkness happens to roll low on initiative, that Darkness might pop--yet another threat vector to worry about while the Counterspell war is raging.

These giftlocks have over 100 hp, 19 base AC, Advantage on concentration, a high initiative bonus, and more healing resources than they know what to do with. The Mangler flurry does 10.4 DPR with Disadvantage, 24.3 if it cancels due to losing initiative. I'm not worried.


BTW I don't think Synaptic Static's d6 penalty stacks with itself.

Correct, it does not stack. Why do you bring it up? :smallconfused:

[MaxWilson]

Correct, it does not stack. Why do you bring it up? :smallconfused:

Apparently I got the wrong impression from this quote:



4) Accounting for their (low) Int saving throws, Synaptic Statics deal over 75 average damage each (between the 3 of them), plus totally screwing the attack rolls of these melee-reliant foes.

It sounded like you expected to impose a huge penalty (3d6ish?) on attack rolls. I guess you really just meant that your AC is good enough that 1d6 is a relatively large penalty.

Good point about the Manglers vs. Darkness.

Once Wall of Fire is up, what's your plan for inflicting damage, in the "only 2 short rests" scenario? Can't Eldritch Blast now because you can't see the target. Synaptic Static? You may hit the PCs too (depends on positioning but it's only a 20' x 40' area) and penalize your own concentration saves.

[LudicSavant]

I guess you really just meant that your AC is good enough that 1d6 is a relatively large penalty. Correct!


Good point about the Manglers vs. Darkness.

Once Wall of Fire is up, what's your plan for inflicting damage, in the "only 2 short rests" scenario? Can't Eldritch Blast now because you can't see the target. Synaptic Static? You may hit the PCs too (depends on positioning but it's only a 20' x 40' area) and penalize your own concentration saves.

Eldritch Blast does not require you to see the target, and since they can't see you, neither side has Advantage or Disadvantage. You can therefore simply pinball them about with Repelling Blast, getting lots of damage off of hazards (like Wall of Fire, Create Bonfire, oil, etc) and repositioning them for ideal AoEs (like Synaptic Static, NOT hitting your allies!).

As an aside, the usefulness of Repelling Blast is also why it's so easy to get multi-hits on Maddening Hex, despite its modest AoE size (though Yam doesn't take that Invocation, it's a resource-efficient damage tool for many Warlocks).

[MaxWilson]

Correct!

Eldritch Blast does not require you to see the target, and since they can't see you, neither side has Advantage or Disadvantage. You can therefore simply pinball them about with Repelling Blast, getting lots of damage off of hazards (like Wall of Fire, Create Bonfire, oil, etc) and repositioning them for ideal AoEs (like Synaptic Static, NOT hitting your allies!).

As an aside, the usefulness of Repelling Blast is also why it's so easy to get multi-hits on Maddening Hex, despite its modest AoE size (though Yam doesn't take that Invocation, it's a resource-efficient damage tool for many Warlocks).

Huh. You're right, it doesn't. Apparently at some point I got myself mixed up on that. This means that True Seeing/See Invisibility is far less important for warlocks than I had believed, and one of what I thought were the core scenarios for Fighters over Warlocks just doesn't exist. Interesting, and my bad.

Nice point about Repelling Blast + Maddening Hex.

[Frogreaver]

Another consideration: most of the non damage spell things you can do are concentration. So unless you gosh, you're going to have a fair amount of time spent with a concentration spell up and not all that much you can do that isn't some form of damage.

Casters do area blasting and control better than martials. In return, their default single target damage (unless specially built for) isn't as impressive. 5e is built around preferring more, weaker monsters to fewer, bigger ones.

True, but often if you spend your first turn casting the concentration spell then by the 2nd turn the monsters are mixed in with your allies and not in particularly good fireball formation anymore. Unless you are an evoker or turn 1 fireballing then fireball often loses some of it's luster.

[MaxWilson]

Results for the combat challenge (Team Fighter-ish, for comparison with Team Caster):

Due to some unusual stat rolls, I wound up including a Warbearian (Barbarian 1/Celestial Warlock 11) in the party instead of my intended 3 Fighters, but I played the Warbarian very fightery, even where this wasn't tactically optimal. E.g. he mostly used his spell slots on Armor of Agathys before combat and Cure Wounds after, instead of chucking Synaptic Static or Hypnotic Pattern, and this almost got him killed against the Skulks (he got critted three times in one round and hit three more times on top of that, by Skulks, after the Giant Ape was already dead--if the Skulks had continued attacking him they would have killed him, but since pop-up healing isn't a thing in my universe, I decided it made sense for them not to do that, and to instead switch to taking down the Moon Druid's wolves). Anyway, the upshot is that I basically wasted his beautiful 18/18/17/15 array playing him basically like any other Barbarian except without Rage, and that's fine because this is Team Fighterish--so nobody complain about rolled stats skewing this experiment.

Unusually for me, I used PHB initiative rules (IGO-UGO) instead of my normal WEGO rules, in order to keep the results more relatable to other people. For the same reason I also used spell slots instead of spell points, and Legendary Resistance instead of TSR-style magic resistance.

The results were... surprisingly unsurprising. Nobody died, everybody ended the final fight healthy (the Battlemaster did end up under a Mass Suggestion to "Kneel before Zod!" but this was dealt with afterwards), nobody used any hit dice (I wanted to avoid using them because I don't allow short rest healing in my game), and the Moon Druid used up a 6th, two 5th, two 4th, and three 3rd level spell slots, so from the outside it may look like it was straightforward--but the experience of playing through was more intense and there were times when I felt like a character death or maybe even TPK was possibly in front of me. And maybe I just got lucky on the dice, or maybe (as I've found before) 5E PCs have more defensive depth than is readily apparent, and can go quite a long way on what appears to be "almost empty."

Anyway, I had a party consisting of the following (parenthesized numbers are the original stat rolls before adjustments):

Human Forge Cleric 1/Arcane Archer 11. Str 12 Dex 20 (15) Con 14 Int 14 Wis 14 (13) Cha 9. Sharpshooter, Alert. Used his Forge Cleric power to give the Battlemaster a magical Hand Crossbow +1, so they would both have magic weapons. Alert was hugely impactful for taking out threats before they could act.

I was hoping Arcane Archers would surprise me and be better than I thought, but nope, the combination of Int-based saves and magic-based arrows (affected by Magic Resistance) plus only being able to use one arrow per round meant that unlike Battlemaster's Trip Attack, the Arcane Archer's Shadow Arrow never did me any good in any combat, although I may have forgotten to use it in a couple of fights. Curving Shot was occasionally useful on round 1, but overall I would have been better off with a Samurai in this particular set of fights so that I could actually gain advantage (using RAW for unseen ranged attackers instead of my normal houserule "only melee attackers gain advantage for being unseen") instead of hoping that I was going to gain advantage for me and all my buddies, and then being disappointed when Shadow Arrow failed again. Also, magic weapons turned out to be unimportant except in fight #2. [Yes, yes, I know that I wrote the fights, so at some level I must have known magic weapons weren't going to be important, but I tried to forget the details while designing this party. -Max]

Human Battlemaster 12. Str 14 Dex 20 (18) Con 14 Int 11 Wis 14 (13) Cha 10. Sharpshooter, Crossbow Expert, Alert, Defensive Duelist, Skilled (Athletics and +1 to Dex). Got a lot of mileage out of Trip Attack + Action Surge (attacks at advantage) in the non-Huge fights. Didn't wind up using Skilled at all. Alert was again key to the rocket tag playstyle.

Jorasco (Mark of Healing) halfling Moon Druid. Str 8 Dex 12 (10) Con 12 Int 11 Wis 14 (13) Cha 10. Resilient (Con), Warcaster, Healer. Got a lot of mileage out of Healer. Didn't get a lot of mileage out of Resilient (Con) and Warcaster because in the cramped quarters, I wound up making the monsters attack the low-AC glass cannon fighters more, or sometimes the warbearian if he charged into the fray.

Lyrandar (Mark of Storms) half-elf Barbarian 1/Celestial Warlock 11. Str 20 (18) Dex 16 (15) Con 17 Int 10 Wis 12 Cha 20 (18). GWM. Didn't get much mileage out of Mark of Storms (just one fight against the Death Knight where he pre-summoned an elemental, but lost control when the Death Knight went out in a 65 HP blaze of fiery glory explosion, and took another 32 HP of damage putting down the elemental). Got a lot of mileage out of Armor of Agathys and Cure Wounds V. Took Counterspell but forgot to use it against the neogis, didn't need it against the Glabrezu.

Fight summary:

1.) Beholder. Supernova from two Alert fighters wound up shutting it down hard. Battlemaster got Charmed when it was no longer relevant; Arcane Archer managed to avoid getting turned to stone or zapped with disintegration. Took some minor damage from Enervation but that's all, healed it with Healer and Second Wind, take a rest, moved on.

2.) Nycaloth and Glabrezu. Again, supernova from two Alert fighters killed the Glabrezu before it could even do anything, which was glorious in a way except that I was very conscious that this was really just a form of gambling--relying on luck, instead of having contingency plans. But that's the Fighter way, so heal the minor damage (if there even was any, I forget), take a rest, and onward we go.

3.) Dragon fight was pretty tough for the Arcane Archer, since the dragon breathed on the whole party (both Fighters took full 65 HP of damage) and then the dragon focused the Arcane Archer with several tail attacks in a row and took him down. Warbearian healed the Archer back to consciousness (it only took a few HP of healing because the dragon had only barely knocked him out, something like 104 damage vs. 99 HP, so the Warbearian's gamble to use only 2 dice of celestial healing paid off) and they killed the dragon. Shadow Arrow would have worked against the dragon except, y'know, Legendary Resistance. And Blindsight actually, but Legendary Resistance anyway.

After this fight the druid spent his first spell slots of the session: one 3rd level slot for Aura of Vitality. Combined with Healer, Second Wind, and etc., this put everyone back at full health (plus temp HP from the Warbearian's Celestial powers). Rest, then Druid summons a couple of Quicklings with a 4th level slot to help with the next fight (since they're apparently getting tougher), and the Warbearian summons an Earth Elemental (would have picked Fire but there's no source of fire here or sufficient fuel to make one), and then onward.

4.) Yeti and Chasmes. This fight was kind of interesting. Because I don't normally play with PHB initiative, I hadn't fully realized how annoying Chasme drone was, in that since you don't make the save and fall asleep until the start of your turn, other people can't be ready to wake you up if necessary, because on their turns you haven't fallen asleep yet! I think that's kind of dumb from a game fiction standpoint, but it did complicate this fight. I should have used Menacing Strike from the Battlemaster to keep the Chasmes at bay until the Abominable Yeti was dead, but instead I just supernova'ed the yeti and got lucky. Nobody got their HP maximum reduced, nobody got critted into oblivion by the Chasmes, although I think I got unreasonably lucky on those Con saves. C'est la vie.

The Battlemaster didn't even Action Surge in this fight, intending to save it for the next fight so that the party wouldn't have to short rest and lose the Quicklings (to keep more spell slots available for Aura of Vitality later on). After the fight, the party continued onward immediately.

5.) Death Knight. Again, Dex 20 + Alert plus some lucky rolls let the fighters (and the quicklings) supernova the bad guy before he could act, but he still had a few HP left. Out of spite, he chose to spend his last action throwing a 20d6 fiery explosion at his own feet, killing the quicklings, damaging the PCs, and breaking the Warbearian's concentration on the Earth Elemental, which has to be put down after landing two good solid punches right in the Warbearian's ribs (32 HP of damage IIRC).

The party rests and heals with Healer/etc. and another Aura of Vitality, then the Warbearian casts Armor of Agathys and the Druid casts Conjure Animals V and they continue. (Druid has now spent a 5th, 4th, and two 3rd level slots.)

6.) Giant Ape + dozen Skulks. Long story short, the fighters took out the Giant Ape quickly but the Skulks were much more trouble than I-the-player anticipated and exactly as much trouble as I-the-adventure-designer could have hoped. The Warbearian charged in to melee the Giant Ape like a Fighter would instead of bombarding with Synaptic Static like a caster would, and a result he took over a hundred HP of damage from the Skulks (including three crits for 4d6+2d4+4 each). The wolves managed to pick off two Skulks due to their offsetting advantage from Pack Tactics, but if the Moon Druid hadn't used his bonus action to drop out of elemental shape and cast Erupting Earth, I don't know what would have happened, could maybe have been a TPK (although I think it wouldn't have been a TPK right then, since the fighters had Alert, but it could have led to TPK later on if the other PCs were dead or dying). The Warbearian had killed one Skulk via Armor of Agathys V when it opportunity attacked him on his way to the Giant Ape (and the Giant Ape actually killed itself by hitting the Warbearian, taking it from 150/157 damage to 175/157 damage), and wolves had killed two, so the the Moon Druid killed four out of the remaining 9 and left five others with only 7 HP each, and the fighters were able to dispatch them swiftly despite disadvantage.

Short rest, re-cast Armor of Agathys, conjure 16 more wolves (down: two 5th, two 4th, three 3rd level slots), onward.

7.) Neogis and Star Spawn Manglers. It's getting late and I'm tired so I'll just say: killed the Manglers on round 1 Trip Attack/Action Surge/etc. supernova (part of the strategy was to burn resources ASAP so that if Enslaved, the Enslaved fighters couldn't supernova the party), Barb spent a Rage and charged into combat, grappling a neogi to get its attention. One Neogi used Fear to try to disperse the party including all the wolves; Barb got frightened and Arcane Archer got paralyzed, but Battlemaster was able to kill the neogi concentrating on Fear and then Indomitable and lucky dice helped him resist two Enslave attempts, and Warbarian managed to break the Hold Person paralyzing the Arcane Archer, although not until after the Archer had lost its turn. Warbearian probably should have Counterspelled the Fear or Hold Person V, but I forgot. Another Hold Person managed to paralyze the Warberian, then the other neogi finished itself off by hitting the paralyzed Barbarian (Armor of Agathys), and... oops. Looks like I accidentally made it five Neogi Masters in that encounter instead of four. Anyway, then someone killed the Hold Person caster (the wolves had been rampaging around biting everybody fairly equally) and then both Manglers and all five neogis were dead.

The fights were getting harder and harder so even though the party was still actually quite healthy, they short rested in order to regain action surge, superiority dice, etc. This required re-casting Armor of Agathys and losing the wolves, so after resting, the druid spent its 6th level slot to summon four Quicklings, and then they continued.

8.) Mind Flayer Arcanist + Githyanki Supreme Commander. Arcane Archer shot at the Arcanist, got blocked by Shield spell, Action Surged to grapple (suceed), shove prone (failed), shove prone (success). Githyanki Supreme Commander triggered a tentacle attack with its legendary action, which hit, but the Arcane Archer rolled a 15 and made the save. Long story short: the Battlemaster finished it off at advantage and shot up the Supreme Commander pretty good, the Supreme Commander tried a Hail Mary play and cast Mass Suggestion on everybody ("Kneel Before Zod!" to demand worshipful genuflection), and it got 3/4 Quicklings and the Battlemaster, but not the Moon Druid, Arcane Archer, or the Warbearian, and this was enough to quickly kill him before he got another actual turn--although now that I look closer at the Supreme Commander's Teleport action, I suppose that could have been useful to him if I were going by the strict RAW on Extra Attack/Readied Action (whereby the Arcane Archer would only get one shot, not three, even though an Eldritch Blast caster would get three) but I don't think it would have changed the outcome, and that RAW is stupid anyway. 3:1 is just too big a numerical disadvantage to overcome.

I assume that after the Supreme Commander was dead, the other PCs eventually found a way to make the Battlemaster stop kneeling, perhaps by chucking the Supreme Commander's body where the Battlemaster could no longer see it/sense its presence.

TL;DR Fighter-ish party had incredible single-target DPR, finished small fights quickly, struggled against swarms. Rocket tag.

[x3n0n]

playing him basically like any other Barbarian except without Rage [snip]

Lyrandar (Mark of Storms) half-elf Barbarian 1/Celestial Warlock 11. Str 20 (18) Dex 16 (15) Con 17 Int 10 Wis 12 Cha 20 (18). GWM.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but can't tell what it is.

If you're not going to Rage and are going to actually wear armor, why Barb 1 (especially vs your originally-planned Fighter 1)?

[MaxWilson]

I'm sure I'm missing something, but can't tell what it is.

If you're not going to Rage and are going to actually wear armor, why Barb 1 (especially vs your originally-planned Fighter 1)?

Shield proficiency, better AC (medium armor / unarmored defense), two Rages per day in key fights (only used it once in actually but only because I was saving it for tough fights), Con save proficiency, greatsword proficiency, and eventual Reckless Attack and Bear Totem Resistance (planned for levels 13-14).

Given his high stat rolls it was the same AC to wear armor vs. not so I went with the stylistic choice: this mighty Warbearian dresses like James Bond, not like a SWAT team.

The original plan was more like Battlemaster 12. But that would have wasted all those juicy rolls. They got "wasted" anyway in the sense that they weren't used to meaningfully affect this particular contrived series of cage fights, but I can imagine him on other adventures that are less contrived, and / or him behaving in ways that are more castery (Synaptic Static, Hypnotic Pattern).

[x3n0n]

Shield proficiency, better AC (medium armor / unarmored defense), two Rages per day in key fights (only used it once in actually but only because I was saving it for tough fights), Con save proficiency, greatsword proficiency, and eventual Reckless Attack and Bear Totem Resistance (planned for levels 13-14).

Ok, that's what I was missing.

Pros vs Fighter: 2 Rages, plans to progress to Barb levels 2 & 3, (Edit: and unarmored defense for style points, stealth, and no metal armor for Shocking Grasp/Heat Metal)
Cons vs Fighter: no Fighting Style, no Second Wind, no opportunity to progress to Action Surge and subclass

[MaxWilson]

Ok, that's what I was missing.

Pros vs Fighter: 2 Rages, plans to progress to Barb levels 2 & 3, (Edit: and unarmored defense for style points, stealth, and no metal armor for Shocking Grasp/Heat Metal)
Cons vs Fighter: no Fighting Style, no Second Wind, no opportunity to progress to Action Surge and subclass

Yes, exactly.

An additional pro of Fighter is getting access to heavy armor for AC 19 (or 21 with shield), which is a relative boost of +3. Also the multiclassing requirements are slightly less MAD (Dex 13 is enough, no Str needed) although heavy armor does want high Str if you care about mobility (which I do, outside of cage matches).

There's nothing wrong with playing Fighter 1/Warlock X, but it's just not MAD enough to seem like a good use of a very rare stat array.

[Dork_Forge]

(it only took a few HP of healing because the dragon had only barely knocked him out, something like 104 damage vs. 99 HP, so the Warbearian's gamble to use only 2 dice of celestial healing paid off)


Is this a table rule you normally play with? It seems like you're tracking negative hp to get back up?

[MaxWilson]

Is this a table rule you normally play with? It seems like you're tracking negative hp to get back up?

Yep, basically. There's two things here, an accounting change and a rule change.

As a matter of accounting, when a monster takes 17 points of damage and then 48 HP of damage and then 7 HP, I just write down "17, 48, 7". Then if I want to know if the monster if dead, I compare that number to its HP, doing math if necessary. If it has 100 HP then it's obviously still alive; if it has 60 HP then it's obviously dead; if it has 71 HP then I need to do math. (17 + 48 = 65; 65 +7 = 72... it's dead, barely.) Addition is easier than repeated subtraction so this way is faster for most people.

As a matter of rules, when you've taken more damage than your HP, instead of vanilla "you can't take any more damage, just track death saves", instead you die when damage = 2 x HP. Each round until you're stable, you make a death save. On a success you stabilize. On a failure you take damage equal to 20% of your HP (rounded up).

This is equivalent to "tracking negative HP" but because of the accounting change it's the other way around: continuing to track damage above HP.

[x3n0n]

As a matter of rules, when you've taken more damage than your HP, instead of vanilla "you can't take any more damage, just track death saves", instead you die when damage = 2 x HP. Each round until you're stable, you make a death save. On a success you stabilize. On a failure you take damage equal to 20% of your HP (rounded up).

Just to make sure I follow right:

Bob has 32 max HP.
Bob takes 37 damage (maxHP <= current damage < 2*maxHP), and is knocked out.
Bob succeeds at his first death save.

5E RAW: Bob is at 0 current HP with 1 success and 0 failures; not stable until he gets to 3 successes, or rolls a nat-20 death save and recovers to 1 HP.

MaxW rules: Bob is "at -5" (but really "at 5 damage above max HP"). As a result of "on a success you stabilize", he's stable. (Yes?) If so, taking any non-fatal damage just restarts the 6 HP (32/5, rounded down) "bleeding" per death save failure, until he succeeds a single death save?
Does a nat-20 death save do anything "special"?
If you're stable at damage >= maxHP for some amount of time (the same RAW 1d4 hours?), do you wake up with maxHP-1 damage?

[Dork_Forge]

Yep, basically. There's two things here, an accounting change and a rule change.

As a matter of accounting, when a monster takes 17 points of damage and then 48 HP of damage and then 7 HP, I just write down "17, 48, 7". Then if I want to know if the monster if dead, I compare that number to its HP, doing math if necessary. If it has 100 HP then it's obviously still alive; if it has 60 HP then it's obviously dead; if it has 71 HP then I need to do math. (17 + 48 = 65; 65 +7 = 72... it's dead, barely.) Addition is easier than repeated subtraction so this way is faster for most people.

As a matter of rules, when you've taken more damage than your HP, instead of vanilla "you can't take any more damage, just track death saves", instead you die when damage = 2 x HP. Each round until you're stable, you make a death save. On a success you stabilize. On a failure you take damage equal to 20% of your HP (rounded up).

This is equivalent to "tracking negative HP" but because of the accounting change it's the other way around: continuing to track damage above HP.

Ahh okay thanks for explaining, I use Roll20 for games, so I just let the individual tokens manage the hp (I input the total, then I can just type '-20 ENTER' and it'll do the math for me, auto updating the character sheet if it's a PC).

How do you find this has affected the overall difficulty of the game?

[MaxWilson]

Just to make sure I follow right:

Bob has 32 max HP.
Bob takes 37 damage (maxHP <= current damage < 2*maxHP), and is knocked out.
Bob succeeds at his first death save.

5E RAW: Bob is at 0 current HP with 1 success and 0 failures; not stable until he gets to 3 successes, or rolls a nat-20 death save and recovers to 1 HP.

(A) MaxW rules: Bob is "at -5" (but really "at 5 damage above max HP"). As a result of "on a success you stabilize", he's stable. (Yes?) If so, taking any non-fatal damage just restarts the 6 HP (32/5, rounded down) "bleeding" per death save failure, until he succeeds a single death save?
(B) Does a nat-20 death save do anything "special"?
(C) If you're stable at damage >= maxHP for some amount of time (the same RAW 1d4 hours?), do you wake up with maxHP-1 damage?

(A) Correct, correct, and correct. He dies at 64 damage.

(B) Natural 1s and natural 20s don't do anything special, unlike RAW.

(C) Yes and no.

Yes, you wake up eventually. I will even let you retain consciousness at damage >= maxHP, if you want to mumble weakly or something (IIRC I usually ask for a DC 10 Con save to keep consciousness if you want to), even though you'll still count as Unconscious for purposes of auto-crits and stuff. But on second glance I see now that's not what you're asking about.

No, you have to heal normally somehow to regain HP, which means either an external healing source or resting***. There's no accelerated healing which pulls HP out of nowhere just because you were knocked unconscious--you're better off healing while you're still healthy.

*** I also disallow short rest healing unless you have a bard with Song of Rest, and on long rests you can either regain half your HD or spend some HD, but not both, both of which tie into the "wounded warrior" scenario (see below) as well as "wounded enemy" and "wounded mate of an frenemy" and things like that. I want wounds that last for days, not 1-4 hours.


Ahh okay thanks for explaining, I use Roll20 for games, so I just let the individual tokens manage the hp (I input the total, then I can just type '-20 ENTER' and it'll do the math for me, auto updating the character sheet if it's a PC).

How do you find this has affected the overall difficulty of the game?

It's hard to say, because it changes behavior: without pop-up healing to rely on, (most) PCs just try to keep their damage low in the first place, or mitigate it by healing before or between combats (sometimes during combat too, but long before nearing 100% damaged). I do occasionally read about people doing things like leveraging familiars to give people healing potions for popup healing, and those things don't work at my table, but to know how much those things actually affect the difficulty of the game I think you'd have to ask them, not me. Like, does embracing pop-up healing via familiars and potions that let you take on significantly tougher monsters, or is it just way of preventing individuals from winning the Darwin Award and making the player sad? I never see pop-up healing so I can't really say.

For me it primarily affects (improves) the verisimilitude level and my suspension of disbelief, and my ability to design scenarios that include things like finding a near-dead warrior in a ditch with vital clues--that guy's not just at 0 HP and in need of a Healing Word (1d4 hours away from regaining 1 HP), he's at 80 HP over his damage maximum, and would be dead if he weren't such a tough old geezer. He needs, like, a dozen healing potions or several days of bed rest if you don't have magic.

[x3n0n]

No, you have to heal normally somehow to regain HP, which means either an external healing source or resting***. There's no accelerated healing which pulls HP out of nowhere just because you were knocked unconscious--you're better off healing while you're still healthy.

*** I also disallow short rest healing unless you have a bard with Song of Rest, and on long rests you can either regain half your HD or spend some HD, but not both, both of which tie into the "wounded warrior" scenario (see below) as well as "wounded enemy" and "wounded mate of an frenemy" and things like that. I want wounds that last for days, not 1-4 hours.

Ok--so if you have any way to do healing that brings your damage back down below your max HP, do you get to act on that turn?
Rephrased: given your WEGO initiative, if I get healed so that I have less than maxHP damage during this turn/round, do I get to act on this turn?

Regarding the Bard: is your version of Song of Rest effectively "if you spend your short rest (or an hour of a long rest) singing, you and any friendly creatures in earshot heal 1dX damage at the end of that rest"?
If you were to use Tasha's, would the Chef bonus be the same?

[MaxWilson]

Ok--so if you have any way to do healing that brings your damage back down below your max HP, do you get to act on that turn?

I treat it as an implicit Delay, assuming you haven't declared an action this round (i.e. were wounded on a previous round and are now back up). That is, you can still declare an action this round at any time, but you automatically lose any initiative contests to everyone else who has already declared their action and started acting. It's "implicit" because you didn't say "I'm Delaying", but in other ways it's the same as any other Delay.


Regarding the Bard: is your version of Song of Rest effectively "if you spend your short rest (or an hour of a long rest) singing, you and any friendly creatures in earshot heal 1dX damage at the end of that rest"?
If you were to use Tasha's, would the Chef bonus be the same?

No, it's "Song of Rest: you may spend HD during a short rest if a bard is singing/whatever, and if you do you gain an extra 1dX HP", the same as PHB rules.

I don't have a strong opinion on how to adapt the Chef feat to this model--it's one of the things about Tasha's that actively bothers me (mostly just because the idea of gaining temp HP from eating "treats" just seems stupid) so my personal answer is "don't adapt it, just leave it out of the game." I do let Healer work normally though--my whole agenda is about preserving the narrative weight of wounding in the default case, but I don't mind a specialized healer getting to be freakishly good at healing wounds. That just makes everyone go "wow!", whereas making deadly wounds automatically heal themselves over the course of 1-4 hours just makes it seem like an alien planet where no one can even relate to the concept of long-term wounds.

[eunwoler]

AOE damage yeah

single target = hit them save or sucks

[LudicSavant]

AOE damage yeah

single target = hit them save or sucks

I think this is a stereotype as surely as "Clerics should only ever be healbots," and one as thoroughly disproven.

There have always been single target damage spells that are well worth it, like Crown of Stars or Spiritual Weapon.

And also like "Clerics should only be healbots," it's not merely a case of the fact that Clerics can be something else, but that they often should be something else. If you only focus on save or sucks, for example, you are going to be way more vulnerable to Legendary Resistance, Magic Resistance, high saves, etc, than any Wizard worth their spellbook should be.

There are examples in the above thread discussion of how casters can just sort of ignore things like Legendary Resistance and Magic Resistance and steamroll Deadly encounters for few resources, using damage spells.

[PhantomSoul]

There have always been single target damage spells that are well worth it, like Crown of Stars or Spiritual Weapon.

I would very much not consider those "single-target damage spells" for a wide range of reasons, most importantly that they're action-economy boosting spells and that they're damage spells that actually hit multiple targets (even if over a longer period of time). They're essentially buffs more than damage spells.

[LudicSavant]

I would very much not consider those "single-target damage spells" for a wide range of reasons, most importantly that they're action-economy boosting spells and that they're damage spells that actually hit multiple targets (even if over a longer period of time). They're essentially buffs more than damage spells.

Would you also object that Fighters do not deal single target DPR because they can choose to attack different targets on different rounds?

You can re-label it whatever you want -- the fact of the matter is that these spells are effective at eliminating big individual targets via damage. They fill the role.

Likewise, things like Magic Missile and Scorching Ray and Blade of Disaster and Bigby's Hand and so forth are capable of hitting multiple creatures within the duration of a single spell, but clearly excel at the single target damage role.

[PhantomSoul]

Would you also object that Fighters do not deal single target DPR because they can choose to attack different targets on different rounds?

You can re-label it whatever you want -- the fact of the matter is that these spells are effective at eliminating big individual targets via damage. They fill the role.

Likewise, things like Magic Missile and Scorching Ray and Blade of Disaster and Bigby's Hand and so forth are capable of hitting multiple creatures within the duration of a single spell, but clearly excel at the single target damage role.

I wouldn't call the Fighters a Spell, which is an important difference! (I recognise you're not saying they are -- but there's a difference in comparison.)

The Spells are more like the Berserker Barbarian's Frenzy giving them a[n extra] Bonus Action option to Attack or like Haste [at least in my experience, it's usually being cast for the extra Action, not for the +2 AC or other bonuses], to me. And it not being restricted to a single target for the whole casting is a meaningful difference to me, but here it's more like adding that Fighter (boosting Action Economy) than like giving an existing Ally bonus Damage.

(I also think Magic Missile giving you a choice of targets is an important benefit, and it has come up regularly at my tables. If anything, it's probably been used as a guaranteed way to finish off one or several targets while hitting multiple targets much more often that not!)

[LudicSavant]

I wouldn't call the Fighters a Spell, which is an important difference! (I recognise you're not saying they are -- but there's a difference in comparison.)

Can we not do this (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JqQq2HXFpjJRWub2o/arguing-definitions)?

These spells are useful for damaging single targets. It doesn't matter what you call them.

The fact that Magic Missile can split does not somehow make it worse at dealing single target damage.

[PhantomSoul]

Can we not do this (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JqQq2HXFpjJRWub2o/arguing-definitions)?

These spells are useful for damaging single targets. It doesn't matter what you call them.

It is nonetheless interesting (revealing?) that both of the counterexamples that first came to mind in defense of single-target damage spells fit into the separate (sub)type rather than being "canonical" single-target damage spells.

(I almost added that they're Bonus Action spells, but Crown of Madness costs an Action when you Cast it [not when you deal the damage], although it does also have a long enough Duration that it may be cast before the combat occurs.)

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Edit to update after edit:

The fact that Magic Missile can split does not somehow make it worse at dealing single target damage.

It does give them noteworthy versatility, though. It may be possible to only target a single creature (without the damage reduction that accompanies unambiguous AoEs, I assume -- which here is an important assumption), but it's not only possible to do that, and that means the spell selection buys you more options for how you use it. (And that these are the next spells to come to mind...)

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Edit to add my opinion, rather than just responding: I think high-level damage spells can have their place, but barring really rare circumstances I pretty much wouldn't ever use them. Those slots typically just have more interesting and potent uses to me. At higher levels those "spare" low-level slots might get used for single-target pure-damage spells... but even then, I'd normally only prepare/know ones that have something beyond single-target damage to offer (like being optionally multi-target or opening up action economy options [even better without concentration], not-so-coincidentally!).

[LudicSavant]

rather than being "canonical" single-target damage spells.


There is nothing "canonical" about you personally defining "single target damage" to exclude options like Crown of Stars, Heat Metal, Scorching Ray, Magic Missile, Chaos Bolt, Spiritual Weapon, etc etc.

That's not the way I'm using the term, nor the way that it's been used in context of much of the larger thread discussion.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you call it a single target damage spell or not. (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JqQq2HXFpjJRWub2o/arguing-definitions) It matters that it does the job.

Also, there are still good spells that don't have the option to target new creatures on future rounds, or split, or anything. Like, say, Dissonant Whispers, Mental Prison, and Mind Spike (but for all I know you may not be counting these either, since they all have an extra effect besides pure damage).

Edit:


Edit to add my opinion, rather than just responding: I think high-level damage spells can have their place, but barring really rare circumstances I pretty much wouldn't ever use them. Those slots typically just have more interesting and potent uses to me. At higher levels those "spare" low-level slots might get used for single-target pure-damage spells... but even then, I'd normally only prepare/know ones that have something beyond single-target damage to offer (like being optionally multi-target or opening up action economy options [even better without concentration], not-so-coincidentally!).

PhantomSoul, all high level mandatory single target damage spells have some additional effect beyond pure damage. Even the lousy ones.

[Valmark]

It is nonetheless interesting (revealing?) that both of the counterexamples that first came to mind in defense of single-target damage spells fit into the separate (sub)type rather than being "canonical" single-target damage spells.

(I almost added that they're Bonus Action spells, but Crown of Madness costs an Action when you Cast it [not when you deal the damage], although it does also have a long enough Duration that it may be cast before the combat occurs.)

----

Edit to update after edit:


It does give them noteworthy versatility, though. It may be possible to only target a single creature (without the damage reduction that accompanies unambiguous AoEs, I assume -- which here is an important assumption), but it's not only possible to do that, and that means the spell selection buys you more options for how you use it. (And that these are the next spells to come to mind...)

----

Edit to add my opinion, rather than just responding: I think high-level damage spells can have their place, but barring really rare circumstances I pretty much wouldn't ever use them. Those slots typically just have more interesting and potent uses to me. At higher levels those "spare" low-level slots might get used for single-target pure-damage spells... but even then, I'd normally only prepare/know ones that have something beyond single-target damage to offer (like being optionally multi-target or opening up action economy options [even better without concentration], not-so-coincidentally!).

I know it has already been pointed out but with this definition any martial but *some* rogues is incapable of single target damage. Unless you purposefully ignore Extra Attack and any other effect that has either multi-targeting or riders on damage.

That said, the fact that a spell excels at dealing damage to a single target means that it's indeed good for single-target damage, even if it has wider applications after that.

Otherwise it's like saying that a spell sucks at something because it's too strong.

What damage reduction do AoEs have? You mean that since they're AoEs they're built-in damage is lower compared to spells only targeting one enemy?

[dmhelp]

Unusually for me, I used PHB initiative rules (IGO-UGO) instead of my normal WEGO rules, in order to keep the results more relatable to other people. For the same reason I also used spell slots instead of spell points, and Legendary Resistance instead of TSR-style magic resistance.

Can you post the entirety of your house rules in this thread or another thread? They sound fascinating.

[MaxWilson]

PhantomSoul, all high level mandatory single target damage spells have some additional effect beyond pure damage. Even the lousy ones.

I think PhantomSoul would count PWK as a "damage" spell (but worse) that has nothing additional to offer beyond single target pseudodamage.


Can you post the entirety of your house rules in this thread or another thread? They sound fascinating.

Sure. Thanks for showing interest. New thread is TSR-ish 5E: Max Wilson's house rules doc (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?630491-TSR-ish-5E-Max-Wilson-s-house-rules-doc).

[LudicSavant]

I think PhantomSoul would count PWK as a "damage" spell (but worse) that has nothing additional to offer beyond single target pseudodamage.

PWK's additional effect is that it bypasses death gates and a whole bunch of high level shenanigans (for example, it can poof a Moon Druid 20 without breaking their Wildshape (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/68271/does-power-word-kill-kill-druids-in-wild-shape)).

It doesn't even deal damage, it just applies the status effect "dead" if a character does not have 101+ hit points (even if it would take far, far more than 101 damage to reduce them to zero, let alone kill them).

PWK even bypasses temporary hit points and Arcane Ward (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/120274/do-temporary-hit-points-count-as-part-of-the-hp-for-resisting-certain-magical-ef).

[MaxWilson]

PWK's additional effect is that it bypasses death gates and a whole bunch of high level shenanigans (for example, it can poof a Moon Druid 20 without breaking their Wildshape (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/68271/does-power-word-kill-kill-druids-in-wild-shape)).

That's not an meaningfully different effect--hit a Moon Druid with PWK or 400 points of damage and you get the same effect in either case: a dead body.

And again, my point was that PhantomSoul didn't just say "has an additional effect", he or she said "something beyond single-target damage to offer (like being optionally multi-target or opening up action economy options [even better without concentration], not-so-coincidentally!)." It seems clear that PWK isn't that.

[LudicSavant]

That's not an meaningfully different effect--hit a Moon Druid with PWK or 400 points of damage and you get the same effect in either case: a dead body.

There are obviously situations where it doesn't produce the same effect. For example, if someone with 99 hit points has the Invulnerability spell cast on them, you can hit them with 400,000 points of damage and nothing will happen... but PWK can still kill them.

[JNAProductions]

There are obviously situations where it doesn't produce the same effect. For example, if someone with 99 hit points has the Invulnerability spell cast on them, you can hit them with 400,000 points of damage and nothing will happen... but PWK can still kill them.

Which is not what's being argued. It's different in niche cases-but the general case is it does the same thing less than 100 points of damage does.

[MaxWilson]

There are obviously situations where it doesn't produce the same effect.

True but irrelevant. Notice how nothing I've written says "it has no additional effect." I'm pointing out that "has an additional effect" is your concept, not PhantomSoul's.

[LudicSavant]

I know it has already been pointed out but with this definition any martial but *some* rogues is incapable of single target damage. Unless you purposefully ignore Extra Attack and any other effect that has either multi-targeting or riders on damage.

That said, the fact that a spell excels at dealing damage to a single target means that it's indeed good for single-target damage, even if it has wider applications after that.

Otherwise it's like saying that a spell sucks at something because it's too strong.

Exactly.

Magic Missile, Crown of Stars, and Power Word Kill are all spells that fill the single target damage role.

Saying "Magic Missile can target multiple creatures if you want, so it's not a single target damage spell!" is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the spells are good at dealing single target damage.


Which is not what's being argued. It's different in niche cases-but the general case is it does the same thing less than 100 points of damage does.

We're already on the same page there. I would consider PWK as contributing to the single target damage niche, just as I do for Magic Missile, Scorching Ray, Crown of Stars, Spiritual Weapon, and Extra Attack.


True but irrelevant. Notice how nothing I've written says "it has no additional effect." I'm pointing out that "has an additional effect" is your concept, not PhantomSoul's.

PhantomSoul's exact quote is "have something beyond single-target damage."

The ability to bypass Invulnerability and other such gates is something beyond single-target damage.

[MaxWilson]

PhantomSoul's exact quote is "have something beyond single-target damage."

The ability to bypass Invulnerability and other such gates is something beyond single-target damage.

The exact quote is "something beyond single-target damage to offer (like being optionally multi-target or opening up action economy options [even better without concentration], not-so-coincidentally!)."

The ability to potentially bypass Invulnerability in an extremely niche scenario (while also doing absolutely zero in the much, much more likely case of a target that turns out to have 101+ HP) is probably not something PhantomSoul will consider "like being multi-target or opening up action economy options."

[LudicSavant]

The exact quote is "something beyond single-target damage to offer (like being optionally multi-target or opening up action economy options [even better without concentration], not-so-coincidentally!)."

Indeed it is. And it remains the case that, like being optionally multi-target or opening up action economy options, doing no damage and directly applying a status effect directly is doing something beyond single-target damage.

Whether you think PhantomSoul thinks that or not, or whether you think it is a big something or a little something or a general something or a niche something, does not actually change the truth value of that statement.

[MaxWilson]

Indeed it is. And it remains the case that, like being optionally multi-target or opening up action economy options, doing no damage and directly applying a status effect directly is doing something beyond single-target damage.

Whether you think PhantomSoul thinks that or not, or whether you think it is a big something or a little something or a general something or a niche something, does not actually change the truth value of that statement.

You're very attached to your own perspective. I had thought before that you were trying to be helpful to PhantomSoul, but you're so insistent here on answering your own question on your own terms instead of PhantomSoul's terms that I just don't know what you're doing. In any case it's clear that my input isn't helping, so I'll just shut up and let you do your thing.

[Chaos Jackal]

Well, even if we accept that PWK has no additional effect other than (pseudo-) single target damage, that still leaves the list of high-level spells satisfying the "no additional effect" criteria frightfully small. I don't have the comfort to go through the spell list right now, but I doubt I'd get more than 2-3 additional cases in that manner. What else is there, disintegrate? Or does breaking force obstacles count as an additional effect? Because personally, I'd never prepare it or PWK for the sake of dealing damage. I'd prepare something of the kind as backup for force effects or if I expect/know I'll fight a demilich or archdruid or something and want to trivialize any issues.
But this also discounts something like mental prison, which deals more damage than disintegrate even without accounting for the included conditions. Should mental prison be excluded as a single-target blast because it also restrains on top of outdamaging disintegrate? Should meteor swarm be excluded because its damage can potentially hit the boss' friends if he has any?
It hardly seems indicative when analyzing the question at hand. Sure, if you only count PWK, disintegrate and upcast blight as single target high-level spell damage,then said damage sucks, but it also misrepresents the situation.

[LudicSavant]

Well, even if we accept that PWK has no additional effect other than (pseudo-) single target damage, that still leaves the list of high-level spells satisfying the "no additional effect" criteria frightfully small. I don't have the comfort to go through the spell list right now, but I doubt I'd get more than 2-3 additional cases in that manner. What else is there, disintegrate? Or does breaking force obstacles count as an additional effect? Because personally, I'd never prepare it or PWK for the sake of dealing damage. I'd prepare something of the kind as backup for force effects or if I expect/know I'll fight a demilich or archdruid or something and want to trivialize any issues.
But this also discounts something like mental prison, which deals more damage than disintegrate even without accounting for the included conditions. Should mental prison be excluded as a single-target blast because it also restrains on top of outdamaging disintegrate? Should meteor swarm be excluded because its damage can potentially hit the boss' friends if he has any?
It hardly seems indicative when analyzing the question at hand. Sure, if you only count PWK, disintegrate and upcast blight as single target high-level spell damage,then said damage sucks, but it also misrepresents the situation.

Exactly thus. Well put Chaos Jackal.


What else is there, disintegrate? Or does breaking force obstacles count as an additional effect? Because personally, I'd never prepare it or PWK for the sake of dealing damage. I'd prepare something of the kind as backup for force effects or if I expect/know I'll fight a demilich or archdruid or something and want to trivialize any issues.

Same! I put it thus in another thread:


Damage is basically the last thing I'm thinking of when I prepare Disintegrate.

The first thing I'm thinking of is removing a Wall of Force.

The second thing I'm thinking of is bypassing certain "death cheating" effects.

[Valmark]

The exact quote is "something beyond single-target damage to offer (like being optionally multi-target or opening up action economy options [even better without concentration], not-so-coincidentally!)."

The ability to potentially bypass Invulnerability in an extremely niche scenario (while also doing absolutely zero in the much, much more likely case of a target that turns out to have 101+ HP) is probably not something PhantomSoul will consider "like being multi-target or opening up action economy options."

To be fair, Phantom framed those as examples it seems to me instead of the criteria.

There's difference between saying "Something beyond single target damage (like X or Y)" and saying "Does X or Y beyond single target damage". Not sure if I'm clear on what I mean.

[LudicSavant]

To be fair, Phantom framed those as examples it seems to me instead of the criteria.

There's difference between saying "Something beyond single target damage (like X or Y)" and saying "Does X or Y beyond single target damage". Not sure if I'm clear on what I mean.

That was my reading as well.

[GeneralVryth]

Just to add another perspective reading over this thread, it seems like Phantom's point was there aren't many high spells that are one shot (like a fireball) single target damage spells, that people use primarily for the damage. Disintegrate is the only spell I can even think of off the top of my head that fits that criteria (PW:K is ticky tack, but I can see the argument) and several people have pointed out they have it for other contingencies than dealing damage, which is the point.

To be honest, I am having a hard time of thinking of one shot single target damage spells in general. Chromatic Orb... and cantrips?

[Goes to look at spell sheets]

Power Word: Kill - see above - 9th
Finger of Death - used to make zombies - 7th level
Disintegrate - see above - 6th level
Enervation - Not one shot, but locked to a single target - 5th level
Blight - 4th level
Phantasmal Killer - also frightens - 4th level
Melf's Acid Arrow - 2nd level
Mind Spike - also has tracking - 2nd level
Scorching Ray - rays can be split - 2nd level
Catapult - throws object - 1st level
Chromatic Orb - 1st level
Ice Knife - secondary aoe - 1st level
Magic Missile - missiles can be split - 1st level
Ray of Sickness - also poisons creature - 1st level

I think that is all of the Wizard's spells that could remotely be considered one shot single target effects pre-Tasha's. That is a surprisingly short list, there is more first level spells than 5th through 9th combined, and most of the 5th through 9th level spells aren't primarily used/considered for their damage (Disintegrate is probably the main debatable one).

If the point was there isn't many good choices for high single target damage, it's a reasonable argument.

[Valmark]

Just to add another perspective reading over this thread, it seems like Phantom's point was there aren't many high spells that are one shot (like a fireball) single target damage spells, that people use primarily for the damage. Disintegrate is the only spell I can even think of off the top of my head that fits that criteria (PW:K is ticky tack, but I can see the argument) and several people have pointed out they have it for other contingencies than dealing damage, which is the point.

To be honest, I am having a hard time of thinking of one shot single target damage spells in general. Chromatic Orb... and cantrips?

[Goes to look at spell sheets]

Power Word: Kill - see above - 9th
Finger of Death - used to make zombies - 7th level
Disintegrate - see above - 6th level
Enervation - Not one shot, but locked to a single target - 5th level
Blight - 4th level
Phantasmal Killer - also frightens - 4th level
Melf's Acid Arrow - 2nd level
Mind Spike - also has tracking - 2nd level
Scorching Ray - rays can be split - 2nd level
Catapult - throws object - 1st level
Chromatic Orb - 1st level
Ice Knife - secondary aoe - 1st level
Magic Missile - missiles can be split - 1st level
Ray of Sickness - also poisons creature - 1st level

I think that is all of the Wizard's spells that could remotely be considered one shot single target effects pre-Tasha's. That is a surprisingly short list, there is more first level spells than 5th through 9th combined, and most of the 5th through 9th level spells aren't primarily used/considered for their damage (Disintegrate is probably the main debatable one).

If the point was there isn't many good choices for high single target damage, it's a reasonable argument.

I think the point (at least the one Phantom originally replied to) is that it doesn't have to be single targeting spells as long as they can produce good single target damage.

As an extreme example take Meteor Swarm. Would you say that it's not good at inflcting damage to one person (40d6) because it's an AoE?

Or a Summon that deals good damage- it doesn't count as single target damage because it's a summon spell?

In addition Phantom explicitely called out spells dealing damage over multiple turns in one of their first replies so it's not even a matter of Istantaneous casting.

[GeneralVryth]

I think the point (at least the one Phantom originally replied to) is that it doesn't have to be single targeting spells as long as they can produce good single target damage.

As an extreme example take Meteor Swarm. Would you say that it's not good at inflcting damage to one person (40d6) because it's an AoE?

Or a Summon that deals good damage- it doesn't count as single target damage because it's a summon spell?

In addition Phantom explicitely called out spells dealing damage over multiple turns in one of their first replies so it's not even a matter of Istantaneous casting.

Oh I agree, it's not unreasonable to use AOE spells for what is single target damage. I do think the relative lack of good single target damage spells of 3rd level or above is interesting. It kind of slots in with what I was saying in a different thread about spell balance. Then again any single target one shot spell that is good solely for its damage would likely end up over powered or at least tread directly on the martial niche, because it would need to do in the 100+ damage range to start to feel worth it.

[Valmark]

Oh I agree, it's not unreasonable to use AOE spells for what is single target damage. I do think the relative lack of good single target damage spells of 3rd level or above is interesting. It kind of slots in with what I was saying in a different thread about spell balance. Then again any single target one shot spell that is good solely for its damage would likely end up over powered or at least tread directly on the martial niche, because it would need to do in the 100+ damage range to start to feel worth it.

Agreed- which is indeed doable (a wizard built accordingly can easily match that damage and more, probably at least Grave clerics too, I'm no expert) but if a spell had that much damage by itself -and nothing else- I'm still not sure I'd take it.

Take Harm- on most characters that spell is bad and it's almost just damage (14d6 targeting Con isn't actually a lot at that level, turns out). Even as a cleric that can force vulnerability on the enemy I might not use it (although hearing the sound of 28 dice rolling is so satisfying).

Although unsure if it'd overshadow martials- spending a daily high level slot to deal damage should indeed surpass a martial's damage (substantially) which usually doesn't have as much heavy investment in terms of reusable resources. Usually.
And even then they (martials) tipically have better sustained dpr (with a few notable exceptions like accordingly built warlocks, Ludic's build on the first page is an example).

[GeneralVryth]

Agreed- which is indeed doable (a wizard built accordingly can easily match that damage and more, probably at least Grave clerics too, I'm no expert) but if a spell had that much damage by itself -and nothing else- I'm still not sure I'd take it.

Take Harm- on most characters that spell is bad and it's almost just damage (14d6 targeting Con isn't actually a lot at that level, turns out). Even as a cleric that can force vulnerability on the enemy I might not use it (although hearing the sound of 28 dice rolling is so satisfying).

Although unsure if it'd overshadow martials- spending a daily high level slot to deal damage should indeed surpass a martial's damage (substantially) which usually doesn't have as much heavy investment in terms of reusable resources. Usually.
And even then they (martials) tipically have better sustained dpr (with a few notable exceptions like accordingly built warlocks, Ludic's build on the first page is an example).

Most builds that can do it are pretty gimmicky. I am not a fan of the nuclear wizard, it's clearly an abuse of the rules, that's why it is so anomalous amongst casters. As for raw damage assuming we are talking something like fire I mean 100+ (which is roughly 30d6) would be a starting point for a level 6 spell. 9th level spells would probably need to be double that to be viable. Meteor Swarm is an army killer, even though is does the most raw damage in a spell by far, it's still roughly only half the HP of an adult dragon, much less an ancient one.

When casters can cook the swarms with a single spell, and have as many save or suck effects as they do, the primary role of martials becomes burning down the big guys. So I am actually fine with casters not being able to enter that niche as well. The ways they can try and get in tend to involve sustained damage from buffs, which feels right.

[Valmark]

Most builds that can do it are pretty gimmicky. I am not a fan of the nuclear wizard, it's clearly an abuse of the rules, that's why it is so anomalous amongst casters. As for raw damage assuming we are talking something like fire I mean 100+ (which is roughly 30d6) would be a starting point for a level 6 spell. 9th level spells would probably need to be double that to be viable. Meteor Swarm is an army killer, even though is does the most raw damage in a spell by far, it's still roughly only half the HP of an adult dragon, much less an ancient one.

When casters can cook the swarms with a single spell, and have as many save or suck effects as they do, the primary role of martials becomes burning down the big guys. So I am actually fine with casters not being able to enter that niche as well. The ways they can try and get in tend to involve sustained damage from buffs, which feels right.

If it interests you even ignoring wether the MM combo works or not this (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=23998967&postcount=170) showcases just how good said nuclear wizard can be (and even then the MM combo is tecnically valid, at worst if you aim one dart at a second enemy it becomes valid under almost any reading).

Casters in general can indeed dish out heavy pain, even if they probably need different investments (I imagine a subclass geared towards offense will have an easier time then one that does not).

Even just the new summon spells (at least some of them) can alone match the typical damage of most martials! Possibly surpass it.

So to put it short they can already enter the niche- just not by straight up brainlessly throwing a big damage spell (at least not all of them).

Again, this coming from me- I'm no optimizer, somebody actually competent would probably know better. I can only look at the work others did.

[LudicSavant]

So to put it short they can already enter the niche- just not by straight up brainlessly throwing a big damage spell (at least not all of them).

Indeed. More elaboration on this further in this post.


So I am actually fine with casters not being able to enter that niche as well.

You can enter said niche with every full caster class, and you can do it while being super versatile too.

Note that the "build on the first page" Valmark was talking about isn't the Nuclear Wizard. It was a Warlock that was good at just about everything (single target damage, AoE damage, battlefield control, buffing, debuffing, healing, tanking, scouting, and more). It wasn't even a damage-focused subclass or anything, and yet it still easily fills the niche, able to focus down bosses before they even get a turn.

Also, before you declare something "clearly an abuse of the rules" you should be aware that the devs have gone on record saying that's precisely how it's supposed to work.

You appear to want it to be the case that martials have a role they are exclusively good at. But 5e doesn't really work like that -- there isn't role protection in this edition. If you want to fill the "focus down the boss" niche as a full caster, WotC has been happy to provide us with myriad tools to do exactly that as any caster class.

It's just, like Valmark said, not as brainless as "cast a single spell and nothing else." Why? Because high single target damage potential throughout 5e is generally designed to be combo-oriented.

Just as a Fighter's big focus damage comes from combinations of Fighting Styles, subclass features, action economy boosters like Action Surge, and feats like GWM or Sharpshooter, so too does a caster's focus damage come from combinations (like using Scorching Ray as a delivery mechanism for on-hit effects, or invocations to make Eldritch Blast dangerous, or any of a hundred other examples).

If one only looks at the base damage of an individual spell in a vacuum, they're going to have a very inaccurate picture of the kind of damage casters can dish out, as surely as if your idea of Fighter damage potential was just looking at the damage die on a weapon table (instead of, say, GWM + PAM + Fighting Style + Action Surge + Battle Master Maneuvers + etc).

Likewise, if a person thinks of a character class as determining their role (like "Wizards are always squishy controllers" or "Clerics are always healbots" or "Fighters are always melee tanks"), then they're going to also get a very inaccurate picture of what can be done with the game. D&D 5e is not designed like a "Holy Trinity" RPG, and as such you cannot assume a character's role just from knowing their class. Two characters made with the same class (and even subclass) can fill entirely different party roles from each other, and both can be not only viable, but optimized enough to defeat several Deadly encounters per day (beyond overkill for any published module).

[Unoriginal]

40d6 is 240 damage max, on a DEX save, and with half of it being fire. And that uses up your one 9th level spell slot.

I've never seen a single person argue that Meteor Swarm would be good if used as a single-target-spell.

[MaxWilson]

To be fair, Phantom framed those as examples it seems to me instead of the criteria.

There's difference between saying "Something beyond single target damage (like X or Y)" and saying "Does X or Y beyond single target damage". Not sure if I'm clear on what I mean.

Yes, that's why I only said I think PhantomSoul wouldn't count PWK (it seems very different from the X and Y given) instead of saying I know. Bypassing Invulnerability in a very, very niche situation (why not just Dispel it instead?) is not much at all like the kind of extra tactical richness they implied they're interested in, whereas Mental Prison is. Disintegrate, hard to say, depends.

[Unoriginal]

Reminds me of how the 4e Disintegrate didn't disintegrate.

[GeneralVryth]

Also, before you declare something "clearly an abuse of the rules" you should be aware that the devs have gone on record saying that's precisely how it's supposed to work.

You appear to want it to be the case that martials have a role they are exclusively good at. But 5e doesn't really work like that -- there isn't role protection in this edition. If you want to fill the "focus down the boss" niche as a full caster, WotC has been happy to provide us with myriad tools to do exactly that as any caster class.


Frankly I don't care what the designer has to say. When you have an effect like MM interactions with Empowered Evocation and Hexblade's Curse where your system is producing significantly more powerful results in one specific situation than it does in most other cases, that is indicative of broken or unbalanced system. And that doesn't get into the Simulacrum cheese later on.

Also, based on both your and @Valmark's response, I wasn't clear in my previous post. I have no problem with casters doing good single target by using sustained spells and abilities (that is the right way to do it). I was musing it was probably good thing they aren't good at single target damage with spells that are one shot effects (as it would likely have a negative effect on the feel of encounters). As far as role protection goes I actually think flexibility in roles is a good. I like 5e as a system for many reasons, that is one of them (the Nuclear Wizard on the other hand, along with Simulacrum, seems like a perversion of the system, which should be "nuked".)

For the record, the warlock from the first page is actually the kind of characters I like playing, characters who may not be the pure best at one thing, but flex to do lots of things pretty well and can adapt themselves to what the party needs. I also tend to like my widgets and useful decisions so I prefer casters (whether full or half) as well.

[LudicSavant]

40d6 is 240 damage max, on a DEX save, and with half of it being fire. And that uses up your one 9th level spell slot.

I've never seen a single person argue that Meteor Swarm would be good if used as a single-target-spell.

Valmark's not crazy here.

A level 17 Champion using Sharpshooter/Crossbow Expert/Action Surge against AC 19 (let alone more for bosses) is less damage than a Meteor Swarm even when they succeed on the save. It's a decent chunk of burst.

And that's of course your damage floor for the round, not even close to the ceiling -- you've still got your bonus action, you Concentration, your familiar and any other minions, possibly a Simulacrum, class features, and/or feats. And of course they could actually fail the save. You don't just have a spell in a vacuum any more than a Fighter has a hand crossbow in a vacuum.

Is that the main reason you prepared Meteor Swarm? Nah, definitely not, and I'm sure Valmark knows that. Is it sometimes worth using to make sure the enemy disappears this turn, if you don't have an even higher burst option prepared? Yeah.

[Valmark]

Frankly I don't care what the designer has to say. When you have an effect like MM interactions with Empowered Evocation and Hexblade's Curse where your system is producing significantly more powerful results in one specific situation than it does in most other cases, that is indicative of broken or unbalanced system. And that doesn't get into the Simulacrum cheese later on.

Also, based on both your and @Valmark's response, I wasn't clear in my previous post. I have no problem with casters doing good single target by using sustained spells and abilities (that is the right way to do it). I was musing it was probably good thing they aren't good at single target damage with spells that are one shot effects (as it would likely have a negative effect on the feel of encounters). As far as role protection goes I actually think flexibility in roles is a good. I like 5e as a system for many reasons, that is one of them (the Nuclear Wizard on the other hand, along with Simulacrum, seems like a perversion of the system, which should be "nuked".)

For the record, the warlock from the first page is actually the kind of characters I like playing, characters who may not be the pure best at one thing, but flex to do lots of things pretty well and can adapt themselves to what the party needs. I also tend to like my widgets and useful decisions so I prefer casters (whether full or half) as well.

To be fair if you don't like the MM etc. (Which isn't even the only way) it doesn't mean they aren't good at it.

Unless you mean they aren't good without investment (as in, without actually thinking how to make high damage in one round) in which case I would tend to agree. There are still some cases like (first example that comes to mind) a Sheperd druid and a DM that gives not-useless beasts. Playing it the straight-forward way can still deal heavy damage in a single round to one target (which is usually when it deals the highest damage before the enemies find countermeasures) with little optimization needed beyond 'I use the spell the subclass is basically built around'.

Note: With "useless" I mean stuff like giving weak, lower CR creatures or even ones not adapt to the area (squids on ground moving at 5 feet), it's tipically fine otherwise. Notable exception with animals relying on poison against poison-immune foes (most of their damage comes from the rider, so they are functionally weak without it. Usually)

Ironically if I'm not wrong that warlock is optimized for something (and is great at it). Healing.
If you check one of the example battles the synopsis is basically "whatever the enemies can't outheal the party" if I recall well xD


Valmark's not crazy here.

A level 17 Champion using Sharpshooter/Crossbow Expert/Action Surge against AC 19 (let alone more for bosses) is less damage than a Meteor Swarm even when they succeed on the save. It's a decent chunk of burst.

And that's of course your damage floor for the round, not even close to the ceiling -- you've still got your bonus action, you Concentration, your familiar and any other minions, possibly a Simulacrum, class features, and/or feats. And of course they could actually fail the save. You don't just have a spell in a vacuum any more than a Fighter has a hand crossbow in a vacuum.

Is that the main reason you prepared Meteor Swarm? Nah, definitely not, and I'm sure Valmark knows that. Is it sometimes worth using to make sure the enemy disappears this turn, if you don't have an even higher burst option prepared? Yeah.

Basically this. I wasn't saying that's what I'm going to use as a first option or prepare it for single targets, but if what I need is to blast X enemy down that's a pretty usable option that doesn't require much in the way of thought.

The last thing I feel is especially important: even a new player (let's pretend a new player that has gotten to 20 without developing much tactical insight beyond 'don't blast your friends'*) can take a look at it and go 'Dang, that's sweet' and use it accordingly and feel satisfied.



*It looks like it's a joke but a friend of mine who has been playing dnd for years still mistakes 'radius' with 'diameter'. He has been forbidden from using Fireballs.

[Frogreaver]

Most builds that can do it are pretty gimmicky. I am not a fan of the nuclear wizard, it's clearly an abuse of the rules, that's why it is so anomalous amongst casters.

Agreed.

I think we can broadly categorize caster damage.


Nuclear Wizard Cheese
Non-Concentration single target damage - think fireball/magic missile
Concentration based single target damage - think spirit guardians/crown of stars
Trapping a creature in concentration based damage spell - requires multiple spells (often multiple casters to pull off)
Non-concentration duration spells - think spiritual weapon (not sure if there is another)


When I think of single target caster damage I think of options 2, 3 or 5.

Though even without option 1, which I fully agree with you on there is still option 4 and while more resource intensive it really shines - but isn't very achievable till level 9ish.

[Valmark]

Agreed.

I think we can broadly categorize caster damage.


Nuclear Wizard Cheese
Non-Concentration single target damage - think fireball/magic missile
Concentration based single target damage - think spirit guardians/crown of stars
Trapping a creature in concentration based damage spell - requires multiple spells (often multiple casters to pull off)
Non-concentration duration spells - think spiritual weapon (not sure if there is another)


When I think of single target caster damage I think of options 2, 3 or 5.

Though even without option 1, which I fully agree with you on there is still option 4 and while more resource intensive it really shines - but isn't very achievable till level 9ish.

Crown of Stars is non Concentration too- I'd also add trapping them with non-concentration damage spells (arguably harder though). An example would be Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound together with something to keep the enemy still (which is likely a Concentration spell until higher levels unless a party member helps out).

[MaxWilson]

Agreed.

I think we can broadly categorize caster damage.


Nuclear Wizard Cheese
Non-Concentration single target damage - think fireball/magic missile
Concentration based single target damage - think spirit guardians/crown of stars
Trapping a creature in concentration based damage spell - requires multiple spells (often multiple casters to pull off)
Non-concentration duration spells - think spiritual weapon (not sure if there is another)


When I think of single target caster damage I think of options 2, 3 or 5.

Though even without option 1, which I fully agree with you on there is still option 4 and while more resource intensive it really shines - but isn't very achievable till level 9ish.

Opinion: what makes Nuclear Wizard feel like cheese isn't the result, it's that you get there via a very subtle rules interaction that feels like it shouldn't matter but for some reason does: the interaction between "simultaneous" and PHB guidance on how to roll AoE damage (roll once, apply multiple times) to bypass the PHB errata which changed Empowered Evocation to work on only one damage roll per round.

Empowered Evocation (p. 117). “The
damage roll” has been changed to “one
damage roll.”

"Beginning at 10th level, you can add your Intelligence modifier (minimum of +1) to the one damage roll of any wizard evocation spell that you cast."

It is WEIRD that Jeremy Crawford apparently thought Scorching Ray needed to be nerfed, but Magic Missile did not.

Personally I think the game is better without that errata, although restricting it to the round you cast it instead of every round would be fine. ("...any wizard spell you cast, on the turn that you cast it.") Then Evokers get a straightforward damage bonus which is useful for Scorching Ray/Magic Missile/Melf's Minute Meteors with no subtle readings required, and groups who like to roll Chain Lightning damage individually for each target get the same results as those who follow the PHB guidance on rolling only one, and ditto for those who like to roll Nd4+N for Magic Missile instead of (1d4+1)*N, etc.

Subtle details of how you roll your damage just shouldn't matter that much!

-Max


Crown of Stars is non Concentration too- I'd also add trapping them with non-concentration damage spells (arguably harder though). An example would be Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound together with something to keep the enemy still (which is likely a Concentration spell until higher levels unless a party member helps out).

Grappling works too. If a PC is already a fan of grapple / prone to grant advantage and force disadvantage, a Hound is basically just free damage on top of that at the cost of an action and a spell slot. The grappler can even reuse the Hound after the first enemy is dead, by dragging another target closer to the Hound. This is effectively a no-concentration damage buff to the grappler, so they don't have to just flail away with a shield bash for mediocre damage (d4+Str, no proficiency bonus).

Could be a wildshaped druid instead of a grappler per se, or even a Polymorphed Giant Ape using its +9 to Athletics (which might be why the wizard can't use a Concentration spell for damage, if he's the Polymorph caster).

MFH isn't fantastic as a combat spell but for a 1 action no-concentration spell, it's better than it looks. And it stacks with itself too--you can cast one every round in a long, tough fight.

[Withershins]

Okay, fair enough. That's slightly more doable, time-wise.



I haven't seen the movie, so I'll take your word for it.

So for your scenario, we're talking about at most a couple hours of actual dungeoneering, with room for a ton of short rests.

The density of short rest opportunities in this campaign makes me tempted to bring an all Warlock party.

All DPR figures are vs AC 17 (since that's the DMG-stated average for CR12). All results account for crit chance, accuracy, etc etc, and all decimal results are rounded to the nearest tenth.

For perspective, the resourceless damage of a GWM/PAM Battle Master (against the same AC) is just ~32.7. Their AC is 19 (18 if they don't take Defense), and their hp is 100 (with Con 14) or 112 (with Con 16).

So let's introduce our first party member.

Yamara d'Jorasco
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/834358053746769940/834358114983215104/e_Ppe_Hi_H.jpg
Mark of Healing Halfling Celestial Pact of the Chain Warlock 11 / Life Cleric 1.

Them Heals
Let's take a look at just how powerful our healing is as a result of Jorasco + Life dip + Celestial. For perspective on the sheer quantity of hp value we're talking about here, a level 12, 14 Con Barbarian has 113 hit points at this level.

Celestial Resilience alone will generate 16 temp hp for you, plus 10 temp hp per character (for 5 characters other than you, meaning 3 party members + familiars), per short rest (for a grand total of up to (8*16)+(8*10*5) = 528 temp hp generated in MaxWilson's scenario).

Our Healing Light feature gives us 12 d6s we can hand out as we please using bonus actions, for a grand total of 42 hp value.

A slot spent on Aura of Vitality is worth ((2d6+7)*10)= 140 hp of non-combat healing per slot.

A slot spent on Cure Wounds is worth 5d8+12 = 34.5 hp of burst healing. Notably, you can combine this with your Healing Light on the same turn to burst for 52.5 hp healing, nearly the burst of a level 6 Heal spell.

A slot spent on Mass Healing Word is worth 3d4+12 = 19.5 hp of healing per party member (for a total of 78 hp value), as a mere bonus action. Notably, you can do this on the same turn that you, say, Eldritch Blast something.

In short, you have so much damn healing that the party can be expected to enter every single combat with full hit points, and Team Monster would have to do seriously fast burst in order to actually take anyone down.

And then, after all this, we take Gift of the Ever-Living Ones.

___

Teh Damagez
Now, let's take a look at our damage. All DPR figures are vs AC 17 (since that's the DMG-stated average for CR12). All results account for crit chance, accuracy, etc etc, and all decimal results are rounded to the nearest tenth. For perspective, the resourceless damage of a GWM/PAM Battle Master (against the same AC) is just ~32.7.

I even accounted for the effects of the Halfling "Lucky" feature in my math.

If we are concentrating on Spirit Shroud, our Eldritch Blast does 2d8+1d10+5 damage per ray (and an extra +5 damage on the first ray, from the 'Radiant Soul' feature, since Spirit Shroud does Radiant damage). This is worth ~47 DPR, ~52.1 DPR if our Familiar helps us, or ~62 DPR if we're standing inside of a Darkness.

Spirit Shroud is only a bonus action to activate, and has the duration to lasts for an entire encounter. Even if we only had 2 short rests instead of Max's 7, we would be able to do this for every encounter for 9 encounters, outdamaging standard GWM/PAM Fighters throughout, and still bringing the value of Celestial Resilience, Invocations, Healing Light, and a 6th level spell to the party.

What else do we have for damage options? Let's see. There's "Summon Fiend" for a Mystic Arcanum, which has 3 attacks for 2d6+9 each, and it has Devil's Sight so it can benefit from this party of Warlocks spamming Darkness. This means it has 32.3 DPR vs AC 17, or 44.7 DPR in Darkness. Notably, this is in addition to your regular Eldritch Blast DPR, which (without Spirit Shroud) is 22.4 DPR / 30 DPR with Advantage. For a grand total of 54.7 DPR / 74.7 DPR for an hour. Plus your Familiar can still Help someone for a bit more DPR!

There's also alternative damage options for our level 5 slot. If we're up against a group, Synaptic Static is really good, dealing damage like a Fireball, except with a much better damage type (Psychic), a much better saving throw (Intelligence), and carrying a strong non-Concentration debuff with it.

That debuff grants -1d6 to attack rolls, which is a strong defensive benefit to the party in general (it's like having ~70% of the value of the Shield spell for the whole party). It also grants -1d6 to ability checks, which can combo with a teammate's Hex to just completely hose someone's ability checks and leave them hyper-vulnerable to spells that use ability checks instead of saves, or just plain grappling or the like.

Another great aspect of it reduces ability checks is that it helps screw over Counterspell and Dispel Magic.

There's Wall of Fire, which deals 6d8+5 (32)/save for half AoE damage when it appears, then another 6d8 (27) true DPR with no save each time they end their turn on the wrong side, or try to pass through it. And it's really, really easy to get multiple procs on Wall of Fire on multiple creatures with Repelling Blast.

There's Armor of Agathys, which allows us to deal 25 true DPR (e.g. it can't miss) per melee hit that strikes us, until it breaks.

There's Cloud of Daggers, which deals 25 true DPR (e.g. it too cannot miss) per tick, and it's really easy to activate it multiple times by pinballing people around with Repelling Blast from multiple Warlocks. Like it's very feasible for this to put out 100 damage in a round to a creature. And it can affect multiple creatures.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/834358053746769940/834379125769633812/unknown.png

There's Darkness, which basically gives you Advantage on all your (and your allies') Eldritch Blasting for 10 entire minutes (which means damage), plus gives many enemies Disadvantage to hit you, plus disables any enemy abilities that require them to see the target.

There's Hellish Rebuke, which deals a very respectable 6d10+5 (38)/save for half burst damage without even using your Action or Bonus Action, so that's stacking right on top of your Spirit Shroud + Eldritch Blast or whatever. And half of that damage is unmissable.

There's Summon Undead, Summon Fey, Summon Greater Demon, Summon Aberration, Summon Shadowspawn, and Summon Lesser Demons, all of which deal respectable damage over generous durations. I can't be bothered to go over every single one of those here, just think of it as a one-step-lower version of what I said about Summon Fiend. Summon Undead is really good at applying fear, Summon Shadowspawn is really good for denying movement, summon aberration can give a minion with regeneration, summon fey can create darkness squares for allies to abuse, give advantage, or wield shortswords. All of them offer different damage types for bypassing resistances, and Aberration/Undead can do ranged attacks.

And there's Thunder Step which does 5d10 (27.5) / save for half AoE damage in a 25-foot diameter, which is close to the damage of a Synaptic Static or Fireball but in a smaller area. The upshot is that you do this while simultaneously moving yourself and an ally up to 90 feet!

There's Guardian of Faith, which is basically a non-Concentration hazard that dishes out up to 60 damage.

There's Sickening Radiance, which covers a huge 60 foot diameter AoE and builds up exhaustion stacks as you bounce people in and out of it (on top of 4d10 damage on each failed Con save).

All of these are Nice Things. So grab up a few of these.

Cleric Spells
You get 2 extra spell slots as a result of your Cleric dip. You can use them for a boosted 1d4+8 (10.5) hp Healing Word, Bless, Command, Sanctuary, or Protection from Evil and Good (e.g. 1st level spells that retain their relevance at all levels).

Invocations!
We get 5 of these. We'll take Devil's Sight, Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Eldritch Mind, and Gift of the Ever-Living Ones (which will take our healing from "really good" to "why yes, I can in fact restore my entire health bar in a turn, you squishy Barbarian").

ASIs
Tasha's race variant. Fey-Touched (+1 Cha) and +2 Cha. Take "Gift of Alacrity" as our Fey-Touched spell.

___


The Labyrinth
Now, I was going to take the time to make 4 of these Warlocks each taking complementary abilities making them more than the sum of their parts, but I realize I'm already running out of time to write stuff today, and Yamara is versatile enough (despite Celestial Resilience not stacking) that I bet 4 of him would do alright anyways (even though he's the healer of the party, and other folks like the party Hexblade can do waaaaay more damage, Yamara already can outdamage many martials). I call the Celestial Warlock a generalist for a reason, after all.

Team Yamara's "default" tactic will be for one of them to have Darkness up at any given time, while the other Yamaras open a fight with Spirit Shroud and Eldritch Blast @#$% into oblivion. Possibly with one or more of them dropping a hazard for the others to pinball people through. Alternatively they could use a summon instead of a Spirit Shroud. They drop fat heals (seriously, they can burst heal each other from 0-100 in a turn) as needed, or simply heal to full after each fight.

In fights 5, 6, 7, and 8, one of the Yamaras will have a fiend summoned via Mystic Arcanum. Each Yamara will be given Gift of Alacrity from Fey-Touched.

They will also hand the fiend a healing potion, just in case it wants to pick someone up off the death gate. They'll do the same for their Chain Pact familiars. Yamaras can produce healing potions themselves using their high (Jorasco-boosted) Herbalism skill, or just spend some of that massive wad of cash they saved by wearing medium rather than heavy armor (specifically, 4 half-plates instead of 4 full plates means 3000 gold to toss around). These can actually heal a full 10 hit points per potion, thanks to Gift of the Ever-Living Ones. Using your familiar's action, not yours. And there are 4 of those familiars, so... yeah.

I will solve problems using damage spells. Even my control spells will be damage spells (e.g. Synaptic Static, Repelling Eldritch Blast, Wall of Fire, etc).

Sound good? Good! I'm gonna take a peek at what's hidden in that spoiler block now, and see if Yamara holds up. Maybe I'll be surprised?

1) Okay... first fight is a Beholder in a tight space? Well the Beholder has a big problem, namely that it can't target people it can't see with eye rays, and while it can suppress Darkness with its antimagic cone, it can't fire eye rays at people while said cone is active. And its bite attack is peanuts. I suspect this is a stomp for Team Yamara with barely any resource expenditures.

2) Nycaloth and Glabrezu can both see through the Darkness, both have Dispel Magic, and the Glabrezu can cast Power Word Stun. They can certainly put up more of a fight than the Beholder can. However, their many resistances, including Magic Resistance, are all useless as a defense against Eldritch Blast + Spirit Shroud. And if they're using Dispel Magic on Spirit Shroud, they're not attacking and dealing damage, and they're only affecting 1 party member at a time (if they succeed on a casting check), and they're only reducing their damage rather than eliminating it, and they can just re-cast it as a bonus action anyways.

The fact that we're in a small demiplane is advantageous to the pair, since it makes it easier for them to actually get in range and attack the teleport-capable Repelling Blasters, but they don't really have the defenses to last for more than a coupla rounds, nor the offense to really threaten people as tanky as Yamara. Especially the Nycaloth (whose wounding ability is basically hard countered by Celestial Warlocks for barely any resources). The Glabrezu's grapples basically don't matter because of Repelling Blasts coming in from all sides. Team Yamara focuses down the Glabrezu first just because it seems like it does more damage (both with its attacks and spells), and because the Nycaloth presumably would be starting with Mirror Image and Invisibility.

3) This is Yamara's biggest threat so far -- the dragon can do meaningful damage while debuffing attack rolls with Frightful Presence. Thankfully, Team Yamara is proficient in Wisdom saves, has Advantage against fear, halfling luck, and can do plenty of damage even if most of their attacks miss (or even if they don't use attack rolls at all), so the fear's not a big deal.

Yamara also notices that it can't burrow because of the limits of the demiplane, as surely as it prevents Team Yamara from kiting with a staggering 120 feet worth of knockback. So he takes advantage of this with Wall of Fire, so that the creature has to approach them if it wants to use its melee options, and proceeds to pinball the dragon through hazards with Repelling Blast until it dies from massive damage. Remember that Wall of Fire does not offer saving throws for Legendary Resistance, beyond its initial appearance. So that's just 6d8 each time it enters the wall, and 6d8 each time it ends its turn in a position to actually hit the PCs. That's gonna add up awfully quick.

The damage from the breath weapons and melee attacks gets healed up as necessary, likely mostly with bonus actions or post-battle healing.

4) Accounting for their (low) Int saving throws, Synaptic Statics deal over 75 average damage each (between the 3 of them), plus totally screwing the attack rolls of these melee-reliant foes. Wall of Fire is also effective here, dealing 6d8 per tick (with those ticks racking up real quick thanks to them A) the narrow quarters of the demiplane, B) the monsters relying on melee range for their attacks and C) Repelling Blast). The Yeti even has a Fear of Fire disadvantage. The Chasmes are resistant to fire, but with no saving throw and multiple ticks, it's still a real threat to their low hit points. Basically, these monsters are gonna get wrecked.

The Abominable Yeti has a breath weapon, but it's likely to only get to use it once during the fight (because it only recharges on a 6).

Chasmes have a 37% chance to knock someone unconscious with their droning, but you can just have your familiars wake you up, or even have an ally poke you with one of the rays of their Eldritch Blasts (and still direct the rest of the rays at the enemy). After which you're immune to the Chasme's droning for 24 hours.

Chasmes also have the potential to reduce maximum hit points, but Yamara can undo this with Greater Restoration after the fight if it happens. Which it might not (because of Wall of Fire and Synaptic Static and Yamara's solid AC and Con save).

5) Ah, the Death Knight, an otherwise fearsome CR17 creature that's helpless against Forcecage. Thankfully for the Death Knight, Yamara doesn't have that spell quite yet, so Death Knight gets to actually play the game.

Mr. Death Knight does not have the ability to see through Darkness, so he's going to make all of his attacks at Disadvantage, while the Yamaras get to make their attacks at Advantage. It also means he can't use any of the "creature he can see" spells. This means Mr. Death Knight is probably going to rely on his AoE attacks, like Hellfire Orb or Destructive Wave.

Yes, he could use Dispel Magic on Darkness, but that's just exchanging his entire turn for a chance to remove 1/4th of the party's Actions (which they spend to simply re-cast it). Not a good deal for Mr. Death Knight. In fact he's better off tossing a Hellfire Orb and hoping someone loses Concentration.

Yamara can counteract the effects of these AoEs through his own AoE healing, or via Counterspells.

Team Yamara is also going to burn the Death Knight's hit points pretty fast since Darkness is working at full strength here. The Yamaras with Spirit Shroud are going to be burning through his 20 AC at a rate of 54.6 DPR each (and the one with Summon Fiend does considerably more). And Yamaras have an initiative roll advantage thanks to Gift of Alacrity, of course. These two things together means he might not even see more than 1 turn. Parry hardly even helps because it only blocks 1 ray.

Magic Resistance, as usual, continues to be an ineffective deterrent against magic and does not affect the fight at all.

Overall this is one of the more taxing encounters to Team Yams resources thus far, simply because Mr. Death Knight's AoEs are big and fat and do enough damage to actually break Concentration and cause re-casting, but it's nowhere close to making them actually run out.

6) One well-placed Synaptic Static can basically reduce this encounter to mush.

The Skulks are basically going to evaporate as soon as Synaptic Static hits. Even if they somehow don't, they are melee-attack based with a low attack bonus against characters with good AC, so... yeah.

The giant ape has no ability to deal with Darkness, so it's going to be plugging away at a paltry ~13.7 DPR. Once the first Synaptic Static falls (since this is an enemy group with low Int, so it's AoE-o-clock), it's going to see that plummet to a pathetic 6.7 DPR.

There's also gonna be a summoned fiend in the mix here, making Team Yams damage even higher.

The best chance Team Monster has is probably taking spread out positions surrounding the party to make it harder for them to AoE, but this is unlikely to work given Yamara's high initiative and mobility options. Even if they do avoid getting AoEed, they still have the problem that they can't do good damage

7) Interesting one!

Neogi Masters are surprisingly threatening for their CR. Their vision pierces Magical Darkness, and they have Counterspell (though their Counterspell has only a 50% chance of making the casting check to eat a Warlock slot), and they have mind control shenanigans. Not to mention that those Manglers do serious burst damage if they get their hands on a paralyzed PC.

Thankfully, our Lucky Halflings have a high (67%, or ~76% with Bless) chance of resisting their influence, but that's definitely not 100%.

The good news is that they don't have a lot of hit points or defenses, nor are they good at keeping their Concentration in the face of the high damage of Team Yams (especially since they have a fiend out for this fight). And the high number of creatures in this encounter means AoEs will be effective. And as always Team Yams has an initiative advantage and has a good chance of killing some of them (potentially even all of them via AoEs) before they get a turn.

Also, while they can see through Darkness, they can't see through, say, a Wall of Fire. Once Team Neogi's vision is blocked, they can't target Hold Persons or Counterspells. So you only really need to get off one spell (you can Counterspell their Counterspells if you have to), then clean them up with raw damage. Even if they manage to get a status effect on someone, you can get rid of that effect just by hitting the Neogis hard enough that they either A) lose Concentration or B) die.

Another thing the Neogis have to worry about is that Hold Person gets countered by Lesser Restoration, which every single Yamara can cast as a racial spell and as a Warlock spell.

But what about the worst case scenario? Even if the Neogis actually manage to paralyze someone and their Manglers actually start dishing out massive damage before it gets removed, the healing power of Team Yams is so high that they can pop that PC right back up to full. Heck, even if they literally kill the character, they can Revivify them and pick them back up to full hp.

So yeah, I'm expecting this one to involve an initial exchange of counterspells fighting over getting a vision blocker up, followed by rapid death of Neogi and Manglers once the vision blocker is established, with many either dying outright or dying as they try to flee the Wall of Fire death zone (the only way out is through the fire).

8) Oh snap, the plot twist! Githyanki and Mind Flayers working together! Cue boss music.

Now, the Githyanki Supreme Commander is mostly just another strong beatstick that Team Yams can run over -- it can't even see through Darkness or anything. The problem is the Mind Flayer Arcanist.

The Mind Flayer is very dangerous, as it actually targets one of Yamara's few weaknesses (his garbage Intelligence saving throw) with a really devastating status effect. I often specifically put something to deal with deadly Int saves in my parties (it's on my checklist of stuff to be prepped for, as some Int saves are party killers), but Team Yams doesn't have that because I just cloned one character 4 times for lack of time. So this will be a test of Yamara's ability to adapt.

Mind Blast has a whopping 73.75% chance of working on Yamara despite his Halfling luck, and stunning him for a duration. On average, Mind Blast will stun a Yamara for ~2.8 rounds. You can't even remove the stun with Lesser or Greater Restoration. That's bad.

Likewise, if it succeeds, it disables Darkness and gives Advantage to hit, meaning the Supreme Commander suddenly starts hitting for a whopping ~93 DPR (including their Legendary Actions), and helping the Mind Flayer get extra attempts to grapple/extract brain (it actually has a >30% chance to miss even with Advantage, and takes multiple actions to attempt to Extract Brain).

There are a few things that Team Yams can do about this.

- The first is that if their Chain Pact familiars manage to scout the fight, they can pre-buff with Bless and Protection from Evil using their Cleric slots, considerably raising their chances. They can also cast Aura of Purity from the Mark of Healing Halfling list. A halfling with Bless and Aura of Purity character only has a 37.2% chance of failing a Mind Blast, even with -1 Int. Concentration on PFG&E may lower their damage output, but it'll still be enough -- Mind Flayer Arcanist is a doom machine, but a squishy doom machine.

- The second is that with +2+1d8 (from Gift of Alacrity) to initiative vs the Mind Flayer's +1, there's a strong chance that one or more Yamaras will go before it does. And if they do, the plan is nova that @#$%er right @#$%ing now before he gets a turn. With only 15 AC and 71 hit points, the Mind Flayer Arcanist can be killed by one or two Yamaras going before him.

The Yamara using Summon Fiend has an average DPR of 31.7 (from their EB) + ~47 (from their fiend) for a total of ~78.8. One using Spirit Shroud has 65.5 DPR That's including the benefit of Halfling Lucky, Advantage from being in Darkness, and the level 6 ability of Celestial-lock applying to the first ray that hits.

Yes, the Mind Flayer can Shield, but they can (and should) just Counterspell that -- this is the encounter where they should nova and not conserve resources.

- The third is that they can try to spread out so that they don't all get caught in a cone shape.

- The fourth is that even if you get unlucky and all the @#$% hits the fan, if even one Yamara is up after the Mind Blast, they can keep blasting away at the squishy Mind Flayer, and it's not going to get to Mind Blast again immediately. They can also drop 24 hp AoE heals or 30 hp single target heals as a bonus action (thanks, Gift of the Ever-Living Ones), making it a lot harder to actually finish off their allies.

Notably, Repelling Blast breaks grapples, so you can save people from getting their brains eaten so long as even one character is up in time.

Even if every single party member and all their familiars get Mind Blasted, there's a chance of it wearing off every round, and it's gonna take a bit for the Supreme Commander and Mind Flayer to actually chew through the 103 hp, 19 AC Yamaras. And once they start getting up, they can start burst healing + doing reliable damage to the Mind Flayer. Even if someone died, if they didn't die specifically from Extract Brain, you can Revivify them + heal them to a respectable 38 hp in one turn. Basically the bounceback potential of Team Yams is very high.

Once the Mind Flayer is dead, the Supreme Commander's ability to kill them through the death gate basically evaporates and it's just a matter of time.

__

Note the Mind Flayer can also try to cast spells instead of just trying to mind blast + eat brains, but doing so opens it up to Counterspells, Dispels, and/or having its Concentration broken -- ultimately, it has less actions to cast spells than Team Yams does. And stuff like Wall of Force won't actually impede a Yamara that much because they're Fey-Touched. I'd say it's more dangerous with the Mind Blasting.

Okay, but what if there were a lot less short rests than Max's scenario?
Then I would probably have actually bothered to take the time to write up my full party rather than just clone Mr. d'Jorasco there, but let's say we had 2 short rests instead, and stuck with just Team Yams. That gives us (between the entire party), 4 L6 slots, 36 L5 slots, 8 L1 slots, 288 hp worth of Healing Light (thanks to Gift of the Ever-Living Ones), 64 hp of cures from the Jorasco racial feature, plus 4x Lesser Restoration from the Jorasco racial feature, plus 4x Gift of Alacrity and 4x Misty Step from Fey-Touched, and then our Pact of the Chain familiars.

That's a lot of stuff. You could clear the 8 encounters above with that using a similar methodology to the one I already described -- I was having tons of resources left over after each fight!

So, from the "entire party" perspective, we can straight up be using 6 spells per encounter over 8 encounters. Plus racial spells, Fey-Touched spells, Pact of the Chain familiars, cantrip combos, Healing Light, and Celestial Resilience. Plus the fact that some of those spell slots have long durations, and are going to last for multiple encounters!

____

Whew. Hopefully I didn't miss anything as I kind of had to hurry up as this took even longer than anticipated. Please correct me if I did.


LudicSavant,
This build is amazing...I love how thought out everything is and the balance between damage and support is exactly what I have been looking for...I know it is a big ask...could you possibly do a more thorough breakdown (level by level) in the style of your other builds? Thanks so much for what you do :D

[Thugpoetry]

LudicSavant,
This build is amazing...I love how thought out everything is and the balance between damage and support is exactly what I have been looking for...I know it is a big ask...could you possibly do a more thorough breakdown (level by level) in the style of your other builds? Thanks so much for what you do :D

forums giantitp com showthread.php?583957-An-Eclectic-Collection-of-Fun-and-Effective-Builds

I have exactly one DnD thread bookmarked...and that's the one. :) Enjoy!

(Apparently, I'm unable to post a link because I'm more the bask in ya'lls glory than posting anything, trying some bootleg jank to get you the thread. :D )