Bless is Bad (sometimes, at low levels)

[strangebloke]

Clickbaity title, but I want to be clear: It still isn't a terrible spell to cast in T1, but I do think its overrated and treated as this super-efficient buff, when it actuality... well, it is efficient, but only some of the time at low levels. Allow me to explain.

Bless scales with the party's damage. Specifically, it scales with the damage of the attackers in your party. Warlocks, fighters, rogues, etc. It makes your party more accurate, which means they hit more, which means they deal more damage. That's it's main use. It also boosts saves, but at levels 1-4 this isn't a serious consideration. The goal is to turn a hit into a miss. How often will it do this? Well, its a +1d4 to attack, normally, which averages to 2.5. If we're being sloppy, we'll say that this makes the difference between hit or miss on 25/200 attack rolls, or 1/8. The other 7/8 of the time, the blessed character is either hitting without bless, or missing by too much for bless to matter.

So what's the problem? Well, your party's damage is kinda low from levels 1-4. Lets say you have a party with a barbarian (2d6+5=12), a TWF rogue (3d6+3=13.5), and an S&B fighter(1d8+5=9.5). In total (pre-accuracy) this is 35 damage. You bless them. Bless "deals damage" each turn equal to 1/8 their total (pre-accuracy) damage. 35/8=~4.4 damage per turn.

At level 4, things are better. Lets say you have a GWM zealot barbarian (3d6+8+10=28.5) a TWF swashbuckler (4d6+4=17) and an S&B fighter (1d8+6=10.5). In total (pre-accuracy) this is 55.5 damage. 55.5/8=~7 damage per turn.

So what's the big deal? Well, its slow. Consider Guiding Bolt. It's 14 damage. Against 13 AC enemies (like orcs) that's a 70% hit chance, and will deal 9.8 damage on average, but also give someone advantage. Lets say its the fighter from before. Their chance to hit goes from 70% to 91%. A 21% accuracy buff, equivalent to a +2.2 damage buff for this fighter. That's a total of +12 damage round 1. Bless takes two turns to outpace this in damage. Which sounds good, but combat at this tier in 5e is very fast paced. The party has very low average HP. A level 1-4 party is heavily rewarded for taking out an orc before that orc gets to take a turn, and something like Guiding Bolt can make that happen. Bless can't. Bless at best guards against the party marginally performing worse than expected over several turns, but the orcs are coming at you right now.

And perhaps more importantly, the 7 damage figure assumes that there are party members who are really good at taking advantage of bless. The GWM zealot here makes more than half of the expected value of bless in this situation. If you just had the rogue and the fighter, Bless would be adding a very modest 3.4 per turn. It wouldn't pass guiding bolt for total expected damage for 3 turns, and at some point there's a question if you're even going to keep the spell up that long, or if the fight will last that long.

This isn't to say Bless is a bad spell, its a great spell! But its reputation as this hyper-efficient super spell isn't really true at low levels. It's more of a "if it fits your party comp, if you think this is going to be a long/hard fight, if saving throws are relevant" kind of deal. At higher levels, it scales a LOT better than other level 1 spells and its worth using, particularly on paladins or multiclass characters who don't have a better use for concentration and get the spell later.

Anyway thanks for listening to my rambling.

[qube]

You make a solid point.

1. Considering it cost a resource, one would expect it to be more efficient then something that doesn't.
(Considering, for instance, an inflict wounds deals 3d10 damage)

2. Looking at what it does - it doesn't always have an effect. (unless extreme cases), If you roll an 18, bless is useless; if you roll a 2, bless is uselss.
Mathematically, It only effect 2.5 of the 20 possible results of a d20.

So then, it's a statistics game.
P(at least X successes) = 1 - P(exactly zero successes) -... - P( exactly (X-1) successes)
P(extactly X successes in N rlolls ) = P( (X-1) suc in (N-1) ) * succesrate + P (X suc in (N-1) ) * failrate)

Drop it through an excell spreadsheet, and you get

you need at least 6d20 for a 50% chance to have any effect ( P(1+) > 50% )
13d20 gives you a 50% to chance to have effected at least two attacks/saves


So, if you expect to roll less then 6 blessed d20, bless does not seem worth it.
between 6 and 13 it starts to depend on how much damage your allies do.
if it's "wasted" on normal attacks ... bless doesn't seem worth it for less then 13 blessed d20
if it's used for high damage attacks (you bring up GWM barbarian, but I also am thinking attack roll spells), bless is useful sooner

[Mastikator]

It's arguably at its best when you have a DM that likes to throw in monsters with lots of CC abilities and/or save or suck abilities. Because bless would be giving double benefit to DPR, 1) do you get to take your attack action on your turn and then 2) do you get to hit. Bless gives a +1d4 to both.

[Frogreaver]

Clickbaity title, but I want to be clear: It still isn't a terrible spell to cast in T1, but I do think its overrated and treated as this super-efficient buff, when it actuality... well, it is efficient, but only some of the time at low levels. Allow me to explain.

Bless scales with the party's damage. Specifically, it scales with the damage of the attackers in your party. Warlocks, fighters, rogues, etc. It makes your party more accurate, which means they hit more, which means they deal more damage. That's it's main use. It also boosts saves, but at levels 1-4 this isn't a serious consideration. The goal is to turn a hit into a miss. How often will it do this? Well, its a +1d4 to attack, normally, which averages to 2.5. If we're being sloppy, we'll say that this makes the difference between hit or miss on 25/200 attack rolls, or 1/8. The other 7/8 of the time, the blessed character is either hitting without bless, or missing by too much for bless to matter.

So what's the problem? Well, your party's damage is kinda low from levels 1-4. Lets say you have a party with a barbarian (2d6+5=12), a TWF rogue (3d6+3=13.5), and an S&B fighter(1d8+5=9.5). In total (pre-accuracy) this is 35 damage. You bless them. Bless "deals damage" each turn equal to 1/8 their total (pre-accuracy) damage. 35/8=~4.4 damage per turn.

At level 4, things are better. Lets say you have a GWM zealot barbarian (3d6+8+10=28.5) a TWF swashbuckler (4d6+4=17) and an S&B fighter (1d8+6=10.5). In total (pre-accuracy) this is 55.5 damage. 55.5/8=~7 damage per turn.

So what's the big deal? Well, its slow. Consider Guiding Bolt. It's 14 damage. Against 13 AC enemies (like orcs) that's a 70% hit chance, and will deal 9.8 damage on average, but also give someone advantage. Lets say its the fighter from before. Their chance to hit goes from 70% to 91%. A 21% accuracy buff, equivalent to a +2.2 damage buff for this fighter. That's a total of +12 damage round 1. Bless takes two turns to outpace this in damage. Which sounds good, but combat at this tier in 5e is very fast paced. The party has very low average HP. A level 1-4 party is heavily rewarded for taking out an orc before that orc gets to take a turn, and something like Guiding Bolt can make that happen. Bless can't. Bless at best guards against the party marginally performing worse than expected over several turns, but the orcs are coming at you right now.

And perhaps more importantly, the 7 damage figure assumes that there are party members who are really good at taking advantage of bless. The GWM zealot here makes more than half of the expected value of bless in this situation. If you just had the rogue and the fighter, Bless would be adding a very modest 3.4 per turn. It wouldn't pass guiding bolt for total expected damage for 3 turns, and at some point there's a question if you're even going to keep the spell up that long, or if the fight will last that long.

This isn't to say Bless is a bad spell, its a great spell! But its reputation as this hyper-efficient super spell isn't really true at low levels. It's more of a "if it fits your party comp, if you think this is going to be a long/hard fight, if saving throws are relevant" kind of deal. At higher levels, it scales a LOT better than other level 1 spells and its worth using, particularly on paladins or multiclass characters who don't have a better use for concentration and get the spell later.

Anyway thanks for listening to my rambling.

If your goal is solely offense then pre level 5 there are almost certainly better options with a 1st level slot. I'd say often pure offense is going to be the best option, especially at levels where you can easily 1 turn enemies.

That said, bless does so much more than boost attack rolls. It also boosts saves (including concentration). Now obviously if you know you are fighting enemies that don't target saves then that's not a great argument. But many times you don't know if you are fighting something that targets saves and as such having bless up may still be the right move to account for that potential risk. Or alternatively if your wizard has used something like web, it may pay to boost his concentration saves above all else.

So mostly, I agree. I'd just add that the reason to use bless at lower levels is for a mix of offense and defense than solely for offense.


It's arguably at its best when you have a DM that likes to throw in monsters with lots of CC abilities and/or save or suck abilities. Because bless would be giving double benefit to DPR, 1) do you get to take your attack action on your turn and then 2) do you get to hit. Bless gives a +1d4 to both.

Or at lower levels even saves for half damage or no damage are important as it's easy to drop and save based damage is usually very high.

[Kane0]

So then, it's a statistics game.
P(at least X successes) = 1 - P(exactly zero successes) -... - P( exactly (X-1) successes)
P(extactly X successes in N rlolls ) = P( (X-1) suc in (N-1) ) * succesrate + P (X suc in (N-1) ) * failrate)

Drop it through an excell spreadsheet, and you get

you need at least 6d20 for a 50% chance to have any effect ( P(1+) > 50% )
13d20 gives you a 50% to chance to have effected at least two attacks/saves


So, if you expect to roll less then 6 blessed d20, bless does not seem worth it.
between 6 and 13 it starts to depend on how much damage your allies do.


Neat, useful rule of thumb to say Bless starts paying for itself after 6 attacks/saves?

[Angelalex242]

As a paladin player, bless isn't a spell I use. I can't conceive of bless outperforming my smites, which I will frequently stack wrathful and divine for an alpha strike.

[Mastikator]

Or at lower levels even saves for half damage or no damage are important as it's easy to drop and save based damage is usually very high.

Save vs frighten, save vs hold person, save vs blindness, save vs command. Any one of those neutralize the PC. Save vs half damage isn't CC or save or suck.

[Sherlockpwns]

Unless you are an Order cleric. Then it is amazing as you are essentially also adding one weapon attack with it from your heaviest hitter (the rogue, usually).

To be honest I wish more spells were like bless. Bless us the perfect example of a spell that is great in many situations and “ok but not great” in others. As folks have said already, in any fight where saves are likely this immediately rises to the top for a huge chunk of your early levels (1-5 at least) and maybe beyond. In a non ideal situation it’s still ok. You can’t say that about most of the “group buff” spells. As an example Globe of invulnerability is worthless or incredible, there is no in between. Other spells like greater invisibility are nearly always the same value to cast (very high), there is little to no consideration of variables. Bless gets you thinking! A+.

[Frogreaver]

Save vs frighten, save vs hold person, save vs blindness, save vs command. Any one of those neutralize the PC. Save vs half damage isn't CC or save or suck.

0 hp is neutralized too.

[Willie the Duck]

So what's the problem? Well, your party's damage is kinda low from levels 1-4. Lets say you have a party with a barbarian (2d6+5=12), a TWF rogue (3d6+3=13.5), and an S&B fighter(1d8+5=9.5). In total (pre-accuracy) this is 35 damage. You bless them. Bless "deals damage" each turn equal to 1/8 their total (pre-accuracy) damage. 35/8=~4.4 damage per turn.

At level 4, things are better. Lets say you have a GWM zealot barbarian (3d6+8+10=28.5) a TWF swashbuckler (4d6+4=17) and an S&B fighter (1d8+6=10.5). In total (pre-accuracy) this is 55.5 damage. 55.5/8=~7 damage per turn.

You should probably also consider people dropping limited-resource effects more frequently during the increased accuracy window.

That said, no, tier 1 with a DPR focus is not the optimal situation to use bless*. To me, the iconic Bless situation is Level 6 during a fight 1) with an enemy that may throw out effects which require saves (perhaps one with which the party in total has some weakness); 2) where the party cleric doesn't want to (/have) a 3rd level spell slot to burn on Spirit Guardians; and 3) where the party includes a ranger with Sharpshooter, a Barbarian with GWM and the cleric themselves who really want to hit with their Inflict Wounds. That's of course cherry-picked for optimal effect, but point is the closer your typical fights are to this and farther they are from OP scenario, the better Bless will look.
*At tier 1 the primary benefit is that it is multi-ally and can be used for defense or offense as needed, which is a larger benefit when your cleric has ~3-8 spells they can prepare for the day (and the paladin even less)

[Corran]

snip
Good points. I'd add that it helps with concentration, so that's something to consider too if your party has casters who cannot easily hold on to it. Or sometimes you count too much on some spell or another for winning an encounter (and I am not necessarily talking about high level play here), to the point that protecting the caster's concentration is well worth one action, slot and concentration going into bless.

[Mastikator]

0 hp is neutralized too.

And?
You can fail a save vs fireball and still get to take an action. If you fail a save against hold person you will not take an action on your next turn.

[Frogreaver]

And?
You can fail a save vs fireball and still get to take an action. If you fail a save against hold person you will not take an action on your next turn.

In my last campaign the PCs were all hit with fireball. 2 of the PCs failed their saves. They immediately hit 0 hp and remained there the rest of the encounter. Ironically they were the 2 PCs with healing.

I’ve seen hold person land only to have concentration drop it before it had any impact.

[strangebloke]

It's arguably at its best when you have a DM that likes to throw in monsters with lots of CC abilities and/or save or suck abilities. Because bless would be giving double benefit to DPR, 1) do you get to take your attack action on your turn and then 2) do you get to hit. Bless gives a +1d4 to both.
Oh definitely. As I note, if the saves are relevant this spell instantly becomes a lot better. But from levels 1-4 this is less common. In lost mines of phandelvr for example, the main two threats I'm aware of are a flameskull and the optional dragon. The latter is optional, the former is... well, guiding bolt is actually really good there too.


You make a solid point.

1. Considering it cost a resource, one would expect it to be more efficient then something that doesn't.
(Considering, for instance, an inflict wounds deals 3d10 damage)

2. Looking at what it does - it doesn't always have an effect. (unless extreme cases), If you roll an 18, bless is useless; if you roll a 2, bless is uselss.
Mathematically, It only effect 2.5 of the 20 possible results of a d20.

So then, it's a statistics game.
P(at least X successes) = 1 - P(exactly zero successes) -... - P( exactly (X-1) successes)
P(extactly X successes in N rlolls ) = P( (X-1) suc in (N-1) ) * succesrate + P (X suc in (N-1) ) * failrate)

Drop it through an excell spreadsheet, and you get

you need at least 6d20 for a 50% chance to have any effect ( P(1+) > 50% )
13d20 gives you a 50% to chance to have effected at least two attacks/saves


So, if you expect to roll less then 6 blessed d20, bless does not seem worth it.
between 6 and 13 it starts to depend on how much damage your allies do.
if it's "wasted" on normal attacks ... bless doesn't seem worth it for less then 13 blessed d20
if it's used for high damage attacks (you bring up GWM barbarian, but I also am thinking attack roll spells), bless is useful sooner
Thanks for doing the actual math. And yeah I considered bringing up spell attacks (guiding bolt is actually very synergistic with bless) but resources always complicate the discussion.

As a paladin player, bless isn't a spell I use. I can't conceive of bless outperforming my smites, which I will frequently stack wrathful and divine for an alpha strike.
Though I obviously favor a 'alpha strike' as you call it, bless is really efficient at high levels, and if you have a chance to cast pre-combat it will outpace a smite for added damage very quickly.

You should probably also consider people dropping limited-resource effects more frequently during the increased accuracy window.

That said, no, tier 1 with a DPR focus is not the optimal situation to use bless*. To me, the iconic Bless situation is Level 6 during a fight 1) with an enemy that may throw out effects which require saves (perhaps one with which the party in total has some weakness); 2) where the party cleric doesn't want to (/have) a 3rd level spell slot to burn on Spirit Guardians; and 3) where the party includes a ranger with Sharpshooter, a Barbarian with GWM and the cleric themselves who really want to hit with their Inflict Wounds. That's of course cherry-picked for optimal effect, but point is the closer your typical fights are to this and farther they are from OP scenario, the better Bless will look.
*At tier 1 the primary benefit is that it is multi-ally and can be used for defense or offense as needed, which is a larger benefit when your cleric has ~3-8 spells they can prepare for the day (and the paladin even less)
Oh sure, I am just more interested in talking about the edge case where things are less ideal.

Good points. I'd add that it helps with concentration, so that's something to consider too if your party has casters who cannot easily hold on to it. Or sometimes you count too much on some spell or another for winning an encounter (and I am not necessarily talking about high level play here), to the point that protecting the caster's concentration is well worth one action, slot and concentration going into bless.
Sure, saving throws. But again, this is less likely to be the case at low levels. Protection from good and evil might be worth keeping up, for one example, but I can't think of a lot of others.

[Corran]

Sure, saving throws. But again, this is less likely to be the case at low levels. Protection from good and evil might be worth keeping up, for one example, but I can't think of a lot of others.
Something like holding onto an entangle or a web spell can be pretty important in some cases (eg if such spells are your only/best options for mass CC, and mass CC happens to be crucial for winning the fight; the former being no unusual in early levels, the latter being no unusual in general). Depeding on how well the caster can afford to protect their concentraion, bless could range from just another safety net to a must-have thing.

Edit: Yes, sometimes defensive buffs like protection from evil can be crucial too (thus bless could be successfully used to buff that concentration), I agree. Other times it might be some debuff, it varies depending on the situation.

[KorvinStarmast]

1. Considering it cost a resource, one would expect it to be more efficient then something that doesn't.
(Considering, for instance, an inflict wounds deals 3d10 damage) Or zero damage if you miss. Bless helps three party members with offense and defense. You can't damage what you don't hit, so it's not wasted on normal attacks. Seen too many misses turned to hits (particularly at low level) and saves.
It's arguably at its best when you have a DM that likes to throw in monsters with lots of CC abilities and/or save or suck abilities. Yes.

Save vs frighten, save vs hold person, save vs blindness, save vs command. Any one of those neutralize the PC. Save vs half damage isn't CC or save or suck. Also yes. But it's not a magic bullet. A low roll can only be helped so much by bless.

Unless you are an Order cleric. To be honest I wish more spells were like bless. Bless us the perfect example of a spell that is great in many situations and “ok but not great” in others. It's helpful but not a silver bullet. And your concentration can drop ...

To me, the iconic Bless situation is Level 6 during a fight 1) with an enemy that may throw out effects which require saves (perhaps one with which the party in total has some weakness); 2) where the party cleric doesn't want to (/have) a 3rd level spell slot to burn on Spirit Guardians; and 3) where the party includes a ranger with Sharpshooter, a Barbarian with GWM and the cleric themselves who really want to hit with their Inflict Wounds. I have a warlock who gets bless once per day thanks to a feat. He also has that invocation which improves his Con save chances. :smallwink: (Eldritch Mind). For that one battle per day bless has always paid off in terms of helping the party.

In response to the OP: bless helps both Offense and Defense. Narrowing the analysis to DPR only is a half baked analytical approach, at best.
(Willie is right about how it gets better in Tier 2 and beyond).

[strangebloke]

In response to the OP: bless helps both Offense and Defense. Narrowing the analysis to DPR only is a half baked analytical approach, at best.
(Willie is right about how it gets better in Tier 2 and beyond).

Saving throws are not very common in t1. There are few enemies that cause saving throws, and if they do it will often be in the first turn, possibly before you have a chance to cast bless.

Obviously if you can precast it this spell gets a lot better.

[JNAProductions]

Bless is one of those spells that scales super well, but isn't as useful early on. It's like Shield in that way-using one of your two slots on Shield at level one is generally a huge waste. Bless is better than Shield at level one, but its usefulness actually improves as you level (more saves being made and more attack rolls), while the relative cost just keeps going down.

It's also fantastic to use on someone who doesn't otherwise use their Concentration-pick it up with Fey Touched or Magic Initiate or something, and that's a solid use of your action at higher levels, 'specially if you can pre-buff.

[KorvinStarmast]

Saving throws are not very common in t1. . Where are you getting this from? :smallconfused: Making it up? (See also death saving throws, which bless will indeed help!) Bless (in my experience of actual play, not a white room analysis) is useful at low levels, and it is even more useful at higher levels. JNA's point on "pre buff" where you can manage it is a good point, +1 for that.

Wolves attack, you need to make a strength save or get knocked prone ... and so on. Plenty of stuff to save against (spider poison, anyone? webs?) at low levels.

[Glorthindel]

One thing I have thought (without going into the numbers, so complete conjecture here!) is that 5th ed has tilted the balance between Bless and Bane.

In earlier editions, Bless was a no-brainer (no concentration, stacks with other buffs, benefits whole groups) while Bane was less valuable (can't pre-buff like Bless, so costs a round casting, plus most casters would ensure their spells land themselves).

But now, while Bless is still a good enough spell, concentration and bounded accuracy makes it less of a must-have, whilst Bane has become a pretty effective synergy-cast (lower spell save DC's mean that dropping bane before a big aoe save spell is well worth the action).

As I say, pure conjecture, but In the last few campaigns, I have seen Bane get much more use than Bless, when it was definitely the other way pre-5th

[Frogreaver]

One thing I have thought (without going into the numbers, so complete conjecture here!) is that 5th ed has tilted the balance between Bless and Bane.

In earlier editions, Bless was a no-brainer (no concentration, stacks with other buffs, benefits whole groups) while Bane was less valuable (can't pre-buff like Bless, so costs a round casting, plus most casters would ensure their spells land themselves).

But now, while Bless is still a good enough spell, concentration and bounded accuracy makes it less of a must-have, whilst Bane has become a pretty effective synergy-cast (lower spell save DC's mean that dropping bane before a big aoe save spell is well worth the action).

As I say, pure conjecture, but In the last few campaigns, I have seen Bane get much more use than Bless, when it was definitely the other way pre-5th

Bane is a really bad spell but that seems more like a new thread.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Bane is a really bad spell but that seems more like a new thread.

Bane is a great spell for monsters to have--annoying and feels consequential, but isn't "you just don't get to play" like hold person. I feel the same way about slow.

[KorvinStarmast]

Bane is a really bad spell but that seems more like a new thread. Since it targets a Charisma save, it's effective on quite a few monsters, but its effectiveness (IME) varies quite a bit as a debuff. When it comes to picking spells it isn't always a top choice.

A nice thing about bless is that the spell itself just works. (Unless concentration drops, of course) (Some non conc buffs include Freedom of Movement, Heroes Feast and Foresight but that's Tiers 2, 3, and 4)

[Jerrykhor]

{Scrubbed} Bless is great, and those who refute it don't understand its greatness.


Clickbaity title, but I want to be clear: It still isn't a terrible spell to cast in T1, but I do think its overrated and treated as this super-efficient buff, when it actuality... well, it is efficient, but only some of the time at low levels. Allow me to explain.

Its not overrated. Just compare it to other level 1 spells, they are mostly crap. Bless is hella good.


Bless scales with the party's damage. Specifically, it scales with the damage of the attackers in your party. Warlocks, fighters, rogues, etc. It makes your party more accurate, which means they hit more, which means they deal more damage. That's it's main use.
And its a great use of your spell slot.


It also boosts saves, but at levels 1-4 this isn't a serious consideration.
{Scrubbed} What other spells boost saves? None. What abilities boost saves? You can count with one hand. Yes its a serious consideration, since the save bonus stacks with other sources of save bonuses.


So what's the big deal? Well, its slow. Consider Guiding Bolt.

You compare Bless to Guiding Bolt?? {Scrubbed} Bless's attack bonus stacks with Advantage, while Guiding Bolts' advantage don't stack with other sources of advantage. Also, it only gives you Advantage on your next attack if you hit. You get one chance to hit your Guiding Bolt, if you miss then its a 100% wasted spell slot. Bless always gets mileage because it affects 3 members of your party.

Bless is greater than you think. One of the supposed weakness of Bless is concentration, but if you include yourself as one of the targets, it can keep itself up.

And I saw someone saying they don't use Bless as a paladin player. Well you should. Bless is fantastic on paladins, and smite spells suck. Turning 1 hit into a miss already adds more damage than a measly Wrathful Smite.

[Corran]

Bane is a great spell for monsters to have--annoying and feels consequential, but isn't "you just don't get to play" like hold person. I feel the same way about slow.
I've found similar success in that regard with vampiric touch, and I tend to use it on bad guys if it makes the least bit of sense. Like, one time I had a player "realize" mid combat how "dangerous" vampiric touch was, in the sense that since it was both doing damage AND restoring hp to the bad guy, it was doubly bad. The sense of urgency and danger can make combat exciting, and such spells can help with that without at the same time upping the difficulty more than you'd want to.

[KorvinStarmast]

And I saw someone saying they don't use Bless as a paladin player. Well you should. Bless is fantastic on paladins, and smite spells suck. Turning 1 hit into a miss already adds more damage than a measly Wrathful Smite. I think he was referring to divine smite, not one of the smite spells.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've found similar success in that regard with vampiric touch, and I tend to use it on bad guys if it makes the least bit of sense. Like, one time I had a player "realize" mid combat how "dangerous" vampiric touch was, in the sense that since it was both doing damage AND restoring hp to the bad guy, it was doubly bad. The sense of urgency and danger can make combat exciting, and such spells can help with that without at the same time upping the difficulty more than you'd want to.

Yeah. And a lot of those spells (or similar effects, I tend to rip off the effects for monsters that thematically aren't spell-casters) are
a) thematic
b) not actually all that threatening
c) but feel threatening and dramatic.

Feeling is much more important, in my experience, than reality. I've had tons of fights that were clear steamrolls (from my perspective as the DM, knowing the facts) but felt really close and tense (as reported) on the players' side. More than ones that are authentically[1] tight or are designed to be tight and tense.

[1] and what is real authenticity? Numbers are summary statistics. Experience, in this case, is what matters IMO. And the players' experience most of all--if they thought it was tight and tense and a near thing, then they'll act that way.

[Pex]

I value Bless for the saving throw bonus, not the attack modifier. The latter is a gravy. The saving throw bonus is the reason to cast it. Even though some foes will have relatively high AC, you can hit them enough. When you fail a saving throw that will be a big deal. You are only proficient in two. Even if foes' DCs are only 11, 12, 13 having a +0 or +1 to that save makes them dangerous. The +1d4 is a big deal.

[Demonslayer666]

The thing I don't like about Bless is that it slows combat down by making each player's attack take longer to resolve for some players. I'd prefer it to be a flat +2.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I think the pre-buff benefit doesn't get enough consideration. Given that the OP was a particular consideration of level 1 I think it's important to remember that a Cleric has only 2 slots at this level. To maximize the benefit of my slot's I'd only be using Bless if I could pre-cast and not lose the opportunity to cantrip/ attack once the fight starts, which in 6-8 encounters/ day I'll definitely have the ability to do at least twice. So really it's not Bless vs. Guiding Bolt. It's Bless + Cantrip vs. Guiding Bolt.
And the OP's assumption that you're going to get advantage on the Guiding Bolt because of the fighter... well now the fighter is going to have to contribute significantly in their action economy to get you that advantage since at level 1 they don't get either multi-attack or action surge.
The contention that saves aren't happening much in tier 1, well others have refuted this and count me in that camp. They are.

Back to my main contention... Generally pre-buffs are the best use of slots because they don't eat into your action economy. This is particularly true at low levels when 1) slots are limited, and 2) At will cantrip/ attack damage isn't that much inferior to low level spells.

[KorvinStarmast]

The thing I don't like about Bless is that it slows combat down by making each player's attack take longer to resolve for some players. I'd prefer it to be a flat +2.
Roll the d4 with the d20 when you have bless on. Slows nothing down.

You can make a token action on Roll 20 for "attack with bless" that does something similar.
The older D&D char sheet had a 'standing buff' tab for things like bless on the front page, but the more recent one (SRD 5e one) does not.

@5eneedsdarksun: nice post. *golf clap*

[tiornys]

Bless also gets better as parties are more optimized; this should be evident but to spell it out, the more damage each prospective target deals, the more damage Bless contributes.

[Eldariel]

Obviously it gets the better the lower your chances of hitting are (since the absolute increase is the same but the percentile increase is higher the lower the initial was). Which of course makes it synergise extremely well with SS/GWM and especially lets it shine against long slogs against a high AC high HP target (since high AC = lots of value and high HP = long durations of lots of value so lots of value). But yes, it's definitely not an easy choice, spending the all-important round 1 action on an action that has 0% chance of taking out one or more enemies (on casters, there are lots of actions that do have the ability to deny enemies actions even if they fail to affect them) and likely is going to do less to deny an enemy actions than a cantrip's worth of damage on R1.

It's for:
1) Long fights, very long fights, and fights where your saves are a very real worry,
2) situations where you have a chance to cast a spell before opening the door or in another way control over when the battle is joined or otherwise a free action, or
3) for minions who want to provide a high level party with a significant buff (and of course, Order Clerics get great extra value out of it).

Definitely overrated but simultaneously a very valuable role player to be aware of and very good at what it does (it's just a matter of figuring out if what it does is what you want at any given point).

[strangebloke]

Bless is one of those spells that scales super well, but isn't as useful early on. It's like Shield in that way-using one of your two slots on Shield at level one is generally a huge waste. Bless is better than Shield at level one, but its usefulness actually improves as you level (more saves being made and more attack rolls), while the relative cost just keeps going down.

It's also fantastic to use on someone who doesn't otherwise use their Concentration-pick it up with Fey Touched or Magic Initiate or something, and that's a solid use of your action at higher levels, 'specially if you can pre-buff.

Yes, absolutely. It's one of the reasons fey touched and 1-level cleric dips are so great. The monk wasn't using their concentration anyway, why not have them concentrate on bless? It scales with total party attack damage pre-accuracy and gives them a bonus to saves equal to half-proficiency. This isn't that great at level 4, its going to be less than 10 damage a round even under the absolute best conditions, but at higher levels its insane! Absolutely one of the best 1st level spells in the game overall.


Where are you getting this from? :smallconfused: Making it up? (See also death saving throws, which bless will indeed help!) Bless (in my experience of actual play, not a white room analysis) is useful at low levels, and it is even more useful at higher levels. JNA's point on "pre buff" where you can manage it is a good point, +1 for that.

Wolves attack, you need to make a strength save or get knocked prone ... and so on. Plenty of stuff to save against (spider poison, anyone? webs?) at low levels.

Okay, wolves. Lets say you're a rogue with 15 AC and a +0 to STR saves. You're swarmed by wolves, and also blessed. The wolves with pack tactics have a 75% hit rate, and on average it takes bless 6 saving throws to do anything. The wolves will have to attack you nine times on average before bless is likely to have any defensive impact. But of course, that's only if you manage to stay standing through all twelve attacks somehow. More realistically you went prone on the first or second attack that landed, and bless did nothing for you until you started making death saves (where, once again, bless has pretty low odds of actually doing anything, since "failing three death saves before anyone in the party can stabilize you" is a pretty rare way to die.)

Now in the interest of being fair, its pretty clear that Bless is a lot better when there are wolves or spiders or lions present. But my point about saving throws being less common stands. Fewer than a third of all monsters in the SRD CR 1 or less induce saving throws, and most are relatively low impact. Bless makes you 12% more likely to succeed on a save against a magma mephit but that only makes about 3 damage of difference. The impact is negligible.

Now, for something like fighting ghouls, Bless's bonus to saves becomes more important because even if its not that likely to do something, preventing paralysis is a big deal. Clerics also don't have great AoE options at this level, so sometimes bless is a decent generic option in a hard situation without truly being great. But again, my argument here isn't that bless is bad all the time, just that its not ideal sometimes. You do actually have to think about if its a good idea in context at low levels.

I'm using analysis because its the only way to make any kind of argument. This is also reflective of my experience in play.


I think he was referring to divine smite, not one of the smite spells.
He was speaking to both. But to be clear, I strongly agree that at level 5+ bless is king of first level spells, massively outscaling all the rest. As @Jerrykhor said, it stacks with everything and scales with party damage. It's only outcompeted by higher level slots on full casters, which a paladin really doesn't have. But scaling with damage isn't key when party damage is low, and stacking with other buffs isn't a huge deal when few people have buffs anyway.

I think the pre-buff benefit doesn't get enough consideration. Given that the OP was a particular consideration of level 1 I think it's important to remember that a Cleric has only 2 slots at this level. To maximize the benefit of my slot's I'd only be using Bless if I could pre-cast and not lose the opportunity to cantrip/ attack once the fight starts, which in 6-8 encounters/ day I'll definitely have the ability to do at least twice. So really it's not Bless vs. Guiding Bolt. It's Bless + Cantrip vs. Guiding Bolt.
And the OP's assumption that you're going to get advantage on the Guiding Bolt because of the fighter... well now the fighter is going to have to contribute significantly in their action economy to get you that advantage since at level 1 they don't get either multi-attack or action surge.
The contention that saves aren't happening much in tier 1, well others have refuted this and count me in that camp. They are.

Back to my main contention... Generally pre-buffs are the best use of slots because they don't eat into your action economy. This is particularly true at low levels when 1) slots are limited, and 2) At will cantrip/ attack damage isn't that much inferior to low level spells.
Yes, agreed. Pre-buffing makes Bless a lot better. But with only 1 minute duration, its a bit harder to pre-buff than say shield of faith. Again, my point is only that situationally you want to be cautious, it isn't a fire and forget super-spell.

And no, I was saying the fighter gets advantage when guiding bolt hits, improving their damage.

[Angelalex242]

Wrathful smite has a fear rider. Making the boss afraid of the Paladin is a better use of a spell slot than random 1d4s. Nobody has legendaries at Tier 1 after all. Further, to end the effect, the boss must waste his action to MAYBE steel his resolve. Otherwise, fear lasts the same 1 minute bless does.

[tiornys]

This isn't that great at level 4, its going to be less than 10 damage a round even under the absolute best conditions
I disagree strongly with this. At level 1 your initial numbers are only a little lower than what an optimized party is likely to have (assuming optimizing for a campaign and not solely for level 1), but by level 4 an optimized party looks very different from what you presented. I'm not even going to factor in class/subclass abilities and whatnot. At best conditions for Bless, you'll have three weapon users. Optimized weapon users are going to be VHuman or Custom Lineage so we'll say we have two people with Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter (2d6 + 26 = 33 avg) and someone with Polearm Master and Great Weapon Mastery (1d10 + 1d4 + 26 = 34 avg). 1/8 * (33 + 33 + 34) = 12.5 damage per round from Bless.

(Actually an optimized party is unlikely to have more than 2 weapon users so the DPR from the third person is likely lower, but also complex to calculate since they'll be combining Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast + Repelling Blast with whatever fun toys the other casters are throwing out, and then also doing something productive with their bonus action. Still, they only need to exceed 13 damage on hit to get Bless's DPR contribution above 10--coincidentally, Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast + Hex from 18 Cha is 13 avg. damage per hit.)

Agreed that it's fantastic on someone who otherwise isn't using their concentration, but once you're past the spell slot bottleneck of the first couple of levels it's worth having a spellcaster concentrating on it for every non-trivial fight.

[KorvinStarmast]

The impact is negligible. No; for example, getting the poisoned condition when fighting an ettercarp (a tier 1 low level encounter) is not negligible.
Now, for something like fighting ghouls, Bless's bonus to saves becomes more important because even if its not that likely to do something, preventing paralysis is a big deal. Yeppers. Thank you for coming around to my way of thinking.

I'm using analysis because its the only way to make any kind of argument. This is also reflective of my experience in play. At level 1-3 your cleric has a spell save DC of 12 or 13. Lots of things can save against that. (See my never ending rant about Suck Red Flame (sacred flame) in tier 1. At level 1-3 cleric's spell attack bonus of +4 or +5. A miss on guiding bolt is a wasted spell slot, so too inflict wounds.
Bless is not saved against, and the spell does not need to hit. And, from a style perspective, is a way to help the party at low level. And beyond that, in a three person party, the cleric also gets bless which helps on the con save if the cleric does get hit.

But to be clear, I strongly agree that at level 5+ bless is king of first level spells, massively outscaling all the rest. As @Jerrykhor said, it stacks with everything and scales with party damage. It's good all game, it's better as your tiers increase, oh yes.
Which leaves us with a badly chosen title (which you do admit was a bit click baity...).

[Kvess]

I didn’t know there were players who didn’t like Bless. My table regards it as one of the best spells in the game. 5e has a weird split between flashy spells that have immediate obvious effects and subtle bonuses that tilt the scales significantly over the course of an encounter.

I think there’s something to be said for immediately ending encounters before bad things happen, but that’s easier said than done and Bless is a reliable and efficient use of a first level spellslot.

[kazaryu]

Clickbaity title, but I want to be clear: It still isn't a terrible spell to cast in T1, but I do think its overrated and treated as this super-efficient buff, when it actuality... well, it is efficient, but only some of the time at low levels. Allow me to explain.

Bless scales with the party's damage. Specifically, it scales with the damage of the attackers in your party. Warlocks, fighters, rogues, etc. It makes your party more accurate, which means they hit more, which means they deal more damage. That's it's main use. It also boosts saves, but at levels 1-4 this isn't a serious consideration. The goal is to turn a hit into a miss. How often will it do this? Well, its a +1d4 to attack, normally, which averages to 2.5. If we're being sloppy, we'll say that this makes the difference between hit or miss on 25/200 attack rolls, or 1/8. The other 7/8 of the time, the blessed character is either hitting without bless, or missing by too much for bless to matter.



bolding mine: this is only one piece of the puzzle, however. Yes, a lvl 1 characters is going to deal less damage than a level 4 character, per attack. However, its also important to note how much damage that is compared to enemy HP. against a 22HP, a single attack that deals 9.5 damage (longsword with the dueling fighting style) is worth more than an attack that deals 30 damage against a 250HP opponent.

[spoiler=leaving this here, just to keep things clear for anyone that reads through later. However, the explanation contained herein is factually incorrect.] The other thing to keep in mind, is that accuracy bonuses have diminishing returns, for exactly the same reason that AC has increasing returns. tier 1 PC's (with the exception of lvl 4) will usually have a +5 to-hit. they can maybe eek out a +6 to-hit using tasha's rules. Bless increases the potential hits by almost 50% for these characters. compare that to a near max level PC that has maxed str and a +2 weapon, giving them a +13 to hit. the 2.5 extra is only a 19% increase. [/quote]
edit: as an addendum to the above: it is still true that increasing an accuracy bonus on low accuracy targets, has a greater effect than increasing the accuracy of a high accuracy unit. However, like damage, accuracy is a relation between 'AC' and 'to-hit' bonus. And i stand by the assertion that, in general, low level PC's have a lower relative accuracy, its far more complicated than i made it out to be above.


combine these 2 things, and it should explain why bless feels pretty powerful, even at low levels. mathematically speaking...it actually is more powerful at low levels.

[JNAProductions]

bolding mine: this is only one piece of the puzzle, however. Yes, a lvl 1 characters is going to deal less damage than a level 4 character, per attack. However, its also important to note how much damage that is compared to enemy HP. against a 22HP, a single attack that deals 9.5 damage (longsword with the dueling fighting style) is worth more than an attack that deals 30 damage against a 250HP opponent.

The other thing to keep in mind, is that accuracy bonuses have diminishing returns, for exactly the same reason that AC has increasing returns. tier 1 PC's (with the exception of lvl 4) will usually have a +5 to-hit. they can maybe eek out a +6 to-hit using tasha's rules. Bless increases the potential hits by almost 50% for these characters. compare that to a near max level PC that has maxed str and a +2 weapon, giving them a +13 to hit. the 2.5 extra is only a 19% increase.

combine these 2 things, and it should explain why bless feels pretty powerful, even at low levels. mathematically speaking...it actually is more powerful at low levels.

If you're targeting an AC 15 foe with +5 to-hit, Bless is worth about 22% more damage.
If you're targeting an AC 20 foe with +7 to-hit, Bless is worth about 31% more damage.

It's not about hit bonus totals-it's what your target number is. You could have +1,000,000 to-hit, but if your foe has AC 1,000,020, Bless is worth way more than if you've got +0 and are targeting AC 6.

[strangebloke]

I disagree strongly with this. At level 1 your initial numbers are only a little lower than what an optimized party is likely to have (assuming optimizing for a campaign and not solely for level 1), but by level 4 an optimized party looks very different from what you presented. I'm not even going to factor in class/subclass abilities and whatnot. At best conditions for Bless, you'll have three weapon users. Optimized weapon users are going to be VHuman or Custom Lineage so we'll say we have two people with Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter (2d6 + 26 = 33 avg) and someone with Polearm Master and Great Weapon Mastery (1d10 + 1d4 + 26 = 34 avg). 1/8 * (33 + 33 + 34) = 12.5 damage per round from Bless.

(Actually an optimized party is unlikely to have more than 2 weapon users so the DPR from the third person is likely lower, but also complex to calculate since they'll be combining Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast + Repelling Blast with whatever fun toys the other casters are throwing out, and then also doing something productive with their bonus action. Still, they only need to exceed 13 damage on hit to get Bless's DPR contribution above 10--coincidentally, Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast + Hex from 18 Cha is 13 avg. damage per hit.)

Agreed that it's fantastic on someone who otherwise isn't using their concentration, but once you're past the spell slot bottleneck of the first couple of levels it's worth having a spellcaster concentrating on it for every non-trivial fight.
To be honest, moving the goalposts for added damage really doesn't make Bless look better. In a party with almost 65 damage output a turn, you're spending your first turn... adding +10 damage per turn?

No; for example, getting the poisoned condition when fighting an ettercarp (a tier 1 low level encounter) is not negligible. Yeppers. Thank you for coming around to my way of thinking.
I said in the first post that there were situations where saving throws were relevant...

At level 1-3 your cleric has a spell save DC of 12 or 13. Lots of things can save against that. (See my never ending rant about Suck Red Flame (sacred flame) in tier 1. At level 1-3 cleric's spell attack bonus of +4 or +5. A miss on guiding bolt is a wasted spell slot, so too inflict wounds.
Bless is not saved against, and the spell does not need to hit. And, from a style perspective, is a way to help the party at low level. And beyond that, in a three person party, the cleric also gets bless which helps on the con save if the cleric does get hit.
Yes, however, there's still a chance it does nothing. As I outline above it takes 6 attacks on average for it to have good odds of doing anything. Guiding bolt has a 65% chance of working on the turn you cast it, Bless has a much lower chance, and it actually takes several rounds for the benefits to stack up.
[/QUOTE]Which leaves us with a badly chosen title (which you do admit was a bit click baity...).[/QUOTE]
I would think bad "sometimes" was pretty clear.

I didn’t know there were players who didn’t like Bless. My table regards it as one of the best spells in the game. 5e has a weird split between flashy spells that have immediate obvious effects and subtle bonuses that tilt the scales significantly over the course of an encounter.

I think there’s something to be said for immediately ending encounters before bad things happen, but that’s easier said than done and Bless is a reliable and efficient use of a first level spellslot.
{Scrubbed} I do like Bless! I just think that a lot of people go "good spell" and just cast it whenever, despite there being situations where its not a great option.

bolding mine: this is only one piece of the puzzle, however. Yes, a lvl 1 characters is going to deal less damage than a level 4 character, per attack. However, its also important to note how much damage that is compared to enemy HP. against a 22HP, a single attack that deals 9.5 damage (longsword with the dueling fighting style) is worth more than an attack that deals 30 damage against a 250HP opponent.

The other thing to keep in mind, is that accuracy bonuses have diminishing returns, for exactly the same reason that AC has increasing returns. tier 1 PC's (with the exception of lvl 4) will usually have a +5 to-hit. they can maybe eek out a +6 to-hit using tasha's rules. Bless increases the potential hits by almost 50% for these characters. compare that to a near max level PC that has maxed str and a +2 weapon, giving them a +13 to hit. the 2.5 extra is only a 19% increase.

combine these 2 things, and it should explain why bless feels pretty powerful, even at low levels. mathematically speaking...it actually is more powerful at low levels.

I mean, sure, Bless is really good against something like Animated Armor for example which are very tough for low level characters to fight effectively.

But the dynamic you're talking about? Where HP is lower and thus hits are more impactful? That's what makes bless a bit sketchy at times. When the name of the game is rocket tag, you do not want to spend a turn casting a buff that maybe will eventually yield damage over the next 2-3 turns. You are essentially giving up an attack such that sometime in the next six attacks, someone probably won't miss. The low level meta heavily favors aggro, not value, to borrow terms from card games. Guiding bolt might do nothing, but it also might heavily swing an encounter right away.

[kazaryu]

If you're targeting an AC 15 foe with +5 to-hit, Bless is worth about 22% more damage.
If you're targeting an AC 20 foe with +7 to-hit, Bless is worth about 31% more damage.

It's not about hit bonus totals-it's what your target number is. You could have +1,000,000 to-hit, but if your foe has AC 1,000,020, Bless is worth way more than if you've got +0 and are targeting AC 6.

FML..you're right. i'll edit. While i stand by the statement that a bonus to-hit is more valuable at low accuracies (and therefore, generally, low levels), my explanation was, as you point out, wrong.




But the dynamic you're talking about? Where HP is lower and thus hits are more impactful? That's what makes bless a bit sketchy at times. When the name of the game is rocket tag, you do not want to spend a turn casting a buff that maybe will eventually yield damage over the next 2-3 turns. You are essentially giving up an attack such that sometime in the next six attacks, someone probably won't miss. The low level meta heavily favors aggro, not value, to borrow terms from card games. Guiding bolt might do nothing, but it also might heavily swing an encounter right away.

i disagree, i don't think being low level really changes much, in terms of meat anyway. Nova builds exist for high level play, and are just as effective, under the right circumstances. and those circumstances are essentially the same for both high and low level play. there's 1 enemy on the field that is significantly more dangerous than the rest. go nova to burst them down, and the rest of the encounter is probably not even a medium difficulty. Its great design for making players feel like they had a dangerous fight, without there's being a major risk of a spontaneous TPK. but its not a terribly challenging fight from a tactical perspective. (unless you nullify the ability to nova in some way shape or form)

if you're talking about meta fights at low level, the things that are going to be challenging are the same as those at high level. multiple enemies of relatively equal threat. and a single target spell, even if it one shots and enemy, isn't going to be as swingy as you think in that scenario. However, i will agree, that bless, at any tier of play, is still a situational spell in terms of effectiveness largely due to party make-up. wizards rarely will benefit from the bonus to-hit, and archers already have boosted to-hits., etc


in fact: another facet i just thought of....bless boosts death saves, which are one of the bigger threats to low level PC's (yoyo healing is much harder when you only have 2 spell slots), and yet OP glossed over the saving throw buff.

[MukkTB]

The things that scare me most are that homebrewed monster that I've never seen before. It has three heads and red glowing spots floating above its- Oh my god. John just failed his saving throw and his eyeballs turned into maggots and crawled out of his head.

When I find a big thing that hits hard, unless its supported by casters, the environment, or has something else going for it, I just found a big target to bully.

In the first case, when I am uncertain and worried about the possibility of horrible save or bad things happen, then I cast bless. Preferably before the thing with the three heads knows I'm around. Protection from Evil also isn't awful depending on your DM. But helping 3 players with saves has a certain something going for it over possibly protecting one player entirely.

[tiornys]

To be honest, moving the goalposts for added damage really doesn't make Bless look better. In a party with almost 65 damage output a turn, you're spending your first turn... adding +10 damage per turn?

Nope! Because you aren't correctly taking into account the hit percentages. The reason this party has such high damage per hit is because they're using the -5/+10 feats, so their accuracy is consequently degraded by another 25%. So to a party with average DPR of 40 (across those three characters), I'm adding +12.5 damage per turn, i.e. boosting their damage by over 30%.

edit to add: to be clear, that means I'm nearly equaling the DPR of any one of those characters on round 1--that is, gaining the DPR of a highly optimized damage dealer without having to invest in any of that optimization--and then potentially exceeding it on subsequent rounds when I add in my own damage from cantrips/basic weapon attacks (although maybe I'm dodging to make sure Bless stays active).

[strangebloke]

Nope! Because you aren't correctly taking into account the hit percentages. The reason this party has such high damage per hit is because they're using the -5/+10 feats, so their accuracy is consequently degraded by another 25%. So to a party with average DPR of 40 (across those three characters), I'm adding +12.5 damage per turn, i.e. boosting their damage by over 30%.

edit to add: to be clear, that means I'm nearly equaling the DPR of any one of those characters on round 1--that is, gaining the DPR of a highly optimized damage dealer without having to invest in any of that optimization--and then potentially exceeding it on subsequent rounds when I add in my own damage from cantrips/basic weapon attacks (although maybe I'm dodging to make sure Bless stays active).

Ah, I see, that works. Though this is a more extreme case.

[KorvinStarmast]

I said in the first post that there were situations where saving throws were relevant... What your OP does, in my view, and why I have responded as I have, is once again demonstrate what a load of bolleaux DPR-only analysis is.

What makes bless so useful is that it is both an offensive and a defensive buff at the same time.
What keeps it in balance is that the magnitude of the buff is limited to 1d4.

[strangebloke]

What your OP does, in my view, and why I have responded as I have, is once again demonstrate what a load of bolleaux DPR-only analysis is.

What makes bless so useful is that it is both an offensive and a defensive buff at the same time.
What keeps it in balance is that the magnitude of the buff is limited to 1d4.

I said that if saves are important in an encounter, bless could be, but that this was rarer at low levels. You contested this, and I proved via the SRD that my claim as stated in the OP was correct. Now you're saying DPR analysis is useless because I didn't talk about defensive utility, even though I did.

I'm just confused. :smallfrown:

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm just confused. :smallfrown: Gee, I don't know, maybe look at the title's thesis statement; Bless is Bad. Maybe you brought this on yourself. {Scrubbed}

[Hytheter]

Wrathful smite has a fear rider. Making the boss afraid of the Paladin is a better use of a spell slot than random 1d4s. Nobody has legendaries at Tier 1 after all. Further, to end the effect, the boss must waste his action to MAYBE steel his resolve. Otherwise, fear lasts the same 1 minute bless does.

I mean, unless they just pass the save. One of the nice things about Bless is that it just works. Wrathful Smite also only hits one enemy, who may well die on the next turn. Bless works on several party members who are generally unlikely to die in a given combat, so it gets a lot more mileage that way as well.

[sambojin]

It's a fine view. Bless is bad, sometimes, depending on party make-up, at low levels. It's true.

But you see, I usually play a Druid. And often, a Moon Druid. So, Bless is nearly always good for the party from lvls2+. Because I can be a Bear, Deinonychus, Frilled Deathspitter, Giant Badger, Velociraptor or Warhorse. I *do* multiattack early on. Even stuff like Elk or Giant Spiders or Octopusses simply *need* their charges, webs or tentacles to hit, for good effect. It's almost like a free spell, in a way.

I also sometimes have a concentration spell up, and have pretty bad AC. That concentration spell is often a Summoned Beast by lvl3, so another attack to just reap the benefits from my Bless-boosted spell attack. One that I'd like to keep around for an entire hour, even after plenty of concentration saves. Kinda coming with 2-5 attacks by default by lvl2-4, with only 1 person-slot needed to be used from Bless's 3, makes it pretty damn optimal as a spell.

Bless is amazing for Druids. Even non-Moon ones (wildfire spirits use the Druid's +d4 spell attack as well, so do Stars archers). Even more-so if you do have an optimised shooter or melee expert alongside (SS/ GWM/ CBE/ PAM/ dual wielder/ TWF/ Sentinel/ whatever). It's a big enough damage percentage jump that you'd sorta shake your head at a Cleric/Fey Touched that *didn't* cast Bless on you both.

It's a small increase, but it's a lot of attacks it's being used on, big or small. Between a moon druid (Brown Bear + summoned beast is a fair chunk of potential damage, but so is Archer'd Stars or wildshape'd Spores or prepped Wildfire) and a 2x attack or SS/GWM lvl2'er , Bless should roll around every turn and a bit on helping. There's usually another character to slap it on as well. So, good spell. Depending on party make-up. Even at low levels.

The enemies only have so many HP at these levels, so inducing the "dead" condition on them as quickly and as reliably as possible, saves a lot of problems like "so, how many rounds will we have to DPR this?". Bless often changes it from 2-4, to 1-2.5'ish. There's both bounded accuracy, and bounded HP, at these early levels, so combat can be swingy. Swing it in your favour. It's a good spell like that.


((I actually think it's pretty funny that both the Godly Theologians and the Fey Touched are obligated to Bless many types of Druids, if they want to be optimal in their undertakings))

(((There's also plenty of stuff that throws the maths off with this. Druid race? If it's a (new)Bugbear with first turn blitz, or an (old)Kobold with pack tactics going due to positioning, or a (new)Kobold just giving everyone-close advantage this round.... Yeah. It's very party dependent, even knowing the Druids themselves have some spells at lvl1 to do a lot of different combat effectiveness multipliers as well. But Bless works 100% of the time)))

[Aalbatr0ss]

This whole “X is bad because Y is better in some situations”… I dunno. I find the most fun part of the game with prepared casters is figuring out which situation spells work the best in. Bless probably doesn’t make sense in a L1 goblin fight that’s going to be over in 2 rounds. In almost any other situation it’s going to pull its level-1 weight just fine.

[Angelalex242]

I mean, unless they just pass the save. One of the nice things about Bless is that it just works. Wrathful Smite also only hits one enemy, who may well die on the next turn. Bless works on several party members who are generally unlikely to die in a given combat, so it gets a lot more mileage that way as well.

Well. Bottom line is, Bless is still concentration, and it competes with /all/ of the spell smites, which are also concentration. And I have a lot more fun dealing 100+ damage at higher tiers than handing d4s out.

[MoiMagnus]

Small note: bless is one of the best spells for your hirelings.

Take a level 1 cleric you hired mostly to carry your stuff around + some RP reasons. Most of their spells will pretty much be irrelevant to you. But not bless, bless is crazy useful. If possible they cast bless before the fight and then go hide somewhere to survive hoping that no enemy actually notice that they're concentrating a useful spell.

[If you gave them a necklace of adaptation, they can even live if your bag of holding for additional safety if they want to. Admitedely we never tried this last bit as the GM houseruled the universe so that low level characters could not influence high level characters with magic, even if willing. One Tier higher/lower was fine, but more than that was banned for everyone, enemies included.]

[KorvinStarmast]

Small note: bless is one of the best spells for your hirelings.
Take a level 1 cleric you hired mostly to carry your stuff around + some RP reasons.
NPC Acolyte?

Spellcasting. The acolyte is a 1st‐level spellcaster. Its spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 12, +4 to hit with spell attacks). The acolyte has following cleric spells prepared:
Cantrips (at will): light, sacred flame, thaumaturgy
1st level (3 slots): bless, cure wounds, sanctuary

Note: we ran into, at second level, a Knight with six guards and an Acolyte, and a Scout, in the jungles of Chult. It's a good thing I took out the acolyte with arrows (ranger) since bless (1d4) plus that ability by the Knight (Recharges after a Short or Long Rest). For 1 minute, the knight can utter a special command or warning whenever a nonhostile creature that it can see within 30 feet of it makes an attack roll or a saving throw. The creature can add a d4 to its roll provided it can hear and understand the knight. A creature can benefit from only one Leadership die at a time. This effect ends if the knight is incapacitated.
stack together.
When the guards get +2d4 to attacks and +2d4 to saving throws the encounter can get hairy for 4 level 2 PCs in a hurry. As it was, the first few rounds of the battle didn't go well. We ended up having to break contact - I dropped a fog cloud and we retreated deeper into the forest/jungle.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Well. Bottom line is, Bless is still concentration, and it competes with /all/ of the spell smites, which are also concentration. And I have a lot more fun dealing 100+ damage at higher tiers than handing d4s out.

It's interesting how many ways their are to build and paly a Paladin. Of all the Paladins we've had at our table only one used spell smites with any regularity. Divine smite on all, but the rest didn't spell smite, maybe due to concentration on other things, or attacking with the bonus action already... or both.

[stoutstien]

It's interesting how many ways their are to build and paly a Paladin. Of all the Paladins we've had at our table only one used spell smites with any regularity. Divine smite on all, but the rest didn't spell smite, maybe due to concentration on other things, or attacking with the bonus action already... or both.

Most of them are meh but wrathful is the odd ball with a strong rider that takes an action to make a Wis check(not save) to shake off if they fail the initial save. If bless is the best buff for 1st lv slot value WS is in the running for best debuff. Even for non conquest pallys it's a strong option as long as fear immunity isn't in play.

[Jerrykhor]

The difference is reliability. Bless is reliable, smite spells are not. The arguments against Bless are always: if you roll too low for the D4 to matter. Well guess what happens if you rolled low on your attack? Your smite spells don't hit, and you're going to be sitting there holding concentration for nothing until the next round comes so that you can try to hit again. During that time, monsters can attack you, increasing your chance to drop concentration.

Like I said, Bless on a Paladin basically keeps its own concentration safe. You know what else drops your concentration? Getting Incapacitated/Stunned etc. And what helps with that? Bless!

Bless is never overrated. You just don't know how good it is.

[Eldariel]

NPC Acolyte?


Note: we ran into, at second level, a Knight with six guards and an Acolyte, and a Scout, in the jungles of Chult. It's a good thing I took out the acolyte with arrows (ranger) since bless (1d4) plus that ability by the Knight (Recharges after a Short or Long Rest). For 1 minute, the knight can utter a special command or warning whenever a nonhostile creature that it can see within 30 feet of it makes an attack roll or a saving throw. The creature can add a d4 to its roll provided it can hear and understand the knight. A creature can benefit from only one Leadership die at a time. This effect ends if the knight is incapacitated.
stack together.
When the guards get +2d4 to attacks and +2d4 to saving throws the encounter can get hairy for 4 level 2 PCs in a hurry. As it was, the first few rounds of the battle didn't go well. We ended up having to break contact - I dropped a fog cloud and we retreated deeper into the forest/jungle.

One of the many reasons Planar Bound Couatl is a godsent (heh) on levels 13+ where you can Conjure Celestial for one. It can turn into a Knight, cast Bless and then use Leadership, followed by turning into other shapes and using other awesome utility abilities all the while taking no action resources from the party.

This is one of the buffs where it just keeps getting better the higher up you go.

[strangebloke]

The difference is reliability. Bless is reliable, smite spells are not. The arguments against Bless are always: if you roll too low for the D4 to matter. Well guess what happens if you rolled low on your attack? Your smite spells don't hit, and you're going to be sitting there holding concentration for nothing until the next round comes so that you can try to hit again. During that time, monsters can attack you, increasing your chance to drop concentration.

Like I said, Bless on a Paladin basically keeps its own concentration safe. You know what else drops your concentration? Getting Incapacitated/Stunned etc. And what helps with that? Bless!

Bless is never overrated. You just don't know how good it is.

Bless doesn't do anything when you roll too high either, though. It literally has only a 1/8 chance of doing anything on any given attack/save. It's more likely to do something after several rounds have gone by, but again, keeping up with the tempo of the fight matters. How long does it take for bless to convert 2 hits/failed saves to misses? It's 13 rolls just to get a 50% chance of that happening. You could be on turn 3 or 4 before that happens, or even later.

Just because the buff is "reliable" in the sense that it doesn't target a save doesn't mean its always going to be impactful.

As for wrathful smite: Bless outscales it pretty quickly, but there are situations at low levels where wrathful smite is going to be more impactful.

[Jerrykhor]

Bless doesn't do anything when you roll too high either, though.
So what? That's nothing to complain about. The point of using Bless is not to get the most out of Bless. Otherwise you'd be trying to make more saving throws just to make the most out of the D4 bonus. But the more saves you make, the more likely you will fail.

Which brings me to my next point: Wrathful Smite is worse because it has 2 chances to fail (you need a hit and a failed save). It has a good chance of being a completely wasted spell slot. I am terribly biased against smite spells, because after playing Paladin for years, i think it has no reason to cost Concentration. Whether you are holding up Hunters Mark as Vengeance, Moonbeam as Ancients or just holding an Aura of Vitality, its not worth to drop concentration on any of them just to try something that is unlikely to succeed. Reliability is very important, since the game all about resource management. And the dumb smite spell costs your concentration just for attempting to use it (and even though it immediately fails). You also need to hold concentration before and after the hit, which to me really kills my desire to use it. I'd rather just Divine Smite it and hope it dies faster.

Your math also does not back up years of actual play from years of experience. You need to understand statistics and probability too. Just because its 1/8 chance doesnt mean you always need to wait 7 times before you see the result. And are those numbers taking into account 3 creature affected?

[JNAProductions]

So what? That's nothing to complain about. The point of using Bless is not to get the most out of Bless. Otherwise you'd be trying to make more saving throws just to make the most out of the D4 bonus. But the more saves you make, the more likely you will fail.

Which brings me to my next point: Wrathful Smite is worse because it has 2 chances to fail (you need a hit and a failed save). It has a good chance of being a completely wasted spell slot. I am terribly biased against smite spells, because after playing Paladin for years, i think it has no reason to cost Concentration. Whether you are holding up Hunters Mark as Vengeance, Moonbeam as Ancients or just holding an Aura of Vitality, its not worth to drop concentration on any of them just to try something that is unlikely to succeed. Reliability is very important, since the game all about resource management. And the dumb smite spell costs your concentration just for attempting to use it (and even though it immediately fails). You also need to hold concentration before and after the hit, which to me really kills my desire to use it. I'd rather just Divine Smite it and hope it dies faster.

Your math also does not back up years of actual play from years of experience. You need to understand statistics and probability too. Just because its 1/8 chance doesnt mean you always need to wait 7 times before you see the result. And are those numbers taking into account 3 creature affected?

I do think Smite spells could do with not needing Concentration... But they should have SOMETHING to prevent you stacking all of them on one attack.

[strangebloke]

So what? That's nothing to complain about. The point of using Bless is not to get the most out of Bless. Otherwise you'd be trying to make more saving throws just to make the most out of the D4 bonus. But the more saves you make, the more likely you will fail.

Which brings me to my next point: Wrathful Smite is worse because it has 2 chances to fail (you need a hit and a failed save). It has a good chance of being a completely wasted spell slot. I am terribly biased against smite spells, because after playing Paladin for years, i think it has no reason to cost Concentration. Whether you are holding up Hunters Mark as Vengeance, Moonbeam as Ancients or just holding an Aura of Vitality, its not worth to drop concentration on any of them just to try something that is unlikely to succeed. Reliability is very important, since the game all about resource management. And the dumb smite spell costs your concentration just for attempting to use it (and even though it immediately fails). You also need to hold concentration before and after the hit, which to me really kills my desire to use it. I'd rather just Divine Smite it and hope it dies faster.

Your math also does not back up years of actual play from years of experience. You need to understand statistics and probability too. Just because its 1/8 chance doesnt mean you always need to wait 7 times before you see the result. And are those numbers taking into account 3 creature affected?

Qube's post goes into detail, but I have also explained my reasoning multiple times Every roll, bless has a 7/8 chance of doing nothing. on two rolls bless has a (7/8)^2 chance of doing nothing. This math lets you say that after 6 blessed rolls bless has a 55% of changing one roll's outcome. Qube took it farther with more complex math, and 13 blessed rolls is what puts you over 50% for changing 2 rolls' outcomes." I would argue that "change two rolls' outcomes" is really when the non-precast bless really becomes worth it, and at low levels that will take several turns to happen. Low-level PCs can get as many as three attacks a turn, but one or two is more realistic, so you'll be well into turn three before its really done much.

And sure, it does have a "lose less" function. It offers proportionally more DPR to the party if the enemy has high AC relative to their attack modifiers, like an animated armor encountered at level 1. I'm just saying that bless tends to be slow in terms of offering value. It makes you deal a little bit more damage on average, but your peak damage remains the same.

[Corran]

Which brings me to my next point: Wrathful Smite is worse because it has 2 chances to fail (you need a hit and a failed save). It has a good chance of being a completely wasted spell slot. I am terribly biased against smite spells, because after playing Paladin for years, i think it has no reason to cost Concentration.
Smite spells definitely increase in value when you get extra attack for the reason you mention (for early PAM builds too). But having more chances to fail does not make something worse than something else which has less or no chances to fail, and I wouldn't say that bless and wrathful smite are so different in power level to be able to say that either one is better without additional context. When you happen accross a situation where both could be reasonably good, you have to try and figure out which one you need most, and other times the situation will be such that if you were to pick between either of those it would be an easy choice (but not because one spell is clearly better than the other, but because one spell is clearly better than the other in that specific scenario).

Moreover, bless is not the most reliable spell either, and I am saying that while entirely agreeing with what you said at another point in your post. Paraphrasing, that bless can be the best option for a fight even if in the end it may not end up affecting it at all (because sometimes it may be the best option as a safety net, and a safety net has a fixed value whether you end up needing it or not, ie whatever the dice end up rolling). And conversly, I would add, you can be in a fight where bless turned out to be critical to the win, but at the same time it wasn't a great choice to begin with, only the dice (and potentially poor planning) made it become so.

Reliability is one of the factors when I am judging a spell's worth. But I have to balance that by weighting in potential outcomes, and moreover by understanding the value of the potential outcomes. For example (and I'm simplifying here), if an ally's spell can almost guarantee a win, and at the same time the caster's concentration can get tested, then bless could be a great option. If I only care about the win, it could be the best choice, even if it doesn't end up giving me the biggest win. But if I cared about winning big (eg because I have more fights ahead of me), I might go with some other option instead of bless, and that would be one that might not necessarily be as reliable (in term of tactics, not in term of spell performance), but at the same time it would have a bigger potential upside.

Aside on smite spells.
Smite spells tend to be a bit on the lower side. Wrathful smite is an excepion. It's not for every fight, but it wont be too uncommon for it to be your among your best choices (even in higher levels, especially after a few of your resources have been depleted). Thunderous smite is situationally useful, but if you get rid of concentration, allowing at such a big push at just a slot expense might step too much on a martial like the fighter (particularly the battlemaster). The rest of the smite spells are not very exciting to be honest. I've used a searing smire a few times against trolls but eh, it's weak (didn't even bother with it in a hydra fight). Banishing smite is mostly wasted on most paladins but it can be useful having it prepared in case the right opportunity comes along. The rest (branding, blinding, staggering) are a a bit too situational for my taste (even though I've seen branding smite put to good effect, once...).
Edit: Smite spells are great at supporting a certain playstyle though. And they are flavorful and (mostly) unique to the paladin, so I like the idea.

[Hytheter]

I do think Smite spells could do with not needing Concentration... But they should have SOMETHING to prevent you stacking all of them on one attack.

I would have made them variants of the base Divine Smite but that ship has long sailed.

[tiornys]

Banishing Smite is at its best on a Hexblade, where it comes online at level 9. It's the only Smite spell that outdamages just using the slot for a smite, and the conditional effect is very powerful.

[Corran]

Banishing Smite is at its best on a Hexblade, where it comes online at level 9. It's the only Smite spell that outdamages just using the slot for a smite, and the conditional effect is very powerful.
Especially if you try to make it more reliable by stacking it with an eldritch smite and by utilizing range in many cases. And by trying making it tactically more useful by improving your initiative and thus taking out targets before they get a/more turns (and potentially letting any good initiative roller allies go before you for a further boost to reliability too).

[Witty Username]

Guiding bolt is much more all-in then bless, average damage of 14 is nice but has issues with multiple enemy fights. Furthermore a miss with a Guiding bolt will biff one of your 2 spell slots for the day. Guiding bolt is nice if you are fighting a single enemy that the damage and advantage has a good chance to take out. Bless is better over a the course of a fight with multiple enemies.

[qube]

@Jerrykhor - I think you've taken the eye of the ball.


Jerrykhor: The difference is reliability. Bless is reliable, smite spells are not. The arguments against Bless are always: if you roll too low for the D4 to matter. Well guess what happens if you rolled low on your attack? Your smite spells don't hit[/quote]

strangebloke: Bless doesn't do anything when you roll too high either, though.

Jerrykhor: So what? That's nothing to complain about. The point of using Bless is not to get the most out of Bless

So, what? so Bless is a wasted spellslot & action, if you roll good on your d20's.
Damage boosts aren't.

While I'm not interested in the power of smite spells specifically ("there are worse spells then spell X, so spell X is awesome" is non-sequitor) - it does need to be noted that, in terms of reliablity, Wrathfull smite & Thunderous smite will have an effect on hit - regardless of the save.

In a void, that makes them WAAAAAAY more reliable then bless.
In game, concentration becomes a problem when you get hit - but that makes bless also problematic to be cast by a frontliner

[Gtdead]

I think the offensive part of Bless is more significant than it seems at first glance, at least for low levels.

If you are dealing 20 dmg/hit (fairly common thanks to GWM/SS) and the enemy has less or equal hit points (low levels), the spike damage of turning a miss into a hit is significant because kills cause a snowball.

If you view the damage output as "average turns to kill" instead of "average dpr", then 1.1 turns is equal to 2. Against 20 Hit Points, a character who consistently deals 10 dpr per attack is exactly the same as one who deals 19.9.

In contrast, at higher levels, the damage output chunks are a smaller percentage of the enemy's hit pool, so it doesn't matter how you increase your dpr, the result will mostly be the same. At that point, comparing the face value of a buff is a better approach.

[Hytheter]

I think the offensive part of Bless is more significant than it seems at first glance, at least for low levels.

If you are dealing 20 dmg/hit (fairly common thanks to GWM/SS)

Are GWM/SS common at low levels? Not in my experience.

[Gtdead]

Are GWM/SS common at low levels? Not in my experience.

The logic works despite them. Powerattacking swarms is just the most glaring example. The turn-to-kill calculation is what matters in this model. As long as the party can score efficient kills (no overkill) in the least possible time, then you can snowball the fight, and bless is a really good buff to this end.

As for how common, there is no reason for vhuman martial builds to not have both SS/GWM along with CE/PAM by level 4, unless the players don't want them. Both of them are better than ASIs and less situational than most other options.

[qube]

If you are dealing 20 dmg/hit (fairly common thanks to GWM/SS) and the enemy has less or equal hit points (low levels), the spike damage of turning a miss into a hit is significant because kills cause a snowball.I'm afraid your argument isn't as strong as you think it is. It's actually an argument against bless - because there is no guarantee a miss is transformed into a hit. If you take the death-mechanic into consideration ... would it not be better to deal damage instead of using a round spending on a buff that might not do anything?

Consider (as pointed out in post 2), it take 6 rolls before the chance of it having had an effect reaches 50%. (and before you think ... well, we're with 3 buffed people, so that's 3 attack rolls per turn and thus 2 rounds ... consider that this can also trigger for a non-spike damage dealing character)

---> with sufficient monsters, that means they can easily get 2 rounds in before 6rolls=50% is reached, and one more dies then the baseline.

Oppositely, if the cleric spends an action & spellslot, instead of casting a buff spell, actually attacking (like casting guiding bolt) - (with 50% hit chance, that would make it equivalent to 6rolls=50%).

---> Then it's possible said monster dies instantly.

--------------
That's not to say that bless on a lvl 5+ reckless GWM barbarian isn't a good thing. If you can spare the concentration, starting during the second round of attacking it will start to pay off.
But of course, if you can spare the concentration.


I guess that's the bless sweet spot: at least lvl 5 to make sure enough rolls are made ; up to level ... 9ish(?) where there are simply better spells to use concentration on.

After that level, bless starts to be a spell for combats you want to spend some, but not too much resources on.

[Spacehamster]

Highly dependent on party, say if you are level 3 and one of the characters is a gloomstalker ranger v human with crossbow expert and blessed either go first or bless us pre cast, then that guy does 3 attacks with archery style and bless so d20 + 3 + 2 + 2,5 average rolls of 17,5 so for a class with high accuracy it’s going to make him hit low AC targets almost all the time and medium-high AC most of the times. :)

[Segev]

Bless is also stronger if you can pre-cast it, rather than taking an action during combat to do so.

[Gtdead]

I'm afraid your argument isn't as strong as you think it is. It's actually an argument against bless - because there is no guarantee a miss is transformed into a hit. If you take the death-mechanic into consideration ... 1) would it not be better to deal damage instead of using a round spending on a buff that might not do anything?

Consider (as pointed out in post 2), it take 6 rolls before the chance of it having had an effect reaches 50%. (and before you think ... well, we're with 3 buffed people, so that's 3 attack rolls per turn and thus 2 rounds ... consider that this can also trigger for a non-spike damage dealing character)

---> with sufficient monsters, that means they can easily get 2 rounds in before 6rolls=50% is reached, and one more dies then the baseline.

Oppositely, if the cleric spends an action & spellslot, instead of casting a buff spell, actually attacking (like casting guiding bolt) - (with 50% hit chance, that would make it equivalent to 6rolls=50%).

---> Then it's possible said monster dies instantly.

--------------
That's not to say that bless on a lvl 5+ reckless GWM barbarian isn't a good thing. If you can spare the concentration, starting during the second round of attacking it will start to pay off.
But of course, if you can spare the concentration.


2)I guess that's the bless sweet spot: at least lvl 5 to make sure enough rolls are made ; up to level ... 9ish(?) where there are simply better spells to use concentration on.

After that level, bless starts to be a spell for combats you want to spend some, but not too much resources on.

1) Absolutely, although we need to consider the scale of the encounter. To showcase using some extremes: Assuming a very dangerous enemy (meaning that it's likely to kill you), if your best case scenario is to win in 1 turn, then it's safe to assume that Guiding Bolt will be a very high value action. If the best case scenario is 12 turns, then Bless will most likely snowball harder. I don't claim that my methodology of aggergating turns to kill is amazing, but I personally find it fairly good when thinking about lower levels. Higher levels are chaotic, mostly thanks to different modes of movement/teleportation, along with stronger crowd control which may make a turns-to-kill model irrelevant by removing the offensive capability of the enemy (essentially save or lose).

2) Agree on the upper limit. My personal opinion is that Bless is a fairly low value action for a late t2 caster. Clerics have one of the most efficient spells in SG, so at that point there isn't really a scenario where the class is likely to be left without spell slots using the standard game rules. Optimized builds also may have access to Shield/Absorb elements which are high value low level spells that scale amazingly well at higher levels. Bless is good, but it should be offloaded to hybrids or martials with dips/items.

[ciopo]

... I've very rarely used bless on myself.

That is to say, I'm not sure why the point of comparison used is the damage of a GWM. That's not what it competes against for my action, it comeptes against a sacred flame.

Like, if I do bless, my current priority would be my barbarian pal, then my bard pal on the assumption he goes polymorph and thus needs all the help possible to keep concentration and only then, as a third wheel, myself to better keep concentration.

or maybe I'm the fourth wheel, and the third wheel is the wizard upcasting fly on the barbarian and the bardape

The bonus on attack rolls is like a ribbon to the bonus to saves, to me :).

But, low level? if I got bless I sure don't have GWM, so it's "should I sacred flame or should I bles A, B, C?" I did when it was properly described ( or I just knew) that whatever opponent was difficult to hit

[strangebloke]

Bless is also stronger if you can pre-cast it, rather than taking an action during combat to do so.

Correct. My evaluation is that bless is best

in t2
if you have a party very heavy on GWM/SS builds in t1
if you can precast it.
if its going to be a very long fight.
if saves are relevant

[da newt]

It feels like some folks are missing the point, so I'll try to help by over simplifying the math (others have done real math - I'm trying to make it super easy to understand).

Let's ASSUME bless gives you a +2.5 to hit and to saves (estimating). So how often will this make a miss into a hit (attack) or a fail into a success (save)? About 2.5 out of 20 times (again, over simplified) which = 12.5%. So what does this mean? For every 10 attacks and saves on average 1.25 of them are affected by bless and 8.75 of them are not.

So 87.5% of the time bless does nothing at all - it fails - but it does cost you a spell slot, and your concentration, and an action to cast (a turn where you don't do anything else).

[x3n0n]

It feels like some folks are missing the point, so I'll try to help by over simplifying the math (others have done real math - I'm trying to make it super easy to understand).

Let's ASSUME bless gives you a +2.5 to hit and to saves (estimating). So how often will this make a miss into a hit (attack) or a fail into a success (save)? About 2.5 out of 20 times (again, over simplified) which = 12.5%. So what does this mean? For every 10 attacks and saves on average 1.25 of them are affected by bless and 8.75 of them are not.

So 87.5% of the time bless does nothing at all - it fails - but it does cost you a spell slot, and your concentration, and an action to cast (a turn where you don't do anything else).

Refinement: 87.5% of "bless-implicated" rolls are unaffected, so "If your bless only affects a single roll," then 87.5% of the time, it will do nothing.

And we get back to the logic from earlier: bless gets much better if you have many and/or high-leverage attack rolls and/or saving throws (and worse if you have fewer and/or low-leverage saves and attack rolls). Those attack rolls (and some saves) are way more prevalent in tier 2 than in tier 1.

[Elder_Basilisk]

But I think it's safe to say that bless is a gimme for an order cleric with a party member who has a good regular attack.

[Segev]

But I think it's safe to say that bless is a gimme for an order cleric with a party member who has a good regular attack.

Define "good regular attack." I am not sure it IS a "gimme."

I have two of my three party members in a game where they are primary attackers. We're level 3. My PC is a Cleric 1/Wizard 2, and I determined that my concentration was likely better spent buffing the lower-AC primary attacker's AC by 2 with shield of faith than casting bless, because I was pretty sure bless would not make a difference often enough to be as valuable. IT did turn out that my calculation was at least off in one respect: the monsters never rolled in the range-of-2 that my shield of faith changed the buffed ally's AC by, though, so maybe I was wrong, there.

[strangebloke]

Define "good regular attack." I am not sure it IS a "gimme."

I have two of my three party members in a game where they are primary attackers. We're level 3. My PC is a Cleric 1/Wizard 2, and I determined that my concentration was likely better spent buffing the lower-AC primary attacker's AC by 2 with shield of faith than casting bless, because I was pretty sure bless would not make a difference often enough to be as valuable. IT did turn out that my calculation was at least off in one respect: the monsters never rolled in the range-of-2 that my shield of faith changed the buffed ally's AC by, though, so maybe I was wrong, there.

Shield of faith is instructive here. In terms of what it actually does, its way weaker than bless. But you can cast it as a bonus action. Pre-casting is easy because it lasts an hour, and you can have it up for multiple combats. It's also relatively easy for it to get 'value' since even at low levels you can get attacked 6+ times in a turn.

I'd generally recommend it more on a high-AC target though. Giving the 20 AC guy dodging in a doorway immunity to everything that isn't a crit is amazing.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Define "good regular attack." I am not sure it IS a "gimme."

I have two of my three party members in a game where they are primary attackers. We're level 3. My PC is a Cleric 1/Wizard 2, and I determined that my concentration was likely better spent buffing the lower-AC primary attacker's AC by 2 with shield of faith than casting bless, because I was pretty sure bless would not make a difference often enough to be as valuable. IT did turn out that my calculation was at least off in one respect: the monsters never rolled in the range-of-2 that my shield of faith changed the buffed ally's AC by, though, so maybe I was wrong, there.

First off, I do use Shield of Faith but it's definitely a fall back plan if I can't pre-cast as it only uses a Bonus Action so I can still attack. For all the talk of how rarely a Bless actually makes a difference (1/8 of all attacks and saves for 3 characters) I'm not sure how SoF makes Bless look bad. SoF makes a difference for attack rolls against 1 character 1/10th of the time. While mitigating damage vs. the party is generally more valuable than increasing damage inflicted against foes SoF is going to actually make a difference a fraction of the time that Bless is.

[da newt]

"And we get back to the logic from earlier: bless gets much better if you have many and/or high-leverage attack rolls and/or saving throws (and worse if you have fewer and/or low-leverage saves and attack rolls)."

Sort of, but also sort of not at all - it doesn't matter how many rolls there are or how high the damage of those rolls are - it will still only affect 12.5% of those rolls on average and have no affect on the vast majority of rolls.

Yes, if it only changes one heavy miss into a hit, that can be very impactful, and if you attack/save 20 times the odds are it will make a difference more times than if you only attack/save 5 times, but it will still only impact 12.5% of rolls and not impact 87.5% of the rolls at all no matter how many rolls you make - the odds don't change.

[x3n0n]

"And we get back to the logic from earlier: bless gets much better if you have many and/or high-leverage attack rolls and/or saving throws (and worse if you have fewer and/or low-leverage saves and attack rolls)."

Sort of, but also sort of not at all - it doesn't matter how many rolls there are or how high the damage of those rolls are - it will still only affect 12.5% of those rolls on average and have no affect on the vast majority of rolls.

Yes, if it only changes one heavy miss into a hit, that can be very impactful, and if you attack/save 20 times the odds are it will make a difference more times than if you only attack/save 5 times, but it will still only impact 12.5% of rolls and not impact 87.5% of the rolls at all no matter how many rolls you make - the odds don't change.

It's not that the odds change; it's that the *value* of the spell scales with the *value* of the 12.5% of the effects.

That is: expected value of a casting of bless = 12.5% * ( (value of turning a miss into a hit) * (number of attacks) + (value of making the save vs missing) * (number of save attempts) )

If your party of 3 is saving vs a lv1 burning hands, that's worth much less (in expected damage prevented) than your party of 3 saving vs a lv3 fireball (assuming the same party).
Similarly, assuming the same enemies, a Sharpshooter and a Monk (quality and quantity of attacks, respectively) will benefit more than 2 "vanilla" fighters (in expected damage dealt).

[tiornys]

It feels like some folks are missing the point, so I'll try to help by over simplifying the math (others have done real math - I'm trying to make it super easy to understand).

Let's ASSUME bless gives you a +2.5 to hit and to saves (estimating). So how often will this make a miss into a hit (attack) or a fail into a success (save)? About 2.5 out of 20 times (again, over simplified) which = 12.5%. So what does this mean? For every 10 attacks and saves on average 1.25 of them are affected by bless and 8.75 of them are not.

So 87.5% of the time bless does nothing at all - it fails - but it does cost you a spell slot, and your concentration, and an action to cast (a turn where you don't do anything else).
This is disingenuous because it compares a small fraction of the benefit to the entire cost. At minimum we should expect Bless to apply to 3 d20 rolls per round, so that's already up to a 1 in 3 chance that it did something on the round you cast it. It's not unreasonable to expect it to affect 6+ d20 rolls per round, at which point it's above a 50% chance of doing something each round.

This is also a poor analysis because it doesn't account for how much impact there is when Bless does turn a failure into a success. The estimation of its DPR contribution, while still flawed, is a vastly superior metric for evaluating the spell since that's something which can be directly compared to the contributions of other spells and party members.

[da newt]

It has become clear that many folks don't understand what 12.5% means.

But you are very right, the 'a little more than one roll out of ten that a miss becomes a hit or a fail becomes a save' it can be quite significant, but it doesn't change the fact that almost nine out of ten rolls the spell does nothing at all.

Now if we want to compare the impact of the spell to a cleric using a turn/action and a spell slot and their concentration on something else the calculus gets a bit more involved.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

It has become clear that many folks don't understand what 12.5% means.

But you are very right, the 'a little more than one roll out of ten that a miss becomes a hit or a fail becomes a save' it can be quite significant, but it doesn't change the fact that almost nine out of ten rolls the spell does nothing at all.

Now if we want to compare the impact of the spell to a cleric using a turn/action and a spell slot and their concentration on something else the calculus gets a bit more involved.

Something that I don't think has been discussed on the thread is that for some characters/ groups the bless has a chance on top of the 12.5% of putting some rolls into the realm where another resource can be used to turn a miss to hit or fail to save. I'm thinking about superiority dice, inspiration dice, and the like, where if you miss by 6 you probably won't bother, but if the bless turns that into a miss by 3 you've got a good chance of success.

On your other point I think that's where something like Shield of Faith (or another BA option) is a good plan B if you can't pre-cast. My Assassin (with Cleric dip) is generally going to Bless if he can pre-cast, but I'm not usually going to miss out on a chance to do damage with my action, so Shield of Faith works well in that case.

[Gtdead]

It feels like some folks are missing the point, so I'll try to help by over simplifying the math (others have done real math - I'm trying to make it super easy to understand).

Let's ASSUME bless gives you a +2.5 to hit and to saves (estimating). So how often will this make a miss into a hit (attack) or a fail into a success (save)? About 2.5 out of 20 times (again, over simplified) which = 12.5%. So what does this mean? For every 10 attacks and saves on average 1.25 of them are affected by bless and 8.75 of them are not.

So 87.5% of the time bless does nothing at all - it fails - but it does cost you a spell slot, and your concentration, and an action to cast (a turn where you don't do anything else).

Bless is a party buff, affecting 3 people. Which means that the chance of having an effect is 1-0.875^3 = 33~% per round and 70-80% during the whole standard 4 round combat depending on initiative so let's say 75%. From there on it's easy to calculate the average effect. Just average the party's damage per attack and apply the percentage.

Another simplified approach is that the average roll required to hit is 8. Bless changes it to 5.5. This results in a 19.2 dpr increase. 1 ASI increases average weapon dpr by 20-23% depending on the circumstances. This means that bless is effectively a free ASI offensively and I think people value ASIs, even if the hit chance does nothing 95% of the time (using the same simplified calculation you used).


-------------------------------------------------------------

And since simplicity helps with decision making. The iconic DnD party is Fighter-Rogue-Cleric-Wizard. For bless purposes we will calculate the averages of Fighter, Rogue and Wizard (firebolt) at lvl 1.
We will also assume that Sacred Flame works like an attack (65% hit chance) which is generous, and the Cleric can attack with Heavy Crossbows with 14 DEX (60% hit chance).

Every 3.9 damage per attack equals 1 Sacred Flame
Every 6 damage per attack equals 1 Heavy Xbow attack.


Super optimized party: 11.6 dpr per attack on average / 3 SFs or 2 HXbow attacks.
Only maxing main stat (no clineage shenanigans): 8 dpr per attack assuming sword and shield with half dueling style / 2 SFs or 1.33 HXbow attacks.

It's almost impossible for Bless to be a net loss. However, both Guiding Bolt and Inflict Wounds are better offensively in these 2 scenarios.

So a few guidelines for low level :

Prioritize it when:

You benefit from the Saving Throw buff.
When it's beneficial for the party to prolong fights (kiting/mostly ranged/heavy defense focus).
If the party has 2 or more power attackers.

Don't prioritize it when:
When your team mates may have better uses for their actions than attack.
When you have an obvious target where killing him first will yield better results.
When your "tank" is able to hold a good choke point, so you may want to Shield of Faith him.

[qube]

Yes, if it only changes one heavy miss into a hit, that can be very impactful, and if you attack/save 20 times the odds are it will make a difference more times than if you only attack/save 5 times, but it will still only impact 12.5% of rolls and not impact 87.5% of the rolls at all no matter how many rolls you make - the odds don't change.
I think that was the point I made in the second post of this thread.



you need at least 6d20 for a 50% chance to have any effect ( P(1+) > 50% )
13d20 gives you a 50% to chance to have effected at least two attacks/saves

[arnin77]

I like to think of Bless as affecting my average roll… if my average attack roll is 10.5, then Bless makes it 13… plus my attack modifier.

Same with saves… if my average roll is 10.5, then it becomes 13 plus my save modifier…

If I’m a level 6 Paladin with 18 cha (which I was..) then my average roll for a save becomes 17 with Bless. I’d be pretty happy with that..

Also, Bless takes 1 spell slot but lasts multiple rounds vs inflict wounds which also takes 1 spell slot but lasts 1 round (unless it has a rider? I don’t think I’ve ever used that spell honestly)… if I have 2 spell slots at level 1 (cleric) I’m thinking Bless is probably a pretty good option regardless… but I think it depends on your preferences, not whether it can be universally decided that it’s good or bad.

[Witty Username]

I think that was the point I made in the second post of this thread.



you need at least 6d20 for a 50% chance to have any effect ( P(1+) > 50% )
13d20 gives you a 50% to chance to have effected at least two attacks/saves


If you have a monk in the party that does mean bless is almost guaranteed to have an effect.
Variant human and or twf shinanigans are also calls towards it.

I would push back on guiding bolt comparison. Mostly because this chance of effectiveness agruement applies to guiding bolt as well,
the chance of a miss obviously, which will be about 40-50%, but more importantly the damage amount 4d6(avg, 14) can be useful but is not much more than a weapon attack 1d8+stat(about 7.5). Against low CR enemies like goblins, guiding bolt is likely a waste of a spell slot, even if it hits, because a basic attack is already pretty likely to kill.
Then there are enemies like Ogres, which should be more favorable but the damage is again not alot. Furthermore, having higher average damage does not guarantee more damage, a low damage roll from a guiding bolt will waste the slot. This logic also applies to the advantage grant, as sometimes the success would happen without it, or be negated by another source of advantage.

Not to say Guiding bolt is bad, but it is not the clear victor over bless at low levels.

[qube]

> you need at least 6d20 for a 50% chance to have any effect ( P(1+) > 50% )
> 13d20 gives you a 50% to chance to have effected at least two attacks/saves

If you have a monk in the party that does mean bless is almost guaranteed to have an effect.Depends of what "almost guaranteed" means.
For an 80% chance of at least 1 effected die, you need 12d20
For an 90% chance of at least 1 effected die, you need 17d20
For an 95% chance of at least 1 effected die, you need 23d20
A single monk PC only adds 1 or 2 extra attack roll dice per round; yet to go from 50% of at least 1, to 80% chance of at least 1, you need 6 dice.


I would push back on guiding bolt comparison.

guiding bolt is likely a waste of a spell slot, even if it hits, because a basic attack is already pretty likely to kill.But "pretty likely" is feeling, not fact.

As you mention goblins, they have 7 hp and an AC of 15. There's a solid chance that they might go down of 1d8+mod, but there's a very real chance that they survive a hit. And that turns into this math:

Bless, after 6 attack rolls, there's a 50% a miss turns into a hit

with a +3 mod: 1d8+3 = 50% killchance --> 25% succesrate
with a +4 mod, 1d8+4 = 62.5% killchance --> 31.3% succesrate
Guiding bolt, on the very same turn it is cast,
with a +3 mod = 55% hit chance, x 98.8% killchance --> 54.4% succesrate
with a +4 mod = 60% hit chance, x 98.8% killchance--> 59.3% succesrate
(and again, considering guiding bolt's effect is more immediate, the goblin killed by the effect won't have a couple of rounds to attack the PCs)


For bless to be more effective, ideally, you need
long combats (increases the efficiency of bless)
with enemies that don't target the caster (concentration)
that have high AC/saves (reduces the efficiency of other spells)

[Frogreaver]

Depends of what "almost guaranteed" means.
For an 80% chance of at least 1 effected die, you need 12d20
For an 90% chance of at least 1 effected die, you need 17d20
For an 95% chance of at least 1 effected die, you need 23d20
A single monk PC only adds 1 or 2 extra attack roll dice per round; yet to go from 50% of at least 1, to 80% chance of at least 1, you need 6 dice.

While true, I'm not sure looking at the 'chance of at least 1' is really the most revealing statistic. Especially when bless can easily affect 2-3 attacks.


Bless, after 6 attack rolls, there's a 50% a miss turns into a hit

with a +3 mod: 1d8+3 = 50% killchance --> 25% succesrate
with a +4 mod, 1d8+4 = 62.5% killchance --> 31.3% succesrate
Guiding bolt, on the very same turn it is cast,
with a +3 mod = 55% hit chance, x 98.8% killchance --> 54.4% succesrate
with a +4 mod = 60% hit chance, x 98.8% killchance--> 59.3% succesrate
(and again, considering guiding bolt's effect is more immediate, the goblin killed by the effect won't have a couple of rounds to attack the PCs)


This isn't accurate in the least. Multiple issues exist with your methodology above.
After 6 attack rolls there's a 0.75 expected value that a miss would be turned into a hit. You are improperly using chance to turn at least 1 miss into a hit when you should be using the exepcted value for turning a miss into a hit.
That miss turned to a hit may target either a full hp goblin or an alraedy injured goblin. If it's on an already injured goblin then it has a higher chance (probably 100%) of killing said goblin.
If you are calculating the kill chance of a miss turned into a hit then you wouldn't use the chance to hit in that calculation

[Amnestic]

One advantage that bless gives: It means more dice rolling. And rolling dice is fun!

[Jakinbandw]

So I want to bring up one thing that has been ignored so far: Planning Confidence. When playing Xcom bumping a hit chance from 85% to 95% is massive. It allows actions to be planned with much more surety. It's the difference between switching targets because you can be sure an enemy is about to die and losing an action because you had to have a plan to deal with a foe that was one hit away from death.

I played a peace cleric/Eloquence bard, and when my party was rolling 1d20+2d4 (occasionally +1d6) on attacks, we could easily predict the exact outcome of an encounter. Turn 1 bless, turn 2 command. Two first level spells that allowed our party to easily deal with most challenges. There was no guesswork in the battles. We knew from the moment the encounter started each action we would be taking, and what we would need to do to win.

[qube]

So I want to bring up one thing that has been ignored so far: Planning Confidence

I played a peace cleric/Eloquence bard, and when my party was rolling 1d20+2d4 (occasionally +1d6) on attacks, we could easily predict the exact outcome of an encounter. Turn 1 bless, turn 2 command.
Two first level spells that allowed our party to easily deal with most challenges.Don't you mean
Turn 1 Emboldening Bond
Turn 2 Bless
Turn 3 Command
As all three are actions?

Ultimately, what you're arguing is that overly buffed characters can deal with challenges quite easily. I don't think anybody disputes that.

However,
by the very definition of overly buffed - it is a very sub-par way of spending resources (both in action-economy and ability usage)
For example, I wonder how many bardic inspirations are lost (or are 'forced' to be used on sub-par things) simply because the inspired character already always it hit from the +2d4 boost.
With bless being a concentration spell - it's not optimal for buffing-chaining; it takes your concentration slot, and you could lose it from getting hit, before all buffs are up.

[x3n0n]

Don't you mean
Turn 1 Emboldening Bond
Turn 2 Bless
Turn 3 Command
As all three are actions?


Given the 10-minute duration and subtle "casting", I am guessing Emboldening Bond is assumed to be already in effect as a "pre-cast" much of the time.

[Jakinbandw]

Don't you mean
Turn 1 Emboldening Bond
Turn 2 Bless
Turn 3 Command
As all three are actions?

Ultimately, what you're arguing is that overly buffed characters can deal with challenges quite easily. I don't think anybody disputes that.

However,
by the very definition of overly buffed - it is a very sub-par way of spending resources (both in action-economy and ability usage)
For example, I wonder how many bardic inspirations are lost (or are 'forced' to be used on sub-par things) simply because the inspired character already always it hit from the +2d4 boost.
With bless being a concentration spell - it's not optimal for buffing-chaining; it takes your concentration slot, and you could lose it from getting hit, before all buffs are up.


Emboldening bond is 10 minute duration, so I had it precast in every situation I remember using it... *Shrug*

The bardic inspiration really only came up when a PC wanted to use great weapon master for extra damage. As for losing concentration... I was rolling my con saves with +2d4 against a DC of 10 (most of the time). I had around a 90% chance of success. Also the paladin had the fighting style that let them use their reaction to reduce or negate damage targeting me so I rarely rolled. Is the use of a level 1 slot, a short rest resource, and a resource that lasts a full 10 minutes (ie: an entire dungeon) wasteful? Considering that we wrecked deadly encounters with a 3 member party, enough that the GM started having to home brew monsters into curse of Strahd to challenge us, maybe. But on the other hand, the number of party wipes that I've read about in curse of Strahd makes me think that maybe bless and emboldening bond are actually pretty good.

Much of it, because it allowed us to play with full knowledge of what was going to happen. To the point where I laid out an entire fight with a boss to the GM before it happened, and they couldn't refute it. That was the fight against baba lysaga. Go ahead, use finger of death on my Bard. I'll eat my 15 points of damage, make my concentration save, and the beatings will continue until moral improves!

[qube]

Much of it, because it allowed us to play with full knowledge of what was going to happen.
Not sure how bless or Emboldening Bond give you knowledge about monsters - let alone the fact baba lysaga (who is protected from divination) can cast finger of death.


As for losing concentration... I was rolling my con saves with +2d4 against a DC of 10hmm ... so ... with only 2 targets for Emboldening Bond & 3 for bless ... you chose yourself for both? and still chose to cast a command - a save spell?
... you're not making a good case for resource management.

And then, I read you saying


Also the paladin had the fighting style that let them use their reaction to reduce or negate damage targeting me so I rarely rolled.

:smalleek: bragging how little you have to use the buff you placed on yourself ... isn't the brag you think it is.


Is the use of a level 1 slot, a short rest resource, and a resource that lasts a full 10 minutes (ie: an entire dungeon) wasteful?considering a short rest takes an hour - equating 10 minutes to an "entire dungeons", says a lot about said dungeon.


But on the other hand, the number of party wipes that I've read about in curse of Strahd makes me think that maybe bless and emboldening bond are actually pretty good.Or, running a high undead module with at least 66% of the party divine character might have something to do with it.

Personally, I played it once. Wasn't that hard (though it sandbox nature does punish bad choices). The lack of radiant damage was a bit annoying though. We didn't even use the NPC we had with us until Stradth (we figured he was weak, but then found out he had the stats of a gladiator)

[Frogreaver]

Most modules difficulty depend a lot on how the DM runs them and what random encounters are rolled and whether you built characters for that module or built characters that are geared toward not know the module.

[Jakinbandw]

Not sure how bless or Emboldening Bond give you knowledge about monsters - let alone the fact baba lysaga (who is protected from divination) can cast finger of death.

+1d4 to skill checks (especially the entire party during social or stealth) is actually pretty good. But no, I will admit that while giving the party +1d4 to stealth and invisibility makes for a great ambush opener, it doesn't tell you much. That said, when you tell the GM next session you want to fight Baba, and they go 'you can't, they'd just kill you with finger of death.' Well that allows one to make some pretty good guesses about what spells your foe has doesn't it?


hmm ... so ... with only 2 targets for Emboldening Bond & 3 for bless ... you chose yourself for both? and still chose to cast a command - a save spell?
... you're not making a good case for resource management.
Oh, when we still had a party of 4, and I was only level 3, I didn't include myself. But once the rouge ditched the party and I had a proficiency bonus of 3, you can bet that I was going to include myself in the 3 people buffed, as I was one of the three party members. I hope you don't think poorly of someone not wasting resources.



And then, I read you saying


Also the paladin had the fighting style that let them use their reaction to reduce or negate damage targeting me so I rarely rolled.

:smalleek: bragging how little you have to use the buff you placed on yourself ... isn't the brag you think it is.

I mean, again, if you think that there was a better third person in a three man party to benefit from the buff....


considering a short rest takes an hour - equating 10 minutes to an "entire dungeons", says a lot about said dungeon.

The fact that you think it is safe to rest inside a dungeon says how video-gamey you view dungeons. The truth is, if you can freely rest while inside a dungeon, then you can have all the long rest resources you want. If you can't rest while in a dungeon, then short rests don't really matter do they? You either get through, or you get out.


Or, running a high undead module with at least 66% of the party divine character might have something to do with it.

And here you show that you know that we only had 3 PCs, which is why I ask the question earlier. Who is the third person that should be buffed in a three man party? The paladin's mount? Also, I was only a level 1 cleric. I went eloquence bard for the rest of my levels, so I never really got radiant damage (outside of the second last fight of the campaign, and was from me minmaxing, IE spirit guardians from a mtg background). Also, not as many undead as you would expect. Demons, werewolves, druids (so many druids), animals... Also some GM specific cthulian monsters that sometimes were infecting existing foes and acted as a second phase of a boss fight. After we made it through the hags, radiant damage just didn't come up. And for most of the game, I couldn't use it. I specced almost entirely into utility, meaning that my my only combat spells were Harm, Bless, and Healing Word.


Personally, I played it once. Wasn't that hard (though it sandbox nature does punish bad choices). The lack of radiant damage was a bit annoying though. We didn't even use the NPC we had with us until Stradth (we figured he was weak, but then found out he had the stats of a gladiator)

Again, I'm not sure why missing radiant damage is a big deal. How many party members did you have?

[Witty Username]

I believe I misspoke, let me rephrase.
As a cleric I am taking into account 3 possiblities:
1. Bless
2. Guiding bolt
3. Making an attack with a weapon

Guiding bolt is more likely to kill a goblin than a single attack with a weapon, but also costs a spell slot. Using your own calculation qube, that is a spell slot to have about +30% higher likelihood to kill the goblin then a hammer smack. This is a reoccurring problem with single target damage spells, they are competing with attacks and cantrips that don't cost resources.
Now this logic doesn't apply as well when we are fighting multiple goblins, say 6 goblins. Now we need to have higher impact than the hammer smack.
And need to get into guiding bolt vs bless.
First, how many attacks to we need to likely kill the goblins, which is about 3 per goblin, or 18 attacks without bless. So bless has an impact by the previous math. About a 50% chance to have 3 attacks worth. Guiding bolt with its +30%, is likely to be about 1-2 attacks worth.
However, guiding bolt has a good chance of eliminating 1 enemy in a way bless does not. But eliminating 1 of 6 goblins isn't going to change this encounter much. But it this was something else, say Orcs or a quickling, this could be much more significant.

Concentration is a whole beast, first can it be broken yes, but that is not as much an issue as it might sound. First, you might want to be the target, since bless likely means your one of the more likely to be using armor and shield, AC 18 at the low end and could get some reaction attacks or such from your party. Second, you need to get hit and fail a con save to have it break, that will depend on the enemy but low CR enemies are less likely to break concentration generally. There is also the meh factor. YMMV, but the bless carrier may be less likely to draw fire depending on your DM. That will probably depend alot on how tanking is handled at your table, and how much the DM or the RP monsters perceive bless as a threat.

[Frogreaver]

I believe I misspoke, let me rephrase.
As a cleric I am taking into account 3 possiblities:
1. Bless
2. Guiding bolt
3. Making an attack with a weapon

Guiding bolt is more likely to kill a goblin than a single attack with a weapon, but also costs a spell slot. Using your own calculation qube, that is a spell slot to have about +30% higher likelihood to kill the goblin then a hammer smack. This is a reoccurring problem with single target damage spells, they are competing with attacks and cantrips that don't cost resources.
Now this logic doesn't apply as well when we are fighting multiple goblins, say 6 goblins. Now we need to have higher impact than the hammer smack.
And need to get into guiding bolt vs bless.
First, how many attacks to we need to likely kill the goblins, which is about 3 per goblin, or 18 attacks without bless. So bless has an impact by the previous math. About a 50% chance to have 3 attacks worth. Guiding bolt with its +30%, is likely to be about 1-2 attacks worth.
However, guiding bolt has a good chance of eliminating 1 enemy in a way bless does not. But eliminating 1 of 6 goblins isn't going to change this encounter much. But it this was something else, say Orcs or a quickling, this could be much more significant.

Concentration is a whole beast, first can it be broken yes, but that is not as much an issue as it might sound. First, you might want to be the target, since bless likely means your one of the more likely to be using armor and shield, AC 18 at the low end and could get some reaction attacks or such from your party. Second, you need to get hit and fail a con save to have it break, that will depend on the enemy but low CR enemies are less likely to break concentration generally. There is also the meh factor. YMMV, but the bless carrier may be less likely to draw fire depending on your DM. That will probably depend alot on how tanking is handled at your table, and how much the DM or the RP monsters perceive bless as a threat.

This sounds reasonable. A few additional points.

At level 5 Bless significantly improves. At level 5 Guiding bolt is still doing essentially the same.
Guiding bolt is better for focus fire.
Advantage can significantly help guiding bolt or it's cousin inflict wounds (and advatnage for attacks and especially melee attacks isn't that hard to come by).

[strangebloke]

First, how many attacks to we need to likely kill the goblins, which is about 3 per goblin, or 18 attacks without bless. So bless has an impact by the previous math. About a 50% chance to have 3 attacks worth. Guiding bolt with its +30%, is likely to be about 1-2 attacks worth.

Obviously, using a spell that deals 14 damage and has a rider effect on a goblin that has only 7 hp and relatively high AC for its CR, is a bad idea. My point in bringing up guiding bolt wasn't to say that its better in every scenario, just that there are scenarios where other level 1 spells will vastly outperform bless. I specifically brought up guiding bolt in the context of orcs.

To continue your goblin comparison, imagine we were instead comparing bless to burning hands, which with its save to half and AoE is going to heavily, heavily swing a fight very early on, compared to something relatively slow like bless.

[Witty Username]

To continue your goblin comparison, imagine we were instead comparing bless to burning hands, which with its save to half and AoE is going to heavily, heavily swing a fight very early on, compared to something relatively slow like bless.

Hell yeah, I will freely admit to buying into goblin toast. This was a bit on the back burner in my head though as those options tend to not be available to paladin or cleric but if you are something like a light or tempest cleric with burning hands or thunderwave definitely use them.


This sounds reasonable. A few additional points.

At level 5 Bless significantly improves. At level 5 Guiding bolt is still doing essentially the same.
Guiding bolt is better for focus fire.
Advantage can significantly help guiding bolt or it's cousin inflict wounds (and advatnage for attacks and especially melee attacks isn't that hard to come by).


Sounds good. I do like the advantage on guiding bolt point particularly. It reminds me of passing a football since if can also be a means of cycling advantage to a party member. Pass your hide check to the rogue for their sneak attack.

[qube]

+1d4 to skill checks (especially the entire party during social or stealth) is actually pretty good. But no, I will admit that while giving the party +1d4 to stealth and invisibility makes for a great ambush opener, it doesn't tell you much. That said, when you tell the GM next session you want to fight Baba, and they go 'you can't, they'd just kill you with finger of death.' Well that allows one to make some pretty good guesses about what spells your foe has doesn't it?An augmented sleep spell, ending concentration spells like bless, followed by an autocrit finger of death or augemented witchbolt?


Oh, when we still had a party of 4, and I was only level 3, I didn't include myself. But once the rouge ditched the party and I had a proficiency bonus of 3, you can bet that I was going to include myself in the 3 people buffed, as I was one of the three party members. I hope you don't think poorly of someone not wasting resources.no but it nukes your argument: as a party of 3 isn't representable situation - you EITHER have to spend your buf spells sub-par, buffing yourself to be handle concentration - OR you have to deal with concentration being a potential issue.

And as we're talking pre-level 5 (before extra attack is a thing), Emboldening Bond only boosts 2 targets.


The fact that you think it is safe to rest inside a dungeon says how video-gamey you view dungeons. Actually, because it's not a video game. Heck, a simple conversation with an NPC they encounter can easily take up 10 minutes; and typically that's also the time my PCs take a short rest (talking is hardly a strenuous activity).

When you do an "entire dungeon" in 10 minutes - that is video-gamey.

[qube]

Guiding bolt is more likely to kill a goblin than a single attack with a weapon, but also costs a spell slot. Using your own calculation qube, that is a spell slot to have about +30% higher likelihood to kill the goblin then a hammer smack.no no.

If you're looking for kill shots (presuming a +3 mod)
if you spend an action using bless, bless has a 25% of getting an extra kill shot (in 6 attack rolls)
if you spend an action using guiding bolt, that has 54% of getting an extra kill shot.
If instead you make a simple 1d8+3 weapon attack
55% hit chance * 50% kill chance = 27.5% chance of getting an (extra) kill.
Vs Bless,

nearly equivalent chance as bless (with a basic weapon)
but in the first round
doesn't cost a spellslot, or uses concentration

vs guiding bolt
Guiding bolt basically takes away the chance a goblin survives a hit.
but a basic attack doesn't cost a spellslot




say 6 goblins
First, how many attacks to we need to likely kill the goblins, which is about 3 per goblinI don't quite agree.
Area spells (heck, even some cantrips) typically have saves instead of attack rolls.
sneak attack, rage, fighting style, twohanded weapons ... a 1d8+X might be a normal attack for a cleric - it's not normal damage output for many other PCs. In fact a lvl 4 rogue drops 1dX+2d6+4 - automatically killing a goblin.
At which point, I do want to note a potential double standard


But eliminating 1 of 6 goblins isn't going to change this encounter much.

6 attack rolls only have a 50% chance of effecting at least one attack roll. That's not going to kill 2 goblins. For 2, we'll have to start looking at 13 blessed attack rolls.

Likewise, do consider other effects
kills from bless don't happen immediately. Those goblins also gets his/her inititative turn. They are able to hit PCs. And at low level, a single hit more or less on a PC might make a combat quite different.
the moment bless 'triggers' is random. Oppositely, guiding bolt allows you to select the target. The goblin attacking the tank isn't a real threat; the goblin archer that might want to go for the wizard on the other hand ...

Considering this is an encounter that should be in bless's favor, it seems pretty lackluster.

[ciopo]

When you do an "entire dungeon" in 10 minutes - that is video-gamey. I would call it good time management. If I have a resource that only lasts 10 minutes, you bet I'm not going to sit on my ass and smell the roses, I would rush to clear as much of expected hostiles as possible, no dillydalling half an hour on each room to loot the bodies or whatnot.

Secure the place first, as any military minded people ought to think of of what is essentially blitzing an enemy position.

It's the lackdaisical taking your time that feels very jarring to me. You clear a place of hostiles, then you take your time going room by room.

I ask to stay in initiative when "10 minutes" stuff are used, it's so much time, it's really a lot of time, dropping out of initiative while there are buffs active is wasting time. Adventurers are supposed to be professionals at their alleged job. What "minutes" for checking out a room? 12 seconds to see if there is any creature lurking about is enough. Use handsigns to communicate.

Nonhostile encounters? Then it isn't a dungeon, or you wouldn't be "gun blazing" to begin with. Or "talk to you later we're on a timetable" , because in any situation where you're prepared for battle, clearing the place of hostiles should generally be the priority

Mileage may vary if it's a espionage mission or save the hostages or blablabla, but then you "should" ignore what doesn't pertain to your primary objective just the same.

Tldr: I find slow "room to room" exploration to be unrealistic

[Frogreaver]

no no.

If you're looking for kill shots (presuming a +3 mod)[list]
if you spend an action using bless, bless has a 25% of getting an extra kill shot (in 6 attack rolls)

25% in six attack rolls comes from improperly used math
The 25% you are calculating is based solely off 'bless turning at least 1 miss to a hit'. That's not the correct probability to use as bless over 6 attacks can cause 0 attacks to hit, 1 to hit, 2 to hit, 3 to hit, 4 to hit, 5 to hit, 6 to hit. In other words the actual effect of bless is greater than your improperly used math shows.

Bless has a 38% chance of turning 1 miss to a hit
Bless has a 14% chance of turning 2 misses to hits
Bless has a 3% chance of turning 3 misses to hits
(everything is is negligible)

This would imply (assuming 1d8+3 damage attacks, actual chance is likely higher as most blessed PC's likely do more than 1d8+3 damage when hitting):
there's a 19% chance that bless caused a single miss to turn to a hit and that this directly resulted in an enemies death
There's a 7% chance that bless caused 2 misses to turn to hits and that this directly resulted in exactly 1 enemies death.
there's a 4% chance of that bless caused 2 misses to turn to hits and this directly resulted in 2 enemies deaths.
Etc.

As you can see this is going to total up over 30% (vs the 25% you previously cited). On top of that some of that probability is related to killing more than 1 enemy, which is something that guiding bolt can never do.

only 6 attack rolls isn't established for this combat
6 attacks rolls would map to an encounter between 2 and 3 goblins. That's not an encounter I would be using a spell on to begin with. If you increase the number of goblins to something you might use a spell on then we are looking at something like 12+ attacks. Which changes the math considerably in Bless's favor.

[Jakinbandw]

An augmented sleep spell, ending concentration spells like bless, followed by an autocrit finger of death or augemented witchbolt?
Honestly this tells me you didn't research your position here. You think that finger of death is an attack. It's not. Second, this requires 2 actions to deal with 1 out of 3 of her enemies, and it manages to... end bless and not much else. If you think that ending bless is worth 2 high level spell slots, and 2 actions, then I think that says a lot about how powerful bless is!

That said, I would expect someone trying to tell me I'm wrong about a spell, to make sure they get spell mechanics right.


no but it nukes your argument: as a party of 3 isn't representable situation - you EITHER have to spend your buf spells sub-par, buffing yourself to be handle concentration - OR you have to deal with concentration being a potential issue.

At our lowest level (3) against the hags we had a party of 4, so I wasn't buffed. Still didn't lose concentration. Now sure, part of that is GM decision. But if you feel that ending bless is important enough that you want to throw attacks against the cleric doing the buffing over the fighters killing you, then that shows that bless is very useful.


And as we're talking pre-level 5 (before extra attack is a thing), Emboldening Bond only boosts 2 targets.
Sure, and in this case, because all 3 of my other party members were martials, I used bardic inspiration to make up the difference for the first few rounds. But your argument here isn't about emboldening bond, or bardic inspiration, (or other tricks we pulled like having a group patron which gave us 4 uses of advantage a day), it's your belief that blessing 3 characters at level 1 isn't as good as as guiding bolt. Guiding bolts rider isn't very useful, as every party should be getting advantage fairly easily in combat. A rouge is going to be using sneak attack+bonus action hide, and as stated earlier, a group patron will give out more advantage than guiding bolt at level 1 (the help action also works, as does command, as does flanking if that optional rule is used). So in the end, it's just comparing 4d6 (average 14) damage that hits around 65% of the time with bless on three martial characters. I just can't see an attack that does 4 more damage (14) than a martial (2d6+3 = 10) that costs a resource to use, being a good use of an action. If the fight is so short that bless isn't going to make a difference, than guiding bolt is just a waste of an action.


Actually, because it's not a video game. Heck, a simple conversation with an NPC they encounter can easily take up 10 minutes; and typically that's also the time my PCs take a short rest (talking is hardly a strenuous activity).

When you do an "entire dungeon" in 10 minutes - that is video-gamey.

So in your dungeons, you go in, get into fights, and then the monsters sit and wait for you to sit down and have long chats with NPCs instead of counter attacking when you're distracted? It really sounds like a video game where monsters wait in their own rooms. I play expecting monsters to know we are there unless we have done lots of work to prevent it, as combat is loud, and monsters are not incompetent. This means that they will either counter attack, breaking our rest, or flee if they feel they can't beat us, or set up an ambush if we use some trick like the hut to get a rest in. Resting in a dungeon is stupid. Stopping to talk is stupid. Unless your GM runs dungeons like a video game where monsters all stay in their rooms and never leave them, even if their friends are fighting and screaming for help on the other side of the door.

If you have the time to take a short rest in a dungeon, you have the time to take a long rest. At that point, you can just do 5 minute adventuring days, and freely use spells with no consideration of the costs.

[strangebloke]

Yeah... I think something you can clear in 10 minutes is definitionally not a dungeon. If there's no traps to disarm, no NPCs to talk to, no secret passageways, no puzzles, and no chances to take a break, that's not a dungeon, that's a single large encounter with multiple waves of reinforcements.

And if that's your entire XP budget for the day, respectfully, all discussion of balance is out the window. Zero short rests and only super deadly++ encounters warp these kinds of discussions heavily.

It's not a question of combat realism, its a question of pacing. Sure, if you're raiding a temple of cultists that might lead to every cultist in the complex jumping on you ASAP, but if you're delving into an evil tomb there might be multiple monstrous factions within the tomb, magical guardians that are tied to a specific room, etc.

[x3n0n]

Yeah... I think something you can clear in 10 minutes is definitionally not a dungeon.

That said, it seems reasonable to get more than one encounter (combat or otherwise) into a 10-minute window, and/or to decide that pre-"casting" the 10-minute Emboldening Bond before entering a new areas in the dungeon is worthwhile, saving the first-round delay that was at issue a few posts ago.

(That is, there's a middle ground before "you'll never get to pre-cast an ongoing 10-minute non-concentration effect with no components, and you'll never cover a second encounter with it" and "you can expect your 10-minute effect to last for an entire dungeon".)

[strangebloke]

That said, it seems reasonable to get more than one encounter (combat or otherwise) into a 10-minute window, and/or to decide that pre-"casting" the 10-minute Emboldening Bond before entering a new areas in the dungeon is worthwhile, saving the first-round delay that was at issue a few posts ago.

(That is, there's a middle ground before "you'll never get to pre-cast an ongoing 10-minute non-concentration effect with no components, and you'll never cover a second encounter with it" and "you can expect your 10-minute effect to last for an entire dungeon".)

When I run dungeons I apply a very straightforward time tracking mechanic. Combat takes a minute. Any kind of check (looking for secret doors, collecting loot, disabling a trap) takes 10 minutes. Conversations with NPCs take realtime. Short rests take an hour. I'll often add some kind of dynamic element to the dungeon as well that adds a degree of time pressure. Maybe the dungeon is flooding and the party will lose access to areas if they take too long. Maybe one or more of the enemies will get reinforcements or lay traps. Maybe there's a Roaming Monster pool that grows every time 10 minutes go by, maybe there's a rival party coming at the dungeon from the opposite side. That kind of thing.

[ciopo]

Yeah... I think something you can clear in 10 minutes is definitionally not a dungeon. If there's no traps to disarm, no NPCs to talk to, no secret passageways, no puzzles, and no chances to take a break, that's not a dungeon, that's a single large encounter with multiple waves of reinforcements.

And if that's your entire XP budget for the day, respectfully, all discussion of balance is out the window. Zero short rests and only super deadly++ encounters warp these kinds of discussions heavily.

It's not a question of combat realism, its a question of pacing. Sure, if you're raiding a temple of cultists that might lead to every cultist in the complex jumping on you ASAP, but if you're delving into an evil tomb there might be multiple monstrous factions within the tomb, magical guardians that are tied to a specific room, etc.

you can move 3000 ft in 10 minutes and still have your standard action to interact with "things", that's not a "small area"


I don't stop to collect loot until I'm sure there aren't any more hostile in the location, why would I? safety first!

If it's a place that has any kind of foot traffic, because creature lives there, then it won't be trapped, or the traps aren't of the lethal kind.


I'm not saying there's no place for careful exploration, but that's more in the avenue of infiltration. If I buff up for a combat encounter, then the place is hostile, gloves off, and time to clear before said buff elapses

[strangebloke]

you can move 3000 ft in 10 minutes and still have your standard action to interact with "things", that's not a "small rea"

When I think of a DND dungeon, I do not think of 100 rounds of initiative, with zero talking and every single bit of exploration challenge arbitrated through standard actions.

That's a single complex encounter, and probably only lasts 5-6 rounds at most, and I would put more than one of those in a proper dungeon.

[Jakinbandw]

When I run dungeons I apply a very straightforward time tracking mechanic. Combat takes a minute. Any kind of check (looking for secret doors, collecting loot, disabling a trap) takes 10 minutes. Conversations with NPCs take realtime. Short rests take an hour. I'll often add some kind of dynamic element to the dungeon as well that adds a degree of time pressure. Maybe the dungeon is flooding and the party will lose access to areas if they take too long. Maybe one or more of the enemies will get reinforcements or lay traps. Maybe there's a Roaming Monster pool that grows every time 10 minutes go by, maybe there's a rival party coming at the dungeon from the opposite side. That kind of thing.

Thats fine, but that's not RAW. Some tables I've been at let you apply the bonus from bardic inspiration after the player knows they've failed a check. I don't use that as a baseline online when I'm discussing bardic inspiration.

[x3n0n]

When I run dungeons I apply a very straightforward time tracking mechanic. Combat takes a minute. Any kind of check (looking for secret doors, collecting loot, disabling a trap) takes 10 minutes. Conversations with NPCs take realtime. Short rests take an hour. I'll often add some kind of dynamic element to the dungeon as well that adds a degree of time pressure. Maybe the dungeon is flooding and the party will lose access to areas if they take too long. Maybe one or more of the enemies will get reinforcements or lay traps. Maybe there's a Roaming Monster pool that grows every time 10 minutes go by, maybe there's a rival party coming at the dungeon from the opposite side. That kind of thing.

Nice! That sounds pretty reasonable.

I might tweak something around the durations of checks, where a "high" success makes something take less time, or to allow them to choose a time limit at the cost of a higher DC. For example, maybe something like "I'll spend a minute trying to pick this (written DC 12) lock"; DM decides if this is even possible (I'll say yes here for the sake of argument) and then decides how much to uplift the DC (say, 1 "difficulty category" of +5, yielding 17). If they roll a 17 or higher, it worked. If not, it's not done yet. If there's a "blunder DC", the DM decides whether it's uplifted by the same amount.

Your approach still gives the party the option to prioritize the 10-minute combat-relevant buff: they can choose to avoid (or delay) additional exploration in a freshly-"cleared" area in favor of pushing toward the next unexplored area while the buff is still active. (I like how it helps establish a rule of thumb to distinguish the (otherwise rather fuzzy) distinction between 10-minute and hour-long buffs.)

[strangebloke]

Thats fine, but that's not RAW. Some tables I've been at let you apply the bonus from bardic inspiration after the player knows they've failed a check. I don't use that as a baseline online when I'm discussing bardic inspiration.

The enemy behaviors in published modules don't track with your preferred style of play either, so lets be clear that neither of us is running things "as written." To just quickly glance at "Phandelvr" the very first dungeon has loads of blurbs for peaceful non-combat interactions you might have with various goblins or dogs. Roleplay like that will almost always take more than ten minutes imx, and instances like this are consistent across most of the adventure modules I have played with. It's practically a staple of a standard dungeon format. An enemy at the gate, a puzzle to advance, a side area with potential social interaction, and a main boss.

I'm also fairly confident that exploration challenges have no set duration and are not intended to be resolved purely in the context of initiative. Some are, but its not a universal thing. The amount of time these things take is up to the discretion of the DM.


Nice! That sounds pretty reasonable.

I might tweak something around the durations of checks, where a "high" success makes something take less time, or to allow them to choose a time limit at the cost of a higher DC. For example, maybe something like "I'll spend a minute trying to pick this (written DC 12) lock"; DM decides if this is even possible (I'll say yes here for the sake of argument) and then decides how much to uplift the DC (say, 1 "difficulty category" of +5, yielding 17). If they roll a 17 or higher, it worked. If not, it's not done yet. If there's a "blunder DC", the DM decides whether it's uplifted by the same amount.

Your approach still gives the party the option to prioritize the 10-minute combat-relevant buff: they can choose to avoid (or delay) additional exploration in a freshly-"cleared" area in favor of pushing toward the next unexplored area while the buff is still active. (I like how it helps establish a rule of thumb to distinguish the (otherwise rather fuzzy) distinction between 10-minute and hour-long buffs.)

The reason the time is standardized, is that it encourages the PCs to diversify what they're doing in the ten minute period. If Balthus the Wizard is going to stop to translate some hieroglyphs, it isn't like everyone else is also going to stand around with their hands in their pockets. In a lot of campaigns with no time tracking, everyone would just attempt the same skill check, leading to those lovely "7 INT barbarian knows magic" moments. Maria the Fighter might take the chance to loot the bodies, Rynnix the Warlock might help Balthus with the Runes, and Gary the Rogue might look for hidden doors.

Basically I just dump loads of optional exploration on my players so that there's reasons to break up the combat.

And no, I don't run orcs sitting in 10x10 rooms waiting to get slaughtered by PCs. But usually a dungeon will have multiple areas, and some of the enemies won't want to leave on area for whatever reason. Enchanted Guardians watching over an entrance is a classic example here.

[ciopo]

When I think of a DND dungeon, I do not think of 100 rounds of initiative, with zero talking and every single bit of exploration challenge arbitrated through standard actions.

That's a single complex encounter, and probably only lasts 5-6 rounds at most, and I would put more than one of those in a proper dungeon.

Ok, and I kind of agree, but also not.

I didn't mean to reduce every single bit of exploration challenge down to single standard actions. I mean that once hostilities started, exploration takes a secondary role to the "make sure the place is safe for us".

Because if hostilities started ( corollary : if my party prebuffs with a 10 minutes duration SOMETHING, it means the place is assumed hostiles ), then it's not an exploration adventure anymore within the scope of that dungeon/encounter.

*Why* would I stop 10 minutes to loot corpses when it takes 6 seconds to open the next door over? even with "combat = 1minute" that's "10 rooms" cleared.

That is to say I'm with Jakinbandw in saying that I feel it's gamey/unrealistic to *stop and do anything else but ensure my safety* when hostilities already started, less so if there aren't buff ticking down, but even then the "stop" between room is 12-18 seconds to top of health with some healing, if deemed necessary.

WHEN hostilities already started, that's the distinction I make, not every exploration turns to that. But even if the place isn't assumed hostile, if you got peace bond / bolstering magic / whatever on... why would anyone not go do things that benefit from it, instead of doing other things that don't benefit from it?

*not all dungeons being equal, but to reiterate if the place is hostile, first clear, then loot?


The reason the time is standardized, is that it encourages the PCs to diversify what they're doing in the ten minute period. If Balthus the Wizard is going to stop to translate some hieroglyphs, it isn't like everyone else is also going to stand around with their hands in their pockets. In a lot of campaigns with no time tracking, everyone would just attempt the same skill check, leading to those lovely "7 INT barbarian knows magic" moments. Maria the Fighter might take the chance to loot the bodies, Rynnix the Warlock might help Balthus with the Runes, and Gary the Rogue might look for hidden doors.
My action would probably be to open the next door over, if I have any ongoing 10 minutes something on me or on another member of the party. (Pending "session 0" aknowledgement form the other players that this is something that would/could happen, if not, I'd probably not prepare/not play something that have that kind of resource)


100% agree on the talking tho, not everyplace is a place to blitz. It's just 10 minutes is.. a long time :)

[x3n0n]

The reason the time is standardized, is that it encourages the PCs to diversify what they're doing in the ten minute period. If Balthus the Wizard is going to stop to translate some hieroglyphs, it isn't like everyone else is also going to stand around with their hands in their pockets. In a lot of campaigns with no time tracking, everyone would just attempt the same skill check, leading to those lovely "7 INT barbarian knows magic" moments. Maria the Fighter might take the chance to loot the bodies, Rynnix the Warlock might help Balthus with the Runes, and Gary the Rogue might look for hidden doors.

Also nice. Would you agree that it still leaves the possibility of having the party decide as a group to delay that work and push onwards (likely to return later)? Otherwise, my Astral Self Monks and Spore Druids and Peace Clerics feel pretty sad. (See also shield of faith, fire shield, protection from evil and good, aura of purity, beast bond, etc., each of which has duration 10 minutes and are often held up as examples of good pre-casts that will often get you benefit in more than 1 combat.)

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I'm going to chip in here and say there are 10 minute spells for a reason. Clearly the intent is to get more than one encounter out of them. Now, is there a risk of rushing along and perhaps missing a trap or some key piece of information if the players' intent is to come back later and do a proper search? Could someone else come along and loot a body if the move on? Sure to both... and that's a good thing. It's in the players' control whether they choose to take the risk of moving quickly to avoid having spells run out. That's often also the case at our table if they have one or more 1 hour spells up and I give them the option of a short rest. The DM can determine the consequences, but players should be in control of what they do over the course of their 10 minute spells.

[Jakinbandw]

I'm also fairly confident that exploration challenges have no set duration and are not intended to be resolved purely in the context of initiative. Some are, but its not a universal thing. The amount of time these things take is up to the discretion of the DM.

I can see where you come from, but it ignores part of my response. That in a situation without danger, there is no reason to not long rest. I have yet to encounter a situation where I'll be safe for 1 hour that I won't be safe for 8 (or two sets of 4). In your example, that means battle, long rest, disarm trap, do social stuff, long rest if resources have been used, then go into the final fight at full power. If foes are just willing to sit around, then obviously I'll take full advantage of it.

I'll also take full advantage of foes being willing to talk. I play a cleric bard with ways to community with any creature, and my minimum checks for persuasion are a nice solid 20+. Spending one spell at most to end an encounter with no other resources used is what I build for.

Searching is actually an action governed by initiative if you check the rules, meaning search actions are supposed to only take 6 seconds max.

[strangebloke]

Ok, and I kind of agree, but also not.

My point is more that when I think of a dungeon, I usually have a large complex with a lot of areas, some of which are more or less walled off from each other. Say you have a cave of cultists. Pretty straightforward! But there's a lot of other things going on here.

There's going to be a guard in an antechamber by the door, maybe an automated one or a bound demon who won't leave their post.
Then once inside there's an area with a load of cultists. There's potential here to cut a deal with these cultists since their local leader wants to displace the big boss, but making such a deal will deprive the heroes of a lot of loot and/or set them up for a sudden but inevitable betrayal.
Either way these are the less loyal/trusted cultists, so the leader will respond by readying the most loyal around himself, retreating to a reinforced position, and filling the rest of the complex with traps and demons rather than sallying out directly.
But the PCs can bypass the trapped/demon-infested area by going into the larger cave network if they find the breakable wall. There are some enemies here too though, a bunch of giant spiders who the cultists use to dispose of bodies. One of their victims is still alive though and if the PCs can cure her paralysis she'll be happy to help.
If the PCs take too long in any one area, (longer than an hour) the loyal cultists will summon demons to attack the party.

You see how this gets broken up? The 10-minute buff would last a certain measure of time, but the only way it lasts the whole fight is if you're able to bullrush through all the traps and demons headfirst. Which, maybe you can! Maybe you do! But the way I like to run things, that's going to be far from an optimal solution, and interaction is rewarded.

This helps break up the combat with other things to do.

I'm going to chip in here and say there are 10 minute spells for a reason. Clearly the intent is to get more than one encounter out of them. Now, is there a risk of rushing along and perhaps missing a trap or some key piece of information if the players' intent is to come back later and do a proper search? Could someone else come along and loot a body if the move on? Sure to both... and that's a good thing. It's in the players' control whether they choose to take the risk of moving quickly to avoid having spells run out. That's often also the case at our table if they have one or more 1 hour spells up and I give them the option of a short rest. The DM can determine the consequences, but players should be in control of what they do over the course of their 10 minute spells.
10 minute buffs, to me, are the "definitely can be pre-cast" category of buff. With 1 minute duration that's harder to pull off, since people can hear you casting and start initiative.

But yes, they will often last more than a single combat.

I can see where you come from, but it ignores part of my response. That in a situation without danger, there is no reason to not long rest. I have yet to encounter a situation where I'll be safe for 1 hour that I won't be safe for 8 (or two sets of 4). In your example, that means battle, long rest, disarm trap, do social stuff, long rest if resources have been used, then go into the final fight at full power. If foes are just willing to sit around, then obviously I'll take full advantage of it.

There being no difference between ten minutes and eight hours out of combat is completely a contrivance of how you run your enemies. There's nothing more to say than that. Typically I'd assume that a group of enemies will be content to wait for ten minutes to get their sweet ambush off, but if you take a long rest they're going to get reinforcements and attack you while you're sleeping.


Searching is actually an action governed by initiative if you check the rules, meaning search actions are supposed to only take 6 seconds max.

That's not true at all. You can make a search action in combat, not every search is a search action. If I want to search a whole temple, or a whole city, it does not take 6 seconds.


Also nice. Would you agree that it still leaves the possibility of having the party decide as a group to delay that work and push onwards (likely to return later)? Otherwise, my Astral Self Monks and Spore Druids and Peace Clerics feel pretty sad. (See also shield of faith, fire shield, protection from evil and good, aura of purity, beast bond, etc., each of which has duration 10 minutes and are often held up as examples of good pre-casts that will often get you benefit in more than 1 combat.)

Oh of course. But many of the benefits of taking it slow are immediate rather than delayed. Something like treasure you can come back for, but that +3 sword of dragonslaying is a bit less exciting when you've already killed the dragon. The secret passageway that lets you bypass the Demonpit is less exciting when you've already killed the demons. The incantation that removes the magical protections of the cultist leader are less exciting when he's already dead. etc.

I've run multiple parties through the same homebrewed module, and they all ended up taking wildly different lines of attack. One was clever and sneaky, relying on the rogue and shadow monk to scout ahead and avoid threats, the other party relied on explosive spells and a barbarian who could cast "walk through walls" with his +2 adamant greathammer.

[Miele]

I would call it good time management. If I have a resource that only lasts 10 minutes, you bet I'm not going to sit on my ass and smell the roses, I would rush to clear as much of expected hostiles as possible, no dillydalling half an hour on each room to loot the bodies or whatnot.

Secure the place first, as any military minded people ought to think of of what is essentially blitzing an enemy position.

It's the lackdaisical taking your time that feels very jarring to me. You clear a place of hostiles, then you take your time going room by room.

I ask to stay in initiative when "10 minutes" stuff are used, it's so much time, it's really a lot of time, dropping out of initiative while there are buffs active is wasting time. Adventurers are supposed to be professionals at their alleged job. What "minutes" for checking out a room? 12 seconds to see if there is any creature lurking about is enough. Use handsigns to communicate.

Nonhostile encounters? Then it isn't a dungeon, or you wouldn't be "gun blazing" to begin with. Or "talk to you later we're on a timetable" , because in any situation where you're prepared for battle, clearing the place of hostiles should generally be the priority

Mileage may vary if it's a espionage mission or save the hostages or blablabla, but then you "should" ignore what doesn't pertain to your primary objective just the same.

Tldr: I find slow "room to room" exploration to be unrealistic

Extremely well put, I'm trying to hammer this into the head of my team mates. Speed is of the essence.

Buffs in general should be given for improving the hit chance of party members, Bless does that, so it's alright, but I often prefer to concentrate on something else. Very rarely it's the absolute best use of my action, but it's good, it gets better over levels and at a certain point it becomes very useful if fighting a large force with infantry and spellcasters.
As for many spells, judging whether or not it's ok to spend a slot and using concentration, is best done after evaluating each situation.

[Jakinbandw]

There being no difference between ten minutes and eight hours out of combat is completely a contrivance of how you run your enemies. There's nothing more to say than that. Typically I'd assume that a group of enemies will be content to wait for ten minutes to get their sweet ambush off, but if you take a long rest they're going to get reinforcements and attack you while you're sleeping.

So you feel that enemies will wait 10 minutes before coming to get you? Cool. Short rests take 6 times that. Short rests take a full hour of uninterrupted rest by the book. I could buy taking a 10 minute break in a dungeon, but not an hour. And to be honest, a 10 minute break is pushing it for me. In my homebrew stuff I write, I prefer 5 minute short rests.

I'll also point out that you don't need to sleep during a long rest. So if you are tricky, you can get your required sleep before a long rest, and then long rest in a more dangerous location able to immediately fight if someone finds you. Also you can split long rests, so even if you do get attacked, you long rest isn't disrupted. This can be taken to extreme levels of cheese, allowing a long rest over a 5 minute rest inside a dungeon by resting 7 hours and 55 minutes outside it, then going inside for 10 minutes and taking a 5 minute rest, but I've never needed to descend to that level of cheese. Note that you can do this for long rests, but not short rests.


That's not true at all. You can make a search action in combat, not every search is a search action. If I want to search a whole temple, or a whole city, it does not take 6 seconds. It was more a counterpoint to how you said every out of of combat action took 5 minutes. By your rules it would take 10 minutes to just glance around a room to see what you spot.

[strangebloke]

So you feel that enemies will wait 10 minutes before coming to get you? Cool. Short rests take 6 times that. Short rests take a full hour of uninterrupted rest by the book. I could buy taking a 10 minute break in a dungeon, but not an hour. And to be honest, a 10 minute break is pushing it for me. In my homebrew stuff I write, I prefer 5 minute short rests.
You're the one who brought short rests up. We were talking about whether a 10 minute buff could be expected to last an entire dungeon or not.

And hour long short rests are easy to justify. "the princess dies at midnight" level narrative framing is a key tool for pacing control.

The long rest splitting plan requires too much information to pull off reliably, and in almost every case will lead to your DM throwing a book at you.


It was more a counterpoint to how you said every out of of combat action took 5 minutes. By your rules it would take 10 minutes to just glance around a room to see what you spot.

You said "searches are 6 seconds maximum." Apologies if this wasn't your intent.

And no, looking around a room would be covered by passive perception at my table.

[Jakinbandw]

You're the one who brought short rests up. We were talking about whether a 10 minute buff could be expected to last an entire dungeon or not.
Actually you did bring up short rests.

Zero short rests and only super deadly++ encounters warp these kinds of discussions heavily.
The discussion, as I understood it, was about whether monsters would wait for you to take a dungeon slow and allow short resting but not long resting, or would they attack, forcing the pcs to push forward. My take was that if there was enough time for a short rest, there was enough time for a long rest, thus a buff limited to long rests would always be useful. You'd either have a chance to long rest, or you wouldn't have time to rest at all, and you might as well push on at full speed before you got mobbed. In this second case, the buff lasting ten minutes is enough to clear the dungeon. In the first case, you can just leave and long rest. This makes ten minute buff really solid.


And hour long short rests are easy to justify. "the princess dies at midnight" level narrative framing is a key tool for pacing control.

This is why low level parties should always start with a religious group patron. Free raising of the dead from level 1. But more seriously, these types of things don't show up in the 2e and 3.5e games I've GMed, or in modules I've read, or in any number of the groups I've been in. The closest is a a time limit a few days away, but even that is very rare. I can't help but think of Xcom 2. The designers felt players were moving too slowly across the map, so they instituted timers on most missions. These timers made players annoyed, and often times were nonsensical, involving your foes blowing up their own equipment for no reason in '8 turns.' In theory it was because you were on the map, except in these missions you started completely hidden from the aliens. What? Do they just go around blowing up their own stuff?

And sure, I get you can make the lore work if you're a smart GM (which I'm sure you are), but just because you can do something doesn't make it fun or enjoyable or common.



You said "searches are 6 seconds maximum." Apologies if this wasn't your intent.

And no, looking around a room would be covered by passive perception at my table.

But again, you don't have any actions that take only one round out of combat right? Kicking open a door takes 10 minutes? Jumping over a pit takes another 10. Am I misunderstanding what you wrote?


Any kind of check (looking for secret doors, collecting loot, disabling a trap) takes 10 minutes.

[strangebloke]

But again, you don't have any actions that take only one round out of combat right? Kicking open a door takes 10 minutes? Jumping over a pit takes another 10. Am I misunderstanding what you wrote?

Not my intent at all. I mean 'action' in a more lose sense here. Things that would normally be an action still are. Things with a more ambiguous duration are ten minutes, which neatly lines up with other things, like ritual spells and 10 minute spell durations.

As for short rests, I'll acknowledge that I usually run with 8 hour SR and week-long LR. It's not perfect but it works. Scrolls of catnap are a popular buy.

[Jakinbandw]

As for short rests, I'll acknowledge that I usually run with 8 hour SR and week-long LR. It's not perfect but it works. Scrolls of catnap are a popular buy.

This would certainly change the mental math I rate abilities by. Or maybe not. It would mean no short resting in dungeons at all, so every dungeon would have to be done in a rush. I don't know, I've never played that style of game.

[Hytheter]

I'll also point out that you don't need to sleep during a long rest.

Uh, no, you absolutely do.


A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours

[qube]

That is to say I'm with Jakinbandw in saying that I feel it's gamey/unrealistic to *stop and do anything else but ensure my safety* when hostilities already started, less so if there aren't buff ticking down, but even then the "stop" between room is 12-18 seconds to top of health with some healing, if deemed necessary.
...
*Why* would I stop 10 minutes to loot corpses when it takes 6 seconds to open the next door over? even with "combat = 1minute" that's "10 rooms" cleared.
Because one of these is gamey/unrealistic, while the other isn't


A room is considered cleared when combat is done. All rooms are strickly adjacent, And we all have at least 10 hp, so it feels gamey if we don't rush forward.
so 10 minutes = 10 combats = 10 rooms cleared
Every step you set could be a deadly pit trap, behind every corner an archer might be lurking, even a small mistake might cost your your life or that of an ally ... And darn, that arrow that hit my armor moved my shoulderplate, so wizard, could he help me adjust it, and strap it more thightly?
Heck, even Mines of Phandelver has a (not-end-)fight that ends in a hostage situation.

How what? Fail the quest in the hope there's an other fight before the 10 minutes run out?


The discussion, as I understood it, was about whether monsters would wait for you to take a dungeon slow and allow short resting but not long resting, or would they attack, forcing the pcs to push forward.The discussion is about weither or not it's accurate to identify 10 minutes as "entire dungeon" time - as you did.

But, while you claim "Stopping to talk is stupid." - you totally ignore that prewritten modules actually assume you do this, and they have been doing so for decades.

No matter how much you argue that murder-hobo rush dungeon is the most efficient way to play - that's simply not representative; and as such, tring to posit you just cast Emboldening Bond pre-dungeon and it lasts an entire dungon - is just as relevant as relevant as discussing using a homebrew rule as baseline.

[Jakinbandw]

Uh, no, you absolutely do.

Yeah, my bad. I misread the rules here.

[ciopo]

Because one of these is gamey/unrealistic, while the other isn't


A room is considered cleared when combat is done. All rooms are strickly adjacent, And we all have at least 10 hp, so it feels gamey if we don't rush forward.
so 10 minutes = 10 combats = 10 rooms cleared
Every step you set could be a deadly pit trap, behind every corner an archer might be lurking, even a small mistake might cost your your life or that of an ally ... And darn, that arrow that hit my armor moved my shoulderplate, so wizard, could he help me adjust it, and strap it more thightly?
Heck, even Mines of Phandelver has a (not-end-)fight that ends in a hostage situation.

How what? Fail the quest in the hope there's an other fight before the 10 minutes run out?

The discussion is about weither or not it's accurate to identify 10 minutes as "entire dungeon" time - as you did.

But, while you claim "Stopping to talk is stupid." - you totally ignore that prewritten modules actually assume you do this, and they have been doing so for decades.

No matter how much you argue that murder-hobo rush dungeon is the most efficient way to play - that's simply not representative; and as such, tring to posit you just cast Emboldening Bond pre-dungeon and it lasts an entire dungon - is just as relevant as relevant as discussing using a homebrew rule as baseline.


It's relative, are we doing an exploration or are we storming a known hostile location? If the party is pre-buffing because the objective of the day is "kill the green dragon XYZ and his minions", then yes, the approach I would take is blitz-style.

Of course it isn't representative of all dungeon delving, but if combat is expected, and you are pre-preparing for it, I can't really understand wasting that preparation by doing other stuff that chips away at the preparation without nominally helping with securing the place (when securing the place is the objective).

On your flowery example, I don't find it more (or less) compelling about the nonflowery example, but I feel we have a disconnect there and I admit some of it is in conseguence of the "game" part of DnD. Meaning that an archer lurking behind a corner is not something deadly, and so doesn't warrant the kind of care that it would have on a much more harsh system, nor does describing something that's nice roleplay but not representative and yes, I'm cognizant you've made the point :)

I gotta disagree hard on the pit trap example, because I find it unrealistic that living creatures would put deadly traps anywhere they would have to walk on, so that at least doesn't hold up in my mind

I guess I should clarify that "room" is an abstraction, it doesn't need to be a room and it doesn't need to be adjacent, but if it can be reached in 6 or 12 seconds, then it's kindaish "adjacent"


I'm generally diplomatic in my approaches, actually, so I do feel the point made about noncombat encounters, and I wouldn't just skip past talking with this or that guy/nonhostile critter/whatnot. But I would not stop to loot the bodies/check every corner and cranny/do that other stuff that can be safely done later, after I've made sure the place is as safe as it can be.

Also, minor and somewhat not the "10 minutes per dungeon", but those resources are usually more than 1/day, so it's 20/30/40 minutes split over multiple uses, and that is indeed enough time to ensure the location/floor/whatever is "clear of hostiles".


It's.. behavioral? my dislike of the "room, break, room, break", because it makes the world feel static. "nothing elsewhere will ever happen because the player characters aren't in it"

One of my biggest pet peeve are people using thunderwave.... and that not triggering *stuff/creatures* from more or less everywhere in the vicinity of the location... a thunderous boom audible out to 300ft .... and ... nothing happens

[Frogreaver]

If your experience is that the dm dungeon is just a bunch of rooms with enemies in them where everything else important can be done later… then I think the blitzkreig approach makes sense.

However, if there are useful things to discover in the dungeons then that approach is probably not the best.

A few examples.
Traps
Secret passage that bypasses to the bosses chamber
Potential NPC ally
Potential warning about some very hostile place in the dungeon you should avoid
Possible magic item finds that can really help

Leaving stuff like this on the table is what you do when you rush through. You know your DM and if this stuff doesn’t occur often enough then blitzkreig becomes the best tactic. But IMO that’s a shame though.

[Jakinbandw]

I want to make it clear. I do play adventures where we are exploring some old tome, where there are traps and monsters guarding areas.

You know what happens? We do check each room slowly, scouting out with stealth and invisibility, and similar options. And then when when we are low on resources, we go back out and rest. Because there is no danger. If your opponents are passive enough to let you take them one room at a time, you can normally be buffed because you can just have a 5 minute adventuring day.

It's just normal for my gms to not have passive enemies that stand around in their rooms waiting for the pcs to come in and kill them. They sound alarms, send reinforcement, and work intellegently. Failing around for 10 minutes is a great way to have them descend on you as a group.

Maybe my group plays foes more intelligently then is proper. But I cant see passive foes causing any more problems as players can 5 minute workday and always have full spellsslots hp, and buffs.

[Frogreaver]

I want to make it clear. I do play adventures where we are exploring some old tome, where there are traps and monsters guarding areas.

You know what happens? We do check each room slowly, scouting out with stealth and invisibility, and similar options. And then when when we are low on resources, we go back out and rest. Because there is no danger. If your opponents are passive enough to let you take them one room at a time, you can normally be buffed because you can just have a 5 minute adventuring day.

It's just normal for my gms to not have passive enemies that stand around in their rooms waiting for the pcs to come in and kill them. They sound alarms, send reinforcement, and work intellegently. Failing around for 10 minutes is a great way to have them descend on you as a group.

Maybe my group plays foes more intelligently then is proper. But I cant see passive foes causing any more problems as players can 5 minute workday and always have full spellsslots hp, and buffs.

There’s alot of middle ground between a 5mwd and blitzkreig the dungeon.

This false dichotomy doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

[Jakinbandw]

There’s alot of middle ground between a 5mwd and blitzkreig the dungeon.

This false dichotomy doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

It's existed in every game I've seen. Either you are facing intellegent foes that will properly fight you, or your essentially playing a videogame where npcs stand around waiting. All your arguments suggest you are more used to the latter, and npcs never do things like interrupting you to set off a trap while your disabling it.

[Frogreaver]

It's existed in every game I've seen. Either you are facing intellegent foes that will properly fight you, or your essentially playing a videogame where npcs stand around waiting. All your arguments suggest you are more used to the latter, and npcs never do things like interrupting you to set off a trap while your disabling it.

Please stop insisting that yours is the only way to play NPCs such that they do more than just stand around.

[Jakinbandw]

Please stop insisting that yours is the only way to play NPCs such that they do more than just stand around.

Fair enough. I think the last relevant post before we got on this tangent was noting that a fight against 6 goblins would require more than 6 attacks to win the fight. My immediate thought is doubling the number of attacks to 12, because while the pcs hit most of the time, some of their hits fail to kill.

On average over these 12 rolls, bless will turn a miss into a hit 1.5 times. That makes it worth around 1.5 times the damage an average ally does on a hit, and since a normal ally does around 10 damage (2d6+3) it'd worth 15 damage. Meanwhile guiding bolt does an average of 14 damage if it hits, but it can miss around 1/3rd of the time, lowering it's damage to 10 damage.

15 damage vs 10 seems to give a clear winner to bless, even if it can't be precast.

[KorvinStarmast]

My take was that if there was enough time for a short rest, there was enough time for a long rest Generally, nope.
Sometimes, maybe, many times no.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Fair enough. I think the last relevant post before we got on this tangent was noting that a fight against 6 goblins would require more than 6 attacks to win the fight. My immediate thought is doubling the number of attacks to 12, because while the pcs hit most of the time, some of their hits fail to kill.

On average over these 12 rolls, bless will turn a miss into a hit 1.5 times. That makes it worth around 1.5 times the damage an average ally does on a hit, and since a normal ally does around 10 damage (2d6+3) it'd worth 15 damage. Meanwhile guiding bolt does an average of 14 damage if it hits, but it can miss around 1/3rd of the time, lowering it's damage to 10 damage.

15 damage vs 10 seems to give a clear winner to bless, even if it can't be precast.

Not a clear winner if it can't be precast and no saves are needed. Bless likely does little to nothing on Round 1, meaning you're likely fighting 1 additional foe for the initial stages of the battle.

That said for very low levels, given 6-8 encounters/ day and few spells my priority would be 1) saving Bless for an encounter where I could pre-cast (and maybe saves are needed), and 2) saving any remaining spells for Healing Word. I'd probably never use Guiding Bolt unless I thought we were into a potentially deadly encounter where I couldn't pre-cast; I'd cantrip or attack for roughly 1/2 the damage of Guiding Bolt. Shield of Faith isn't a bad option either if you're front lining and get caught in a tough fight, as it's a Bonus Action and can maybe last more than one encounter.

[Frogreaver]

Not a clear winner if it can't be precast and no saves are needed. Bless likely does little to nothing on Round 1, meaning you're likely fighting 1 additional foe for the initial stages of the battle.

This is true, but there's also a significant chance that guiding bolt misses on round 1.

If guiding bolt hits on round 1 it's likely better than bless in tier 1 but probably not by a significant margin. If it misses though, bless is almost guaranteed to be better (probably by a large margin).


That said for very low levels, given 6-8 encounters/ day and few spells my priority would be 1) saving Bless for an encounter where I could pre-cast (and maybe saves are needed), and 2) saving any remaining spells for Healing Word. I'd probably never use Guiding Bolt unless I thought we were into a potentially deadly encounter where I couldn't pre-cast; I'd cantrip or attack for roughly 1/2 the damage of Guiding Bolt. Shield of Faith isn't a bad option either if you're front lining and get caught in a tough fight, as it's a Bonus Action and can maybe last more than one encounter.

In tier 1 I'd probably be saving my slots for healing word / cure wounds. Guiding bolt is a good option outside those. Bless I love, but it's real potential is helping your party against save effects.

I really don't get the love for shield of faith. IMO it's one of the worst spells imaginable.

[strangebloke]

I really don't get the love for shield of faith. IMO it's one of the worst spells imaginable.

It lasts an hour, and can reduce damage taken by a character who is able to tank (say someone standing in a doorway) by a significant fraction. Goblins have a +4 to attack, which means a fighter with chainmail, shield, and defense style will get hit about 30% of the time (15 or higher against 19 AC). SoF reduces that by 33%. For an hour. That means you're potentially looking at 4-5 encounters here, and its trivial to precast.

Not that you have to precast it. Unlike bless, you can also cast it as a bonus action alongside a cantrip either at the start of combat, or mid combat to shore up an allies defenses.

It doesn't scale amazingly into the late game because of concentration and also attack values growing out of control, but as a defensive tool its completely solid. It's not powerful, but it is convenient to use in a lot of situations where (for example) bless wouldn't be.

[x3n0n]

It lasts an hour, and can reduce damage taken by a character who is able to tank (say someone standing in a doorway) by a significant fraction. Goblins have a +4 to attack, which means a fighter with chainmail, shield, and defense style will get hit about 30% of the time (15 or higher against 19 AC). SoF reduces that by 33%. For an hour. That means you're potentially looking at 4-5 encounters here.


Just a nit: everything else makes sense to me, but shield of faith is one of those "10-minute buffs" that came up earlier in the thread, not an hour.

[ciopo]

I really don't get the love for shield of faith. IMO it's one of the worst spells imaginable. going from 18 to 20 AC is relatively significant if you're in a situation that you can "force" who gets attacked. And this is at low level, when monster to hit bonuses are around +3.

[strangebloke]

Just a nit: everything else makes sense to me, but shield of faith is one of those "10-minute buffs" that came up earlier in the thread, not an hour.

oh derp. Well either way.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

This is true, but there's also a significant chance that guiding bolt misses on round 1.

If guiding bolt hits on round 1 it's likely better than bless in tier 1 but probably not by a significant margin. If it misses though, bless is almost guaranteed to be better (probably by a large margin).



In tier 1 I'd probably be saving my slots for healing word / cure wounds. Guiding bolt is a good option outside those. Bless I love, but it's real potential is helping your party against save effects.

I really don't get the love for shield of faith. IMO it's one of the worst spells imaginable.

I don't love Shield of Faith, but if cast on a front liner with a high AC, particularly at a pinch point that +2 can be halving damage. It's also a bonus action, so action economy is good as you've got your attack or cantrip to work with. And you might get a 2nd encounter out of it, which is particularly good at low levels when spells are at a premium.
I have a Rogue with Cleric dip, and I will use this if I don't get a chance to pre-cast bless and given my low amount of spells and high sneak attack damage that I don't want to lose out on it's working out to be a good option. Healing word is also up there for the same reason.

[Frogreaver]

It lasts an hour, and can reduce damage taken by a character who is able to tank (say someone standing in a doorway) by a significant fraction. Goblins have a +4 to attack, which means a fighter with chainmail, shield, and defense style will get hit about 30% of the time (15 or higher against 19 AC). SoF reduces that by 33%. For an hour. That means you're potentially looking at 4-5 encounters here, and its trivial to precast.

What I find when people start talking that X reduces damage by 33% is that they never stop to consider what the damage being taken was to begin with.

A 33% increase sounds great unless you realize it's only a 33% increase on a single dollar and so now you have $1.33

So let's talk this through. A PC taking 10 attacks at 30% chance to be hit will only take 3 hits. Shield of faith will lower that to 2 hits. A 1 hit reduction. So the real question is how many attacks is it reasonable to assume a tier 1 PC takes in 1 to 2 encounters? Most often it's going to be less than 10. Though it could be 10-20. So it will most often save you less than 1 hit on average. A reasonable case where it's really good might save you 2 hits. Keep in mind there's a significant chance it could do nothing.

As you noted it's not very good late game for various reasons, but it's really not good early game either.


going from 18 to 20 AC is relatively significant if you're in a situation that you can "force" who gets attacked. And this is at low level, when monster to hit bonuses are around +3.

A doorway or narrow corridor against melee only enemies that will not grapple and are deadset on fighting to the death right here and now is the only place where you can force enemies to target one specific ally.

That's a pretty rare set of circumstances in my estimation. But even in that best case scenario it's probably only preventing 2 would be hits as the total number of attacks you are taking just isn't high enough for it to really prevent more.

[strangebloke]

What I find when people start talking that X reduces damage by 33% is that they never stop to consider what the damage being taken was to begin with.

A 33% increase sounds great unless you realize it's only a 33% increase on a single dollar and so now you have $1.33

So let's talk this through. A PC taking 10 attacks at 30% chance to be hit will only take 3 hits. Shield of faith will lower that to 2 hits. A 1 hit reduction. So the real question is how many attacks is it reasonable to assume a tier 1 PC takes in 1 to 2 encounters? Most often it's going to be less than 10. Though it could be 10-20. So it will most often save you less than 1 hit on average. A reasonable case where it's really good might save you 2 hits. Keep in mind there's a significant chance it could do nothing.

As you noted it's not very good late game for various reasons, but it's really not good early game either.[/QUOTE]

One hit is a pretty big deal at level one though, so I don't see the point you're making. A single hit from an orc or bugbear can knock a PC out. Even a random goblin will usually take out half of a level 1 PC's health. Adding to this, my example of targeting a high-AC character with SoF was specifically in the context of someone blocking a chokepoint, where they could easily get attacked 20-30 times in a single encounter, and then still have the buff up for 1-2 more encounters after that.

Like you can pick situations that make it look bad, its not fire and forget. Its more situational than bless is, but it has its uses. It having better action economy and duration helps a lot.



A doorway or narrow corridor against melee only enemies that will not grapple and are deadset on fighting to the death right here and now is the only place where you can force enemies to target one specific ally.

That's a pretty rare set of circumstances in my estimation. But even in that best case scenario it's probably only preventing 2 would be hits as the total number of attacks you are taking just isn't high enough for it to really prevent more.
Again, preventing 2-3 hits is a big deal at this level.

And chokepoint blocking comes up a lot, its a basic element of tactical battle maps and, y'know, dungeons. Opponents can try to grapple someone, but this tends not to go in their favor unless your DM is doing full goblin conga line shenanigans.

[Frogreaver]

One hit is a pretty big deal at level one though, so I don't see the point you're making. A single hit from an orc or bugbear can knock a PC out. Even a random goblin will usually take out half of a level 1 PC's health. Adding to this, my example of targeting a high-AC character with SoF was specifically in the context of someone blocking a chokepoint, where they could easily get attacked 20-30 times in a single encounter, and then still have the buff up for 1-2 more encounters after that.

Like you can pick situations that make it look bad, its not fire and forget. Its more situational than bless is, but it has its uses. It having better action economy and duration helps a lot.

So I'm not saying there's no circumstances at all where you might want to use shield of faith. I'm just saying those circumstances are so few and far between that it's not a good spell. Or to say it another way, it's much harder to pick situations to make it look good than it is to pick situations that make it look bad.

Though contrary to your post level 1 isn't one of those times it looks good. At that level you are far better saving that slot for healing word or cure wounds in case someone does get hit to 0. Trying to prevent 0 hp by adding +2 AC still leaves too high a chance for that event to occur.

*I don't think i've ever once seen a single character attacked 30 times in a combat. Have you?

[Hytheter]

*I don't think i've ever once seen a single character attacked 30 times in a combat. Have you?

Clearly you've never fought a pack of Star Spawn Manglers. :smallbiggrin:

I would say I probably have seen it, but only at higher levels in long encounters that are supposed to be the only fight of the day.

[strangebloke]

So I'm not saying there's no circumstances at all where you might want to use shield of faith. I'm just saying those circumstances are so few and far between that it's not a good spell. Or to say it another way, it's much harder to pick situations to make it look good than it is to pick situations that make it look bad.

Though contrary to your post level 1 isn't one of those times it looks good. At that level you are far better saving that slot for healing word or cure wounds in case someone does get hit to 0. Trying to prevent 0 hp by adding +2 AC still leaves too high a chance for that event to occur.

*I don't think i've ever once seen a single character attacked 30 times in a combat. Have you?

Two sessions ago the monk took almost 250 attacks straight to his chrome dome.

[Frogreaver]

Two sessions ago the monk took almost 250 attacks straight to his chrome dome.

And I can without a doubt state that is not normal 5e play.

[strangebloke]

And I can without a doubt state that is not normal 5e play.

Even so, I'd say 20 or 30 wouldn't be that unusual to see, spread out over 2-3 encounters.

[Frogreaver]

Even so, I'd say 20 or 30 wouldn't be that unusual to see, spread out over 2-3 encounters.

To be frank, how would you know? You play in a bubble where 250 attacks against a monk is normalized.

[strangebloke]

To be frank, how would you know? You play in a bubble where 250 attacks against a monk is normalized.
Really just trying to completely discredit my whole experience, huh? I also play with other DMs, other players. I currently play in three campaigns a week with three different DMs, and I've done AL. I've got like 3500 hours logged on roll20 and while a lot of that is idle time, I've probably done at least as much play IRL.

Shield of Faith is situationally a 50% damage reduction that lasts for multiple encounters. If you're going to argue its bad, you'd also have to argue that the Barbarian's rage is bad.

[Witty Username]

*I don't think i've ever once seen a single character attacked 30 times in a combat. Have you?
30, not sure. I know I have seen at least 15 but tbf the party was only level 3 I needed to stop somewhere. :)

[5eNeedsDarksun]

What I find when people start talking that X reduces damage by 33% is that they never stop to consider what the damage being taken was to begin with.

A 33% increase sounds great unless you realize it's only a 33% increase on a single dollar and so now you have $1.33

So let's talk this through. A PC taking 10 attacks at 30% chance to be hit will only take 3 hits. Shield of faith will lower that to 2 hits. A 1 hit reduction. So the real question is how many attacks is it reasonable to assume a tier 1 PC takes in 1 to 2 encounters? Most often it's going to be less than 10. Though it could be 10-20. So it will most often save you less than 1 hit on average. A reasonable case where it's really good might save you 2 hits. Keep in mind there's a significant chance it could do nothing.

As you noted it's not very good late game for various reasons, but it's really not good early game either.



A doorway or narrow corridor against melee only enemies that will not grapple and are deadset on fighting to the death right here and now is the only place where you can force enemies to target one specific ally.

That's a pretty rare set of circumstances in my estimation. But even in that best case scenario it's probably only preventing 2 would be hits as the total number of attacks you are taking just isn't high enough for it to really prevent more.

The alternative to Shield of Faith after the fact is a cure spell worth about 8 points of damage though. The reality is most 1st level spells cast in combat just aren't that good. The Guiding Bolt, which has been a point of comparison here, is roughly twice as good as an attack or cantrip at low levels.
Unless you have a subclass that gets an AOE spell like Burning Hands or Thunderwave the Cleric probably isn't going to dramatically shift an encounter with any 1st level spell. Those 1 or 2 hits/ misses due to Bless or Shield of Faith are par for the course. Things like extended duration and BA casting (SoF) or Saving Throw benefits (Bless) are gravy.

[strangebloke]

The alternative to Shield of Faith after the fact is a cure spell worth about 8 points of damage though. The reality is most 1st level spells cast in combat just aren't that good. The Guiding Bolt, which has been a point of comparison here, is roughly twice as good as an attack or cantrip at low levels.
Unless you have a subclass that gets an AOE spell like Burning Hands or Thunderwave the Cleric probably isn't going to dramatically shift an encounter with any 1st level spell. Those 1 or 2 hits/ misses due to Bless or Shield of Faith are par for the course. Things like extended duration and BA casting (SoF) or Saving Throw benefits (Bless) are gravy.

Yeah pretty much. Most people would say healing word is a good use of a 1st level slot at level 1 if it gets an enemy up, but SoF can arguably prevent an ally from going down in the first place.

[Segev]

The frail wizard/cleric with Mage Armor, a good Dexterity, and a shield who has the shield spell ready and can put up shield of faith and maybe mirror image might make a surprisingly good door-blocker. Sure, he can't take many hits, but if he's taking almost no hits to begin with....

[KorvinStarmast]

For an hour. That means you're potentially looking at 4-5 encounters here, and its trivial to precast. It lasts for one or two combats, as noted in the follow up. Our cleric cast it last night on our barb, and it lasted for all of one fight and the beginning of the second when her concentration got whacked by a Cone of Cold from an Oni.

It's not powerful, but it is convenient to use in a lot of situations where (for example) bless wouldn't be. I have been pleasantly surprised by how often it's been useful in Tiers 1 and 2.

So I'm not saying there's no circumstances at all where you might want to use shield of faith. I'm just saying those circumstances are so few and far between that it's not a good spell. I noticed that we stopped using it in mid Tier 3 - before that I saw a lot of situations where it helped our tank be tankier.

*I don't think i've ever once seen a single character attacked 30 times in a combat. Have you?
Clearly you've never fought a pack of Star Spawn Manglers. :smallbiggrin:
Yeah, those little boogers are an absolute pain in the neck. My players hate them.
The frail wizard/cleric with Mage Armor, a good Dexterity, and a shield who has the shield spell ready and can put up shield of faith and maybe mirror image might make a surprisingly good door-blocker. Sure, he can't take many hits, but if he's taking almost no hits to begin with.... Nice combo platter there.

[Frogreaver]

Really just trying to completely discredit my whole experience, huh? I also play with other DMs, other players. I currently play in three campaigns a week with three different DMs, and I've done AL. I've got like 3500 hours logged on roll20 and while a lot of that is idle time, I've probably done at least as much play IRL.

Discredit is the wrong word. I fully believe you had that experience, so there's nothing to discredit.

What I am doing is taking 2 data points and using them to call into question the typicalness of your experiences. Data point 1 is that you played any D&D game with 250 hits on 1 character in an encounter. Data point 2 is that you would use that as an answer to my question about the rarity of 30 attack encounters. It's elementary logic from here. Either you agree 30 attacks on a single pc is extremely atypical, in which case your example just muddied the waters for no good reason (this would be an accusation of bad faith), or you believed it helped establish the typicalness of such scenarios (this is good faith but IMO based on a misperception).

I assumed good faith.


Shield of Faith is situationally a 50% damage reduction that lasts for multiple encounters. If you're going to argue its bad, you'd also have to argue that the Barbarian's rage is bad.

Shield of faith is only a 50% damage reduction in circumstances where you are already taking very little damage. Rage is a 50% damage reduction in circumstances even when you are taking alot of damage. Rage is a 50% damage reduction against all attack values. Shield of faith is only a 50% reduction against very low attack values when placed on a character with already high AC values. Rage also provides a damage boost and doesn't rely on concentration. Shield of faith provides no damage boost and doesn't rely on concentration. Rage also usually has a rider from your subclass that gets added on. Shield of faith does not.

Rage is much better than shield of faith.


Yeah pretty much. Most people would say healing word is a good use of a 1st level slot at level 1 if it gets an enemy up, but SoF can arguably prevent an ally from going down in the first place.

Healing word has a high success rate at pulling up a fallen ally. What is the success rate of shield of faith at keeping you from going down in the first place?

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Yeah pretty much. Most people would say healing word is a good use of a 1st level slot at level 1 if it gets an enemy up, but SoF can arguably prevent an ally from going down in the first place.

Yeah, I'd put Healing Word at top tier because:
A) Action Economy: you can still attack/ cantrip, which is about 1/2 as good as a level 1 spell.
B) It's not 'wasted' in the sense that you know it is needed and will work (almost nothing else is 100% guaranteed to actually do something)
C) Despite the low number of HP it's generally worth more because 5e doesn't track negative hp, so all damage beyond 0 is negated.

[Corran]

Healing word has a high success rate at pulling up a fallen ally. What is the success rate of shield of faith at keeping you from going down in the first place?
Healing word can help your action economy and/or hinder the enemy's action economy. Shield of faith does the same thing (edit: though in favorable scenarios it starts to look more like helping with attrition). The situations where one would be better than the other, combined with the fact that they dont even compete for concentration, makes mathing it out to see which ones comes on top under a middle of the park situation not very rewarding. Healing word has a niche too when the DM is having the enemies for for downed enemies, so just adding this for completeness.