Making nature's wrath not suck

[TyGuy]

I don't like unavoidable useless features. Even if they seemingly balance out feature-suits with strong stuff like aura of warding. Nature's wrath stinks and I don't want it wasting space.

Its action economy is bad for what it does considering a typical paladin won't have the DC to make it stick. And even with a good DC, it probably won't stick for long since the target gets to choose between str or dex and make a save each turn.

So either make the action economy better, or make the effect better. I'd rather not make it a bonus action. So that leaves making the effect better.

Brainstorming here. What if it was changed from one creature to every creature of the paladin's choice within range? And perhaps increase the range as well. Maybe 15 ft?

Or drop the restraint and DC, make it a short duration movement reduction of some sort?

Got any suggestions or other ideas?

[Speely]

It should require an Action to make the save to break the effect imo.

[loki_ragnarock]

Ancients paladin tends to be more the casty, charismay paladin style.

It's not a stretch to say that they'd have perfectly serviceable DCs. In exchange for an action they get a chance to lock down an opponent while everybody in your party - potentially even the paladin themself - gets advantage to hit them. Not bad for a short-rest resource.

It's not a bad ability at all. It's not The uber-bestest, but it's basically fine.

[Kane0]

Ancients gets Ensnaring Strike as a bonus spell, just use the Channel on Harness Divine Power.

But if that doesn't sit well with you, just have it affect multiple enemies (prof bonus or Cha mod or something) or if you want to keep it single-target have it function a little more like the Arcane Archer's Grasping Arrow.

[Jerrykhor]

I played an Ancients paladin for 1 whole campaign, and I think the main drawback of Nature's Wrath is the range. It should be 30 ft.

The next is allowing the creature to choose Str or Dex save. Any creature worth considering using this on would likely be good in either one save.

Once Tasha's came out with the new CD option to get back spell slot, this never gets used.

[sithlordnergal]

So, Ancients Paladins are my favorite type of Paladin, to the point where I only ever play Ancients Paladins. I love their spell list, I love their Aura, Turn the Faithless is pretty handy for dealing with Fey, and both Undying Sentinel and Elder Champion are great. That said...I fully agree, Nature's Wrath is absolute garbage. I have not one but two level 20 Ancients Paladins that I play regularly in AL, and I have never once used Nature's Wrath. Hell, I've used Turn the Faithless twice, but never Nature's Wrath. In order to fix it you'd need to do the following:

---To leave it as an Action---

1) Make it an ability check against the Paladin's spell DC, not a saving throw, this includes the initial check as well.

2) Increase the range to 30ft

3) Requires an Action to escape if the target fails the initial check


---Make it a Bonus Action---

1) Have it be a Bonus Action

2) Increase the Range to 30ft

3) Make it an ability check, Restrained Creatures can retry the ability check at the end of their turn

[sithlordnergal]

Ancients paladin tends to be more the casty, charismay paladin style.

It's not a stretch to say that they'd have perfectly serviceable DCs. In exchange for an action they get a chance to lock down an opponent while everybody in your party - potentially even the paladin themself - gets advantage to hit them. Not bad for a short-rest resource.

It's not a bad ability at all. It's not The uber-bestest, but it's basically fine.

No, I'd say its a bad ability. Takes an Action to use, allows the target to choose between a Strength or Dexterity save, they get to have an initial save, it's only a 10ft range, they get to repeat the save at the end of their turn, all for the Restrained Condition. The worst offender is the fact targets get to choose between a Strength or Dexterity save, meaning you can't target a weak ability. They can always use their best physical ability.

And all you get from it is the Restrained Condition, which is a good condition but not nearly good enough to make up for the weaknesses. Especially since Ancients Paladins always have Ensnaring Strike.

[Silly Name]

So, it seems the main problems of Nature's Wrath are its range, its action cost and how easy it is to escape. I think if you improve even just two of those aspects, then the ability would get substantially better.

The best option, I think, is to make it a creature-targeted Entagle with a 30-feet range: it's always a STR saving throw to avoid, and then require making a STR check as an action to escape. It may still not be the best option for your Action, but it'd have enough utility to justify considering using it.

[RogueJK]

The best option, I think, is to make it a creature-targeted Entagle with a 30-feet range: it's always a STR saving throw to avoid, and then require making a STR check as an action to escape.

The issue is that Ancients Paladins already have basically that exact thing, with Ensnaring Strike.

If you're going to set about "fixing" Nature's Wrath, it should have an effect that's distinct from Ensnaring Strike, rather than just effectively making it "you get 1 free Ensnaring Strike per short rest".

Even something simple like making it a ranged AoE that can affect up to PB enemies at a time could be enough. But I'd rather see it have an even more noticeably distinct effect.

Perhaps make it something like Spiritual Weapon or the Fathomless Warlock's tentacle, with Nature's Wrath allowing you to spend your BA and Channel Divinity to summon up a mass of thorny brambles at a spot you can see within 60' of you, with which you can make a CHA-based Bonus Action attack each round dealing 1d8 magical piercing damage and slowing the enemy by 10' until your next turn as the vegetation impedes their movement. If an enemy attacks anyone other than you within 5' of the thorny brambles, you can spend your Reaction to make an additional attack with the brambles. The effect lasts for 1 minute, and you can move it up to 20' each turn as part of the BA. When you reach Paladin 11, you can apply Improved Divine Smite's bonus 1d8 radiant damage to these attacks.

[Silly Name]

The issue is that Ancients Paladins already have basically that exact thing, with Ensnaring Strike.

If you're going to set about "fixing" Nature's Wrath, it should have an effect that's distinct from Ensnaring Strike, rather than just effectively making it "you get 1 free Ensnaring Strike per short rest".

Even something simple like making it a ranged AoE that can affect up to PB enemies at a time could be enough. But I'd rather see it have an even more noticeably distinct effect.

I mean, I agree on principle that it'd be better if it was a more distinct effect, but that's less "fixing" it and more changing it into something else.

[RogueJK]

That's fair. So how about this for a less drastic change:

Natures Wrath allows you to spend a BA and a Channel Divinity to summon an area of magical vegetation in a 10' radius around you, which lasts for 1 minute. This area is centered upon you, and moves with you. Within this area, the ground is difficult terrain for creatures of your choosing. Once on each of your turns, when you hit an enemy within the radius with a weapon attack, the enemy must make a STR save or be Restrained by spectral grasping vines. If they fail the save, that enemy remains Restrained until they or an ally spend an Action and make a successful STR check against your save DC to break out. You can have up to your Proficiency Bonus number of enemies Restrained by this effect at one time.

Sort of an Ensnaring Strike-meets-Spirit Guardians, with the ability to affect more than one enemy at a time, along with a little level scaling. Distinct from Ensnaring Strike, while also allowing you to stack with Ensnaring Strike if you want to burn extra resources, yet not straying too far from the original Nature's Wrath effect.

[Sorinth]

On the other hand it doesn't require concentration. Not sure there are too many spells that impose restrain and don't require concentration. So if you are going to boost it I would suggest making it require concentration or having it only last until the end of the Paladin's next turn instead of offering a save every turn.

[Corran]

Ancients paladin tends to be more the casty, charismay paladin style.

It's not a stretch to say that they'd have perfectly serviceable DCs. In exchange for an action they get a chance to lock down an opponent while everybody in your party - potentially even the paladin themself - gets advantage to hit them. Not bad for a short-rest resource.

It's not a bad ability at all. It's not The uber-bestest, but it's basically fine.
It becomes even better if the party is using lots of summons.



I played an Ancients paladin for 1 whole campaign, and I think the main drawback of Nature's Wrath is the range. It should be 30 ft.
Yes. Even if paladins have lots of reasons to be in melee, and despite the mobility an ancient paly could have (misty step/ steed), 10' is just too short.


The next is allowing the creature to choose Str or Dex save. Any creature worth considering using this on would likely be good in either one save.
Well, at least dex saves suffer disadvantage after the first save is failed, so making this pretty efficient against low str enemies. Not much, but it's something. Making it force either instead of giving the target a choice seems certainly more reasonable, but I dont think this is a dealbreaker. The incredibly short range is more of an issue IMO (I incorectly remembered it to be 30').

[Guy Lombard-O]

That's fair. So how about this for a less drastic change:

Natures Wrath allows you to spend a BA and a Channel Divinity to summon an area of magical vegetation in a 10' radius around you, which lasts for 1 minute. This area is centered upon you, and moves with you. Within this area, the ground is difficult terrain for creatures of your choosing. Once on each of your turns, when you hit an enemy within the radius with a weapon attack, the enemy must make a STR save or be Restrained by spectral grasping vines. If they fail the save, that enemy remains Restrained until they or an ally spend an Action and make a successful STR check against your save DC to break out. You can have up to your Proficiency Bonus number of enemies Restrained by this effect at one time.

Sort of an Ensnaring Strike-meets-Spirit Guardians, with the ability to affect more than one enemy at a time, along with a little level scaling. Distinct from Ensnaring Strike, while also allowing you to stack with Ensnaring Strike if you want to burn extra resources, yet not straying too far from the original Nature's Wrath effect.

Naturally, I'd like this on an Ancients paladin. It'd be cool and worthwhile to use.

But it also sounds like an actually good ability. As opposed to merely fixing Nature's Wrath to the point where it isn't actively bad. I think simply making it a bonus action puts it into the realm of something that might actually see use. It's still not really good, but at least it's not so bad that it's basically unusable. Since the only other channel Ancients gets only works against Fey and Fiends, making it a bonus action would have made me at least attempt it occasionally when I ran my Ancients from 1-12.

[RogueJK]

Naturally, I'd like this on an Ancients paladin. It'd be cool and worthwhile to use.

But it also sounds like an actually good ability. As opposed to merely fixing Nature's Wrath to the point where it isn't actively bad.

Something else to consider is that Oath of the Ancients is about to get a pretty big nerf thanks to the new MotM style of statblocks featuring "non-spell-casting spellcaster enemies".

If enemies are no longer casting "spells", then RAW Aura of Warding's resistance doesn't apply to them. That is, it'd halve the fire damage from an old style enemy mage who casts the Fireball spell, but wouldn't halve the fire damage from a new style enemy mage who uses their "Fiery Burst" ability to do 8d6 fire damage in a 20' radius of a spot within 150' 2x/daily. (Hypothetical example.)

That's a big hit to their Aura of Warding, which is their flagship ability and which currently helps make up for the fact that some of their other stuff like Nature's Wrath is quite lackluster.


As a result, the other Ancients abilities could definitely stand to be tweaked into being "actually good abilities", rather than the current situation of just "Yeah, it sucks... but at least they get Resistance to Spell damage", since that's no longer going to be much of a consolation.

[TyGuy]

I think I'm coming around to just making it a bonus action thanks to the conversation. It makes it usable with minimal disruption. Yeah it's not a creative fix, but that might actually be a bonus now that I think of it. Keeping it super simple so the player has one single word change to remember. It also keeps it slightly lackluster and just something extra to throw out as a "why not" ability; which is perfect for Ancients.