Tag Archives: spells

Concentration Frustrates D&D’s Rangers More than Paladins and Hexblades, but Unearthed Arcana Helps

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Concentration rates as one of the best additions to the fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons rules. In earlier editions, higher-level parties might enter a fight layered with spells like haste, invisibility, fly, blur, protection from energy, and on. Players needed spreadsheets to track their bonuses, while dungeon masters struggled to create any challenge. Concentration simplifies the game by limiting the magical effects in play.

In earlier editions, the same caster behind the buffs could also immobilize foes with Evard’s black tentacles, and then smother them with cloudkill. Now, the need for concentration limits the power of spellcasters, helping to eliminate D&D’s old problem of wizards who surged in power with every level until they overshadowed other classes. (See How fifth edition keeps familiar spells and a Vancian feel without breaking D&D.)

Plus, concentration enriches the game by adding a fresh, tactical element. Combatants can end spell effects by targeting casters and breaking their concentration.

While concentration improved D&D and put wizards in their place, the innovation proved mixed for class archetypes that cross swords and spells.

For exhibit A, see the paladin. In my last game, the party’s smite-happy paladin relished the chance to lock down a monster with compelled duel. This 1st-level spell boosts the paladin’s flavor of champion and protector. But compelled duel requires concentration, so while the paladin trades blows, every hit threatens to end the duel. Paladins want to bear the brunt of attacks, and they lack proficiency with Constitution saves, so their concentration is fragile. Why would a paladin ever cast shield of faith?

Worse, the paladin’s smite spells also require concentration, so even momentary attention to a smite spell ends the compelled duel. With smites serving as a cornerstone of the paladin’s offense, the need for concentration brings some frustration. Spells like magic weapon, heroism, and bless seem perfect for paladins, but all demand concentration.

In the D&D Next playtest, the paladins smite spells skipped the concentration requirement, but spells like banishing smite and blinding smite impose ongoing effects that merit concentration. The designers added concentration to add the tactical element where foes can break concentration to end punishing effects.

The same tension between concentration and a melee archetype hinders warlock hexblades and pact of the blade warlocks who aim to use their pact blade for more than posing. Hexblades gain smite spells that require concentration, yet the class also features spells like hex that demand attention.

Surely rangers suffer the most friction between concentration and the class’s featured abilities. The hunter’s mark spell underpins the ranger’s flavor as someone who targets prey and pursues it to the finish. With a duration marked in hours, hunter’s mark seems meant to last through a ranger’s daily adventures. But the spell requires concentration, so rangers who need another spell lose their mark and what feels like a key feature. Also, rangers who aim to enter melee with say, a sword in each hand, suffer an outsized risk of losing their mark. (This exposes another spot where fifth edition punishes melee archetypes, but I’ve written about that already.)

The D&D design team uses their Unearthed Arcana series to test player reaction to potential game additions. A collection of class feature variants reveals one feature intended to smooth the rough spots from hunter’s mark. Read my annotated description.

Favored Foe
1st-level ranger feature (replaces Favored Enemy)¹
You can call on your bond with nature² to mark a creature as your favored enemy for a time: You know the hunter’s mark spell, and Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for it.³ You can use4 it a certain number of of times without expending a spell slot5 and without requiring concentration6—a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

When you gain the Spellcasting feature at 2nd level, hunter’s mark doesn’t count against the number of ranger spells you know7.

1. Instead of changing the base ranger class by adding a new feature missing from the Player’s Handbook, this variant adds an option that replaces a weak class feature. Most players would opt for Favored Foe, but rangers built from the core book keep a unique feature. The D&D design team has chosen not to make changes to the game that supplant anything in the published books. New players should never join a game and then learn that their Player’s Handbook character fails to match the latest rules.

2. The hunter’s mark spell implements a 4th-edition power called Hunter’s Quarry, a non-magical exploit that seemed to behave in some magical ways because the rules said so. Now, the replacement works like magic because it is.

3. First-level rangers can’t normally cast spells, but this feature needs the hunter’s mark spell. This line adds the one spell to a 1st-level ranger’s knowledge.

4. Oddly, the description says “use” rather than “cast”. This shows the designer thinking of this feature as an ability more than a spell. The whole feature description reads like something written by committee, but surely a final version will show more polish.

5. Because hunter’s mark implements a marquee ranger class feature, having to spend a spell slot on it feels like a tax. Here the ability goes tax free.

6. This waives the concentration requirement. Dual-wielding Drizzt admirers everywhere can cheer.

7. Hunter’s mark no longer taxes a ranger’s list of known spells either.

Favored Foe offers a good way eliminate a frustrating edge in the ranger class. I predict we’ll see it in a class options book toward the end of 2020.

Update: Unfortunately, the final version of Favored Foe in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything brings back the frustration. “When you hit a creature with an attack roll, you can call on your mystical bond with nature to mark the target as your favored enemy for 1 minute or until you lose your concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell).”

The offhand mention of concentration confused me, but a ruling on another feature sharing the wording clears up the intent. The trickery domain cleric’s Invoke Duplicity feature also works “until you lose your concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell).” Lead rules designer Jeremey Crawford explained that this wording means that you must concentrate on the feature to maintain it, just like a spell.

The new Favored Foe skips the need to spend a bonus action, but otherwise it weakens the version tested in Unearthed Arcana in every way. In addition to requiring concentration, the new feature does less damage, only damages once per turn, just lasts a minute, and can’t be moved. Why do the D&D designers hate rangers?

Demi-Human Level Limits, D&D Adventurers League, Open Rolls, and More From the Comment Section

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Time for another visit to the comment section, starting with a request.

DM Bill writes, “Could you do an article about humans versus non-humans, and the importance of the First Edition level cap, please!”

Until third edition, Dungeons & Dragons limited non-human characters to maximum levels in most classes. D&D co-creator Gary Gygax favored the sort of human-dominated fantasy that appeared in the fiction that inspired him. To Gary, demi-human level limits explained why humans dominated D&D worlds despite the extraordinary talents and longevity of elves and dwarves. Gary wrote, “If demi-humans, already given some advantages, were as able as humans, the world would be dominated by them, and there goes the whole of having a relatively familiar world setting in regards to what cultures and societies one will find in control. So a demi-human is unlimited in thief level only, as that this a class not destined to control the fate of major groups or states.”

I doubt the rare humans who become capable enough to overshadow non-humans really explain human prevalence in a D&D world, but the level limits encouraged playing human characters and tended to fill adventuring parties with humans. Of course, some groups simply ignored the rule.

Gary wrote, “Why are humans more able to rise to higher levels than demi-humans? Because the gods say so, and don’t like pointy eared types with curly-toed shoes, squat miners with big beards, hairy-footed midgets, etc.” Gary intended the comment as harmless fun at the expense of make-believe creatures, and in 2005 most readers read it that way. But now the comment reads in a way Gary surely didn’t consider. In our history, people have justified inflicting countless horrors on other humans by claiming that God disapproved of some group. Talking about even fictional half-humans like this raises uncomfortable echoes.

Nowadays, many players feel drawn to the exotic character races. In an apt post, John Arendt compares the typical Adventurers League party to the Munsters, a collection of exotic, monstrous types with perhaps one human for contrast. “When an AL player sits down with a shadar-kai shadow sorcerer, there’s no point in even asking them what they’re doing in a large human city; the players haven’t considered it. The culture is about players assembling races and classes because the mechanical bits sound cool.” I see many players drawn to exotic characters for their story, flavor, and for the chance to play someone who seems extraordinary even in a D&D world. That urge never succeeds as well as players hope. Even in the Forgotten Realms, a party that includes a deep gnome, a tortle, a triton, a shadar-kai, and a guy with flaming hair would alarm ordinary folks, but to keep the adventure on track everyone treats such groups as unremarkable.

D&D’s Animal Companions and Familiars—Choosing the Right Pet For Your Character

In D&D’s Animal Companions and Familiars—Choosing the Right Pet For Your Character I touted the power of find familiar.

Seven writes, “When used correctly find familiar is way overpowered. My owl scouts ahead so we don’t get ambushed. My owl flies down the tunnel triggering the glyph. My owl scouts the dungeon as I watch. Oh, it dies. Ok, I ritually cast. Let’s burn an hour.

“I disallowed the Help action in combat for familiars and my players try not to abuse the power granted by the find familiar, but I miss the old days when you suffered a consequence when your familiar died.”

Ilbranteloth writes, “Why can’t a spirit have a personality? Gwenhwyver was a magic item, but had a personality and sting connection to Drizzt. Having a personality is up the player. It has nothing to do with being a flesh and blood creature that only exists in our imagination.”

If find familiar feels too strong for a 1st-level spell, I suggest limiting it by adding two elements:

  • Treat the familiar as an non-player character with an attitude and a some desire to avoid getting hurt. As controlled by the dungeon master, familiars follow orders, but not necessarily cheerfully or recklessly.

  • Doors. Scouting familiars lack the hands needed to open most doors.

The post also suggested find steed and find greater steed to players interested in gaining a mount.

Larissa writes, “Find greater steed is a 4th-level spell, so paladins won’t get it until level 13. For the greater steed, play a bard and take the spell at level 10, because for a paladin it’s a long wait.”

Steal This Rule: Flashbacks and Heists in Dungeons & Dragons

The post Steal This Rule: Flashbacks and Heists in Dungeons & Dragons explained how to adapt rules for flashbacks to Dungeons & Dragons.

Morten Greis writes, “It is kind of weird to see flashbacks-mechanics coming back as if it was a wholly new thing. In 2010, I wrote this: Using Flashbacks in Your Roleplaying Game. It is a great mechanic, though, and it is good to see people using it more.”

For gamers interested in flashbacks, Morten’s post gives more suggestions for using the mechanic to enhance your game.

Captain Person writes, “There’s a product on DMs Guild called Here’s To Crime: A Guide to Capers and Heists that adapts the Blades in the Dark heists to fifth-edition D&D.”

Michael Lush writes, “‘The Arcadian Job’ episode of the Netflix series 3Below: Tales of Arcadia had an interesting flash-forward spin on this.

“The protagonists need to break into a high security military base, but the action focuses on the planning session where they narrate what they are doing and their plans appear on screen.

“We infiltrate under cover of night and cut through the wall with…BZZZZZZT!!! No, can’t do that! Look the wall is electrified…

“We infiltrate under cover of night and short circuit the wall (failed Security roll. An alarm rings, guards show up, and we die in a hail of blaster fire! No, can’t do that…

“OK. Infiltrate under cover of night, insulate the wall with rubber matting (rolls a success), and climb over the…ZAP!! Oh sentry turrets.

“Hmm. The wall is a bust. How about the gate?

“Once they bypass all the security, the flash-forward planning switches back to normal real-time play.”

In a tabletop game, such planning steps would resemble a video game where when you run into trouble, you restore to the last save. The story that develops includes no failures because the framing story shows how the players planned around all the pitfalls.

The 3Below episode finds a new take on the usual storytelling approach to planning. Typically, if the characters make a plan on screen, we know the plan will fail. The narrative lets us enjoy the surprise and tension of seeing the plan unravel. But if we never see the planning, then the plan succeeds. Narratives never show heroes making successful plans because revisiting a familiar plan as it unfolds would prove less interesting.

lunaabadia writes, “One of the mechanics I really like in Gumshoe games such as Night’s Black Agents is the Preparedness skill. It represents this concept that your character has a knack for planning. As with other skills in the game, you spend one or more points to add to a roll for what you are trying to accomplish. You might say, ‘but of course I brought night goggles,’ and you make the roll. As you noted above, the whole point is to zip past the boring hours players can spend wondering what gear to bring. Preparedness answers the question of whether you brought it and frees players’ brains to focus on the action.

“I would guess Preparedness could be done with Inspiration, and in a heist session it could make a lot of sense to give each player Inspiration at the start of the mission, representing their planning. Do you spend it on a roll? Or do you hold it in case you need to do a flashback?”

7 Dungeons & Dragons character builds absurdly good at one thing

The post 7 Dungeons & Dragons character builds absurdly good at one thing continues to attract readers and comments.

Geoff writes, “Disciple of Life doesn’t apply to goodberries. It says ‘whenever you use a spell of 1st level or higher to restore hit points to a creature, the creature regains additional hit points.’ Goodberry is a spell that summons magical berries, not a spell that restores hit points to a creature.”

Your interpretation adds up, but officially the interaction works. See this Sage Advice post.

Chivalry & Sorcery: What if Gary and Dave had not found the fun?

In Chivalry & Sorcery: What if Gary and Dave had not found the fun?, I had a bit of fun at the expense of one of the earliest fantasy roleplaying games.

Shane Devries tells how his group started playing Chivalry & Sorcery by ignoring most of the rules, and then slowly added complexity. “Over a period of a couple of years we were playing the entire system as written and NEVER looked back. Over time D&D and Palladium dropped away and by 1985 all we played was Chivalry & Sorcery, which we still play to this day. All my players prefer C&S BECAUSE of its complexity and revel in the system and what it has to offer. The older players in my group with decades of experience will not go back to D&D or any other system for this fact.”

Why You Should Play in the D&D Adventurers League (and a New 1-Sheet Quick Start)

The post Why You Should Play in the D&D Adventurers League (and a New 1-Sheet Quick Start) prompted some readers to share their bad experiences dropping in for Adventurers League games.

Alphastream responds, “The experience really varies, but bad areas are uncommon. I’ve traveled for work across the US and tried many different stores. I would say under 15% are truly bad, primarily due to bad store management. And, even when I’ve found a bad one, I’ve offered to DM an additional table, recruited players via MeetUp (or a similar site), and had a great time. I’ve had far better results finding AL tables and meeting cool players/DMs there than I have with trying to find decent home groups. Good stores are also very welcoming to new players. Stores overall are changing a lot these days, mastering skills to draw in customers through many different programs and creating healthy and safe spaces focused on fun.”

My local game store draws players interested in sampling D&D, and while many become regulars, many don’t return. The conversion rate rises when prospective players arrive at a table starting a new campaign or hardcover. When players get slotted into an ongoing game, they seem to find the experience more daunting. An ideal welcome would feature short seasons of low-level games that fed into a higher-level experience. Wizards of the Coast should support a program like that. I can even suggest a name for it.

How New Changes Created the 4 Most Annoying Spells in Dungeons & Dragons

In How new changes created the 4 most annoying spells in Dungeons & Dragons, I wrote, “By the end of the encounter, player characters go from one beguiled victim to the next, raining attacks on the defenseless pinatas. As a DM, I may be biased, but I think the least fun scenes in the game come when PCs beat helpless foes to death.”

Acemindbreaker writes, “Why play that out? If it’s clear that their opponents stand no chance, montage it instead of rolling the dice. ‘So, your opponents are all helpless as long as your wizard keeps up hypnotic pattern. Are you intending to kill them all?’

“‘Yeah.’

“‘All right, easy enough to do. Once they’re all dead, what next?’”

Zachiel cites maze as an annoying spell that can wreck most player characters. Wizards aside, PCs never boast enough intelligence to make a DC20 check on less than a 20. Lucky for players, few will ever face the 8th-level spell. However, the spell appears on Acererak’s list in Tomb of Annihilation, so I got to send someone to the labyrinth, and that delighted me. My joy probably makes me a mean DM, but we DMs so rarely get to thwart players with such potent magic.

How to Run Better D&D Games By Doing Less

How to Run Better D&D Games By Doing Less suggested ways DMs can delegate some of their tasks to players.

Daniel writes, “My players enjoyed reciting expository dialog (usually in the form of flashback conversations involving NPCs). Maybe this is because some of them had more of an acting background than a gaming one. It does mean that I had to compose and print the dialog in advance but it then saved me having to do too much talking (and switching personas) during a session.”

In D&D, Letting Everyone Roll Certain Checks Guarantees Success, So Why Bother Rolling?

The post In D&D, Letting Everyone Roll Certain Checks Guarantees Success, So Why Bother Rolling? raised a question that drew plenty of interest.

RobOQ writes, “As a player I tend to get annoyed at rolling for every imaginable thing. I prefer, both as a player and a DM, to go by the rule of ‘if there isn’t an interesting outcome to both success and failure on the roll, leave the dice where they are and just describe the more interesting outcome.’ I see very little point in rolling dice where a failure means the situation doesn’t change at all.”

Insight Played Wrong Can Become the Most Unrealistic Thing In D&D, a Game With Djinns In Bottles Who Grant Wishes

In Insight Played Wrong Can Become the Most Unrealistic Thing In D&D, a Game With Djinns In Bottles Who Grant Wishes, I betrayed a low passive insight by suggesting that a liar might avoid eye contact.

Dr Sepsis writes, “Someone who is lying is more likely to make eye contact as they check to see if they’re being detected.”

HDA writes, “Instead of rolling dice to get information, make your players think, observe, ask questions, learn from the world around them. As the DM playing a non-player character, maybe raise your eyebrow a bit. You know, emote. What is even the point of having intrigue and deception in your game if the players can just roll to see through it?”

8 Fast Facts About D&D’s Magic Missile Spell

In response to 8 Fast Facts About D&D’s Magic Missile Spell, Kristen Mork pointed me to Sage Advice that said each magic missile should provoke a separate concentration check.

This answer defies the answer the design team gave when they introduced the game, but fine. In practice, the newer ruling makes magic missile an efficient way to break concentration and to finish fallen characters. (See Can a DM Have Monsters Kill Fallen Characters Without Bringing Hurt Feelings?)

After penning my 8 facts, I watched a Q&A panel by TSR editor Tim Kask that expanded on one. Gary Gygax’s debates with Tim helped shape Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. “The only thing that I won was that magic missile always hits for damage,” Tim said. “It took me two-and-a-half weeks of arguing. I kept telling him that that’s the only thing the little guy gets and if it’s hit or miss, then he’s dead.”

Dan writes, “I would actually argue that the magic missile and shield spells were inspired by a bit earlier in that scene from The Raven, whereby Karloff produces magical knives and an ax and sends them toward Price, who blocks them with magic barriers.

“The small exploding balls at the beginning of your embedded video are much more likely to have been what inspired Melf’s Minute Meteors.”

Steve Blunden writes, “Seeing both these clips, and of course the wizard duels in Harry Potter inspired me to see if the rather colourless counterspell could be dramatically improved. When a character tries to cast counterspell, the player should be encouraged to describe what this might look like. E.g. if counterspell is used against fireball, the player can describe the counterspell as a jet of water leaping out of their hand to douse the fire.”

In Making Counterspell Awesome, Mike “Sly Fourish” Shea recommended this approach.

How Character Death Lands D&D in a Tug-of-War Between Game and Story

The post How Character Death Lands D&D in a Tug-of-War Between Game and Story prompted alphastream to share some history.

“Second edition and earlier simply had fragile PCs. You could die easily, end of story.

“Third edition had monsters that were absolutely brutal at all tiers, plus some really exploitable loopholes (such as non-associated class levels) that created sky-high challenges. This all meant that if the DM knew how to craft monsters,characters could easily die, even when they had full hit points. Unfortunately, it was incredibly taxing to modify monsters.

“Fourth edition gave PCs too much of a safety net between hp and healing surges, though the edition also had some amazing challenges (especially after the developers went back and corrected the monster design math).

“Fifth edition on paper looks more fragile than 4E, but it has not been in play. Characters are very resilient and have a lot of hit points compared to monster damage. Monsters are often given special abilities and to balance that they do less damage, but the abilities don’t actually threaten PCs with death. This problem is even worse at high tiers of play, where monster damage is absolutely shameful. Most monsters have no chance. If they hit 100% of the time they still could not drop all the PCs to 0 hit points. And when that isn’t the case, there is no way for the PCs to be defeated in most fights. To me, the 5E solution is pretty simple: add damage.”

Abelhawk writes, “I have a couple of house rules that make death a bit more dangerous and limiting:

“1. When a character is brought to 0 hit points, they gain a level of exhaustion. Levels of exhaustion gained in this way go away after a short rest, or if the character is brought to half their hit point maximum.

“2. When a character dies and is brought back to life, they receive one permanent death saving throw failure. A character with three permanent death saving throw failures cannot be brought back to life by any means.”

Imposing exhaustion on characters raised from 0 hp rates as a fairly popular house rule. As for the second house rule, I like the idea of limiting characters to some maximum number of resurrections.

Turning Character Deaths in D&D Into Deals that Benefit Game and Story

In the post, Turning Character Deaths in D&D Into Deals that Benefit Game and Story, I wrote, “If D&D players wanted a game where fighting rated as a last resort, they would play Call of Cthulhu or the Dallas Television RPG, where you can’t shoot JR.”

Jacob Blalock responds, “Most people who want to play have to take what they can get in terms of finding a group to play with, and that means they mostly play the most recent edition of the most widely recognized RPG, 5th-edition D&D.”

Jacob makes a fair point. Some roleplaying gamers play D&D because the game’s popularity makes finding a group easier, rather than because the game perfectly suits their tastes.

Cymond writes, “I was recently considering the idea of a house rule: Let a dying character remain conscious but unable to act or speak loudly. You can still have those dramatic deathbed moments where they confess their eternal love, beg to be avenged, plead with the unscrupulous rogue to please save the world, etc. Or maybe say that they don’t die immediately after 3 failed saves, but are beyond saving with anything less that the same things that would resurrect them, and save the deathbed moment until after combat.”

Tardigrade writes, “I strongly feel that if a character death is a problem for your narrative, then you’re playing the game wrong. If you are narrating a story, go write a book. If you are trying to create an experience that challenges players, then play D&D, design the game so that their choices matter and don’t fudge the dice.”

BlobinatorQ responds, “Ultimately it comes down to the group. If the group wants D&D to be nothing but challenges, and wants the stakes to be high with character death always on the table, then so be it. If the group wants to build and be invested in a narrative, and don’t want people left out of the experience due to some unlucky dice rolls, then things should be crafted to suit that. There is no one right way to play D&D, it can be a very different game for different groups.”

When I explained the problems that death creates for a story, I focused on the story a particular player imagines for their character. The story of a D&D campaign can stand some character deaths, but that doesn’t cushion the blow a dead character brings to their player.

Ilbranteloth notes that the 1st-edition rules for characters at 0 hit points were forgiving, giving players at least 7 rounds to help a fallen character.

“What differs significantly are the consequences of your near-death experience. And this is where I think 5e has made it much less of a thing. In AD&D, if you were reduced to 0 hp, then once you were restored to at least 1 hp with mundane OR MAGICAL means, you were in a coma for 10-60 minutes. Then you had to rest for a full week, minimum. A Heal spell was required to avoid this period of rest.

“There was a significant consequence already built into the game for dying and we avoided it because it generally put the adventure on hold while the party headed back to town to rest and recover.

“In most cases, it also meant nobody was out of the game. The entire party went to town to rest and resupply, and of course you didn’t have to play that out. So it was a short, we-failed moment.

“If this one rule was still in effect, then the risk of death is back, without having to kill any PCs. And it also has the effect of reducing the risk of actual character death because players try to make sure they aren’t reduced to 0 hp.”

I have now learned that when I played AD&D, everyone I played with got the rules for 0 hit points wrong.

The post Print My Custom D&D DM Screen to Defeat the Basilisk explained why I typically use a DM screen.

Alphastream writes, “When I run organized play games and don’t use a screen, I get maybe one person every four or so tables that can’t help but look at my notes. And when that happens, they tend to look often… enough that it distracts me! So, I tend to use a screen. Plus, I like collecting/buying screens and then I get to show them off.

“I find screens can be effective for drawing attention from others. In a public space where that’s valuable, such as to get other people walking by to be interested and sit down, it can be an asset.”

“The least valuable aspect of a screen, for me, is what’s printed on my side. Outside of a few things, such as conditions, dispel magic, and counterspell, I never look anything up. What I’ve been doing lately is draping two pieces of paper taped together over one part of my screen. Facing the players is a map of the general area of the world. Facing me is a list of the character names and info I want for help with roleplay: race, background, class/subclass, etc. I add a list of important campaign NPCs and similar notes. That’s stuff I reference all the time.”

I have one young player who finds the basilisk so irresistible that I often see his eyes rise like Kilroy over the top of my screen.

The post’s sidebar explained why I roll in the open and raised some debate.

I wrote, “If I had rolled behind the screen and simply announced a pair of crits, the event would have fallen as flat as a card trick on radio.”

Navy DM responds, “If players have that low level of trust in their DM, then that is a whole different issue.”

Sam replies, “Sounds more like the excitement and watching the dice roll than not trusting what the DM rolled to me.”

Marty replies, “Exactly. The tension comes from seeing the rolls and reacting. Rolling in the open has completely changed my game for the better.”

Most DMs who roll behind the screen acknowledge that they occasionally override rolls to shape play, aiming for a better experience. Rather than players trusting their DM to stick to a die roll, I assume the players trust the DM to not abuse their privilege in some way. What would count as a betrayal of trust?

To be clear, I make some rolls in secret to conceal information from the players. I often roll hidden perception and especially insight checks to avoid revealing secrets.

Beyond the advantages I described in the post, rolling in the open forces me to honor any surprises the dice send my way. If a secret roll upends my plans, I might feel tempted to ignore the roll and take the comfortable path I expected. For me, rolling in the open feels a bit more exciting, like dungeon mastering without a net.

Other DMs feel like sometimes overriding rolls lets them craft a more dramatic game. I respect that perspective, but it’s not for me.

8 Fast Facts About D&D’s Magic Missile Spell

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1. Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax introduced the Magic Missile spell in the original game’s first supplement, Greyhawk (1975). “This is a conjured missile equivalent to a magic arrow, and it does full damage (2-7 points) to any creature it strikes.” After that sentence, the description tells how higher-level magic users shoot extra missiles.

2. Gary took the idea for Magic Missile from the 1963 movie The Raven. The movie ends with a wizard duel between Vincent Price and Boris Karloff. Karloff flings bolts of energy at Price, who brushes them aside with a flick of his hand.

3. The exchange that inspired Magic Missile also led to the Shield spell, so the original Player’s Handbook (1978) explains, “This shield will totally negate magic missile attacks.” This property remains in fifth-edition D&D.

4. The original description of Magic Missile led players to dispute whether casters needed to make a to-hit roll. J. Eric Holmes, the editor of the 1977 Basic Set, opted for yes. His rules explain that casters must roll the same missile attack as a longbow. TSR editor Tim Kask helped Gary plan Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. “The only thing that I won was that Magic Missile always hits for 1 to 3 points of damage,” Tim said. “It took me two-and-a-half weeks of arguing. I kept telling him that that’s the only thing the little guy gets and if it’s hit or miss, then he’s dead.”

Magic missiles always hit without allowing a saving throw, even though in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (1979) Gary stresses the importance of saves. Player characters “must always have a chance, no matter how small, a chance of somehow escaping what otherwise would be inevitable destruction.”

5. D&D’s fourth-edition designers seemed uncomfortable with a spell that always hit without a save, so the edition’s original version required an attack roll. When D&D fans griped that fourth veered too far from the game’s roots, the designers appealed to nostalgia by again making the missiles always hit. The 2010 rules update announces the change.

6. In fifth edition, wizards can add missiles by casting Magic Missile with a higher-level spell slot. In earlier editions, higher-level casters gain extra missiles for free. Back then, magic users started as weak characters who only launched one missile when they cast their day’s only 1st-level spell. But wizards steadily gained more spells, and higher-level spells, and even their first-level spells like Magic Missile gained strength. At higher levels, wizards boasted much more power than any other class. Gary Gygax felt comfortable with dominant, high-level wizards so long as they suffered through lower levels as feeble magic users. Today’s designers strive to match the power of every class at every level. Part of that balance comes from attaching a price to extra missiles.

7. In fifth edition, the missiles strike simultaneously. This means the strikes count as a single source of damage for things like resistance and that 3 magic missiles striking a character at 0 HP does not count as 3 failed death saves. A concentrating spellcaster hit by multiple missiles makes one Constitution save against a difficulty class set by the volley’s total damage. See 9 More Fifth-Edition D&D Rules Questions Answered by the Designers.

Update: In a newer answer to the same question, lead-designer Jeremy Crawford reversed the answer given at the convention Q&A. He now says the make separate concentration rolls for each missile. This makes Magic Missile an efficient way to break concentration.

8. Strictly by the fifth-edition rules, when you cast Magic Missile, you roll 1d4 and use the result to set the same damage for every missile. This stems from a rule on page 196 of the Player’s Handbook. “If a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target at the same time, roll the damage once for all of them.” The interpretation comes from lead-designer Jeremy Crawford. In practice, Jeremy allows players to roll separate damage for every missile, just like Gary did in 1975.

Should Charm Person Work Like a Jedi Mind Trick?

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In three original, brown Dungeons & Dragons books, what spell ranks as the most powerful? At 6th level, disintegrate could turn someone to dust, but charm person could put someone “completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such time as the ‘charm’ is dispelled.” Would you rather turn a foe to dust or turn a king or empress into your thrall? And charm person rates as a mere 1st-level spell, available to the weakest of mages.

Charm person brings more power. No contest. Why did such a potent spell land at first level? Read to the end for the answer.

D&D’s fifth-edition rules curtail charm person’s original power. “The charmed creature regards you as a friendly acquaintance.” But even weakened, the spell might outrank disintegrate. Would you rather turn a hostile king to dust or make him regard you as a friendly acquaintance? You could go far with help from a powerful and friendly acquaintance.

Charm person delivers power, but when I play wizards, the spell’s potential frustrates me. I dream of using charm like a sort of Jedi mind trick, subtly casting it with a hand wave and making allies—or at least friendly acquaintances—of all who stand in my way.

I’m thwarted because charm person is a spell, and spells work differently than Jedi mind tricks in two key ways:

  • People usually notice someone casting a spell.
  • Spellcasting takes longer than a hand wave.

According the Player’s Handbook (p.203) spells with verbal components require “the chanting of mystic words.” Somatic components add “forceful gesticulation or an intricate set of gestures.” Most D&D worlds make magic common enough for ordinary folks to recognize spellcasting when it starts.

Folks also know that spells can pose severe danger. A spellcaster can shoot bolts of fire, or worse, compel you to do terrible things.

In many D&D scenes, someone who witnesses spellcasting will probably assume the worst and take sensible precautions—if not violent steps. Even villagers will know that they can’t usually be ensorcelled by someone who can’t see them.

Folks in the market won’t assume someone who starts a spell intends to use prestidigitation to clean a stain. Spells can make you do terrible things—like give away free merchandise.

Of course, the circumstances matter. Today, if an actor in a play pulls a gun, no one clears the theater. If someone in the audience pulls a gun, people take cover. Spellcasting has as much potential to be deadly or entertaining.

To cast a spell without provoking a fight, characters may need to fool their target into believing a spell is harmless, or even beneficial. Can the wizard bluff the chief into expecting a spell that will lift a curse? Despite any deception, targets with arcane knowledge may recognize a spell from the casting. They may even loose a counterspell.

Spellcasting in a D&D world often looks like a potentially hostile act. Can a target do anything before a spell like charm takes effect?

Often, yes.

In D&D, when someone in a tense situation makes a provocative move, roll initiative. Then, start taking turns from the top of initiative order. Nobody has to start fighting, but if the queen’s guards see the wizard start chanting and gesturing, they may loose arrows.

To some players, forcing the wizard into initiative order either seems unfair or defies their sense of the game. The wizard acted first, right?

Stop imagining initiative as a way to settle who starts acting first. In D&D, everyone in a round does 6 seconds of fighting all at the same time. Turns just exist as a completely unrealistic way to make sense of all those actions in a fun way. Who starts their 6 seconds first matters far less than who finishes first. The first to finish lands the first blow.

To picture how initiative works, imagine a Western where two gunslingers face each other. Each dares the other to draw, but the first to move may still fall to someone quicker to shoot.

“But,” players argue, “The wizard gained surprise, because our characters were just talking.”

No. The players at the kitchen table are just talking. In the game world, the queen faces a group of hardened, armed killers. While the woman with the lute seems agreeable, the ranger keeps an arrow nocked and the dwarf fingers his axe and glowers. (Charisma was his dump stat.) The queen knows these types by bloody reputation. When wizard the starts chanting, no one feels surprise except the ranger. (That player is sending a text.)

This sometimes defies players’ expectations, so when someone interrupts a role-playing scene with an attack, I explain that despite their “surprise,” everyone will act in initiative order. Then I ask if they still want to start something.

Initiative does more than support the game’s fiction; it avoids rewarding instigators with a free attack. Many players enjoy role-playing scenes, so don’t reward impatient players who spoil the dialog. (For more, see What to do when a player interrupts a role-playing scene to start a battle.)

Sometimes a wizard can cast spells without starting a fight by concealing the act of casting. Mystic words and forceful gestures seem hard to hide, but some combination of distraction, background noise, and concealment might succeed. In a noisy ballroom, a caster could make a Dexterity (Slight of Hand) check to hide a gesture. In the throne room, a party member might engineer a noisy distraction. Perhaps, with a Charisma (Performance) check, a bard can conceal mystic words and gestures in a song and dance. These misdirections give players a chance to show skill and ingenuity.

Still, if characters aim to charm the queen, they probably have to find a way to get her alone somewhere in the caster’s line of sight. Otherwise, her court would see the bard’s song and dance, note the queen’s change in attitude, and connect the dots. Guards know that the queen can’t be spellbound by a bard with a split skull.

With these challenges, charming someone powerful starts looking less like a quick way to wealth and influence and more like a heist. Such undertakings make great adventures.

By now, many readers probably want to set me straight in the comment section. “Hey dummy, The Jedi mind trick isn’t charm person, but more like suggestion.” Do the suggestion spell’s components resemble a hand wave and the suggested instruction? “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

A soft dungeon master could allow their children such tricks, but that defies the game. Verbal components consist of mystic words. In a tweet, designer Jeremy Crawford confirms the rules. “The spell’s suggestion is a separate, intelligible utterance.”

Suggestion appeared in the Greyhawk supplement two years before Star Wars reached theaters, and Gary Gygax drew inspiration from hypnotism, not Jedi.

If you want to use charm to turn enemies into friends and use suggestion to bend the will of kings and queens, you need skill and a clever plan—or to play a sorcerer with the Subtle Spell metamagic option. As a DM, I relish seeing players show ingenuity in my D&D games, so I favor these limitations. As a player, well, I’m creating a sorcerer for my next character. Always look out for sorcerers.

Why did Gary Gygax put the original charm person spell at first level despite its power? Original D&D debuted as a tightly-focused game where treasure hunters entered dungeons, spent turns moving and fighting, and kept score in gold. (See The Surprising Trait Fourth Edition Shared With Original Dungeons & Dragons.) Characters in dungeons didn’t meet queens or even shopkeepers to charm. Instead, magic users cast charm person to turn one attacking orc into an ally who could walk ahead. Such redshirts died in the next trap or next battle. As the game blossomed, D&D’s simple style of play disappeared. As soon as Greyhawk reached players, charm person started to weaken. Fifth edition includes the weakest version yet. Even so, at 1st level, charm person rates as strong.

A Dungeons & Dragons Summoning Spell Reference

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Many summoning spells in fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons explicitly allow the player to choose the creatures summoned. Others only let the player choose from broad options. Typically players choose the quantity and challenge rating of creatures.

This reference lists typical creatures summoned by each conjuration spell. Download a Markdown version, or a PDF version or a low-ink PDF formatted using the The Homebrewery.

Spells Where the DM Determines Summoned Creatures

Spells that let players choose broad options work best when the dungeon master selects the specific creatures summoned. The Sage Advice Compendium issued by D&D’s designers explains, “A spellcaster can certainly express a preference for what creatures show up, but it’s up to the DM to determine if they do. The DM will often choose creatures that are appropriate for the campaign and that will be fun to introduce in a scene.”

To help DMs make these selections, this reference lists the common monsters summoned by each spell. To make random selection easy, the creatures are numbered.

Conjure Animals

You summon fey spirits that take the form of beasts.

Land Beasts
Qty CR Creature
1 2 1: Giant Boar, 2: Cave Bear, 3: Giant Constrictor Snake, 4: Giant Elk, 5: Polar Bear, 6: Rhinoceros, 7: Saber-toothed Tiger, 8: Swarm of Poisonous Snakes
2 1 1: Brown Bear, 2: Dire Wolf, 3: Giant Eagle, 4: Giant Hyena, 5: Giant Spider, 6: Giant Toad, 7: Lion, 8: Tiger
4 1/2 1: Ape, 2: Black Bear, 3: Crocodile, 4: Giant Goat, 5: Giant Wasp, 6: Swarm of Insects
8 1/4 1: Axe Beak, 2: Boar, 3: Constrictor Snake, 4: Elk, 5: Giant Badger, 6: Giant Bat, 7: Giant Centipede, 8: Giant Frog, 9: Giant Lizard, 10: Giant Owl, 11: Giant Poisonous Snake, 12: Giant Wolf Spider, 13: Panther, 14: Swarm of Bats, 15: Swarm of Rats, 16: Swarm of Ravens, 17: Wolf

When you cast this spell using certain higher-level spell slots, you choose one of the summoning options above, and more creatures appear: twice as many with a 5th-level slot, three times as many with a 7th-level slot, and four times as many with a 9th-level slot:

Swimming Beasts
Qty CR Creature
1 2 1: Giant Constrictor Snake, 2: Hunter Shark, 3: Plesiosaurus, 4: Swarm of Poisonous Snakes
2 1 1: Giant Octopus, 2: Giant Toad, 3: Swarm of Quippers
4 1/2 1: Crocodile, 2: Giant Sea Horse, 3: Reef Shark
8 1/4 1: Constrictor Snake, 2: Giant Frog, 3: Giant Poisonous Snake

Conjure Minor Elementals

You summon elementals.

Elementals
Qty CR Creature
1 2 1: Azer, 2: Gargoyle
2 1 Fire Snake
4 1/2 1: Dust Mephit, 2: Ice Mephit, 3: Magma Mephit, 4: Magmin
8 1/4 1: Mud Mephit, 2: Smoke Mephit, 3: Steam Mephit

When you cast this spell using certain higher-level spell slots, you choose one of the summoning options above, and more creatures appear: twice as many with a 6th-level slot and three times as many with an 8th-level slot.

Conjure Woodland Beings

You summon fey creatures.

Fey Creatures
Qty CR Creature
1 2 1: Darkling Elder*, 2: Meenlock*, 3: Seahag
2 1 1. Dryad, 2: Quickling
4 1/2 1: Darkling*, 2: Satyr
8 1/4 1: Blink Dog, 2: Pixie, 3: Sprite

Creatures marked with an asterisk appeared in Volo’s Guide to Monsters.

When you cast this spell using certain higher-level spell slots, you choose one of the summoning options above, and more creatures appear: twice as many with a 6th-level slot and three times as many with an 8th-level slot.

Summon Lesser Demons

Roll to determine the number and challenge rating of the demons from among the possibilities.

Because official D&D lacks challenge rating 1/2 demons, DMs can either rule that summoning 4 demons brings lower CR demons or they can ignore that possible outcome.

Demons
Qty CR Creature
2 1 1. Maw Demon (Volo’s Guide to Monsters), 2: Quasit
4 1/2 None
8 1/4 1: Abyssal Wretch (Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes), 2: Dretch

When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 6th or 7th level, you summon twice as many demons. If you cast it using a spell slot of 8th or 9th level, you summon three times as many demons.

Spells Where the Caster Chooses Summoned Creatures

This reference lists the likely options available when players choose summoned creatures.

Conjure Celestial

You summon a celestial of challenge rating 4 or lower.

CR Creature
2 Pegasus
4 Qouatl
5 Unicorn

When you cast this spell using a 9th-level spell slot, you summon a celestial of challenge rating 5 or lower.

Conjure Elemental

Choose an area of air, earth, fire, or water that fills a 10-foot cube within range. An elemental of challenge rating 5 or lower appropriate to the area you chose appears in an unoccupied space within 10 feet of it. For example, a fire elemental emerges from a bonfire, and an earth elemental rises up from the ground.

CR Creature
5 Air Elemental, Earth Elemental, Fire Elemental, Salamander, Water Elemental, Xorn
6 Galeb Duhr, Invisible Stalker
7 Air Elemental Myrmidon, Earth Elemental Myrmidon, Fire Elemental Myrmidon, Water Elemental Myrmidon
9 Frost Salamander (Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes)

All elemental myrmidons appear in Princes of the Apocalypse.

Infernal Calling

Uttering a dark incantation, you summon a devil from the Nine Hells. You choose the devil’s type, which must be one of challenge rating 6 or lower, such as a barbed devil or a bearded devil. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 6th level or higher, the challenge rating increases by 1 for each slot level above 5th.

CR Creature
5 Barbed Devil
6 White Abisai (Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes)
7 Black Abisai (Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes)
8 Chain Devil
8 Bone Devil
10 Orthon (Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes)

Summon Greater Demon

You utter foul words, summoning one demon from the chaos of the Abyss. You choose the demon’s type, which must be one of challenge rating 5 or lower. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the challenge rating increases by 1 for each slot level above 4th.

CR Creature
5 Babau (Volo’s Guide to Monsters), Dybbuk (Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes), Shadow Demon
5 Balgura, Tanarukk (Volo’s Guide to Monsters)
6 Chasme, Vrock
7 Armanite (Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes), Draegloth (Volo’s Guide to Monsters), Maurezhi (Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes)
8 Hezrou, Shoosuva (Volo’s Guide to Monsters)
9 Glabrezu
10 Yochlol

How to Create Wire Spell Templates for Dungeons & Dragons

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Nothing stalls a fight on a grid like a circular or conical area-effect spell. Everyone waits while someone counts and recounts squares, and then figures angles like a pool shark. For fireballs and other circles, macrame rings trim minutes from the process. The rings come in variety of sizes, so you can get an 8-inch ring for Fireball, a 6″ ring for Darkness, and a 4″ ring for Antimagic Field.

ArcKnight’s sets of flat-plastic templates include conical templates, but I favor wire templates. Rigid patterns make measuring easier and wire can often be set on a map without moving any miniatures. No one manufactures wire cones that work as well as macrame rings, so I made my own.

My cones along with circular macrame rings

 

Materials

These templates require these components:

Home-improvement stores sell all these components, including the heat-shrink tubing.

Tools

To make the templates you need these tools:

Steps

To create a 6-inch-cone template and a 6-inch extension, do the following steps:

  1. In the corner of a large sheet, use the protractor to mark a 60° angle. Extend the angle 12 inches and then mark each line at 6 inches. Rotate the ruler at 6 and 12 inches to draw circular arc between the branches.

    I drew cones on a paper folder.

  2. Clean the steel rods.
  3. Use the pliers bend the rod to match the shape of the 6-inch cone.

    Shaped 6-inch cone

  4. Using the hacksaw, cut the rod where the wire overlaps.
  5. Bend and trim the remaining wire to the shape of the 6-inch extension.
  6. Connect the ends of each template with heat-shrink tubing, and then use the heat gun to shrink the connection.

    Heat-shrink tubing

  7. Paint the templates.

    Painted cone

These templates approach the quality of macrame rings.

Finished cone and extension

Spell Blow Back—How Part of D&D that Everyone Avoided Shaped the 5th-Edition Power Curve

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The original Dungeons & Dragons game featured some activities that most players didn’t enjoy and eventually came to skip. I already wrote about mapping. Unless your group plays D&D in a deliberately old style, you don’t draft a player as a mapper who struggles to translate room dimensions to graph paper.

Spells with punishing side-effects qualify as another nuisance that D&D players learned to skip.

With some spells, players could simply avoid the side effects. The risk of instant death tends to limit teleportation to safe, familiar locations. And when Polymorph Other threatened system shock or a loss of individuality, party members never volunteered to fight in the form of a dragon.

Sometimes, avoiding side effects meant avoiding the spells. I’ve never seen anyone cast Contact Higher Plane. Apparently, few players like risking their character to a random chance of insanity.

Wish brought a mini-game where the dungeon master to tried grant the letter of the wish while perverting its spirit. Players countered by attempting to phrase their wishes to avoid any punishing interpretations. By third edition, players could skip the mini-game by selecting a wish from a menu of approved options.

A few irresistible spells included punishing side effects that DMs often ignored.

Haste aged its target a year, which forced a severe downside on humans, but an insignificant one on elves—and on humans in casual games without either bookkeeping or a reckoning of calendar years.

Lighting bolts could hit a wall and double back on the caster. When players started treating bolts as billiard balls and demanded to hit every foe using a trick shot, I suspect many DMs gave up on the bounce-back rule.

Fireball proved most popular and suffered the worst side effects. The original version risked blow back. “Fire Ball will generally conform to the shape of the space (elongate or whatever).” This meant a Fireball confined to small dungeon places could easily blow back and damage player characters. This drawback not only threatened PCs, but it also weighed the game with complicated volume calculations. D&D blogger and college mathematics lecturer Delta dutifully did the math. “After years of applying this, let me offer a heartfelt mathematician’s ‘Aaaarrgghh!!!’”

Worse than damage, Fireball destroyed treasure. “Besides causing damage to creatures, the Fireball ignites all combustible materials in the burst radius, and the heart of the Fireball will melt soft metals such as gold, copper, silver, etc. Items exposed to the spell’s effects must be rolled for to determine if they are affected.” Hitting PCs with collateral damage hurt enough, but players hated seeing treasure within their grasp destroyed.

Gary Gygax saw the the gotchas as a test of player skill and relished enforcing the punishments. His son Ernie recalled casting Fireball and how his father “would always let you know whatever cool thing you had destroyed. Normally it was difficult to figure out what anything was, but once it was destroyed, my dad would share. ‘Oh, it’s a real shame.’”

Few others saw the fun. Ernie Gygax found the lost treasure so bothersome that his wizard Tenser developed the spell Cone of Cold specifically to avoid the drawbacks of Fireball.

Faced with Fireball’s volume calculations, with item saving throws interrupting the game, and with the protests of players, many DMs just ignored Fireball’s side effects.

But without the gotchas, Haste, Lightning Bolt, and especially Fireball offered much more power. By Gary Gygax’s calculation, Cone of Cold—a replacement for Fireball without the punishing side effects—rated as a 5th-level spell.

The 5th-edition rules rewrite Haste, Lightning Bolt, and Fireball without the downsides. Haste now requires concentration and just targets one creature, so it loses some of its old power. Wizards seldom prepare Lighting Bolt because Fireball overshadows it. But Fireball keeps all the punch of a 5th-level spell with none of the downsides of its 3rd-level origin. When wizards gain the ability to cast Fireball, they leap in power.

Rather than dropping the power of the best spell available to 5th-level wizards, the designers of 5th edition gave every class some new ability that matches the Wizard’s leap in power. Fighters gain a second attack, Monks gain Stunning Strike, Rogues gain Uncanny Dodge, and so on. For more, see The obvious innovation in fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons that no designer saw before. I suspect the designers boosted Hypnotic Pattern from a average 2nd-level spell to an powerful (and annoying) 3rd-level spell so Bards could match that leap in power.

By the way, Cone of Cold isn’t the only spell made to avoid a part of D&D that players preferred to skip. Originally, some of D&D’s strategy came from the job of hauling coins out of the dungeon. Players hired bearers and bought mules to help. Still, no one found encumbrance fun or baggage trains heroic, and Gary must have noticed. He created Tenser’s Floating Disk on behalf of Ernie and every other player who wanted a painless way to recover every last copper from the dungeon.

What I Wish the Player’s Handbook Had Explained About Some More D&D Spells

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In my last post, I offered some extra explanation for common spells that called for it. This post covers more spells.

Hex

Until Hex ends, the caster deals an extra d6 damage every time they hit the hexed creature with an attack. Some players hope that spells like a Magic Missile qualify for extra damage, but no. Actual attacks include an attack roll. Hex rewards casters capable of rolling lots of attacks from spells like Eldritch Blast.

The target of a hex suffers disadvantage on ability checks made with an ability of the caster’s choice. This penalty does not affect saving throws, so the disadvantage rarely comes into play.

Hypnotic Pattern

Creatures outside the 30-foot cube spanned by a Hypnotic Pattern see the pattern, but don’t suffer its effects.

When creatures become hypnotized, their intelligent allies typically focus their attacks on breaking the spellcaster’s concentration.

Creatures with advantage on saves against being charmed also gain advantage saving against Hypnotic Pattern. Creatures immune to charm cannot be affected.

Hypnotized creatures can’t take actions, but they can still evade attacks. Neither the victims’ AC nor their saving throws suffer penalties.

Suggestion

Players dream of casting Suggestion unnoticed, but observers will spot the enchantment. In addition to the usual gestures, casting Suggestion requires a verbal component of mystic words. The verbal component includes more than just the suggestion itself.

A suggestion must seem reasonable, so many suggestions include a bit of context. Jeremy Crawford offers some plausible suggestions:

“Flee! A dragon comes.”

“Don’t attack; I intend no harm.”

“Your sword is cursed. Drop it!”

In most cases, giving the king a suggestion like “execute the queen because she plots against you” would fail. Designer Mike Mearls says that the suggestion would seem too unlikely and too obviously harmful. “Context is really key. If the queen was already on trial, then it might work to push king to a guilty verdict.”

Wall of Force

Although a wall of force blocks spells just like in past editions, the new text fails to make this obvious. The description of Wall of Force only says that nothing can “physically pass” through the wall.

Designer Jeremy Crawford explains that a wall of force grants total cover, and that spells cannot target things behind total cover. (See page 204 in the Player’s Handbook.) Also. total cover blocks areas of effect from extending from their point of origin into the wall of force. This means that the wall blocks virtually all spells and their effects.

Spells like Teleport and Misty Step can pass a wall of force. These spells target the creatures who teleport, not the destination. Misty Step only requires the caster to see a destination in range. This interpretation fits D&D tradition, which says that creatures who teleport travel through the astral plane and that walls of force do not extend to the astral plane.

In the past, a wall of force could not block gaze attacks. This still applies to monsters, because they have gaze attacks that only require a victim who sees the eyes. However, the Eyebite spell implies that the caster targets victims.

When a caster creates a wall of force consisting of ten 10-foot panels, all the panels must form a single flat surface with a side of each panel connecting to another panel’s side. The wall cannot include checkerboard-style, corner-to-corner links.

Spells where the affected can’t see the areas of effect

For spells like Silence and Darkness, marking the spell’s area of effect on a map steals the uncertainty experienced by characters under the spell. Creatures in a Fog Cloud cannot see whether a step takes them deeper into the cloud. Creatures in Hunger of Hadar cannot see a path out and desperately want to find it.

A Silence spell that affects some characters can create a fun situation. Instead of marking the silence on the map, tell the characters who can no longer hear. Those players may not talk to other players, nor can the other players talk to them. Nobody sees the bounds of the silence, but they know who can’t be heard. If someone wants to help lead the characters out of the silence, they must point and gesture.

Spells like Darkness and Fog Cloud effectively blind characters, leaving them with no knowledge of the spells’ reach.

If a spell leaves out some of the party and enables them to see the area of effect, handle the spell in the easiest way: Mark its area on the battle map and let everyone take advantage of the perfect information. This assumes that characters shout directions to guide their blinded allies. Also, this assumes that everyone gives and follows directions perfectly. As long as players and their foes sometimes benefit from the assumption, it seems fair.

If a spell blinds everyone in a party, ask all the players how they intend to act and where they plan to move. Then go back to taking turns. When someone leaves the spell’s area, you can mark it the battle map. But until the next round, you can hold the players to their declared actions without being unfair. Everyone in a round takes their actions in the same six seconds. Any character who found a way out was too busy getting there to guide anyone else.

If a spell blinds monsters, then as the dungeon master, you must take the familiar job of reacting as the creatures would. Outside of a spell’s area, smart creatures might shout instructions to guide allies. Inside, smart creatures might spread out, assuming the caster aimed to blind as many creatures as possible. Aggressive creatures might charge the spellcaster. Cautious creatures back away until they can see. If more than one action seems equally likely, roll a die. Whatever the monsters do, explain their rational. Players should feel that the monsters act on something other than the DM’s perfect knowledge.

What the Player’s Handbook Should Have Explained about 6 Popular D&D Spells

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Fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons features popular spells like fireball that leave little room for interpretation, but others that require extra help. Some spells only become clear after you chase rules in other parts of the book, others make key points easy to overlook, and some just call for tips to run at the table.

Animate Objects

The Animate Objects spell description never mentions that casters always choose to animate a handful of sling stones or similar tiny objects. I suspect the designers never realized the spell would play this way, and that makes me sad. I want a spell that causes tables, chairs or, best of all, statues to spring to life and attack. In fantasy, that scene appears everywhere. It resonates.

Instead, casters choose to use Animate Objects to make make 10 tiny rocks fly up bonk the victim. Visually, the spell looks just like Telekinesis. Except Animate Objects features an attack at the upper limit of the power curve. If I ever expand my list of 4 most annoying spells, Animate Objects ranks number 5 based on failed potential. The ten attack rolls also slow play, and that just adds to the sadness.

Animate Objects never matches the popular imagination because the spell works best with 10 tiny objects, which together deal more damage than any other option. I want a spell that forces casters to animate furniture in a room, but D&D delivers a spell that only forces a caster to carry a handful of copper pieces to animate.

When animated objects lack legs, they can fly. Because the spell turns objects into creatures, I would rule that a large-sized object could carry a medium-sized rider. This allows, say, a large flying carpet able to carry someone for a minute. Animated brooms lack the size to carry a rider, but halflings can fly medium-sized surfboards.

Banishment

When Banishment sends a creature back to their native plane, the banishment makes a popping noise.

If fighting temporarily stops, and then banished creatures return to the battlefield, reroll initiative. This makes the restart of battle more interesting than just letting every player ready an attack for their foe’s return. Plus, the banished creature’s return rates as a game situation that calls for initiative. Everyone stands ready. The best initiative proves quickest to attack.

For more on initiative, see What to do When a Player Interrupts a Role-Playing Scene to Start a Battle.

Counterspell

The game lacks an official way for spellcasters to identify spells to Counterspell. As a DM, you could require a Wisdom (Perception) check to see the casting, and then a Intelligence (Arcana) check to identify the spell. Nobody dislikes Counterspell enough to impose such hurdles.

Instead, use designer Jeremy Crawford’s house rule: If the spell exists on your spell list and you can see the caster, then you can identify the spell. You know the spell’s default level, but not whether the caster has raised the spell to a higher level.

Counterspell targets the caster of a spell. Characters cannot target someone they cannot see or someone behind total cover. Whenever possible, enemy spellcasters will work their magic out of sight or beyond the 60-foot range of Counterspell.

Force Cage

Force Cage brings enough power to turn many showdowns into one-sided beatdowns. The spell imposes one limitation: The spell’s material components cost 1,500 gp. If the material components for a spell have a price, casting the spell consumes the components. I suspect the designers think the price of a Force Cage limits the spell more it actually does. By the time 13th-level characters can cast the spell, they typically gain 229,242 gp worth of loot.

Globe of Invulnerability

Players rarely cast Globe of Invulnerability, but enemy casters might. Spells of level 5 and lower cannot pass into the Globe of Invulnerability, but Dispel Magic can target and dispel the globe.

Guidance

If a player stands at a threshold of potential fight and wants a d4 bonus to initiative, they can cast Guidance. Initiative counts as a Dexterity ability check, so Guidance helps. Some players always want this boost, so they claim their clerics spend every minute casting Guidance like a nervous tic.

This tactic creates three side effects:

  • Guidance includes a verbal component, so casting creates noise.
  • Because the cleric spends every moment either casting Guidance or concentrating on Guidance, their passive perception suffers the -5 penalty imposed on passive ability checks made with disadvantage.
  • The first time a party member grows tired of the constant incantations and demands silence, I award the player inspiration.

Next: Suggestion, Wall of Force, and more

How new changes created the 4 most annoying spells in Dungeons & Dragons

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In Dungeons & Dragons, if you play a rogue, the class description describes your key powers. All rogues make sneak attacks, cunning actions, and use evasion. If you play a spellcaster, your powers sprawl into the spell list. Every wizard tends to prepare the same powerful spells on the list. Once wizards reach fifth level, they all start casting fireball. Spells also appear as a monster powers, turning some spells into foundational abilities that span the game.

magic-circleI’ve asked D&D players and dungeon masters what spells they find the most annoying or the least fun in play. Four spells dominated the list of annoyances.

All of the annoying spells offer enough power to make them common in play once characters can cast them. Like sneak attack, these tend to appear in most fights, but unlike sneak attack, these spells sap a little bit of the fun out of play.

Some readers will ask, “So what? Just ban the spells from your game.” But DMs in the Adventures League cannot ban anything. At best, authors of adventures can concoct ways to discourage the spells. In Barovia, Banishment fails. In the D&D Open, players lose points for using spells like Hypnotic Pattern.

Curiously, none of the 4 annoying spells bothered players of previous D&D editions. I wondered why. When I investigated the origins of these 4 spells, I discovered that all introduced critical changes that turned them from forgettable to aggravating. None of these spells even appeared in the playtest documents. Now they’re enshrined in the official rules.

So what are the 4 spells and what makes them so irritating?

Hypnotic pattern

What makes it so annoying?

Hypnotic Pattern forces every creature in its area of effect to make a Wisdom save to avoid being incapacitated. Few monsters boast good Wisdom saves. With half or more of their foes incapacitated, a party can focus fire on the few that still pose a threat, picking off the outnumbered monsters. By the end of the encounter, player characters go from one beguiled victim to the next, raining attacks on the defenseless pinatas. As a DM, I may be biased, but I think the least fun scenes in the game come when PCs beat helpless foes to death.

Why did it work before?

Hypnotic Pattern started as the Illusionist class’s answer to the Sleep spell. Like Sleep, an ally could break a victim’s stupor. Like Sleep, Hypnotic Pattern only affected a limited number of total hit dice. The spell never proved more troublesome than Sleep.

Third edition tinkered with the spell a little. Victims could no longer be roused, but the caster needed to concentrate—and in 3E, concentration demanded a standard action.

Where does it go wrong?

The fifth-edition designers removed the hit-die limit. Perhaps someone decided on a simulationist approach: If everyone in an area sees the pattern, they all should save. Now every creature in the area of effect faced a Wisdom save to avoid becoming incapacitated. Few monsters boast good Wisdom saves. As with the original spell, allies or damage can rouse hypnotized creatures, but those allies face an entire party working to block them. The spell still requires concentration, but concentration in 5E costs no action.

How should it have worked?

The spell should have followed the pattern of Sleep and kept a hit-point limit.

Counterspell

What makes it so annoying?

Part of the fun of Dungeons & Dragons comes from casting imaginary spells to bring down terrible foes. Part of the game’s challenge comes from facing evil wizards that rock the battle with spells. Counterspell drains the fun out of those confrontations. Instead of casting spells, you don’t. Instead of battling against spell effects, nothing happens.

Meanwhile at the table, everyone gets mired in a rules dispute over whether the wizard who just had his spell countered can counter that Counterspell. (Yes, wizards casting a spell can counter the Counterspell that counters their spell.)

Why did it work before?

Up to fifth edition, D&D lacked a spell named Counterspell. Instead, Dispel Magic could counter spells. In the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, Dispel Magic can “counter the casting of spells in the area of effect.” But the game offered no clue how countering would work in play. Rather than inventing rules for readied actions or reactions decades early, players did the sensible thing and ignored countering.

Third edition introduced the readied action—the foundation players needed to use Dispel Magic as a counterspell. To counter, spellcasters readied a counterspell action and watched for something to counter. If the round passed without anyone starting a spell worth blocking, you wasted an action. In practice, wizards never tried to counter. Better to just cast a spell of your own.

Where does it go wrong?

The counterspell function of Dispel Magic hardly fits the spell’s disenchant role. By splitting Counterspell into a separate spell, the 5E designers let the spell work as a reaction. Instead of reading an action to counter, wizards could counter any time, even on their own turn, even as they cast another spell.

Countering spells turned from a process that demanded one or more standard actions, to something wizards could do without losing time for another spell.

For the first time ever, D&D introduced the Counterspell duel. Instead of doing something, dueling spell casters do nothing. Turns out nothing isn’t much fun.

Sly Flourish worked to salvage some fun from Counterspell by adding colorful descriptions. He’s still making chicken salad out of something other than chicken.

How should it have worked?

In 5E readying a spell such as Dispel Magic costs the spell slot even when the spell goes unused. If Counterspell were gone, and if Dispel Magic worked as it did in 3E, no one would counter spells. I think everyone would be content with that.

Banishment

What makes it so annoying?

The Banishment spell forces targets to make a Charisma save to avoid being sent to another plane.

Banishment lets players split combat scenes into two parts. In part one, the wizard or cleric banishes the toughest foes so their party can gang up on the outnumbered mooks in a one-sided romp. In the second part, the banished creatures spring back into reality and the party ambushes them. A potentially compelling fight turns into a rout followed by a dreary murder scene.

Once 7th-level players gain access to Banishment, it becomes a key factor in encounter design. If any monster enters the battle looking like a boss, he’s sure to be banished. Every boss now needs one or more allies of similar power.

Why did it work before?

In The Dungeons & Dragons spells Gary Gygax never meant for players, I told of Gary’s tendency to add every magical effect from fantasy to his game. This urge led him to include a spell that banished creatures to whatever hell they came from. Unearthed Arcana introduced the 7th-level spell Banishment along with a 4th-level version called Dissmissal. Because the spells only worked on visitors from another plane, they both rated as weak. Unlike Dismissal, Banishment capped the number of hit dice it could affect, but it offered ways to reduce the target’s save. Banishment and Dismissal served a narrow use, so they seldom reached play.

Where does it go wrong?

Someone on the D&D design team must have fancied the notion of banishing enemies from the battlefield. They championed changes that turned Banishment from something no one ever casts into an inevitable opening move. Not only does the spell drop into Dismissal’s 4th-level slot, but it also banishes natives from their own plane. I suppose the designer figured that if these banished creatures bounce back after a minute, then the spell would be balanced. Nope. The return just gives one-sided battles an ugly coda.

How should it have worked?

D&D thrived for 11 years without Banishment. The game would have thrived without it.

The 5E version of the spell might be fun if banished creatures returned in 1d8 rounds at a point of their choice within line of sight of their last location. This change would add enough uncertainty to avoid the pinata treatment.

Conjure Animals

What makes it so annoying?

Conjure Animals belongs to a class of annoying spells including Conjure Minor Elementals and Conjure Woodland Beings. The spells imply the caster gets to choose which creatures appear. This invited broken options. For example, conjuring 8 challenge rating 1/4 elk created an instant stampede. Eight challenge rating 1/4 pixies might cast at-will spells like Fly and Phantasmal Force for you.

In a clarification, designer Jeremy Crawford wrote that players only select the number of creatures to summon. The DM chooses the specific creatures, selecting creatures appropriate for the campaign and fun for the scene.

Nonetheless, as soon as Timmy summons 8 of anything, the game screeches to a halt. Suddenly Timmy manages his own actions and those of 8 proxies, taking more actions than the rest of the table combined.

Why did it work before?

Summoning spells came as a recent addition to the game. Originally, druids outdoors could call creatures from the wood, but then the Druid still had to make friends. None of this worked in a fight. At least the forest friends could tidy a cottage during the span of a musical number.

Third edition added actual summoning spells, but none created more than 1d4+1 creatures. Instead of 8 woodland friends, Timmy got about 3. Still, the problem of Timmy taking so much time on stage prompted the 4E designers to avoid summoning spells.

Where does it go wrong?

Somehow in the process of striking all traces of 4E from the D&D, the 5E designers forgot the problem of summoning spells.

How should it have worked?

Spells like Conjure Animals should never bring more than 4 creatures, and the options should favor single creatures.

Related: The 3 Most Annoying High-Level Spells in D&D