Tag Archives: initiative

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

What to do when a player interrupts a role-playing scene to start a battle

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Every dungeon master sees an impatient player spoil a scene sooner or later. Or sooner. The party talks with the Viper Queen when a player grows restless and blurts out, “I hit her with my axe!” If you have yet to deal with such a scene, I hope your second turn in the DM’s chair goes as well as your first.

Instigators who interrupt role-playing scenes expect to end tiresome banter and be rewarded with a free attack. While everyone was talking, they struck by surprise! As they see it, they earned first strike. Cheating them of a free attack just makes you a bad DM who wants to screw over the players.

Roll for initiative!

Except the rules say something else: When a character makes a hostile move, roll initiative. The instigator takes a turn when it comes. If a player with higher initiative wants to stop the attack, then they gain their chance. If a foe with higher initiative wants to stop the attack by, say, bashing the instigator’s skull, then they get a chance too.

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.

Instigators argue that the Wild West showdown differs from the scene in the game. The gunslingers stand ready, but the characters in the game are just talking.

Nope. The players at the kitchen table are just talking. In the game world, the Viper 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 Viper Queen knows these types by bloody reputation. When the dwarf hurls an axe, he takes no one by surprise.

Sometimes, players actually work to surprise foes by launching an attack during a conversation. Perhaps the characters wear cult robes, someone adopts a disguise, or the murder attempt happens at a festival. Before the players earn surprise, these scenes call for Charisma (Deception) checks to seem friendly and to hide deadly intent.

Most of the time though, the sudden attack comes from one player’s impatience. When someone interrupts a role-playing scene with an attack, I explain that despite their “surprise,” everyone will act in initiative order. Then I offer the instigator a chance to take back their action. I hate seeing role-playing scenes cut short even more than I love screwing over the players.

Often, instigators recant their attack. When they don’t, their action may call for more discussion.

If a scene runs its course, and the party grows tired of the villain’s monologue, and someone attacks, then fine. Roll for initiative. But if someone finds a scene tiresome and doesn’t care if anyone else likes it, then starting a fight rates as a jerk move. Players who enjoy role playing and cautious play deserve their fun without some instigator launching an attack.

The excuse of “that’s what my character would do” does not entitle a player to spoil the other players’ fun.

On the DM’s Deep Dive show, Elite DM Teos Abadia explains how he lets the party intervene in-game. “I’ll freeze time. ‘Everyone can see that your character is about to kill this person. Everybody has a chance to stop this. What do you all want to do?’” Teos makes it clear that the single player stands alone against everybody else in the party.

Ultimately though, the game’s social contract does not allow one character to drag an unwilling party into a battle. Players bear responsibility for imagining a character who can cooperate with the other characters on the adventure. (See A role-playing game player’s obligation.) For the game to work, all the players must decide on a mutual course of action.

If you happen to be playing when some player picks a fight that you want no part of, and your DM fails to follow my advice, then try persuading the rest of the party to abandon the instigator to die alone. That’s what my character would do.