5 Common Rules Mistakes for Spellcasting Classes in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

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greetings my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything Dungeons and Dragons including advice for players and guides for Dungeon Master's we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are taking a look at five common rules mistakes players in Dungeons & Dragons fourth edition make when playing a spell casting class so today we're gonna look at five of the biggest misconceptions with the abilities of classes like the bard the druid the Warlock wizard sorcerer and cleric there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling kicking things off we're gonna take a look at the bards jack-of-all-trades ability now on paper this is a very simple ability your bard gets to add one half of their proficiency modifier to any ability check that they make that doesn't already apply their proficiency bonus this seems simple on paper you get to add half your proficiency bonus to skill checks even if you're not proficient in those skills but what many players don't realize is that there's more ability checks in Dungeons and Dragons fourth edition than just the ability checks that you make using skills such as stealth deception intimidation and Arcana on top of all the skills on your character sheet you're also going to be using jack-of-all-trades for things like oppose strength checks or even initiative rules a lot of people don't realize that initiative is a dexterity based ability check and you can apply jack-of-all-trades to this as well jack of all trades can also come up in some interesting ways with spell casting as a bard if your bard selected the dis spell magic spell or took counter spell with one of their magical secrets and you're trying to dis spell or counter a spell of a higher level spell slot than what you use to cast a spell magic or counter spell you have to make a spell casting ability check to see if you successfully dispel or counter that spell as a bard you get to add your jack-of-all-trades bonus to this check the other major misconception here is where this doesn't apply jack of all trades cannot be used for saving throws or attack rolls some people get this misconstrued and think that their skills encompass everything that they do but saving throws and attack rolls are something wholly different and therefore do not get to use jack of all trades characters and Dungeons and Dragons make all sorts of rolls they make damage rolls they make attack rolls they make saving throws they make ability checks but an ability check is always a roll made using a d20 to hit a target number and quite commonly you don't add jack-of-all-trades to damage rolls that your bard makes with their spells or other abilities such as weapon attacks jack of all trades only applies to ability checks made using a d20 the next rules misconception that we're going to be looking at is the comparison between the clerics domain spells and the warlocks expanded spell list on paper these two options look very very similar but they actually work entirely different so we're gonna discuss what those differences are as a cleric you have a list of prepared spells but as a warlock you have a list of spells known when you are casting spells as a cleric you choose the spells that you want to cast from the spells that you've prepared and as a warlock you choose the spells that you want to cast from the spells that you know the clerics domain spells are added to the spells that they have prepared and are always available to the cleric to cast as long as they have a spell slot available to them of the appropriate level when we look at the warlocks expanded spell list this instead is a list of spells that are optional to take when the warlock is choosing their spells knowing they don't get automatically added in they're just additional options this can be very disappointing as it looks like on paper that the warlocks are getting 10 additional spells known thanks to their expanded spell list but unfortunately that's not the case you don't automatically learn these spells granted to you by your patron instead they are part of the general list of warlock spells that you can select when you level up as long as you have those from your patron all cleric spells work like so you choose your prepared spells which is level wisdom modifier for the amount of spells you got you add your domain spells to that and then you use your spell slots to cast those spells this is different than if we look at all the warlock spells which work like so you add your expanded spell list then choose your spells known from the combined list determined by your level and then you use your spell slots to cast those spells so your warlock will never know more spells than what are said on the table for your characters level whereas your cleric will often have a number of spells prepared equal to their level plus their wisdom modifier plus however many levels worth of domain spells they've unlocked the next topic of discussion is going to be regarding the Druids wild shape now instead of talking about the entire feature which we have another video for which I'll put the links in we are going to specifically talk about how wild shape works with spell casting and the way that these two work together because this is where a lot of confusion can come for new druid players when your druid is in a wild shape form you cannot cast spells many players are confused about this and think that perhaps that if they choose a wild shape form that has hands and can manipulate spell components or can form words or they try to cast spells that don't have verbal components or somatic components that they can still cast these spells while they're wild shaped that is not the case your ability to cast spells as a druid in wild shape is not dependent on the components of that spell instead your ability to cast spells as a druid is are you in wild shape if so you cannot cast spells unless you're a level 18 druid in which case knock yourself out now aside from not being able to cast spells there is a very important fact about the Druids wild shape and that is that a druid and wild shape is allowed to maintain concentration on a spell they cast prior to wild shaping and this is where the druid really shines in my opinion this means that if you have wild shaped into a bait err you can still have call lightning or ferry fire or polymorph or conjure animals still in effect as long as you cast that spell before you transformed into your wild shape form the juror at my table combines Moonbeam and a bear form in almost every combat encounter that we get into they cast Moonbeam on their enemy run in turn into a bear and start mauling them and if a spell has an option that allows you to continue to manipulate that spell on subsequent turns you can do this so now our druid is a bear running around the battlefield in melee combat and there's a moon beam moving around the battlefield damaging enemies as well it's a great combination and it works as a druid this is very effective as a circle of the moon druid because you can use your action to cast the spell and then your bonus action to transform so you're ready for battle in a single turn keep in mind that if you do lose your concentration on the spell though you will have to revert back to your form in order to cast a spell with concentration again before going back into wild shape I feel like a broken record bringing this one up again but it's really important to discuss the next one on our list is the sorcerers meta magic specifically quick and spell and how casting spells as a bonus action interacts with your regular spell casting now again we have an entire episode talking about the Sorcerer's meta magic which goes into detail about all the different options available but we want to specifically focus on quick and spell which allows you to switch the casting time of a spell that usually has a casting time of one action to one bonus action this is not a restriction of sorcerers but applies to all spell casters if you cast a spell as a bonus action you cannot cast another spell that turn except for a can trip with a casting time of one action this means that a sorcerer can quicken a fireball to cast it as a bonus action and then follow that up in the same turn by casting Firebolt with their main action but they could not then follow up that quickened fireball with another fireball this even applies to all spell casters so if you're a wizard and you cast misty step which uses your bonus action you then couldn't cast fireball in that same turn you now must only cast a canned trip with a casting time of one action one police where this can be misconstrued is the idea that people say there is no possible way whatsoever to cast two spells on a turn but that's actually not true the way that the text is written specifies that this is when you cast a spell as a bonus action now your action can only be a cancer if you have a way to gain multiple actions on a turn you can in fact cast more than one spell finally we come to perhaps one of the most confusing class features in the game and that is the Wizards spell book itself I don't really understand why this gets such a bad rap for being so confusing because in my mind it's quite straightforward but I do think it's important that we explain exactly how a wizard's spell book works so that new players can understand just how simple it actually is now we do talk a lot about the nuances of how spell casting works in our video for spells and spell casting which we'll link here but when we talk about the spell books specifically there's a few ways that this works differently than every other spell caster in the game and this is because the book does add an additional step between your spells knowing your spells prepared now there's also the spells you have written in your spell book and how those play into spell cast Oh your wizard begins play with several first level spells in their spell book and every time you gain a level you get to add two spells to that spell book if during your adventures you encounter other pieces of arcane magical writing you can spend your downtime and some gold to copy those spells into your spell book then when your wizard prepares their spells for the day they get to choose spells from their spell book to prepare not the entire wizard spell list the wizard spell list defines what spells are allowed to go into your spell book and what spells you can pick from when you're picking those two spells when you level up so to try to make this as simple as possible here's how it works you have your list of all of the available wizard spells which you can find in the players handbook it's the wizard spell list from this list you're going to be putting spells into your spell book think of the spell book like your recipe book when you are looking at your recipe book does it have every recipe available to you in the world no these are the ones that you've written down into your recipe book after you have this list of spells that you have put into your spell book you can choose from your spell book to prepare spells for that day so it goes all wizard spells which ones are going to go into the spells in your spell book and which spells are you going to prepare for the day it's also worth noting that Wizards have some enhanced abilities regarding ritual spells not only do wizards not need to use a spell slot when they cast a spell as a ritual they don't need to have that spell prepared either as long as that spell is in there spell book and they have access to their spell book so well clerics bards and druids have to both prepare the ritual spell in order to cast it as a ritual wizards don't even have to prepare their ritual spells at all fine familiar is a spell available in the wizard spell list but if you didn't choose to write it into your spell book you cannot cast the spell however if it is in your spell book but you didn't choose to prepare it for the day you can still cast it as a ritual because it is a ritual spell so the benefit of adding ritual spells to your spell book is that you can actually prepare a list of spells that are not rituals while still maintaining access to ritual spells the number of spells that you can prepare from your spell book is equal to your wizard level plus your intelligence modifier also keep in mind we have tons of videos about some of the best spells and the way that they work and different features from different classes that might add a bit of confusion if this wasn't comprehensive enough and you're looking for a deeper dive into one of these topics we may have a few different options for videos that dive deeper into things like sorcerer and meta magic or druid wild shape so always keep in mind that there are a lot of nuances to these abilities even as an experienced player a lot of people can miss a few rules and that's okay if you've looked at the rulebook if you're new or experienced in Dungeons & Dragons the whole point is to have fun missing a rule here and there isn't really a problem we're just here to hopefully help you learn them and make better decisions and use your resources better moving forward so this has been a look at five commonly mistaken spell casting class features in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition if you've made any other major mistakes with some of the nuances of spell casting let us know about them in the comments below our videos are made possible thanks to the generosity our patreon supporters if you're enjoying our work and want to help contribute to our show please check us out by following the links in the description below to join our community don't forget to check out our live play in the worlds of Dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern at twitch.tv slash dungeon underscore dudes you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we have plenty more coverage on the rules for spells spell casters and classes in Dungeons & Dragons for the addition write up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 159,813

Rating: 4.9516788 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: 9oVMd56gbM0

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020