Don't ban Silvery Barbs! - D&D 5E Advanced guide to Silvery Barbs

this spell came out when i was doing my week-long exam sorry for the weights let's do a little intro coronal shift a very strong feature on the best wizard subclass in the game wizards of the coast thoughts to themselves let's make that a spell now you would think that just making this a spell is already better than having it as a feature but oh no they made it better here we have silvery barbs welcome to pack tactics there's so much to talk about silvery barbs first level enchantment so you can get this through fate touch which means it's really easy to get for every class normally only bards sorcerers and wizards get this you can also pick this background to get it for free with also a free cast this is setting dependent so chances are high this isn't an option at all continuing on reaction 60 foot range when you see a creature succeeds on an attack roll ability check or saving throw it's instantaneous the triggering creature must re-roll the d20 and use the lowest roll you can then choose a different creature you can see within range or self the chosen creature has advantage on the next attack roll ability check or saving throw it makes within one minute a creature can be empowered by only one use of this spell at a time now forcing the enemy to re-roll this isn't disadvantage so that means this works with disadvantage gator come here hello i need you to dodge there we go i'm a wyvern my attack is plus seven kobold you look stupid no i'm a scary monster anyways if i bite you now i would have disadvantage to my attacks so my chance to hit goes from 65 to 42 if i successfully hit you anyways and you decide to use your reaction to cast the spell what happens then gator you would have super disadvantage kind of my chance to hit is 65 because i already hit on a disadvantage this is a re-roll in addition a party member or you get advantage we'll get to that eventually if i have multi-attack what happens if i attack you again back to disadvantage correct my chance to hit is back to 42 for the spell only applies to one attack if you use shield instead that's a plus 5 ac until the start of your next turn that's every attack shield is safer to use normally the dm announces his role and if the value is a hit you use shield to make it a miss barb's is a re-roll so that means you're gambling with dice it can still be a hit barbs can prevent the crit though so that's a big deal shield can't but still shield is still king in many cases so i i advocate you grab both and prepare both you'll be likely switching back and forth concretely i can tell you in majority of cases if you really want to shut someone down you'll be using silvery barbs if he fails every round after that it's all reaction cast shields when you have to that's what i expect shield versus barbs math-wise is impossible to quantify and is the wrong way to look at it new scenario i attack normally 65 to hit i succeed you use barbs i roll again and hit anyways here is a cut out of eric from frye minis he also casts silvery barbs after your cast what happens then you roll again and take the lowest correct rules for combining magical effects shout outs to tabletop builds dmg page 252 player handbook page 205 and xanathar's page five all outline that only one effect of the same name or spell applies while their durations overlap the duration of this spell is instantaneous thus the party can directly multiply casting of this spell on one target last scenario let's say i have advantage to my attack 88 to hit i succeed you use this spell then it's back to 65 again a normal roll same applies to advantage to saving throws like magic resistance that's actually a very cool boost to summon greater demon that spell is one of the coolest role play spells out there due to the high risk it has barbs can make it so there's less of it it will be a video eventually gator you can leave now sweet bye-bye the second part of the spell that advantage to next attack roll that's only one attack so i expect your chance to hit goes from 65 percent to 88 if you're using sharpshooter then it's 40 up to 64 that's really all you need to know there we can finally move on to ability checks i don't know the gist of the average creatures ability checks at all so i can't properly analyze this but what i can tell you it's very weak in majority of cases but also all over the place from cr to cr i might be completely wrong though saving throws con save spells single target spells almost every spell got a boost really but those two in particular got the biggest so that means there's tons of things to re-analyze that's a good thing for me there's more content anyways we can technically be here forever let's just tackle some of it this is already super long con save spells like let's say levitate targeting an enemy let's say the enemy has a 45 chance of failing to save he succeeds if you use silvery barbs his chance of failing is again the same 45 you are basically casting the spell again for the cost of a reaction in a first level slot the value is less for an aoe spell i'm saying the same thing over and over again a reroll barb's value is always back to a straight roll now imagine better spells that can do intelligent safe for example that's 70 this is what i think is bad for the game barb's forcing the creatures to re-roll saves it's not broken but it's so unnecessary why did casters get such a significant boost and not marshals sure they got that advantage to one attack you can also argue stunning strike at a boost but the the these are such insignificant footnotes compared to the caster's power casters can aoe shut down and force stronger saves on creatures i'm investing my barbs into whatever's happening there it's it's doing more things than whatever a marshall can do then once i've invested that slot i'll give that same caster who cast that big shutdown spell advantage to his concentration save because it's more important to keep that concentration than boosting a single attack he shut down a guy or two or three or four guys for one minute hopefully the enemies have to invest actions to recover if they do that means none of my teammates are getting damaged yes that's the optimal move to make from the enemy to recover but i don't care that's a win anyways no way am i spending this on the marshall daniel has an article where he explains the math for aoe save spells in detail i'm gonna skip that because i feel it's so obvious the gist is when you see a party member cast a single target or aoe shutdown spell and the creature or creatures happen to succeed use your slots for silvery barbs that is teamwork this is a team spell don't just think about using this for yourself and your spells think about the other players that's more conservative than blowing two spells on exclusively yourself share your pool of resources this spell can be a pseudo counterspell potentially foiling the enemy's counter spell attempt of course most casters will be casting counterspell at its level anyways to stop the spell but when this option is dried up or you didn't have it to begin with it is a valid consideration here's a small list of chances daniel made legendary resistance this spell doesn't bypass it as written nor intended by the developers i think you know this it's been covered by absolutely everyone split enchantment does work with silvery barbs because you don't have to give someone advantage at all it says right here you can so that means it's an option you can't twin silvery barbs though because it's capable of targeting multiple creatures feats the best option is to pick it through fate touch this is an enchantment spell reason why this feat is so good is because it's a half feet that comes with a lot of things barbs competes with gift of alacrity but alacrity in optimization is still king here barbs is second place if someone has alacrity then barbs is the pick to make in majority of cases for casters bards got the most benefits out of this spell bart said tier 1 play has a huge problem with ac this spell does help a little bit with that problem because at those levels enemies usually only have one attack anyways so it does defend you against a single enemy at least for eloquence bards this spell stacks with unsettling words you might argue this is overkill but you only use barbs on a success anyways there's tons more stuff this video is already too long check out tabletop builds daniel covers more stuff that i didn't at all i'm linking his article in the description same with shrimp monk winter byron and fry minis all of them made really good videos on this topic to add on to that shout out to all of the artists who've helped me make videos throughout this whole year min morocco novatonix and drakevin check them out on youtube and twitter they need tons of love too now for the conclusion i freaked out like everyone else when i saw this spell but after sitting on it for a few days i concluded this spell doesn't have to be bad for the game this can be awesome because it does make reaction economy really interesting everything being shield or absorb elements is boring mechanically now there's more to think about that's a good thing to add to the game the spell as is is probably the most mechanically interesting spell to ever been released so far this could have been a 10 out of 10 as is but right now it's 1 out of 10 because of marshalls marshals are getting next to nothing they need a big boost so badly and if they do then silvery barbs is fine wizards and most of the full casters are getting boosted in every single new book just because of the new spells it's stupid it's content for me but i want to cover these classes in optimization and i can't they don't have anything interesting going for them the spells do the only interesting thing to ever come out of a marshall is an echo night so here is what i want from now on i just want marshall books and nothing else no new spells just martial books i think you get the points make marshalls good not just casters don't ban this spell have fun with it try it merry christmas by the way bye bye

Channel: Pack Tactics

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Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 24 2021