The Most Broken Spells in 5e Dungeons & Dragons | Web DM

ok everyone welcome to the web DM school for delinquent spells I'm mr. Pruitt this is coach Davis and today we're just gonna just go okay listen counterspell I'm gonna need you to stop back counter so I'll stop in a row stop interrupting me counter spell sit down healing word you're making this fight going to bring banishment out of suspension right now I will use it on you know what I just I can't do that how are we gonna reach these problem spells coach Davis we all love spells we're going to talk about some spells today cuz when it comes to casting certain spells there's always some bad apples we can't always rely on Google chromecast let's just kind of go through this yeah this whole show kind of morphed from like one spell yeah one spell divinity and so it began as a discussion of counterspell yeah and and which itself grew out of a discussion that we had during the last AB great you know the show we did over a duration Riley right here looking at the spells this particular class what do they have what challenges might you face it's a dungeon master and in running it it's pretty clear that there are problem spells yeah that that keep cropping up again and again on various places where people talk about you know the issues that they have with fifth edition and like the fact that we had even though we had just done like a show on AB duration and talked about counterspell and we had one of our patrons say like hey well you guys do a show on like white counterspell sucks the fun out of the game and you know the tyranny of counterspell sort of really led me to think like there really are a lot of spells we're not I don't think we're gonna be able to get to them all here but we'll get to the ones that are you know those of you on Twitter and Facebook the policies on those platforms and asked about them you know told us about which ones bother you there at least try to get to those I define a problem spell as one of three things it either slows down the game in an unacceptable way too good to pass up you know it might as why is this a choice like I will always pick this why isn't this just given to me yeah you know and then boring like spells that are just really boring and like those are the three that I have if I'm always gonna cast this spell and always gonna take it then it's it's just too good I want more variety and you know I'm these are your shields your fireballs yes yes definitely your counter spells right you'll find that they all like overlap right like so like slow down the game a lot of those tend to be boring you know because they slow down the game they suck the fun out not because they're you know not thematic or fun but just like how does this work again either because they're not cast very often or the wording on them is weird or it's open to interpretation you know spells like that might be something like Moonbeam or bark skin where when does the enemy take damage from a moonbeam is it possible for them to take it like twice in one round of combat you know like there's all these kinds of rules calls and the DM has to like look up the spell and maybe the players looked up especially we got the warlock with the repelling blast or god yeah you push people back and through these these areas of expose and then based on just reading through Facebook and Twitter from our viewers I added like two other categories or criteria for what like a problem spell would be and that's just like how do I even like what is even going on with this but you know and that slows down the game right but it's also like before you even trying to put this into effect you're sitting there going like you know how do I predict the future with augury right how does one take the course of events that are going on it's a second-level spell right in the pretty shirts of ritual or at least we made it a ritual early on you don't want to do them a disservice they're trying to commune with their deity and use this magic to help them plan but it's like the spell really gives you no guidance on how to judicata it and run it and there's nothing in the dmg that offers further commentary either so like I don't know roll it d4 and make guess like that's not very satisfying though for a first spell yeah because R is the the wheel whoa wheel whoa both word on Motown yeah and then finally the last category are just like trash spells spells that you just never see prepared or that you cast once and it was so underwhelming that you just would never you know never want to do it again so I'd like just kind of go through the categories talk about the spells you know maybe if we've got fix this forum discuss that but just have a discussion about what makes them problems and ways that we would handle them mm-hmm I love it let me let's start out with those that slow down the game so we're here what with augury I say like augury does the app we had some some folks on Twitter mention that augury was difficult mostly because they get our grandma see look at the text of augury itself yeah I got a pulled up right here it is a ritual cast I'm a minute but it is your your divining from an otherworldly entity about the results of a specific course of action that you plan to take within the next 30 minutes and the DM chooses possible omens will whoa weal and woe or nothing so to me straight out this is literally a codified version of the play players have a plan and they get to expend a resource in game to go is that playing dumb sure okay that's not about some bad way to look at it yeah I mean you know in in essence that's all it is is a meta it is a meta way for players to go so we want to storm the castle with these people while they sneak in here can we use should we do that yeah and their gods like yeah do it but in a way you have to really look at like weal or woe to who you know right obviously they think to them but you know if you're asking a god a God looking at this cosmically might not think that right and I realize like I'm just making it more convoluted than it already is but like with with regards to whose perception you know maybe y'all charging in there is is a good thing for the gods cuz I'll they're gonna charge in there and screw that up they're probably all gonna die but yeah yeah yeah just get in the wheel and whoa it'll be fine I find it hard with this one to not just go well it's weal and woe because like if something's wheel I mean there's no risk mm-hmm then that mean that's sort of what it implies to me unless it's like we plan on breaking in here you know like I want to know the results of a heist for instance yeah like if you're about to plan a heist how does this translate into the game part of the way to sort of fix augury here is like a specific course of action within the next 30 minutes it's not just like anything we want to do when indefinitely it was very specific so the DM has maybe a better idea of what it is that the players are trying to attempt they obviously know what opposition there might be but the fact that it's there's dice involved that the outcome is still uncertain like it does put a lot of pressure on the DM to basically either predict it or perhaps even I can imagine DM feeling the need to alter results in favor of the of what the all gory build may be that's satisfying maybe it's not I'm not sure I'd find it very satisfying yeah no I wouldn't do that especially as a ritual it's like you really gonna do that every time then the players might you know get you know it might become just standard operating procedure to lock that one into place through you know through that kind of magic so oh and then of course there's 25% chance of getting a random reading if you cast it more than once in a day or once for longer so this is a spell that like the flavor of its really cool you're throwing bones you're casting arteries you're sacrificing a pig and reading its entrails or something whatever it is it's got a lot of flavor but like asking the DM to to predict the future or at least like anticipate future result to the extent that they know what the outcome of a course of action would be is like just it's tough so I don't think I would do any of that I think instead of you might say like what's a result of an augury you cast you know looking for signs and portents and omens and get something other than like a direct answer maybe you get like hanging inspiration or something or certain number of rerolls or you get something else you know something else that's early can convey that I have an insight into the future I think that even I think maybe rerolls would be a good way it's not advantage you know it's kind of like lucky you know it's kind of lucky or the the diviners ability oh sure right like important yeah so it could probably I think that that may be where I would go with it and then you get a certain number based on like the level of the spell I don't really have a lot of people cast this spell not a lot of clerics casting augury yeah in the games I've played so let's see what's the next one that slows down the game I would say by far the one that we got mentioned the most is slowing down the game our conjurer the conjurer spells yeah and and by extension animate objects anything that adds actions to the player side especially is gonna slow down the game and the fact that the players have the option to summon up to eight of particular sort of creatures now there's all kinds of conjuration spells they come in all sort of flavors and varieties butts are the big offenders in this regard our conjurer animals this third little spell right you get like eight wolves I think with its ER form one 1/4 that's not nothing Kaja woodland beings would be another right that gets you the the fairies that are capable of casting all those spells and like that caused so much headaches people now does the now how do you read this folks I think this is one of the things to meet them that kind of can slow this down is does the caster get to choose the exact animal right now I don't let them choose iam I let them choose how many they want to summon and then especially with a you know database like Danny beyond you can just like filter the ax beasts yeah - the ones exactly the ones you need exactly the CR range that you need and then it's right there and then like even if it's not necessarily tabulated with numbers next to them you can just kind of like eyeball the list and roll a random or pick appropriate for the environment or whatever you want to do cuz I have seen arguments over that well I want wolves its we're in the woods I should be able to get wolves it's like well no you can you can get one I get one quarter beasts yes you can but you don't you're just summoning I will tell a player that if you want specific animals and I admit I think we mentioned this before maybe in the conjuration show that that is a that's a treasure being able to specifically conjure exactly what you want counts s treasure which means you've got to go out and find a wolf that's willing to come when you call it every time you've got to find whether it's a wolf that you found in the in the forest or you traveled to the beasts lands in the outer realm is gonna say that sounds like an awesome adventure when you go to the beasts lands and you gotta track down you got a freaking on the floor and wolf Lord be like I need you and your seven best yeah and this is the deal and this is how I also solve problems with you know fine familiar and others is like because you're summoning the same one they remember if you treat that wolf like garbage if they are constantly thrown out front and die and have to face these things then the next time they show up they might be like yeah you conjured us we'll do what you will you know you'll do what you want but we know that you don't treat us well you know where we're going to attempt to undermine that I know that there's some players that won't like that because oh this is my spell it's my thing it should just work but the task there is that which your turn in combat you get eight times as many actions and things to do and time spent resolving your business yeah I think it's perfectly reasonable to go you have to treat these things not as disposable nothings but as the spirits of animals that your character presumably gives a crap about and not treat them as disposable things well you know they're not they're not just video game icons or avatars that will just spawn away like when you're done with them I mean like like I said I mean these are coming from somewhere they have a life that you're pulling them from oh certainly they won't have to go back to yeah presumably yeah so those are like role-playing restrictions you can put on the conjure spells and it can be you know that might prevent certain abusive behaviors by by the party but in terms of just like the mechanics of conjure spells if you've got a lot of them use average die rolls there are options in the dmg for how to handle mobs how to handle large groups of creatures attacking at once sly flourish has a mob attack calculator where you basically input the number of individual creatures in a particular mob and it will tell you like factor in everything I'm factoring and everything will tell you okay here's how many of them would have hit go ahead and apply damage for that right and you don't even roll you just know okay well I'm attacking with however many creatures then this many of them will automatically hit and they do will take average damage boom maybe you give each member of your party some of your animal companions to control so that it's it's not a hand hassle for ever just one person it's trade a load well yeah especially you know if you get a wolves right in the wolf bear tactics Rocking mmhmm yeah it could be that you know you split up the wolves amongst the party members or or whatever it is right if it's in a battle situation you know most cr8 sorry 8c are one quarter monsters yeah there's a lot of low level a ohi's that are gonna take those out yeah what's which is why spread them out right not to mention targeting the caster to vary concentration yep that's all that's that you that's a big one right like I have seen that happen in every edition of D&D that there are significant numbers of summoning monsters I think the best way around this is summoning one creature and if it were me if I had my druthers the conjurer spells would summon a creature you get the one and you you can't really you could be happy it could be anywhere from CR one quarter to two but you don't necessarily get all that many extra actions just just for the just for the spell that's the big one that I saw on time and again conjure spells you know animate objects similar similar situation anymore in the slow down the game category we had people mention guidance and I think that's just one of those where you know if you've got players who don't remember that they potentially have guidance on every role and your cleric player isn't handy with a d4 to hand them or roll themselves yeah then that's that's on the players and you just as a dungeon master hit is well within your rights say sorry that we are past that role like it yeah if you wanted to stack inspiration and guidance but I trust me it happens all the time oh the Barbie player is doing something else oh wait you've got a bad inspiration on that or you could have had this and oh yeah I have guidance I have guidance up there it's one of those things where you know you can be a real just like stickler for the rules and no this is when you have to declare this ability it's got to be before they roll etc but for me I just didn't it's about speed it's like if you guys want those things then pay attention personally for me if a Claire's casting guidance all the time and that's that's a regular part of the game I would prefer that they remember that yes absolutely now you're having to cast the spell concentration you're having to maintain the concentration so you should be there to be like oh yeah you're gonna go off and sneak okay cool I'm gonna cast guidance on you there and as they go off and sneak you go and roll the d4 okay a tutu that in and it's weird because some players are particular about die like dice that are that they're rolling that they're meant to roll yeah and like a few casts guidance is like neural on role in the deal or roll the dice well they cast the spell though I am of the same opinion especially if you're dealing with a player who seem to be forgetful of the buffs they don't no more available to them yeah or you know the the converse of that is the cleric player who forgets that guidance is a concentration spell and not everybody can have it and you know it doesn't really do much for group checks maybe you just give it to the person with you know no proficiency or something close down the game of its extra die adding yeah I don't know I've always seen it as the completely out of combat you know yes you put it you cast it on the rogue all the time sure he's the one sneaking ahead he's the one picking the locks he's the one making the perception checks away from everyone and so it's I don't know to me that's just kind of like a standard thing for that guidance is well you know any of those kind of things and then the other one that people mentioned is sort of slowing down the game was Moonbeam and by extension flaming sphere things that summon a small area of damaging effect it'll usually have some kind of wording that says when the target first enters the effect or starts their turn and the edge case is my who goes right before the enemy cast a moonbeam on top of that enemy they have just entered it so they're gonna take damage and they their turn so they're going to take damage many of these spells like the confusion that seems to come around them is just it seems to be like of reading the description and not taking it literally yeah like assuming that there's some kind of hidden or like I'm not interpreting this right mm-hmm when time and again they tell us that the language of fifth edition is supposed to be natural and plain and straightforward yeah does it say these are the two conditions and then yeah it doesn't matter if they happen in the same round it doesn't matter now change it if you want right if you think it's too much for the druid sit with a moonbeam and run it back and forth across the line of enemies then maybe they're you know can only be subject to it once per turn which would mean they're subject to it on the Druids turn and then on their turn I think maybe that slows down the game more for people having to look up the rules what does it do when is it triggered how does it work although if you can properly and work a flaming sphere down a corridor oh yeah for the melee base caster I did that with my blade singer yeah and let me tell you it is an amazing tool to a control the funnel and flow if you put it right in front of you so they have to go around you and they can't surround you yeah because they don't want to be right in front of you yeah and then you have fighters on either side of you I've done it yeah and it's amazing how to just use it as the Vanguard Wow through a group of a mob of enemies that thing but again it takes a huge understanding yeah yeah when it's when it's called into play shortly and not overuse not overused and everybody being on the same page about it and things like that yeah so uh too good to pass up what do you guys there's a loss of the big one I think even my list it doesn't even cover most with the ones that I saw as being big too good to pass up everything from eldritch blast and fireball to mending prestidigitation mage hand of course healing word and healing spirit ended up a lot of good too good to pass up list fly was another one a lot of people who were a lot of demons who seemed to be frustrated by flight even you know whether it was permanent flight by Eric okra or the other fly spell and it passed without trace is another one I can see past without Trey being a problem spell for some diems just because it's really good you know it extends the benefit to others yeah it's really good but it's I mean that's why the bad guy hires a seer right yeah you know they hire seer who scry specifically using magic to find them yeah pass without trace to me as one of those great spells that are absolutely great until you start getting up against enemies they can cast like third fourth fifth level spells yeah and then by then your villain should be really good at like seeing through that kind of thing it allows for the whole party to engage in stealth mm-hm and so in that sense it's like yeah it's a good group up +10 can't be tracked through natural means like that's really good but it's also concentration and the radius on it's not that particularly big yeah so you got a cut you have to be clumped up making you susceptible to we type a tag scratch or a baby but it's also like it doesn't render you invisible you know the person in heavy armor so we have disadvantage on their stealth Jax I mean I'm like group invisibility which I'm not even sure they have any I mean like you can up cast invisible but there's not like the old you know 15 foot radius yeah yeah this one's one where I can see if you've got especially if you were using the Monster Manual stats like there's really no way that a baseline monster has a hope of detecting a group would pass without trace especially not stealth focused characters with pass countries so yeah it does feel a little bit unfair in that sense and to me the solution is to just include high perception guard creatures you know perhaps with special senses blind sense tremor sense see invisible that kind of thing except that this concentration based second level spell is there to facilitate everyone sneaking and not just like some people yeah and that sense I I see this one is like I'll accept it it's good buff but I'm not gonna take it every time because it's its situation yeah yeah yeah but like some of that some of the can trips though like like like you said like mending mage hand I mean mage hand is a can trip I think almost every single spell caster I make it I usually end up picking mage hand I mean it's Eve useful like just being able to pick things up and manipulate them at range it's really useful it's useful in a place where you don't know where danger is gonna be coming from if every time I have the option to pick this spell I'm gonna pick it because I feel like if I don't I'm shooting myself in the foot and not taking it like doesn't that suggest it's just a little too good like if you always feel like you have to take this that like if you don't I'm gonna be screwed or I'm not gonna be able to be as effective as I like to be or it doesn't fit my idea of what a spellcaster is or something like that to me suggests that it's too good you know and and I don't know how you change it because I think mage hands you know I don't think it's o P at all I don't think it's okay it's just it's very good at the utility that it provides and because you have a limited number of kamma of cantrip slots yeah nice to see other things in the camera other than those three main bending and prestidigitation presto is usually one of those it's on first it's always the one that it usually makes the chopping block as opposed to mage Han mostly because you can kind of all right you can kind of fake some stuff with mei-chan right with you carrying lights and stuff oh you can create like illusions in a way like just dropping stuff or you know picking up like a thing of like gunpowder or something and sprinkling over to kind of create you know a distraction or carrying a torch and dropping it or blah blah blah mending is one of those that's like when you need that character that can do that ah there's nothing quite like it sure if anything I would love to turn mending into a more less than minute like I I get I get the one-minute casting time to keep it like out of combat but I don't know I think to me there should be a version that you can because then it then it becomes the thing where you got to do it in the in the heat of combat no shorts or patch up something combat kind of a more like patch up your shield or your armor or a door a door while you're trying to you know hold off the enemy and waves of enemies yeah I think like mending is one of those where when I think about it from a world building perspective it's kind of like man mending is sort of like him like it'd be kind of like a can trip that you would want like I might want this all the time kind of you know like you could see everyone everybody could use it my restriction for mending is that it doesn't just like restore a piece like there's that that you know the tear or the hole or the thing that it fixes can't be above a certain you know dimension in length or something and I forget what it is it's like a foot maybe or something and I just I say like it's not just that it it heals or mends a portion of a larger hole it's like if you've got a giant say crack in your wagon or your wagon littles broken or something you can't mend it back together right but do you have a hole in your shoe like see that's how I that's how I look at mending is it the tinkerer skill it's for fixing pots and sharpening knives and yeah and things like that it's folk magic and if you're trying to over here like to say patch up you know a castle wall with it or door that's been rented right or just rent or trying to use it to like say you know you know fix something that's very valuable or something then the magic screwed brightly like it's a can trip come on it's like one of the first things that you might learn it's the craftsmanship fort is ugly and and utilitarian and especially if you don't know that you know if you're not proficient in the tools that you are trying to work with the magic of you know without oh yeah like like something's up with your full plate and you're mending some straps or whatever but you don't have you know X with to fix it yeah you're gonna have to do as best you can and it could even be that if you find it just too ubiquitous and too powerful that the effects of mending are temporary you know that this on this mending only lasts an hour so it's like fixing it like putting a patch on a flat you know yeah you just you're trying to get to somewhere where you can get permanently fixed yeah or or I could see like with mending specifically and like say armor maybe farmer doesn't have the disadvantage on stealth yeah when you mend it well now it does because now it doesn't it doesn't move as much so you're not as flexible in it and maybe make some weird noises because now those those pieces don't you know they don't flow together yeah oh yeah definitely you just like fused them together with quick magic so you know there was someone else who on Facebook who mentioned like that that can't ribs in general are difficult they mean these three in particular they call that but just in general it was difficult because if you're trying to run a low magic game the presence of on-demand magic like these like mending and prestidigitation image hand you know fire bolt or eldritch blast or guidance you know that it makes it hard to run a low magic campaign and they felt so frustrated by that and you know to those people out there I would just say like your players might not like it your players might not play they might need to find new people but it's perfectly reasonable for you to say casters in this world do not have the kind of on demand at will magic that can't troops have and I know that there's a lot of people out there who insist that everybody hated firing their crossbows and third edition is wizards but to me the on demand magic of can trips and the like especially attack magic fundamentally changes what a spell caster is and I can see I share that view like I don't mind can trips I don't you know I think they're fine for the kinds of gaming I do with fifth edition but I can definitely see for those people who are like I you know this is a problem for me not because I can't adjudicate it in the combat or I don't know what to do with it when someone casts it but the very presence of it in my game world changes my game world in ways I don't like that's the case then just be like no you you know get the can troops or you get like you know you're casting mod in can trips a day I'm on the fence about what to me like eldritch bless it technically is the same a damage output as fire bolt sure but you have to make more attack roles so you have the possibility to attack more creatures but you also have the possibility to miss in do less damage right right so I think that the upside of Eldridge blast is offset by the fact that you're making multiple damage rolls yeah so you know of course then the other side of that argument is well that's more chances for a crit certainly more chance for quite more chances to apply hex if you're to apply hex if you're doing that but I think that I don't really have a problem with Eldridge blast like some people do they just don't like a Kassar that just does the one thing I'm sympathetic to that right because that to me that does change the nature of the magic if the magic is repetitive and on demand then to me it's almost by definition not magical I like eldritch blast because I think that having a solid attack cantrip for the warlock kind of like solidifies them as a ranged damage dealer maybe on par with say an archer or something like that yeah but you soup up all you know you get all the invocations for it you you really trick it out to me eldritch blast is not too good to pass up it's boring a [ __ ] it's just it's it's not the I don't necessarily equate it with like the spamming you know button you know I played a mage and Warcraft you spam yeah there are nice spells in that one it's force damage so even though it's like the die type is the same as fireball force this is gonna be edge edge it out a little bit more in terms of like resistances that you'll meet the fact that it seems like it's so easy to trick it out and make it so much better than any other attack can trip you really just need agonizing blast one thing you can stack on Eldridge spear you can stack on the repelling repelling blast and now you're moving people ten feet with each one of those right what's the one every others like it pulls them forward as well not attracting blast yeah okay yeah so you can push them around no save on that either it doesn't matter like gargantuan demon Prince doesn't matter hit him with I hit him with my Aldrich blast four times they're knocked back forty feet yeah and it's that that I start going like well I mean so far every warlock I've played with it has done that which means that from a diems perspective I am constantly seeing these bolts of these lasers flying all over the place mm-hm and it's just a situation where I'm like I'm you know there's other kin trips there's other builds there's other ways to play the character you'd be interesting to see those yeah and so that's why I kind of look at it as like I wouldn't take it away I think it's an important part of the warlock yeah see I'm the I'm the other way where I just like I finally figured out how I want to do my gunslinger oh yeah it's gonna be how long Josey Wales meets whatever the saint of killers basically I appreciate an EM sympathetic towards the people who are like listen my fighter it fights with their sword all the time they I don't keep worried about the fact I'm consoling my blade yeah my archers constantly using a bow I don't say like with the swords at least there is an opportunity for description and interaction because you're in melee with a combatant and if you're if you're you and the DM are both on it about like okay if York swings you duck you know you you know try to stab under the ribs blocks it with the rhythm of the shield like if it's a back-and-forth action sort of description like that even if you're not rolling to hit even if you're dice or coming up stinkers you know you can still have an engaging round whereas I feel like with the warlock like how many times like does it look different every time you use it like you would have to find some way of giving your descriptions a bit of energy and vigor mm-hmm that could be fun but to me it lacks the vitality of a melee combat so that's where I kind of draw those things in there although I don't think anybody should give you a crap if you are a warlock player for spamming eldritch blast because it is good and you have a lot of resources to trick it out and it's kind of the workhorse of your spell repertoire well yeah I mean the easy response is because it's usually a fighter types like oh you gonna swing that sword again again yeah yeah you're gonna use a different weapon every time so I'm just gonna play my character and you play yours yeah and let's all be on the same team we've talked about healing word before in the past I kind of get the problem with healing word although as a player I love the fact that healing where to save my ass on multiple occasions oh sure yeah it sucks that you know hey at range I can just pop someone up alright but you telling me a you know you pray to a god that will give you the power to smite your foes at a distance but you have to touch your allies to heal them like like this thing is I give away this and I think it should exist I also understand the problem with it this is one of those right I'm in the same boat like I get it I don't think I would get rid of it I I think the fact that it doesn't do a ton of healing is being overlooked by a lot of teams who complain about it like yeah you only need one hit point to get back up there but that depends on initiative order and I'm really kind of those things where it's like if you find that this is a problem for you then break up your monster group so that they have multiple initiatives so that you were going multiple times in a round of combat yeah and it's not like a big chunk of when the players go and then a big chunk when you go I don't mind that I find that's very fast and efficient way to do it but yeah you know initiative order in a in a cyclical based initiative it it counts for a lot and you you know the cleric might pop up the Barbarian with three hit points left and but the next round is the enemy's right or the next turns the enemy's turn and they hit the bar there's gonna go down again you know it and so it's there is some strategy involved in it aims really just place combat and dropping players or sorry characters in combat as like the be-all end-all of their you know metric for how well they're doing you know so they come back from the pop right back up like and make it more difficult to do that give them an exhaustion exhaustion for dropping a zero well keep their deaths Abe's if they fill the knee yeah that was gonna be my first thing is if this is a problem your campaign then adjust the death save mechanic and you got to do a short rest to get rid of your dead safe yeah yeah failures and so you know hey it sucks or just have more responsive monsters once you do this once then they're gonna be like oh that guy heals you and that guy's almost dead let's focus our fire on these two people right you know and make sure that he can't do that make sure he stays dead like your monsters are have some intelligence yes and so you should use it you should use it and one common thing that I saw at least when people who are sort of like I you know this spell frustrates me because my players always use it like that tells me more about how you create encounters necessarily than how the players are doing and that's it to me and sorry if it sounds harsh that is a DM problem because the DM is the one who is preparing encounters in such a way that the players are able to develop standard operating practices yeah and and have like set strategies like I always open with the banishment another too good to be true or too good to pass up time spell you should have a villain sorcerer sitting there with a counter spell waiting yeah actually if they've interacted with this party before yes you know they know that the second a player drops and that clerk starts casting that's probably gonna be healing word counter telling me that yeah beg you know there's at least three or four goblins that are just a trained with their bows on them waiting for the cash those are in-game ways to kind of handle that of course the other way is to just say like hey the spells really messing up the way that I run combats and games like you know we can either ban it or what I might do is take yeah you know take every spell that's not in the basic list that comes you know for free with fifth edition and be like all of those spells if you want them like you're gonna have to find them like you're gonna you're gonna have to go out and quest for that prayer or that scroll or that whatever as a way to kind of control those problem spells I'm thinking the healing spirit I think healing spirits is fine my pain on healing spirit is that you should read James sheiks article in the Deenie beyond where he talked about all the different ways he would fix healing spirit and like what was wrong with it and it's like a really great just takedown of the whole thing I know as out of healing or is that in healing spell I think it's really cool you create like this zone that players can walk through and get a little bit of healing and that's kind of cool to have some fast in combat healing like that yeah it really becomes a problem outside of healing when you can summon the zone and your party can just keep walking through it to each get 10 d6 or the peeling mostly the fixes for that limit the amount of times that the healing spirit can be tapped into and or require the druid to use their reaction to extend the benefit of the healing magic to the person so those are the things for dealing spirit well maybe we'll get back to some of the too good to pass up because there's other ones I don't make it sure we talk about I was surprised to see that a lot of people mentioned find familiar as a spell that makes the game less fun for them and they find it boring and and and specifically the solution of just kill the familiar isn't working for them you know I I do think that if you're letting familiars just run all over dungeons and it's like a problem for you you know like the PCs are learning too much information about them or you can all familiar you know they tend to not have a lot of hit points takes relatively a lot of gold at low levels to bring them back in convenience to not have immediately but it seems like it's the I can send this small creature out into the world where they're gonna be small and you know unobtrusive yeah and Nikolas yeah and learn all about this dungeon again if it's happening every time then it might be time to I don't know include denizens in your dungeon that specifically feed on familiar type animals or hunt them down or like me yeah if you're in a dungeon you see a rat or a snake going by you might want to try to kill it neat it sure you might want to kill any it might be yeah there might be those goblin children's job to catch rats for the stew pots or maybe that's why they brought in the Goblin rat hound you know just to keep those kind of things under control or that's what kinds of things right yeah yeah I see I see this is probably a problem for other players that I want to play rogues or Rangers yes yes now the wizard has you're stepping on their toes yeah yeah yeah and and that's the kind of thing where I might say like alright well you can't like the familiar can't ride in the rogues hood the familiar can't that's what I've always like tried to press for in games it's just like that's the way for the party to tag along with the road because the scouting so they know immediately if something is wrong now that the motors kind of protected from the rogue I and I again like the summon creature spells how often is your familiar gonna want to do this like this is one of those things where when you think about it it's the rules as they are presented it would suggest that like this is yours to control this is your swear but this ability is also pretty clear and the spells also pretty clear it is an extra plane or spirit that inhabits a body created for it it's not a it's not just an animal it has a higher level of being and intelligence and he's perfectly reasonable for Ratigan to turn around to the pointy headed wizard and go no you're gonna go walk around in the dark this time mister I have invisible like it was last time I got pierced by a bunch of [ __ ] you know arrows and was roasted alive you know like I'm just not gonna do that yeah yeah and to treat the conjured creatures that your party has not as disposable things but as the living beings that they are and they might not like that your players might not like it but it is a way of preventing that abuse yeah and I mean that's just simple too simply taking it for granted yeah I feel like oh I get this I can just do whatever I want yeah yeah yeah they wouldn't let yeah there's some give to this take there's some gift that take that you couldn't just boss around hireling x' and you know old-school dandy either you had to convince them you had to pay them you had to woo them in a way and if you didn't then they might leave they might take your stuff and we try to kill you in your sleep yeah go into the dungeon we'll have dinner ready yeah sure back at the tavern after they steal all your [ __ ] yeah I can definitely see that I looking at from that perspective like yeah if I was a DM and I and I'd been working on these dungeons and and wanted the exploration of the dungeon to be a big part of it I would be bored and and you know if the first hour of every dungeon consisted of the parties sitting around outside wall a sparrow flew around and telepathically communicated with a wizard yeah if that's the case then you just when you start the sesh and be like here's your map yeah I mean that's the other thing they come standard operating procedure than use then you skip the boring parts and you go yep you guys doing the same thing all right here's what you're feeling you know our a roll D 20 that's how many rounds they get or something I don't know before they're found and this is how far you know they make it here's the map but you know what all this is you'd have time to check it out you don't know which way to go or what to do and you know there's plenty of other ways to get the party a map as well that could be just as interesting I never had that problem because I have players that want to that want to their fine familiar as a [ __ ] flump so I don't get bored with with fine familiar or subsequent flock of familiar I would include nock and arcane lock in boring and just because they're there the light switch sort of spells you you do them and they either work or they don't well the way I kind of look at it is like someone was mentioning on what on one of the social media platforms like reduce was a big problem for them because players kept like reducing doors and things like that now it's thinking in the same terms it's like well that's kind of like arcane lock you keep just knock sorry you just keep opening them and then that got me thinking I just like if doors are such an important obstacle in your dungeon then just don't have one kind have like 20 different kinds of doors like if I'm serious and I'm think about the more I thought about this the more I was like well you'd have to have like knock is a powerful spell if knock can open almost any container locked chest whatever it makes a big noise but it's clearly capable of manipulating everything from simple latches to complex locking mechanisms that's a lot to ask for one spell to carry so if I was going to do an adventure that featured a lot of lock-picking a lot of dungeon crawls in which doors are obstacles or a lot of like breaking and entering then I might just be like knock is like a dozen different spells there's this is the spell that opens the narrow French door this is the spell that I know but that opens double ranch-style doors you know this one gets a deadbolt open this one will you know undo a chain on the other side and it's what you're what you've got then is all of these very specific very different ways to open the doors and say a dungeon maybe you have different keys that open them or or the spells are the keys you know in some ways and and maybe one of them is a you know musical lock and the other has other you know things going on and it's varying up your environments that will make a lot of these spells less problems so like fly why is fly a problem well it's probably because you're using too many environmental obstacles that rely on limited movement for the party to be challenged and it's not that you should never include those even if you have characters that can fly but it's just like they're gonna get around to those you know if you don't want them to then put them in confined places have it be that that flying in this particular part of the wilderness is really dangerous you know always high winds and storms or there's like large predators right like those huge sized eagles around here that will just snatch your flying characters right out of the air because they're better fliers than them or you know giant spiders that weave webs and the trees that catch these kind of things right I look at him here so tighten tighten a tree boa who you know they just sits in a tree and waits for a flying character to come by before it snatches them out of the air like make the environments varied make the combats varied make it so that banishment isn't the first choice and only choice that your characters go to or that fireball wins every fight before they can get to it or hypnotic pattern becomes just so devastating to winning and encounter you vary those things up by looking at the limitations of the spells what's their range what do they have line of sight what's the area of effect like can I design an encounter area that is gonna neutralize those things and then have enemies who are used to fighting in that encounter area fight and now the party is forced to use other magic also this fifth edition that the whole point of the game is to tell stories of heroes Khong you know conquering and overcoming their obstacles so like you're kind of fighting against the system at that point that's where I would start look at the limits of the spells and then design specific encounters around them if you're having that much trouble what else you got there Jim I'm sure there's a lot I mean there is there is a lot I wanted to talk about just a couple more things I know we're running long on the show but some people were saying like brothers a lot of spells that I just never see prepared like see invisibility or which bolt missiles magic or a magic weapon those those are some that I saw and to me it's like you will see missiles magic or a pop-up in your games when the presence of and identifying the correct aura of magic items becomes a big deal if you are trying to steal magic items then masking their magic aura is very important if you are trying to pass off certain magic items as something that they aren't or just mundane items as magical you're gonna want NIST old magic aura but if you are an assassin who wants to make sure that they are not spotted using their disguise self spell or their magic weapons pistols match borders will be really helpful you can reveal information of the world through detect magic and missiles magic aura counters detect magic it makes people read as different kinds of creatures so that they don't set off say certain glyphs of warding right if you have a glyph of warding keyed to Dragonborn and your Dragonborn missiles magic auras themselves to detect as an elf then that's gonna fool the glyph of warding it's gonna fool other spells that rely on identifying parts of the target and having that trigger them you will see an invisibility you know see invisibility will see use in your campaign when invisible foes become too much a problem for your players or or scrying foes or something magic weapon will see using your campaign if you don't hand out magic weapons that's just sort of how you arrange for those spells to be valuable you know someone was saying I never see charm type magic used in my campaigns and just there's something about the way they were writing it that made it seem like what it sounds like it could be wrong but it sounds like you have a lot of very combat heavy like go in guns blazing style games and that your players like that charm is a subtle spell and all Kuip of char magic it's not for combat it is for the courtroom the restaurant the the bedroom getting around town garden is for the indirect approach it's for wizards who who don't want to get their hands dirty and just want to subtly manipulate things and if you're not running that kind of game then those spells are not gonna be valuable that would be my first answer for anyone who's like why does it people want people in my games prepare X and spell then you need to not look at the player as the source of the blockage but instead consider what you might be doing as the DM to not create the kind of conditions that you want to see for the players to cast those spells see invisibility that's that's one that would have saved my story bound crew it's not concentration is dark vision right so many meetings that they had yeah it sucks with in a good spot of that scrying sensor it was always there to curious matter where our thoughts on counterspell go and check out our Abdur asian up sewed where we kind of go over it the bottom line is it has limits you use sly flourishes sort descriptions to jazz up the counterspell but it is a fun stealer like let's make no let's not mince words spells are not being cast if they are countered you know and for many players you have no problem doing it to the DM but when it's turned on them they you know yes it's a problem so yeah if you've if it's not fun for your game get rid of it Dandy's done fine for four editions without it and it will do fine for fun if you liked the video give it a thumbs up and subscribe web DM exists thanks to our patreon patrons the web daemons if you join the web demons you'll get our weekly podcast show audio discounts that'll save you way more than five dollars a month on books and dice and so much more check out our free podcast episodes right now including our interview with Dale Kingsmill of monarchs factory YouTube channel WebM is a proud partner of Deen be beyond our favorite supplement for our didi games we've got a link to them in the description go and check them out if you like our advice for your games then why don't you come check us out and watch us play yeah we've got games on Twitch every week and they're archived on our second youtube channel web d in place thanks for watching [Music] because then you could add a cacophony underneath us rags to dim soundtracks from the Harry Potter fights I need you to do something I'm getting the hard one either way

Channel: Web DM

Views: 281,164

Rating: 4.8055964 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons & dragons, DnD, Web DM, WebDM, d&d, Dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons gameplay, new d&d players, tips for new d&d players, gm tips, dm tips, spells, magic, broken spells 5e, 5e, dungeons and dragons spells, cantrips, counterspell, illusion, enchantment, evocation, abjuration, conjuration, divination, necromancy

Id: 2nWJLwQBk5A

Length: 49min 13sec (2953 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Icebrick1]

I actually disagree with WebDM on a lot of things here. I agree that Augrey (and Divination) are kind of hard to deal with as DM, and that Conjure spells are too strong and slow down the game. Same with Guidance, though to a lesser extent.

They're wrong about Moonbeam, it doesn't trigger when you cast the spell, it only triggers when the enemy starts in the spells area and when the enemy is moved into the spells area, not when the area moves onto the enemy. I've never seen Mage Hand get overused, infact it pretty much never gets used at all for me. Counterspell has some fun mind games, and makes wizard duels much more interesting, IMO.

I kind of agree that some spells are too good compared to their competitors, like Fireball and Eldritch Blast, but I see the other spells as too weak, rather than these few spells too strong. I do wish Warlocks had Invoctions for non-EB cantrips though.

[u/Mr_Shad0w]

This was a cool episode, but I feel like the title is somewhat misleading. The guys discuss spells they dislike / feel are "too good", etc. but I feel like fundamentally it was "Things we don't like about spellcasting / spellcasting classes in 5e".

Would it make sense to make this a series? I feel like WebDM could really unpack the problem more fully if it was spread out over several episodes.

[u/1Beholderandrip]

26 minutes: D&D doesn't do low-magic very well. There's other systems that do it better. That doesn't mean D&D5e is a bad game. If you judge a fish by how well it can climb a tree you will be constantly frustrated when you GM your game.

Cantrips are calculated when the designers are making spellcasters. Removing them from the game would be a serious handicap for the way 5e runs.

"You might need new people to play." Or. OR. Instead of taking the nuclear option of changing major parts of the game you ask the players if they can switch to a different game system that makes it easier and funner for them to DM.

28 minutes: If don't want magic to be reliable choose a different system. The argument that the range of eldritch blast makes it boring is the same as saying archers are boring for the same reason. You find eldritch blast difficult to describe, yet: "I swing my sword at their head this time. Oh. Yay. They ducked." So more descriptive than when you used your sword to attack their arm last attack, and their foot before that. You can do the same with the description of Eldritch Blast. "They see the glowing orb flung their way and duck." You can still use description with eldritch blast.

30 minutes in: Being able to "Fight Back" as an option when someone swings a sword at you? They swing, you block with a counter, an opening presents itself as you go for their ribs. Call of Cthulhu 7e does that with it's combat rules.

35 minutes: Yeah... that spell still needs an errata. Healing Spirit is a fun killer.

38 minutes: If you don't want Find Familiar to be as useful: Please tell the player this before you start the game. If you want to limit the usefulness of a spell don't tell them after they've already picked the spell. All spellcasters take their spells for granted. The fighter takes their sword for granted. Don't surprise a player mid-game with how your familiar is doing it's best to screw you over unless they're aware of this before choosing the spell. And if you don't want to tell them beforehand, ban the spell. Nobody's going to cry over it and quit the game.

40 minutes in: A flying familiar won't set off any pressure plates in a dungeon. It might fly over a trip wire without noticing. How well can your bird open locked doors in a dimly lit dungeon? The first door would stop them in their tracks.

Any DM who is a locksmith with a degree in door history can go nuts. That type of book keeping would drive me insane.

44 minutes: D&D is a system about heroes. The players are powerful. That's a feature, not a bug.

[u/K_Mander]

Keys to what makes a spell "broken"

1. slows down the game
2. too good to pass up
3. boring
4. trash/underwhelming

Table of Contents:

Slows Down the Game

• 4:54 Augury
• 8:58 all conjure/summoning spells
• 14:35 Guidance (and to a lesser extent Bardic Inspiration)
• 16:40 Moon Beam and by extension Flaming Sphere

Too Good to Pass Up

• 18:42 rapid fire Eldritch Blast, Fireball, Mending, Prestidigitation, Mage Hand, Healing Word, Healing Spirit
• 18:56 Fly
• 19:09 Pass Without Trace
• 21:07 Mage Hand
• 22:19 Prestidigitation
• 22:51 Mending
• 27:33 Eldritch Blast (bonus Boring talk at 28:41)
• 31:45 Healing Word
• 35:20 Healing Spirit (with a shout out to James Haeck's DDB article on it)

Boring

• 36:18 Find Familiar
• 40:44 Knock and Arcane Lock
• 42:36 Fly (again)

Trash/Underwhelming

• 44:50 Nystul's Magic Aura
• 45:57 See Invisibility
• 46:06 Magic Weapon
• 46:16 Charm and other charm magics
• 47:33 Counterspell (see: Web DM Abjuration)

[u/Don_Camillo005]

has to be rope trick and tiny hud

[u/Hutobega]

People love just trying to double dip spells like moon beam ugh

[u/[deleted]]

Surprisingly clickbaity. Ick.