Banishment and confusion are good comparisons about how we think about spells. Banishment is a single target save or suck, albeit with only a single saving throw, but if the creature makes that save it does nothing. Confusion hits multiple targets so you just have the potential for more control flat out (it's also not charm or fear based which is helpful). It has the feel bad risk that it doesn't work on any given round but hopefully you've picked your spot and have multiple creatures effected.
Confusion is probably the single most under-rated spell in the whole game. It is really good. First, it's neither a charm nor fear, which means nothing is inherently immune to it, you can hit most if not all enemies with it in most encounters, they can never take reactions (which doesn't mean just opportunity attacks, but things like counterspell as well), and you can damage the enemies hit by it as much as you like without any risk of it breaking, you can literally just straight up win encounters with this spell alone, I take it always when I am playing a character who can, and my DMs hate it because of how totally it dominates encounters.
@@joshl4751 Personally I like Confusion more than Hypnotic Pattern. HP is a charm, which means almost everything at higher levels is immune to it by default, and even if they aren't, you can't do anything to the cced targets or it breaks, and just one enemy with any kind of weak aoe effect can free all affected enemies with a single action.
Another very insightful video. Of course control per round is a flawed system, but I have not seen a better way to calculate control. Keep up the good work :)
Thanks! Yes it's definitely flawed and crude, but hopefully it gives a rough idea at least. And just like you can't really count on DPR numbers to tell the whole story, you certainly can't count CPR numbers to tell the whole story. Thanks for the positive feedback and for watching!
I know it doesn't matter for most games, but we've got lots of mileage out of confusion in tier 3&4 play. The smaller aoe hurts a bit, but it not being a charm or fear makes it strictly better than HP or Fear at higher levels. Also, more casters means than limiting reactions gains power to limit counterspell wars. Obviously not a top tier pick even then, but a great use of 4th lvl spell slot at higher levels.
Haha it is a solid spell for most of the game, yea! As you get higher levels, creatures have more movement options, so it isn't as effective, but still pretty good.
No, the video is saying it’s a very good spell for its level. You can’t compare results across levels with this analysis because each level comes with its own assumptions about enemy HP and abilities. Now, Web is indeed a good spell against some enemies across all levels despite diminishing returns, but that is a separate assertion not addressed by the video.
Great video! I think you've undertaken a task that no one I have seen has had the bravery to try to do, quantify the effectiveness of control spells (the best spells in the game really). Awesome work, and I think it was really effective at accurately quantifying the power of these spells.
The big difference between sleep and color spray is that color spray lets the entire party attack that blinded guy with advantage. For sleep, one guy can attack with advantage and then they wake up.
Super informative video. I would absolutely love to see a complete ranking or all control spells. You could do a video every level. It would be so interesting to see which spells optimizaters overlook
That would be fun to do. Once the new ruleset comes out I'll probably have to revise the control calculation method a bit (actually might need to wait until the MM comes out so I can get an idea of how effective certain controls will be). Once that's done then I will take a look at doing spell levels and do damage and control for each spell.
Also on a topic of wall of force ~5% of MM creatures can teleport. So that is somewhat a difference between it and a forcecage. And based on a new class changes, almost every class have teleporting subclass, and if not, they can cast misty step. Plus you can get it from a elf or a feat. You can expect every single character in tier 3 and 4 be able to teleport 30ft as bonus action at least a couple of times a day. If new monster manual wont increase amount of creatures with teleportation to at least 15% this game would be unplayable for DMs, and not because of the wall of force.
Yea, we seem to be moving towards more teleportation over time, so force cage will be better if that is the continued trend. I think it should be rare personally, but I like lower magic games. I am hoping wall of force and force cage both got a nerf, but I won't hold my breath.
@@DndUnoptimized it is easy to nerf forcecage with concentration. But the only way to nerf wall of force is more teleporting enemies. And teleports it is super silly design and very long and annoying encounters, or more enemies with disintegrate, but it also very questionable.
I was hoping it would have a certain amount of HP, or it would force a concentration save every time it's hit over a certain damage threshold. Something like that. Hopefully not a ton of teleporting monsters, that would make encounters really annoying as you pointed out.
@@DndUnoptimized i hate the idea of force field having hp, it just so wrong on so many levels. Maybe high threshold of single instance of force damage can break it. But definitely not random attacks.
Re: weird vs prismatic wall. Weird has a larger area of effect. Twice as large (60' vs 30' for PW). As a 17th level caster, your Spell DC is maxed at 19, more if you used those 17 levels to find a magic item that increases your Int modifier beyond +5 (tome of clear thinking) or just raises your proficiency or spell DC by 1. (Ioun stones, etc) But even at 19, that's pretty good for a Wisdom save. But it's the area that matters. Eventually, everyone will make the save. But 60 feet diameter area is a courtyard, a cavern, a charging cavalry, etc. While the PW is better, it is only 90' wall or 30' sphere.
If you are looking for AOE for a bunch of enemies then meteor swarm is going to be much more effective. If you really want a fear effect then Illusory Dragon is much better because it only effects enemies and does within sight opposed to a range, plus the damage is better and you can move the damage each turn and it's an int save, and half on failure. And it's a lower level spell. Average wis save is pretty good for enemies at 17 level so it's about a 55% chance if success unfortunately.
There seems to be a disconnect somewhere in your rating system, on how valuable it is to deprive an opponent of their action, versus affecting their movement. The rating of Hypnotic Pattern is the most glaring example of this. NO ally is going to drop an AoE on that because everyone knows how valuable it is. On the other hand, as a DM, id quite happily drop a friendly fire AoE on affected targets, because getting them all back into the action economy is worth whatever damage they take. A spell that only limits movement isn't even in the same league. Yeah, the brutes will be affected. But they were never the biggest threat anyway. The ranged opponents will often simply ignore the debuff and continue to act normally. Action economy is everything.
I believe you are talking about how I reduce the number of targets of the AOE because it is friendly fire? I do that because of two things. One, if it is really debilitating then you really need to avoid allies, so it is harder to get as many enemies into the radius. Two, if you don't mind hitting some allies, then your allies will get hit and that is negative control, since you are hitting your own allies. Am I getting your point correctly?
@@DndUnoptimized no. I'm talking about the value of taking away an enemy's act, versus any other type of control, and thus any assumptions made as a result. The reason Hypnotic Pattern is so powerful is single save and loss of action. Loss of action is SOOOO big, that it would be worthwhile to damage your allies in order to free them from the effect. Yes, you rate the conditions like stunned and paralyzed as more valuable than conditions like blinded or prone. I'm saying that the disconnect is in HOW MUCH difference there is. Stunning a single target for one round is a stronger strategic control than making a dozen enemies prone. This disconnect is why obviously lower value spells that can affect large areas rank higher in your system, compared to fight winning spells that rank lower.
I see, so you are saying that the value of removing the action isn't representative in my calculations. Right now I rate it at 40% of the unconscious condition, but you think it should be higher, correct? I can definitely see that argument and the assignment of each portion of unconscious is kind of a best guess. I think like damage, AOE control looks better on paper, but because you spread out the control over many people it isn't as useful as completely disabling one person. Same thing with damage calculations where AOE effects will look way better on paper, focus fire is more efficient so it is under represented by the numbers.
@@DndUnoptimized exactly. Especially in an encounter where a hard control can swing the action economy to the favor of the group, that hard control becomes immeasurably more powerful than debuffing or soft control.
It’s interesting to see just how bad some of the high level spells are. Of course, as you mentioned, the metric you use to calculate the strength of the spell lacks some nuance (like with banishment) and doesn’t consider concentration as a weakness (like with force cage). It makes me wonder how big the martial-caster divide would be if casters just picked average or bad spells instead of the best ones.
That is a fantastic question. I think that's why we hear stories about how martials dominate casters at some tables. The lack of concentration is somewhat taken into account because if you are calculating a character's actions over an encounter, you will have multiple spells going at the same time, which increases CPR.
Here is my list of best control spells of each level. 1st: Tasha's Hideous Laughter 2nd: Web 3rd: Hypnotic Pattern 4th: Confusion 5th Wall of Force 6th Wall of Ice 7th Forcecage 8th Maze 9th: Psychic Scream
Wow its almost like 5e was designed in a really short amount of time by the smallest team of designers since 1e who didn't have time to really playtest all of their spells. Huh.
Haha, well you would hope that the balance improved over time, but we ended up with some pretty zany stuff later like Silvery Barbs and Twilight/Peace cleric.
@@DndUnoptimized Well, that's because of powercreep. They want new subclasses + spells to be stronger than old ones because that "gets people to buy books"
@@wanderingshade8383 power creep is just easier than "different and viable" which is the better way to draft. Although silvery barbs is so interesting because it probably could be different and viable by just making it a second level spell
Damn i was really hoping ud calc vortex warp but totally get how web is stronger. But like fr vortex warp is like the most powerful single target control in the game hands down
I would think vortex warp is more of a utility spell with a controle aspect. Another spell that I really love is wither and bloom as it is both a damage and a healing spell. Sure neither the healing nor the damage is going to be impressive, but if we have a stars druid with an order cleric dip and their chalice out they can damage a few foes provide some healing to 1 and have another make an attack. 😁😁😁 (if you are down and in need of healing you aren't exactly in the best position make an attack, for that reason a heal split feature is super useful)
All boils down to action economy and threat level. Action economy should be self explanatory to anyone playing dnd long enough. Threat level is how much one creature can deal in a single round - bosses with legendary actions for instance would have a much higher threat level than your average mob. Example: Can my big damage play take out any of the enemies number? If yes then do it (FIREBALL!). If unlikely then Hypnotic pattern, wall of force etc. lowering the opponent's team's action economy. All the while focus fire if you can only deal damage. Can the high threat target attack at range? If no, then cast levitate until it sticks. Can you tip the scale of battle in your favour? If yes then buff your team and debuff the enemy Is the high threat target more dangerous than anticipated? If yes temporary CC until you can heal your team up - Banishment, phantasmal force, hideous laughter, irresistible dance etc. Can you beat the enemy? If no, run, no shame in running away. Dimension door lighting step darkness, invisibility etc.
>Best 4th level control spell >not Polymorph Huh On a serious note, they "fixed" spells in new edition. But picked them based not on math, but on popularity. If there is video with some random c-tier celebrity voice actor playing dnd casted a spell, people think it is op. That why spiritual weapon, one of the weakest cleric spells, now even weaker. Same with banishment. Also they removed unique mechanics from spells, so vtt can handle it. So all spell that increase hp maximum or granted different pools of hp are now temporary hp etc. Very uninspiring. What they did to conjure animals is just disgusting, wont even comment on it.
Haha I meant to talk about polymorph in the video and why is didn't choose it but it was too long. Polymorph is a fantastic control, but can be used a lot of ways. Usually they most effective way is to buff allies and turn them into apes, but my CPR calculations don't deal with that, it usually is either for healing or damage output. The other way is to disable enemies and take them out of the fight. Either you end up turning them into a slug and then they take damage and break it, or they manage to last the entire encounter as a slug and the polymorph spell is essentially a banishment spell in terms.
Feel like you undervalue the blind of colour spray here - unlike sleep which only lasts for one hit or till helped blind endures for the whole round no matter what, and blind is a good condition to give for your teams benefit. Also the greater HP pool you are able to effect means at level 1 you could well blind the entire encounter for a round, where with sleep you end up leaving one or two awake...
Maybe I'm under valuing it. It still ends up useless after a few levels, but during the levels it does work, sleep works much better and can be done from range. Yea if you have enemies that can do an aoe to wake people up then maybe it can be all cancelled, but it'll still end up hurting the enemies. Even if an ally uses an action to wake them up immediately, that's still a whole action wasted which is good still. But I'm sure there are times where color spray can be fantastic.
@@DndUnoptimized The big thing with Blind is I can't think of a single thing at those low levels where sleep is much use that are immune to blind (though there may be some) but sleep is actually quite often irrelevant as the NPC's are immune. And the blind might actually stay useful into the later levels. Sleep lasts exactly 1 hit, so your party may well not manage to kill the one target they woke, even though they focused on it, and if you have just ticked into the CR rating stuff that has multi attack you have dented their action economy but its not as crippling, and that is really all the sleep did. Where colour spray gives your entire team advantage and the opponents disadvantage for the entire round, so your team are overall more likely to succeed at focus firing down a select target or two and it likely effects more targets or bigger boss targets as its bigger die and one more of them! And having no save but lasting the whole round you can actually make really great use of it against BBEG, even ones that usually have legendary resistances - almost certainly not the fight opener as they will have too much HP but it can actually shine even in the later game if you use it with cunning. But sleep really has no value at all by then, smaller die and less of them to make it working at all less likely and the minnion will just wake the boss up, barely denting the opponents action economy most of the time...
For sure not every spell should be a banger to change the combat (I want martials to be effective). I'm not arguing for that, just for the spells to be balanced relative to each other.
@@DndUnoptimized I assume your goal is a) for spell casting to be easier to pick up ny removing "trap picks" and/or b) for characters who pick spells by theme instead of power level to not be too far from optimal efficiency. Please correct me if I got you wrong there :) Those are honorable goals and I agree that some spells are garbage and deserve buffs. I would caution against going for full homogeneity of "in vacuum" power level though, since spells are also balanced around other things like availability to different classes, school limitations, class/race features or items like Instrument of the Bards.
@wwapd1 yup, that's my goal. I definitely don't want all spells to be mathematically equal, and some variance is definitely important. But not something like 7x more powerful.
Hi don't wanna be weird but i also calced power word pains cpr prior to this lol and I came up with the max 10ft speed being worth 8 not 4. Am I confused? 2/3 of 12 is 8 right and like 12 is removing 30ft speed. Dont wanna nitpick love the video but yeah just tryna refine my maths
i think the low rating of banishment shows a bit of a flaw in your system, or at least how your system isnt really able to judge this type of spell. dont get me wrong, im not saying you did a bad job by any means, im just saying this as i think its an interesting talking point: banishment is good in encounters where one enemy is a "big" one to remove, which isnt factored into a judgement system that doesnt consider that specific scenario and seems to essentially consider all enemies to be equal and shutting any enemy down to be equal value to another, not giving adequete value to shutting a specific enemy down in certain contexts. web is only better if there are a bunch of roughly equal enemies, whereas banishment shines if removing a single enemy for a prolonged period has great value. p.s. if ive missed something i apologise, im very tired rn
No you are correct. It treats control as control whether you do it in a goblin or on tiamet. I'm not sure how I could take that into account but I'll think on it. The truth is that focused strong Control is often better than area weaker control just like focused damage is better than AOE damage even though the numbers would indicate otherwise. Thanks for taking the time to share this
@@DndUnoptimized another thing to note is that spells like banishment are good specifically in encounters where there is one "big" enemy plus a ton of other enemies that become easier to take out once the big one is removed before it returns and then you can all focus that one big enemy. if its _just_ the big one then i think banishment is usually useless.
0:09 No I won't. I'm not buying it until I hear people's opinions on it, which probably won't be very high. Every problem they fix seems to come paired with 2 more they added for NO REASON.
Fair enough! Maybe I should have said, "a lot of people". I think generally they are making things better, but it doesn't seem to be what I was hoping, and I am looking to other games more and more...
@@DndUnoptimized No worries! When one guy makes a thing 100s or more people will see, tiny errors are bound to be found by someone. Good video otherwise. I like that Confusion Vs Banishment once again proved the validity of aoes over single target.
Bringing up spell choice on topics related to the caster martial divide is kind of dumb. Its like saying theirs a divide between fighters that stab the enemy and fighters that stab their team mates or do nothing
there are a huge different between vhuman battlemaster fighter with GWM, polearm master and Precision Attack and elf champion with grappler feat. Like 300% difference.
@@МаратГабдуллин-б5ф yes but when people bring up the caster martial divide they are talking about the realistic potential (not dependent on overly generous dm rulings) of each category. The title of this video is phrased the same way but deals with a very different balance problem that is one component of the caster martial comparison which can imply it is arguing casters arent overpowered because you can choose bad spells
Would you accept that there is a difference in power between a PDK fighter and an echo knight? It's easier to tell if a subclass is strong or weak even for a newer player. It's harder to tell if a spell is strong or weak unless you know a lot of the mechanics and spells. The argument is that spells should be closer in power to one another within a spell level. It's reasonable that a player would choose a bad spell and think it's ok or even very powerful, but it's unrealistic for a player to stab their own teammates. I don't really get your argument.
@@DndUnoptimized yeah, my complaint is more of a tangent on how this was titled. However im not sure anyone would accept spell lists weak enough to close the gap with non casters
@jeice13 it's titled caster caster divide, which is how two casters have a big difference in power due to spell choice. If we are talking damage, then yea, casters will do less damage than martials in combat if they choose the bad spells. If we are talking control, well martials don't really have much control, so there isn't much of a comparison.
Banishment and confusion are good comparisons about how we think about spells. Banishment is a single target save or suck, albeit with only a single saving throw, but if the creature makes that save it does nothing.
Confusion hits multiple targets so you just have the potential for more control flat out (it's also not charm or fear based which is helpful). It has the feel bad risk that it doesn't work on any given round but hopefully you've picked your spot and have multiple creatures effected.
Yea, I actually like both of them and they aren't too overpowered.
@@DndUnoptimized yeah, confusion seems bad because it's not hypnotic pattern which is an overpowered spell
Confusion is probably the single most under-rated spell in the whole game. It is really good. First, it's neither a charm nor fear, which means nothing is inherently immune to it, you can hit most if not all enemies with it in most encounters, they can never take reactions (which doesn't mean just opportunity attacks, but things like counterspell as well), and you can damage the enemies hit by it as much as you like without any risk of it breaking, you can literally just straight up win encounters with this spell alone, I take it always when I am playing a character who can, and my DMs hate it because of how totally it dominates encounters.
@@joshl4751 Personally I like Confusion more than Hypnotic Pattern. HP is a charm, which means almost everything at higher levels is immune to it by default, and even if they aren't, you can't do anything to the cced targets or it breaks, and just one enemy with any kind of weak aoe effect can free all affected enemies with a single action.
Another very insightful video. Of course control per round is a flawed system, but I have not seen a better way to calculate control. Keep up the good work :)
Thanks! Yes it's definitely flawed and crude, but hopefully it gives a rough idea at least. And just like you can't really count on DPR numbers to tell the whole story, you certainly can't count CPR numbers to tell the whole story.
Thanks for the positive feedback and for watching!
I know it doesn't matter for most games, but we've got lots of mileage out of confusion in tier 3&4 play. The smaller aoe hurts a bit, but it not being a charm or fear makes it strictly better than HP or Fear at higher levels. Also, more casters means than limiting reactions gains power to limit counterspell wars. Obviously not a top tier pick even then, but a great use of 4th lvl spell slot at higher levels.
Nice! Glad it is seeing some play. And yea, it not being charm or fear helps it stick!
so you're saying casting web and slinging cantrips is one of the best things a caster an do their entire career
Haha it is a solid spell for most of the game, yea! As you get higher levels, creatures have more movement options, so it isn't as effective, but still pretty good.
No, the video is saying it’s a very good spell for its level. You can’t compare results across levels with this analysis because each level comes with its own assumptions about enemy HP and abilities. Now, Web is indeed a good spell against some enemies across all levels despite diminishing returns, but that is a separate assertion not addressed by the video.
Great video! I think you've undertaken a task that no one I have seen has had the bravery to try to do, quantify the effectiveness of control spells (the best spells in the game really). Awesome work, and I think it was really effective at accurately quantifying the power of these spells.
The big difference between sleep and color spray is that color spray lets the entire party attack that blinded guy with advantage. For sleep, one guy can attack with advantage and then they wake up.
Excellent vid! thus is needed nuance 🎉
Super informative video. I would absolutely love to see a complete ranking or all control spells. You could do a video every level. It would be so interesting to see which spells optimizaters overlook
That would be fun to do. Once the new ruleset comes out I'll probably have to revise the control calculation method a bit (actually might need to wait until the MM comes out so I can get an idea of how effective certain controls will be).
Once that's done then I will take a look at doing spell levels and do damage and control for each spell.
Also on a topic of wall of force ~5% of MM creatures can teleport. So that is somewhat a difference between it and a forcecage. And based on a new class changes, almost every class have teleporting subclass, and if not, they can cast misty step. Plus you can get it from a elf or a feat. You can expect every single character in tier 3 and 4 be able to teleport 30ft as bonus action at least a couple of times a day. If new monster manual wont increase amount of creatures with teleportation to at least 15% this game would be unplayable for DMs, and not because of the wall of force.
Yea, we seem to be moving towards more teleportation over time, so force cage will be better if that is the continued trend. I think it should be rare personally, but I like lower magic games. I am hoping wall of force and force cage both got a nerf, but I won't hold my breath.
@@DndUnoptimized it is easy to nerf forcecage with concentration. But the only way to nerf wall of force is more teleporting enemies. And teleports it is super silly design and very long and annoying encounters, or more enemies with disintegrate, but it also very questionable.
I was hoping it would have a certain amount of HP, or it would force a concentration save every time it's hit over a certain damage threshold. Something like that. Hopefully not a ton of teleporting monsters, that would make encounters really annoying as you pointed out.
@@DndUnoptimized i hate the idea of force field having hp, it just so wrong on so many levels. Maybe high threshold of single instance of force damage can break it. But definitely not random attacks.
Re: weird vs prismatic wall. Weird has a larger area of effect. Twice as large (60' vs 30' for PW). As a 17th level caster, your Spell DC is maxed at 19, more if you used those 17 levels to find a magic item that increases your Int modifier beyond +5 (tome of clear thinking) or just raises your proficiency or spell DC by 1. (Ioun stones, etc) But even at 19, that's pretty good for a Wisdom save. But it's the area that matters. Eventually, everyone will make the save. But 60 feet diameter area is a courtyard, a cavern, a charging cavalry, etc. While the PW is better, it is only 90' wall or 30' sphere.
If you are looking for AOE for a bunch of enemies then meteor swarm is going to be much more effective. If you really want a fear effect then Illusory Dragon is much better because it only effects enemies and does within sight opposed to a range, plus the damage is better and you can move the damage each turn and it's an int save, and half on failure. And it's a lower level spell.
Average wis save is pretty good for enemies at 17 level so it's about a 55% chance if success unfortunately.
@DndUnoptimized if you really want a fear effect tell them you are going to cast meteor storm
LOL! Can't argue against that
There seems to be a disconnect somewhere in your rating system, on how valuable it is to deprive an opponent of their action, versus affecting their movement. The rating of Hypnotic Pattern is the most glaring example of this. NO ally is going to drop an AoE on that because everyone knows how valuable it is. On the other hand, as a DM, id quite happily drop a friendly fire AoE on affected targets, because getting them all back into the action economy is worth whatever damage they take.
A spell that only limits movement isn't even in the same league. Yeah, the brutes will be affected. But they were never the biggest threat anyway. The ranged opponents will often simply ignore the debuff and continue to act normally.
Action economy is everything.
I believe you are talking about how I reduce the number of targets of the AOE because it is friendly fire? I do that because of two things. One, if it is really debilitating then you really need to avoid allies, so it is harder to get as many enemies into the radius. Two, if you don't mind hitting some allies, then your allies will get hit and that is negative control, since you are hitting your own allies.
Am I getting your point correctly?
@@DndUnoptimized no.
I'm talking about the value of taking away an enemy's act, versus any other type of control, and thus any assumptions made as a result.
The reason Hypnotic Pattern is so powerful is single save and loss of action.
Loss of action is SOOOO big, that it would be worthwhile to damage your allies in order to free them from the effect.
Yes, you rate the conditions like stunned and paralyzed as more valuable than conditions like blinded or prone. I'm saying that the disconnect is in HOW MUCH difference there is.
Stunning a single target for one round is a stronger strategic control than making a dozen enemies prone.
This disconnect is why obviously lower value spells that can affect large areas rank higher in your system, compared to fight winning spells that rank lower.
I see, so you are saying that the value of removing the action isn't representative in my calculations. Right now I rate it at 40% of the unconscious condition, but you think it should be higher, correct? I can definitely see that argument and the assignment of each portion of unconscious is kind of a best guess.
I think like damage, AOE control looks better on paper, but because you spread out the control over many people it isn't as useful as completely disabling one person. Same thing with damage calculations where AOE effects will look way better on paper, focus fire is more efficient so it is under represented by the numbers.
@@DndUnoptimized exactly. Especially in an encounter where a hard control can swing the action economy to the favor of the group, that hard control becomes immeasurably more powerful than debuffing or soft control.
Ready for a 5.24 update!
Hope to get there!
It’s interesting to see just how bad some of the high level spells are.
Of course, as you mentioned, the metric you use to calculate the strength of the spell lacks some nuance (like with banishment) and doesn’t consider concentration as a weakness (like with force cage).
It makes me wonder how big the martial-caster divide would be if casters just picked average or bad spells instead of the best ones.
That is a fantastic question. I think that's why we hear stories about how martials dominate casters at some tables.
The lack of concentration is somewhat taken into account because if you are calculating a character's actions over an encounter, you will have multiple spells going at the same time, which increases CPR.
Here is my list of best control spells of each level.
1st: Tasha's Hideous Laughter
2nd: Web
3rd: Hypnotic Pattern
4th: Confusion
5th Wall of Force
6th Wall of Ice
7th Forcecage
8th Maze
9th: Psychic Scream
That's a pretty good list!
Wow its almost like 5e was designed in a really short amount of time by the smallest team of designers since 1e who didn't have time to really playtest all of their spells. Huh.
Haha, well you would hope that the balance improved over time, but we ended up with some pretty zany stuff later like Silvery Barbs and Twilight/Peace cleric.
@@DndUnoptimized Well, that's because of powercreep. They want new subclasses + spells to be stronger than old ones because that "gets people to buy books"
@@wanderingshade8383 power creep is just easier than "different and viable" which is the better way to draft. Although silvery barbs is so interesting because it probably could be different and viable by just making it a second level spell
Damn i was really hoping ud calc vortex warp but totally get how web is stronger. But like fr vortex warp is like the most powerful single target control in the game hands down
I love vortex warp, it's my favourite spell in the game! So much cool stuff you can do with it. But web is definitely stronger in terms of control.
I would think vortex warp is more of a utility spell with a controle aspect. Another spell that I really love is wither and bloom as it is both a damage and a healing spell. Sure neither the healing nor the damage is going to be impressive, but if we have a stars druid with an order cleric dip and their chalice out they can damage a few foes provide some healing to 1 and have another make an attack. 😁😁😁 (if you are down and in need of healing you aren't exactly in the best position make an attack, for that reason a heal split feature is super useful)
All boils down to action economy and threat level.
Action economy should be self explanatory to anyone playing dnd long enough.
Threat level is how much one creature can deal in a single round - bosses with legendary actions for instance would have a much higher threat level than your average mob.
Example:
Can my big damage play take out any of the enemies number? If yes then do it (FIREBALL!). If unlikely then Hypnotic pattern, wall of force etc. lowering the opponent's team's action economy.
All the while focus fire if you can only deal damage.
Can the high threat target attack at range? If no, then cast levitate until it sticks.
Can you tip the scale of battle in your favour? If yes then buff your team and debuff the enemy
Is the high threat target more dangerous than anticipated? If yes temporary CC until you can heal your team up - Banishment, phantasmal force, hideous laughter, irresistible dance etc.
Can you beat the enemy? If no, run, no shame in running away. Dimension door lighting step darkness, invisibility etc.
I am of the firm believe that nobody at WotC can do math.
Hahaha, either that or the things they calculate are way different than the things we calculate
15 seconds in. YEESSSSSSS!
So... uhhh... when will the entire spell list be analyzed. I have a hunger!
Haha I don't know if I'll ever get to that. But maybe I'll think about it when the new rules come out! Thanks for the love though!
>Best 4th level control spell
>not Polymorph
Huh
On a serious note, they "fixed" spells in new edition. But picked them based not on math, but on popularity. If there is video with some random c-tier celebrity voice actor playing dnd casted a spell, people think it is op. That why spiritual weapon, one of the weakest cleric spells, now even weaker. Same with banishment. Also they removed unique mechanics from spells, so vtt can handle it. So all spell that increase hp maximum or granted different pools of hp are now temporary hp etc. Very uninspiring. What they did to conjure animals is just disgusting, wont even comment on it.
Haha I meant to talk about polymorph in the video and why is didn't choose it but it was too long. Polymorph is a fantastic control, but can be used a lot of ways. Usually they most effective way is to buff allies and turn them into apes, but my CPR calculations don't deal with that, it usually is either for healing or damage output. The other way is to disable enemies and take them out of the fight. Either you end up turning them into a slug and then they take damage and break it, or they manage to last the entire encounter as a slug and the polymorph spell is essentially a banishment spell in terms.
Feel like you undervalue the blind of colour spray here - unlike sleep which only lasts for one hit or till helped blind endures for the whole round no matter what, and blind is a good condition to give for your teams benefit. Also the greater HP pool you are able to effect means at level 1 you could well blind the entire encounter for a round, where with sleep you end up leaving one or two awake...
Maybe I'm under valuing it. It still ends up useless after a few levels, but during the levels it does work, sleep works much better and can be done from range. Yea if you have enemies that can do an aoe to wake people up then maybe it can be all cancelled, but it'll still end up hurting the enemies. Even if an ally uses an action to wake them up immediately, that's still a whole action wasted which is good still.
But I'm sure there are times where color spray can be fantastic.
@@DndUnoptimized The big thing with Blind is I can't think of a single thing at those low levels where sleep is much use that are immune to blind (though there may be some) but sleep is actually quite often irrelevant as the NPC's are immune. And the blind might actually stay useful into the later levels.
Sleep lasts exactly 1 hit, so your party may well not manage to kill the one target they woke, even though they focused on it, and if you have just ticked into the CR rating stuff that has multi attack you have dented their action economy but its not as crippling, and that is really all the sleep did.
Where colour spray gives your entire team advantage and the opponents disadvantage for the entire round, so your team are overall more likely to succeed at focus firing down a select target or two and it likely effects more targets or bigger boss targets as its bigger die and one more of them! And having no save but lasting the whole round you can actually make really great use of it against BBEG, even ones that usually have legendary resistances - almost certainly not the fight opener as they will have too much HP but it can actually shine even in the later game if you use it with cunning. But sleep really has no value at all by then, smaller die and less of them to make it working at all less likely and the minnion will just wake the boss up, barely denting the opponents action economy most of the time...
DMs appreciate weaker spells. You absolutely do not want every control spell to have the potential to TPK.
For sure not every spell should be a banger to change the combat (I want martials to be effective). I'm not arguing for that, just for the spells to be balanced relative to each other.
@@DndUnoptimized I assume your goal is a) for spell casting to be easier to pick up ny removing "trap picks" and/or b) for characters who pick spells by theme instead of power level to not be too far from optimal efficiency. Please correct me if I got you wrong there :)
Those are honorable goals and I agree that some spells are garbage and deserve buffs. I would caution against going for full homogeneity of "in vacuum" power level though, since spells are also balanced around other things like availability to different classes, school limitations, class/race features or items like Instrument of the Bards.
@wwapd1 yup, that's my goal. I definitely don't want all spells to be mathematically equal, and some variance is definitely important. But not something like 7x more powerful.
Spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r2v5urpCyNQJXM8ipxCWF4IQvHqSDuw5wKYquDf-ZrY/edit?usp=sharing
Caster Caster Divide: Damage: th-cam.com/video/VJ6jdXRQOzM/w-d-xo.html
Control Per Round: th-cam.com/video/_sRxkYY6x90/w-d-xo.html
Hi don't wanna be weird but i also calced power word pains cpr prior to this lol and I came up with the max 10ft speed being worth 8 not 4. Am I confused? 2/3 of 12 is 8 right and like 12 is removing 30ft speed. Dont wanna nitpick love the video but yeah just tryna refine my maths
Oh nice catch! I must have mixed it up and thought of 10ft reduction, not 10ft max. Thanks!
i think the low rating of banishment shows a bit of a flaw in your system, or at least how your system isnt really able to judge this type of spell. dont get me wrong, im not saying you did a bad job by any means, im just saying this as i think its an interesting talking point: banishment is good in encounters where one enemy is a "big" one to remove, which isnt factored into a judgement system that doesnt consider that specific scenario and seems to essentially consider all enemies to be equal and shutting any enemy down to be equal value to another, not giving adequete value to shutting a specific enemy down in certain contexts. web is only better if there are a bunch of roughly equal enemies, whereas banishment shines if removing a single enemy for a prolonged period has great value.
p.s. if ive missed something i apologise, im very tired rn
No you are correct. It treats control as control whether you do it in a goblin or on tiamet. I'm not sure how I could take that into account but I'll think on it. The truth is that focused strong Control is often better than area weaker control just like focused damage is better than AOE damage even though the numbers would indicate otherwise.
Thanks for taking the time to share this
@@DndUnoptimized another thing to note is that spells like banishment are good specifically in encounters where there is one "big" enemy plus a ton of other enemies that become easier to take out once the big one is removed before it returns and then you can all focus that one big enemy. if its _just_ the big one then i think banishment is usually useless.
0:09 No I won't. I'm not buying it until I hear people's opinions on it, which probably won't be very high. Every problem they fix seems to come paired with 2 more they added for NO REASON.
Fair enough! Maybe I should have said, "a lot of people". I think generally they are making things better, but it doesn't seem to be what I was hoping, and I am looking to other games more and more...
@@DndUnoptimized No worries! When one guy makes a thing 100s or more people will see, tiny errors are bound to be found by someone. Good video otherwise. I like that Confusion Vs Banishment once again proved the validity of aoes over single target.
Bringing up spell choice on topics related to the caster martial divide is kind of dumb. Its like saying theirs a divide between fighters that stab the enemy and fighters that stab their team mates or do nothing
there are a huge different between vhuman battlemaster fighter with GWM, polearm master and Precision Attack and elf champion with grappler feat. Like 300% difference.
@@МаратГабдуллин-б5ф yes but when people bring up the caster martial divide they are talking about the realistic potential (not dependent on overly generous dm rulings) of each category. The title of this video is phrased the same way but deals with a very different balance problem that is one component of the caster martial comparison which can imply it is arguing casters arent overpowered because you can choose bad spells
Would you accept that there is a difference in power between a PDK fighter and an echo knight? It's easier to tell if a subclass is strong or weak even for a newer player. It's harder to tell if a spell is strong or weak unless you know a lot of the mechanics and spells. The argument is that spells should be closer in power to one another within a spell level.
It's reasonable that a player would choose a bad spell and think it's ok or even very powerful, but it's unrealistic for a player to stab their own teammates. I don't really get your argument.
@@DndUnoptimized yeah, my complaint is more of a tangent on how this was titled. However im not sure anyone would accept spell lists weak enough to close the gap with non casters
@jeice13 it's titled caster caster divide, which is how two casters have a big difference in power due to spell choice.
If we are talking damage, then yea, casters will do less damage than martials in combat if they choose the bad spells. If we are talking control, well martials don't really have much control, so there isn't much of a comparison.