I've stopped DMing D&D because of how broken the entire game is. It's especially disheartening for me as a DM how broken charater builds can be, so i eventually reached a point where i didn't want to put in any work to build encounters anymore. I'm done.
@@PerfectionHunterthat sounds more like a player problem than a you problem, as your players must be insisting on broken builds and exploits at the expense of your fun, making the game not fun for you and resulting in no game and no fun for anyone...
Hey, hope it's not a weird question but, what do you use to get such a perfectly bald head? I've tried a few different things and none of them look that good
I forgot to put the "like and subscribe" graphic on screen within the first 60 seconds. I am in shambles, the algorithm will destroy us, this is the end
I'm just Glad you are back! I was just wondering about you last night. Thinking about how I haven't seen no content from on my time line. Hope you got your rest and everything is good. Can't to see more videos from you.
More like- Lvl2 Artificer: *erases their 3rd goblin* Hounds of Tindalos: *crawling out of every sharp corner like cockroaches to investigate the spacetime disruptor*
@@grendl74 tbh, as soon as I'd hit level 15 I would *always* have planeshift memorised. ALWAYS. Too many reasons speak against not memorising it as soon as you are that powerful.
10:43 Funny thing. WAY back in 3.5, Lycanthropy used to permanently shift your alignment to that of the original Werebeast that infected you. This, of course, makes sense if you were ever bitten by a werewolf or wererat, who are Evil... but in 3.5, the Werebear was *Lawful Good.* So I had a concept for an adventure, involving a Werebear who was going around, infecting known villains... and turning them Good, albeit against their will. It was going to be a question of if the players stop the werebear or not. It was stupid, and felt kinda mean-spirited, so I never used it. But I think it's funny you kinda came to the same conclusion I did.
I always found the Werebear hilarious. Because it stated that you lose control during the full moon doing actions in accordance with your alignment... which was Lawful Good.
I don't really see a problem with doing this from the DM side, as a plot, but I'd have a problem with players doing it. I only allow adventuring to continue within the first 24 hours of being afflicted (because it's not right to say "you can't even do your normal actions anymore, good luck getting out of the dungeon"), and any time they _voluntarily_ shift into beast form, they incur one level of Exhaustion. So the Werebear PC has a running clock to get their bites in. 24 hours. Then they can never adventure again while afflicted with lycanthropy. There is no cheese potential, that 24 hour grace period is for your _entire life._ If you've burned it all up and get cursed again, you're gonna stand there like an idiot Not Adventuring and your friends are going to have to escort you out.
actually amazing campaign idea tell the players the villagers are scared of the werebear, that there's a bounty on it - but if the players kill the werebear, suddenly there's an outbreak of criminals and villains that they unknowingly caused!
The question is whether it's really Lawful Good behaviour to forcefully change someone's alignment like that. It's essentially a form of near permanent mind control.
Listen I know a lot of people just listen to the audio but the edit of the arracockra taking out a hammer labeled “cheese” and bonking the tarrasque is fantastic.
Surprised no one told you that yet but attunment can be ended in multiple ways. A line from DMG page 136 "A creature's attunement to an item ends if the creature no longer satisfies the prerequisites for attunement, if the item has been more than 100 feet away for at least 24 hours, if the creature dies, or if another creature attunes to the item. A creature can also voluntarily end attunement by spending another short rest focused on the item, unless the item is cursed."
@@Flashback2020 It takes a short rest to attune to an item. Most DMs allow you to do it during long rest too From DMG page 136: "Attuning to an item requires a creature to spend a short rest focused on only that item while being in physical contact with it (this can't be the same short rest used to learn the item's properties). This focus can take the form of weapon practice (for a weapon), meditation (for a wondrous item), or some other appropriate activity. If the short rest is interrupted, the attunement attempt fails. Otherwise, at the end of the short rest, the creature gains an intuitive understanding of how to activate any magical properties of the item, including any necessary command words."
@@Alex-pq4vp But a short rest takes at least 1hour so if you want to do this trick it would take 3 hours in a party of 4 people, if the original wielder does not want to attune again. There is plenty of room for a DM here to punish this player behavior. For example the line where it says focused only on that item, can be laid out as any distraction will interrupt the attunement, like being talked to, being touched by someone or experience a weather change while being outside. Not to mention the simple solution by putting time pressure on players or just start fights after a long rest. And to be fair he explicitly said you just can pass the spear to your party members in the video, which is obviously not true.
Hot take- Fly Speed only ruins encounters if you have every encounter outdoors in an open field. Sure, no enemy can hit that eldritch blast bird man- but if the enemies just take full cover, or there's a ceiling in the room? They're the same as everyone else.
That's kinda the same way a Twilight cleric's 300 foot darkvision affects the game: only outdoors. Being able to share it with party members that may not have any Darkvision at all is still very useful underground.
ignoring that they are an open target for range attacks is honestly just sad. fly speed is not broken most DMs just don't use range attacks a longbow can shoot stupidly far and cost stupidly cheep to make/buy.
@@sicroto I mean, you're still completely negating the threat of melee attacks while being exactly as vulnerable to ranged attacks in the air as you were on the ground. In a mixed encounter (some melee and some ranged threats) this is a huge advantage. Even if the melee enemies have ranged secondary options (which is almost non-existent unless you're fighting humanoids), for most melee-focused enemies those will be significantly worse attacks. After all, if they had good ranged attacks, they wouldn't be trying to close with you in the first place! There's the occasional edge case where pythagoras math means you're just a bit out of range of someone you want to hit, but in practice flight is a massive buff to your survivability in most encounters.
We had a simple polymorph restriction - unless your character has seen it "up close and personal" they are not familiar enough to recreate it. Any backstory encounters need to be GM approved during "Episode 0" creation. It gives a small bonus to the mage for not hiding at the back when the Giant Serpent or whatever appears, because they can then add it to their "Size of a. (insert beastie here)" list.
There is an argument that polymorph isn't duplicating a beast you are changing your form and so the idea that you need to see a creature to polymorph into it is rather restrictive. I polymorph into a German Shepherd, there is no stat block for that but a Wolf is close enough to the form that you can use that stat block. Technically the spell doesn't change you into a beast. That is just the category of stat blocks you can choose from because they are the weaker ones for their CRs.
@@nickm9102 I get your point. Changing into similar. "I've seen Wolves and Golden Retrievers, so a German Shepard is pretty much the same." But if You had never seen a Greater Pink Wangdoodle and had no idea what it was, you wouldn't be a able to change into one. Same for a nordic mage that had never seen a large jungle cat like a tiger or a Dinosaur. Could still do a mammoth, Dire wolf or similar. It doesn't really restrict the mage in that they can still get the results, just the flavour is different.
Personally, I think Polymorph shouldn't be able to turn a character into anything that isn't a beast of CR 1/4 or less. Sheeping someone is a time-honored tradition and should be upheld as a strong crowd control option and nothing else. That said, though, the part that a lot of people forget with Polymorph is that it replaces your mental stats, too. When you turn into a T-rex, even if your personality is the same, would you even be able to recognize your friends? Or would you just see a whole bunch of tiny animals trying to kill that bigger animal you want to eat?
@@ilovethelegend the argument there is how strong the party bond is. You retain your personality and alignment so if you have a strong party bond you would likely recognize your ally if you are good or neutral you would likely refrain from making a party member a meal. If you have a weak party bond it would depend on how hungry you are and since most predators are used to not eating for days or weeks at a time I doubt you would put much effort into it. Now if you are evil or you haven't been eating then it is very likely that polymorphing you will create another enemy at worst at best you would abandon your original "mission" to find food. Now you will move further away from this the higher the Intelligence is. This means a 1-2 you follow your instincts 3-5 you would react simmer to how a domesticated animal would. 6-8 at this point you are reaching a level where only the most aggressive people would respond that way and realistically is only incapable of using its equipment because of the spell wording. A CR7 Giant Ape realistically could do everything that a PC could do except it has no language. Which is likely the reason it is a CR7, a Druid would have to be lvl 21 to use this form. Add to that the ability to retain Mentals in Wild shape and you are definitely going to be better off Wildshapeing for the 10 hour stretch and armoring and arming yourself. But this can't happen unless you reach lvl 21.
Inflicted lycanthropes only transform at the full moon and lose control of the character for the duration of the transformation in every other edition. Being a lycanthrope (even one that matches your alignment) was always considered a bad thing. The only option to get around that is to be a natural lycanthrope, which is only possible in 3.5 due to level adjustment mechanics.
You still lose control of your character in 5e. The only way around this would probably be to be inflicted with lycanthropy by a good aligned being as I believe your lycanthrope alignment is based on what creature inflicted it on you.
"Thanks from the concordance! Great Video!" Ace told me to post this, after my 4th attempt at comment I realized I cannot promote. Sorry TH-cam Comment Auto Mod filter or whoever is moderating the comment section. You are valued and loved! Also DnD Shorts you are valued & loved 💕!!
"Dinosaurs just didn't exist" man I can't imagine a bigger buzzkill than hearing your DM's world filled with magic, beholders, dragons, werewolves, and elementals didn't have dinosaurs because it didn't fit their idea of what a medieval fantasy setting looks like. But Giant apes were okay!
Rule of Cool can overstep into chaos. Using the same logic, nazi laser vikings are also a thing you could summon. Polymorph into an R2-D2, Illusory Bugs Bunny, build a mundane supercollider, play as Batman who fell through a dimensional rift. There's already lots of cool things to play with, no need to break other people's worlds because they're not enough for you.
@@TlalocTemporal Bruh a dinosaur is just a large and scary chicken, it's nothing like nazi laser chickens. Meanwhile there's floating eye monsters that has 10 tentacles with eyes on the end that shoot disintegration beams and petrifying rays, they're A OK! 👍
@@chroprs -- Different kinds of fiction. A 1600s British ship captain is out of place in Shadowrun, while a corporate cyborg is out of place in a pirate game. Both characters could be fantastic fiction, but using them in the wrong game can derail stories that try to take the world seriously.
You didn't pay attention to what he was saying. The WORLD that he was referring to did NOT have any dinosaurs. Dinosaurs NEVER existed on that particular world. Not too difficult to comprehend here and I exclusively play 2nd Edition AD&D. I have never played 4th or 5th Editions.
Yes, a world where giant apes exist and dinosaurs never did is particularly fine. Similarly, a world where apes evolve from men is also fine. A world where chickens don't exist and dogs lay eggs that people cook and eat for breakfast is fine. Because of this comment, I just might swap out toads in my next game with Lotads from Pokemon. "You want _what_ as a familiar? Never heard of that. You can have a Lotad, though."
Flying speed being op shows a really interesting progression in the hobby. In that flying is not op In dungeons. Or really anywhere with a ceiling. It's only as the game has evolved past that first half of its name that flying has become a problem
I def agree although to be fair if you can fly you can just sorta float/hover above the ground making you immune to stuff like tripwires or pressure plates in dungeons, or just cross a chasm with no effort and the like. Tbh dungeon crawling is only really interesting and/or fun at lower levels that becomes less attractive later on.
Yeah, I had a player show up to a mega dungeon with an aarakocra. Not as op as other people thought it would be because half the game was a dungeon. It was the strongest right before the dungeon and navigating a lava field at the end boss.
Flying is not even OP outside though, only a very select few enemies can not have some form of ranged attack and those ones can run and hide. The example at 3:02 is terrible because a single hand full of rocks from the Terrasque will one shot the flyer even at much higher levels.
Flying could be even dangerous because if they get knocked prone mid air that can end up being a lot of damage. What I find a bit weird though is that you can fly in a 5ft wide corridor. Your wings basically don't exist as physical things to keep mind of.
As an older player who has dealt with Hostile DMs and power gamers trying to defeat them... It warms my heart to hear you pushing kindness and cooperation. It makes the table so much better.
Archer with Bag of Holding launcher sends Evil Wizard to void. Evil Wizard appears, "I can planeshift you fool." Archer with Bag of Holding launcher sends Evil Wizard to void again. Evil Wizard appears again, "You can't beat me you fool." Archer with Bag of Holding launcher sends Evil Wizard to void again. Evil Wizard appears again, "Stop that you fool. What do you hope to accomplish!" Archer with Bag of Holding launcher sends Evil Wizard to void again. Evil Wizard doesn't re-appear. Archer waits a few minutes to be sure and mutters, "To force you to waste all your spell slots. Stupid wizards."
I don't ban any established rules from my table. Instead, I'll take the time to see and poke any holes in the "broken" builds/ideas. For Aaracokra, casters will now have a hold person on their spell list. Bag of Holding + Portable Hole (or any other extraplanar holes) will result in a portal to a thieves' guild held in a secret plane (this is something that I started to do since 3e). Wish spells I definitely am not worried about. The more greedy the wish, the more I become an efreet granting that wish. Do you want to become immortal? Cool. You're now a statue!
For almost any flying race I tend to use the idea of...you have negative cover. If enemies are targeting based on what they can see...they CAN SEE YOU! No hiding up above the battlefield archers and mages will try and target you especially if you are making a big but flying threat of yourself. Ranged enemies will usually deal with flying threats first their their melee compatriots deal with melee threats, then move to support melee combatants once the flying/ranged threats are dealt with.
Good strategy. And the DMs ultimate is ofcourse always in play: any broken rules can be houseruled, or an even more busted reply. I myself also like cosmologically logical interventions: turning yourself into an invulnerable nanite swarm of spellcasters? The Gods/Tindalos/They-who-Dwell-Beyond have taken notice.....and would like to have a word.
On the TFC, the first encounter I witnessed of a flying race character, they were up 30 feet and a monster did use hold person on them..... and they died... from the fall damage+ they got crit hit after they fell...Fortunately, it was also the first time my character got to use revivify. But TFC encounters can't be flexed much on the fly because to make it more balanced you have to get encounters pre-approved. Honestly, it is a system you have to see working to decide if it is for you. I like it. But there is nothing wrong with other ways to play.
Anything that can knock the Aarakocra prone will be devastating. Maybe give every archer Ammunition of Walloping, which on every hit forces a DC 10 STR save or be knocked prone. DC 10 once is a joke. DC 10 multiple times a round, every round, might actually induce a fail. And then if they're low on HP, the fall may kill them outright, at least at low level. That's one warning I give flying races. You can quite literally take yourself out by landing badly at level 1. Even at level 5, if you're in archery range, you're not safe from the Ammunition of Walloping.
I hope a few folks who watch this hop on over to the forged concordance. I have DMed there a good while now and they are a genuinely great community. Folks who care a lot about dnd.
I jumped on as soon as I saw this video, waiting on guild access for my character as of 9A today! No doubt the mods are dealing with a big bump in applications this week :D
Many, many moons ago (read as AD&D rules) Our party met up with several black puddings... In a panic, our mage cast a spell thinking it was a fire AOE.... unfortunately it was a Make gaseous (or similar) spell to allow short term passage through solid objects... so now we had several black puddings in gaseous form that really couldn't hurt us, but were hanging around trying to eat us... and the spell only lasted for a few minutes... the team quickly used various fire implements to herd the black puddings into appropriate containers (that they could not eat through) These containers were capped and the plan was to lob them off of a cliff or down a chasm... later on one of the players ran out of ammunition and decided to lob one of the canisters at a small patrol of orcs... said container shattered releasing a very angry, very hungry, and fully solidified black pudding in their midst... while the black pudding did inflict some damage, it was mostly the chaos caused by the pudding that allowed our party to deal with the threat.... Thereafter, black pudding "grenades" became a sort of "staple" at our gaming table when we wanted a crazy diversion.
Bag of holding used by character to cover and contain a beholder by scooping it out of the air while it was passing a drop off the character was hidden at the top of. When the beholder was just below the top I bagged it . Enemies were surprised when I pulled it out (carefully to make sure it was facing them) let it do its eye thing, shoved it back in the bag and the party capitalized. This was AD&D ORIGINAL. It was not long after the Monster Manual (not compendium) first came out. Had a LOT of fun with that one. Yes I am THAT old. Started playing D&D when there were only 2 books. DMG and PHB.
so it was ruled that they will maintain the gaseous form until released from the containers? Also, why would you have so many sturdy containers ready lol
@@talkingbirb2808 I do not recall the DM making any such specific rulings and the Black Puddings seemed to just expand upon breakage. AS for the sturdy containers, I do not recall them as being anything special, other than being made of a substance a black pudding could not eat through, like glass or crystal bottles... Remember that this was AD&D as well as a fantasy setting so things like physics were often overlooked or modified in favor of gameplay, not to mention all of the physics breaking of magic weapons, armors, and spells...
I remember hearing as a kid that there was a difference between nuclear and nucular, but for the life of me I can't recall what the distinction was. In any case, I had to look it up to find the spelling and it was described as a regional pronunciation.
@@lordsergal8783 Nuclear means related to the nucleus. How do anyone say "nucleus"? Nobody says newkelus. Say "nucleus", then say "nuclear" and it has only one reasonable way of being pronounced. I know I'm being stupid about it and it doesn't matter how people say it, but I can't help it, it triggers me to no end when I hear these creators saying it like newkelar, and there's a LOT who say it like that, so I really feel good when one like this pops up and says it right. 🙃
@@Leongon-- "New-ke-lus"? I've never heard that, even from the science teacher than thought Jupiter had a moon called Lo. It's always been "New-clee-us", like New Cletus (the old one dun blowd up).
I feel the same way about artificer when not pronounced in accord with the word artifice. I can see why someone would do it this way with it being a potential new word but it's still like nails on a chalkboard to me. And while it may be prudish I usually pronounce aaracokra as coke to avoid the possibility of childish giggles.
When my group was playing regularly back in the 90's, one of my fave 2 player combos was "cuisinart". I came up with it during the infamous "against the giants" module. My buddy and I had surprise, so both began casting. A horizontal blade barrier appeared above a cluster of giants, who look up at it above their table. One segment later, the reverse gravity goes off. Lets tally the damage ... Fall upwards: > 1x Blade Barrier Damage > 1x falling damage ipon hitting the ceiling. > Roll to avoid getting hit by objects affected by the reverse gravity ... in this case, the giant stone table. Then repeat the above damage as reverse gravity expires, effectively doubling everything.
Prestidigitation says "warm up" So bringing that to its ultimate conclusion, it should be renamed "create plasma" Just keep in mind that its ONLY a cantrip
For the record, I don't find the "prestidigitation nuke" to be very convincing, RAW. It says "warm up," not "heat." As a DM, I would have no trouble ruling that this means "set the temperature to warm" rather than "add whatever amount of heat the player would like to." Casting prestidigitation on something which was already warmed wouldn't even do anything, because it is already "warm."
@@HouseDiAngelo It's cognitive realm nonsense, of course. But even if we agree that "warm" is subjective, we still have a shared understanding of the sort of temperature range that it entails. I imagine the same would be true in Faerun.
@HouseDiAngelo Grungeon Master argued that the "cooling liquids" half of that gives a decent point of reference. If you assume *cooling* water from room temperature (roughly 20°C) cannot *freeze* that water, it is reasonable to say it can lower Temps by roughly 15°C or so, which can then be mirrored on the upper end to heat things up to 35°C. Not worldbreaking, but heated blankets and chilled lemonade will only ever be 6 seconds away
My house rule for putting two extradimensional spaces into each other is that both become inaccessible until you remove one from the other, with one being the only thing you can retrieve. No astral explosion, no loss of items inside the space, just a temporary inconvenience until you can grab a hold of both disabled containers and physically pull them apart with a single action.
Seems simpler to just ignore the rule altogether, when you put a bag of holding into another one…nothing happens, rather deal with near infinite storage space than wonky trans dimensional magic effects
Why is the simulacrum loop fixed with that? The only downgrade is, that the caster needs more time, even with this "fix". Day 1: cast Simulacrum, pay 1.500 gp, order the simulacrum to order 25.000gp on Wish, make a nice nap, because in 14 days you're becoming a god... Day 2: after a relaxing nap, cast another Simulacrum and order him to get you a damage immunity from Wish. (Repeat these steps every day until you have immunity against all 13 damages types, which will cost you 19.500 gp) Day 14: congratz, you're an unkillable god now! Day X: But you wanna have a nice living too? Then recast simulacrum every day and let him order 25.000 gp from Wish - because there's not "enough" money you can have (man we really gonna wreck that company) - enjoy! (Btw. the only "fix" for this is, to ban Simulacrums from being able to cast Wish)
I'ma put my own here: *Vow of Poverty* in 3.5E, and by extension giving it to your Paladin special mount to get a free buffed-up dragon that is perfectly obedient. Lemme explain: Vow of Poverty is part of a line of Exalted feats in 3.5, all requiring you to take Sacred Vow first. Each give some sort of permanent buff but requiring you to permanently abstain from some aspect of DND, with VoP being the most severe by *far* because it means you can't have gold or magic items. You're not even allowed to hold potions and you can only use a quarterstaff. The flipside is that it makes you a *fuckin badass* and you get stronger as you level. We're talking +4AC that turns into +13 by lv18, tons of bonus exalted feats (including more vows), making your natural attacks into +1 to +5 good magical weapons, spell resistance, ability score improvements, and much more. Even still, normally this would cripple a character. But what if we put it on something that doesn't *need* money or magic? Enter the paladin special mount. At Lv 5, you get was is essentially the 5e find steed spell into a class feature that boosts the Mount's hitdie/level/AC, makes it your permanent ally in Celestia that you can eventually call and uncall as many times as you want, and gives it some mindlink stuff. You can also pick their feats based on their HD, which will become important in a moment. There are also a ton of variant mounts other than the standard warhorse, some of which require you to have a higher paladin level to even summon them. You can even get dragons, but as outlined in the Draconomicon there's a ton of setup. They're intelligent so they won't always obey you, they need a lair, and 10k worth of gold and gems. You miiight be able to see where this is going. Get to the level where you can get a juvenile brass dragon (has to be a large sized good dragon for the standard paladin), make it have sacred vow along with VoP and another one called Vow of Obedience, and *HUZZAH!* Your dragon mount will not want the gold/gems or a lair, it will obey you without question, and because 3.5 treats hit die as levels for monsters you can easily have a lv 10 paladin with a dragon mount stronger than many lv 20 characters. Like we're talking 30+AC, 35+str, spellcasting, breath weapon, 250ft of flying per round, everything. Also it attacks and moves on your initiative count while also allowing you to use its movement as your own and keep your own attacks, so you can just keep pecking at enemies with spells or use a reach weapon like lances while charging in midair for some huge damage cuz 3.5 charging does triple damage with a Lance and you can increase the multiplier further up to 9x with spells and features. Oh, and if your dm tries putting you in cramped dungeons? Take the initiate of horas re feat for yourself which lets you do a full attack on a charge but also turn into a small-sized hawk for an hour a day. The juvenile brass dragon can use its Alter Self special ability to turn into any humanoid or beast it's own size or larger with the stats of the transformed creature but keeping it's buffs, so just have it turn into a Legendary Wolf. 120ft speed cr18 medium beast with all the buffs from VoP and the other stuff, while being able to cast verbal spells. Why is this important? Cuz it's medium and you're now small, *you can still ride your mount* so cramped spaces like dungeons become a non-issue for you cuz you're now fighting and exploring in the same size category as the rest of your party likely is. If you need to climb/fly/swim/burrow, your dragon can simply transform to something else as many times as it wants a day and can also cast spells to give you air for places without it. Enjoy pissing off your dm!
My bud back in college rolled a prestige Paladin (4 Cleric/2 Fighter, levels full casting and BAB) with the Saint template... to this day, our DM says it was the most broken thing he accidentally allowed to happen. Holy shit, that +1 LA and in character trials were so worth all the cheese the man got to do.
WotC : creates the Vow of Poverty to buff the monk because it's the worst class of the edition The druid, the best class of the edition : Time to turn homeless.
@@raphaelregnault6914eh, unless you're spamming spells the whole time a 3/4BAB class isn't really all that great. Hell, just by the nature of the moonspeaker prestige class, I'd say druids are not the top spot. Moonspeaker can be taken as early as lv2 and gets you wildshape at lv5 as if you were a lv5 druid, and has a fuckton of other insane buffs along with it that far outclass what druid can offer. There is *not* a "best base class" in 3.5; there's best classes for a 1-3lev dip, 5 if you're pushing it for a class feature, but with the 1,200 prestige classes and several hundred alternate class features there's almost no reason to use the base version of any class unless it is a prerequisite for something godly like stormruler for raptoran clerics or soulbow for soulknifes.
The trick with two Bags of Holding -- in 3e/3.5, the whole "tear a hole in space" thing was for if you put one in a Portable Hole, or vice versa: if you put a BoH in another BoH, the inner one would just completely fill the outer one to capacity.
Also a decent nerf in and of itself. As the dm, just never give them both halves of the demon sphere. Your players don't "need" both, as they handle the same issue.
As far as I can see, with 3.5e there is no official rule on what happens when you out a bag of holding in a bag of holding. if you know otherwise, please tell.
I've always banned fly speed by saying that they can flit and glide. They can only go up or hover for one turn, and then they gotta start descending at or at half their walk speed unless they can grip onto something. So if they have a flying speed of 30 feet they can get 30 feet up into the air and then hover for one or two turns at most slowly descending. Turn 1 they go up to thirty feet, turn two they descend to 15 feet or 0 feet depending on their race, and turn three they descend to 0 feet and can fly again. I mainly do that to limit the max range hover, and to limit the game challenege breaking issue of just avoiding any traversal challenwge completely. Fly over the chasam with a rope and tie it off, fly up to the top of the tower and whack the boss, skip over my cool parkour battle where you have to be leaping platform to platform fighting with the flying creatures harrassing you. Skip over the entire second stage of descent into avernus by using feather fall or flight. They can flit rather than fly. If they want to fly up to the top of a cliff they gotta do it in jumps of 30 feet with extra time to find a hand hold they can use to reset and push off of into their next flight. They want to traverse a chasm more than 30 feet across? They gotta find something mid way through to land on or allow themeselves to slow fall pretty far down and then grab the opposing wall and make it back up using the aforementioned flying assited leaping to climb back up. They can definitely jump off the top of a high object or cliff and as long as they maintain a 15 - 30 foot per round descent rate they can go their full movement speed every round including a dash if they want that. If they go really far downwards like that i allow them to pick up speed and double their speed, then tripple, then quadruple, then if they were to go down like an entire mountain in one go or something they eventually can reach wingsuit velocity but they do have to descend more steeply and that can be terrain limited. The limiting fly speed to 15 feet rule still enables the hover one shotting it just takes slightly more work, and it does absolutely nothing to prevent the instant skip over terrain based challenges. Thicket of thorns? Cross it instantly. Chasm? Fly over it. Cliff to get up? Fly. Cliff to get down from? Fly down. Wall around a base you gotta infiltrate? Spend eight rounds flying straight up to get to 1,200 feet, fly over the wall to be above a deserted enough area, fall at the 500 feet per round rate, stop just before you reach the ground on round three, boom you're inside. Is it cool to be a flying ninja? Yes it absolutely is. But its also kinda dumb, although the base infiltration is the least bad example and one I'm completely fine with because theyd have to fight their way out alone unless the whole party flies. At lower levels they fly up to their movement speed and must descend at their full movement speed the next turn, though you do still get forward movement as well. At a little higher level, you can descend at 15 feet per round. At an even higher level, I allow full flight for two rounds before beginning their descent. And at a very high level I allow four or five rounds of regular flight before descent allowing a maximum time in the air of five rounds ascending and ten rounds descending which is more than enough to make most battles completely in the air. They can go all the way up to 150 feet, still in range of many spells and bows, and then slowly coming down. It also makes sense that they cant fly as well as a creature that flies cause they have solid bones and large muscles and frigging armor and heavy weapons they are carrying along with potions and food and tools and magic items. No way is the arracockra paladin flying indefinitely wearing full plate carrying a greatsword, a longsword, and a shield, and all of his stuff.
The all-time classic ban has to be the Coffeelock. A build which, RAW (i.e., the mechanics are being interpreted correctly), but is clearly an exploit that many GMs homerule to not work.
Actually RAW it can't work. Xanathars and even the PHB/DM handbook make it pretty clear that it can't work. A cokelock now that works. But that's a lot of gold lol. Basically you have to skip sleep for a coffee lock to work and you must make a certain dc saving throw or get exhaustion which will kill you at 6 fails I think.
@@gaigetucker6242 _Whenever you end a 24-hour period without finishing a long rest, you must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or suffer one level of exhaustion._ _It becomes harder to fight off exhaustion if you stay awake for multiple days. After the first 24 hours, the DC increases by 5 for each consecutive 24-hour period without a long rest. The DC resets to 10 when you finish a long rest._
Counter point to someone using a flying race cheesing the Tarrasque: The Tarrasque makes an improvised weapon attack, throw orphanage. That, or just... *jump.*
yeah, I played as aaracockra onece, troll just hurled a boulder at me and it was decided that I will fall to the ground from the impact. Pretty realistic. Magic fly, on the other hand, just needs to maintain concentration
No, IMO the most powerful spell in D&D is "Counterspell". It has the (high) potential of stopping any spell, even Wish and Counterspell. But here's the real "OP Combo" issue... the double standard players feel... no matter what they come up with it's "creative", but if a DM does it, then those same players feel "That's not fair!". To show this to them I once played a campaign in which the players got more and more OP. I flooded the game with magical items, spell books, weapons and even the optional ability to be a Vampire!!! And in the first 10 sessions they were over the moon, but as the enemies and monsters started having those same OP abilities... suddenly it wasn't fun for them. They wanted to be omnipotent gods over the inferior monsters, not equal gods of battle. This cured them of 2 things... murder-hoboism and they never wanted to play the (inferior) Pathfinder equilibrium way again! D&D is the best!!! Honorable mention to Call of Cthulhu!
Here's the trick: by RAW, you don't know what you're counterspelling! You have to make the decision with only partial information. _Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, page 85:_ _If the character perceived the casting, the spell’s effect, or both, the character can make an Intelligence (Arcana) check with the reaction or action. The DC equals 15+ the spell’s level. If the spell is cast as a class spell and the character is a member of that class, the check is made with advantage. For example, if the spellcaster casts a spell as a cleric, another cleric has advantage on the check to identify the spell. Some spells aren’t associated with any class when they’re cast, such as when a monster uses its Innate Spellcasting trait._ _This Intelligence (Arcana) check represents the fact that identifying a spell requires a quick mind and familiarity with the theory and practice of casting. This is true even for a character whose spellcasting ability is Wisdom or Charisma. Being able to cast spells doesn’t by itself make you adept at deducing exactly what others are doing when they cast their spell._ I provide my spellcasting bosses with spellcasting mooks who are there specifically to counterspell Counterspell -- or any other Reaction spell you attempt to cast in response to the boss's casting (they _assume_ it's Counterspell if they fail the Arcana check). This sometimes sets up counterspell battles. The party needs to have one more Reaction and Counterspell available than the enemies do if they expect to use the "denial of service attack" strategy.
@mal2ksc Sure... if that what works for your table. And that's the important thing... the table needs to establish the ground rules and be consistent. I actually enjoy (as DM or player) Counterspell battles. I play most Classes, but Wizard is my favorite.
Such an arrow would be, at best, unstable in flight and not function as intended. First test, fired arrow flips up and hits the ground 9.9 feet away from you. Oops.
First time you see the "Arrowhead of total destruction"? That's decade old! Originally, there's also a caption under it that says: "Engineers They shouldn't play D&D"
The Simulacrum-chain strat _does_ have a couple of built-in limiters that make it more difficult, and can be used by a DM to limit or block such shenanigans. Firstly, the ruby dust: The amount needed is fifteen-hundred gp worth, so this gets very expensive very quickly (though, as you noted, the Simulacrums can be sent out to get more). And it's _ruby dust;_ a rarity that the DM can easily decide that your shenanigans have depleted the available supply of. Secondly, the other (non-costed) material component. Snow or ice in sufficient quantity to match the volume of the target. In most environments, that's going to be difficult to prevent from melting on you. There's the issue that both of these can be bypassed by having the Simulacrums cast the spell via Wish, but of course that prevents the Wish-based shenanigans you mentioned.
Wish can also be used to create 25 000gp's worth of (permanent) material, which must fit into a 300ft cube. You could make one simulacrum create 25 000gp's worth of ruby (enough for 16.66 castings of Simulacrum), and another a 300ft cube of snow. Then repeat as necessary.
I've always assumed ruby dust came from, well, crushing rubies. All you need to do that is something harder than the rubies that won't wear away itself, like diamonds. It's a perfect use for ugly, flawed, uncut diamonds. I think most people would keep the rubies intact and not grind them until they actually need them, since rubies have other uses.
I have homebrew mods on some of those. Tiny Hut - burrowing/tunneling creatures can enter from underneath if they become aware of the presence of the party otherwise they ignore it Flying - no hovering, characters must use their full flight distance when they move, they may bank and turn twice, the space they are in must have a vertical and horizontal height/length of at least half the distance of their maximum flight distance, if those reqs aren't met then the only thing they can do is use a flight assisted charge in a straight line that ends on contact with the target. Magic Items - characters can attune to 2+prof modifier in magic items, familiars, pets, etc cannot equip magic items and followers are limited to one which is controlled by the DM Polymorph - you can only poly into a creature you have actually seen/experienced
There's an easier fix for Simulacrum: make it so only the caster can be the target of the spell. That way the simulacrum tree stops as soon as the resulting simulacrum can't cast any seventh level spells (they only have the spells slots the caster of the spell had when they were done casting the spell, and they can't re-fill any slots). So, if the original caster had three seventh level slots, the first simulacrum will have two, the second will have one, and the third will have none and now you can't generate more. No infinite army, just a second simulacrum possible when you reach level 20 (as before that, you'll only have one seventh level slot and your first simulacrum will have none). In 1st edition, the Simulacrum spell was very limited. It created a perfect duplicate of the creature in appearance, but it was only able to do precisely what the caster told it to do, with all the intelligence and ability to understand nuance typical of a zombie. The creature could be given the ability to think and act on its own (a vital force) by a Reincarnation spell (though the caster retained complete control), and be given 40% - 65% (35% + (d6 x 5)%) of the subject's knowledge and skills by a Limited Wish, as well as 20% - 50% of the subject's character levels (10% + (d4 x 10)%). So, best case, after casting two extra spells, you'd get a copy with 50% of the original class levels, 65% of the original knowledge (so, I suppose, roll under 66 on d100 to see if you know a particular thing the subject would know or can use a particular skill), and able to heal normally and receive healing spells, as well as regain expended spells. Without the extra spells, you get basically a decoy or Real Doll that looks like someone you managed, and only moves or acts when you specifically tell it to do so -- so a very presentable, but very expensive, zombie without actually having to steal a body. Oh, and the creature to be simulated has to be within reach of the caster for the whole twelve hours it takes to cast the spell, so either they're willing, or they're unconscious, or you're going to have some serious explaining to do.
The easiest way to nerf the simulacrum stat is to make the simulacrums have free will and go "hey wait a minute, why is THIS guy telling us what to do?"
You don't even have to prevent the simulacrum to try to cast wish at all, or to make multiple clones of themselves. Just remind your players that Mystra, the goddess of the Weave, the one who banned all spells above level 9 and restricted the number of spell slots any spellcaster could have, isn't a fan of anyone circumventing the limitation of her spells. They can try, but they might get the visit of an avatar of a god
For my campaigns, I did a bit of structure on where the beginning and end were but left the players to fill the middle. It created a lot of work for me to counter-balance the game but it's supposed to be fun. I always enjoyed watching players come up with complex strategies or game breaking ideas. I feel like a lot of DMs have a set storyline and don't want to change the set up so it's an instant 'no you can't do that' scenario. If everyone playing understands the 'standard', I guess it's okay. It can create discouraging situations. Always felt that explaining the intent and how, allows the player to do so. Especially if it's a sound idea. -A rogue drops a bunch of caltrops in a camp, while they sleep. A wizard lightning bolt the area. All creatures within the caltrops would make a save for the caltrops. Failing the save would make them take full damage from the bolt. Succeeding the save, they'd take a -2 to saving from the lightning bolt. The argument being that the creatures fell prone, all dice damage is applied since all caltrops are a connecting source.
4:03 Flying speed is simple to deal with at any level and Fly is only a second level spell. A new DM might have trouble, but the DM is god - you can put a roof or give the enemies arrows. Or if they players can fly, then just add flying enemies.
The old adage, what's good for the goose is good for the gander is apt here. If the players are "abusing" flight, then so will the NPCs. See how much the players like being snipped by Eldritch Spears from 600' in the air?
It's better to adapt the combat honestly. Have enemies that can also fly, give enemies cover, put the enemies inside caves and buildings. Hell, let there be challenges that player can solve with their flight, make a few combats where their busted flight combo is vital to winning and make others where it's unusable and even causes issues. Hell, imagine a fight against a dragon or kaiju where someone is flying, zipping around and dealing damage with eldritch blasts while the rest of the party has to work from the ground to exploit weak points
I remember back in the days of auld when one of the most annoying class combos was Bard/Dragon Disciple/Pale Master. An AC so high they could barely be touched, immunity to critical hits, immunity to sleep, poison and paralysis, immunity to one element of choice, immunity to insta-death and ability/level drain, HP through the roof and free spells. Oh, and you can fly.
Timestamps Combo Name Rating in Power: - 1:00 Instant Gems Spells 3/10 -> You use spellgem instead of wish to cast spells as an action, even if they usually require 10 minute casting or more. - 2:45 50 Foot Flyer 4/10 -> You have 50ft of flying speed at level 1 and most of the combat creatures at that level doesn't have Flight speed, making you basically immune to melee attacks. - 4:07 Bag of Holding Nuke 5/10 -> You use a bag of holding and Place them in another extra dimensional space, banishing every creature within 10 feet of the extra dimensional space in the Astral Plane without any saves involved. - 5:22 Sponsor. - 6:35 Companion Attunement 5/10 -> You use your familiar or NPC companion attune to magic items, alike ring of spellstoring, which they can use to cast spells to combo with you. - 8:21 Simulacrum Loop 7/10 -> be a spellcaster with at least two level 7 spellslot and casting Simulacrum on yourself, and then make them cast simulacrum on you, and go on. - 10:14 Boon of the Moob 7.5/10 -> at level 1 use lycantropy to gain Immunity to bludgeoning, slashing and piercing from non-magical or non-silvered weapons, which is what most monsters at this level use only, werebear is preferred because you get 40 feet walking speed, 30 feet climbing speed, 19 minimum strength score and +1 to your AC additionally. - 12:01 Killing Bonuses 8/10 -> Some features give you bonuses when you kill a creature, so you can technically buy a sack full of chicken or some other weak creatures and murder one each morning to gain the bonus for the day (like the Blood Spear), and so you can combo it in some ways, the example given is a Dhamphir that uses sword bard's flourish and bite attack to attack every creature within 5 feet of you, like fireflies that you can use to surround yourself with, and you regain all the hp from those damages, so basically a pop insta heal, and additionally, you add the damage you dealt to your next ability check or attack roll, so you can gain like +100 to your next ability check (+100 counterspell go brrrr). - 13:51 Dino Time -> Polymorph, Polymorph into a T-rex (the westmarch server that bans this just doesn't have any dinosaurs, it doesn't have to be broken, it's just lore reasons and it's cool, it isn't all about brokenness imo!)(And it seems the ban was lifted earlier this year!).
Other ways to nerf without ban : 1 - make spell gems cast a spell with the original spell casting time 2 - impose disavantage on long ranged eldritch blast while flying. As you fly, you are unbalanced by the recoil of your blast, which affects long distance shots (essentially turning the 75m range to a long range value, like for ranged weapons, meaning you only get normal attack if you cast Eldritch Blast at his usual range while flying). 3 - Introduce the Lhaksharut, from Pathfinder : a Lawful Neutral extraplanar construct-like entity who is tasked with maintaining the separation and integrity of the planes. Such a creature would surely take actions against mortals using what is basically a magical planar nuke (CR20). 4- FIREBALL 5- I like this solution actually 6 - the curse is lifted from any blood or fluid that originates from you once you get cured. 7 - CHILLING TOUCH and also FIREBALL and get the bloodspear to require attunement. Plus, for the cockroaches part, impose a Constitution check. If failed, the character is disguted by the taste of the arthopodes, don't get the benefit of his ability and spends the remaining of his turn puking.
Warlocks have the option of taking Eldritch Spear as an invocation, which extends the range of Eldritch Blast to 300 feet. How does that interact with your nerf? (I also don't know where you get 75m, EB is 120 feet by default and 300 feet with Eldritch Spear, neither of which is 75 meters.)
for lycanthropy i have a general rule it is not to stop the "statergy" stated here but just generally it comes from 3.5 specifically i believe. after failing the con save to be cursed the curse does not take effect until the next full moon, there is a "grace period" before they can transform, also from 3.5 is the creature can cure it in the first day by taking the "correct" amount of wolfsbane or a remove disease effect but after the first day it is a curse and cannot be removed in this way
A friend of mine told me about two OP combos in a campaign he DMed. First was a Druid able to summon 6 Wolves finding an item that let him cast the spell again as a free action, so he just sent 12 wolves on the BBEG and obviously won. Second was a Paladin NPC they trained with who used a Smoke Screen, Plain Step, and Astral Projection combo to appear to split into two in a puff of smoke and appearing on both sides of the player. This caused a severe disadvantage on hit for the player because they don't know which is the real and if they guess wrong the Paladin gets advantage to hit since the player's back is turned. In one of my own campaigns, I had one trick that wasn't too OP but did scare the DM when I enacted it. My spell book, the Tome of Voidsinging (this was a Homebrew), would summon a void fireball a few inches above the surface of the book and shoot it long range at 3+2d8 damage, which was enough to one shot most players. Well, I realized that since the fireball is above the surface of the book, putting the book against the target will summon the fireball inside them. I two-shot the BBEG.
First off, I love your content and have followed for a long time. I do, however, have some observations I’d like to share. The Tarrasque can throw objects, just like most creatures with hands/claws. No special stat block is needed to do this, just like PCs don’t need that. Sage Advice recommends using the giant’s ’throw boulder’ ability as a guideline. Therefore, a flying creature isn’t automatically immune to the Tarrasque. Casting wish to duplicate a spell of 8th level or lower does not create the stress described in the section of the spell description that mentions the 33% chance to lose the ability to cast Wish again. The Blood Spear requires attunement. Handing it to another player will not allow them to gain the temporary HP. Again, thank you for all the wonderful content! Keep up the amazing work!!
i'm happy to see fellow westmarch servers, getting some well deserved Exposure. I feel that its few and far between that players know about this kinda stuff.
I think your last point is often understated, there is an important difference between banning things for story reasons vs banning things for being too powerful (especially if said power can be argued as just a DM not knowing how to deal with things). I had a campaign banned two races, a bunch of subclasses and a whole class - because the beings that made those things possible didn't exist in the world yet - and the whole campaign was based around bringing those creatures into the world.
I love these "broken" builds/combos. As a DM, I sometimes use them for NPCs (without revealing how) to test them out and get a great reaction from my players. As the NeverPlayer, I'll use the less broken ones (i.e. SorLock, Hexadin, etc.) to build iconic characters that, if too unbalanced for that DM's game, can easily slip away for a more even-keeled build because story. 😁
This reminds me of one of the most powerful magic items I have ever devised: The Leomund's Tiny Hut Hand Grenade, a Grenade that spawns a hut by itself and only grants entrance to people designated by the thrower at the time of throwing.
An alternate solution for low-level flight speeds: Let them only stay aloft for short bursts: several abilities will give you flight speed that only lasts for your turn, where you fall if you don't land by the end, but Aarocokra could extend that to a few rounds at a time; They can fly back up once they've landed, or maybe after a turn resting like a Tabaxi, but this means there's a vulnerable moment where melee attackers can get to them. Actually, this might be better; having such a low speed isn't so much of a problem when you can still hover and have a 600 foot range.
So my GM made me a were-tiger that I have full control over BC I'm a moon druid. I didn't ask for it. Only one person in my party knows BC no one else was there and the storyline was we went on a walk. We have a wizard worst comes to worse. Looking forward to my first play on monday!
So, I'm a new GM and my players stumbled upon a pretty fun combo. One player is a Goliath Fighter Rune Knight, while the other is playing a wizard specializing in graviturgy magic. The Rune Knight has a skill that allows them to increase their size to the next height category, going from medium to large, and they also possess a rune that can incapacitate a creature for 1 minute. So, at the start of the round, the Goliath uses the rune to incapacitate my beast, and unfortunately, I fail the saving throw. Then, as a bonus action, the Goliath grows in size to a whopping 16 feet tall. Everything seems fine so far, but then it's the wizard's turn. They cast the spell Enlarge/Reduce, which not only can make a creature one size larger or smaller but also stacks with the Rune Knight's size increase ability. So, now I'm dealing with an incapacitated beast, a 16-foot-tall Goliath Fighter, and a wizard who just made the Goliath even bigger, turning them into a towering 32-foot giant. not broken to the effect of ban but yaaaa.
I've recently watched a few sessions where flying in a similar style baldurs gate 3 does it. You can fly, to cross pretty much any obstacle. But most actions are disallowed or nerfed while airborne. Doing intricate movements while flopping around is impossible. Aiming any attack is with disadvantage. So if you want to fight propperly, you must land at the end of your movement. At the end of your movement, you may choose to stay airborne (to travel larger distances in the air). This turned Flying into a traversal tool, instead of a glorified damage immunity. And it actually made it feel quite fair.
A group I played with once had a group of enemies stumble upon us as we were resting in Leomunds Tiny Hut. The results were a 3 hour long combat consisting of dodging in and out against foes that tried to hit us with prepared actions.
We abused the tiny hut thing recently in our campaign since we had prep time on the edge of the monster’s territory before it was aggroed. Good thing too, because I don’t think we would have survived that fight if most of the party wasn’t taking refuge in that dome. Of course the DM saw this coming and still periodically damaged the party members because we were fighting in an unstable area with random geysers and tiny hut doesn’t protect from the bottom. As for the simulacrum thing, it can be great for something like starting a company, but not as useful in combat for one plain reason: each simulacrum only takes orders from the caster that created it. And since they don’t have their own initiative, acting on the same turn as their caster, it breaks the immersion of the adventure to say you have enough time in your six second turn to play a game of telephone with the simulacrums to relay commands.
I love the inclusiong of the t-rex ban on this video, my original setting bans quite a few things because they just don't fit the setting, like undead and undeath being a literal myth to imitate real life, you can believe that ghosts are real and that paranormal stuff happens but there's no "ghost" creature to fight nor any zombies to animate, I wanted to do something special with certain tribes of undead, like vampires, and them being the same as in every other story sounded boring to me. I love your videos a lot dude, keep up the good work and ty for the hours of entertainment you have given me!
The simulacrum restriction still doesn't fix the true op effect: infinite simulacra without any rests needed! You cast simulacrum. Simulacrum has no 7th level slot. However both you and the simulacrum have a 9th level slot. They can cast simulacrum on you using WISH, creating a simulacrum (in one action) with no 7th level slot but a 9th level slot. Rinse and repeat. Note that they have not cast simulacrum, they have cast wish to replicate the effects of the simulacrum spell, so using this restriction does not stop this combo. Also this wish strategy is even more broken because wish consumes NO MATERIAL COMPONENTS! So cost is only a limitation on the first casting.
@@linkplays2952Maybe but there are ways to play DND at high level without breaking the, just takes very meticulous tracking of magic items and abilities and everyone needs to understand not to abuse features. Way too much hassle for me as a DM personally, but I've seen it done 😅
@@Bruh-kg9nw If the player dont want to break the game then it wont be broken. Like if your player wants to do this combo and you "ban it" they will do some other overpowered combo. If your players dont want to break the game then they're not doing this in the first place.
Something I did want to point out at around the 3 min mark you got wrong was the whole aarakocra terrasque thing, it only works if you completely ignore improvised weapon rules, scaling improvised weapon damage, or run the terrasque like a video game character. nothing is stopping a npc (of any kind) from doing something not directly printed on the statblock without homebrew. the terrasque has 11 wisdom, nothing it stopping it from picking up a large-sized rock and chucking it at the punk-bird, knocking it out of the sky. other than "it's not in the statblock" and if that's your only argument, then you must also agree that say, a bandit as example can't pick things up, has a bow and scimitar equipped and ready at all times and can use both whenever without putting them away, even if you try to disarm them, and that they're unable to open doorknobs or even jump.
@@preyasmanthedemopan2854 I'd certainly let the tarrasque throw a rock, but it wouldn't be able to apply its proficiency bonus to an improvised weapon.
With the bag of holding nuke, I’ve always let my players know that I homebrew it to repel each other like with magnetism, the closer they get, the more they repel. So if you and your ally have one, you can be near each other fine but if you try to put one inside another, they repel each other and are incapable of going inside another
personally as a DM I love it when I inevitably run into a player that decides to go broken combo. Generally a conversation is had with the other players on a fun practical demonstration session or two and I'll generally start introducing broken combos of my own some of which are at a much higher level than the players are at at which point the player who wants to power game usually gets the hint in a pretty funny and generally nonmalicious way to come to the conclusion that its probably not the best idea to just go for breaking the game. I find that guiding players to the conclusion rather than just telling them not to do it works out much better as I've found that in the past 5 years or so many new players don't like the idea of being told no outright.
My favorite D&D exploit is Conjure Animals. As one of the features, you can summon 8 creatures with a dc of 1/4, which means that at first level you can conjure eight swarms of rats. At 9th level, that number quadruples. A 17th level character casting the spell at 9th level can summon 32 swarms of rats, dealing 64d6 damage in one round. In addition, 1 swarm of rats is about 25 rats, meaning that 32 swarms is equal to 800 rats swarming the battlefield.
The thing with Broken combo's is if your players want to do them, so can you as the DM - the tone of the game goes from very serious to more daft and terrifying for the NPC not wise/powerful enough to pull of a combo, turning everyone that isn't capable into lone ants in a world saturated with giants/dragons/beholders. But that can be fun too. Also never held that flying is actually broken at all, as you do nothing that well but make yourself a target with no way to hide. Though I do like the rule change here - keeping the range of flight comparable to walking speed later and limited early on just stops a flying race fighter from almost entirely negating the Monk's superpower of mobility in most situations... As yes while you can get really long range weapons (or just drop rocks) and fly really high out of return fire from the archers on ground, all your targets have to do is step under a roof (etc) and you are useless as anything but a scout till you come down, and in many cases the giant siege weapon meant to drive off the more terrifying beast/dragon or invading horde that many places can have will have the power to reach you...Plus the big counter is you have high range, great, but that doesn't stop some of the NPC from having it too. Might even be a warlock that just pops up with with equal or greater range, your own patron sent them when you are using your gifts too effectively - the patron wants to keep you coming back and giving up more of yourself for power etc... Or an alchemist with a few potion of polymorph/fly etc, the avatar of some god of fair play in this setting that will bind your wings on you if you fly too close to the sun - flying really can't do anything but catch a novice DM out, and once they have been caught out once there are so many tools available that make abusing flight actively dangerous so the players have to be careful with it, which means they won't push it often - I'd still let them 'abuse' it from time to time, or when the have done the scouting work to be sure its safe, but every now and then their antics catch the attention of or happen to provoke somebody who can deal with them...
The Simulacrum thing honestly can get pretty wild even with the nerf. Sure, you only gotta have one clone, but if you go on a wild pokemon hunt before to catch some neat dragon or something similar (some dragons have shape change, so you don't lose out on a human form) and use the Magic Jar + Clone combo beforehand, that still means you basically as a full caster ancient dragon (brass is only CR 20, so it works with that) bring alone another ancient dragon. (Even at half hp it's 150, so it won't get disintegrated). The other "gotta catch em all", or at least, gotta catch one that is the very best combo is with the Necromancer's subclass specific enthrall ability. There are some pretty neat undead out there to catch (even named liches, or dracoliches). You will need to feeblemind them to oblivion and you'll most likely need at least 1 other caster to pull it off, to hold them while you (or them, it's better to have a sorc buddy for hightened spells) try to land the feeblemind. (If you have high enough DC you can ignore the 30 day trial period on your need undead buddy!)
I’ve always just played with consequences in the game and if you do something to purposefully break the world powerful creatures will take notice. Spell Sniper in particular has always been, “sure your spell can go that far but your character can’t accurately aim it from that far away, roll to see if it hits and the DC goes up with range.” Just because Hercules could throw a boulder into space doesn’t mean he can knock the wings off a fly with it.
Haha Ome of my favorite alltime npcs was a kobold who was werebear(albeit blackbear not griszly size,didnt get the full stat boost to strength) and was pretty much lawful evil but was easier to justify him bein warmer to the party as bein a good bear made him kinda neutral overall. Even though he'd sprout a gaping maw out off his stomach,and often comported himself on spiderlegs for lore/class reasons if he wasnt nathed in holy water periodically. Was the best little abomination ever. Was 2 levelsaway from sproutin wings too. Did I mention he was also a bard? And a hell of a cook
Hmm Think you're missin out on if those characters could necromantically revive a chicken to kill it again for boosts. Arise Chicken Chicken arise. Be 2d6hp now
He was fiercely loyal to his clan,or young masters as he called them when he wasnt ragin. Yooung prople hate it when you point out rhe obvious. Like these chuds
I'm pretty sure the "fix" for bag of holding bombs just makes them a little trickier (and only works on medium and smaller enemies) but safe in melee. Just lay out your portable hole, push enemy in, and drop another bag in. And if bag isn't destroyed now, it is more easily repeatable.
For the flying speed i will give something in return, a lot of newer races with flying speed (including the aaracockra from mpmm) are balanced around the fact that they can, i will give them for compensating this something little, like for the owlin give them talons as a natural weapon, for the fairy fey ancestry or a proficiency. so they will be nerfed but they still got something (cause their race dosen't give anything else)
When you were talking about the T. rex ban I was really excited to hear how someone polymorphed into a T. rex in order to amass infinite gold, or negate all damage, or make their meat hang lower than their two veg., or something super OP like that, but nope. It's just for storytelling reasons. As advanced as things get, it's always good to remember that the fundamentals are equally important!
On that last one: I now kinda want to do a one shot caveman session. Everyone's a "shaman" that can pick one dino to turn in to. Weapons limited to slings, clubs and simple spears. Armor limited to hide only.
In my dad's campaigns with my family where he dms, halflings are basically banned for story reasons. Basically there was a prophecy about a halfling slaying the liches in that setting so the liches proceeded to exterminate all the halflings. In all the campaigns in that setting that we have done, only 2 halfling characters have been made (or survived at all): the one who was prophecied and another that was a player character for my mom.
When I first started dming I had a major boss fight setup for my players the arackrokca roque stayed in the air and spammed magic missle killing the boss in about 2 rounds with the help of the party
I have actually hard cast Leomund's Tiny Hut IN COMBAT. Yup, ten turns of DM: "What do you do with your turn?" Me:"Still casting LTH." It saved the party as they held off attackers that would have overwhelmed us at a choke point and we were able to take time to rest and plan.
I saw someone mention something akin to the second last one as the "Bag of rats", which inspired me to invent a magical item... but instead it summons a bunch of rats like the bag of tricks... which then pull out tiny instruments and play music for you. Or alternatively you can pull out a single rat and it follows people around with a tuba...
To be fair, Tiny Hut can be fixed quite easily - say that, through the nature of the spell, you cannot both exit and enter on the same turn. There are still other issues of course, you can technically long rest mid fight with this, but your enemies can prepare stuff too at the DMs discretion so it's _probably_ balanceable at that point
Regarding #2, I knew a player who tried that with a bag of ants to trigger a magic crown back in 4e. I advised him that on-kill effects, to make the game balanced, should only activate on creatures with a stat block for starters, and ideally hostile ones at that. Also, while I might use combos that appear busted, I use them with full understanding that my GM can bring the banhammer down on them if I abuse them, and I'm ready to drop them if that happens.
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That's the moment when you understand the upload of video took 4 minutes.
I've stopped DMing D&D because of how broken the entire game is.
It's especially disheartening for me as a DM how broken charater builds can be, so i eventually reached a point where i didn't want to put in any work to build encounters anymore. I'm done.
@@PerfectionHunterthat sounds more like a player problem than a you problem, as your players must be insisting on broken builds and exploits at the expense of your fun, making the game not fun for you and resulting in no game and no fun for anyone...
Hey, hope it's not a weird question but, what do you use to get such a perfectly bald head? I've tried a few different things and none of them look that good
I have a super broken combo where you can actually go infinite damage.
With a level one spell
I forgot to put the "like and subscribe" graphic on screen within the first 60 seconds. I am in shambles, the algorithm will destroy us, this is the end
No worries. Keep calm and roll a new char.
TH-cam personally asked me to unsubscribe, but I told them to screw off
I'm just Glad you are back! I was just wondering about you last night. Thinking about how I haven't seen no content from on my time line. Hope you got your rest and everything is good. Can't to see more videos from you.
Good thing pinned comments exist.
QUICK, CAST TIME STOP, ITS NOT TOO LATE
Lv 2 artificer: *'oneshots' an archmage with the bag of holding bomb*
Archmage: *planeshifts back* "yeah, you're so dead now"
This is the way
*Casts Wish*
More like-
Lvl2 Artificer: *erases their 3rd goblin*
Hounds of Tindalos: *crawling out of every sharp corner like cockroaches to investigate the spacetime disruptor*
Better hope he had that memorized.
@@grendl74 tbh, as soon as I'd hit level 15 I would *always* have planeshift memorised. ALWAYS.
Too many reasons speak against not memorising it as soon as you are that powerful.
2nd appearance of a Bag of Holding bomb.
“The campaign starts on the Astral Plane.”
The equivalent of killing someone by defenestrating them...out the window well of a daylight basement floor.
Most of the silly artificer attempts of BH bombs can usually be shut down by the DM telling the players to look up item weights in the PHB.
10:43 Funny thing. WAY back in 3.5, Lycanthropy used to permanently shift your alignment to that of the original Werebeast that infected you. This, of course, makes sense if you were ever bitten by a werewolf or wererat, who are Evil... but in 3.5, the Werebear was *Lawful Good.*
So I had a concept for an adventure, involving a Werebear who was going around, infecting known villains... and turning them Good, albeit against their will.
It was going to be a question of if the players stop the werebear or not.
It was stupid, and felt kinda mean-spirited, so I never used it.
But I think it's funny you kinda came to the same conclusion I did.
I always found the Werebear hilarious. Because it stated that you lose control during the full moon doing actions in accordance with your alignment... which was Lawful Good.
Huh I guess that gives an actual use to that one Ceremony use case
I don't really see a problem with doing this from the DM side, as a plot, but I'd have a problem with players doing it. I only allow adventuring to continue within the first 24 hours of being afflicted (because it's not right to say "you can't even do your normal actions anymore, good luck getting out of the dungeon"), and any time they _voluntarily_ shift into beast form, they incur one level of Exhaustion. So the Werebear PC has a running clock to get their bites in. 24 hours. Then they can never adventure again while afflicted with lycanthropy. There is no cheese potential, that 24 hour grace period is for your _entire life._ If you've burned it all up and get cursed again, you're gonna stand there like an idiot Not Adventuring and your friends are going to have to escort you out.
actually amazing campaign idea
tell the players the villagers are scared of the werebear, that there's a bounty on it - but if the players kill the werebear, suddenly there's an outbreak of criminals and villains that they unknowingly caused!
The question is whether it's really Lawful Good behaviour to forcefully change someone's alignment like that. It's essentially a form of near permanent mind control.
Listen I know a lot of people just listen to the audio but the edit of the arracockra taking out a hammer labeled “cheese” and bonking the tarrasque is fantastic.
Lol imagine doing this as DM. "As you are about to draw your weapons, the Vampire lord gently laughs and pulls out a jar full of cockroaches"
I'm the owner of TFC thanks so much for the shout-out 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Hey Ace, ur stinky
oh hey Ace
Hiya, Ace! Been a while since I was over there, but it's good to see you anyway :)
How do people join? I've been dying to play. I'm usually a forever DM
Nitpick! The whole team cannot get the bloodspear buff because the bloodspear requires attunement!
Surprised no one told you that yet but attunment can be ended in multiple ways. A line from DMG page 136 "A creature's attunement to an item ends if the creature no longer satisfies the prerequisites for attunement, if the item has been more than 100 feet away for at least 24 hours, if the creature dies, or if another creature attunes to the item. A creature can also voluntarily end attunement by spending another short rest focused on the item, unless the item is cursed."
@@Alex-pq4vpHow long does attunement take? I thought it required a long rest to attune to an item?
@@Flashback2020 It takes a short rest to attune to an item. Most DMs allow you to do it during long rest too
From DMG page 136: "Attuning to an item requires a creature to spend a short rest focused on only that item while being in physical contact with it (this can't be the same short rest used to learn the item's properties). This focus can take the form of weapon practice (for a weapon), meditation (for a wondrous item), or some other appropriate activity. If the short rest is interrupted, the attunement attempt fails. Otherwise, at the end of the short rest, the creature gains an intuitive understanding of how to activate any magical properties of the item, including any necessary command words."
@@Alex-pq4vp But a short rest takes at least 1hour so if you want to do this trick it would take 3 hours in a party of 4 people, if the original wielder does not want to attune again. There is plenty of room for a DM here to punish this player behavior. For example the line where it says focused only on that item, can be laid out as any distraction will interrupt the attunement, like being talked to, being touched by someone or experience a weather change while being outside. Not to mention the simple solution by putting time pressure on players or just start fights after a long rest. And to be fair he explicitly said you just can pass the spear to your party members in the video, which is obviously not true.
Hot take- Fly Speed only ruins encounters if you have every encounter outdoors in an open field.
Sure, no enemy can hit that eldritch blast bird man- but if the enemies just take full cover, or there's a ceiling in the room? They're the same as everyone else.
That's kinda the same way a Twilight cleric's 300 foot darkvision affects the game: only outdoors. Being able to share it with party members that may not have any Darkvision at all is still very useful underground.
ignoring that they are an open target for range attacks is honestly just sad. fly speed is not broken most DMs just don't use range attacks a longbow can shoot stupidly far and cost stupidly cheep to make/buy.
@@sicroto EXACTLY. Preach my friend.
just getting a range option for eldritch blast is good mostly only for outdoors
@@sicroto I mean, you're still completely negating the threat of melee attacks while being exactly as vulnerable to ranged attacks in the air as you were on the ground. In a mixed encounter (some melee and some ranged threats) this is a huge advantage.
Even if the melee enemies have ranged secondary options (which is almost non-existent unless you're fighting humanoids), for most melee-focused enemies those will be significantly worse attacks. After all, if they had good ranged attacks, they wouldn't be trying to close with you in the first place!
There's the occasional edge case where pythagoras math means you're just a bit out of range of someone you want to hit, but in practice flight is a massive buff to your survivability in most encounters.
We had a simple polymorph restriction - unless your character has seen it "up close and personal" they are not familiar enough to recreate it. Any backstory encounters need to be GM approved during "Episode 0" creation.
It gives a small bonus to the mage for not hiding at the back when the Giant Serpent or whatever appears, because they can then add it to their "Size of a. (insert beastie here)" list.
There is an argument that polymorph isn't duplicating a beast you are changing your form and so the idea that you need to see a creature to polymorph into it is rather restrictive. I polymorph into a German Shepherd, there is no stat block for that but a Wolf is close enough to the form that you can use that stat block.
Technically the spell doesn't change you into a beast. That is just the category of stat blocks you can choose from because they are the weaker ones for their CRs.
@@nickm9102 I get your point. Changing into similar. "I've seen Wolves and Golden Retrievers, so a German Shepard is pretty much the same." But if You had never seen a Greater Pink Wangdoodle and had no idea what it was, you wouldn't be a able to change into one. Same for a nordic mage that had never seen a large jungle cat like a tiger or a Dinosaur. Could still do a mammoth, Dire wolf or similar.
It doesn't really restrict the mage in that they can still get the results, just the flavour is different.
Personally, I think Polymorph shouldn't be able to turn a character into anything that isn't a beast of CR 1/4 or less. Sheeping someone is a time-honored tradition and should be upheld as a strong crowd control option and nothing else.
That said, though, the part that a lot of people forget with Polymorph is that it replaces your mental stats, too. When you turn into a T-rex, even if your personality is the same, would you even be able to recognize your friends? Or would you just see a whole bunch of tiny animals trying to kill that bigger animal you want to eat?
@@ilovethelegend the argument there is how strong the party bond is. You retain your personality and alignment so if you have a strong party bond you would likely recognize your ally if you are good or neutral you would likely refrain from making a party member a meal. If you have a weak party bond it would depend on how hungry you are and since most predators are used to not eating for days or weeks at a time I doubt you would put much effort into it. Now if you are evil or you haven't been eating then it is very likely that polymorphing you will create another enemy at worst at best you would abandon your original "mission" to find food. Now you will move further away from this the higher the Intelligence is.
This means a 1-2 you follow your instincts 3-5 you would react simmer to how a domesticated animal would. 6-8 at this point you are reaching a level where only the most aggressive people would respond that way and realistically is only incapable of using its equipment because of the spell wording.
A CR7 Giant Ape realistically could do everything that a PC could do except it has no language. Which is likely the reason it is a CR7, a Druid would have to be lvl 21 to use this form. Add to that the ability to retain Mentals in Wild shape and you are definitely going to be better off Wildshapeing for the 10 hour stretch and armoring and arming yourself. But this can't happen unless you reach lvl 21.
@@ilovethelegendthe common rule is that you don’t roleplay your stats, those are for your checks, saving throws, attacks and spells.
Welcome back Mr Shorts... I didn't realise how much i missed your content till you popped up on my feed 2 minutes ago!
Inflicted lycanthropes only transform at the full moon and lose control of the character for the duration of the transformation in every other edition. Being a lycanthrope (even one that matches your alignment) was always considered a bad thing. The only option to get around that is to be a natural lycanthrope, which is only possible in 3.5 due to level adjustment mechanics.
You still lose control of your character in 5e. The only way around this would probably be to be inflicted with lycanthropy by a good aligned being as I believe your lycanthrope alignment is based on what creature inflicted it on you.
@@floofzykitty5072 from what I've seen said, you are combining the old system with the new, and the alignment change was a part of old lycanthropy
"Thanks from the concordance! Great Video!" Ace told me to post this, after my 4th attempt at comment I realized I cannot promote. Sorry TH-cam Comment Auto Mod filter or whoever is moderating the comment section. You are valued and loved! Also DnD Shorts you are valued & loved 💕!!
Mods delete this comment
How can we be sure you are the real Mo? Hmmm?
merry Christmas mo
Mods remove this guy's femoral artery
oh hey Mo
"Dinosaurs just didn't exist" man I can't imagine a bigger buzzkill than hearing your DM's world filled with magic, beholders, dragons, werewolves, and elementals didn't have dinosaurs because it didn't fit their idea of what a medieval fantasy setting looks like. But Giant apes were okay!
Rule of Cool can overstep into chaos. Using the same logic, nazi laser vikings are also a thing you could summon. Polymorph into an R2-D2, Illusory Bugs Bunny, build a mundane supercollider, play as Batman who fell through a dimensional rift.
There's already lots of cool things to play with, no need to break other people's worlds because they're not enough for you.
@@TlalocTemporal Bruh a dinosaur is just a large and scary chicken, it's nothing like nazi laser chickens.
Meanwhile there's floating eye monsters that has 10 tentacles with eyes on the end that shoot disintegration beams and petrifying rays, they're A OK! 👍
@@chroprs -- Different kinds of fiction. A 1600s British ship captain is out of place in Shadowrun, while a corporate cyborg is out of place in a pirate game. Both characters could be fantastic fiction, but using them in the wrong game can derail stories that try to take the world seriously.
You didn't pay attention to what he was saying. The WORLD that he was referring to did NOT have any dinosaurs. Dinosaurs NEVER existed on that particular world.
Not too difficult to comprehend here and I exclusively play 2nd Edition AD&D. I have never played 4th or 5th Editions.
Yes, a world where giant apes exist and dinosaurs never did is particularly fine. Similarly, a world where apes evolve from men is also fine. A world where chickens don't exist and dogs lay eggs that people cook and eat for breakfast is fine. Because of this comment, I just might swap out toads in my next game with Lotads from Pokemon. "You want _what_ as a familiar? Never heard of that. You can have a Lotad, though."
Flying speed being op shows a really interesting progression in the hobby. In that flying is not op In dungeons. Or really anywhere with a ceiling. It's only as the game has evolved past that first half of its name that flying has become a problem
I def agree although to be fair if you can fly you can just sorta float/hover above the ground making you immune to stuff like tripwires or pressure plates in dungeons, or just cross a chasm with no effort and the like. Tbh dungeon crawling is only really interesting and/or fun at lower levels that becomes less attractive later on.
Yeah, I had a player show up to a mega dungeon with an aarakocra. Not as op as other people thought it would be because half the game was a dungeon. It was the strongest right before the dungeon and navigating a lava field at the end boss.
Flying is not even OP outside though, only a very select few enemies can not have some form of ranged attack and those ones can run and hide. The example at 3:02 is terrible because a single hand full of rocks from the Terrasque will one shot the flyer even at much higher levels.
Flying could be even dangerous because if they get knocked prone mid air that can end up being a lot of damage.
What I find a bit weird though is that you can fly in a 5ft wide corridor. Your wings basically don't exist as physical things to keep mind of.
Also ....flying at night, from a distance....limits ranged attacks too
As an older player who has dealt with Hostile DMs and power gamers trying to defeat them...
It warms my heart to hear you pushing kindness and cooperation.
It makes the table so much better.
Archer with Bag of Holding launcher sends Evil Wizard to void.
Evil Wizard appears, "I can planeshift you fool."
Archer with Bag of Holding launcher sends Evil Wizard to void again.
Evil Wizard appears again, "You can't beat me you fool."
Archer with Bag of Holding launcher sends Evil Wizard to void again.
Evil Wizard appears again, "Stop that you fool. What do you hope to accomplish!"
Archer with Bag of Holding launcher sends Evil Wizard to void again.
Evil Wizard doesn't re-appear.
Archer waits a few minutes to be sure and mutters, "To force you to waste all your spell slots. Stupid wizards."
that fight was pretty expensive, wasn't it?
@@talkingbirb2808 And they have to repeat it every eight hours.
I don't ban any established rules from my table. Instead, I'll take the time to see and poke any holes in the "broken" builds/ideas. For Aaracokra, casters will now have a hold person on their spell list. Bag of Holding + Portable Hole (or any other extraplanar holes) will result in a portal to a thieves' guild held in a secret plane (this is something that I started to do since 3e). Wish spells I definitely am not worried about. The more greedy the wish, the more I become an efreet granting that wish. Do you want to become immortal? Cool. You're now a statue!
For almost any flying race I tend to use the idea of...you have negative cover. If enemies are targeting based on what they can see...they CAN SEE YOU! No hiding up above the battlefield archers and mages will try and target you especially if you are making a big but flying threat of yourself. Ranged enemies will usually deal with flying threats first their their melee compatriots deal with melee threats, then move to support melee combatants once the flying/ranged threats are dealt with.
Good strategy. And the DMs ultimate is ofcourse always in play: any broken rules can be houseruled, or an even more busted reply. I myself also like cosmologically logical interventions: turning yourself into an invulnerable nanite swarm of spellcasters? The Gods/Tindalos/They-who-Dwell-Beyond have taken notice.....and would like to have a word.
On the TFC, the first encounter I witnessed of a flying race character, they were up 30 feet and a monster did use hold person on them..... and they died... from the fall damage+ they got crit hit after they fell...Fortunately, it was also the first time my character got to use revivify. But TFC encounters can't be flexed much on the fly because to make it more balanced you have to get encounters pre-approved. Honestly, it is a system you have to see working to decide if it is for you. I like it. But there is nothing wrong with other ways to play.
Anything that can knock the Aarakocra prone will be devastating. Maybe give every archer Ammunition of Walloping, which on every hit forces a DC 10 STR save or be knocked prone. DC 10 once is a joke. DC 10 multiple times a round, every round, might actually induce a fail. And then if they're low on HP, the fall may kill them outright, at least at low level. That's one warning I give flying races. You can quite literally take yourself out by landing badly at level 1. Even at level 5, if you're in archery range, you're not safe from the Ammunition of Walloping.
@@mal2ksc Earthbind is also a hell of a 2nd level spell that almost no-one ever takes but NPCs can ruin a flying races day with.
I hope a few folks who watch this hop on over to the forged concordance.
I have DMed there a good while now and they are a genuinely great community. Folks who care a lot about dnd.
oh hey Puddle
I jumped on as soon as I saw this video, waiting on guild access for my character as of 9A today! No doubt the mods are dealing with a big bump in applications this week :D
nearing my one year anniversary on TFC, it is a fun place. Thanks for the indirect shoutout
Many, many moons ago (read as AD&D rules) Our party met up with several black puddings... In a panic, our mage cast a spell thinking it was a fire AOE.... unfortunately it was a Make gaseous (or similar) spell to allow short term passage through solid objects... so now we had several black puddings in gaseous form that really couldn't hurt us, but were hanging around trying to eat us... and the spell only lasted for a few minutes... the team quickly used various fire implements to herd the black puddings into appropriate containers (that they could not eat through) These containers were capped and the plan was to lob them off of a cliff or down a chasm... later on one of the players ran out of ammunition and decided to lob one of the canisters at a small patrol of orcs... said container shattered releasing a very angry, very hungry, and fully solidified black pudding in their midst... while the black pudding did inflict some damage, it was mostly the chaos caused by the pudding that allowed our party to deal with the threat.... Thereafter, black pudding "grenades" became a sort of "staple" at our gaming table when we wanted a crazy diversion.
Bag of holding used by character to cover and contain a beholder by scooping it out of the air while it was passing a drop off the character was hidden at the top of. When the beholder was just below the top I bagged it . Enemies were surprised when I pulled it out (carefully to make sure it was facing them) let it do its eye thing, shoved it back in the bag and the party capitalized. This was AD&D ORIGINAL. It was not long after the Monster Manual (not compendium) first came out. Had a LOT of fun with that one.
Yes I am THAT old. Started playing D&D when there were only 2 books. DMG and PHB.
That is amazing!
so it was ruled that they will maintain the gaseous form until released from the containers? Also, why would you have so many sturdy containers ready lol
@@talkingbirb2808 I do not recall the DM making any such specific rulings and the Black Puddings seemed to just expand upon breakage. AS for the sturdy containers, I do not recall them as being anything special, other than being made of a substance a black pudding could not eat through, like glass or crystal bottles... Remember that this was AD&D as well as a fantasy setting so things like physics were often overlooked or modified in favor of gameplay, not to mention all of the physics breaking of magic weapons, armors, and spells...
@@edwardpaulsen1074 yeah, it's just hard to forget physics when you are a bachelor in physics 😅
When a content creator can actually say "nuclear" instead of newkehlar or something weird, I can have a happy day. Thank you, sir.
I remember hearing as a kid that there was a difference between nuclear and nucular, but for the life of me I can't recall what the distinction was. In any case, I had to look it up to find the spelling and it was described as a regional pronunciation.
@@lordsergal8783 Nuclear means related to the nucleus. How do anyone say "nucleus"? Nobody says newkelus. Say "nucleus", then say "nuclear" and it has only one reasonable way of being pronounced. I know I'm being stupid about it and it doesn't matter how people say it, but I can't help it, it triggers me to no end when I hear these creators saying it like newkelar, and there's a LOT who say it like that, so I really feel good when one like this pops up and says it right. 🙃
@@Leongon-- "New-ke-lus"? I've never heard that, even from the science teacher than thought Jupiter had a moon called Lo. It's always been "New-clee-us", like New Cletus (the old one dun blowd up).
Nukular 😂
I feel the same way about artificer when not pronounced in accord with the word artifice.
I can see why someone would do it this way with it being a potential new word but it's still like nails on a chalkboard to me.
And while it may be prudish I usually pronounce aaracokra as coke to avoid the possibility of childish giggles.
When my group was playing regularly back in the 90's, one of my fave 2 player combos was "cuisinart".
I came up with it during the infamous "against the giants" module. My buddy and I had surprise, so both began casting. A horizontal blade barrier appeared above a cluster of giants, who look up at it above their table. One segment later, the reverse gravity goes off. Lets tally the damage ...
Fall upwards:
> 1x Blade Barrier Damage
> 1x falling damage ipon hitting the ceiling.
> Roll to avoid getting hit by objects affected by the reverse gravity ... in this case, the giant stone table.
Then repeat the above damage as reverse gravity expires, effectively doubling everything.
Prestidigitation says "warm up" So bringing that to its ultimate conclusion, it should be renamed "create plasma" Just keep in mind that its ONLY a cantrip
For the record, I don't find the "prestidigitation nuke" to be very convincing, RAW. It says "warm up," not "heat." As a DM, I would have no trouble ruling that this means "set the temperature to warm" rather than "add whatever amount of heat the player would like to." Casting prestidigitation on something which was already warmed wouldn't even do anything, because it is already "warm."
@@nxtboy96but what is warm? It is so subjective
@@HouseDiAngelo It's cognitive realm nonsense, of course. But even if we agree that "warm" is subjective, we still have a shared understanding of the sort of temperature range that it entails. I imagine the same would be true in Faerun.
My stove can also warm up food. It's still unable to turn matter into plasma.
@HouseDiAngelo Grungeon Master argued that the "cooling liquids" half of that gives a decent point of reference. If you assume *cooling* water from room temperature (roughly 20°C) cannot *freeze* that water, it is reasonable to say it can lower Temps by roughly 15°C or so, which can then be mirrored on the upper end to heat things up to 35°C. Not worldbreaking, but heated blankets and chilled lemonade will only ever be 6 seconds away
My house rule for putting two extradimensional spaces into each other is that both become inaccessible until you remove one from the other, with one being the only thing you can retrieve.
No astral explosion, no loss of items inside the space, just a temporary inconvenience until you can grab a hold of both disabled containers and physically pull them apart with a single action.
Seems simpler to just ignore the rule altogether, when you put a bag of holding into another one…nothing happens, rather deal with near infinite storage space than wonky trans dimensional magic effects
Welcome back to TH-cam! I’ve been going through withdrawal symptoms
Why is the simulacrum loop fixed with that?
The only downgrade is, that the caster needs more time, even with this "fix".
Day 1: cast Simulacrum, pay 1.500 gp, order the simulacrum to order 25.000gp on Wish, make a nice nap, because in 14 days you're becoming a god...
Day 2: after a relaxing nap, cast another Simulacrum and order him to get you a damage immunity from Wish.
(Repeat these steps every day until you have immunity against all 13 damages types, which will cost you 19.500 gp)
Day 14: congratz, you're an unkillable god now!
Day X:
But you wanna have a nice living too? Then recast simulacrum every day and let him order 25.000 gp from Wish - because there's not "enough" money you can have (man we really gonna wreck that company)
- enjoy!
(Btw. the only "fix" for this is, to ban Simulacrums from being able to cast Wish)
I would also ban the ability for Simulacrums to cast Wish for the original caster, cuz getting free Wishes with no downside is busted.
TFC member here! Thanks for the video!!! - Prophet
I'ma put my own here: *Vow of Poverty* in 3.5E, and by extension giving it to your Paladin special mount to get a free buffed-up dragon that is perfectly obedient. Lemme explain:
Vow of Poverty is part of a line of Exalted feats in 3.5, all requiring you to take Sacred Vow first. Each give some sort of permanent buff but requiring you to permanently abstain from some aspect of DND, with VoP being the most severe by *far* because it means you can't have gold or magic items. You're not even allowed to hold potions and you can only use a quarterstaff. The flipside is that it makes you a *fuckin badass* and you get stronger as you level. We're talking +4AC that turns into +13 by lv18, tons of bonus exalted feats (including more vows), making your natural attacks into +1 to +5 good magical weapons, spell resistance, ability score improvements, and much more. Even still, normally this would cripple a character. But what if we put it on something that doesn't *need* money or magic?
Enter the paladin special mount. At Lv 5, you get was is essentially the 5e find steed spell into a class feature that boosts the Mount's hitdie/level/AC, makes it your permanent ally in Celestia that you can eventually call and uncall as many times as you want, and gives it some mindlink stuff. You can also pick their feats based on their HD, which will become important in a moment. There are also a ton of variant mounts other than the standard warhorse, some of which require you to have a higher paladin level to even summon them. You can even get dragons, but as outlined in the Draconomicon there's a ton of setup. They're intelligent so they won't always obey you, they need a lair, and 10k worth of gold and gems. You miiight be able to see where this is going.
Get to the level where you can get a juvenile brass dragon (has to be a large sized good dragon for the standard paladin), make it have sacred vow along with VoP and another one called Vow of Obedience, and *HUZZAH!* Your dragon mount will not want the gold/gems or a lair, it will obey you without question, and because 3.5 treats hit die as levels for monsters you can easily have a lv 10 paladin with a dragon mount stronger than many lv 20 characters. Like we're talking 30+AC, 35+str, spellcasting, breath weapon, 250ft of flying per round, everything. Also it attacks and moves on your initiative count while also allowing you to use its movement as your own and keep your own attacks, so you can just keep pecking at enemies with spells or use a reach weapon like lances while charging in midair for some huge damage cuz 3.5 charging does triple damage with a Lance and you can increase the multiplier further up to 9x with spells and features.
Oh, and if your dm tries putting you in cramped dungeons? Take the initiate of horas re feat for yourself which lets you do a full attack on a charge but also turn into a small-sized hawk for an hour a day. The juvenile brass dragon can use its Alter Self special ability to turn into any humanoid or beast it's own size or larger with the stats of the transformed creature but keeping it's buffs, so just have it turn into a Legendary Wolf. 120ft speed cr18 medium beast with all the buffs from VoP and the other stuff, while being able to cast verbal spells. Why is this important? Cuz it's medium and you're now small, *you can still ride your mount* so cramped spaces like dungeons become a non-issue for you cuz you're now fighting and exploring in the same size category as the rest of your party likely is. If you need to climb/fly/swim/burrow, your dragon can simply transform to something else as many times as it wants a day and can also cast spells to give you air for places without it.
Enjoy pissing off your dm!
Man. Book of Exalted Deeds sure was a book. I definitely pulled a lot of cheese out of that.
My bud back in college rolled a prestige Paladin (4 Cleric/2 Fighter, levels full casting and BAB) with the Saint template... to this day, our DM says it was the most broken thing he accidentally allowed to happen. Holy shit, that +1 LA and in character trials were so worth all the cheese the man got to do.
WotC : creates the Vow of Poverty to buff the monk because it's the worst class of the edition
The druid, the best class of the edition : Time to turn homeless.
@@raphaelregnault6914eh, unless you're spamming spells the whole time a 3/4BAB class isn't really all that great. Hell, just by the nature of the moonspeaker prestige class, I'd say druids are not the top spot. Moonspeaker can be taken as early as lv2 and gets you wildshape at lv5 as if you were a lv5 druid, and has a fuckton of other insane buffs along with it that far outclass what druid can offer.
There is *not* a "best base class" in 3.5; there's best classes for a 1-3lev dip, 5 if you're pushing it for a class feature, but with the 1,200 prestige classes and several hundred alternate class features there's almost no reason to use the base version of any class unless it is a prerequisite for something godly like stormruler for raptoran clerics or soulbow for soulknifes.
@@Crocogator it really did. Most banned book for 3.5 IIRC
Welcome back! Oh yeah, The Forged Concordance can be fun for DMs and Players alike
The trick with two Bags of Holding -- in 3e/3.5, the whole "tear a hole in space" thing was for if you put one in a Portable Hole, or vice versa: if you put a BoH in another BoH, the inner one would just completely fill the outer one to capacity.
Also a decent nerf in and of itself. As the dm, just never give them both halves of the demon sphere. Your players don't "need" both, as they handle the same issue.
@@chaosstripe9446 An artificer can infuse to create a bag of holding at lvl 2
As far as I can see, with 3.5e there is no official rule on what happens when you out a bag of holding in a bag of holding. if you know otherwise, please tell.
I've always banned fly speed by saying that they can flit and glide. They can only go up or hover for one turn, and then they gotta start descending at or at half their walk speed unless they can grip onto something. So if they have a flying speed of 30 feet they can get 30 feet up into the air and then hover for one or two turns at most slowly descending. Turn 1 they go up to thirty feet, turn two they descend to 15 feet or 0 feet depending on their race, and turn three they descend to 0 feet and can fly again.
I mainly do that to limit the max range hover, and to limit the game challenege breaking issue of just avoiding any traversal challenwge completely. Fly over the chasam with a rope and tie it off, fly up to the top of the tower and whack the boss, skip over my cool parkour battle where you have to be leaping platform to platform fighting with the flying creatures harrassing you. Skip over the entire second stage of descent into avernus by using feather fall or flight.
They can flit rather than fly. If they want to fly up to the top of a cliff they gotta do it in jumps of 30 feet with extra time to find a hand hold they can use to reset and push off of into their next flight. They want to traverse a chasm more than 30 feet across? They gotta find something mid way through to land on or allow themeselves to slow fall pretty far down and then grab the opposing wall and make it back up using the aforementioned flying assited leaping to climb back up.
They can definitely jump off the top of a high object or cliff and as long as they maintain a 15 - 30 foot per round descent rate they can go their full movement speed every round including a dash if they want that. If they go really far downwards like that i allow them to pick up speed and double their speed, then tripple, then quadruple, then if they were to go down like an entire mountain in one go or something they eventually can reach wingsuit velocity but they do have to descend more steeply and that can be terrain limited.
The limiting fly speed to 15 feet rule still enables the hover one shotting it just takes slightly more work, and it does absolutely nothing to prevent the instant skip over terrain based challenges. Thicket of thorns? Cross it instantly. Chasm? Fly over it. Cliff to get up? Fly. Cliff to get down from? Fly down. Wall around a base you gotta infiltrate? Spend eight rounds flying straight up to get to 1,200 feet, fly over the wall to be above a deserted enough area, fall at the 500 feet per round rate, stop just before you reach the ground on round three, boom you're inside. Is it cool to be a flying ninja? Yes it absolutely is. But its also kinda dumb, although the base infiltration is the least bad example and one I'm completely fine with because theyd have to fight their way out alone unless the whole party flies.
At lower levels they fly up to their movement speed and must descend at their full movement speed the next turn, though you do still get forward movement as well. At a little higher level, you can descend at 15 feet per round. At an even higher level, I allow full flight for two rounds before beginning their descent. And at a very high level I allow four or five rounds of regular flight before descent allowing a maximum time in the air of five rounds ascending and ten rounds descending which is more than enough to make most battles completely in the air. They can go all the way up to 150 feet, still in range of many spells and bows, and then slowly coming down.
It also makes sense that they cant fly as well as a creature that flies cause they have solid bones and large muscles and frigging armor and heavy weapons they are carrying along with potions and food and tools and magic items. No way is the arracockra paladin flying indefinitely wearing full plate carrying a greatsword, a longsword, and a shield, and all of his stuff.
The all-time classic ban has to be the Coffeelock. A build which, RAW (i.e., the mechanics are being interpreted correctly), but is clearly an exploit that many GMs homerule to not work.
Actually RAW it can't work. Xanathars and even the PHB/DM handbook make it pretty clear that it can't work. A cokelock now that works. But that's a lot of gold lol. Basically you have to skip sleep for a coffee lock to work and you must make a certain dc saving throw or get exhaustion which will kill you at 6 fails I think.
@@gaigetucker6242 if you go warforged they literally cant get exhausted
@@gaigetucker6242 _Whenever you end a 24-hour period without finishing a long rest, you must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or suffer one level of exhaustion._
_It becomes harder to fight off exhaustion if you stay awake for multiple days. After the first 24 hours, the DC increases by 5 for each consecutive 24-hour period without a long rest. The DC resets to 10 when you finish a long rest._
there's an invocation you can take that removes the need for sleep entirely. @@gaigetucker6242
I’m 2 minutes 40 into the video and man that Spell Jam would go nuts with Planar Binding
Counter point to someone using a flying race cheesing the Tarrasque:
The Tarrasque makes an improvised weapon attack, throw orphanage.
That, or just... *jump.*
yeah, I played as aaracockra onece, troll just hurled a boulder at me and it was decided that I will fall to the ground from the impact. Pretty realistic. Magic fly, on the other hand, just needs to maintain concentration
No, IMO the most powerful spell in D&D is "Counterspell". It has the (high) potential of stopping any spell, even Wish and Counterspell. But here's the real "OP Combo" issue... the double standard players feel... no matter what they come up with it's "creative", but if a DM does it, then those same players feel "That's not fair!". To show this to them I once played a campaign in which the players got more and more OP. I flooded the game with magical items, spell books, weapons and even the optional ability to be a Vampire!!! And in the first 10 sessions they were over the moon, but as the enemies and monsters started having those same OP abilities... suddenly it wasn't fun for them. They wanted to be omnipotent gods over the inferior monsters, not equal gods of battle. This cured them of 2 things... murder-hoboism and they never wanted to play the (inferior) Pathfinder equilibrium way again!
D&D is the best!!! Honorable mention to Call of Cthulhu!
Here's the trick: by RAW, you don't know what you're counterspelling! You have to make the decision with only partial information.
_Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, page 85:_
_If the character perceived the casting, the spell’s effect, or both, the character can make an Intelligence (Arcana) check with the reaction or action. The DC equals 15+ the spell’s level. If the spell is cast as a class spell and the character is a member of that class, the check is made with advantage. For example, if the spellcaster casts a spell as a cleric, another cleric has advantage on the check to identify the spell. Some spells aren’t associated with any class when they’re cast, such as when a monster uses its Innate Spellcasting trait._
_This Intelligence (Arcana) check represents the fact that identifying a spell requires a quick mind and familiarity with the theory and practice of casting. This is true even for a character whose spellcasting ability is Wisdom or Charisma. Being able to cast spells doesn’t by itself make you adept at deducing exactly what others are doing when they cast their spell._
I provide my spellcasting bosses with spellcasting mooks who are there specifically to counterspell Counterspell -- or any other Reaction spell you attempt to cast in response to the boss's casting (they _assume_ it's Counterspell if they fail the Arcana check). This sometimes sets up counterspell battles. The party needs to have one more Reaction and Counterspell available than the enemies do if they expect to use the "denial of service attack" strategy.
@mal2ksc Sure... if that what works for your table. And that's the important thing... the table needs to establish the ground rules and be consistent. I actually enjoy (as DM or player) Counterspell battles. I play most Classes, but Wizard is my favorite.
4:47 I had to pause and laugh for a good minute that someone actually made a diagram like that.
Such an arrow would be, at best, unstable in flight and not function as intended. First test, fired arrow flips up and hits the ground 9.9 feet away from you. Oops.
First time you see the "Arrowhead of total destruction"? That's decade old! Originally, there's also a caption under it that says:
"Engineers
They shouldn't play D&D"
The Simulacrum-chain strat _does_ have a couple of built-in limiters that make it more difficult, and can be used by a DM to limit or block such shenanigans.
Firstly, the ruby dust: The amount needed is fifteen-hundred gp worth, so this gets very expensive very quickly (though, as you noted, the Simulacrums can be sent out to get more). And it's _ruby dust;_ a rarity that the DM can easily decide that your shenanigans have depleted the available supply of.
Secondly, the other (non-costed) material component. Snow or ice in sufficient quantity to match the volume of the target.
In most environments, that's going to be difficult to prevent from melting on you.
There's the issue that both of these can be bypassed by having the Simulacrums cast the spell via Wish, but of course that prevents the Wish-based shenanigans you mentioned.
Wish can also be used to create 25 000gp's worth of (permanent) material, which must fit into a 300ft cube.
You could make one simulacrum create 25 000gp's worth of ruby (enough for 16.66 castings of Simulacrum), and another a 300ft cube of snow.
Then repeat as necessary.
I've always assumed ruby dust came from, well, crushing rubies. All you need to do that is something harder than the rubies that won't wear away itself, like diamonds. It's a perfect use for ugly, flawed, uncut diamonds. I think most people would keep the rubies intact and not grind them until they actually need them, since rubies have other uses.
@@mal2ksc True, but those rubies are also a rarity that could very easily be depleted by reckless use of Simulacrum.
There are very few animal type creatures to wild shape or polymorph into. Removing any kinda breaks classes and builds relying on them.
The TFC is an awesome place to play, come and join us! :D
Hey can you send a link to join I’d love to play
@@YoItsMurro links tend to get nuked in youtube comments, just google it
"Shorts we would like to hire you to do a video about all the rules we've had to make because of you." Beard's lookin GREAT dude!
I have homebrew mods on some of those.
Tiny Hut - burrowing/tunneling creatures can enter from underneath if they become aware of the presence of the party otherwise they ignore it
Flying - no hovering, characters must use their full flight distance when they move, they may bank and turn twice, the space they are in must have a vertical and horizontal height/length of at least half the distance of their maximum flight distance, if those reqs aren't met then the only thing they can do is use a flight assisted charge in a straight line that ends on contact with the target.
Magic Items - characters can attune to 2+prof modifier in magic items, familiars, pets, etc cannot equip magic items and followers are limited to one which is controlled by the DM
Polymorph - you can only poly into a creature you have actually seen/experienced
SO glad you are back, Shorts!!! We missed you terribly!!!
These are some of the most level headed bans I have heard of for DnD.
There's an easier fix for Simulacrum: make it so only the caster can be the target of the spell. That way the simulacrum tree stops as soon as the resulting simulacrum can't cast any seventh level spells (they only have the spells slots the caster of the spell had when they were done casting the spell, and they can't re-fill any slots). So, if the original caster had three seventh level slots, the first simulacrum will have two, the second will have one, and the third will have none and now you can't generate more. No infinite army, just a second simulacrum possible when you reach level 20 (as before that, you'll only have one seventh level slot and your first simulacrum will have none).
In 1st edition, the Simulacrum spell was very limited. It created a perfect duplicate of the creature in appearance, but it was only able to do precisely what the caster told it to do, with all the intelligence and ability to understand nuance typical of a zombie. The creature could be given the ability to think and act on its own (a vital force) by a Reincarnation spell (though the caster retained complete control), and be given 40% - 65% (35% + (d6 x 5)%) of the subject's knowledge and skills by a Limited Wish, as well as 20% - 50% of the subject's character levels (10% + (d4 x 10)%). So, best case, after casting two extra spells, you'd get a copy with 50% of the original class levels, 65% of the original knowledge (so, I suppose, roll under 66 on d100 to see if you know a particular thing the subject would know or can use a particular skill), and able to heal normally and receive healing spells, as well as regain expended spells. Without the extra spells, you get basically a decoy or Real Doll that looks like someone you managed, and only moves or acts when you specifically tell it to do so -- so a very presentable, but very expensive, zombie without actually having to steal a body. Oh, and the creature to be simulated has to be within reach of the caster for the whole twelve hours it takes to cast the spell, so either they're willing, or they're unconscious, or you're going to have some serious explaining to do.
The easiest way to nerf the simulacrum stat is to make the simulacrums have free will and go "hey wait a minute, why is THIS guy telling us what to do?"
You don't even have to prevent the simulacrum to try to cast wish at all, or to make multiple clones of themselves.
Just remind your players that Mystra, the goddess of the Weave, the one who banned all spells above level 9 and restricted the number of spell slots any spellcaster could have, isn't a fan of anyone circumventing the limitation of her spells.
They can try, but they might get the visit of an avatar of a god
For my campaigns, I did a bit of structure on where the beginning and end were but left the players to fill the middle. It created a lot of work for me to counter-balance the game but it's supposed to be fun. I always enjoyed watching players come up with complex strategies or game breaking ideas. I feel like a lot of DMs have a set storyline and don't want to change the set up so it's an instant 'no you can't do that' scenario. If everyone playing understands the 'standard', I guess it's okay. It can create discouraging situations. Always felt that explaining the intent and how, allows the player to do so. Especially if it's a sound idea. -A rogue drops a bunch of caltrops in a camp, while they sleep. A wizard lightning bolt the area. All creatures within the caltrops would make a save for the caltrops. Failing the save would make them take full damage from the bolt. Succeeding the save, they'd take a -2 to saving from the lightning bolt. The argument being that the creatures fell prone, all dice damage is applied since all caltrops are a connecting source.
4:03 Flying speed is simple to deal with at any level and Fly is only a second level spell. A new DM might have trouble, but the DM is god - you can put a roof or give the enemies arrows. Or if they players can fly, then just add flying enemies.
The old adage, what's good for the goose is good for the gander is apt here. If the players are "abusing" flight, then so will the NPCs. See how much the players like being snipped by Eldritch Spears from 600' in the air?
It's better to adapt the combat honestly. Have enemies that can also fly, give enemies cover, put the enemies inside caves and buildings. Hell, let there be challenges that player can solve with their flight, make a few combats where their busted flight combo is vital to winning and make others where it's unusable and even causes issues. Hell, imagine a fight against a dragon or kaiju where someone is flying, zipping around and dealing damage with eldritch blasts while the rest of the party has to work from the ground to exploit weak points
Fly is a 3rd level spell.
@@Femaiden and some enemies have wings that arent a spell
I remember back in the days of auld when one of the most annoying class combos was Bard/Dragon Disciple/Pale Master. An AC so high they could barely be touched, immunity to critical hits, immunity to sleep, poison and paralysis, immunity to one element of choice, immunity to insta-death and ability/level drain, HP through the roof and free spells. Oh, and you can fly.
5:22 That was one of the most unexpected segües I've ever heard. Well done sir.
Love to see your videos are back, hope you had a great break
Timestamps Combo Name Rating in Power:
- 1:00 Instant Gems Spells 3/10 -> You use spellgem instead of wish to cast spells as an action, even if they usually require 10 minute casting or more.
- 2:45 50 Foot Flyer 4/10 -> You have 50ft of flying speed at level 1 and most of the combat creatures at that level doesn't have Flight speed, making you basically immune to melee attacks.
- 4:07 Bag of Holding Nuke 5/10 -> You use a bag of holding and Place them in another extra dimensional space, banishing every creature within 10 feet of the extra dimensional space in the Astral Plane without any saves involved.
- 5:22 Sponsor.
- 6:35 Companion Attunement 5/10 -> You use your familiar or NPC companion attune to magic items, alike ring of spellstoring, which they can use to cast spells to combo with you.
- 8:21 Simulacrum Loop 7/10 -> be a spellcaster with at least two level 7 spellslot and casting Simulacrum on yourself, and then make them cast simulacrum on you, and go on.
- 10:14 Boon of the Moob 7.5/10 -> at level 1 use lycantropy to gain Immunity to bludgeoning, slashing and piercing from non-magical or non-silvered weapons, which is what most monsters at this level use only, werebear is preferred because you get 40 feet walking speed, 30 feet climbing speed, 19 minimum strength score and +1 to your AC additionally.
- 12:01 Killing Bonuses 8/10 -> Some features give you bonuses when you kill a creature, so you can technically buy a sack full of chicken or some other weak creatures and murder one each morning to gain the bonus for the day (like the Blood Spear), and so you can combo it in some ways, the example given is a Dhamphir that uses sword bard's flourish and bite attack to attack every creature within 5 feet of you, like fireflies that you can use to surround yourself with, and you regain all the hp from those damages, so basically a pop insta heal, and additionally, you add the damage you dealt to your next ability check or attack roll, so you can gain like +100 to your next ability check (+100 counterspell go brrrr).
- 13:51 Dino Time -> Polymorph, Polymorph into a T-rex (the westmarch server that bans this just doesn't have any dinosaurs, it doesn't have to be broken, it's just lore reasons and it's cool, it isn't all about brokenness imo!)(And it seems the ban was lifted earlier this year!).
dude nearly spat out my drink durning your add .
Other ways to nerf without ban :
1 - make spell gems cast a spell with the original spell casting time
2 - impose disavantage on long ranged eldritch blast while flying. As you fly, you are unbalanced by the recoil of your blast, which affects long distance shots (essentially turning the 75m range to a long range value, like for ranged weapons, meaning you only get normal attack if you cast Eldritch Blast at his usual range while flying).
3 - Introduce the Lhaksharut, from Pathfinder : a Lawful Neutral extraplanar construct-like entity who is tasked with maintaining the separation and integrity of the planes. Such a creature would surely take actions against mortals using what is basically a magical planar nuke (CR20).
4- FIREBALL
5- I like this solution actually
6 - the curse is lifted from any blood or fluid that originates from you once you get cured.
7 - CHILLING TOUCH and also FIREBALL and get the bloodspear to require attunement. Plus, for the cockroaches part, impose a Constitution check. If failed, the character is disguted by the taste of the arthopodes, don't get the benefit of his ability and spends the remaining of his turn puking.
Warlocks have the option of taking Eldritch Spear as an invocation, which extends the range of Eldritch Blast to 300 feet. How does that interact with your nerf? (I also don't know where you get 75m, EB is 120 feet by default and 300 feet with Eldritch Spear, neither of which is 75 meters.)
Exactly what I need right now! Thanks! 😃
for lycanthropy i have a general rule it is not to stop the "statergy" stated here but just generally it comes from 3.5 specifically i believe. after failing the con save to be cursed the curse does not take effect until the next full moon, there is a "grace period" before they can transform, also from 3.5 is the creature can cure it in the first day by taking the "correct" amount of wolfsbane or a remove disease effect but after the first day it is a curse and cannot be removed in this way
A friend of mine told me about two OP combos in a campaign he DMed. First was a Druid able to summon 6 Wolves finding an item that let him cast the spell again as a free action, so he just sent 12 wolves on the BBEG and obviously won. Second was a Paladin NPC they trained with who used a Smoke Screen, Plain Step, and Astral Projection combo to appear to split into two in a puff of smoke and appearing on both sides of the player. This caused a severe disadvantage on hit for the player because they don't know which is the real and if they guess wrong the Paladin gets advantage to hit since the player's back is turned.
In one of my own campaigns, I had one trick that wasn't too OP but did scare the DM when I enacted it. My spell book, the Tome of Voidsinging (this was a Homebrew), would summon a void fireball a few inches above the surface of the book and shoot it long range at 3+2d8 damage, which was enough to one shot most players. Well, I realized that since the fireball is above the surface of the book, putting the book against the target will summon the fireball inside them. I two-shot the BBEG.
First off, I love your content and have followed for a long time.
I do, however, have some observations I’d like to share.
The Tarrasque can throw objects, just like most creatures with hands/claws. No special stat block is needed to do this, just like PCs don’t need that. Sage Advice recommends using the giant’s ’throw boulder’ ability as a guideline. Therefore, a flying creature isn’t automatically immune to the Tarrasque.
Casting wish to duplicate a spell of 8th level or lower does not create the stress described in the section of the spell description that mentions the 33% chance to lose the ability to cast Wish again.
The Blood Spear requires attunement. Handing it to another player will not allow them to gain the temporary HP.
Again, thank you for all the wonderful content! Keep up the amazing work!!
i'm happy to see fellow westmarch servers, getting some well deserved Exposure. I feel that its few and far between that players know about this kinda stuff.
We need more broken combos haha. I love your content and I always love watching your videos, so keep being awesome!
Greetings Mr Shorts, the Concordance sends their best.
I think your last point is often understated, there is an important difference between banning things for story reasons vs banning things for being too powerful (especially if said power can be argued as just a DM not knowing how to deal with things).
I had a campaign banned two races, a bunch of subclasses and a whole class - because the beings that made those things possible didn't exist in the world yet - and the whole campaign was based around bringing those creatures into the world.
I love these "broken" builds/combos.
As a DM, I sometimes use them for NPCs (without revealing how) to test them out and get a great reaction from my players.
As the NeverPlayer, I'll use the less broken ones (i.e. SorLock, Hexadin, etc.) to build iconic characters that, if too unbalanced for that DM's game, can easily slip away for a more even-keeled build because story. 😁
My first Wish: "Being able to Cast wish indefinitely as a free action"
Boom... Broken again 😂😂
Glad you had time off. Good to have you back!
Great to see you back!
This reminds me of one of the most powerful magic items I have ever devised: The Leomund's Tiny Hut Hand Grenade, a Grenade that spawns a hut by itself and only grants entrance to people designated by the thrower at the time of throwing.
Isn't that just bead of force?
@@codebracker No, because allies of the user can enter and exit the sphere while enemies can never get in in the first place.
An alternate solution for low-level flight speeds: Let them only stay aloft for short bursts: several abilities will give you flight speed that only lasts for your turn, where you fall if you don't land by the end, but Aarocokra could extend that to a few rounds at a time; They can fly back up once they've landed, or maybe after a turn resting like a Tabaxi, but this means there's a vulnerable moment where melee attackers can get to them.
Actually, this might be better; having such a low speed isn't so much of a problem when you can still hover and have a 600 foot range.
So my GM made me a were-tiger that I have full control over BC I'm a moon druid. I didn't ask for it. Only one person in my party knows BC no one else was there and the storyline was we went on a walk. We have a wizard worst comes to worse. Looking forward to my first play on monday!
So, I'm a new GM and my players stumbled upon a pretty fun combo. One player is a Goliath Fighter Rune Knight, while the other is playing a wizard specializing in graviturgy magic. The Rune Knight has a skill that allows them to increase their size to the next height category, going from medium to large, and they also possess a rune that can incapacitate a creature for 1 minute.
So, at the start of the round, the Goliath uses the rune to incapacitate my beast, and unfortunately, I fail the saving throw. Then, as a bonus action, the Goliath grows in size to a whopping 16 feet tall. Everything seems fine so far, but then it's the wizard's turn. They cast the spell Enlarge/Reduce, which not only can make a creature one size larger or smaller but also stacks with the Rune Knight's size increase ability.
So, now I'm dealing with an incapacitated beast, a 16-foot-tall Goliath Fighter, and a wizard who just made the Goliath even bigger, turning them into a towering 32-foot giant. not broken to the effect of ban but yaaaa.
I've recently watched a few sessions where flying in a similar style baldurs gate 3 does it.
You can fly, to cross pretty much any obstacle. But most actions are disallowed or nerfed while airborne. Doing intricate movements while flopping around is impossible. Aiming any attack is with disadvantage. So if you want to fight propperly, you must land at the end of your movement. At the end of your movement, you may choose to stay airborne (to travel larger distances in the air).
This turned Flying into a traversal tool, instead of a glorified damage immunity. And it actually made it feel quite fair.
Glad you’re back!
9:30 welcome to a quick guide to summon inevitables.
A group I played with once had a group of enemies stumble upon us as we were resting in Leomunds Tiny Hut. The results were a 3 hour long combat consisting of dodging in and out against foes that tried to hit us with prepared actions.
To get 65 movement just be a wood elf they get plus 35 moment at lvl 1
We abused the tiny hut thing recently in our campaign since we had prep time on the edge of the monster’s territory before it was aggroed. Good thing too, because I don’t think we would have survived that fight if most of the party wasn’t taking refuge in that dome. Of course the DM saw this coming and still periodically damaged the party members because we were fighting in an unstable area with random geysers and tiny hut doesn’t protect from the bottom.
As for the simulacrum thing, it can be great for something like starting a company, but not as useful in combat for one plain reason: each simulacrum only takes orders from the caster that created it. And since they don’t have their own initiative, acting on the same turn as their caster, it breaks the immersion of the adventure to say you have enough time in your six second turn to play a game of telephone with the simulacrums to relay commands.
I love the inclusiong of the t-rex ban on this video, my original setting bans quite a few things because they just don't fit the setting, like undead and undeath being a literal myth to imitate real life, you can believe that ghosts are real and that paranormal stuff happens but there's no "ghost" creature to fight nor any zombies to animate, I wanted to do something special with certain tribes of undead, like vampires, and them being the same as in every other story sounded boring to me. I love your videos a lot dude, keep up the good work and ty for the hours of entertainment you have given me!
The simulacrum restriction still doesn't fix the true op effect: infinite simulacra without any rests needed!
You cast simulacrum. Simulacrum has no 7th level slot. However both you and the simulacrum have a 9th level slot. They can cast simulacrum on you using WISH, creating a simulacrum (in one action) with no 7th level slot but a 9th level slot. Rinse and repeat. Note that they have not cast simulacrum, they have cast wish to replicate the effects of the simulacrum spell, so using this restriction does not stop this combo.
Also this wish strategy is even more broken because wish consumes NO MATERIAL COMPONENTS! So cost is only a limitation on the first casting.
you're level 17 anyways you're breaking the game lmao
@@linkplays2952Maybe but there are ways to play DND at high level without breaking the, just takes very meticulous tracking of magic items and abilities and everyone needs to understand not to abuse features. Way too much hassle for me as a DM personally, but I've seen it done 😅
@@Bruh-kg9nw If the player dont want to break the game then it wont be broken. Like if your player wants to do this combo and you "ban it" they will do some other overpowered combo. If your players dont want to break the game then they're not doing this in the first place.
Something I did want to point out at around the 3 min mark you got wrong was the whole aarakocra terrasque thing, it only works if you completely ignore improvised weapon rules, scaling improvised weapon damage, or run the terrasque like a video game character. nothing is stopping a npc (of any kind) from doing something not directly printed on the statblock without homebrew.
the terrasque has 11 wisdom, nothing it stopping it from picking up a large-sized rock and chucking it at the punk-bird, knocking it out of the sky. other than "it's not in the statblock"
and if that's your only argument, then you must also agree that say, a bandit as example can't pick things up, has a bow and scimitar equipped and ready at all times and can use both whenever without putting them away, even if you try to disarm them, and that they're unable to open doorknobs or even jump.
Does the Tarrasque even have the ability to grip with its physiology? Or are you referring to it using its mouth or something?
@@SodaPopBarbecue it has movable fingers, doesn't it? even then you can say it uses either, regardless, it's still able to pick up and toss a rock
@@preyasmanthedemopan2854 I'd certainly let the tarrasque throw a rock, but it wouldn't be able to apply its proficiency bonus to an improvised weapon.
@mal2ksc it wouldn't need it's proficiency bonus to knock a level 1 bird out of the sky with a rock
With the bag of holding nuke, I’ve always let my players know that I homebrew it to repel each other like with magnetism, the closer they get, the more they repel. So if you and your ally have one, you can be near each other fine but if you try to put one inside another, they repel each other and are incapable of going inside another
personally as a DM I love it when I inevitably run into a player that decides to go broken combo. Generally a conversation is had with the other players on a fun practical demonstration session or two and I'll generally start introducing broken combos of my own some of which are at a much higher level than the players are at at which point the player who wants to power game usually gets the hint in a pretty funny and generally nonmalicious way to come to the conclusion that its probably not the best idea to just go for breaking the game. I find that guiding players to the conclusion rather than just telling them not to do it works out much better as I've found that in the past 5 years or so many new players don't like the idea of being told no outright.
I find it hilarious that forged concordance is the one here lol you've got good energy dude keep it up
My favorite D&D exploit is Conjure Animals. As one of the features, you can summon 8 creatures with a dc of 1/4, which means that at first level you can conjure eight swarms of rats. At 9th level, that number quadruples. A 17th level character casting the spell at 9th level can summon 32 swarms of rats, dealing 64d6 damage in one round. In addition, 1 swarm of rats is about 25 rats, meaning that 32 swarms is equal to 800 rats swarming the battlefield.
You can't conjure swarms IIRC
The thing with Broken combo's is if your players want to do them, so can you as the DM - the tone of the game goes from very serious to more daft and terrifying for the NPC not wise/powerful enough to pull of a combo, turning everyone that isn't capable into lone ants in a world saturated with giants/dragons/beholders. But that can be fun too.
Also never held that flying is actually broken at all, as you do nothing that well but make yourself a target with no way to hide. Though I do like the rule change here - keeping the range of flight comparable to walking speed later and limited early on just stops a flying race fighter from almost entirely negating the Monk's superpower of mobility in most situations...
As yes while you can get really long range weapons (or just drop rocks) and fly really high out of return fire from the archers on ground, all your targets have to do is step under a roof (etc) and you are useless as anything but a scout till you come down, and in many cases the giant siege weapon meant to drive off the more terrifying beast/dragon or invading horde that many places can have will have the power to reach you...Plus the big counter is you have high range, great, but that doesn't stop some of the NPC from having it too. Might even be a warlock that just pops up with with equal or greater range, your own patron sent them when you are using your gifts too effectively - the patron wants to keep you coming back and giving up more of yourself for power etc... Or an alchemist with a few potion of polymorph/fly etc, the avatar of some god of fair play in this setting that will bind your wings on you if you fly too close to the sun - flying really can't do anything but catch a novice DM out, and once they have been caught out once there are so many tools available that make abusing flight actively dangerous so the players have to be careful with it, which means they won't push it often - I'd still let them 'abuse' it from time to time, or when the have done the scouting work to be sure its safe, but every now and then their antics catch the attention of or happen to provoke somebody who can deal with them...
Broken combos are less fun than powerful ones by FAR
The Simulacrum thing honestly can get pretty wild even with the nerf.
Sure, you only gotta have one clone, but if you go on a wild pokemon hunt before to catch some neat dragon or something similar (some dragons have shape change, so you don't lose out on a human form) and use the Magic Jar + Clone combo beforehand, that still means you basically as a full caster ancient dragon (brass is only CR 20, so it works with that) bring alone another ancient dragon. (Even at half hp it's 150, so it won't get disintegrated).
The other "gotta catch em all", or at least, gotta catch one that is the very best combo is with the Necromancer's subclass specific enthrall ability. There are some pretty neat undead out there to catch (even named liches, or dracoliches). You will need to feeblemind them to oblivion and you'll most likely need at least 1 other caster to pull it off, to hold them while you (or them, it's better to have a sorc buddy for hightened spells) try to land the feeblemind. (If you have high enough DC you can ignore the 30 day trial period on your need undead buddy!)
I’ve always just played with consequences in the game and if you do something to purposefully break the world powerful creatures will take notice. Spell Sniper in particular has always been, “sure your spell can go that far but your character can’t accurately aim it from that far away, roll to see if it hits and the DC goes up with range.” Just because Hercules could throw a boulder into space doesn’t mean he can knock the wings off a fly with it.
Haha
Ome of my favorite alltime npcs was a kobold who was werebear(albeit blackbear not griszly size,didnt get the full stat boost to strength) and was pretty much lawful evil but was easier to justify him bein warmer to the party as bein a good bear made him kinda neutral overall.
Even though he'd sprout a gaping maw out off his stomach,and often comported himself on spiderlegs for lore/class reasons if he wasnt nathed in holy water periodically.
Was the best little abomination ever.
Was 2 levelsaway from sproutin wings too.
Did I mention he was also a bard?
And a hell of a cook
Hmm
Think you're missin out on if those characters could necromantically revive a chicken to kill it again for boosts.
Arise Chicken
Chicken arise.
Be 2d6hp now
He was fiercely loyal to his clan,or young masters as he called them when he wasnt ragin. Yooung prople hate it when you point out rhe obvious. Like these chuds
I'm pretty sure the "fix" for bag of holding bombs just makes them a little trickier (and only works on medium and smaller enemies) but safe in melee. Just lay out your portable hole, push enemy in, and drop another bag in. And if bag isn't destroyed now, it is more easily repeatable.
For the flying speed i will give something in return, a lot of newer races with flying speed (including the aaracockra from mpmm) are balanced around the fact that they can, i will give them for compensating this something little, like for the owlin give them talons as a natural weapon, for the fairy fey ancestry or a proficiency. so they will be nerfed but they still got something (cause their race dosen't give anything else)
When you were talking about the T. rex ban I was really excited to hear how someone polymorphed into a T. rex in order to amass infinite gold, or negate all damage, or make their meat hang lower than their two veg., or something super OP like that, but nope. It's just for storytelling reasons. As advanced as things get, it's always good to remember that the fundamentals are equally important!
On that last one: I now kinda want to do a one shot caveman session. Everyone's a "shaman" that can pick one dino to turn in to. Weapons limited to slings, clubs and simple spears. Armor limited to hide only.
In my dad's campaigns with my family where he dms, halflings are basically banned for story reasons. Basically there was a prophecy about a halfling slaying the liches in that setting so the liches proceeded to exterminate all the halflings. In all the campaigns in that setting that we have done, only 2 halfling characters have been made (or survived at all): the one who was prophecied and another that was a player character for my mom.
When I first started dming I had a major boss fight setup for my players the arackrokca roque stayed in the air and spammed magic missle killing the boss in about 2 rounds with the help of the party
I have actually hard cast Leomund's Tiny Hut IN COMBAT. Yup, ten turns of DM: "What do you do with your turn?" Me:"Still casting LTH." It saved the party as they held off attackers that would have overwhelmed us at a choke point and we were able to take time to rest and plan.
I saw someone mention something akin to the second last one as the "Bag of rats", which inspired me to invent a magical item... but instead it summons a bunch of rats like the bag of tricks... which then pull out tiny instruments and play music for you. Or alternatively you can pull out a single rat and it follows people around with a tuba...
To be fair, Tiny Hut can be fixed quite easily - say that, through the nature of the spell, you cannot both exit and enter on the same turn. There are still other issues of course, you can technically long rest mid fight with this, but your enemies can prepare stuff too at the DMs discretion so it's _probably_ balanceable at that point
Regarding #2, I knew a player who tried that with a bag of ants to trigger a magic crown back in 4e. I advised him that on-kill effects, to make the game balanced, should only activate on creatures with a stat block for starters, and ideally hostile ones at that.
Also, while I might use combos that appear busted, I use them with full understanding that my GM can bring the banhammer down on them if I abuse them, and I'm ready to drop them if that happens.