On Animate Objects : it says "Once given an order, the creature continues to follow it until its task is complete.". Meaning you don't even have to use your bonus action every round, only when their current target dies. Otherwise they'll just keep attacking ; you only have to give an order like "kill this enemy", rather than "attack this enemy" which will technically be completed after a single attack.
unless the enemy moves out of the objects' 30ft vision after which they are completely blind by exploiting the 1 round delay between your order and the objects action and the fact that they're blind out of 30 feet, a mobile opponent can just avoid them altogether obviously something your average opponent might not be able to do
Telekinesis is a quintissential spell for all magic users, nothing says "Mind over matter" than some scrawny 3 foot tall, 40 lbs soaking wet Gnome picking up a 12 foot tall beefer Ogre and tossing them around like a frisbee!
Definitely the biggest difference between a fighter missing and a monster making a save is resource cost - the fighter can swing all day, but only the wizard is risking a high level slot to do nothing.
@@sharkforce8147 Oh definitely. That is a huge advantage for classes like fighter, monk, paladin etc - they are not going to waste their whole turn firing off a cantrip or something that does nothing. Multiple attacks in a round is multiple chances to deal damage. That is also part of what makes eldritch blast stand out so much against other cantrips - combined with agonizing blast it actually deals competitive damage, barring additional damage or effects from magical weapons. A valor bard or bladesinger is going to have to weigh the difference between casting a spell and attacking twice though once they get to level 6, and part of why I really appreciate this video series is that it helps shed light on the fact that a wizard's job - optimally - is to change the battlefield and manipulate the combat, more than blasting. Being able to slow down a bunch of enemies, or restrain them, or knock them prone, or incapacitate them - all of these things can substantially shift the course of combat. Blasting, I think I have learned here, is a privilege of a wizard who has already done the job of getting the enemies restricted to an area. A bladesinger that has trapped a bunch of enemies in a web can swing twice with advantage and back out with enemies making AoO at disadvantage. That is a strategy that helps everyone in the party. Or fireball-ing your enemies since they are all bunched together because of a terrain effect before they had a chance to spread out. But it is interesting to get this perspective on how spells like hold person/monster - as devastating as paralyzed is as a condition - is a big investment because of the number of chances the enemy has to save against it. A well coordinated party, IMO, should recognize by lvl 9 that they should focus fire immediately if a hold spell succeeds - depending on combat order, it could be over in a turn.
Planar Binding won't cost you your concentration for its duration. Most conjure spells don't dismiss the conjured creature if you break concentration. You just lose control of them but they stay for the full duration. But Planar Binding will both reassert control for you, AND extend the duration. So you have a concentration free ally for the full duration.
One thing I've never seen anybody mention about Wall of Force is that you can use it to create a horizontal plane, floating 5ft in the air above you. Now all large melee monsters need to squeeze to reach your party and have disadvantage. Melee monsters larger than that cannot do anything to you. I would argue that if you stand in the middle of that plane, large+ ranged attackers can't hit you without ducking, but that's DM dependent. It should certainly protect you from a dragon breath weaponing from above.
@@Coid Not disputing your math, but in most games, by the time you reach the level needed to cast the spell in the first place, that sort of money should be easily available to the players.
It has occurred to me recently that, by definition given in the Sage Advice Compendium, objects animated by Animate Object spell are considered magical while the spell is in effect. I'm talking about the section of the Compendium that answers the question "what is actively magical and what is just background magic". Some of the questions you need to ask yourself to determine whether the thing is actively magical is "is it a spell?" and "is it powered by a spell slot?". In case of Animate Objects, the answer is "yes". So, for the duration of the spell, these mundane objects are magical. Which is only logical, because of course they are - they can move on their own, fly, perform tasks and attack. Besides, even from a balance standpoint, I believe it's perfectly reasonable for a 5th level spell requiring concentration to create minions with attacks which count as magical. Besides, as our recent campaign has demonstrated, at level 10 and higher, when you start encountering a lot of flying and/or Fireball-slinging foes, those tiny 20 HP objects with only 30 ft flying speed often can't keep up with the enemy and can be wiped out by a single blast.
Planar Bind DOES remove the need for concentration. Concentration is part of a spells duration, and Planar Binding replaces the "Concentration, up to 1 hour" of the Conjure Elemental spell with "24 hours" of the Planar Binding spell. HOWEVER since casting spells with a casting time greater than one action requires your concentration, the same person cannot concentrate on Planar Binding during casting AND the summon. However, in addition to your mention of Magic Circle, this process can be made easier by simply setting up a Planar Binding with a Glyph of Warding, and possibly using Forcecage for extra protection.
In a political campaign, when your political enemies don't have many hit points, Geas is a "Do what I want or you die". As a Sorcerer, subtle spell helps with applying it.
@@CarrowMind I believe Aberrant Mind Sorcerers can now pick it up, and since it's part of their Psionic Spellcasting shtick, they don't even need to use Subtle Spell on it. For everyone else, Metamagic Adept exists to save the day for anyone with a free feat to spend.
In steel wind strike, you don't have to teleport next to an enemy. It says that you *can* teleport, and only after all the attacks are made and the damage is dealt, so you can just remain in place if you want to
Fighting a vampire as evocation wizard. Sculpt spells dawn, so that you and your allies don't take damage from it, then place the spell on top of your group. When the vampire is put to 0 outside of the area of the spell and turns to mist, recast it ontop of them to perma-kill the vampire
Planar Binding. As DM I play it this way as it seems the most logical 1. Draw the magical circle with the gem component. 2. Summon the creature or get it into the circle somehow. 3. Planar Binding is cast, the creature stays in circle if it fails save. A highly intelligent creature that makes its save might stay in circle anyway seeking to trick and later slay or enslave the caster. Be careful who you summon! 4. The creature is bound to you as in spell if it fails it’s save. No concentration required. 5. A hostile creature will always twist your words to its advantage and will always try to break the spell. Planar Binding is a spell effect and can be dispelled, but not by the creature who is bound. 6. Creatures who are bound generally have friends also, it’s rare that a bound creatures allies wouldn’t investigate. They have enemies also, who might help you keep the creature bound. 7. The creatures that you would want to bind almost always work for someone higher up. You bind a Deva for any length of time to do some task that isn’t in it interests you can bet its Planetar commander will come looking for it followed by its Solar general and their personal escort of 4 Planetars if that isn’t enough. 8. Binding evil creatures such as Demons and Devils. This is different as the Overlord knows they can’t die on material plane anyway and also knows that any death or destruction they cause is probably a good thing. These overlords treat most servitors as expendable, so temporary unavailability isn’t a burden to them. 9. Elemental Binding. They have goals that vary from above but remember in general any creature resents enslavement. It’s far better to use planar Binding to just make a deal with them to pay for their services. 10. Concentration isn’t required once bound but CAREFUL ATTENTION is. The creature will follow your instructions, but stay here and guard this room might mean “Carefully inventory everything here, study the room carefully so I can teleport in and steal everything later when I am not bound.”
There are definitely some spells that seem more interesting for villains than for players, because they can guarantee the situational conditions happens. As a player, I can't think of many situations for Far Step when Dimension Door, Fly or Misty Step wouldn't have done the job. But as a DM, I can come up with crazy fights across the tops of buildings or on raised platforms where Far Step on a villain could be challenging for the players as they have to jump/climb/fly to keep up.
Animate Objects has so many uses beyond damage. For objects, it's an even better version of Telekinesis, since it can affect much larger objects. It can transmit information back to you ("If he went left, spin on a circle. If he went right, drop to the ground.") And oh, yeah... it can do damage.
It's great when you animate unexpected things. You are sieging a town? Animate that door open. Drawbridge? You got it. Portcullis? You know what to do. Are you in a forest? Animate that trees. In a room? Rugs and curtains are wonderful to animate. Chains are good to bring with you, to grapple enemies. And why not? Bring a 10 silver pieces pouch, to fight those pesky invulnerable to non silver damage.
The only downside of being a telekinesis alternative is that it only lasts for 1 minute. Sure, it might not be a problem when you need to do something in that moment, but in a dungeon where other puzzles might come those 10 minutes can make some difference.
Dominate Person is definitely a spell that’s more useful to an NPC villain than to a player, especially if you’re targeting that 8 Wisdom Barbarian. Although, I’ve heard there are some players that get upset when they lose control of their characters. I’m fine with those sorts of spells being used against my character because it’s just part of D&D.
I used it on an enemy who said they arere the big boss of the place. Commended him to tell us every secret and one of them was that he is just playing this role as commended by his actual boss^^
43:56 Long story short, I turned my party’s petrified cleric into a medium sized object after he got captured by a flying monstrosity, because the DM said polymorph would not affect him :) Metal Man dealt the killing blow and floated down to the ground in a T-pose. Praise the sun!
I feel like planar binding is one of those spells that really comes into its own once you have access to wish. One action to cast, and you get whatever it is you are trapping bound to you for 180 days, concentration free. Obviously it's a niche use, especially when you need to consider legendary resistances, and the fact that most high level creatures that you'd want to bind have pretty good Charisma saves. But ending the big encounter with a beefed up pit fiend with a single spell, and keeping it around for half a year afterwards is pretty nice.
Planar Binding with Wish is a good combo with Feeblemind, that sets the Intelligence and Charisma attribute scores to 1. Have to keep in mind that this combo will consume your 2 most powerful spell slots, so you will have to be sure that you want to capture the enemy you're fighting (Save the slots for the ending of the combat if your enemy have legendary resistance).
Planar Binding does not require concentration. In fact casting Planar Binding breaks concentration because it requires concentration to cast. Conjure elemental into an inverted magic circle created by a glyph of warding, then immediately start your binding. Have a silvery barbs prepared just in case the elemental makes their save.
The duration of spells usually is where the concentration is included. When Planar Binding replaces your duration on a summon spell, that includes the part where you have to concentrate on it. Edit: equally important to note is that casting a spell with a casting time longer than 1 action requires your concentration during the casting time (this includes rituals). So your summoned creature will almost always disappear when you begin the Planar Binding. You need two or three casters to pull off a binding. One to summon, one to bind, and possibly a 3rd to forge the magic circle at the beginning of the ritual Edit 2: conjured elementals don't disappear, but I think the fiends, fey, and celestials summoned by other spells do.
That is why I think it is a orange instead of purple. Its so circumstantial and even when it comes up it isn't that good. Maybe if you're a lvl 10 conjuration wizard it will be purple but I still don't think so.
That was quick... You beat me to it. RAW, most Conjuration spells will end about 6 sec before Planar Binding completes. It's silly, but it means Raw, you need several magic users to make the spell work. I think spells like this come from the history of D&D where Gary Gygax or a friend made up a spell to explain how an NPC did something. At some point, the spell became available to PCs, but if special thought wasn't put into its design, then you wind up with this.
@@samboots1 that's so funny because that's why I think this spell is green. It's not a great 5th level spells, but it is excellent at 6th+ levels because you would cast it during your downtime and have a buddy for 10 days (or a month, half a year, or a full year if you keep bumping up the spell level). It does require a bit of prep, but it is a full party member NPC with a personality and special abilities unlike that of a Simulacrum or other such spells. The no concentration part makes it that much better.
@@redram9 now that you say it you're correct. I love spells that add companions with just spending as little spell slots as possible (because you can do 10 days you can long rest and have all your spell slots again.) This could be as good as find familiar is at level 1, because you increase your action economy with even more and maybe more powerful actions. Agree to rate it to low tier green, because it still needs that set up that unlike spells such as find familiar or find steed, takes quite a while and is kinda expensive (campaign dependant.)
Planar binding doesn't "replace the duration on a Summoning spell". As the spell description says, it extends the duration on the summoning spell. The difference in language there is important
Also one thing before I forget, animated objects will continue to follow an order until it is complete, meaning if you were to order them to kill a target, they will continue to attack each round without needing your bonus action for additional commands. This in turn frees up your bonus action, so you are getting all that damage each round while still having an action and bonus action, provided you don't need to issue a new command. Not such a huge deal on a wizard, but really massive on a bard, or a sorcerer with quickened spell, since you have other things to do with that bonus action.
A little DPR comparison for Conjure Elemental Air Elemental DPR vs AC 16 / vs AC 20 19.1 (normal), 26.325 (Advantage) / 13.5 (normal), 21.285 (Advantage) VS Invisible Stalker DPR vs AC 16 / vs AC 20 11.7 (normal), 17.315 (Advantage) / 7.7 (normal), 12.915 (Advantage) From this you can see that the Invisible Stalker does pretty comparable damage to the Air Elemental due to the permanent Advantage from being Invisible that it has against the majority of foes. Things will swing in the favor of the Air Elemental against things with low AC, especially once low enough that a nat 1 is necessary in order to miss them, and in favor of the Invisible Stalker against things with super high AC especially those that can only be hit on a nat 20 anyway. The Invisible Stalker also has arguably better survivability due to it having a bit more hp and, while it has 14 AC instead of 15 AC, the majority of attackers will have Disadvantage, giving the Invisible Stalker an effective AC more along the lines of 18 or 19, IIRC.
I think you're under rating dawn. Dawn is one of the few spells that specifically calls out that it is sunlight. This makes it a very potent vampire killer spell. If they get reduced to 0 hp while inside the area, they're toast. If you move it onto them while they're in a gaseous form, they're toast. If they start their turn in the area, they take 20 radiant damage and don't get to regenerate. Combine this with a grappler or some other movement control and you've got a very dead vampire very quickly. Now, I'm not saying it is a green or even purple spell, but I definitely don't think it should be a red spell.
I played an Evocation wizard with a DM that allowed me to exclude myself from Sculpt Spells and Dawn was much, much better. It has an extremely wide radius and completely screwed over enemies in our melee-heavy party, CON-save or no. I think 5th-level spells are when the wizard subclasses start really making a difference in spell selection. Animate Objects is very good for any wizard, it's godly in the hands of a Conjurer. Danse Macabre struggles to be mediocre for most wizards, it's deadly in the hands of a Necromancer. Creation is a joke spell for most wizards, it's a top-tier gamebreaker often better than Wall of Force for 13th+ level Illusionists.
I think it's probably worth mentioning devil talismans for the purpose of Infernal Calling. How exactly you obtain one is up to your DM, but they make the spell very powerful if you can do so. Use it to control a chain devil, carrying additional chains about for it so that it gets 6 attacks per round, or perhaps use it on a black abashai for an assassin that can reliably get constant advantage in combat.
For planar binding, when you drop something to 0 hp I think you can choose to deal non fetal damage and they stabilize, in one hour they regain a hit point and become conscious
I think you may have undervalued Planar Binding, regarding concentration - you really don't need to do it. You're probably right about the fact you would normally need to concentrate, but there are ways to subvert that. The obvious one that people go for is Conjure Elementals, but a more subtle one is another spell I feel you undervalued - Glyph of Warding. Glyph of Warding allows you to subvert concentration, because if the spell you cast into Glyph of Warding is concentration, it simply lasts for its duration when triggered. You cast Summon Greater Demon, or Infernal Calling, or whatever you want into an upcast Glyph of Warding, with the trigger being a password of your choice. When you're ready to bind the creature, you cast your reversed Magic Circle around where the creature will come out. Once it's complete, speak the password, creature appears neatly in your Magic Circle, and you begin binding the creature. Because the devil, demon or other creature came from your Glyph of Warding, it doesn't require concentration, the spell just lasts for its duration. Once bound, its duration is now replaced by the duration of Planar Binding, and it still requires no concentration. You still need to worry about it being hostile, and all that entails, but those are the risks of binding creatures into your service... **** On Glyph of Warding: This should probably go in the 3rd level spells video, but I really don't want to make another comment, particularly in a 2 week old video. As I was saying earlier, I feel you also undervalued this spell. Yes, it does have a cost, but the potential upside is huge, particularly if you're ever in a fight you can plan the battlefield beforehand. Throw Haste and Fly into Glyphs so that your Warrior can chase that Dragon you know you'll be fighting. Set up Wall of Force Glyphs for if the attacking army manage to breach the gate. Bait an opposing army into attacking on the area you prepared, only for multiple Walls of Fire to rip through their lines and cut off their retreat. Hell, even Glyph of Warding -> Suggestion to get the next humanoid who passes over the Glyph to give all their money to the party, and then walk for as far as their feet will take them. If concentration is one of a Wizard's biggest resources, being able to subvert it, even situationally, is a significant boon. It deserves a higher rating.
I actually think the concentration extension of planar binding is an oversight rather than the intent, but this is a clever workaround, albeit somewhat expensive. All the more reason to ignore the concentration issue in the first place. It makes for a ton of needless complication otherwise.
200gp isn't hugely expensive by the time you're hitting level 5 spells (your game may vary), but setting up the glyph is an extra high level spellslot. It's not something you can do for every summon spell obviously, but it gives you a TON more flexibility.
I agree any way to subvert concentration is valuable, but I have issues with Glyph of Warding as that solution. #1 the spell has to target a creature or an area. Summoning spells, for the most part, won't work. Conjure Elemental is an exception IMO, as technically according to text, you are targeting a 10' cube for the elemental to appear. This is a bit of a loophole, not one I would assume a DM wouldn't Nix. #2 The Glyph can't move,. This isn't a problem if your enemy comes to you (and you have warning) that's not how D&D adventures tend to be played though. Once in awhile there's the seige adventure, but the standard is the PCs are adventuring/questing/exploring/traveling #3 If your DM allows Conjure Elemental to be cast into a Glyph for example, that sucker is going to be hard to trap in an inverted magic circle because it's going to appear right beside whomever set it off, on a random side, so you basically need to be on the wrong side of the circle. #4 there's more, but I'm out of time. The main ones are there. #2 especially. Suffice it to say, this is a subject I had already thought about before I ranked the spell. I did talk about mixing Demiplane and Glyph of Warding in my combos vid
@@TreantmonksTemple Regarding #1: I would assert that for pretty much any summoning spell, the "target" is the area in which it will appear, and thus Glyph of Warding is an appropriate vessel for them. Conjure Elementals is kind enough to do this explicitly, but any summon spell that calls for you to pick a point within range should fulfill the requirements. In the Spellcasting section of the PHB, under Range (p202): The target of a spell must be within the spell’s range. For a spell like magic missile, the target is a creature. For a spell like fireball, the target is the point in space where the ball of fire erupts. Then we look at the same section, but the Targets subheading (p204): A typical spell requires you to pick one or more targets to be affected by the spell’s magic. A spell's description tells you whether the spell targets creatures, objects, or a point of origin for an area of effect (described below). If we look at the Summon/Conjure spells, all of them require us to pick a point of origin within range from which the summoned creature(s) appear. Given the above sentences, we must infer that this point is the target of the spell; this is the point of origin within the range of the spell which the spell effect extends from, otherwise known as the target of the spell. Add this to the fact that Glyph of Warding explicitly mentions summoning hostile creatures, and it looks like your DM is both being stingy and breaking RAW if they nix this use. Regarding #2: Absolutely it's a problem, and most of my examples of use didn't alleviate the concern for this, but if you know you're going into a fight, but still have some time to prepare, this can still be useful. Regarding #3: Considering that Binding creatures is almost certainly an out-of-combat, end of the day or even downtime activity, is it really that much of a worry if you're on the wrong side of the circle, and the devil/demon/elemental/etc. gets in a single opportunity attack as you walk out of the circle? Regarding #4: Demiplane usage is (obviously) only really viable for high level characters. I was trying to assert that there are perhaps more uses for it from the point you get Glyph of Warding onwards. It's absolutely not a top-tier spell, and I get that, but it can be more useful than given credit for. Anyway, I really do like your content, and I've really enjoyed this series, so please don't take this as an attack. Just advocating for some more optimised usage of particular spells :)
Planar Binding DOES NOT require concentration. In fact, you lose concentration while you are casting planar binding. Conjure an elemental into an inverted magic circle created by a glyph of warding and immediately start casting planar binding. Your planar binding will finish as the magic circle is running out. Have a silvery barbs prepared just in case the elemental makes their charisma save.
Something to remember with Planar Binding is that it CAN be used on defeated enemies if you remember to have your Big Stupid Fighters choose to knock out enemies when they drop them to 0 hp, rather than kill them outright. If you have them knock the creature out again before you cast the spell, the creature should generally either not wake up until about when the spell is completed or one or two rounds beforehand if I recall the rules about creatures with 0 hp that have stabilized correctly. Admittedly, using Planar Binding on such a creature will guarantee that it's hostile and will try to twist your commands, but that's just even more incentive to make sure you issue the right commands. Another point is that some creatures can probably be bargained with to mollify them for their service, especially if what you want them to do is in line with what kinds of things they would like to do anyway. For instance, thwarting evil for a Couatl or violent slaughter for most demons.
@@Coid in order to scribe a scroll from a spell, you need to make an arcana check, and if you fail the check, you need a new scroll. Expertise in Arcana would help with that check.
Scribing scrolls requires money, the particular spell to be known or prepared, arcana proficiency, and widely varying amounts of time and money. No roll is needed to create spell scrolls. It’s just incredibly limited on what you can make. Rolling comes from attempting to use a spell scroll that you can only attempt if you have the spell on your class list and if it is of a higher level than the maximum level spell you can prepare or know.
Similar downtime activities and tasks are stated to be able to be broken down in increments for progress. Although it would certainly take a while to do, if given enough downtime then I think there’s wiggle room for such a task. Scribing spells into a spell book are stated to take various amounts of time and money depending on spell level, but it doesn’t state that it has to be done all at once. Hell if times a factor it might be in a wizards favor to not risk exhaustion and stretch out that spell inscription anyways. 2 hrs per spell level is a lot of time.
Where I think you can get the best bang for your buck with the Dream spell is if you're somewhat acquainted with a Beholder that you hadn't quite finished off, but likewise hadn't finished you off either. (Even better if your encounter left you with a piece of him!) Then in your downtime you can just keep casting Dream until you hit a time when he happens to be asleep (it's gotta happen sometime!) and then use their peculiar ability to reshape reality by having what you want them to dream of pop into existence. Of course, the dream could also have some strange effects as well. Best done from a safe distance (you only have to be on the same plane as the target) and then maybe follow up with a scry to see what effect your inspired dream had on the beholder. If it produced the desired effect, arrange to go pick up your winnings. If it spawned some new form of beholder, then leave the area alone.
I saw something ridiculous recently. Steel wind strike: 14th level evocation wizard, high elf with the elven accuracy feat. Casts greater invisibility, rolls 3d20s for up to five creatures each, dealing flat 60 points of force damage to each from overchannel. Pick up an action surge from two levels of fighter and do it again. 3 levels in fighter for champion’s crit range and suddenly you’re doing minimum 600 points of damage across 10 targets with a good chance to crit multiple times. Granted, other wizards are casting wish by then, but for pure flavor purposes I think this is just hilariously awesome Edit: ALSO spell sniper works for this since it’s a spell that requires an attack roll, suddenly it’s a 60 foot radius
You made an error with Skill Empowerment, "You must choose a skill in which the target is proficient..." That said I think that it is too high of a spell slot but I do think that even with that limitation it's still 'very good' (I'd argue for a more commonly useful orange or 'low' purple). I believe that Skill Empowerment is better than red for four (and a half) main reasons: 1: Getting expertise on a skill is very difficult/impossible for most classes to do. It really should work on non-proficient skills (at least at half strength), but people still pick skills they want to do well anyway. Only a few ways come to mine, Rogue, Bard, and Human's have that feat (right? I don't like playing humans). Otherwise, if you're not human/using feats, not a Rogue or a Bard and not a Sorcerer/Wizard (for this spell) it's 'impossible' (I'm sure I missed a few, Knowledge Cleric comes to mind) to get. 2: Expertise, when critical fails are not a thing (which is RAW that skill checks do not automatically fail at 1), is generally better than advantage, especially because I often see players choose proficiency in things they want to be good at which combos with their high stats. Of course the math can adjust from situation to situation, but because Expertise allows higher potential rolls and can avoid all together a failed roll (such that Expertise's bonus is high enough that a 1 would be successful), I would choose Expertise over advantage in almost all situations-and like you said, you (and myself) prefer the consistency over randomness. 3: Advantage on skill checks is 'easy' to get. Of course this isn't true all the time, but in general, the help action makes it very very easy to get help on a single very important check, or more. Sure a Wizard and Sorcerer can Empower+Enhance for ultimate power, but a Wizard/Sorcerer can do it for one check if it's not time sensitive. True-if it's not time sensitive it's not as likely to require the extra points, but this combination allows for higher numbers to be reached than possible and the fact that when you need it it's probably going to work on literally any skill (if you average 4 players with 4 skill proficiencies, hardly extreme, you can get expertise in all but 2 skills, and that has a lot of potential). 4: This one is something that I really enjoy, often you talk (and I look for) spells that are useful even at higher levels with the same slot. I prefer Sorcerers so spells that can do that are really really important to me! Skill Empowerment is a rarity in that it scales without upcasting. Spells like Hypnotic Pattern are consistently great-potentially a great use of your concentration even when Wall of Force and more are on the table, but Hypnotic Pattern is still the same spell it was at third level, and it's always doing the same thing (even when upcast). Skill Empowerment is a rarity in that it's more powerful as you continue to level up. A 9th level caster is getting another +4, hardly small, a 13th level is getting a +5 with the same slot (free upcasting). Spells like Wall of Force fight for your fifth level slots still and so I agree that it's far too high, at 4th level or maybe lower is much more appropriate, but I'm picking this at 13th level because I'm not impressed with the 7th level spells for Sorcerer (and there are some good ones, but I also am playing with some limitations due to character design which leaves me with Teleport, random, Etherealness, cool but less useful when you're the dedicated counterspell boi, and Reverse Gravity, not bad, but I'm not much of a fan). 5: For the half reason, I see Skill Empowerment generally as an out of combat spell, I think almost everyone would agree, but there's one place it's really good for combat and that is grappling. Now, a strength Bard or Strength rogue can reach this (haha) but for the Barbarian or (big stupid) Fighter, they can't get expertise with Athletics easily, a big deal when they are the strong bois. As I have read-but not reasearched, very few creatures are proficient in Athletics or Acrobatics to escape grapples (except giants, which tend to be too large to grapple and are easy to identify), see here www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468737-The-Grappler-s-Manual-(2-0)-Grappling-in-5th-Edition. Creatures that are grappled are in serious danger as they have to use their action to contest-no legendary resistances, can be moved against their will, advantage/disadvantage and more. We like spells that are consistent-well sure this strategy doesn't work well against some enemies, but those enemies are usually easy to identify. As a 9th level spellcaster (i.e. +4) with a big stupid Fighter, think what that does to an enemy with an impressive +5 strength mod. (This was done with 8 million dice roll simulation to check) 66%->80.5% to make the first grapple 70%->83.5% to maintain the grapple (meet it beat it here) What does it do to the dreaded +0 Mind Flayer? 83.5%->93% to make the first 86.25%->94.75% to maintain, that's some control! And as before it scales 'for free'. A level 17 big stupid fighter backed by this spell only grants a .75% chance to escape from the grapple for the scary Mind Flayer. (99.25% to maintain!) If that's not 'guaranteed' consistent I don't know what is! (Well a belt of Fire Giant Strength or higher haha). By the way, if you ever want some simulations for more complex rolls hit me up and I'll give you a hand!
Telepathic Bond: Creatures with INT of 2 or less aren't affected by this spell. So that leaves out most familiars, including all of the (common) flying familiars. There are 2 common familiars (Cat and Octopus) that qualify. (INT 3) If you can get a Tressym, Flying Monkey (INT 11 and 5 respectively) or any of the Pact of the Chain familiars, you're good to forge Telepathic Bond with them. Otherwise you'll have to find a way to increase your common familiar's INT, or work out a homebrew solution with your DM in order to get a different familiar that qualifies.
Rarys telepathic bond does now work with familiars because it says "Creatures with Intelligence scores of 2 or less aren’t affected by this spell." To me knowledge all familiars have an intelligence of 2 (exception being warlock familiars)
Planar binding cast with a wish spell gives you a high CR minion for a year and a day. Casting time is one action so you can do it in combat with no material cost. Combined with Portent it's pretty OP.
My group is currently doing a campaign set in the Underdark which is basically all stone 'cause it's underground. So hearing about Transmute Stone is making me very excited, especially since it has no duration. It won't be a while till I get it (since we've started in the fall of 2022, we're level 4 now, so who knows how long till we get to level 9) and I won't be able to use it as much since we're doing a variant rest system (short rest is 8~ hours, long rest is 24 hours of non-strenuous activity), but I am still excited. I'm switching soon from a homebrew class to a full-on wizard so this series has been very helpful! Thank you so much, Treantmonk. :) I've been scheming of all the ways I can use Transmute Stone to terrorize towns and cities. Like using it to get rid of the foundation for buildings or maybe transmuting any stone buildings so there's just mud left, blocking all roads, filling a whole town with really hard to cross mud, etc. I likely won't do this stuff as the wizard I'll be making will be lawful good but if she dies, I'm planning on making a lawful evil enchantment wizard next so this sort of thing might be fun, haha.
Note on the spell Creation - An illusionist can cast this at night, creating a wooden nickle (or something), and then use malleable illusion to change it to another object over and over during the day - the DM has to determine if changing it to an inorganic object exceeds the duration of the spell (Probably yes depending on the time the change occurred) but imagine your owl flying with a wooden nickle over an enemy and then having you change it into a 5' spiked ball of oak (or something equally dense and heavy). This would drop about 1000 pounds on an enemy! Then after the fight, turn it back into a wooden nickle and put it in your pocket!
According to JC at least (for what it's worth), not all "illusion school" spells qualify for malleable illusions. Creation is one of those that doesn't because technically the object you create is "real" even though it's from the illusion school.
Planar Binding changes the duration to 24 hours and up based on slot. You can’t concentrate on a creature when you sleep which would make the higher level castings meaningless (unless you don’t need to sleep for some reason).
I agree, but the spell does state "If the creature was summoned or created by another spell, that spell's duration is extended to match the duration of this spell." This suggests to me that the initial spell duration is merely extended rather than replaced.
I always go with the ruling of the DM at the table. The question then becomes, all existing summons are concentration, how does that work with higher level slots. I guess you could say you have to find them in the wild to make use of those extended durations (even 24 hours would be a long time), but that would make this spell maybe one of the worst in the game.
Regarding Dawn, I have a few thoughts, first on paper the damage is lower than say animate objects, but radiant damage of dawn is rarely resisted vs physical dmg of AO is very often resisted so the net damage is much closer. Dawns effect cant be destroyed, vs AO objects can easily be destroyed by an AOE or breath weapon negating the spell. A continuous AOE damage can generate an impressive DPR especially given the large area impacted (30ft rad is huge) unlike a single target blast like AO. Bonus action movement of 60ft is excellent although friendly fire is a negative. Half dmg on a save is also favorable vs a blast with no effect if saved. This spell seems perfect combined with force cage or other immobilizing spell. Moonbeam, is much smaller AOE with half dmg, not sure I agree that it is "better" just a lower level version.. Thanks for all of your work Treantmonk!
I know this kind of comment is cheesy but: Yay! Transmute Rock finally gets the place it deserves :=) I have been advocating a green rating for this spell for ages. The quarter movement and wide area make this a no save control vs non flying opponents. It is somewhat circumstantial but that is more then made up for by not requiring concentration.
Transmute Rock is amazing for fortress-building. Transmute a hard rock that's really difficult to quarry like Hematite or Granite, transport the mud to a scaffolding, then cast Dispel Magic. Bam. Wall of extremely hard rock with few creases (perhaps none depending on how carefully you shape it) better than anything you'd get with even modern manufacturing techniques.
just an additional point on wall of stone I think you've ratrd it too high considering it requires existing Stone to be present for it to even be cast way too circumstantial
Very much agree with this. Had a player find this out during my game and it made the difference between them taking it and not. Wall of stone seems much too highly ranked given that condition.
I can't help but think that the Planar Binding concentration consequence for conjuration spells is a mistake, due to the impossibility of maintaining concentration through sleep and the like. Maybe we can all poke at JC to get a clarification as to intent? I do think that your reading is correct in the most literal RAW sense though.
@@davisoares2288 Yes, if the same caster who casts the binding was concentrating on the summon spell. Any spell that takes more than an action to cast uses your concentration for the casting time.
Hi, it's worth noting that a cone area of effect becomes a circle when you fly and cast it just downward! So cone of cold casted from 60ft height becomes a circle of 60ft diameter!
Gotta say, I think scrying should be at least a purple rating, spying on your enemies is very valuable, and as a dm I love it when I can give pcs info or story beats that they normally wouldn't know or would've been difficult for them to find out through other means. I agree with alot of your ratings and enjoy your videos.
Treantmonk runs tons of one shots. He doesn’t seem to understand the value of spells that are more campaign dependent. Teleportation Circle and Scrying are underrated for a campaign.
Yep, that's always been true. Teleportation is a great counter to most walls, including this one. Doesn't mean that Wall of Force isn't still *the* beat spell for its level. Plenty of creatures, even really intimidating ones, don't have any ability to teleport.
Enervation, another spell that I wish that Sorcerers got. Planning on using it on my Necromancer Bard because story reasons. I do think that it has it's place, just not on a wizard's list.
Here are the rankings in text format for quick reference. Red (*) - Not Recommended Orange (**) - Too Circumstantial to warrant preparation Purple (***) - Ok Spells Green (****) - Good Spells Blue (*****) - Must Have Spells Ab - Abjuration Conj - Conjuration Enc - Enchantment Evo - Evocation Ill - Illusion Necr - Necromancy Tran - Transmutation Conc - Concentration Animate Objects (Tran, Conc) (*****) (43:49) Bigby's Hand (Evo, Conc) (****) (29:51) Cloudkill (Conj, Conc) (*) (16:17) Cone of Cold (Evo) (***) Much better for an Evoker (32:48) Conjure Element (Conj, Conc) (***) or (****) for Conjurer (06:29) Contact Other Plane (Div, Ritual) (**) (19:04) Control Winds (Tran, Conc) (*) (50:44) Creation (Ill) (*) (39:19) Danse Macabre (Necr, Conc) (***) or (*****) for Necromancers (40:34) Dawn (Evo, Conc) (*) (34:06) Dominate Person (Enc, Conc) (*) or (***) for a 10th Level Enchanter (26:48) Dream (Ill) (*) (38:29) Enervation (Necr, Conc) (*) Nearly as bad as Immolation in Treantmonk's opinion (42:49) Far Step (Conj, Conc) (*) (15:14) Geas (Enc) (**) (25:43) Hold Monster (Enc, Conc) (***) or (****) for a 10th Level Enchanter (23:37) Immolation (Evo, Conc) (*) Worst 5th Level Spell in Treantmonk's opinion (35:45) Infernal Calling (Conj) (**) (13:58) Legend Lore (Div) (*) (21:01) Mislead (Ill, Conc) (***) (36:27) Modify Memory (Enc, Conc) (***) (22:48) Negative Energy Flood (Necr) (*) (42:18) Passwall (Tran) (**) (49:44) Planar Binding (Abj) (***) or (****) for Conjurer (01:20) Rary's Telepathic Bond (Div, Ritual) (****) (17:36) Scrying (Div, Conc) (**) (20:05) Seeming (Ill) (**) Better for an Illusionist (Still **) (37:36) Skill Empowerment (Tran, Conc) (*) (51:38) Steel Wind Strike (Conj) (***) Don't take if your Wizard can't handle being in melee (11:28) Synaptic Static (Enc) (****) (21:51) Telekinisis (Tran, Conc) (****) Redundancy with Bigby's Hand (46:48) Teleportation Circle (Conj, Conc) (**) (12:52) Transmute Rock (Tran) (****) (48:21) Wall of Force (Evo, Conc) (*****) (27:56) Wall of Light (Evo, Conc) (*) (34:58) Wall of Stone (Evo, Conc) (****) (31:10)
Creation: the 1 minute cast makes for a fun encounter all by itself. And a 5 ft cube is huge for some of the materials. "Okay here's the plan: Everyone protect the Wizard during this 1 minute cast. We're gonna hop on board that pirate ship, drop a 60,000 lb block of steel 30 ft onto the deck, then we'll scavenge whatever sinks with water breathing. It's not that situations don't present themselves. Just watch a few warehouse and forklift accident videos. Drop a 5 ft cube of anything. It's interesting, and I daresay useful without really having to work too hard.
Great video, as always. Thanks. I hope to one day have my PCs summon an elemental. Then I can bring back their druid from a previous campaign that just happened to be in that form.
As you get towards 7th level spells, have you thought any more about Mirage Arcane? I commented on your Moon Druid video that I think it's super powerful with some smart imagination, and you responded that you didn't think it could make walls because that'd be 'concealing' creatures, and you didn't think the 'physical interaction' ability of the illusion would affect objects since they don't have a sense of touch. I responded but you didn't seem to return to it, so in case it got lost in the ocean of comments or for the benefit of others here, the gist of it is: the walls argument would prevent you from creating anything that might block line of sight to anything else if that's your definition of 'conceal', and the illusion-doesn't-affect-objects argument would mean illusory hills or crevasses would have nonsensical effects on a pulled cart or dropped objects. While dynamic environmental effects like lava or rockslides aren't addressed and DMs might disallow them, I do think you can make mile-high adamantine walls and the like, just based on the logic contained in the spell (hills are implied in terrain, crevasses are explicitly mentioned, and the intention is that these things supply real collision forces---or lack-of-collision-forces, in the case of the crevasse---to both creatures and pulled carts etc). The truesight wording is unfortunately vague about whether they can choose to NOT interact with the illusion... if they can ignore it, there are some similarly nonsensical situations though (what happens if they drop/throw an item while they're inside an illusory hill?) It's too bad the developers only seemed to think of using it to affect overland travel when they made it--the implications of affecting terrain and creating structures make it the first truly godlike reality-altering spell in the game IMO.
Sorry, I respond to a lot of comments, but I miss some, and can't remember the exact nature of the interaction. I can tell you that you should be able to make Adamantine walls, and they should be able to conceal all kinds of stuff. They can't however conceal creatures, so attempting to block creatures with the walls is not going to work. As for carts etc, yes with a spell like this with quasi-real effects, some things the DM is going to have to make a call on when things get into the grey area.
Wall of Stone (and the old defunct Wall of Iron) has combat use as well. You can cast it tilted on a hard angle so that it immediately falls over, crushing enemies. Drow priestesses often used the spell this way in the Dark Elf novels.
First of all, I agree 100% with all you rankings for level 5 spells :) I have two rather long comments; one serious, one just for laughs: I am really surprised that you have not considered(?) the use of Scrying on your Familiar (which you love so much). Sure, Rary's Telepathic Bond works well with Familiars but Scrying on it means you can see everything it sees. Unless there is a Druid in the party, this spell is something I recommend all Wizards should learn. It is useful in literally every campaign. There will always be places you want to scout. Always. You can spy on enemies, scout dungeons, fly through castles and into their prisons, have your familiar follow an enemy or attach itself to their wagon - the list is only limited by our imagination. And most times, you can afford waiting the next day to memorise it. That's the whole point of being a caster who can memorise different spells after all. With regards to Dawn, I don't disagree at all with you, it is terrible. BUT... from all the spells up to level 5, it is the only one that I have found capable enough to cheese whole fights. I'm not saying this is a good thing, and I'm not saying you can do it consistently, but it is the only spell that can be placed inside most rooms while you either hold the door closed or another party member casts a Wall spell. Its huge area and half damage on a save means you could kill everything in rooms up to 120 feet across. You can easily ready actions or time the refresh of door closing/wall/dawn. I know I know, it sounds boring, terrible, whatever when read like this but when used once in a campaign when the DM does not expect it, it creates the kind of story that begins with "Do you remember that time when we..." :P
@@rmiller_nub Cat and Octopus have Int 3. And while it is not official, I would expect a DM to allow a Raven to have more than the Int 2 they've given it in the book; Raven's have shown really high intelligence in solving problems and puzzles, both when motivated with food and to simply play a prank on someone :) There are also the additional familiars that have been added like the Imp, Pseudodragon, etc.
Very interesting examination of 5th level spells: nevertheless, I remind you that Modify Memory (like Suggestion) can be useful in social situations if you are alone with your victim: having V and S components, other creatures will see that you are casting that spell saying weird words, and this is the opposite of beneficial!
I think your read of planar binding is actually, objectively wrong. A few reasons for this: -"that spell's duration is extended to match the duration of this spell." The important part here is "match the duration," because planar binding has a duration of 24 hours (or more, if you upcast, which is a fantastic thing to do!) with NO concentration. -What would be the point of being able to upcast to extend the duration of the spell if you immediately drop it the first time you long rest? Obviously not the intention. -Assume, for the sake of argument, concentration is required and you drop it. For some summons that doesn't even matter. Conjure Elemental and Conjure Fey both last an extra hour if you drop concentration, they don't leave. Planar binding extends that hour to whatever the duration of planar binding is. So all that even happens *if* you assume planar binding requires concentration (again, a reading I think is clearly wrong) is your summoned minion is hostile to you and not friendly.
I love summon spells as "flash bang" spells (cast it outside the room with the enemy, summon whatever, then lock the door and wait for the problem to sort itself out), so "Oh darn: I lost my Concentration. That's now an 'in there problem'" is my phrase of choice
For anyone who cares, for Animate Objects, 10x tiny objects does by far the most damage on average per turn at all enemy ACs, even when factoring in chance to hit. I ran the numbers myself.
Elementals are not that smart are they ? It wouldn't make sense for them to find every far fetched ways to misinterpret your commands Don't cast cloudkill. Cast sunbeam. Or let the cleric cast moonbeam Skill empowerment is much more powerful than ehance ability. You can reliably hit high skill dc at high level
Enjoy your videos - makes me look forward to surviving our CoS campaign also for getting animate objects 😀 Love your voice and vast knowledge - keep up the good work, please
When you went over negative energy flood, you skipped over the part of the spell that actually makes it decent. That's giving huge temp hp to undead. I've used that to buff ghouls hp to where they're effective combatants at high levels. A necromancy schooled wizard who uses this generally have ghouls with double the hp of other ghouls and even better if aid is cast on them by the party cleric. However once you get control undead that's when it really shines. You can health buffer your high tier undead preventing their death or taking control of that zombie you just made. I won't lie though it is mostly useless when you first access it because zombies and skeletons aren't worth the health buff with the cost of the spell slot.
Geas : this spell can be used during all missions. Even in a simple dongeon, it can allow you to gain a new companion during 30 days (order : "help me and obey me"), without concentration. So this is not bad. But you have to choose a powerfull ally, because spending a 5th level spell on a low lvl ennemy doesn't worth it. And if your ally is very good, you could even repeat the same spell each 30 days, so that you can maintain your control on him... or if you are really smart, and show him respect and give him benefits, you could even finally gain a real new companion, a good bodyguard.
Wall of Force as a sphere is not going to work on many dragons... They do not fit. The creature may just REQUIRE a 10X10 for ti feet or to figure out a passage it can go through,, but when it extends its neck, tail and wings, its not fitting the sphere. dome or sphere with a 10ft radius It just shunts them out of the sphere's area.
10 ft radius is 20 feet across. A large sized creature, which is 10 feet across should fit fine unless it's neck/tail etc leave the creature's area by A LOT. The reach of the creature doesn't support that.
Think the claim that the Concentration is still required with Planar Binding is wrong. It changes the Duration. And Concentratioon is a subsection of Duration in the PHB. So I think it changes from like 1min (C) to 24h, not 24h (C). And in this way it makes sense that it can be in effect over a Long Rest (would be new to me that you can have Concentration while Unconcious).
If you're a Necromancer, Danse Macabre can really load up the damage as well if you create skeletons and order them to dual-wield broken scimitars (you'll have to supply extras, of course). Yes, I would very much like for my five skeletons as a 9th-level necromancer to make two attacks at +9/1d6+9 or 11 damage. Doing 135 damage if all ten attack hits sounds like a good use of a 5th-level spell.
Planar Binding is really weird. You mention the "subverting orders" part, but as a dm, I feel like the "wait around for 1 hour" part makes it pretty terrible for hostile creatures. They don't die when reduced to zero; they just go back home. I'd just kill myself if I was that pit fiend.
If you are a College of Eloquence Bard, then I can see Infernal Calling being useful as magical secrets at level 10 if you wanted a summoning spell. Assuming you have expertise in Persuasion/Deception and high CHA then you probably can't fail the check against the devil and then it must obey your commands and if you lose concentration it just disappears. So there's one advantage over summon elemental. There are a lot of Tiefling Eloquence Bards around that this may suit thematically.
i think creation is a 5th level spell since you can generate money from nothing with it. you create either precious metals or gems and sell them. if you want to do that repeatedly without causing problems for yourself use spells like alter self to change your appearance. edit: combine that with fabricate and minting proficiency and you could "print" your own money for an hour.
@@redram9 that's not what the spell says. "Using any material created by this spell as another spell's material component causes that spell to fail." material component is a defined term and means when a spell has an 'M' in the components colomn
@@deirakos hmm. That's true! Well, the creation will still disappear when creation ends. Better hope whomever you rip off has no way of getting back at you.
@@TreantmonksTemple (i used this for reference www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/volume-to-weight): 5 cubic feet of gold weigh 6000 lb. the item list in the phb lists gold as 50gp per lb. that would be 300,000gp worth of pure gold for a 5th level slot. sure you have to find someone to buy it first etc etc. and all that for a 5th level spell slot and you have 1 hour to sell it. you could even go further if you create platinum instead (500gp per lb) that would be 3.3million gp for a 5th level spell slot i hope someone corrects me on this as it seems really bonkers
You might have simply misspoke but the way you pronounced "caveats" at 14:21 just made me burst out laughing lol... I don't mean to pick on you though, I'm definitely a huge fan of your content and the way you break these topics down. You deserve far more subscribers.
I swear, sometimes I'm not sure that we are reading the same spells. I don't dislike wall of force by any measure, but I remember one of your knocks against hold monster in a ranger video was that it can be overcome with a 2nd-level lesser restoration. Well, wall of force can be bested by a 2nd-level misty step. Wall of light does not require you to use your action to continue dealing damage. Anything that ends its turn within the wall takes 4d8 damage with no save. Depending on how your DM handles blinded creatures, there could be a good chance of enemies who fail the initial save staying where they are and taking a second instance of damage at the ends of their turns. Meanwhile, it illuminates an enormous area, useful for detecting creatures skulking in the dark, eliminating the effects of heavy obscurement, and imposing penalties on foes with light sensitivity. And the on-action damage is "crappy" compared to what? Fire bolt at 9th level is dealing 11 damage on a hit , not accounting for resistance and immunity. Wall of light averages 18. Magic missile, the last single-target damage spell you recommended, does 22.5 on average out of a 5th-level slot, and that's, you know, once. The only ongoing single-target concentration effects I know of that are even close are storm sphere (on a bonus action) and . . . Enervation. Hoo boy. 4d8 damage and half as much healing, without a saving throw, is not worth using your action for every round? What kind of cantrips are you casting? You are lucky to average half that with fire bolt. I mean, if you cast a 3rd-level fireball on a single target every round and assume a 65% chance for it to fail its save, you will only average about five more damage per round than you will using enervation's action, and that's without considering any healing.
@@sharkforce8147 When we are talking about no inputs except an action, then, yes, the comparison is a cantrip. You can cast an instantaneous 5th-level spell and then cantrips on subsequent turns, or you can cast one of these ongoing spells and put your action into it, instead of casting cantrips, on later turns. My point is that these spells are not going to compete for immediate damage against instantaneous spells, but that they will outperform the cantrips by a wide margin thereafter. Assuming a 65% chance of a failed Dex save, a 5th-level fireball will average 28.875 damage. (Cone of cold is in the same area, depending on what assumption you make about Con saves.) Enervation will average 14.85 damage and half as much healing in the first round. From then on, fire bolt, assuming 60% hit and 5% crit chances, will run about 7.7 damage. Enervation will average 18 on any enemy that failed the initial save and that same cantrip damage on any that succeeded, which works out to 14.395 damage and 5.85 healing per round. Fireball's original advantage of 14.025 damage is matched, on average, in 2.09 additional rounds. In addition to the ~45 damage dealt, the caster of enervation will have regained around 19.7 health, and he or she will have perhaps as many as 7.91 further turns outdamaging the fire bolt alternative. Note that this example was generous to the fireball/fire bolt side because I did not take into consideration the frequency of resistance and immunity, and because fireball is not, after all, a single-target spell. And, yes, scaling up magic missile is usually a bad decision, which only furthers my point. What spells is Treantmonk casting that deal so much more damage than these?
@@sharkforce8147 "Let people that are actually good at dealing damage do that job" does not increase the wizard's or the party's damage more than wall of light or enervation. Unless the wizard has a spell to turn him- or herself into a character of another class, this is not an optimal course of action. Wizards being bad at sustained single-target damage is hardly evidence that wizards should not take spells that make them better at sustained single-target damage--never mind that wall of light is also an AoE. With animate objects, what assumptions are you making about initiative order, enemy placement, and death rate of objects? As I read the spell, unless the enemy is within 30 feet of the objects both when you issue the command on your turn and when they act on their own turn(s), they do zero damage. They do the same amount when "dead," and, whenever they do deal it, their damage is nonmagical. Which is not to say that animate objects is at all a bad spell, or that it will not do more damage than wall of light or innervation in some combats. The point is that skimming an entry and calculating its expected damage is a pretty deficient model for how something will work in actual play. Yes, you can use wall of force to turn one big fight into two cakewalks, if you have one big fight that needs to be turned into two cakewalks. I have never advocated for taking only damage-dealing concentration spells. But you are talking eventualities, not addressing the point. If the damage of wall of light and enervation is "sub-par," what is par?
Telepathic Bond should be Blue. It is the ultimate answer for your DM's objection "He can't hear you in the chaos of the combat" so no talking/communicating during the combat Synaptic Static may be ok, considering additional bonuses, but definitely not as good as described Seeming is a great spell. With Malleable Illusions, you can change the multiple creatures every round. It should be ranked higher (purple as a generic rating, green for Illusionists). And uses are not so circumstantial: change your visuals with your fighter, change the appearance of an army, immediately disappear in the crowd. Also, it has 8 hours, and do not uses concentration which is an important aspect
I think you are under-rating Seeming and Teleportation Circle by quite a bit. Mass Disguise Self is very very useful in a lot of out of combat situations. Your party naturally gains a reputation by adventuring so being able to look like other people is a big deal. And with TP Circle you get to know 2 circles automatically from the start so as long as there is a good motivation for speeding up travel time its a good spell imo.
Thinking about this more, 5th level is where you really spells that are over-leveled and should be a few levels lower. Maybe as a community we should pool are resources and time and reorder the spell lists, moving spells up and down levels to provide more balance.
Dominate Person can be good under the right circumstances. If the dungeon you're currently delving has at least one humanoid who is familiar with it, such as a slave, you can dominate that person and force them to tell you everything you need to know about the dungeon. Now, admittedly, this is a significant resource cost for something that should be as simple as casing Charm Person and giving the target a little money. However, I've played with far too many DMs who flat out refuse to let players gather information from NPCs. They're more afraid of their boss than they are of you, or they tell you lies about what's coming. With this spell, there's no wiggle room. If they know it, they tell you. And you can get longer castings of it at higher levels, forcing the target to act as a scout for you, which can be quite effective if they're allowed in an area. That can be good if you, for instance, dominate someone's servant and have the servant set that target up. For those reasons, I'd say the spell is circumstantial.
@@TreantmonksTemple Yes, and the campaign as well, and the other players. It won't be great if you're playing with wargamers, because they just want to get to the next challenge. Getting information out of an unnecessary NPC will just delay the game.
@@stranger6822 Know this is way too late, but "Detect Thoughts" gets this done for a second level spell, rather than a 5th level. That being said, like many spells, it all comes down to the DMs willingness to work with you.
For Creation, while it's normally useless for most wizards, it's great in the hands of an Illusionist. Malleable Illusions gives you a taste of Illusory Reality 5 levels early, and you can even redeploy it for multiple combats. Turn it into a wooden ring when you're done and use it somewhere else. If you're okay with stone or wood you can even pre-cast it before you finish a long rest. Yes, I would very much like a deployable 20' cube of Wall of Force cast out of an 8th level spell slot that doesn't impact me of slots for the day.
As Chris pointed out in another comment, Jeremy Crawford clarified that not all illusion spells can be used with malleable illusion, citing creation as an example, since the thing you create is real and not illusory. Having said that, it’s always worth bearing in mind that ‘things that Jeremy Crawford has said or tweeted’ is not an official rulebook.
Something I'd love to see is a video on traps/advice/ideas moving from 3.5 or Pathfinder to 5e. I know I'm late to the game, but I'm getting ready to finally make the shift. I'm nervous about DMing my first 5e games, because I REALLY know my 3.5 and 3.75, but 5e is still new to me. Sad thing, I cannot find DMs near me, so I end up as the DM always. Ah well. Advice? Suggestions?
Relax. 5e is much simpler than 3.5 or Pathfinder. A lot is the same. A couple notable differences: 1) WAY less things provoke attacks of opportunity now. Movement out of threat range, and others specified in specific abilities. Casting in melee is risk free now 2) 5 foot step is gone 3) There is no such thing as a full attack anymore. You are not punished for moving and attacking on your turn 4) proficiency bonus replaced BAB, Saves, Skill ranks 5) your AC is one number now. No touch, flat footed, CMD. It doesn't change
It's not a video, but "A Grognard's Guide to 5E D&D Rules" by Person_Man may be of some help to you. www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?358474-A-Grognard-s-Guide-to-5E-D-amp-D-Rules
Point of order: you can't use teleportation circle to teleport to any other circle you've seen before - you also need the sigil sequence. As you cast the spell, you draw a 10-foot-diameter circle on the ground inscribed with sigils that link your location to a permanent teleportation circle of your choice whose sigil sequence you know and that is on the same plane of existence as you. Which may or may not even be visible at the location of the circle - if you have enough mojo to make a permanent circle, you can also mask some writing on the floor - which you should, because Arcane Eyes, Scrying and familiars are not uncommon, and it's not as if you can change your address. You can expect most sigil sequences to be secret, because if your enemies ever learn them, they can pour an army into your stronghold. On the other hand? You don't actually need the location, just the sequence, which means that a battered Netherese tablet with the right scribbles on it can kick off an adventure very far from home. Roll DC 15 Nature to figure out which constellations these are.
It's always been my assumption that the magical sigils inscribed on the circle would be visible. You could cover them up easily enough, but it's up to the DM whether breaking the circle or the magic sigils might prevent the circle from functioning properly.
Sigil Sequences are kept secret, sure, but if you have physical access to a particular teleportation circle for 1 minute unmolested, then you can memorize the sequence for it. At most illusion magic could add a few extra steps to being able to see the teleportation circle.
On Animate Objects : it says "Once given an order, the creature continues to follow it until its task is complete.". Meaning you don't even have to use your bonus action every round, only when their current target dies. Otherwise they'll just keep attacking ; you only have to give an order like "kill this enemy", rather than "attack this enemy" which will technically be completed after a single attack.
Interesting. The spell gets better and better....
unless the enemy moves out of the objects' 30ft vision after which they are completely blind
by exploiting the 1 round delay between your order and the objects action and the fact that they're blind out of 30 feet, a mobile opponent can just avoid them altogether
obviously something your average opponent might not be able to do
Telekinesis is a quintissential spell for all magic users, nothing says "Mind over matter" than some scrawny 3 foot tall, 40 lbs soaking wet Gnome picking up a 12 foot tall beefer Ogre and tossing them around like a frisbee!
Definitely the biggest difference between a fighter missing and a monster making a save is resource cost - the fighter can swing all day, but only the wizard is risking a high level slot to do nothing.
@@sharkforce8147 Oh definitely. That is a huge advantage for classes like fighter, monk, paladin etc - they are not going to waste their whole turn firing off a cantrip or something that does nothing. Multiple attacks in a round is multiple chances to deal damage. That is also part of what makes eldritch blast stand out so much against other cantrips - combined with agonizing blast it actually deals competitive damage, barring additional damage or effects from magical weapons.
A valor bard or bladesinger is going to have to weigh the difference between casting a spell and attacking twice though once they get to level 6, and part of why I really appreciate this video series is that it helps shed light on the fact that a wizard's job - optimally - is to change the battlefield and manipulate the combat, more than blasting. Being able to slow down a bunch of enemies, or restrain them, or knock them prone, or incapacitate them - all of these things can substantially shift the course of combat.
Blasting, I think I have learned here, is a privilege of a wizard who has already done the job of getting the enemies restricted to an area. A bladesinger that has trapped a bunch of enemies in a web can swing twice with advantage and back out with enemies making AoO at disadvantage. That is a strategy that helps everyone in the party. Or fireball-ing your enemies since they are all bunched together because of a terrain effect before they had a chance to spread out.
But it is interesting to get this perspective on how spells like hold person/monster - as devastating as paralyzed is as a condition - is a big investment because of the number of chances the enemy has to save against it. A well coordinated party, IMO, should recognize by lvl 9 that they should focus fire immediately if a hold spell succeeds - depending on combat order, it could be over in a turn.
Spellcaster 1: Wall of Force
Spellcaster 2: Sickening Radiance
Party: Netflix and Chill
Planar Binding won't cost you your concentration for its duration. Most conjure spells don't dismiss the conjured creature if you break concentration. You just lose control of them but they stay for the full duration.
But Planar Binding will both reassert control for you, AND extend the duration. So you have a concentration free ally for the full duration.
One thing I've never seen anybody mention about Wall of Force is that you can use it to create a horizontal plane, floating 5ft in the air above you. Now all large melee monsters need to squeeze to reach your party and have disadvantage. Melee monsters larger than that cannot do anything to you. I would argue that if you stand in the middle of that plane, large+ ranged attackers can't hit you without ducking, but that's DM dependent. It should certainly protect you from a dragon breath weaponing from above.
Ooh! I like!
Couldn't the enemy climb on top of it?
Sure, but not and also hit the people under it.
@@meris8486 Since you're standing under it, that wouldn't really do much. But doing this feels a little bit cheesy anyways imo
Animating silver or adamantine objects to use against Lycanthropes, golems and what not is genius-level D&D.
@@Coid Not disputing your math, but in most games, by the time you reach the level needed to cast the spell in the first place, that sort of money should be easily available to the players.
@@mattbriddell9246 I agree. I just figured your comment would probably get
It has occurred to me recently that, by definition given in the Sage Advice Compendium, objects animated by Animate Object spell are considered magical while the spell is in effect. I'm talking about the section of the Compendium that answers the question "what is actively magical and what is just background magic". Some of the questions you need to ask yourself to determine whether the thing is actively magical is "is it a spell?" and "is it powered by a spell slot?". In case of Animate Objects, the answer is "yes". So, for the duration of the spell, these mundane objects are magical. Which is only logical, because of course they are - they can move on their own, fly, perform tasks and attack.
Besides, even from a balance standpoint, I believe it's perfectly reasonable for a 5th level spell requiring concentration to create minions with attacks which count as magical. Besides, as our recent campaign has demonstrated, at level 10 and higher, when you start encountering a lot of flying and/or Fireball-slinging foes, those tiny 20 HP objects with only 30 ft flying speed often can't keep up with the enemy and can be wiped out by a single blast.
Well, I once Animated silver cutlery to fight werewolves.
@@parheliaa I carry a bag with 10 silver pieces just for that.
Planar Bind DOES remove the need for concentration. Concentration is part of a spells duration, and Planar Binding replaces the "Concentration, up to 1 hour" of the Conjure Elemental spell with "24 hours" of the Planar Binding spell.
HOWEVER since casting spells with a casting time greater than one action requires your concentration, the same person cannot concentrate on Planar Binding during casting AND the summon.
However, in addition to your mention of Magic Circle, this process can be made easier by simply setting up a Planar Binding with a Glyph of Warding, and possibly using Forcecage for extra protection.
In a political campaign, when your political enemies don't have many hit points, Geas is a "Do what I want or you die". As a Sorcerer, subtle spell helps with applying it.
The only problem with that is Sorcerers can't get Geas.
@@CarrowMind I believe Aberrant Mind Sorcerers can now pick it up, and since it's part of their Psionic Spellcasting shtick, they don't even need to use Subtle Spell on it.
For everyone else, Metamagic Adept exists to save the day for anyone with a free feat to spend.
In a political campaign, I'd assume lots of talking. Take Mag Init, get Vis Mock, talk your foes to death in a debate with a cantrip.
Halfway there! I'm looking forward to the wizard builds once we're done analyzing spells.
In steel wind strike, you don't have to teleport next to an enemy. It says that you *can* teleport, and only after all the attacks are made and the damage is dealt, so you can just remain in place if you want to
Fighting a vampire as evocation wizard. Sculpt spells dawn, so that you and your allies don't take damage from it, then place the spell on top of your group. When the vampire is put to 0 outside of the area of the spell and turns to mist, recast it ontop of them to perma-kill the vampire
Planar Binding. As DM I play it this way as it seems the most logical
1. Draw the magical circle with the gem component.
2. Summon the creature or get it into the circle somehow.
3. Planar Binding is cast, the creature stays in circle if it fails save. A highly intelligent creature that makes its save might stay in circle anyway seeking to trick and later slay or enslave the caster. Be careful who you summon!
4. The creature is bound to you as in spell if it fails it’s save. No concentration required.
5. A hostile creature will always twist your words to its advantage and will always try to break the spell. Planar Binding is a spell effect and can be dispelled, but not by the creature who is bound.
6. Creatures who are bound generally have friends also, it’s rare that a bound creatures allies wouldn’t investigate. They have enemies also, who might help you keep the creature bound.
7. The creatures that you would want to bind almost always work for someone higher up. You bind a Deva for any length of time to do some task that isn’t in it interests you can bet its Planetar commander will come looking for it followed by its Solar general and their personal escort of 4 Planetars if that isn’t enough.
8. Binding evil creatures such as Demons and Devils. This is different as the Overlord knows they can’t die on material plane anyway and also knows that any death or destruction they cause is probably a good thing. These overlords treat most servitors as expendable, so temporary unavailability isn’t a burden to them.
9. Elemental Binding. They have goals that vary from above but remember in general any creature resents enslavement. It’s far better to use planar Binding to just make a deal with them to pay for their services.
10. Concentration isn’t required once bound but CAREFUL ATTENTION is. The creature will follow your instructions, but stay here and guard this room might mean “Carefully inventory everything here, study the room carefully so I can teleport in and steal everything later when I am not bound.”
Been building the God Wizard since pathfinder, and haven't met a single DM that doesn't complete detest me for it.
There are definitely some spells that seem more interesting for villains than for players, because they can guarantee the situational conditions happens. As a player, I can't think of many situations for Far Step when Dimension Door, Fly or Misty Step wouldn't have done the job. But as a DM, I can come up with crazy fights across the tops of buildings or on raised platforms where Far Step on a villain could be challenging for the players as they have to jump/climb/fly to keep up.
RPGabe Planar Binding is that spell. You can justify any wizard having so crazy planar creature as his bodyguard.
Exactly. Been thinking this as of late
Animate Objects has so many uses beyond damage. For objects, it's an even better version of Telekinesis, since it can affect much larger objects. It can transmit information back to you ("If he went left, spin on a circle. If he went right, drop to the ground.") And oh, yeah... it can do damage.
Yes, I should have gotten more into the utility uses. A great spell!
It's great when you animate unexpected things.
You are sieging a town? Animate that door open. Drawbridge? You got it. Portcullis? You know what to do.
Are you in a forest? Animate that trees. In a room? Rugs and curtains are wonderful to animate.
Chains are good to bring with you, to grapple enemies.
And why not? Bring a 10 silver pieces pouch, to fight those pesky invulnerable to non silver damage.
The only downside of being a telekinesis alternative is that it only lasts for 1 minute.
Sure, it might not be a problem when you need to do something in that moment, but in a dungeon where other puzzles might come those 10 minutes can make some difference.
Your Vids are the only thing I look forward too on a Monday!
Monday's are the worst! Glad I can ease the sting a bit. I also look forward to my next cup of coffee.
Dominate Person is definitely a spell that’s more useful to an NPC villain than to a player, especially if you’re targeting that 8 Wisdom Barbarian. Although, I’ve heard there are some players that get upset when they lose control of their characters. I’m fine with those sorts of spells being used against my character because it’s just part of D&D.
I used it on an enemy who said they arere the big boss of the place. Commended him to tell us every secret and one of them was that he is just playing this role as commended by his actual boss^^
43:56 Long story short, I turned my party’s petrified cleric into a medium sized object after he got captured by a flying monstrosity, because the DM said polymorph would not affect him :) Metal Man dealt the killing blow and floated down to the ground in a T-pose. Praise the sun!
I feel like planar binding is one of those spells that really comes into its own once you have access to wish.
One action to cast, and you get whatever it is you are trapping bound to you for 180 days, concentration free.
Obviously it's a niche use, especially when you need to consider legendary resistances, and the fact that most high level creatures that you'd want to bind have pretty good Charisma saves. But ending the big encounter with a beefed up pit fiend with a single spell, and keeping it around for half a year afterwards is pretty nice.
Planar Binding with Wish is a good combo with Feeblemind, that sets the Intelligence and Charisma attribute scores to 1. Have to keep in mind that this combo will consume your 2 most powerful spell slots, so you will have to be sure that you want to capture the enemy you're fighting (Save the slots for the ending of the combat if your enemy have legendary resistance).
Davi Soares I actually never thought of that.
The intelligence of 1 also means they can't really think of ways around your commands either.
If you cast wish for planar binding, you are using a 9th level slot to cast it.
That's a year and a day duration.
Planar Binding does not require concentration. In fact casting Planar Binding breaks concentration because it requires concentration to cast. Conjure elemental into an inverted magic circle created by a glyph of warding, then immediately start your binding. Have a silvery barbs prepared just in case the elemental makes their save.
The duration of spells usually is where the concentration is included. When Planar Binding replaces your duration on a summon spell, that includes the part where you have to concentrate on it.
Edit: equally important to note is that casting a spell with a casting time longer than 1 action requires your concentration during the casting time (this includes rituals). So your summoned creature will almost always disappear when you begin the Planar Binding. You need two or three casters to pull off a binding. One to summon, one to bind, and possibly a 3rd to forge the magic circle at the beginning of the ritual
Edit 2: conjured elementals don't disappear, but I think the fiends, fey, and celestials summoned by other spells do.
That is why I think it is a orange instead of purple. Its so circumstantial and even when it comes up it isn't that good. Maybe if you're a lvl 10 conjuration wizard it will be purple but I still don't think so.
That was quick... You beat me to it.
RAW, most Conjuration spells will end about 6 sec before Planar Binding completes. It's silly, but it means Raw, you need several magic users to make the spell work.
I think spells like this come from the history of D&D where Gary Gygax or a friend made up a spell to explain how an NPC did something. At some point, the spell became available to PCs, but if special thought wasn't put into its design, then you wind up with this.
@@samboots1 that's so funny because that's why I think this spell is green. It's not a great 5th level spells, but it is excellent at 6th+ levels because you would cast it during your downtime and have a buddy for 10 days (or a month, half a year, or a full year if you keep bumping up the spell level). It does require a bit of prep, but it is a full party member NPC with a personality and special abilities unlike that of a Simulacrum or other such spells. The no concentration part makes it that much better.
@@redram9 now that you say it you're correct. I love spells that add companions with just spending as little spell slots as possible (because you can do 10 days you can long rest and have all your spell slots again.)
This could be as good as find familiar is at level 1, because you increase your action economy with even more and maybe more powerful actions.
Agree to rate it to low tier green, because it still needs that set up that unlike spells such as find familiar or find steed, takes quite a while and is kinda expensive (campaign dependant.)
Planar binding doesn't "replace the duration on a Summoning spell". As the spell description says, it extends the duration on the summoning spell. The difference in language there is important
Also one thing before I forget, animated objects will continue to follow an order until it is complete, meaning if you were to order them to kill a target, they will continue to attack each round without needing your bonus action for additional commands.
This in turn frees up your bonus action, so you are getting all that damage each round while still having an action and bonus action, provided you don't need to issue a new command.
Not such a huge deal on a wizard, but really massive on a bard, or a sorcerer with quickened spell, since you have other things to do with that bonus action.
A little DPR comparison for Conjure Elemental
Air Elemental DPR vs AC 16
/ vs AC 20
19.1 (normal), 26.325 (Advantage)
/ 13.5 (normal), 21.285 (Advantage)
VS
Invisible Stalker DPR vs AC 16
/ vs AC 20
11.7 (normal), 17.315 (Advantage) / 7.7 (normal), 12.915 (Advantage)
From this you can see that the Invisible Stalker does pretty comparable damage to the Air Elemental due to the permanent Advantage from being Invisible that it has against the majority of foes. Things will swing in the favor of the Air Elemental against things with low AC, especially once low enough that a nat 1 is necessary in order to miss them, and in favor of the Invisible Stalker against things with super high AC especially those that can only be hit on a nat 20 anyway.
The Invisible Stalker also has arguably better survivability due to it having a bit more hp and, while it has 14 AC instead of 15 AC, the majority of attackers will have Disadvantage, giving the Invisible Stalker an effective AC more along the lines of 18 or 19, IIRC.
I think you're under rating dawn. Dawn is one of the few spells that specifically calls out that it is sunlight. This makes it a very potent vampire killer spell. If they get reduced to 0 hp while inside the area, they're toast. If you move it onto them while they're in a gaseous form, they're toast. If they start their turn in the area, they take 20 radiant damage and don't get to regenerate. Combine this with a grappler or some other movement control and you've got a very dead vampire very quickly.
Now, I'm not saying it is a green or even purple spell, but I definitely don't think it should be a red spell.
I do mention this in the video, but I just don't think that vampires are common enough to rate orange. If you are playing CoS, then that's different
@@TreantmonksTemple If you're playing CoS, you're not getting the 100gp material component. (Source: am playing CoS)
I played an Evocation wizard with a DM that allowed me to exclude myself from Sculpt Spells and Dawn was much, much better. It has an extremely wide radius and completely screwed over enemies in our melee-heavy party, CON-save or no.
I think 5th-level spells are when the wizard subclasses start really making a difference in spell selection. Animate Objects is very good for any wizard, it's godly in the hands of a Conjurer. Danse Macabre struggles to be mediocre for most wizards, it's deadly in the hands of a Necromancer. Creation is a joke spell for most wizards, it's a top-tier gamebreaker often better than Wall of Force for 13th+ level Illusionists.
Animate object + blindness.
The warrior thought he could easily overcome a diviner.
He was wrong.
I think it's probably worth mentioning devil talismans for the purpose of Infernal Calling. How exactly you obtain one is up to your DM, but they make the spell very powerful if you can do so. Use it to control a chain devil, carrying additional chains about for it so that it gets 6 attacks per round, or perhaps use it on a black abashai for an assassin that can reliably get constant advantage in combat.
For planar binding, when you drop something to 0 hp I think you can choose to deal non fetal damage and they stabilize, in one hour they regain a hit point and become conscious
I think you may have undervalued Planar Binding, regarding concentration - you really don't need to do it. You're probably right about the fact you would normally need to concentrate, but there are ways to subvert that. The obvious one that people go for is Conjure Elementals, but a more subtle one is another spell I feel you undervalued - Glyph of Warding.
Glyph of Warding allows you to subvert concentration, because if the spell you cast into Glyph of Warding is concentration, it simply lasts for its duration when triggered. You cast Summon Greater Demon, or Infernal Calling, or whatever you want into an upcast Glyph of Warding, with the trigger being a password of your choice. When you're ready to bind the creature, you cast your reversed Magic Circle around where the creature will come out. Once it's complete, speak the password, creature appears neatly in your Magic Circle, and you begin binding the creature.
Because the devil, demon or other creature came from your Glyph of Warding, it doesn't require concentration, the spell just lasts for its duration. Once bound, its duration is now replaced by the duration of Planar Binding, and it still requires no concentration. You still need to worry about it being hostile, and all that entails, but those are the risks of binding creatures into your service...
****
On Glyph of Warding: This should probably go in the 3rd level spells video, but I really don't want to make another comment, particularly in a 2 week old video. As I was saying earlier, I feel you also undervalued this spell. Yes, it does have a cost, but the potential upside is huge, particularly if you're ever in a fight you can plan the battlefield beforehand. Throw Haste and Fly into Glyphs so that your Warrior can chase that Dragon you know you'll be fighting. Set up Wall of Force Glyphs for if the attacking army manage to breach the gate. Bait an opposing army into attacking on the area you prepared, only for multiple Walls of Fire to rip through their lines and cut off their retreat. Hell, even Glyph of Warding -> Suggestion to get the next humanoid who passes over the Glyph to give all their money to the party, and then walk for as far as their feet will take them.
If concentration is one of a Wizard's biggest resources, being able to subvert it, even situationally, is a significant boon. It deserves a higher rating.
I actually think the concentration extension of planar binding is an oversight rather than the intent, but this is a clever workaround, albeit somewhat expensive. All the more reason to ignore the concentration issue in the first place. It makes for a ton of needless complication otherwise.
200gp isn't hugely expensive by the time you're hitting level 5 spells (your game may vary), but setting up the glyph is an extra high level spellslot. It's not something you can do for every summon spell obviously, but it gives you a TON more flexibility.
I agree any way to subvert concentration is valuable, but I have issues with Glyph of Warding as that solution.
#1 the spell has to target a creature or an area. Summoning spells, for the most part, won't work. Conjure Elemental is an exception IMO, as technically according to text, you are targeting a 10' cube for the elemental to appear. This is a bit of a loophole, not one I would assume a DM wouldn't Nix.
#2 The Glyph can't move,. This isn't a problem if your enemy comes to you (and you have warning) that's not how D&D adventures tend to be played though. Once in awhile there's the seige adventure, but the standard is the PCs are adventuring/questing/exploring/traveling
#3 If your DM allows Conjure Elemental to be cast into a Glyph for example, that sucker is going to be hard to trap in an inverted magic circle because it's going to appear right beside whomever set it off, on a random side, so you basically need to be on the wrong side of the circle.
#4 there's more, but I'm out of time. The main ones are there. #2 especially. Suffice it to say, this is a subject I had already thought about before I ranked the spell. I did talk about mixing Demiplane and Glyph of Warding in my combos vid
@@TreantmonksTemple Regarding #1: I would assert that for pretty much any summoning spell, the "target" is the area in which it will appear, and thus Glyph of Warding is an appropriate vessel for them. Conjure Elementals is kind enough to do this explicitly, but any summon spell that calls for you to pick a point within range should fulfill the requirements.
In the Spellcasting section of the PHB, under Range (p202): The target of a spell must be within the spell’s range. For a spell like magic missile, the target is a creature. For a spell like fireball, the target is the point in space where the ball of fire erupts.
Then we look at the same section, but the Targets subheading (p204): A typical spell requires you to pick one or more targets to be affected by the spell’s magic. A spell's description tells you whether the spell targets creatures, objects, or a point of origin for an area of effect (described below).
If we look at the Summon/Conjure spells, all of them require us to pick a point of origin within range from which the summoned creature(s) appear. Given the above sentences, we must infer that this point is the target of the spell; this is the point of origin within the range of the spell which the spell effect extends from, otherwise known as the target of the spell. Add this to the fact that Glyph of Warding explicitly mentions summoning hostile creatures, and it looks like your DM is both being stingy and breaking RAW if they nix this use.
Regarding #2: Absolutely it's a problem, and most of my examples of use didn't alleviate the concern for this, but if you know you're going into a fight, but still have some time to prepare, this can still be useful.
Regarding #3: Considering that Binding creatures is almost certainly an out-of-combat, end of the day or even downtime activity, is it really that much of a worry if you're on the wrong side of the circle, and the devil/demon/elemental/etc. gets in a single opportunity attack as you walk out of the circle?
Regarding #4: Demiplane usage is (obviously) only really viable for high level characters. I was trying to assert that there are perhaps more uses for it from the point you get Glyph of Warding onwards. It's absolutely not a top-tier spell, and I get that, but it can be more useful than given credit for.
Anyway, I really do like your content, and I've really enjoyed this series, so please don't take this as an attack. Just advocating for some more optimised usage of particular spells :)
Planar Binding DOES NOT require concentration. In fact, you lose concentration while you are casting planar binding. Conjure an elemental into an inverted magic circle created by a glyph of warding and immediately start casting planar binding. Your planar binding will finish as the magic circle is running out. Have a silvery barbs prepared just in case the elemental makes their charisma save.
Something to remember with Planar Binding is that it CAN be used on defeated enemies if you remember to have your Big Stupid Fighters choose to knock out enemies when they drop them to 0 hp, rather than kill them outright. If you have them knock the creature out again before you cast the spell, the creature should generally either not wake up until about when the spell is completed or one or two rounds beforehand if I recall the rules about creatures with 0 hp that have stabilized correctly.
Admittedly, using Planar Binding on such a creature will guarantee that it's hostile and will try to twist your commands, but that's just even more incentive to make sure you issue the right commands.
Another point is that some creatures can probably be bargained with to mollify them for their service, especially if what you want them to do is in line with what kinds of things they would like to do anyway. For instance, thwarting evil for a Couatl or violent slaughter for most demons.
Skill Empowerment could be used by non diviners to help scribe scrolls into a spell book on downtime days, which could arguably make the spell orange.
How would it do that?
@@Coid in order to scribe a scroll from a spell, you need to make an arcana check, and if you fail the check, you need a new scroll. Expertise in Arcana would help with that check.
Scribing scrolls requires money, the particular spell to be known or prepared, arcana proficiency, and widely varying amounts of time and money.
No roll is needed to create spell scrolls. It’s just incredibly limited on what you can make.
Rolling comes from attempting to use a spell scroll that you can only attempt if you have the spell on your class list and if it is of a higher level than the maximum level spell you can prepare or know.
My apologies, I read the post after I posted and realized it was about inscribing a spell from a scroll to a spell book.
Similar downtime activities and tasks are stated to be able to be broken down in increments for progress. Although it would certainly take a while to do, if given enough downtime then I think there’s wiggle room for such a task. Scribing spells into a spell book are stated to take various amounts of time and money depending on spell level, but it doesn’t state that it has to be done all at once.
Hell if times a factor it might be in a wizards favor to not risk exhaustion and stretch out that spell inscription anyways. 2 hrs per spell level is a lot of time.
Where I think you can get the best bang for your buck with the Dream spell is if you're somewhat acquainted with a Beholder that you hadn't quite finished off, but likewise hadn't finished you off either. (Even better if your encounter left you with a piece of him!)
Then in your downtime you can just keep casting Dream until you hit a time when he happens to be asleep (it's gotta happen sometime!) and then use their peculiar ability to reshape reality by having what you want them to dream of pop into existence. Of course, the dream could also have some strange effects as well. Best done from a safe distance (you only have to be on the same plane as the target) and then maybe follow up with a scry to see what effect your inspired dream had on the beholder. If it produced the desired effect, arrange to go pick up your winnings. If it spawned some new form of beholder, then leave the area alone.
I saw something ridiculous recently. Steel wind strike: 14th level evocation wizard, high elf with the elven accuracy feat. Casts greater invisibility, rolls 3d20s for up to five creatures each, dealing flat 60 points of force damage to each from overchannel. Pick up an action surge from two levels of fighter and do it again. 3 levels in fighter for champion’s crit range and suddenly you’re doing minimum 600 points of damage across 10 targets with a good chance to crit multiple times.
Granted, other wizards are casting wish by then, but for pure flavor purposes I think this is just hilariously awesome
Edit: ALSO spell sniper works for this since it’s a spell that requires an attack roll, suddenly it’s a 60 foot radius
You made an error with Skill Empowerment,
"You must choose a skill in which the target is proficient..."
That said I think that it is too high of a spell slot but I do think that even with that limitation it's still 'very good' (I'd argue for a more commonly useful orange or 'low' purple). I believe that Skill Empowerment is better than red for four (and a half) main reasons:
1: Getting expertise on a skill is very difficult/impossible for most classes to do. It really should work on non-proficient skills (at least at half strength), but people still pick skills they want to do well anyway. Only a few ways come to mine, Rogue, Bard, and Human's have that feat (right? I don't like playing humans). Otherwise, if you're not human/using feats, not a Rogue or a Bard and not a Sorcerer/Wizard (for this spell) it's 'impossible' (I'm sure I missed a few, Knowledge Cleric comes to mind) to get.
2: Expertise, when critical fails are not a thing (which is RAW that skill checks do not automatically fail at 1), is generally better than advantage, especially because I often see players choose proficiency in things they want to be good at which combos with their high stats. Of course the math can adjust from situation to situation, but because Expertise allows higher potential rolls and can avoid all together a failed roll (such that Expertise's bonus is high enough that a 1 would be successful), I would choose Expertise over advantage in almost all situations-and like you said, you (and myself) prefer the consistency over randomness.
3: Advantage on skill checks is 'easy' to get. Of course this isn't true all the time, but in general, the help action makes it very very easy to get help on a single very important check, or more. Sure a Wizard and Sorcerer can Empower+Enhance for ultimate power, but a Wizard/Sorcerer can do it for one check if it's not time sensitive. True-if it's not time sensitive it's not as likely to require the extra points, but this combination allows for higher numbers to be reached than possible and the fact that when you need it it's probably going to work on literally any skill (if you average 4 players with 4 skill proficiencies, hardly extreme, you can get expertise in all but 2 skills, and that has a lot of potential).
4: This one is something that I really enjoy, often you talk (and I look for) spells that are useful even at higher levels with the same slot. I prefer Sorcerers so spells that can do that are really really important to me! Skill Empowerment is a rarity in that it scales without upcasting. Spells like Hypnotic Pattern are consistently great-potentially a great use of your concentration even when Wall of Force and more are on the table, but Hypnotic Pattern is still the same spell it was at third level, and it's always doing the same thing (even when upcast). Skill Empowerment is a rarity in that it's more powerful as you continue to level up. A 9th level caster is getting another +4, hardly small, a 13th level is getting a +5 with the same slot (free upcasting). Spells like Wall of Force fight for your fifth level slots still and so I agree that it's far too high, at 4th level or maybe lower is much more appropriate, but I'm picking this at 13th level because I'm not impressed with the 7th level spells for Sorcerer (and there are some good ones, but I also am playing with some limitations due to character design which leaves me with Teleport, random, Etherealness, cool but less useful when you're the dedicated counterspell boi, and Reverse Gravity, not bad, but I'm not much of a fan).
5: For the half reason, I see Skill Empowerment generally as an out of combat spell, I think almost everyone would agree, but there's one place it's really good for combat and that is grappling. Now, a strength Bard or Strength rogue can reach this (haha) but for the Barbarian or (big stupid) Fighter, they can't get expertise with Athletics easily, a big deal when they are the strong bois. As I have read-but not reasearched, very few creatures are proficient in Athletics or Acrobatics to escape grapples (except giants, which tend to be too large to grapple and are easy to identify), see here www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468737-The-Grappler-s-Manual-(2-0)-Grappling-in-5th-Edition. Creatures that are grappled are in serious danger as they have to use their action to contest-no legendary resistances, can be moved against their will, advantage/disadvantage and more. We like spells that are consistent-well sure this strategy doesn't work well against some enemies, but those enemies are usually easy to identify. As a 9th level spellcaster (i.e. +4) with a big stupid Fighter, think what that does to an enemy with an impressive +5 strength mod. (This was done with 8 million dice roll simulation to check)
66%->80.5% to make the first grapple
70%->83.5% to maintain the grapple (meet it beat it here)
What does it do to the dreaded +0 Mind Flayer?
83.5%->93% to make the first
86.25%->94.75% to maintain, that's some control!
And as before it scales 'for free'. A level 17 big stupid fighter backed by this spell only grants a .75% chance to escape from the grapple for the scary Mind Flayer. (99.25% to maintain!) If that's not 'guaranteed' consistent I don't know what is! (Well a belt of Fire Giant Strength or higher haha).
By the way, if you ever want some simulations for more complex rolls hit me up and I'll give you a hand!
I may do that, thanks!
Telepathic Bond: Creatures with INT of 2 or less aren't affected by this spell. So that leaves out most familiars, including all of the (common) flying familiars.
There are 2 common familiars (Cat and Octopus) that qualify. (INT 3)
If you can get a Tressym, Flying Monkey (INT 11 and 5 respectively) or any of the Pact of the Chain familiars, you're good to forge Telepathic Bond with them.
Otherwise you'll have to find a way to increase your common familiar's INT, or work out a homebrew solution with your DM in order to get a different familiar that qualifies.
Rarys telepathic bond does now work with familiars because it says "Creatures with Intelligence scores of 2 or less aren’t affected by this spell." To me knowledge all familiars have an intelligence of 2 (exception being warlock familiars)
Planar binding cast with a wish spell gives you a high CR minion for a year and a day. Casting time is one action so you can do it in combat with no material cost. Combined with Portent it's pretty OP.
For animate objects you could use tiny magic items like the pearls half a necklace of fireballs or if you’re really rich pearls of power
Animated objects must be non magical
My group is currently doing a campaign set in the Underdark which is basically all stone 'cause it's underground. So hearing about Transmute Stone is making me very excited, especially since it has no duration. It won't be a while till I get it (since we've started in the fall of 2022, we're level 4 now, so who knows how long till we get to level 9) and I won't be able to use it as much since we're doing a variant rest system (short rest is 8~ hours, long rest is 24 hours of non-strenuous activity), but I am still excited. I'm switching soon from a homebrew class to a full-on wizard so this series has been very helpful! Thank you so much, Treantmonk. :)
I've been scheming of all the ways I can use Transmute Stone to terrorize towns and cities. Like using it to get rid of the foundation for buildings or maybe transmuting any stone buildings so there's just mud left, blocking all roads, filling a whole town with really hard to cross mud, etc. I likely won't do this stuff as the wizard I'll be making will be lawful good but if she dies, I'm planning on making a lawful evil enchantment wizard next so this sort of thing might be fun, haha.
Dream deserves more credit, creativity makes the Dream a manipulation machine
Note on the spell Creation - An illusionist can cast this at night, creating a wooden nickle (or something), and then use malleable illusion to change it to another object over and over during the day - the DM has to determine if changing it to an inorganic object exceeds the duration of the spell (Probably yes depending on the time the change occurred) but imagine your owl flying with a wooden nickle over an enemy and then having you change it into a 5' spiked ball of oak (or something equally dense and heavy). This would drop about 1000 pounds on an enemy! Then after the fight, turn it back into a wooden nickle and put it in your pocket!
According to JC at least (for what it's worth), not all "illusion school" spells qualify for malleable illusions. Creation is one of those that doesn't because technically the object you create is "real" even though it's from the illusion school.
@@TreantmonksTemple Where id JC say this btw?
Million dollar question: what happens if you cast dream on a beholder?
If you chose to give it a nightmare, and it fails the save, then in the lore it would create another beholder. Sorry this comment is a year old.
Planar Binding changes the duration to 24 hours and up based on slot. You can’t concentrate on a creature when you sleep which would make the higher level castings meaningless (unless you don’t need to sleep for some reason).
I agree, but the spell does state "If the creature was summoned or created by another spell, that spell's duration is extended to match the duration of this spell." This suggests to me that the initial spell duration is merely extended rather than replaced.
I always go with the ruling of the DM at the table. The question then becomes, all existing summons are concentration, how does that work with higher level slots.
I guess you could say you have to find them in the wild to make use of those extended durations (even 24 hours would be a long time), but that would make this spell maybe one of the worst in the game.
Regarding Dawn, I have a few thoughts, first on paper the damage is lower than say animate objects, but radiant damage of dawn is rarely resisted vs physical dmg of AO is very often resisted so the net damage is much closer. Dawns effect cant be destroyed, vs AO objects can easily be destroyed by an AOE or breath weapon negating the spell. A continuous AOE damage can generate an impressive DPR especially given the large area impacted (30ft rad is huge) unlike a single target blast like AO. Bonus action movement of 60ft is excellent although friendly fire is a negative. Half dmg on a save is also favorable vs a blast with no effect if saved. This spell seems perfect combined with force cage or other immobilizing spell. Moonbeam, is much smaller AOE with half dmg, not sure I agree that it is "better" just a lower level version.. Thanks for all of your work Treantmonk!
I’m also looking forward to the build analysis. I’ll never get a high enough character to use 6 lvl spells haha
I know this kind of comment is cheesy but: Yay! Transmute Rock finally gets the place it deserves :=)
I have been advocating a green rating for this spell for ages. The quarter movement and wide area make this a no save control vs non flying opponents. It is somewhat circumstantial but that is more then made up for by not requiring concentration.
Transmute Rock is amazing for fortress-building. Transmute a hard rock that's really difficult to quarry like Hematite or Granite, transport the mud to a scaffolding, then cast Dispel Magic. Bam. Wall of extremely hard rock with few creases (perhaps none depending on how carefully you shape it) better than anything you'd get with even modern manufacturing techniques.
just an additional point on wall of stone I think you've ratrd it too high considering it requires existing Stone to be present for it to even be cast
way too circumstantial
Well, too circumstantial to be compared with wall of force at least
Very much agree with this. Had a player find this out during my game and it made the difference between them taking it and not. Wall of stone seems much too highly ranked given that condition.
I can't help but think that the Planar Binding concentration consequence for conjuration spells is a mistake, due to the impossibility of maintaining concentration through sleep and the like. Maybe we can all poke at JC to get a clarification as to intent? I do think that your reading is correct in the most literal RAW sense though.
Sounds good to me
Wouldn't the concentration be broken in the moment you started casting Planar Binding, since it takes 1 hour to cast?
@@davisoares2288 Yes, if the same caster who casts the binding was concentrating on the summon spell. Any spell that takes more than an action to cast uses your concentration for the casting time.
For steel wind strike, you "CAN" end your turn next to an enemy. You don't have to. Just return to the point you started.
Hi, it's worth noting that a cone area of effect becomes a circle when you fly and cast it just downward! So cone of cold casted from 60ft height becomes a circle of 60ft diameter!
Gotta say, I think scrying should be at least a purple rating, spying on your enemies is very valuable, and as a dm I love it when I can give pcs info or story beats that they normally wouldn't know or would've been difficult for them to find out through other means. I agree with alot of your ratings and enjoy your videos.
Treantmonk runs tons of one shots. He doesn’t seem to understand the value of spells that are more campaign dependent. Teleportation Circle and Scrying are underrated for a campaign.
According to Jeremy Crawford, you can Misty Step out of a Wall of Force "bubble"
link?
@@minibuscus2 twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/704487607162408961?s=19
Wall of Force does not interfere with teleportation. Now when we get to 7th level spells
@@pasp9866 Misty Step doesn't care about cover. Neither does Sacred Flame, by the way...
Yep, that's always been true. Teleportation is a great counter to most walls, including this one. Doesn't mean that Wall of Force isn't still *the* beat spell for its level. Plenty of creatures, even really intimidating ones, don't have any ability to teleport.
Enervation, another spell that I wish that Sorcerers got. Planning on using it on my Necromancer Bard because story reasons. I do think that it has it's place, just not on a wizard's list.
Here are the rankings in text format for quick reference.
Red (*) - Not Recommended
Orange (**) - Too Circumstantial to warrant preparation
Purple (***) - Ok Spells
Green (****) - Good Spells
Blue (*****) - Must Have Spells
Ab - Abjuration
Conj - Conjuration
Enc - Enchantment
Evo - Evocation
Ill - Illusion
Necr - Necromancy
Tran - Transmutation
Conc - Concentration
Animate Objects (Tran, Conc) (*****) (43:49)
Bigby's Hand (Evo, Conc) (****) (29:51)
Cloudkill (Conj, Conc) (*) (16:17)
Cone of Cold (Evo) (***) Much better for an Evoker (32:48)
Conjure Element (Conj, Conc) (***) or (****) for Conjurer (06:29)
Contact Other Plane (Div, Ritual) (**) (19:04)
Control Winds (Tran, Conc) (*) (50:44)
Creation (Ill) (*) (39:19)
Danse Macabre (Necr, Conc) (***) or (*****) for Necromancers (40:34)
Dawn (Evo, Conc) (*) (34:06)
Dominate Person (Enc, Conc) (*) or (***) for a 10th Level Enchanter (26:48)
Dream (Ill) (*) (38:29)
Enervation (Necr, Conc) (*) Nearly as bad as Immolation in Treantmonk's opinion (42:49)
Far Step (Conj, Conc) (*) (15:14)
Geas (Enc) (**) (25:43)
Hold Monster (Enc, Conc) (***) or (****) for a 10th Level Enchanter (23:37)
Immolation (Evo, Conc) (*) Worst 5th Level Spell in Treantmonk's opinion (35:45)
Infernal Calling (Conj) (**) (13:58)
Legend Lore (Div) (*) (21:01)
Mislead (Ill, Conc) (***) (36:27)
Modify Memory (Enc, Conc) (***) (22:48)
Negative Energy Flood (Necr) (*) (42:18)
Passwall (Tran) (**) (49:44)
Planar Binding (Abj) (***) or (****) for Conjurer (01:20)
Rary's Telepathic Bond (Div, Ritual) (****) (17:36)
Scrying (Div, Conc) (**) (20:05)
Seeming (Ill) (**) Better for an Illusionist (Still **) (37:36)
Skill Empowerment (Tran, Conc) (*) (51:38)
Steel Wind Strike (Conj) (***) Don't take if your Wizard can't handle being in melee (11:28)
Synaptic Static (Enc) (****) (21:51)
Telekinisis (Tran, Conc) (****) Redundancy with Bigby's Hand (46:48)
Teleportation Circle (Conj, Conc) (**) (12:52)
Transmute Rock (Tran) (****) (48:21)
Wall of Force (Evo, Conc) (*****) (27:56)
Wall of Light (Evo, Conc) (*) (34:58)
Wall of Stone (Evo, Conc) (****) (31:10)
Scrying+dream = truly disgusting villain in your campaign
Cast the conjuration using a glyph.. then the concentration is not required to maintain it.
Creation: the 1 minute cast makes for a fun encounter all by itself. And a 5 ft cube is huge for some of the materials.
"Okay here's the plan: Everyone protect the Wizard during this 1 minute cast. We're gonna hop on board that pirate ship, drop a 60,000 lb block of steel 30 ft onto the deck, then we'll scavenge whatever sinks with water breathing.
It's not that situations don't present themselves. Just watch a few warehouse and forklift accident videos. Drop a 5 ft cube of anything. It's interesting, and I daresay useful without really having to work too hard.
Great video, as always. Thanks.
I hope to one day have my PCs summon an elemental. Then I can bring back their druid from a previous campaign that just happened to be in that form.
That would be so cool.
I must have watched this 10 times so hard to pick those precious 2 spells per level
If you have farstep active.. you can wade into battle, steel wind strike, and bonus action teleport away with farstep since it is already active.
You could also cast farstep through a glyph to avoid concentration (late game, this is a great spell in the demiplane glyph room)
As you get towards 7th level spells, have you thought any more about Mirage Arcane? I commented on your Moon Druid video that I think it's super powerful with some smart imagination, and you responded that you didn't think it could make walls because that'd be 'concealing' creatures, and you didn't think the 'physical interaction' ability of the illusion would affect objects since they don't have a sense of touch. I responded but you didn't seem to return to it, so in case it got lost in the ocean of comments or for the benefit of others here, the gist of it is: the walls argument would prevent you from creating anything that might block line of sight to anything else if that's your definition of 'conceal', and the illusion-doesn't-affect-objects argument would mean illusory hills or crevasses would have nonsensical effects on a pulled cart or dropped objects.
While dynamic environmental effects like lava or rockslides aren't addressed and DMs might disallow them, I do think you can make mile-high adamantine walls and the like, just based on the logic contained in the spell (hills are implied in terrain, crevasses are explicitly mentioned, and the intention is that these things supply real collision forces---or lack-of-collision-forces, in the case of the crevasse---to both creatures and pulled carts etc).
The truesight wording is unfortunately vague about whether they can choose to NOT interact with the illusion... if they can ignore it, there are some similarly nonsensical situations though (what happens if they drop/throw an item while they're inside an illusory hill?)
It's too bad the developers only seemed to think of using it to affect overland travel when they made it--the implications of affecting terrain and creating structures make it the first truly godlike reality-altering spell in the game IMO.
Sorry, I respond to a lot of comments, but I miss some, and can't remember the exact nature of the interaction. I can tell you that you should be able to make Adamantine walls, and they should be able to conceal all kinds of stuff. They can't however conceal creatures, so attempting to block creatures with the walls is not going to work. As for carts etc, yes with a spell like this with quasi-real effects, some things the DM is going to have to make a call on when things get into the grey area.
Wall of Stone (and the old defunct Wall of Iron) has combat use as well. You can cast it tilted on a hard angle so that it immediately falls over, crushing enemies. Drow priestesses often used the spell this way in the Dark Elf novels.
First of all, I agree 100% with all you rankings for level 5 spells :)
I have two rather long comments; one serious, one just for laughs:
I am really surprised that you have not considered(?) the use of Scrying on your Familiar (which you love so much). Sure, Rary's Telepathic Bond works well with Familiars but Scrying on it means you can see everything it sees. Unless there is a Druid in the party, this spell is something I recommend all Wizards should learn. It is useful in literally every campaign. There will always be places you want to scout. Always. You can spy on enemies, scout dungeons, fly through castles and into their prisons, have your familiar follow an enemy or attach itself to their wagon - the list is only limited by our imagination. And most times, you can afford waiting the next day to memorise it. That's the whole point of being a caster who can memorise different spells after all.
With regards to Dawn, I don't disagree at all with you, it is terrible. BUT... from all the spells up to level 5, it is the only one that I have found capable enough to cheese whole fights. I'm not saying this is a good thing, and I'm not saying you can do it consistently, but it is the only spell that can be placed inside most rooms while you either hold the door closed or another party member casts a Wall spell. Its huge area and half damage on a save means you could kill everything in rooms up to 120 feet across. You can easily ready actions or time the refresh of door closing/wall/dawn. I know I know, it sounds boring, terrible, whatever when read like this but when used once in a campaign when the DM does not expect it, it creates the kind of story that begins with "Do you remember that time when we..." :P
Does Telepathic Bond actually work on Familiars? Remember if it Int 2 or less Bond does not work
@@rmiller_nub Cat and Octopus have Int 3. And while it is not official, I would expect a DM to allow a Raven to have more than the Int 2 they've given it in the book; Raven's have shown really high intelligence in solving problems and puzzles, both when motivated with food and to simply play a prank on someone :)
There are also the additional familiars that have been added like the Imp, Pseudodragon, etc.
Very interesting examination of 5th level spells: nevertheless, I remind you that Modify Memory (like Suggestion) can be useful in social situations if you are alone with your victim: having V and S components, other creatures will see that you are casting that spell saying weird words, and this is the opposite of beneficial!
I think your read of planar binding is actually, objectively wrong. A few reasons for this:
-"that spell's duration is extended to match the duration of this spell." The important part here is "match the duration," because planar binding has a duration of 24 hours (or more, if you upcast, which is a fantastic thing to do!) with NO concentration.
-What would be the point of being able to upcast to extend the duration of the spell if you immediately drop it the first time you long rest? Obviously not the intention.
-Assume, for the sake of argument, concentration is required and you drop it. For some summons that doesn't even matter. Conjure Elemental and Conjure Fey both last an extra hour if you drop concentration, they don't leave. Planar binding extends that hour to whatever the duration of planar binding is. So all that even happens *if* you assume planar binding requires concentration (again, a reading I think is clearly wrong) is your summoned minion is hostile to you and not friendly.
For planar binding, hit the target with a non lethal attack and just keep doing that till the spell ends
I love summon spells as "flash bang" spells (cast it outside the room with the enemy, summon whatever, then lock the door and wait for the problem to sort itself out), so "Oh darn: I lost my Concentration. That's now an 'in there problem'" is my phrase of choice
For anyone who cares, for Animate Objects, 10x tiny objects does by far the most damage on average per turn at all enemy ACs, even when factoring in chance to hit. I ran the numbers myself.
You can’t trap huge creatures inside a spherical wall of force. 15’ cube does not fit inside a 10’ radius sphere. Sorry!
Elementals are not that smart are they ? It wouldn't make sense for them to find every far fetched ways to misinterpret your commands
Don't cast cloudkill. Cast sunbeam. Or let the cleric cast moonbeam
Skill empowerment is much more powerful than ehance ability. You can reliably hit high skill dc at high level
Enjoy your videos - makes me look forward to surviving our CoS campaign also for getting animate objects 😀 Love your voice and vast knowledge - keep up the good work, please
Thank you!
When you went over negative energy flood, you skipped over the part of the spell that actually makes it decent. That's giving huge temp hp to undead. I've used that to buff ghouls hp to where they're effective combatants at high levels. A necromancy schooled wizard who uses this generally have ghouls with double the hp of other ghouls and even better if aid is cast on them by the party cleric. However once you get control undead that's when it really shines. You can health buffer your high tier undead preventing their death or taking control of that zombie you just made. I won't lie though it is mostly useless when you first access it because zombies and skeletons aren't worth the health buff with the cost of the spell slot.
Geas : this spell can be used during all missions. Even in a simple dongeon, it can allow you to gain a new companion during 30 days (order : "help me and obey me"), without concentration. So this is not bad. But you have to choose a powerfull ally, because spending a 5th level spell on a low lvl ennemy doesn't worth it. And if your ally is very good, you could even repeat the same spell each 30 days, so that you can maintain your control on him... or if you are really smart, and show him respect and give him benefits, you could even finally gain a real new companion, a good bodyguard.
Wall of Force as a sphere is not going to work on many dragons... They do not fit.
The creature may just REQUIRE a 10X10 for ti feet or to figure out a passage it can go through,, but when it extends its neck, tail and wings, its not fitting the sphere.
dome or sphere with a 10ft radius It just shunts them out of the sphere's area.
10 ft radius is 20 feet across. A large sized creature, which is 10 feet across should fit fine unless it's neck/tail etc leave the creature's area by A LOT. The reach of the creature doesn't support that.
With glyph of warding, you can cast the summoning spell without concentration and you don't need another career to achive this
For planar binding
Bring a few daggers to animate and bludgeoning resistance should be less of an issue.
How to end nautical combat: “I cast passwall on the enemy ship. Below the waterline.”
Think the claim that the Concentration is still required with Planar Binding is wrong. It changes the Duration. And Concentratioon is a subsection of Duration in the PHB. So I think it changes from like 1min (C) to 24h, not 24h (C). And in this way it makes sense that it can be in effect over a Long Rest (would be new to me that you can have Concentration while Unconcious).
If you're a Necromancer, Danse Macabre can really load up the damage as well if you create skeletons and order them to dual-wield broken scimitars (you'll have to supply extras, of course). Yes, I would very much like for my five skeletons as a 9th-level necromancer to make two attacks at +9/1d6+9 or 11 damage. Doing 135 damage if all ten attack hits sounds like a good use of a 5th-level spell.
Me picking immolation and enervation: "it's flavorful"
Planar Binding is really weird.
You mention the "subverting orders" part, but as a dm, I feel like the "wait around for 1 hour" part makes it pretty terrible for hostile creatures.
They don't die when reduced to zero; they just go back home.
I'd just kill myself if I was that pit fiend.
If you are a College of Eloquence Bard, then I can see Infernal Calling being useful as magical secrets at level 10 if you wanted a summoning spell. Assuming you have expertise in Persuasion/Deception and high CHA then you probably can't fail the check against the devil and then it must obey your commands and if you lose concentration it just disappears. So there's one advantage over summon elemental. There are a lot of Tiefling Eloquence Bards around that this may suit thematically.
I like the idea of creation to generate a massive amount of bows for my skeleton army, maybe to put a castle under siege.
*Wall of Stone requires has a ten minute concentration, not one minute. So to make it permanent it takes a bit longer.
i think creation is a 5th level spell since you can generate money from nothing with it. you create either precious metals or gems and sell them. if you want to do that repeatedly without causing problems for yourself use spells like alter self to change your appearance.
edit: combine that with fabricate and minting proficiency and you could "print" your own money for an hour.
Except you can't use Creation components in the casting a spell.
@@redram9 that's not what the spell says. "Using any material created by this spell as another spell's material component causes that spell to fail."
material component is a defined term and means when a spell has an 'M' in the components colomn
@@deirakos hmm. That's true! Well, the creation will still disappear when creation ends. Better hope whomever you rip off has no way of getting back at you.
You can generate money with lower level spells. Even cantrips
@@TreantmonksTemple (i used this for reference www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/volume-to-weight):
5 cubic feet of gold weigh 6000 lb. the item list in the phb lists gold as 50gp per lb. that would be 300,000gp worth of pure gold for a 5th level slot. sure you have to find someone to buy it first etc etc. and all that for a 5th level spell slot and you have 1 hour to sell it. you could even go further if you create platinum instead (500gp per lb) that would be 3.3million gp for a 5th level spell slot
i hope someone corrects me on this as it seems really bonkers
You might have simply misspoke but the way you pronounced "caveats" at 14:21 just made me burst out laughing lol... I don't mean to pick on you though, I'm definitely a huge fan of your content and the way you break these topics down. You deserve far more subscribers.
I said "cav-ee-at" instead of "caav -eat" didn't I?
Another great video.
I swear, sometimes I'm not sure that we are reading the same spells.
I don't dislike wall of force by any measure, but I remember one of your knocks against hold monster in a ranger video was that it can be overcome with a 2nd-level lesser restoration. Well, wall of force can be bested by a 2nd-level misty step.
Wall of light does not require you to use your action to continue dealing damage. Anything that ends its turn within the wall takes 4d8 damage with no save. Depending on how your DM handles blinded creatures, there could be a good chance of enemies who fail the initial save staying where they are and taking a second instance of damage at the ends of their turns. Meanwhile, it illuminates an enormous area, useful for detecting creatures skulking in the dark, eliminating the effects of heavy obscurement, and imposing penalties on foes with light sensitivity. And the on-action damage is "crappy" compared to what? Fire bolt at 9th level is dealing 11 damage on a hit , not accounting for resistance and immunity. Wall of light averages 18. Magic missile, the last single-target damage spell you recommended, does 22.5 on average out of a 5th-level slot, and that's, you know, once. The only ongoing single-target concentration effects I know of that are even close are storm sphere (on a bonus action) and . . .
Enervation. Hoo boy. 4d8 damage and half as much healing, without a saving throw, is not worth using your action for every round? What kind of cantrips are you casting? You are lucky to average half that with fire bolt. I mean, if you cast a 3rd-level fireball on a single target every round and assume a 65% chance for it to fail its save, you will only average about five more damage per round than you will using enervation's action, and that's without considering any healing.
@@sharkforce8147 When we are talking about no inputs except an action, then, yes, the comparison is a cantrip. You can cast an instantaneous 5th-level spell and then cantrips on subsequent turns, or you can cast one of these ongoing spells and put your action into it, instead of casting cantrips, on later turns. My point is that these spells are not going to compete for immediate damage against instantaneous spells, but that they will outperform the cantrips by a wide margin thereafter.
Assuming a 65% chance of a failed Dex save, a 5th-level fireball will average 28.875 damage. (Cone of cold is in the same area, depending on what assumption you make about Con saves.) Enervation will average 14.85 damage and half as much healing in the first round. From then on, fire bolt, assuming 60% hit and 5% crit chances, will run about 7.7 damage. Enervation will average 18 on any enemy that failed the initial save and that same cantrip damage on any that succeeded, which works out to 14.395 damage and 5.85 healing per round. Fireball's original advantage of 14.025 damage is matched, on average, in 2.09 additional rounds. In addition to the ~45 damage dealt, the caster of enervation will have regained around 19.7 health, and he or she will have perhaps as many as 7.91 further turns outdamaging the fire bolt alternative. Note that this example was generous to the fireball/fire bolt side because I did not take into consideration the frequency of resistance and immunity, and because fireball is not, after all, a single-target spell.
And, yes, scaling up magic missile is usually a bad decision, which only furthers my point. What spells is Treantmonk casting that deal so much more damage than these?
@@sharkforce8147 "Let people that are actually good at dealing damage do that job" does not increase the wizard's or the party's damage more than wall of light or enervation. Unless the wizard has a spell to turn him- or herself into a character of another class, this is not an optimal course of action.
Wizards being bad at sustained single-target damage is hardly evidence that wizards should not take spells that make them better at sustained single-target damage--never mind that wall of light is also an AoE.
With animate objects, what assumptions are you making about initiative order, enemy placement, and death rate of objects? As I read the spell, unless the enemy is within 30 feet of the objects both when you issue the command on your turn and when they act on their own turn(s), they do zero damage. They do the same amount when "dead," and, whenever they do deal it, their damage is nonmagical. Which is not to say that animate objects is at all a bad spell, or that it will not do more damage than wall of light or innervation in some combats. The point is that skimming an entry and calculating its expected damage is a pretty deficient model for how something will work in actual play.
Yes, you can use wall of force to turn one big fight into two cakewalks, if you have one big fight that needs to be turned into two cakewalks. I have never advocated for taking only damage-dealing concentration spells. But you are talking eventualities, not addressing the point. If the damage of wall of light and enervation is "sub-par," what is par?
Telepathic Bond should be Blue. It is the ultimate answer for your DM's objection "He can't hear you in the chaos of the combat" so no talking/communicating during the combat
Synaptic Static may be ok, considering additional bonuses, but definitely not as good as described
Seeming is a great spell. With Malleable Illusions, you can change the multiple creatures every round. It should be ranked higher (purple as a generic rating, green for Illusionists). And uses are not so circumstantial: change your visuals with your fighter, change the appearance of an army, immediately disappear in the crowd. Also, it has 8 hours, and do not uses concentration which is an important aspect
Well, you could just summon the elementals with a Glyph of Warding (which negates concentration), fixing the problem with it entirely.
I think you are under-rating Seeming and Teleportation Circle by quite a bit. Mass Disguise Self is very very useful in a lot of out of combat situations. Your party naturally gains a reputation by adventuring so being able to look like other people is a big deal. And with TP Circle you get to know 2 circles automatically from the start so as long as there is a good motivation for speeding up travel time its a good spell imo.
They are still very campaign dependant. As an example, most published campaigns wouldn't have to much use for either spell.
Thinking about this more, 5th level is where you really spells that are over-leveled and should be a few levels lower. Maybe as a community we should pool are resources and time and reorder the spell lists, moving spells up and down levels to provide more balance.
Great analysis as always!! Please get to that fog cloud video! I am starting a campaign where I think it would be very useful and I am new to Wizard!
It's on my list, not sure when I'm getting to it...
Dominate Person can be good under the right circumstances. If the dungeon you're currently delving has at least one humanoid who is familiar with it, such as a slave, you can dominate that person and force them to tell you everything you need to know about the dungeon.
Now, admittedly, this is a significant resource cost for something that should be as simple as casing Charm Person and giving the target a little money. However, I've played with far too many DMs who flat out refuse to let players gather information from NPCs. They're more afraid of their boss than they are of you, or they tell you lies about what's coming. With this spell, there's no wiggle room. If they know it, they tell you.
And you can get longer castings of it at higher levels, forcing the target to act as a scout for you, which can be quite effective if they're allowed in an area. That can be good if you, for instance, dominate someone's servant and have the servant set that target up.
For those reasons, I'd say the spell is circumstantial.
Good points. Of course some of your points are based on the style of DM you have
@@TreantmonksTemple Yes, and the campaign as well, and the other players. It won't be great if you're playing with wargamers, because they just want to get to the next challenge. Getting information out of an unnecessary NPC will just delay the game.
@@stranger6822 Know this is way too late, but "Detect Thoughts" gets this done for a second level spell, rather than a 5th level. That being said, like many spells, it all comes down to the DMs willingness to work with you.
Telepathic bond is perfect for mass polymorph type situations..
Overchannel also works well with Bigby’s hand.
My recollection is that it has been ruled that overchannel applies to continued effects.
That would be very interesting indeed. If you see that anywhere, let me know
Treantmonk's Temple
twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/798281206622060544?s=21
For Creation, while it's normally useless for most wizards, it's great in the hands of an Illusionist. Malleable Illusions gives you a taste of Illusory Reality 5 levels early, and you can even redeploy it for multiple combats. Turn it into a wooden ring when you're done and use it somewhere else. If you're okay with stone or wood you can even pre-cast it before you finish a long rest. Yes, I would very much like a deployable 20' cube of Wall of Force cast out of an 8th level spell slot that doesn't impact me of slots for the day.
As Chris pointed out in another comment, Jeremy Crawford clarified that not all illusion spells can be used with malleable illusion, citing creation as an example, since the thing you create is real and not illusory. Having said that, it’s always worth bearing in mind that ‘things that Jeremy Crawford has said or tweeted’ is not an official rulebook.
Planar binding is great for use of the wish spell. :)
Something I'd love to see is a video on traps/advice/ideas moving from 3.5 or Pathfinder to 5e. I know I'm late to the game, but I'm getting ready to finally make the shift. I'm nervous about DMing my first 5e games, because I REALLY know my 3.5 and 3.75, but 5e is still new to me. Sad thing, I cannot find DMs near me, so I end up as the DM always. Ah well. Advice? Suggestions?
Relax. 5e is much simpler than 3.5 or Pathfinder. A lot is the same. A couple notable differences:
1) WAY less things provoke attacks of opportunity now. Movement out of threat range, and others specified in specific abilities. Casting in melee is risk free now
2) 5 foot step is gone
3) There is no such thing as a full attack anymore. You are not punished for moving and attacking on your turn
4) proficiency bonus replaced BAB, Saves, Skill ranks
5) your AC is one number now. No touch, flat footed, CMD. It doesn't change
It's not a video, but "A Grognard's Guide to 5E D&D Rules" by Person_Man may be of some help to you. www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?358474-A-Grognard-s-Guide-to-5E-D-amp-D-Rules
Point of order: you can't use teleportation circle to teleport to any other circle you've seen before - you also need the sigil sequence.
As you cast the spell, you draw a 10-foot-diameter circle on the ground inscribed with sigils that link your location to a permanent teleportation circle of your choice whose sigil sequence you know and that is on the same plane of existence as you.
Which may or may not even be visible at the location of the circle - if you have enough mojo to make a permanent circle, you can also mask some writing on the floor - which you should, because Arcane Eyes, Scrying and familiars are not uncommon, and it's not as if you can change your address.
You can expect most sigil sequences to be secret, because if your enemies ever learn them, they can pour an army into your stronghold.
On the other hand? You don't actually need the location, just the sequence, which means that a battered Netherese tablet with the right scribbles on it can kick off an adventure very far from home. Roll DC 15 Nature to figure out which constellations these are.
It's always been my assumption that the magical sigils inscribed on the circle would be visible. You could cover them up easily enough, but it's up to the DM whether breaking the circle or the magic sigils might prevent the circle from functioning properly.
Sigil Sequences are kept secret, sure, but if you have physical access to a particular teleportation circle for 1 minute unmolested, then you can memorize the sequence for it. At most illusion magic could add a few extra steps to being able to see the teleportation circle.