D&D 5E High-level no-save spells in practice

[FormerlyHemlock]

It depends on what your normal hit is doing. If you're most characters, yeah, it's an extra die. Not really impressive. If you got a bunch of d6's or d8's tacked onto it, however, 60-70 damage out of nowhere can turn a fight right around.

Anyways, again, I'm not advocating for it, I just find it interesting that the designers are like "oh man, we totally need a mechanic beyond good saves, advantage on saves, resistances and immunities to deal with spellcasters, because there's no way a martial could ever make a challenging encounter implode!".

And there's no way a spellcaster could make an encounter implode without needing to overcome a saving throw, either. Clearly spells like Otto's Irresistible Dance and Telekinesis don't exist, nor does Wall of Force, Major Image, or Planar Binding!

It's like WotC built a wall a mile high and ten feet wide, expecting PCs to climb over it instead of going around.

P.S. I'm not saying only spellcasters can go around the wall. Purple Worm Venom is great for fighters, and there are weapons like Gloomweaver spears that could potentially be stolen and used. I'm just saying that if the wall totally stymied spellcasters then it would be, like, a hundred feet wide. But it's not.

 

[Clint_L]

The funny thing about this in 5e is that the grid is an optional variant rule.

The default is theatre of the mind and creatures take up as much space as the DM says they do using size categories as guidelines.

It is rather silly to say a giant can't be taller than 20' and that is reflected in the rules.

We usually use miniatures (as do you, I know), so I just point to the miniatures on the table when questions of size and reach come up, and we apply common sense. It's never a problem. If someone looked at an adult red dragon on the table and then tried to tell me that according to RAW they could use forcecage on it, I would laugh.