D&D 5E Treantmonk's Guide to Everything Xanathar

[Ancalagon]

Also, you forgot to put the level for the gloom ranger

 

[Cognomen's Cassowary]

I think you have to have clarification, either official or from a DM, about how chaos bolt interacts with critical hits (and spell bombardment) before you can decide if it is worth taking. If the ruling is that any two of the d8s matching generates a new bolt, a crit could, at an extreme, produce six additional attacks.

 

[gyor]

I can't argue with that. I'm going to add your recommendation to the spell description.



To be more specific, an attack roll or something labelled an attack, but yes, I do agree about the RAW. Based on our conversation, I'm certain that if we each tried this, then our DM reminded us that a familiar can't attack, then we pointed them to the sage advice and pointed out that burning enemies with dragon breath is technically not an attack according to the rules, we would get two entirely different responses.


I did use summoning in 5e, but I've largely stopped after that it was clarified that you don't get to choose what you summon, your DM picks (you do get to pick one aspect apparently)


Or you could cast Conjure Animals and select 8 beasts of challenge rating 1/4 or lower, then your DM rolls a die, flips through the MM, "Lizard. You get 8 Lizards."

Edit: I should point out that the DM is supposed to PICK what you get, not randomly roll, but I've now had 2 different DM's pull out the dice, because that's how they feel it should be. "DM picks" of course does not mean they can't pick randomly, so you can't really argue.



I thought I made it clear in my description that it "works against your enemies", but perhaps it needs further clarification.

That is the beauty of summon Celestial, there is no CR 4 Celestials except for the Couatl and no CR 5 Celestial except for Unicorn so you always know what your getting and it's always awesome, maybe the best of the conjure spells.

 

[Cognomen's Cassowary]

I think you have to have clarification, either official or from a DM, about how chaos bolt interacts with critical hits (and spell bombardment) before you can decide if it is worth taking. If the ruling is that any two of the d8s matching generates a new bolt, a crit could, at an extreme, produce six additional attacks.

Actually, I take that back. I just noticed the d6 damage that has been added since UA. That makes chaos bolt plainly better than magic missile and chromatic orb for WMS at 1st level, assuming at least two enemies and a 30/65/5 miss/hit/crit split. A friendly ruling on crits just makes it that much better. I still need to do the math for higher levels.

 

[gyor]

23a) You're right about Unicorn Spirit. It doesn't add to the healing of the spell, the aura itself heals. If there was only some way to heal with both your action and bonus action, we'd be talking about some serious healing but, eh, spell limitations. Maybe if you had that Elixir cantrip from UA.

23b) Why not? You can tell a demon to cast Fear and walk over to where you are on the same round, so why can't you tell a demon to tell you its true name and blast someone with a Fear?

24) The Sage Advice FAQ straight-up says that an attack only consists of an attack roll. Meaning, Magic Missile is not an attack despite the fact the spell says that it hits the target.


0.) By the way, Treantmonk, I get the impression that you don't use summoning spells all that much in your 5E D&D games. I think you should. Bounded accuracy makes those things killer. I was sort of skeptical about spells like Conjure Animals, too, but summoning a pack of Dimetrodons and giving them all 30 hit points + temp hit points? Nasty. Summoning a Korred and telling the Korred to summon another Earth Elemental/Xorn/Galeb Duhr? Nasty. Summoning a Cuoatl and having it bounce-shapechange into a Hobgoblin Devastator/Variant Human Illusionist? Nasty.

-1.) It probably won't affect your rating of the spell, but Wrath of Nature only hands out difficult terrain to your enemies, not to your friends. That is significantly more valuable. Also, you can use Awaken on a bunch of trees in downtime so that you can make sure that the tree auto-damage triggers.

It specifics that the Coautl's shapeshifting ability does not grant access to class features so if it took the shape of a variant human Illusionists, it would only gain the benefits of being a variant human, which still could be nice.

What it can do is give access to innate racial traits, like a Tieflings Hellish Rebuke, a Drow's Faerie Fire, Elvish Weapon Profiency, Firbolg magic, Yuan Ti Pureblood magic, an Aasmir Healing Touch, or take the form of a variant human and gain any feat.

 

[Rofel Wodring]

I suppose we could debate what a 'class feature' is. I don't think the Illusionist NPC is the same as the Wizard class. Indeed, because they have different CRs for the same level of spellcasting I doubt you could call those class features at all.

You may just want to stick to shapechanging into a Hobgoblin Devastator, though. That's plenty of power already.

 

[see]

Frankly, I could almost give up color coding altogether, as any feedback I get is universally negative on it, but it helps me organize my own thoughts on things.

Something that would help is if the colors weren't in a random order. Is purple better or worse than green? I have to stop and think about it every damn time, which I wouldn't if you'd used standard spectrum order. It's like if you rated the abilities with letter grades, X worst, F bad, E situational, A ordinary, C good, B best.

Skipping yellow, fine, I understand why, but subbing in purple is a brown choice.

 

[CapnZapp]

Something that would help is if the colors weren't in a random order. Is purple better or worse than green? I have to stop and think about it every damn time, which I wouldn't if you'd used standard spectrum order. It's like if you rated the abilities with letter grades, X worst, F bad, E situational, A ordinary, C good, B best.

Skipping yellow, fine, I understand why, but subbing in purple is a brown choice.

Yes, these guides have something like a standard (or two, I guess). Where we finally get to learn by heart which is best and which is worst, without having to go back to the color key all the time.

I realize you wanted to use different categories, since your rationales are different.

That doesn't mean you couldn't have reused the same colors.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Henry]

Yes, these guides have something like a standard (or two, I guess). Where we finally get to learn by heart which is best and which is worst, without having to go back to the color key all the time.

I realize you wanted to use different categories, since your rationales are different.

That doesn't mean you couldn't have reused the same colors.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

Kind of like electrical circuit diagrams - we know the direction of flow is technically incorrect, but 300 years later, not only does it make little difference, it’s too late to change it now plus, once you learn it, it becomes kind of a rote memorization.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

Something that would help is if the colors weren't in a random order. Is purple better or worse than green? I have to stop and think about it every damn time, which I wouldn't if you'd used standard spectrum order. It's like if you rated the abilities with letter grades, X worst, F bad, E situational, A ordinary, C good, B best.

Skipping yellow, fine, I understand why, but subbing in purple is a brown choice.

Here's a mini guide that might help you:

Dung: D for Don't do it man, Dang!
Flushed: F for Faulty as, ahem, fudge spell
Cantaloupe: C for Circumstantially Capital
Amethyst: A for Average as hmmm, something really average that starts with A
Grassy: G for Good Gravy what an option!
Sky: S for Stupendously Super-Duper

I just "M" muddied the waters there...