...and thus was born Barry, Your Cut-Rate Planar Ally (TM), who is willing to work at 60 cents on the dollar.
...and thus was born Barry, Your Cut-Rate Planar Ally (TM), who is willing to work at 60 cents on the dollar.
I apologize to anyone who's posts I miss, there really is quite a bit to respond to. I'm going to do my best. I did promise to respond to the rest of this detailed post...6. Hold Monster or Hold Person: These spells can be quite powerful. Even a round of being held can increase damage output substantially since every hit by a creature within 5 feet of the target is a critical hit. This can be especially good for a rogue or paladin.
You can make money in down time with any spell, if that's your thing. I'm inclined to keep my down time open for scribing spells, research, or that kind of thing.7. Teleport: During downtime this is a spell you can use to make money if you have a DM willing to allow it.
Yeah, I'm not really a fan of the trickery domain either. They get a bunch of strange powers that I'm not sure how to use effectively, the one you are referring to included.8. Project Image: Treantmonk, if you do a cleric guide, look a the Trickery Domain. You sort of get this effect back.
Yes, I'm beginning to get a handle on Planar Binding in 5e. I'm going to play around with it myself before I go recommending it though.9. Gate: Summoning effect must be used in conjunction with planar binding and magic circle to unlock its true power. This allows you to summon a big dog creature like a Goristro or a Yugoloth and bind it. This spell should become more valuable as they release more fiends and elementals. But you must do your research to find names of creatures or learn them in battle. It makes for cool role-play scenarios for buying the names of creatures that can be summoned.
It does kill a Demilich, no question about it. I would suggest that the average creature with Legendary Resistance has probably already used it up by the time they get down to double digit HP. There is of course a defense against this spell, and that's having 100+ HP. If you, as a caster, knew definitively how many HP your opponent had, this wouldn't be such a limitation, but generally, it's guesswork. Guess wrong and poof - goodbye 9th level spell slot. Finally, the idea of going for the kill isn't really what I'm recommending in my guide.10. Power Word Kill: Automatically kill a demilich. Automatically kill a wounded Legendary Creature that can automatically save with Legendary Resistance. There is no defense against this spell. Nothing is immune. Get them within the hit point range and end them regardless of AC, saving throws, immunities, damage resistance, special abilities, or the like. I think it rates at least a purple, perhaps a blue. It is a great fight ender.
Lots of spells screw up an enemy if they fail their save. Lots of spells of lower level than either of these screw up the enemy more severely than these do. They are both slotted at too high a level for what you get IMO.11. Weird and Phantasmal Killer: I think a bit better than brown. The save every round sucks as does the concentration. It does do 4d10 Psychic Damage (very few creatures have Psychic damage resistance) and applies the Frightened condition which gives Disadvantage on all attacks. Given the fear is in its mind, it can't get out of line of sight of the source of its fear. It will have disadvantage on attacks as long as it misses its save. It's like a reverse blur for the entire party that does damage. Even a few rounds of this spell can destroy an opponent and reduce damage against the party.
As much as I love time stop, I feel like its usefulness is a bit diminished with the introduction of concentration. Most buffs and battlefield control spells use concentration and since you can't use target spells in a time stop I can't think of many things to do with the remaining extra turns after you set up your wall of force or buff yourself with something.
Maybe I'm just not creative enough. What time stop packages would you suggest?
heh. I answered the same question an hour ago at the Wizards site. See reply 17. http://community.wizards.com/forum/player-help/threads/4209951#comment-52092501
I'm afraid you won't get that from me. I don't mean that to sound like a jerk or anything. I say it because my philosophy of gameplay is that PCs are rather personal to an individual player, and game tables have styles of play that run the gammut. There is no way I could come up with an entire guide about the best optimized combinations because it has no appeal to me to do so and is very much dependent on environmental factors you can't possibly predict. My philosophy is that first and foremost, players should play a character and all that comes with that (spell selection, attribute allocation, etc) to be unique what kind of PC that player envisions, and that is different from player to player. Sometimes much different. It doesn't do me much good to say this is a great combination of spells/abilities when that player might be in an environment where none of those are relevant.
That's why I am vague in my responses, because the game can cover millions of different scenarios that all have an impact to how I personally would build my character and what spells I would learn. The thing is, is that I don't know what those are until I play the game. It's the same reason I almost never plan out my PC for several levels ahead, let alone all the way up to level 20. The choices I make from level to level are entirely based on what has actually happened in the game so far.
That's why I don't spend a lot of time coming up with guides. I'd much rather spend my time creating adventures, new monsters/concepts, and campaign settings.
P.S. I have to add, I get a chuckle out of thinking of ending Tomb of Horrors final battle with:
1) A skull is floating in the middle of the room, what do you do?
2) "I cast Power Word Kill"
3) Oh. (flips through MM). Wow. Uh...it dies. See you guys next week.