D&D 5E Balancing a Homebrew AoE Stun Spell

Blue said:

Power Word Stun is an 8th level spell for a single target stun, only works of targets with 150 HPs or less, and gives a save every round. The spell you wouldn't "certainly wouldn't spend my 6th level slot on" will likely stun for more creature-rounds (since it can catch many), has no HP limit, and is two levels lower.

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It grants no save at all in the first round, but also it isn't a good spell for its level. Things you could do instead with a 6th level slot: upcast Hold Monster to two targets that can be up to 180 ft apart, give my melee allies a chance at free crits for however many rounds; or facing a horde upcast animate objects; cast Mass Suggestion on every enemy and get half of them (or however many fail the save) to run away. Yes the first two are concentration, but it's your 6th level slot; something's wrong if it's not your big play of the combat.

rczarnec said:

Another point of comparison is Psychic Scream which is an AOE stun with some damage and is not concentration. It is a 9th level spell.

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Well, it's 10 creatures of your choice, not an AoE, which makes it a lot more powerful (compare the strength of the debuff on Slow vs the one on Hypnotic Pattern as an example of what that's worth), plus it lasts until they save. I mean, yes, of course it should be stronger as a 9th level spell. But suppose this were a 5' radius or a 10' cube. Maybe if you're extremely lucky / your enemies have extremely poor tactics you might be able to get 3 or 4 creatures, but realistically you're usually using it on 2.

You could use a 3rd level slot to cast Command on three creatures of your choice and tell them to grovel. They lose a turn (same as this spell), and they're prone (not as good as auto-advantage unless you have mostly melee allies, but pretty good). They can still take reactions, and they don't fall prone until their turn, which depending on initiative order could be significant. But you're likely affecting more creatures most of the time and you don't have to worry about friendly fire. And a true 3rd level spell ought to be stronger than upcasting a 1st level spell.

If the wizard and the bard cast Hypnotic Pattern followed by Faerie Fire, creatures that failed both saves would be pretty much stunned with _no_ further save.

To be clear, I'm not necessarily claiming this spell is not overpowered. And I don't mean to sound like I'm arguing; my intent is just to think through this carefully and play a bit of devil's advocate in the spell's defense.

Maybe it should be 4th level as written. I don't think it's comparable to a 6th+ level spell.

Saelorn said:

I won't comment on whether it's balanced, because you're using synaptic static as a reference point, but I will say that the part about extra saving throws when attacked is very fiddly for a spell that only lasts one round. I would be more comfortable raising the level to 4, and getting rid of that caveat.

It does seem a bit powerful, though, since its effect scales automatically with the power of your opponent. I mean, that's true of all status conditions in 5E, but this spell looks like it was specially built to exploit that flaw in the system.

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I'm using Hypnotic Pattern as the main reference point, but yeah, the comparison to synaptic static means if you think synaptic static is one of the best 5th level spells, this has to be two levels weaker than that to be balanced.

What I like about the extra saving throw on taking damage is that you can't just use it as a single target "everybody beat up on this one guy with advantage" spell. You can try it, hoping they fail repeatedly, or you can split your efforts. And if it's a 5' radius your party members probably don't all get the offensive benefit of stunned without more than one failed save.

Esker said:

I'm using Hypnotic Pattern as the main reference point, but yeah, the comparison to synaptic static means if you think synaptic static is one of the best 5th level spells, this has to be two levels weaker than that to be balanced.

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Synaptic Static isn't a spell in my game. Many of the spells in Xanathar's are wildly overpowered in comparison to the base game, so I just assume that, if you're using that book then you don't care about balance.

Esker said:

What I like about the extra saving throw on taking damage is that you can't just use it as a single target "everybody beat up on this one guy with advantage" spell. You can try it, hoping they fail repeatedly, or you can split your efforts. And if it's a 5' radius your party members probably don't all get the offensive benefit of stunned without more than one failed save.

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Because of the way that saving throws work in 5E, you're probably not going to use a spell that they have a good chance of saving against. You're probably using it against someone with mediocre Intelligence, such that they would need a 19 or 20 to break free, in which case their odds don't substantially increase by giving them multiple chances. It's entirely possible that they would need a 21 on the die, and there's no chance of them breaking free before the next turn.

The big problem with third level spells is that a level three spell slot is a trivial resource to a high-level wizard. I don't expect this spell would be much of a problem for a level 5 wizard with a save DC of 16, but it would be a big deal for a level 17 wizard with a save DC of 21, because they can keep casting it every round.

Esker said:

It grants no save at all in the first round, but also it isn't a good spell for its level.

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Sorry, but considering that the only lower level spells that grant stun without concentration are but a single level less with huge limitations on them, I don't find that to be a true statement. With guaranteed one round of stun so it can't be blocked by a legendary save, giving all of your allies an action, it's a very useful spell against a single more powerful opponent the like BBEG of an adventure.

Really, when the lowest level stun spells in the PHB are 7th with heavy limitations, the is no comparison that a multi-target stun spell with no concentration is as low as 6th, much less the way less than 6th you seem to think is appropriate.

As a side note, giving a long list of spells where the majority require concentration in order to have a large effect just bolsters the argument that 5e puts concentration on serious debuffs.

Saelorn said:

Synaptic Static isn't a spell in my game. Many of the spells in Xanathar's are wildly overpowered in comparison to the base game, so I just assume that, if you're using that book then you don't care about balance.

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Interesting; it doesn't seem that overpowered to me. It seems good, but not as good as Animate Objects, for example (the bard in my group agrees, having selected Animate Objects at level 9).

Because of the way that saving throws work in 5E, you're probably not going to use a spell that they have a good chance of saving against. You're probably using it against someone with mediocre Intelligence, such that they would need a 19 or 20 to break free, in which case their odds don't substantially increase by giving them multiple chances. It's entirely possible that they would need a 21 on the die, and there's no chance of them breaking free before the next turn.

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Yeah, that's a good point. What if it were WIS or CON instead of INT?

The big problem with third level spells is that a level three spell slot is a trivial resource to a high-level wizard. I don't expect this spell would be much of a problem for a level 5 wizard with a save DC of 16, but it would be a big deal for a level 17 wizard with a save DC of 21, because they can keep casting it every round.

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Yeah that's a fair worry. Ancient Red Dragon vs. a party with a couple high level casters that have this spell; just try to survive until you blow through its legendary resistance, then keep casting this spell while your archers and blasters go to work. The INT save is also a big part of that being a problem, since WIS and CON save modifiers tend to scale along with the wizard's DC.

Blue said:

Really, when the lowest level stun spells in the PHB are 7th with heavy limitations, the is no comparison that a multi-target stun spell with no concentration is as low as 6th, much less the way less than 6th you seem to think is appropriate.

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Ok, but the duration is a significant difference between this spell and those. Not saying you're wrong, but let's just be clear about that.

What do you make of the monk comparison? Setting aside the INT save (which I'm starting to think is a big part of this spell's problem), this is sort of a 2ish, maybe three-target ranged stunning strike that takes your whole action, they can break out after a single attack, and costs a 3rd level spell slot instead of one measly ki point. And by the way, it's fine if your answer is "I think it's balanced against stunning strike, but I think stunning strike is unbalanced".

Consider the following possible changes:

(1) replace INT save with WIS save, and replace 30 ft. range / 10' cube with 5 ft. range / "creatures within range". More likely to save, more likely to break the save on the first hit, and puts the caster at risk (or at least forces you to spend a 2nd level slot too to misty step away afterwards). [EDIT: oops, you can't misty step right after you cast a spell under RAW]

Or, (2) keep the save and the range, widen the area a bit, but replace stunned with restrained.

I like every spell that targets an int save. Also stun that last until the beginning of your next turn does not allow tl setup for yourself. 1 round of stun, nothing on a failed save is not terribly unbalanced. You might make it restrained + incapacitated instead.
Against a single stong enemy, the monk's stunning strike is a lot more potent. I would even call hold person for more potent because it does not allow for a save on damage. Against weaker opponent fireball is better because of damage on miss.
Since your spell does not discern friend from foe, you have created a spell that is nice but probably slightly underpowered.

Esker said:

What do you make of the monk comparison? Setting aside the INT save (which I'm starting to think is a big part of this spell's problem), this is sort of a 2ish, maybe three-target ranged stunning strike that takes your whole action, they can break out after a single attack, and costs a 3rd level spell slot instead of one measly ki point. And by the way, it's fine if your answer is "I think it's balanced against stunning strike, but I think stunning strike is unbalanced".

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Already put together my comments on the monk in an earlier post, will reiterate here.

Stunning Strike is single target at no range. Yes, with an attack action you may be able to trigger it more than once a round if you have sufficient melee targets and you roll a lot of hits and spending more resources doesn't make it multi-target.

It requires both a successful to hit roll and has a save. It is only a single round as well.

Being able to have all the flexibility of a spellcaster and also outdo a class at a defining class feature of the problems we had back in D&D 3.5 that 5e made great strides to solve.

Look, if you want an area of effect that takes foes out of the fight without concentration, upcast sleep to 3rd level. It, along with Blindness/Deafness and Mass Suggestion seem to be the only non-concentration debuffs - and it seems to be what you want. Yes, it has a HP limit instead of a save, which helps balance it.

So designing for your specifications of an aoe debuff without concentration you're filling a desirable niche that no other spells really fill which will automatically make the results a competitive pick. Some people think that homebrew should err on the side of under powered as the cost of getting basically exactly what you want. However, as long as you aren't planning on publishing this and just using it in your home game it won't be the end of the world if you end up with something a little too good. Just keep refining and play testing and see how it plays out. After all, this doesn't break any of the explicitly stated taboos of spell creation like cantrip healing.

So I think our closes points of comparison are Command and Blindness/Deafness which are pseudo versions of what we're looking for. Comparing to concentration spells will get wonky because I think it's harder to determine how much value you should get by removing the restriction. So at 3rd level command can affect 3 creatures to essentially skip one turn and go prone which is a buff for melee and debuff for ranged attackers. However, Command also has a pretty glaring restriction that the target must understand your language, which rules out a lot of monsters. You currently have the Int < 2 restriction but my gut feeling would be that Command's restriction is harsher. There is the potential for exotic intelligent enemies that don't speak common (like genies for example). So to balance this out you could put in a stricter drawback, which I'd also argue would have to be harsher than Command's as stunned is better than prone. Being tied to a specific creature type or maybe being tied to a condition like Charmed or Poisoned which monsters a pretty commonly immune to.

We could also depower it in a different direction. The spell creation guidelines say that a wide area can make up for a lesser effect, we can infer that the inverse is true. So you could balance it with a small area:
-5 ft radius circle typically only hits 1-2 targets
-15 ft cone requires the caster to get in close