Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
... except this actually happened *in real life*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ketch#Lord_Russell.27s_execution
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
D&D 5E TIME STOP SPELL (9º)
- Thread starter maritimo80
- Start date
... except this actually happened *in real life*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ketch#Lord_Russell.27s_execution
Jabborwacky
First Post
----- reminiscing on old editions. ------
To be honest, you never knew your players until one of them had their hands on the time stop spell. It could let you know if they were happy or sad that day, or if perhaps they were just kind of insane. Cause you know something is up if a great old one is congratulating the party wizard on really outdoing himself that day.
Even mystra's ban on 10th level and above spells couldn't save the Realms from a 20th level wizard. I shiver at the thought of what would have happened if a player used time stop and multiple wish scrolls at the same time. Ten headed time-stopping hydras spewing delay blast fireballs have nothing on me buddy! I mean, I would never use time stop like that! That was that other guy over there...
In all seriousness, time stop kind of broke the game a bit. Being able to limit break/street fighter gauge/etc special attack things allowed you to decimate entire cities in an instant. If every end game villain is powerful enough to deliver a counter to the kind of combos a time stopping wizard could deliver and have enough energy to counter attack, it made those kinds of villains unreasonably powerful. You'd need a second version of the villain to challenge a party without a wizard.
----- End nostalgia trip ------
Which brings us to the question... and I've just spent about 45 mins looking at the spells available to wizards. I can't really see anything that would be able to replicate a stacking set of spell effects (at least not offensively). They were very cautious with spells moving into 5e. If you could use stone shape, that would be one thing. However, that is interacting with the environment, so it would probably break the spell.
With some RP, you might gain a significant advantage by using Time Stop to buff yourself with various spells. When time stop ends, the opponent is going to be caught off guard by your new capabilities. I can tell you that if I was facing a mage and the next second he is glowing with several different kinds of magic I didn't see before, I would be confused. Especially if his position has changed.
To be honest, you never knew your players until one of them had their hands on the time stop spell. It could let you know if they were happy or sad that day, or if perhaps they were just kind of insane. Cause you know something is up if a great old one is congratulating the party wizard on really outdoing himself that day.
Even mystra's ban on 10th level and above spells couldn't save the Realms from a 20th level wizard. I shiver at the thought of what would have happened if a player used time stop and multiple wish scrolls at the same time. Ten headed time-stopping hydras spewing delay blast fireballs have nothing on me buddy! I mean, I would never use time stop like that! That was that other guy over there...
In all seriousness, time stop kind of broke the game a bit. Being able to limit break/street fighter gauge/etc special attack things allowed you to decimate entire cities in an instant. If every end game villain is powerful enough to deliver a counter to the kind of combos a time stopping wizard could deliver and have enough energy to counter attack, it made those kinds of villains unreasonably powerful. You'd need a second version of the villain to challenge a party without a wizard.
----- End nostalgia trip ------
Which brings us to the question... and I've just spent about 45 mins looking at the spells available to wizards. I can't really see anything that would be able to replicate a stacking set of spell effects (at least not offensively). They were very cautious with spells moving into 5e. If you could use stone shape, that would be one thing. However, that is interacting with the environment, so it would probably break the spell.
With some RP, you might gain a significant advantage by using Time Stop to buff yourself with various spells. When time stop ends, the opponent is going to be caught off guard by your new capabilities. I can tell you that if I was facing a mage and the next second he is glowing with several different kinds of magic I didn't see before, I would be confused. Especially if his position has changed.
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FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Depends on your style. The exact choice of second spell isn't the point--pick whatever concentration spell tickles your fancy. Wall of Force, Hypnotic Pattern, etc.
I chose Animate Objects VIII because you have plenty of time to position yourself during Time Stop so that the objects can immediately commence murdering your target right after your DBFB goes off (it goes off before Animate Objects finishes casting) and will have plenty of opportunity attacks if the target tries to get away. But against a foe with excellent AoEs of his own you would want to choose a different spell.
It occurs to me now that you could cast a Forcecage during your Time Stop to cage the enemy in with your animated objects.
But details will vary with your situation.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Depends very much on how you run HP.
If you play high HP as life force leading to increased binding energy between elements of your flesh, or any other HP-as-reality trope, you're going to find that slitting someone's throat while they are asleep or Time Stopped or paralyzed isn't a simple matter of a single action declaration--that flesh don't cut (easily). You'll get a dagger strike in at advantage as an auto-crit, exactly as if the target were paralyzed, and then your Time Stop ends.
You are, of course, free to rewrite all the 5E rules related to HP and paralysis and attacks against unconscious targets and called shots against conscious targets. If you do so you will find that Time Stop is not the only spell which has just gone way up in value. You'll probably also find your game is turning into GURPS: all the fighters will start making called shots against eyeslits, all the time during combat, because you've made bypassing HP a thing. That's a potentially fun way to play 5E but it is also a major rewrite.
evilbob
Adventurer
Fair enough! Yeah I guess any 9th level spell that does less than 40d6 is strictly worse. Evocation FTW!
The Cloudkill / Dimension Door example is pretty decent - but then again, it's hard to imagine a situation where this would be THAT much more effective than taking two rounds to do those things instead - especially a situation where a different 9th level spell wouldn't have been a better use of your slot (again: Meteor Swarm). Same thing with Forcecage / Animated Objects. If your goal is killin', meteors tend to get that done (140 avg dam). Certainly there are niche scenarios but other spells are still just as useful if not more so.
pming has a decent point, honestly. If Time Stop didn't allow you to just walk up to someone and stab them in the neck, I'm not sure what else it could be used for. (Now, I can justify the "crit doesn't mean auto-kill" thing, at least to myself: HP still represent the difficulty of killing something, and even stabbing that enemy in the eye is something that might not kill them if you didn't do it exactly right. So your auto-crit-to-the-eye STILL didn't kill the guy if you didn't do enough HP damage because that means you just didn't quite do it right, and now they are horribly injured but alive...) I mean, again: 9th level spells can just straight up kill a dude. So this isn't much different than Meteor Swarm or True Polymorph or whatever, except that the target doesn't get a save - which I suppose you could still add after-the-fact, like a Con save for half due to the time distortion of "getting stabbed" suddenly allowing you to react. Or, if you didn't like that, you could always interpret the spell such that the "action" "affecting a creature" is what breaks the spell - and crucially, not the effect of the action - which means that at best the creature would be surprised, but not helpless, when the action took place. It's a reasonable interpretation, even if a bit rules-lawyery. Or, you could just decide that like Power Word Kill, the spell's target gets no save and that's that. PW:K still has a limitation of 100 HP, but it's otherwise pretty comparable.
Still, even if it's arguably not RAW, this seems like the best possible use of this otherwise useless spell.
evilbob
Adventurer
Ah, called shots to the eyes - that takes me back.
But yes, suddenly higher-slot Sleep becomes the best finisher in the game, Hold Person / Monster goes WAY up in value, Power Word Stun is better than Power Word Kill because of the higher HP limit, etc. - overall your game gets a lot more deadly without the HP abstraction.
Jabborwacky
First Post
Ah, called shots to the eyes - that takes me back.
But yes, suddenly higher-slot Sleep becomes the best finisher in the game, Hold Person / Monster goes WAY up in value, Power Word Stun is better than Power Word Kill because of the higher HP limit, etc. - overall your game gets a lot more deadly without the HP abstraction.
I think the advantage/disadvantage covers most of it. Unless we're dealing with a cyclops, because then they really have blinded the thing. But the DM could still rule its just advantage on everyone's actions against it and not true blindness (a cyclop's eye should be much harder to destroy if its the only one it has).
As for anyone thinking about using timestop to do the stabby thing, just remember not to waste those extra rounds you have. It's a lot easier said than done.
I like the idea of Time Stop as a reaction spell that can be used for offensive or defensive purposes.
TIME STOP
9th-level transmutation
Casting Time: 1 reaction, which you may take at any time
Range: Self
Components: V
Duration: Instantaneous
You briefly stop the flow of time for everyone but yourself. No time passes for other creatures, while you take 1d4 + 1 turns in a row, during which you can use actions and move as normal. Any previous effects, attack rolls, ability checks, or saving throws that affected any creature or object on the turn you cast Time Stop are not resolved until the flow of time resumes. This spell ends if one of the actions you use during this period, or any effects that you create during this period, affects a creature other than you or an object being worn or carried by someone other than you. In addition, the spell ends if you move to a place more than 1,000 feet from the location where you cast it.
TIME STOP
9th-level transmutation
Casting Time: 1 reaction, which you may take at any time
Range: Self
Components: V
Duration: Instantaneous
You briefly stop the flow of time for everyone but yourself. No time passes for other creatures, while you take 1d4 + 1 turns in a row, during which you can use actions and move as normal. Any previous effects, attack rolls, ability checks, or saving throws that affected any creature or object on the turn you cast Time Stop are not resolved until the flow of time resumes. This spell ends if one of the actions you use during this period, or any effects that you create during this period, affects a creature other than you or an object being worn or carried by someone other than you. In addition, the spell ends if you move to a place more than 1,000 feet from the location where you cast it.
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FormerlyHemlock
Hero
TIME STOP SPELL (9º)
To be honest... Most of my gaming still occurs in a game loosely based on 3.5 and 1e with some 5e spice. Characters max at level 5, but continue to gain abilities and can continue to increase damage (and armor reduces damage.) At high levels most people are killed/crippled by just one or two decisive blows that make it through armor, and bypassing HP to kill helpless targets is codified by official house rules.
However, I run a lot of infrequent 5e games as well. I definitely don't play HP as reality. Nevertheless, like I said in the post you quoted: in combat, I don't do auto-kills on helpless targets. I can assume that they are distracted by the other foes, so I simply follow the rules and such attacks are auto-crits.
(I might allow it if one threw caution to the wind and exposed themselves to other enemy combatants. But a kill stroke on a nonhuman would also be much more dicey in general, so I don't see this potential adjudication as game breaking. )
But out of combat, I don't see much justification for such a position in my games (since I don't do HP as reality). I'd allow Paul's example since it happens unexpectedly during negotiations.
If he did it in combat, I'd allow him an auto crit attack... The target is primed for battle, so the instant the time stop ends his adrenaline-amped instincts kick in and he backpedals, reacts defensively, or whatever. Plus, 12-30 seconds to carefully position yourself in front of him *without touching him* will be harder if he is in a defensive posture.
As far as out of combat goes... In the stupid "can torches light fires" thread I talked about how the DMG guidelines about when to roll the dice vs simple declare success/failure apply here. It's the DM's job to determine not just when to roll the dice, but when to look to the rules at all.
You don't need to look to the rules to know that torches light fires. In my view, I also don't need to look at the rules to know what happens when someone creeps up on a sleeping human and slits their throat. I might use rules to *get* the guy in position. But after that? The result of a slit throat? This would be resolved prior to engaging the rules.
To be honest... Most of my gaming still occurs in a game loosely based on 3.5 and 1e with some 5e spice. Characters max at level 5, but continue to gain abilities and can continue to increase damage (and armor reduces damage.) At high levels most people are killed/crippled by just one or two decisive blows that make it through armor, and bypassing HP to kill helpless targets is codified by official house rules.
However, I run a lot of infrequent 5e games as well. I definitely don't play HP as reality. Nevertheless, like I said in the post you quoted: in combat, I don't do auto-kills on helpless targets. I can assume that they are distracted by the other foes, so I simply follow the rules and such attacks are auto-crits.
(I might allow it if one threw caution to the wind and exposed themselves to other enemy combatants. But a kill stroke on a nonhuman would also be much more dicey in general, so I don't see this potential adjudication as game breaking. )
But out of combat, I don't see much justification for such a position in my games (since I don't do HP as reality). I'd allow Paul's example since it happens unexpectedly during negotiations.
If he did it in combat, I'd allow him an auto crit attack... The target is primed for battle, so the instant the time stop ends his adrenaline-amped instincts kick in and he backpedals, reacts defensively, or whatever. Plus, 12-30 seconds to carefully position yourself in front of him *without touching him* will be harder if he is in a defensive posture.
As far as out of combat goes... In the stupid "can torches light fires" thread I talked about how the DMG guidelines about when to roll the dice vs simple declare success/failure apply here. It's the DM's job to determine not just when to roll the dice, but when to look to the rules at all.
You don't need to look to the rules to know that torches light fires. In my view, I also don't need to look at the rules to know what happens when someone creeps up on a sleeping human and slits their throat. I might use rules to *get* the guy in position. But after that? The result of a slit throat? This would be resolved prior to engaging the rules.
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