D&D 5E Guide to cruddy spells (v1.01)

[Dausuul]

If you want to do this seriously, you'd probably want to brew up an AI learning system. You'd have them fight a sequence of random toughness encounters; maybe you'd feed the AI the CR of the encounter, as PCs know that an ancient dragon is different than 3 goblins.

For a given loadout of a party, you'd let the AI optimize how long they last against such a random sequence.

Feed something like that to Alpha or similar learning AIs and you should get resource management falling out of it. I mean, they can feed it starcraft and it beats grandmasters.

That would certainly be ideal, for somebody who knows a lot more than I do about machine learning.

That said, it might be possible to do a much less sophisticated variant using an evolutionary strategy. Give the simulated players a set of weights to plug into a formula for determining when to use a spell (number of targets available, CR, et cetera), and then do as you propose and run a series of "gauntlets" to see which strategy gets you farthest before TPK. Randomly adjust the weights, re-run, and pick whichever variant performs best. Repeat to zero in on the optimal values.

I might try it sometime. Not right now, though.

 

[Mistwell]

concentration & nonconcentration debuffs are up.
@Mistwell I did in the guide itself days ago.

But thanks to your comment I noticed & changed the typo from tined to tuned.

So you can change it for a typo but not substance? Because the substance of "Bless is a cruddy spell" makes me not take most of the rest seriously.

To you, imagine I made a guide where I listed Fireball as a cruddy spell.

 

[tetrasodium]

Ok lets dig in to the complaint on this one:



1) Unless you are hitting on a 2, the +d4 from bless is always useful, no matter what level you are at. Attack bonuses that stack with advantage are EXCEPTIONALLY rare. But honestly, the attack bonus is just the icing on the cake, its the save bonus where the meat comes in. There is almost nothing in the game that boosts your saves, and yet you have this simple 1st level spell to do the job.

2) Part of the argument here is that the spell needs to be cast "ahead of time" to be useful, or you need knowledge of your foes. I would argue until the cleric gets spiritual guardians, what better buff spell is there to cast in general combat? And heck there are still a number of times I would use bless over spiritual guardians depending on the terrain and monsters.

While there are spells I disagree on this list, I can at least see the other point of view, and can kind of go in the middle. But Bless? Bless should be on the "is this spell OP?" list, not the "cruddy spell list". When my 20th level paladin player literally looked at his list when fighting CR 20s and said....eh you know what, I think I'll start off with bless....that should tell you something about how amazing the spell is.

#2 is the big one. Not every campaign is run like the swat team kicking in the door to splatter monsters waiting patiently for you to finish setting up to kill them. It could very well make a difference yes that's acknowledged by saying that the effect is pretty decent, the short duration plus concentration alone is the problem because they result in the spell not pulling the weight t needs to pull given the at will damage disparity. Cleric may not have many great concentration spells on their list, but paladin has quite a few. There's also nothing preventing someone from taking it as a magical secret as part of a feat or any number of other ways like the new tasha's spell granting magic items. If a player like that paladin looks at the spell & knowing the limitations of duration+concentration still thinks the tradeoffs are worth it good for him, but those downsides are something for them to consider.

More importantly bless & false life are no longer listed because they are turning into the inverse of the last thread's oxygen consuming "LOL mord's sword witchbolt& truestrike are bad" with people constantly touting the bad system design loophole from what happens with damage beyond zero & massive damage followed up by any amount of healing along with the situations where someone decides bless is worth the shirt duration & concentration.
edit: @Mistwell it was changed the other day to include more detail on why it was included & the typo was caught today when I went back to double check that I did it because I believe @Stalker0 was the first to do anything but rehash why bless is a good buff.

 

[nevin]

The problem is not that so many spells are cruddy. Its that so many are very niche and wizards rarely memorize them. And 10 to 15 percent of the spells are just so generally useful they overshadow everything else

 

[tetrasodium]

The problem is not that so many spells are cruddy. Its that so many are very niche and wizards rarely memorize them. And 10 to 15 percent of the spells are just so generally useful they overshadow everything else

I mostly agree & that's why there are plenty of spells that are "good... but" or just so incredibly niche that they seem to have had more thoughtput into how the strings can be bolted on & how much red tape can find any surface to adhere to than finding ways to make them actually worth preparing/learning in some situation other than "lets take a long rest to prepare x & cast x tomorrow". With 5e spells that's exacerbated because a lot of the time it feels like so many of those other spells are held back trying to compensate for a handful of must take spells.

 

[Gadget]

I'm going to avoid the whole bless debate for now; suffice it to say that I don't agree with the fact that spells like Bless are "cruddy."

I will comment to say that I think the devs far overvalued "damage over time" spells, and the cruddy spell list shows it. If we look at some of the damage over time spells, we'll find spells that consistently show up on 'bad' spell lists: Witch Bolt, Melf's Acid Arrow, Vampiric Touch, Phanstasmal Killer, Enervation, etc. Many of these spells have other issues that make them poor, but they have a consistent theme: ongoing damage. Other spells that do damage over time either add a measure of battlefield control (Flaming Sphere, Cloud of Daggers, Evard's Black Tenticals), or give discrete attacks you can choose to use over the duration (Melf's Minute Meteors, Crown of Stars).

 

[Stalker0]

I'm going to avoid the whole bless debate for now; suffice it to say that I don't agree with the fact that spells like Bless are "cruddy."

I will comment to say that I think the devs far overvalued "damage over time" spells, and the cruddy spell list shows it. If we look at some of the damage over time spells, we'll find spells that consistently show up on 'bad' spell lists: Witch Bolt, Melf's Acid Arrow, Vampiric Touch, Phanstasmal Killer, Enervation, etc. Many of these spells have other issues that make them poor, but they have a consistent theme: ongoing damage. Other spells that do damage over time either add a measure of battlefield control (Flaming Sphere, Cloud of Daggers, Evard's Black Tenticals), or give discrete attacks you can choose to use over the duration (Melf's Minute Meteors, Crown of Stars).

Completely agree, 5e combats are simply too short in most cases to warrant high use of DOT.

 

[tetrasodium]

Completely agree, 5e combats are simply too short in most cases to warrant high use of DOT.

A lot of the DoT spells are just not very effective as well & get thwarted by "they opt not to stand in your cloud of daggers & swing around bob to avoid it without even taking an AoO" or "yea they see that wall of fire and move ten feet away/just charge through so they are on the safe side with you rather than being on the hot side."

 

[Stalker0]

A lot of the DoT spells are just not very effective as well & get thwarted by "they opt not to stand in your cloud of daggers & swing around bob to avoid it without even taking an AoO" or "yea they see that wall of fire and move ten feet away/just charge through so they are on the safe side with you rather than being on the hot side."

One thing I did with 4e back in the day was added in "immediate" and "escalating" damage to beef up its DoT effects for the higher levels.

For those who remember, 4e had a system where you might take 10 damage, and then every round you roll a saving throw (which was basically just a 50/50 roll or close to it, not like 5e saves), and you would take another 10 damage if you failed the save.

I added these, not sure if they could be included in certain 5e spells but it would be an interested idea.

1) Immediate: The spell does 10 damage, and you immediately make a saving throw. On a failure, you take another 10 damage. Repeat until you pass the save.

2) Escalating: The spell does 10 damage, and you immediately make a saving throw. On a failure, you take another 10 damage, and the damage is increased by 5. Repeat until you pass the save.

 

[Gladius Legis]

This.

It's the go to spell for every single Cleric in the world until Spirit guardians starts competing for that concentration slot at 5th.

And in so many parties with both a Paladin and Cleric, once the Cleric hits Lv. 5 and gets Spirit Guardians, the Paladin takes over Bless duty.