D&D (2024) Warcaster Cheesy Fondue 2024

[Guest 7037866]

you need to spend a feat, use a reaction for the round and coordinate it with other players.

While on the surface I agree with you, I would just point out it is a way to bascially allow spellcasters to get off two spells nearly every round if they want, one using only their reaction on a spell that would normally require their action.

Seems fine, spell slot is a spell slot, does not matter if you spend it on damaging/debuffing enemies or buffing/healing allies.

A caster could, for instance, cast healing word as a bonus action, toll the dead with their action, move close to the injured PC who has to move to engage on their turn, and then when the PC moves away to engage, cast cure wounds.

You could effectively keep many buffing spells as reactions using War Caster, and then use your actions on your turn for offensive purposes, even attacking, or dodging, or whatever.

All spells of a same level should be balanced with each other. Right? RIGHT!?

Sure, but immaterial to the discussion for the most part.

War Caster allows the caster an offensive spell instead of a weapon attack when a creature provokes an OA. Enemies don't often provoke OAs as it is detrimental to their survival.

However, an ally moving out of the casters reach could happen often, in fact practically every round if you really wanted to.

This lead to an imbalance of occurance. The feat was meant to be used occasionally in an offensive fashion against an enemy, not in a commonplace nearly each round use as a means to buff an ally.

And it could be a good usage of healer with Curewounds.
Just pass by the healer with warcaster to get that heal that you need.

It does create an interesting support caster who uses their action primarily to Help or Dodge, and then buffs via War Caster on the target's turn.

I suppose if I did anything like this I would have to ammend the limit on spellcasting per turn to per round:
1 reaction spell AND either 1 action spell OR 1 bonus action spell and 1 cantrip.

I don't want PCs burning through spell slots or it encourages the 5MWD

 

[Azzy]

I mean, it is suspicious they changed both Warcaster and Opportunity Attack. Feels like it could be intentional.

It could, but it's just a weird choice.

 

[mellored]

Question is: does it really hurt?

Nope.
It encourages team work. We are litterally talking about taling a feat to make it easier to buff an ally.


Narrativly It's would be odd if you could hit an enemy with Haste but not an ally.

 

[mellored]

If your a trickster cleric / echo knight/ gaze of two minds...

Can you leave your own reach?

 

[Horwath]

It does create an interesting support caster who uses their action primarily to Help or Dodge, and then buffs via War Caster on the target's turn.

I suppose if I did anything like this I would have to ammend the limit on spellcasting per turn to per round:
1 reaction spell AND either 1 action spell OR 1 bonus action spell and 1 cantrip.

I don't want PCs burning through spell slots or it encourages the 5MWD

variant rule:
IF you spent a spell slot on your turn and on a reaction before the start of your next turn, on your next turn you can only cast spells without using spellslots.

 

[Guest 7037866]

Nope.
It encourages team work. We are litterally talking about taling a feat to make it easier to buff an ally.

I think it is a bit more debatable than that.

You can buff an ally already on your turn, so why should all those buffs which otherwise cost you your action become reactions due to making an "Opportunity Attack" against an ally?

The whole "spell attack" instead of OA weapon attack is fine, but IMO should be restricted to cantrips.

Then even if you want to apply this to an ally using the RAW instead of the RAI, your options are limited but still situationally useful. You ally can benefit from a cantrip like guidance to help break down a door so your party can get into the next room or escape or whatever. Your ally is about to charge through a wall of fire so you cast resistance on them. You cast message to whisper a tactical warning to them you don't want your enemies to hear.

There would not be tons of uses, of course, with this restriction. However, you could still make cantrip attacks against enemies, as well as the other benefits from War Caster. It becomes a minor situational buff, not a constant way to buff allies with spells that are stronger as well as normally requiring your action.

That is just how I would do it personally. I think the RAW is a bit too much without some form of house-ruling.

Narrativly It's would be odd if you could hit an enemy with Haste but not an ally.

Narratively it would be odd if you choose to Haste an enemy anyway.

variant rule:
IF you spent a spell slot on your turn and on a reaction before the start of your next turn, on your next turn you can only cast spells without using spellslots.

Sure, something along those lines could work as well. I'd probably rephrase things a bit--but the message/ concept is clear enough.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

you can always argue that it is you who decides, who is and when hostile from your point of view.

Only if you want to make me hostile, if I'm your DM!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

BTW, I suspect that the only reason that word hostile is missing from both OA and WC is because they specifically mentioned that they did a "brevity" pass on all the rules, and whoever cut the word in both cases probably thought "Why would you beat up an ally for moving past you? OBVIOUSLY it's redundant to say 'hostile' here!"

It's not really telling that the 'change' was intended, just because it's been made in two places. It just means that they didn't notice this rather silly corner-case.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Yeah, letting you buff as essentially a free action (seriously, what is a cleric using their reacton for anyways) is too much for a feat. Given WOTC's haphazard at best approach to writing rules, assuming any actual intent behind any wording change is grasping at best. The rules are whatever a dozen different hands wrote down, none of them knowing what the other was doing. Because apparently having rules written like rules are a bad thing to a certain segment of gamers, we get this slop.

 

[Plaguescarred]

The reference to enemies and foes in Opportunity Attack rules to me clearly indicate which creature triggers them.

Opportunity Attacks​

Combatants watch for enemies to drop their guard. If you move heedlessly past your foes, you put yourself in danger by provoking an Opportunity Attack.