D&D (2024) Emanation damage point and linked exploits:

[FrogReaver]

My personal subjective sense of when it becomes degenerate is long before party size + 1. But even if it does less total damage, I personally feel moving the Cleric around off-turn is more degenerate than multiple Clerics, just due to the fact that multiple Clerics are actually paying for their damage with multiple spell slots.

2 Clerics also have twice as many spell slots, so not really seeing the issue...

There is a cost. Moving the cleric to make the tactic really effective requires grappling the cleric. Grappling the cleric and moving any substantial distance requires paying a steep price . Requirements like high str, high movespeed, the grappler fear, taking the attack action, using one of your attacks to target the cleric, having to either take OA's, use a whip, or end your turn near an enemy to use your remaining attacks, not using a 2 handed weapon, bow or shield. Also, to allow the cleric to move on his turn or another ally to grapple move him you must end the grapple, thus always costing you at least 1 attack in addition to everything else.

Also, if you move the cleric, your next ally probably has to spend most of his movement to get to the clerics new position.

It's a terribly inefficient tactic. You may can argue it's better than what the other character might otherwise could have done, but it seems straightforward that it's not better than what just having a 2nd cleric could have done.

Pushing enemies into spirit guardians is an option, but depends too heavily on their position, your position and the clerics position to be reliable. There's still a cost but much lower, a single weapon mastery for push or a subclass ability that lets you do so. But this use case will never be too strong and mostly just adds some tactical depth to the game.

Note, though, that depending on the method, moving the Cleric might not be less damage than multiple Clerics. One needs to include the value of the rest of the party's own attacks, since with sequentially-controlled-mount (or vehicle) shenanigans moving the Cleric around doesn't require the other party member's actions.

Of course one can go even father by combining actionless off-turn Cleric movement with your multiple-Cleric concept, where each Cleric on their turn hits the enemies with two copies of Spirit Guardians (from themselves and whomever is passenger or riding shotgun), plus an action spell of their own.

Edit: or with a big wagon maybe n Clerics can hit the enemies with n copies of Spirit Guardians on each of their n turns, plus their own actions, simply by rotating drivers using movement to get to the driver position and item interaction to take the reins? That would be n^2 Spirit Guardians activations per round per enemy. If each cleric readies actions to move on and off the wagon and the enemies' geometry is absolutely perfect, one should be able to get up to n^2+n activations per round per enemy.

Well, I think you ultimately proved my point. Multiple clerics wins in the mount/vehicle department as well.

Or maybe the real point is that multiple cleric parties are now OP? Dunno.

 

[FrogReaver]

I guess there's a question about how emanations stack.

Like if 1 cleric is emanating Spirit Guardians and another is as well, is the overlap zone just a spirit guardians emanation that does damage once if a creature moves into that area?

 

[James Gasik]

I guess there's a question about how emanations stack.

Like if 1 cleric is emanating Spirit Guardians and another is as well, is the overlap zone just a spirit guardians emanation that does damage once if a creature moves into that area?

Wouldn't the rule about multiple spell effects not stacking come into play? Assuming it or a variant of it are still in the game?

 

[FrogReaver]

Wouldn't the rule about multiple spell effects not stacking come into play? Assuming it or a variant of it are still in the game?

Maybe? The rule you reference is there but it's not clear it applies here given how they've defined everything else.

Cleric 1 makes an emanation that deals damage to a creature when it enters this emanation. Cleric 2 does the same. Enemy walks into Cleric 1's emanation and takes damage. Walks 5ft further and enters B's emanation without leaving A's. It sounds like the enemy should take damage for entering B's emanation here. But not 100% clear to me.

 

[Xetheral]

2 Clerics also have twice as many spell slots, so not really seeing the issue...

Because whether or not I personally consider it degenerate depends more on how silly the tactic is, and less on how much damage output it causes. Hence, I consider the move-the-cleric-every-turn tactic more degenerate than I consider party full of Clerics, regardless of relative damage output.

There is a cost. Moving the cleric to make the tactic really effective requires grappling the cleric. Grappling the cleric and moving any substantial distance requires paying a steep price . Requirements like high str, high movespeed, the grappler fear, taking the attack action, using one of your attacks to target the cleric, having to either take OA's, use a whip, or end your turn near an enemy to use your remaining attacks, not using a 2 handed weapon, bow or shield. Also, to allow the cleric to move on his turn or another ally to grapple move him you must end the grapple, thus always costing you at least 1 attack in addition to everything else.

Also, if you move the cleric, your next ally probably has to spend most of his movement to get to the clerics new position.

It's a terribly inefficient tactic. You may can argue it's better than what the other character might otherwise could have done, but it seems straightforward that it's not better than what just having a 2nd cleric could have done.

Pushing enemies into spirit guardians is an option, but depends too heavily on their position, your position and the clerics position to be reliable. There's still a cost but much lower, a single weapon mastery for push or a subclass ability that lets you do so. But this use case will never be too strong and mostly just adds some tactical depth to the game.

No grappling required if you're (ab)using the controlled mount rules. The (probably small-sized) Cleric sits on the back of the mount, and an adjcaent character spends half their move to hop on and take control, resetting the mount's initiative. The mount Dashes, causing the Cleric to zap all enemies within range, while the controlling character uses their action for whatever they want, ending the mounts's movement adjacent to the next PC in initiative. The character controlling the mount then spends the other half of their move to dismount (or to fall off and then stand back up, depending on how that table reads the rules). The next character then repeats the process. On their own turn the Cleric moves to the front position and takes control themselves, zaps everyone when the mount dashes, takes their own action, then moves to the back of the mount. It's only n zaps per enemy instead of n+1, but it doesn't cost any actions or attacks. And the dashing mount probably has a much higher speed than a grappling character, permitting one to hit more enemies.

Well, I think you ultimately proved my point. Multiple clerics wins in the mount/vehicle department as well.

Or maybe the real point is that multiple cleric parties are now OP? DunDunnoO

I entirely agree that the degenerate moving-the-cleric tactic works best with more clerics. I still think it's degenerate even with a single cleric.

I guess there's a question about how emanations stack.

Like if 1 cleric is emanating Spirit Guardians and another is as well, is the overlap zone just a spirit guardians emanation that does damage once if a creature moves into that area?

I would rule the damage stacks, but the movement speed reduction does not stack. But there's definitely ambiguity there, and if the DM rules that the damage isn't cumulative, the wagon-full-of-clerics idea doesn't work and we're back to hauling around a single cleric on a mount.

And to be absolutely clear, I'm not advocating for a DM to allow any version of this tactic to work. I don't want that to get lost in the back-and-forth!

 

[FrogReaver]

Because whether or not I personally consider it degenerate depends more on how silly the tactic is, and less on how much damage output it causes. Hence, I consider the move-the-cleric-every-turn tactic more degenerate than I consider party full of Clerics, regardless of relative damage output.

Maybe. I think if more people just realize another cleric is better than trying to move the cleric with the Barbarian then you won't really see grapple move the cleric this silliness in play, or at least only situationally, instead of all the time.

No grappling required if you're (ab)using the controlled mount rules. The (probably small-sized) Cleric sits on the back of the mount, and an adjcaent character spends half their move to hop on and take control, resetting the mount's initiative. The mount Dashes, causing the Cleric to zap all enemies within range, while the controlling character uses their action for whatever they want, ending the mounts's movement adjacent to the next PC in initiative. The character controlling the mount then spends the other half of their move to dismount (or to fall off and then stand back up, depending on how that table reads the rules). The next character then repeats the process. On their own turn the Cleric moves to the front position and takes control themselves, zaps everyone when the mount dashes, takes their own action, then moves to the back of the mount. It's only n zaps per enemy instead of n+1, but it doesn't cost any actions or attacks. And the dashing mount probably has a much higher speed than a grappling character, permitting one to hit more enemies.

Right, I'm analyzing grappling and mounts as separate cases.

I will say this about mounts. Mount tactics aren't usually an effective long term strategy. Mounts die. They aren't always easy to readily replace. The faster ones aren't really cheap. So even if this technically works, I don't look for mounted spirit guardians clerics to become a big thing.

I see the mounted movement rules as the sillier thing here and think most DM's would likely rule against it if the players tried to use that tactic more than once for anything. A simple, a mount cannot move more than it's speed once per round (or dash speed if dashing) most likely solves the silliness, and while it's technically a houserule, it's also a DMG encouraged one when it comes to rules exploits.

I would rule the damage stacks, but the movement speed reduction does not stack. But there's definitely ambiguity there, and if the DM rules that the damage isn't cumulative, the wagon-full-of-clerics idea doesn't work and we're back to hauling around a single cleric on a mount.

IMO. 4 clerics not on mounts using reaction moves seems better there. 2x > x. Also no worries about mounts dying.

And to be absolutely clear, I'm not advocating for a DM to allow any version of this tactic to work. I don't want that to get lost in the back-and-forth!

I am...
A cleric proccing Spirit Guardians twice a turn, while using his action and reaction to move a 2nd time, is not too strong for damage. The investment tradeoffs on grapple moving the cleric is too high to make it generally useful. The ability to push enemies into the spirit guardians is too situational. None of this use cases are degenerate, or OP or anything bad IMO.

On mounts...
Having it proc 4 times due to the whole party being on a mount and not require any actions or reactions could be too much, but in actual play there's a ton of mitigating factors around this (mounts die, any ally wanting to melee means OA's come into play, party is clustered in fireball formation), as well as the possibility the DM nerfs the mount reset initiative exploit that's driving this combo.

 

[Ancalagon]

I think the problem here is that we are using too over the top examples. Like the scenarios Treantmonk posted were a bit... silly, and relied on odd ruling, like someone bursting into a room with a damaging spell effect not triggering an initiative roll. It's easy and reasonable to dismiss this as whiteroom nonsense. So I'm going to craft a VERY REASONABLE example.

Let us take a 4-member party. Let us supposed that only two members are taking part in these shenanigans, a druid and a barbarian. The other two are ... busy, it doesn't matter. This seems pretty reasonable so far yes?

Also, to avoid the weirdness of one PC grappling another and moving them around, I'm going to make the barbarian big and strong, and the druid small and very plausibly easy to carry - maybe they shape changed into an owl (avoids AOO), maybe they are a little gnome. This is still very reasonable, yes?

So there is a room with foes. The druid casts conjure animal and steps into the room, running around a bit and hitting everyone with the emanation. 5d8 damage to all the foes. Then the druid readies an action - something like "when the next person in the initiative order does something, I dash!" (this will only be possible on round 2 btw as the first round an action was required to cast the spell). The once again move into the room, doing 5d8 damage to everyone. Then the barbarian picks up the druid and does the same. Boom, 5d8 damage twice. (yes I know there is a save)

So we're now doing 20d8 damage to all our foes, per round (15 d8 on round 1), with a single 4th level spell. I don't know about you, but I think we've already exceeded the "is this balanced?" threshold, by far.

Now compare this to the 2014 rules, where to damage a foe "more" you had to push each foe into the emanation, vs just moving the emanation! Far, far more balanced.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think the problem here is that we are using too over the top examples. Like the scenarios Treantmonk posted were a bit... silly, and relied on odd ruling, like someone bursting into a room with a damaging spell effect not triggering an initiative roll. It's easy and reasonable to dismiss this as whiteroom nonsense. So I'm going to craft a VERY REASONABLE example.

Let us take a 4-member party. Let us supposed that only two members are taking part in these shenanigans, a druid and a barbarian. The other two are ... busy, it doesn't matter. This seems pretty reasonable so far yes?

Good so far.

Also, to avoid the weirdness of one PC grappling another and moving them around, I'm going to make the barbarian big and strong, and the druid small and very plausibly easy to carry - maybe they shape changed into an owl (avoids AOO), maybe they are a little gnome. This is still very reasonable, yes?

Sure.

So there is a room with foes. The druid casts conjure animal and steps into the room,

Doesn't work with conjure animals. Needs to be conjure woodland beings at level 4. So we are talking this coming online at level 7 by the earliest.

running around a bit and hitting everyone with the emanation. 5d8 damage to all the foes.

Accurate for conjure woodland beings.

Then the druid readies an action - something like "when the next person in the initiative order does something, I dash!" (this will only be possible on round 2 btw as the first round an action was required to cast the spell).

It's not a dash, it's a regular move, but sure.

Also of note, is that if don't have conjure woodland being precast, you need to spend half your movement moving out and half back toward the barbarian so that he isn't wasting movement before carrying you. That's a significantly shorter range. You probably aren't hitting everything on turn 1 this way.

The once again move into the room, doing 5d8 damage to everyone. Then the barbarian picks up the druid and does the same. Boom, 5d8 damage twice. (yes I know there is a save)

How is the Barbarian picking up the Druid? Grapple? That's an action. So no reaction move by the Barbarian.

So we're now doing 20d8 damage to all our foes, per round (15 d8 on round 1), with a single 4th level spell. I don't know about you, but I think we've already exceeded the "is this balanced?" threshold, by far.

I tally 15d8 per round (10d8 on round 1 unless you can precast).

Now compare this to the 2014 rules, where to damage a foe "more" you had to push each foe into the emanation, vs just moving the emanation! Far, far more balanced.

2024 damage is not comparable to 2014 damage at all. It's much higher.

And finally,
10d8 save for half = 36 damage
15d8 save for half = 54 damage
20d8 save for half = 72 damage

54 damage per round for 2 level 7+ characters is not high. And it's something achievable by 2 Druids in this case.

 

[Sulicius]

The problem with this take on warcaster is that it makes total sense. From a plain logic, how the world works kinda deal.

When a foe triggers an AoO, it's because they moved away from you quickly, they foolishly (or desperately) let their guard down, and you take a stab at them. A warcaster feat-haver is fast enough to blast them with a quick cantrip instead of a sword swipe.

Why would this be harder to do on a friend?

It would be harder because the rules state that OA’s are for foes. I know they changed the wording, but the section is 100% clear on the intent.

 

[Sulicius]

Double post, ignore