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Unless you're cheesing extra spell slots with Tome of the Stilled Tongue / Spell Gem abuse, it's surprisingly difficult to use Glyph of Warding. Pretty much the only buff out of the PHB that it's really good for is Stoneskin. Granted, that's a VERY good use (game-changing, really) but the...

I might have to bump up Shadow Blade some. Maybe it's because I'm playing (yet another) Bladesinger in Out of the Abyss, but ever since I copied that spell using downtime that spell has been amazingly strong for a 3rd-level spell with Extra Attack. I can easily dish out 6d8+8 damage in a round...

Slow is only a candidate for 'best spell in your arsenal' when: A) Your frontline is completely scrambled, making most AoE spells difficult to use even if the frontline spends a turn reorganizing. B) You're fighting monsters that simultaneously have a middling WIS save and can be meaningfully...

The thing is that as you level up, the more likely it is for monsters to have Actions that are both painful and don't require Multiattack. The, say, Behir and Beholder laugh at your ability to restrict their attacks. Slow's only good against hordes of low/mid-WISpure bruiser monsters or...

Not just the AL. The official hardcovers, even the 'stingy' ones like Tomb of Annihilation, hand out way, waaaay more magical items than the DMG and Xanathar's assumes. '5E D&D is a low-magic item game' is simply not a paradigm the official designers for the game adhere to.

Keep in mind, however, that proficiency only tells half of the story. A lot of monsters have great STR and CON scores. For example, while the Fire Giant has charisma saving throw proficiency and not strength, their STR saving throw (+7) is still higher than CHA (+5) -- which is middling for...

Someone in GITP did a list of common saves for monsters > CR2. CON topped the list, with WIS, then STR, then CHA, then DEX, then INT.

I disagree on the utility of Slow. It targets WIS, which is the second-strongest save of monsters, and it's an EOTS. If a spell is limited by those two things, it needs to have a guaranteed effect even on a save (like Ray of Enfeeblement) or it needs to be a complete shutdown. Slow starts out...

I suppose we could debate what a 'class feature' is. I don't think the Illusionist NPC is the same as the Wizard class. Indeed, because they have different CRs for the same level of spellcasting I doubt you could call those class features at all. You may just want to stick to shapechanging into...

About Infernal Calling: Getting a demon to make the check requires a Charisma (whatever) check versus their own Insight check. Now, a lot of devils in the DMG don't have good insight checks. They top out at +5 and are usually significantly worse. The problem is that it's very likely that your...

In my experience, gained from playing with at least 8 different DMs at conventions and in AL? DMs generally let you pick what you want to use with summoning spells as long as you don't try the Pixie Bomb. Which is understandable, because that dumbass Sage Advice of "the DM picks for you" is...

23a) You're right about Unicorn Spirit. It doesn't add to the healing of the spell, the aura itself heals. If there was only some way to heal with both your action and bonus action, we'd be talking about some serious healing but, eh, spell limitations. Maybe if you had that Elixir cantrip from...

I don't rate the base Scrying spell particularly high in my own guide, though. It can be good, but the fun part of the spell (spy on faraway locations you've never been to before) requires a bit of thought and downtime to it -- that is, spying on a low-level minion, getting a view of their...

Such as?

Scrying is only worth anything because you can use it to spy on faraway locations you've never been to before. If you're only able to scry locations close to where you are and/or have seen before, its value goes way down.

Few things about Circle of the Shepherd: The Bear spirit is better for summoning, true, but assuming you don't need the Unicorn Spirit it's pretty much a no-questions-asked free hit on all of your buddies even if you're not into summoning. Which you should be. The Unicorn spirit is massive...

And this doesn't seem to be a problem with encounter design to you when blandly ported over to TTRPGs? You padded your analysis with action scenes that don't advance the plot or introduce Chekov's guns for future scenes. And frankly, if you're going to count 'Luke and friends get railroaded into...

Die Hard is a very poor example, because A) it involved strictly 'realistic' combats, B) John solved like half of the problems in the movie without resorting to combat C) aside from bullets, his feet, and exhaustion John McClane didn't really have any 'resources' and D) Most importantly, John...

The 6-8 encounters per short rest is stupid because very few stories in action-adventure fiction, even when they're doing Fighting Anime-style gauntlets, actually adheres to that guideline. It's a basic genre emulation fail, so I'm not surprised that both hardcovers and actual published DDAL...

I don't particularly care much for the idea behind Tenser's Transformation, but it's a more effective spell than I thought. Especially if you have Haste backup from someone/something else. Generally, while status effects and CC are still useful, one thing 5E D&D did do was make it so that...