Asisreo
Patron Badass
You have to see the target for Firebolt & Magic Missle. True strike and Ray of Sickness works on invisible enemies.
D&D 5E A use for True Strike
- Thread starter Asisreo
- Start date
Flamestrike
Legend
You cant twin True strike, and Witch bolts damage doesnt scale on subsequent rounds.
Asisreo
Patron Badass
You can twin true strike and an upscaled witchbolt still does extra hitdice on initial hit. I think we've shown that's not the most effective use though. Namely because you break concentration.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
1) Crit Fishing
2) multiclass sorcerer/rogue
2) multiclass sorcerer/rogue
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yeah no re: 2. Not unless you have a situation where you cannot possibly get Advantage or Sneak Attack (which some subclasses allow w/o Advantage) without True Strike and it's worth blowing an entire round to use True Strike rather than Hiding or the like. In most situations you could take a normal pot-shot and then Hide with your Rogue bonus action thing, for example. Hell if you were a Wood Elf or Halfling you could do that without even really needing much to hide behind.
It's certainly not going to be a routine situation, and if it happens a lot to you, you're probably doing something really wrong as a Rogue.
Re: 1, I'd love to see the build where that actually worked out. I mean we're probably talking an Elf with the triple-advantage thing, like most Crit-Fishers, but skipping around of likely multiple attacks just to get Advantage from that? I don't think it's going to add up. I don't do Crit Fisher math though.
@Asireo - The more I think about the Plane Shift example, the more I like it. It's only one spell, and it's a big risk, but it's much less corner-case than anything else that's been suggested, because it can potentially significantly reduce the risk of failure of Plane Shift (which is of course a "two points of failure" spell), and one that can absolutely a spin a battle 180 degrees (whereas as cantrips and Chromatic Orb and so on generally will not). So I think that's your best example here, maybe the only good example.
The one thing working against it is that you could also deploy your Familiar to go up to the enemy and use the "Help" action (this is totally RAW and legal and also RAI according to JC) and give you Advantage that way without wasting a turn. As it acts on your turn, it's probably quite difficult to stop that. However, that's generally once-a-battle, because said familiar will get killed the next turn if there are enemies left, and they might have been killed earlier in the battle. The familiar is the big thing though because party members may not consider it worth giving up three attacks or Sneak Attack (yeah I am thinking of a specific situation
) to do Help for you. Though that said last time this happened, that is exactly what happened - the Rogue sighingly gave up his SA so he could do help, and the Sorcerer (I think?) landed Plane Shift as a result. Of course the NPC then saved, and as I noticed Plane Shift was on his spell list, promptly sent the Fighter straight to hell - good old Fighter WIS saves... ).But I would concede that's probably not a reason to have have TS, but at that level you have more Cantrips, so it's less of a loss, and it could actually work - you could also use it as "backup Advantage" there, like if an expected source of Advantage but it might not work, you could use TS - and hell if you still had your familiar, you use TS, maybe bait the enemy into trying break your Concentration on that, then deploy the familiar so you got Advantage anyway. And again this works because Plane Shift literally turn a fight from "Ohhhhh nooooo!" to "WE GOT DIS!!!".
jmartkdr2
Hero
according to Frogreaver's math - not even then:
This is a good question. Let's evaluate.
Assuming 60% accuracy again.
For 2 attack character: Damage output is at 1.2*Damage
For Elven accuracy: Damage output is 0.936*Damage
You would need to be attacking something at a 35% chance to hit before you would be better off using true strike.
Asisreo
Patron Badass
Slight necro of thread, wouldn't be a demon's advocate if I didn't.
You could use true strike as a Moon Druid and transform into a Giant Spider to web your enemy. Since it is limited, having advantage on that would be good. You could also use it when throwing something like holy water or expensive equipment, which you probably won't have more than a 50% chance to hit with anyways. If a party member wanted, you could true strike then your party member could cast True Polymorph on the same turn to turn you into something like a Balor or Death Knight. You can then wreak havoc with your first attack with advantage. Well, technically this works with regular Polymorph as well.
A bard can take Guiding Bolt and ensure the advantage rider happens. I believe inflict wounds was already brought up, too. Assuming you're in tier 1, you can true strike inflict wounds. If the enemy's AC is higher than 13, then you have a higher average DPR.
I don't think it's much of a secret that true strike falls off after tier 1 outside of the polymorph shenanigans, though.
You could use true strike as a Moon Druid and transform into a Giant Spider to web your enemy. Since it is limited, having advantage on that would be good. You could also use it when throwing something like holy water or expensive equipment, which you probably won't have more than a 50% chance to hit with anyways. If a party member wanted, you could true strike then your party member could cast True Polymorph on the same turn to turn you into something like a Balor or Death Knight. You can then wreak havoc with your first attack with advantage. Well, technically this works with regular Polymorph as well.
A bard can take Guiding Bolt and ensure the advantage rider happens. I believe inflict wounds was already brought up, too. Assuming you're in tier 1, you can true strike inflict wounds. If the enemy's AC is higher than 13, then you have a higher average DPR.
I don't think it's much of a secret that true strike falls off after tier 1 outside of the polymorph shenanigans, though.
Li Shenron
Legend
Hiding because tangential to the main discussion.
As usual the Sage Advice speaks in riddles.
Looking at Twinned Spell, we see that this ability can be used to get close to casting 2 non-cantrips in the same round: if you have 2 slots of a certain level X, you can "burn" one of them as a bonus action to get the X sorcery points required to use Twinned Spell on the other slot.
There are already some obvious caveats, first of all they have to be same spell, but then technically they are really just 1 casting, so among other things it takes a single counterspell to stop them.
So probably the first intent is to simply limit the general usefulness of Twinned Spell to make it less likely that a Sorcerer uses it every single round, consuming her slots at double speed to cast 2 spells for the whole battle. So they put more limitations on which spells you can use it with, but at this point which spells to ban is still arbitrary (for example, they could have said "you can't Twin spells of your current highest spell level", or forbidding concentration spells or spells longer than instantaneous...).
But the second intent is probably for playability's sake to avoid Twinned Spell to cause too many rolls at once. That's why you can't Twin area spells, otherwise you might trigger a lot of saves (notice that perhaps for the same reason they did not design a metamagic which e.g. doubles a spell area).
Why then no "self" spells? Most self spells don't stack with themselves or simply don't make sense to cast twice anyway. However, some self spells are actually... area spells! For example Lightning Bolt or Prismatic Spray. Basically if the "area" starts from the caster, the spell usually has Range: Self.
On the other hand, I think the Sage is wrong when he says that a spell is disqualified if "it can target an object". Nowhere in the RAW it says something like that, it only says "targets only one creature" which is not about the spell in general but it's about a particular casting of that spell. In fact the RAW also says "To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level" (which is once again to avoid lots of rolls if you Twinned a Magic Missile or Scorching Ray even directing all bolts the same creature). If you can Twin a 1st-level Charm Person because it doesn't matter that the spell can't be twinned when you cast it on multiple targets, then you can Twin a Dispel Magic cast on a creature because it doesn't matter that the spell can't be twinned when cast on an object. Unless they update the errata to "To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting an object or more than one creature at the spell’s current level" the RAW allows to Twin a Dispel Magic or Remove Curse, as long as you cast it on a creature.
But generally speaking, I cannot think of any ineligible spell which would truly break the game if you allow it to be Twinned. Not a spell casting an object for example, but neither Fireball to be honest.
And I generally despise this design approach of adding spanners in the works just to indirectly tone down a character ability, because a savvy gamer will always find enough particular spells which do qualify and will happily use Twinned Spell every round anyway. If they wanted to prevent this sort of abuse, they should have directly prevented it, maybe putting a spell level limit or another usage limit.
As usual the Sage Advice speaks in riddles.
Looking at Twinned Spell, we see that this ability can be used to get close to casting 2 non-cantrips in the same round: if you have 2 slots of a certain level X, you can "burn" one of them as a bonus action to get the X sorcery points required to use Twinned Spell on the other slot.
There are already some obvious caveats, first of all they have to be same spell, but then technically they are really just 1 casting, so among other things it takes a single counterspell to stop them.
So probably the first intent is to simply limit the general usefulness of Twinned Spell to make it less likely that a Sorcerer uses it every single round, consuming her slots at double speed to cast 2 spells for the whole battle. So they put more limitations on which spells you can use it with, but at this point which spells to ban is still arbitrary (for example, they could have said "you can't Twin spells of your current highest spell level", or forbidding concentration spells or spells longer than instantaneous...).
But the second intent is probably for playability's sake to avoid Twinned Spell to cause too many rolls at once. That's why you can't Twin area spells, otherwise you might trigger a lot of saves (notice that perhaps for the same reason they did not design a metamagic which e.g. doubles a spell area).
Why then no "self" spells? Most self spells don't stack with themselves or simply don't make sense to cast twice anyway. However, some self spells are actually... area spells! For example Lightning Bolt or Prismatic Spray. Basically if the "area" starts from the caster, the spell usually has Range: Self.
On the other hand, I think the Sage is wrong when he says that a spell is disqualified if "it can target an object". Nowhere in the RAW it says something like that, it only says "targets only one creature" which is not about the spell in general but it's about a particular casting of that spell. In fact the RAW also says "To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level" (which is once again to avoid lots of rolls if you Twinned a Magic Missile or Scorching Ray even directing all bolts the same creature). If you can Twin a 1st-level Charm Person because it doesn't matter that the spell can't be twinned when you cast it on multiple targets, then you can Twin a Dispel Magic cast on a creature because it doesn't matter that the spell can't be twinned when cast on an object. Unless they update the errata to "To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting an object or more than one creature at the spell’s current level" the RAW allows to Twin a Dispel Magic or Remove Curse, as long as you cast it on a creature.
But generally speaking, I cannot think of any ineligible spell which would truly break the game if you allow it to be Twinned. Not a spell casting an object for example, but neither Fireball to be honest.
And I generally despise this design approach of adding spanners in the works just to indirectly tone down a character ability, because a savvy gamer will always find enough particular spells which do qualify and will happily use Twinned Spell every round anyway. If they wanted to prevent this sort of abuse, they should have directly prevented it, maybe putting a spell level limit or another usage limit.
jaelis
Oh this is where the title goes?
If you're setting up some awesome battle-winning attack, wouldn't it be better to have an ally use help, so you can cast it earlier? And if you're on your own, now you have to really worry about concentration.
Asisreo
Patron Badass
Perhaps, but maybe the ally in your enemy's face doesn't really want to sacrifice his action because it may be valuable to keep him alive and the spellcaster might not want to get close enough to provide melee, since he'd need to be within 5ft. It may also be dangerous because they may have legendary actions so they might just attack before your initiative and kill the helper anyways.
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