D&D 5E Again the Banishment spell ruined my game !

[Plane Sailing]

Given that your players are clearly abusing the spell,

How is using the spell as it is intended 'abusing' the spell?

Now, you might argue that you don't want a poor mans 'maze' spell available as a 4th level spell, that seems reasonable. If the spell was changed to only banish things which have some other planar connection it would fit more with the traditional banishment, but that would be a bit rough on a sorcerer who has limited spells.

 

[Eric V]

How is using the spell as it is intended 'abusing' the spell?

Now, you might argue that you don't want a poor mans 'maze' spell available as a 4th level spell, that seems reasonable. If the spell was changed to only banish things which have some other planar connection it would fit more with the traditional banishment, but that would be a bit rough on a sorcerer who has limited spells.

Banishment seems like a great spell when the opponent is gone all 10 rounds, and seems like a waste when concentration is ruined on round 2.

 

[fba827]

As a DM, once I stopped worrying about balanced encounters, making all of them challenging, and just focused on the happiness of my players, it became a much better experience for all of us.

So youre saying that you stopped worrying about balance and just focused on giving your players a 'happy ending' (if you know what I mean and I think you do )

*ducks and runs* ... Bad joke, nothing to see here. Move along.

 

[Mistwell]

I think one house rule I might consider is that they don't go to a safe demi-plane while banished - they can go instead to a plane they've been to before. In other words, if the Wizard has allies on the Plane of Fire that they've visited before, they might go there for 10 rounds. And, if they can talk an ally there into helping them, maybe they can bring that ally back with them when they return to the prime material plane.

Bam, the wizard returns...with a pack of Mephits!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think one house rule I might consider is that they don't go to a safe demi-plane while banished - they can go instead to a plane they've been to before. In other words, if the Wizard has allies on the Plane of Fire that they've visited before, they might go there for 10 rounds. And, if they can talk an ally there into helping them, maybe they can bring that ally back with them when they return to the prime material plane.

What's the chance that the Wizard has been there before? And that they'll run into someone friendly? And can convince them to come back and help within a minute?

I'm thinking way less than 1%.

 

[Dausuul]

Banishment seems like a great spell when the opponent is gone all 10 rounds, and seems like a waste when concentration is ruined on round 2.

Yup.

Banishment is an excellent spell, and can swing an encounter under the right circumstances. (The fact that it targets the Charisma save is especially nice, since most monsters have lousy Cha saves... though clerics, ironically, have good ones.) In an encounter with a powerful boss and a bunch of less-powerful-but-not-trivial mooks, it can split the encounter in half and let you mop up efficiently. But it's not a guaranteed win button by any means.

You could do exactly the same thing with Otiluke's resilient sphere. True, the sphere only targets Large or smaller foes--but banishment doesn't put the boss monster in a nice handy bubble that you can roll off a cliff into lava.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Put another way, I don't think Banishment was written with the focus rules in mind and I don't think the focus rules were written with Banishment in mind. It's an unusual circumstance, and I'm just not comfortable with writing it off by saying, "No price in GP, no problem solving required." I see spell components as a roleplaying opportunity. They're there to give casters inspiration for describing their actions. I'm not saying anyone needs to go mining for bat guano; I just doubt the focus rules were intended to brush aside roleplaying hooks.

Agreed, except that I don't think the D&D team wrote the rules this way unintentionally. The PHB has quite a few flavor options that--to a certain subset of players--just beg to be houseruled into hooks.

 

[Mistwell]

What's the chance that the Wizard has been there before? And that they'll run into someone friendly? And can convince them to come back and help within a minute?

I'm thinking way less than 1%.

If the spell is popular and well known, and the house rule says they can choose where they go if they've been to other planes, I don't think it would be that low a chance.

I imagine it would be a scene something like this if cast on a PC:

DM: "You appear in The Conflagratious Tavern, on the Plane of Fire, which you visited last year. You sense an ongoing connection to the Prime Material Plane, with your return imminent. There are about 12 patrons here, mostly Mephits consuming various igneous rocks mixed with intoxicating gasses in flaming mugs. They stare at you, apparently nonplussed by your sudden appearance."

PC: "I holler at them that there's a 50gp ruby and other potential loot in it for any of them that join me in returning to a battle against some Drow scum and their Lolth-worshipping leader!"

DM: "Fine, roll a Charisma (Diplomacy) check, this will be difficult."

PC: [Rolls] A 21!

DM: Good enough [rolls 1d12] 7 of them agree, as they down their remaining drinks in one gulp and scramble next to you."

PC: Those drow are in for a flaming surprise!

 

[the Jester]

I actually think this spell, and this issue, sits at a very important structural point in terms of making the game easy or fun for players, for the reason that Banishment is not really a great spell to use on players. It's a dick move.

Wow, I'm in total disagreement with you here. If it's within the enemy's capabilities and it's the logical move, it's never a "dick move" to use their abilities in a tactically sound way. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that it's doing your players a disservice to softball things, including things like this.

First of all, it removes a player from the action for the duration of a combat, possibly hours of play time ("Sorry, Jerry, hey, while you're out, want to make a quick pizza run?") and secondly, targeted at the right PC (*cough* the Cleric of Life *cough*) in a tough fight, it has the very real potential to be an uncounterable win button.

If removing one specific pc from the field is an "uncounterable win button", then there is a problem far worse than a single spell here.

I flatly disagree that it's an "uncounterable win button" for a bunch of reasons- not least because no one pc's removal, via banishment, sleep, hold person, power word kill or what have you, is EVER an "uncounterable win button" (at least in my campaign)- that implies that the loss of (f'rinstance) the cleric of life leads to an automatic TPK. Never seen it, ever, in 34 years of gaming.

I may not like players, but even I recognize that this combo doesn't just make life hard for them, it breaks the dynamic of the game.

Nope, I don't buy that either. There are often times when, for any number of reasons, one player or another has to sit the game out for a while: they're dead, they're sick or otherwise can't make it to the session, his or her character isn't with the rest of the party, is paralyzed, etc.

And don't forget, banishment is a concentration spell. There are built-in counters to that- break the caster's concentration!

Making Banishment challenging serves /everyone/.

Here, on the other hand, I absolutely agree with you- with the caveat that I mean "the material component part of banishment should be something you need to have, not subbing in an arcane focus or component pouch". To my mind, determining what the material component for a particular enemy ought to be is a fun challenge in itself. (Or it can, and I will go ahead and say should, be.)

 

[AmerginLiath]

I think one house rule I might consider is that they don't go to a safe demi-plane while banished - they can go instead to a plane they've been to before. In other words, if the Wizard has allies on the Plane of Fire that they've visited before, they might go there for 10 rounds. And, if they can talk an ally there into helping them, maybe they can bring that ally back with them when they return to the prime material plane.

Bam, the wizard returns...with a pack of Mephits!

I initially misread that somehow as "Bam, the wizard returns...with a pack of Menthols!" and imagined that you had banished him to Flavor Country!

Honestly, if you feel as a DM that the overuse of Banishment is causing an issue with your design of adventures, the best first step is to discuss it out-of-game with the player in question. It's natural for a Sorcerer to use his particular spells often, since those are his particular spells – he's a specialist by nature. However, you might be able to come to an accommodation over how he uses it (which is a better metagame conceit than purposely designing monsters against a PCs tactic or to have enemies focus on a particular foe for potential tactics).

Or Plan B: if beings keep being banished from that part of the world to some demiplane with such frequency, something might take notice about the seesawing of the walls of reality. Have some warlocks of a Great Old One (high Cha saves!) appear, as someone in the Far Realm has taken notice of such metaphysics and is iNtErEsTeD iN tHiS sItUaTiOn.・.