D&D 5E Analyzing Bless

[Zardnaar]

The fact the you can compare bless to a level 3 spell indicates how OP it is lol. We have used it over spiritual guardians as you can hit 5 people with it and SG is not so great at range. Blessing 5 people is kinda good.

5E spells tend to deal crazy amount if damage (4d6 and 3d10 inflict/guiding bolt) but NPCs have crazy amounts of hit points (59 hp Ogres). If you want to be really good at combat you deal crazy amounts of dmaage (bless + eldritch blast also works no feats required), or you use save or suck spells and ignore hit points.

 

[TwoSix]

Bless is great. Sometimes. But it doesn't always make everything better. Nor solve every problem.

Like most abilities that provide a small bonus, most of the time it doesn't matter, but when it does matter, you REALLY notice how much it matters.

("Oh man, I failed that save.
Did you add the d4 from my Bless?
No...and now I saved versus that Finger of Death! Thanks, bless!")

 

[Corwin]

Like most abilities that provide a small bonus, most of the time it doesn't matter, but when it does matter, you REALLY notice how much it matters.

("Oh man, I failed that save.
Did you add the d4 from my Bless?
No...and now I saved versus that Finger of Death! Thanks, bless!")

Yeah. Which, to me at least, means working as intended. If it didn't do this, what'd be the point, right?

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah. Which, to me at least, means working as intended. If it didn't do this, what'd be the point, right?

Absolutely. Nothing wrong with a strong, fallback low-level spell which helps to fill a class niche, which is exactly what bless does.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

1. The size of the party doesn't matter much with bless.

It matters tremendously. For example, Bless really sucks in a party with exactly one character. It isn't very good in a party with only two characters. If you are in a gaming group whose size can change radically from session to session, reflexive belief in the awesome power of Bless will not serve you well.

It's the composition. If you have 50% of your party as damage dealer type characters then this analysis will hold. If you have 2/3 of your party as damage dealers then you may want to revisit and look at such a party. If you have 1/3 of your party as damage dealers then you may want to revisit and take a look as well because those scenarios will change things.

I did talk about this.

Party size will have a much more limited impact than composition.

No, as described above and previously: As the size of a party increases, the number of targets increases, first allowing Bless to be fully utilized and then allowing the caster to cherry pick targets.

2. Bless absolutely does do more when extra abilities are added in.

If by 'extra abilities', you mean things like Assassinate and Action Surge and Smite, I believe I addressed this.

You could easily add such abilities into the comparison to see the effects...

Not easily: There are many such abilities, and they can stack. Conversely, there are abilities and situations that detract from Bless. (Such as advantage.)

3. Yep chance to hit matters which is why I picked 50% chance to hit for my comparison on the outset. (I thought this was obvious to most people but thanks for spelling it out).

No problem. Based on some of the comments to your threat, arguing that target AC didn't matter, it was not obvious to everyone.

4. Bless is good when someone attacks at disadvantage but for a different reason than you list. The lower a party memebers chance to hit the more bless helps.

Um, that *is* what I said: Bless shines more as it becomes more difficult to hit a target. Disadvantage and high AC are the two usual causes of this. I also called out the 1d4 reroll because it is important. When you have advantage is it not rerolled; when you have disadvantage it is not rerolled.

5. Yep, I imagine the -5/+10 feats make bless even better. In fact with those feats and some nice magic items bless may very well be OP and better than nearly every other spell you have access to. Someone else can do the analysis if they want

Powerful, but not OP. And its power is mitigated by the fact that the caster helps other characters shine. And Bless is often not the answer. It works well with the -5/+10 feats because Bless improves when attacks become more difficult, and the feats improve as it becomes easier to hit. Indeed, someone else .

6. Yep, in certain situations bless will be better than spirit guardians etc. I don't think many have a problem with a level 1 spell being situationally better than a 3rd level spell as long as it isn't nearly always better than a 3rd level spell.

I don't think it is. Spirit Guardians is an awesome spell that includes some control; Bless is useless for this. And when it becomes necessary to Revivify someone, Bless is blown out of the water. And, because party size does matter, the efficiency of Bless decreases as the caster upcasts to include lower-priority targets. Anyway, Ken

 

[FrogReaver]

I think I've figured out the internets problem. Anytime someone tries to generalize someone goes out of their way to state nope you can't generalize because it might happen some very rare way. So basically the internet is left with meaningless corner case examples and no general rules of thumb to build anything on

 

[Corwin]

I think I've figured out the internets problem. Anytime someone tries to generalize someone goes out of their way to state nope you can't generalize because it might happen some very rare way. So basically the internet is left with meaningless corner case examples and no general rules of thumb to build anything on

Whoa whoa whoa. I think you are painting the internet with too broad a brush. You should have specified that your theory only applies to EN World subforums where FrogReaver is commenting on the nature of internet discussions being too corner case.

 

[FrogReaver]

The fact the you can compare bless to a level 3 spell indicates how OP it is lol. We have used it over spiritual guardians as you can hit 5 people with it and SG is not so great at range. Blessing 5 people is kinda good.

5E spells tend to deal crazy amount if damage (4d6 and 3d10 inflict/guiding bolt) but NPCs have crazy amounts of hit points (59 hp Ogres). If you want to be really good at combat you deal crazy amounts of dmaage (bless + eldritch blast also works no feats required), or you use save or suck spells and ignore hit points.

Is it OP compared to most other level 1 spells at level 1? I'd say so. Is it OP when considering the -5/+10 power attack feats. I'd say probably. Is it OP compared to 3rd and higher level spells. I'd say no.

So IMO, it depends on which category of OPness you are talking about.

 

[FrogReaver]

The fact the you can compare bless to a level 3 spell indicates how OP it is lol. We have used it over spiritual guardians as you can hit 5 people with it and SG is not so great at range. Blessing 5 people is kinda good.

5E spells tend to deal crazy amount if damage (4d6 and 3d10 inflict/guiding bolt) but NPCs have crazy amounts of hit points (59 hp Ogres). If you want to be really good at combat you deal crazy amounts of dmaage (bless + eldritch blast also works no feats required), or you use save or suck spells and ignore hit points.

Is it OP compared to most other level 1 spells at level 1? I'd say so. Is it OP when considering the -5/+10 power attack feats. I'd say probably. Is it OP compared to 3rd and higher level spells. I'd say no.

So IMO, it depends on which category of OPness you are talking about.

 

[FrogReaver]

Hi, It matters tremendously. For example, Bless really sucks in a party with exactly one character. It isn't very good in a party with only two characters. If you are in a gaming group whose size can change radically from session to session, reflexive belief in the awesome power of Bless will not serve you well. I did talk about this. No, as described above and previously: As the size of a party increases, the number of targets increases, first allowing Bless to be fully utilized and then allowing the caster to cherry pick targets. If by 'extra abilities', you mean things like Assassinate and Action Surge and Smite, I believe I addressed this. Not easily: There are many such abilities, and they can stack. Conversely, there are abilities and situations that detract from Bless. (Such as advantage.) No problem. Based on some of the comments to your threat, arguing that target AC didn't matter, it was not obvious to everyone. Um, that *is* what I said: Bless shines more as it becomes more difficult to hit a target. Disadvantage and high AC are the two usual causes of this. I also called out the 1d4 reroll because it is important. When you have advantage is it not rerolled; when you have disadvantage it is not rerolled. Powerful, but not OP. And its power is mitigated by the fact that the caster helps other characters shine. And Bless is often not the answer. It works well with the -5/+10 feats because Bless improves when attacks become more difficult, and the feats improve as it becomes easier to hit. Indeed, someone else . I don't think it is. Spirit Guardians is an awesome spell that includes some control; Bless is useless for this. And when it becomes necessary to Revivify someone, Bless is blown out of the water. And, because party size does matter, the efficiency of Bless decreases as the caster upcasts to include lower-priority targets. Anyway, Ken

1. I'm not even going to comment on how silly it is to bring up a 1 character party. Like seriously that's the best objection you can find?

2. A party with 2 characters. Let's look at that. I'll take the lowest and highest damage characters from my 6 character example. Since there are only 2 characters both get blessed. 100% and 270%. That's 1480% over 4 rounds. If both are bless the damage goes up to 16.5%. Didn't I compute 15% for the 6 man party? LOL. The smaller party size actually did slightly better with bless even though I only had 1 good target for bless.

What was you saying again about lower player parties benefiting significantly less from bless? As long as the 50-50 split of strong attacking characters vs weak attacking characters is kept bless will stay roughly equal in any realistic party composition.

3. I agreed with you that bless does more with extra abilities added in and you reply with "I addressed this". Come on man. There's no need post something and then when someone agrees with you to say "I already said that". Like what the heck are you even going for with your comment? Just trying to make me mad?

4. It's easy if you know what abilities or combinations of abilities you want to compare. I'm not sure why you would dispute that. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you mean its not easy to do a total comparison of all abilities because there are a lot of them and it would take forever in which case you would be right. But why even bring that up. Do you just enjoy bringing up super obvious things even when it's obvious if you take 2 seconds and think about what someone is saying that they obviously aren't speaking of things in the way you are trying to disagree about.

4b. I agree. You are correct. There are many abilities and situations that detract from blesses usefulness.

5. If you were saying that bless is good when attacking with disadvantage because you have a lower effective chance to hit pre d4 bless dice then I misunderstood and I am sorry. Looks like we both agree here as well

6. In regards to the -5/+10 feat Very Powerful yes. OP possibly. You may not like the term OP and many don't because it doesn't really convey as much information as the speaker thinks it conveys. There are different types of OP as I brought up earlier in a reply to another poster. I'm fairly certain we all can already agree that bless is probably the best level 1 spell in the game. It may not be the best in every situation etc.... but I can't think of many level 1 spells that start of solid and scale like bless does. In some sense it being the best level one spell in the game makes it OP. However, that isn't the kind of OPness we are really talking about. If bless as a level 1 spell was pretty much the only spell worth casting for damage in every tier of the game even when comparing higher tier spells then we have a problem. I actually think it may end up being that way with 2-3 power attack characters and a few magic items. Do you think it's impossible for it to reach that level of effectiveness for bless? I think it's possible but I would have to do the analysis on it to find out for sure.

7. If I understand you correctly you say that you don't think bless is situationally better than a 3rd level spell like spirit guardians. Instead of arguing that case and telling me why bless is not situationally better than those you instead tell me about specific situations where spirit guardians and revifify are better than bless. Your not giving valid points that support your stance there. Everything you said is true about spirit guardians and revifify being situationally better than bless but you didn't show that bless was not situationally better than them.

8. Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to say I disagree and maybe you shouldn't be so quick to say "i already said that"?