Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8602968" data-attributes="member: 6799660">I will point out that, other than being tradition, there really isn't a difference between divine hammer, flamestrike, and holy word and Spiritual Weapon, Spirit Guardians, or combat cantrips -- they do the same thing (flamestike in particular is and always has been 'higher level, lower damage fireball' with a few extra nuances thrown in surrounding damage resistance). That said, if you don't like a thing, you don't like it.It is effective, but note that it has plenty of limitations -- it requires concentration (a hard thing to maintain  while shepherding a front-line requiring spell*); it means you aren't concentrating on other, often very important, other concentration spells; it requires you to be in the front line; It damages anything except those things you specify when the spell is cast**.*unless you take two feats to make the saves a semi-sure thing, which is a heavy investment and requires it to be a feat-having game (which are, frankly, a higher-power play experience). ** things you need to be able to see at the time of casting. so no stealthing or invisible allies. No one back behind a bend in the corridors. No innocent prisoners the rogue freed in round 3 and rushed through the battlefield towards supposed safety...That said, it is certainly a powerful spell, and (and others may disagree here) it seems like the Spirit Guardians/Spiritual Weapon combo is an expected part of a cleric's 'boss-fight' strategy -- it's too good and too obvious to have been an accidentally good setup. For that reason, I posit this: if you would rather a front-line cleric go in a-mace-a-swingin', remove the spell, but then give clerics a second attack some time in the 6-8 level range.I think people have brought up the big players: Guidance and Bless bend the curve on skills and spells; Healing Word gets a downed ally up at range from any hit that doesn't kill them outright; Revivify does the same if they were killed; Spirit Guardians/Spiritual Weapon set up a spell-focused combat synergy you dislike. The rest -- well there are certainly powerful spells, but I suspect you already know about them from earlier editions (Resurrection, Plane Shift, Anti-Magic Field, Silence, Stone Shape, and any of the divination spells like Scrying or Divination have effects which can obviate entire obstacles depending on the situation). I don't think there aren't any 'surprise' super-spells in the cleric list after level 3 spells.</blockquote>

Verification