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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 9455534" data-attributes="member: 7030563">I am not saying the CME is bad, but it is extremely situational at the level you could do this, in a large part due to the short range and the kind of abilities and legendary actions a single boss creature is going to have and that makes it not OP.At 20th level you can 1-2 round most encounters anyway.  I played tonight, we are playing with five 17th level characters in a published WOTC campaign.  One out of those 7 fights made it to round 3.  Here are the 7 fights we had:The first fight took 2 rounds, but we had it won in 1 (3 Erinyes, 2 Vroks and a Goristo).  We used one 8th level spell (Tsunami) and 1 first level spell (cause Fear) and that ended the encounter .... it just took two rounds to kill the Demons and seriously damage the Erinyes who we were actually allied with.  We then threatened and scared off the damaged Erinyes with a 36 Intimidation check (they would have died in another round certainly).  We actually had the "set up time" you talked about in this one but we did it without using a 9th level slot and to be honest could have done it easily without using an 8th level slot.  Our party took no damage at all.The 2nd through 5th fights were arena fights as part of a plot hook.  It was 3 party members fighting in an Arena (we got short rests between each of these).  We were fighting these with a Fighter11/Barbarian6, Paladin6/Sorcerer11 and a Rogue7/Bard5/Warlock5The 2nd fight was against 3 Barlgura and they did not even get a turn.The 3rd fight was against a Purple Worm and we killed it on the 1st turn of the second round (it did get a turn and did some minor damage to the Rogue and Paladin/Sorc).The 4th was 2 flying Iron Golems that took 2 rounds and signficantly damaged the Paladin/Sorc.The 5th fight was against a Red Abashi and two Horned Devils.  We ended the fight halfway through the 2nd round.  We brought the Abashi to near 0 and he capitulated on his turn. ---- 3 of the 5 party members got the equivalent of a long rest here from a spa in the adventure  ---The 6th fight (with all 5 party members) was against 2 Pit Fiends.  It ended in 2 rounds with one of them dead and one of them banished and we left.The 7th fight is ongoing when we stopped the game for the night.  We are fighting a single Tiefling boss and she has hit us pretty hard.  We just finished the 2nd round.  Two of us are near death but so is she.  She will almost certainly die in the first two turns of the third round unless she downs one of us with a legendary action .... in which case she will die a little later in the third round.  Also she would shred someone with CME standing right next to her with legendary actions and a bonus action stun effect with a 23 save.  She did kill my silence spell and nearly downed me in 2 rounds.  If I had 9th level spells and was concentrating on CME I would have lost that too with the same effect (wasted first action) but using a much higher level slot.Above are 7 fights from a published adventure at 17th level, which is the lowest level you can cast 9th level spells, and this tactic would not have been OP or really even useful in any of those.  In the ones it would have worked in, we easily won with less resources.FWIW my character is a Whispers Bard 5/Hexblade Warlock 5/Swashbuckler Rogue 7 using the 2014 rules and as of right now she has used one 3rd level pact slot, 2 2nd level slots, 2 1st level slots, she has her hexblade curse on the boss we are fighting.  So she is not even really low on resources after all of those fights.[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/126445566[/URL]</blockquote>

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