D&D 5E Blees Still Broken/OP?

[Ovinomancer]

Math time. Not including blesses saving throw bonus, just damage.


Worst condition. 1 attacker with 1d8+3.
1d8+3 * .125 = 0.9375 damage per round.

Moderate condition. 2 attackers with 1d8+4 and 2 attacks, 1 with sharp shooter.
(2d8+18) * .125 * 2= 6.75 damage per round.

Optimal bless condition of 3 attackers with 1d8+5, sharpshooter, and 4 attacks.
(3d8+45) * .125 * 4 = 29.25 damage per round.


Spiritual Weapon.
1d8+3 * .60 = 4.5 damage per round. No concentration, cast / maintain with a bonus action. (so 1 extra sacred flame).

Spiritual Guardian.
3d8 * .6 + 3d8*.4/2 = 10.8 damage per round. AoE.


So bless is only broken if you build around it. Though i still think it should be moved up to a level 2 spell.

Quibbles with your math.

1) Spiritual Guardian should be doing 9.2 damage by your calculation, not 10.8.

2) your moderate condition is pretty lackluster. Except in very small parties, the odds of only blessing 2 people is pretty small, and would be the exception rather than the rule. Also, at 5th, my party had a ranger (slayer), polearm paladin, and a monk as the front line (supported by a cleric and a bard). The average damage for the ranger was 30.5/rnd (with mark and a +1 bow, so a 2d8+d6+5 and a d8+d6+5). The paladin was 25.5 (d10+4+d10+4+d4+4), and the monk was 20.5 (d6+3 x3) [see, one of them wasn't optimized!, actually only the ranger had a true 18 stat, the paladin had gauntlets, and the monk a +3 dex.]

So a grand total of a possible 76.5 damage a round, without spells (other than mark), crits, smites, or flurries. By that math, bless increases average damage per round by a little more than 9.5. That tops everything except a Spiritual Guardians that has more than one person in the AOE. Over the course of a 3 round combat, that's almost 30 more damage dealt.

Bless is, by far, not the best spell. It's conditional, highly contingent on party makeup, and has strong competition for the concentration slot at higher levels. But your analysis seems heavily slanted towards downplaying the merit that it does have. It's a solid spell, a workhorse even, and not some trivially useful spell that appears better than it is. It's exactly as good as it appears.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It was the way it was misleadingly worded, making it seem better than it really is in play. Celtavian's original post strongly alluded to [/i]bless[/i] being so great because of the constant benefit it provides. But its not providing that bonus to "all" their rolls. Just the ones dureing the short duration the spell is active. And a cleric, in practical play, is not likely to be able to have bless up for everything. That was only ever my point. Outside of white-room analysis, bless's short duration, concentration requirement, and competition with the limited daily resource of spell slots, has shown my IMX to be extremely hard to have reliably active for the bulk of an adventuring day's encounters.

But it's all good. Celtavian clarified his stance and agreed with me.

Oh, is that what happened.

 

[Prism]

A big part of bless's issue is that it scales.

It's fine from 1-4, but as soon as you hit 5, the moderate use case jumps to dealing 13.5 damage per round.

Ah I thought you had factored that in by saying two attackers with 2 attacks. Your damage calculations seem to suggest two attacks

 

[Celtavian]

The +1d4 from bless is extremely helpful when using the -5/-10 feats. I have yet to play a game where a few of the players did not take those feats. My players are min-maxers. We have played multiple campaigns and not one has failed to have a -5/+10 feat user. Our first campaign was Great Weapon Master, every other campaign has been one or more people with Sharpshooter. Bless is quite powerful in conjunction with those feats as we have discussed in many previous threads.

As far as spiritual weapon goes, why not cast spell and spiritual weapon? Then you get a boost to hit with your spiritual weapon. Then again spiritual weapon isn't as great as it appears to be. I've found moving it around a combat field often leaves it inactive for a round or two nearly every battle. Using your bonus action for something like healing word or another sell often comes up meaning you wasted a slot on a spell you don't get to use very much. When I first made my cleric, I thought spiritual weapon was great. Then I started using it in battle and found many times that it wasn't as useful as I thought it would be. Creatures move around a lot. It's almost useless in ranged battles, against flying creatures, or creatures that move a lot like Legendary Creatures. It was pretty nifty when I could wail away. That was pretty rare as the group's cleric.

Spiritual Guardians is awesome when it works. That's a fun spell. It is also a spell that competes with other spells and requires you move into combat range. Often creatures consider it a priority to end the spell and end up directing a lot of attacks at the cleric. That can be very painful. It's not often a great strategy to have the cleric paint himself with a big old "kill me" sign.

One of the other nice features of bless is it isn't visible. You don't have to move to keep it active once it is cast. It takes no action to continue. It boosts other spells you might use like resonating bolt or your melee attack. Enemies don't have to stay in visible range. In general, it's very hard to justify using a 3rd level spell to dispel a first level spell that is difficult to see the effect of.

 

[famousringo]

A big part of bless's issue is that it scales.

It's fine from 1-4, but as soon as you hit 5, the moderate use case jumps to dealing 13.5 damage per round.

With bounded accuracy, everything that affects rolls scales. Shield scales because it protects you from bigger hits. Faerie Fire scales because your party gets more attacks. Keeping buffs and debuffs effective at high level is a deliberate feature of the game, not just for Bless.

Where Bless wins over other buffs is the sheer breadth of improving all rolls. It's a buff for all seasons and it's cheap, so if you don't have any better ideas on what you should use your concentration on, Bless is a solid bet.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Bless is not heavily used at my table. It comes out now and then, but the "Top 3" (at 1st level, not counting Domain spells) at my table are cure wounds, healing word, and shield of faith. Bless is probably the #4 choice, ahead of inflict wounds and command.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I'm surprised that Warding Bond doesn't get more attention. I rarely see it mentioned, and yet especially for Life Clerics (who have an otherwise-semi-useless "Heal self whenever you heal someone else feature") it's no-concentration +1 AC, +1 to saves, resistance to everything for one of your buddies for a whole hour, at the cost of one spell slot and a share in the damage. What's not to like? (Okay, the potential disruption to your own Concentration is not to like. But aside from that...)

Anyway, if Shield of Faith is popular at your table, I would expect Warding Bond to be popular too.

 

[TwoSix]

This is a bit of a tangent, but I'm surprised that Warding Bond doesn't get more attention. I rarely see it mentioned, and yet especially for Life Clerics (who have an otherwise-semi-useless "Heal self whenever you heal someone else feature") it's no-concentration +1 AC, +1 to saves, resistance to everything for one of your buddies for a whole hour, at the cost of one spell slot and a share in the damage. What's not to like? (Okay, the potential disruption to your own Concentration is not to like. But aside from that...)

Anyway, if Shield of Faith is popular at your table, I would expect Warding Bond to be popular too.

Warding Bond is a great spell. My last session, it singlehandedly kept our fighter up. Downside was it put me at 2 death saves.

 

[Zardnaar]

The +1d4 from bless is extremely helpful when using the -5/-10 feats. I have yet to play a game where a few of the players did not take those feats. My players are min-maxers. We have played multiple campaigns and not one has failed to have a -5/+10 feat user. Our first campaign was Great Weapon Master, every other campaign has been one or more people with Sharpshooter. Bless is quite powerful in conjunction with those feats as we have discussed in many previous threads.

As far as spiritual weapon goes, why not cast spell and spiritual weapon? Then you get a boost to hit with your spiritual weapon. Then again spiritual weapon isn't as great as it appears to be. I've found moving it around a combat field often leaves it inactive for a round or two nearly every battle. Using your bonus action for something like healing word or another sell often comes up meaning you wasted a slot on a spell you don't get to use very much. When I first made my cleric, I thought spiritual weapon was great. Then I started using it in battle and found many times that it wasn't as useful as I thought it would be. Creatures move around a lot. It's almost useless in ranged battles, against flying creatures, or creatures that move a lot like Legendary Creatures. It was pretty nifty when I could wail away. That was pretty rare as the group's cleric.

Spiritual Guardians is awesome when it works. That's a fun spell. It is also a spell that competes with other spells and requires you move into combat range. Often creatures consider it a priority to end the spell and end up directing a lot of attacks at the cleric. That can be very painful. It's not often a great strategy to have the cleric paint himself with a big old "kill me" sign.

One of the other nice features of bless is it isn't visible. You don't have to move to keep it active once it is cast. It takes no action to continue. It boosts other spells you might use like resonating bolt or your melee attack. Enemies don't have to stay in visible range. In general, it's very hard to justify using a 3rd level spell to dispel a first level spell that is difficult to see the effect of.

You can't cast bless and another spell in the same round unless it is a cantrip IIRC.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Warding Bond is a great spell. My last session, it singlehandedly kept our fighter up. Downside was it put me at 2 death saves.

Warding bond is great. Especially when you have plenty of options to heal yourself And even better when someone in your party has Inspiring Leader feat and said fighter also has heavy armor mastery.

 

[TwoSix]

Warding bond is great. Especially when you have plenty of options to heal yourself And even better when someone in your party has Inspiring Leader feat and said fighter also has heavy armor mastery.

I'm a life cleric with the Healer feat, so I have lots of options to heal myself. The problem when I go down is that no one else does, because I'm so good at it.