D&D 5E Chill touch vs Troll regeneration

[FormerlyHemlock]

That's not a bad way to look at it.

I thought RAW did treat a disintegrate VIII as a level 8 spell. That's how I've been playing it.

For the most part it does, but there are exceptions in specific spells and monster abilities. Take Globe of Invulnerability for example. The spell says,

Any spell of 5th level or lower cast from outside
the barrier can’t affect creatures or objects within it,
even if the spell is cast using a higher level spell slot.

I think that's bogus--it breaks my suspension of disbelief and the logic behind what expending a higher-level spell slot really, physically means. Therefore, at my table I run it differently. Or will, anyway, the first time it comes up.

AFB, but IIRC Tiamat's spell immunity works the same way: explicitly calls out that overcasting doesn't help. Again, bogus, won't be used by me.

 

[dave2008]

For the most part it does, but there are exceptions in specific spells and monster abilities. Take Globe of Invulnerability for example. The spell says,



I think that's bogus--it breaks my suspension of disbelief and the logic behind what expending a higher-level spell slot really, physically means. Therefore, at my table I run it differently. Or will, anyway, the first time it comes up.

AFB, but IIRC Tiamat's spell immunity works the same way: explicitly calls out that overcasting doesn't help. Again, bogus, won't be used by me.

Thank you for the clarification

 

[matskralc]

AFB, but IIRC Tiamat's spell immunity works the same way: explicitly calls out that overcasting doesn't help. Again, bogus, won't be used by me.

Nope.

"Limited Magic Immunity. Unless she wishes to be affected, Tiamat is immune to spells of 6th level or lower. She has advantage on saving throws against all other spells and magical effects." - Rise of Tiamat, p 92.

So a wizard uses his 7th-and-higher slots for things like Finger of Death or Sunburst or to upcast something like Sunbeam or Bigby's Hand or Blight, which all give damage even on a save (or require an attack roll, like Bigby's Hand). Then his 6th-and-lower slots are used for buffs like Fly or Haste or even Protection from Energy.

I don't necessarily see how it's the game's problem when a player wants all the advantages that he wants without paying any of the (opportunity) costs associated with getting them.

EDIT: I also don't see the problem with it being hard to kill a CR 30 goddess​.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Nope.

"Limited Magic Immunity. Unless she wishes to be affected, Tiamat is immune to spells of 6th level or lower. She has advantage on saving throws against all other spells and magical effects." - Rise of Tiamat, p 92.

So a wizard uses his 7th-and-higher slots for things like Finger of Death or Sunburst or to upcast something like Sunbeam or Bigby's Hand or Blight, which all give damage even on a save (or require an attack roll, like Bigby's Hand). Then his 6th-and-lower slots are used for buffs like Fly or Haste or even Protection from Energy.

I don't necessarily see how it's the game's problem when a player wants all the advantages that he wants without paying any of the (opportunity) costs associated with getting them.

EDIT: I also don't see the problem with it being hard to kill a CR 30 goddess​.

Excellent, thanks for checking. Let me be clear: I'm not saying the way Globe of Invulnerability works is bogus because it makes killing things in a Globe of Invulnerability hard. (It's not, really--you just wait a minute behind full cover for the Globe of Invulnerability to expire.) I'm saying it's bogus because it's inconsistent with the rest of the PHB. It offends my suspension of disbelief. It's not an argument about game balance at all.

So it looks like one way for an all-wizard party to kill Tiamat could potentially be massed castings of Magic Missile VII, VIII, and IX from 4 Evokers and their Simulacra. At 93.50 per Magic Missile IX, four evokers plus four evoker Simulacra could do 748 damage to Tiamat in the first round, followed by 680 more in the second round via Magic Missile VIII. AFB, but I think she has about 700 HP. That means that there is at least a theoretical path to victory if they can manage to get all eight wizard(ish)s within 120' of her on the same round, possibly by leveraging Phantom Steed and/or Haste. (A Hasted Phantom Steed can travel 600' per round.)

The path to victory gets considerably easier if one of the Simulacra True Polymorphs itself into a gargantuan ancient white dragon and successfully grapples Tiamat to the ground. Tiamat without mobility is easy meat.

And that is the story of how the theorycrafted Circle of Four Archwizards came together to notionally destroy a great menace to Greyhawk.

(It gets more interesting if the Archwizards have to be built for general adventuring instead of specifically Tiamat-slaying. They're unlikely to all be evokers, for instance. I think it's still doable, but challenging.)

 

[matskralc]

Excellent, thanks for checking. Let me be clear: I'm not saying the way Globe of Invulnerability works is bogus because it makes killing things in a Globe of Invulnerability hard. (It's not, really--you just wait a minute behind full cover for the Globe of Invulnerability to expire.) I'm saying it's bogus because it's inconsistent with the rest of the PHB. It offends my suspension of disbelief. It's not an argument about game balance at all.

Whoops, sorry. I didn't mean to imply that you were complaining about game balance. That was in reference to Celtavian complaining about how hard it is for a Wizard to kill Tiamat. I am inclined to agree with your take on Globe of Invulnerability and I fully agree with your statement that you see magic immunity as an opportunity to let the spotlight shine on the martial classes.

EDIT: It is extremely easy for the martial classes to be overshadowed by the full casters, especially when full casters aren't being drained of their resources during an appropriately challenging adventuring day! *ducks*

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think the basic problem can be summed up thusly:

Easy ways to shut down significant features of solos are bad.

I agree you can't just remove individual cantrip from the game. Blanket immunity against whole categories of features are also bad because it's impossible to fully investigate the consequences.

Look, even if Chill Touch is "just" a cantrip, when a level 17 caster uses it, it's not "just" a cantrip any longer. Now it's a feature that costs the full action of a level 17 caster! That is, the opportunity cost of this action is "could've cast Wish but didn't".

To me, this means that if a Wizard 17 spends his whole action on shutting down regeneration he should have a very reasonable chance of doing so. The regen is after all only shut down for a single round. And you do need to hit the monster's AC (though admittedly that won't be too difficult).

So if Tiamat or Juiblex is advancing upon the party amidst its most trusted half dozen guards and consorts, fine. Chill Touch does great damage (4d8 plus whatever the regen rate is). But the Wizard would probably have made great damage anyway.

And if the other monsters also have regen, theirs aren't turned off.

But when the monster is solo, everything changes.

Then the group has five actions to Juiblex' one. Suddenly spending one of them on keeping regeneration out of the picture isn't so expensive anymore. It creates a new fight, where the group has four actions to Juiblex' one - but now his entire side doesn't have regeneration at all any longer!

That's an curious way of looking at it, if you don't mind my saying so. I mean, if Jubilex's entourage doesn't have regeneration and you suppress Jubilex's regeneration, his entire side no longer has regeneration, but so what? It's 20 hp that his side doesn't regain, big whoop. At the levels which you're likely to face Jubilex at, that's probably about one attack from the Battlemaster. You could have accomplished more with Fireball or Meteor Swarm, both of which guarantee suppression of his regeneration, unlike Chill Touch which does nothing on a miss.

Look at it this way. There are 350+ creatures in the Monster Manual, by page count alone. By a quick count (I might have missed something) there are 12 creatures with regeneration in the MM. Of those, almost half are Slaad, which are by no means guaranteed to appear in every campaign unless the DM really has a thing for chaotic neutral toad dudes. So taking the remaining 7, less than 0.02% of the monsters in the MM have regeneration.

Even if we accept on face value that Chill Touch is OP against regenerating opponents, a spell that is OP against 0.02% of monsters isn't all that OP. Even if we include Slaad and all creatures with at least one healing ability, I'd guess that we're still dealing with less than 1% of the MM.

IMO, whether or not you feel that suppressing HP recovery is too powerful for a cantrip, Chill Touch simply isn't that powerful in perspective. I suppose if the DM went out of his way to homebrew lots of regenerating monsters I might be inclined to change my opinion, if only with respect to that particular campaign.

Having played a wizard in the Tiamat encounter, feeling completely useless other than casting a fly spell wasn't fun. I had exactly two spell slots to use against her. A 7th and 8th level slot. She would have likely saved or used Legendary Resistance to render those nearly ineffective. It's not fun for the player to be in that situation. It never was, not even when you ran into 90% plus magic resistant creatures back in 1st edition. It's not fun in a game with less spell slots. I doubt I'll use pure magic immunity as an ability for enemies again seeing the effect it had when combined with Legendary Resistance in that Tiamat fight.

While I freely admit that the capstone boss fight might not be the best place for it, I actually like those types of fights in general. I find it enjoyable to have to come up with unconventional solutions, such as using spells to make indirect attacks, rather than just spamming Fireball.

 

[Yardiff]

By the book, chill touch would completely shut down a troll's regen, and I see no reason not to go by the book on this. Fire bolt is a better spell 95% of the time and also shuts down troll regen; why deprive the chill touch user of the one benefit chill touch offers?

Actually by the book "Only acid and fire can arrest the regenerative properties of a troll's flesh."

In the MM there are many creatures that have regeneration no all of them say there is a specific way that it can be shut down such as "Regeneration. The oni regains 10 hit points at the start of its
turn if it has at least 1 hit point."

SO by the book chill touch wont shut down troll regen but can shut down any regen that doesn't have a specific counter to shut regen down.

This is my take by reading the books.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Look at it this way. There are 350+ creatures in the Monster Manual, by page count alone. By a quick count (I might have missed something) there are 12 creatures with regeneration in the MM. Of those, almost half are Slaad, which are by no means guaranteed to appear in every campaign unless the DM really has a thing for chaotic neutral toad dudes. So taking the remaining 7, less than 0.02% of the monsters in the MM have regeneration.

I have a thing for chaotic neutral toad dudes.

Not a "thing", though. Just a thing, apparently.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I have a thing for chaotic neutral toad dudes.

Not a "thing", though. Just a thing, apparently.

I'm just saying that, with the exception of DMs who really like slaad and make an extra effort to work them into the campaign, they're not really the sort of creatures that appear in most campaigns. Goblins and trolls I would expect but slaad, not so much.

Even if you include slaad in the sums you're still only looking at around 0.03% of creatures in the MM being regenerating creatures, and that's low balling the monster count by using page count instead of creature count.

There simply aren't that many regenerating creatures in the game to make Chill Touch an OP spell. It's like claiming that the Person spells (Charm Person, Hold Person) are OP in an all humanoid campaign. There's certainly an argument to be made there. However, if you run a campaign more akin to the distribution of the MM, then those spells suddenly aren't all that great, because in the vast majority of encounters they are essentially useless.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm just saying that, with the exception of DMs who really like slaad and make an extra effort to work them into the campaign, they're not really the sort of creatures that appear in most campaigns. Goblins and trolls I would expect but slaad, not so much.

Even if you include slaad in the sums you're still only looking at around 0.03% of creatures in the MM being regenerating creatures, and that's low balling the monster count by using page count instead of creature count.

There simply aren't that many regenerating creatures in the game to make Chill Touch an OP spell. It's like claiming that the Person spells (Charm Person, Hold Person) are OP in an all humanoid campaign. There's certainly an argument to be made there. However, if you run a campaign more akin to the distribution of the MM, then those spells suddenly aren't all that great, because in the vast majority of encounters they are essentially useless.

Being serious for a second here: it's not 0.03%, it's 3%.

Slaad make great opponents IMO because they are relatively beefy and high-CR creatures, and they're easy to produce: a single Red Slaad can impregnate dozens of humanoids with slaad eggs, creating a whole slaad epidemic on its own. Red and Blue Slaad should be by far the most common given the spellcaster requirements on Green+ Slaad, but for any scenario where you'd normally consider orcs, ogres, or giants, Slaad also work well. Their main weakness is their lack of ranged weaponry, so they only work in relatively closed terrain, but their regeneration partially offsets that and prevents them from being whittled to death by regular human troops with longbows. Slaad infestations are fun, especially if you threaten to infect and/or impregnate human peasants if the PCs don't intervene in time.

I don't think Chill Touch is OP, but it's pretty good. Decent damage (d8), good damage type (necrotic is rarely resisted), decent range for a spell (120'). It's on my short list of ranged cantrips to consider taking, and which I have taken in the past. Competitive with Fire Bolt and Ray of Frost IMO.