D&D 5E Crown of Madness not as bad in play as it seems

[ECMO3]

We have a sorcerer who picked up crown of madness way late (at level 8) and in game it has not been as awful as it appears on paper. While the enemy does not attack every turn he is usually effectively out of the fight for several turns. I will also note that we have a Fey Wanderer Ranger in the party too and this certainly helps. Overall it has been pretty effective for a 2nd level slot.

It has generally taken combatants out of fights entirely or for several rounds. The cost is the sorcerer using his action every turn. A few key things I observed:

If the target does not attack, he is not free from the spell he just can act normally, or in reality kind of normally. He is still charmed, this means he can't attack the sorcerer, he can't launch an area of effect that would harm the sorcerer.

If the sorcerer gets in his way the victim needs to walk around him to attack someone else, either going far out of his way or drawing an opportunity attack (with a spell because he has warcaster). The sorcerer has a whip he is not proficient in just to provide a large AOO area to cover.

If the target makes it into melee he can get grappled and moved into an area where he always has one of his allies to attack and it is impossible to escape from the grapple as long as the grappler moves him to a good location because he must use his action to attack.

The sorcerer can still cast action spells using quicken spell.

The real kicker though is when he does save it is a save against being charmed and the Ranger then hits another enemy with Beguiling twist (usually frightened). So when the spell ends the party gets an additional few turns of frightened without concentration out of it.

 

[Lyxen]

It's a fun spell in the arsenal, honestly, after that you will probably hear tons of powergamers explaining to you why it's bad, but if enjoy it, just continue doing so (the sorceress in our BG-DiA uses it now and then and it's fun, admittedly we run much more story/role orientated tables).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I love hearing those stories. It is not uncommon in our games that a "questionable" pick of a spell or a feat or subclass saves the day.
Usually damage is overvalued, but it often comes down to: what 21 points of damage won't solve, 23 damage won't do either. Some creative use of an "underpowered" ability might prove to be invaluable in that situation.

 

[Gadget]

eh...I still think the spell is far to finicky and situational. A Hold Person could almost always have a better effect, though that might not be available to the same number of casters. I'm not saying that all spells need to be perfectly balanced in all situations, but this one really seems to require a lot out of the caster and a fairly high amount of rules parsing to use.

That said, the best use I've seen of this spell is cause an npc to attack their flying mount (I can't remember if it was a griffin or wyvern). It was rather hard for victim put distance between himself and his mount.

 

[jgsugden]

You're stealing one action from a monster, and getting to make a melee attack using the target's attack against one of their allies. That actually is not that bad. However, limiting it to only humanoids keeps it off my list. I'd rather have spells that are not limited to humanoids unless it is a highly humanoid centric game.

 

[Shiroiken]

eh...I still think the spell is far to finicky and situational. A Hold Person could almost always have a better effect, though that might not be available to the same number of casters. I'm not saying that all spells need to be perfectly balanced in all situations, but this one really seems to require a lot out of the caster and a fairly high amount of rules parsing to use.

I just checked. All the base classes that have access to Crown of Madness have access to Hold Person. I don't know about the Artificer, nor 3PP classes.

 

[jgsugden]

This has a few more use cases than Hold Person that make it more versatile. It has longer range, it charms, it has the potential to incite infighting amongst enemies. Consider what happens when the hobgoblin guard to the goblin king suddenly gets a crown above his head and attacks his king when there are no visible enemies nearby.... In a story driven game, that could be a major turn of events.

 

[Stoutstien]

Fat fingered this post

 

[grimslade]

Crown of Madness is a very thematic spell. It makes the PC (or NPC) caster a puppet master or a font of insanity. The spell is situational but very cool to show the horror of Enchantment.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The real kicker though is when he does save it is a save against being charmed and the Ranger then hits another enemy with Beguiling twist (usually frightened). So when the spell ends the party gets an additional few turns of frightened without concentration out of it.

It seems like a Fey Wanderer Ranger on the team would flip the script on the usefulness of a lot of spells and abilities that involve one or more saves against being charmed or frightened.

As for Crown of Madness, I think it is a fine spell when you gain access to it at level 3. At that point the chances of having a humanoid enemy whose attacks do more damage than you can with your action as a full spellcaster are reasonably high, you've got to get the most out of every spell slot, and not upcasting (like the rival Hold Person) is not an issue. I'm surprised you've found it useful at eighth level, but I suppose if you have a Sorcerer who intends to burn metamagic on Quickens anyway the loss of the action just means trading an extra cantrip per round for whatever attacks the Crown of Madness target can do.