D&D (2024) Emanation damage point and linked exploits:

[mellored]

well, you are tracking a spell cast by someone, and it should work on someones turn(or "recharge" radiation on that turn)

You cast spirit Guardians and walk past 2 enemies.
One enemy moves out and next to the Barbarian
2 different enemies attack the barbarian
The druid comes up next to you and cast conjure woodland beings.
The enemy next to you goes up and attacks the barbarian.
The Barbarian then punts 2 enemies next to you.

That works fine as written.

also, will we be getting some ruling on "cheese grater" combo with Spikegrowth? haha!

Best I've seen for that is that dragging people moves them to the square you just left.

So you also need to go though the spike. (Heavy armor mastery is nice here).

Pushing works as normal, rewards teamwork, but isn't crazy damage.

Also. Enemies can push and grapple too.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Not really? WotC decided to change the conjure spells to make them different from the Summon X spells

Okay... so let me get this straight.

The conjure line of spells from the '14 PHB were deemed to be too much. And fair enough, I can get behind that decision.

I vaguely recall a UA where the summon line of spells were introduced -- using a unique stat block for the critters summoned, with a small bit of customization, essentially as a replacement for the conjure spells. That works, I've riffed off of these in homebrew, they're fine.

But then in 5e24, we make the summon spells from UA officially how we're doing things... but for some reason we need to keep the conjure spells around, and so the decision is to... make them all really bizarre? Including a couple of emanations that apparently weren't playtested by anyone with -- well, I can't say that part here.

Again, that certainly is a decision that could be made.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

From the 2024 DMG, which presumably the creator of the video hadn't read yet (it wasn't likely even out yet) before making it:

"Players Exploiting the Rules



Combat Is for Enemies. Some rules apply only during combat or while a character is acting in Initiative order. Don’t let players attack each other or helpless creatures to activate those rules.

Seems this would apply to nonsense like the warcaster "allies trigger opportunity attacks that I use to buff/heal".

 

[Selas]

Okay... so let me get this straight.

The conjure line of spells from the '14 PHB were deemed to be too much. And fair enough, I can get behind that decision.

I vaguely recall a UA where the summon line of spells were introduced -- using a unique stat block for the critters summoned, with a small bit of customization, essentially as a replacement for the conjure spells. That works, I've riffed off of these in homebrew, they're fine.

But then in 5e24, we make the summon spells from UA officially how we're doing things... but for some reason we need to keep the conjure spells around, and so the decision is to... make them all really bizarre? Including a couple of emanations that apparently weren't playtested by anyone with -- well, I can't say that part here.

Again, that certainly is a decision that could be made.

The summon spells come from XGE and Tasha's; they're not new. But with their inclusion in the PHB, it made the conjure spells redundant, so they changed those instead.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I noted in the video that Treantmonk made that his example had a LOT of caveats to make it work.

1) The Druid cast Conjure Woodland Beings. They cast Longstrider. The Wizard cast Haste on them. That is 3 active spells on a single character. Two of them explicitly for movement.
2) The Druid was optimized to win initiative, and consistently won initiative on every encounter.
3) He used full surprise rounds which are no longer in the rules.
4) The Druid was specifically an owl which could ignore opportunity attacks and was faster than normal. This may not be a huge consideration, but it is A consideration because Druids have limited forms
5) The entire dungeon was explicitly sound-proofed so that no enemies could hear what was happening.
6) The enemies were either very low health, or consistently failed their saves. He shows the math, each creature should be taking an average of 18 damage on a fail. Even assuming all three saves are failed, that is 48 damage. I know for a fact that CR 3 enemies like Bandit captain's have an average of 60 hp. If your 7th level party is facing a majority of enemies weaker than CR 3, that's potentially an encounter design problem. Assuming the enemies succeed at least one save, they are only taking 42 damage, which is significant, but shouldn't be ending every single encounter before it starts.

That isn't to say I don't see that this is "potentially rules legal", but it feels like it is optimizing the fun out of the game. The INTENT of the change was to allow a character to cast their damaging aura, walk into an enemy group, and damage them on their turn. It feels weird to walk past an enemy who is in your aura, and them be perfectly healthy and fine. It is only when you start optimizing for "how many times can I proc this" that you start seeing any issues at all.

That isn't "how do these designers even have the brain power to tie their own shoes!" but is much more them recognizing... most groups aren't going to optimize then face a literal best case scenario.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They wanted to reduce the amount of things you had to track.

It's very simple and clear to run as written.

And it works fine if you play normally.


My suggestion
"Whenever the Emanation enters a creature's space on your turn...."

Which means that an enemy can trivially run into your damaging aura, attack you and break your concentration, and face no consequences. They could potentially do this AND leave your emanation in the same turn.

The gaming community would then decry how utterly toothless and weak these spells are and how the designers were clearly too incompetent to write good rules.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Okay... so let me get this straight.

The conjure line of spells from the '14 PHB were deemed to be too much. And fair enough, I can get behind that decision.

I vaguely recall a UA where the summon line of spells were introduced -- using a unique stat block for the critters summoned, with a small bit of customization, essentially as a replacement for the conjure spells. That works, I've riffed off of these in homebrew, they're fine.

But then in 5e24, we make the summon spells from UA officially how we're doing things... but for some reason we need to keep the conjure spells around, and so the decision is to... make them all really bizarre? Including a couple of emanations that apparently weren't playtested by anyone with -- well, I can't say that part here.

Again, that certainly is a decision that could be made.

Not quite.

They made a promise to include all the old material in the game. This is partially because they have adventurers written that reference this material. Can't have a friendly druid cast Conjure Animals if Conjure Animals doesn't exist.

The new conjure spell designs WERE PLAYTESTED. All of them. Treantmonk even specifically made a point of rating every single one of them with a perfect score, because he wanted to make sure the old conjure spells were not in the game.

What was not playtested was the new emanation rules. Which 95% are the exact same as the old rules for things like Spirit Guardians. But, to allow a player to cast spirit guardians, and walk through a crowd of zombies, burning the undead as they moved forward (which is something that most players thought they could do) they changed the phrasing.

Instead of the spell only triggering when an enemy enters the space or ends its turn in the space (limited to once per turn), it now triggers when an enemy enters the space, ends their turn in the space or the emanation enters their space (all of this limited to once per turn). The only thing that was done "wrong" was not assuming that people would homebrew surprise rounds against the intent of the rules and that they would do any narrative silly thing to move in and out of the enemy's space every turn AND that this would allow them to do so more often than the old way of just pushing the enemy in and out of the space every single turn (which was the old exploit for hazard zone spells)

 

[mellored]

Which means that an enemy can trivially run into your damaging aura, attack you and break your concentration, and face no consequences.

Wasn't suggesting that change that part.

I suggest.

If you move it over someone on your turn.
If they move into it.
If they end their turn there.
-max once per turn.


That only nerfs the readied action and allies dragging you around part, without adding more things to track.

Minimal change to stop the worst offense.

If you got another suggestion, by all means.

 

[mellored]

He shows the math, each creature should be taking an average of 18 damage on a fail.

18 is average damage.
22.5 on a failed save, 11.25 on a success.

3 failed saves is 67.5

And he had to hit some of them 4 times.

 

[Selas]

Wasn't suggesting that change that part.

I suggest.

If you move it over someone on your turn.
If they move into it.
If they end their turn there.
-max once per turn.


That only nerfs the readied action and allies dragging you around part, without adding more things to track.

Minimal change to stop the worst offense.

If you got another suggestion, by all means.

I don't think the spell needs to be changed--specially when it was changed to work how players were already using it--just because some are deliberately trying to pull another peasant railgun.