D&D 5E Guide to cruddy spells (v1.01)

[Rabulias]

Unless you lose concentration very fast, or are more effective than the allies you buff, it boosts your kill rate significantly.

And if the cleric includes themself in the bless, they get +1d4 on any Concentration saving throw. It can also help any other party casters who need to pass Concentration saves.

 

[tetrasodium]

You must be playing your games very differently to me.

Recent example. My level 11 paladin (+12 to hit) was fighting a mixed group of enemies. We knew there were some sort of shadow demon things among them, and the group planned for my PC to focus on them because they were vulnerable to radiant damage from smites. From previous combats, we knew that the demons weren't difficult to hit, so i was using Great Weapon Master. We didn't have sufficient prep time before combat for me to cast Bless as i would have, in an optimal situation.

My dice deserted me. I rolled low single figures three times in four attacks over the first two rounds of combat. This was a big deal in the context of the combat. Not only did the demon I targeted survive to get an action off (and drop an AoE on us all, causing loads of damage, some of which might have been avoided if we'd had that +1d4 on saving throws...), but that meant i had to spent the next turn finishing it off, which meant an assassin got through to our archer who then had to stop shooting and defend herself in melee, which in turn meant she couldn't shoot the mind flayer off the cleric. A Bless, and I would have one-rounded the demon, and been in place to smack the assassin down before it got into our squishier characters.

I'm aware that 5e maths is designed so that PCs hit significantly more often than they miss. But 'hit significantly more' is NOT the same as 'never miss'. I only had a ~20% chance of missing that demon. That's not large, but 20% chances do happen. Repeatedly, in some cases. Turning that 20% into 10% is a big deal. The first failure didn't really matter, but combined with the subsequent ones it sure did.

Plus, in the specific case of a paladin, I'd argue that the cost of using your Concentration is not really very high. You often want to be saving your spell slots for smites, so casting a spell once and then getting lasting benefit from it is good resource use. Plus, Bless is only level 1, so you can save higher level slots for bigger smites, which can have a major impact especially if you land a crit on something.

Once you look up the monster you named to see that it's on MM pg64 CR4 AC13 with a mere 66hp this turns into "tell me that you are using homebrew rules or monsters to avoid the problem without telling me you are using homebrew". The monster you named has a 5% chance to be missed by an attacker with +12 tohit no matter the bonuses on top. If you roll a one on the d20 it doesn't matter how many other bonuses you have. Bless would not have changed that. The mindflayer is on pg222 at CR7 but 71hp & only 15 ac to again require a one to miss no matter how many bonuses you add.

 

[humble minion]

Once you look up the monster you named to see that it's on MM pg64 CR4 AC13 with a mere 66hp this turns into "tell me that you are using homebrew rules or monsters to avoid the problem without telling me you are using homebrew". The monster you named has a 5% chance to be missed by an attacker with +12 tohit no matter the bonuses on top. If you roll a one on the d20 it doesn't matter how many other bonuses you have. Bless would not have changed that. The mindflayer is on pg222 at CR7 but 71hp & only 15 ac to again require a one to miss no matter how many bonuses you add.

I said ‘some sort of shadow demon things’ rather than saying ‘shadow demons’ because I knew they were not basic MM shadow demons. I don’t know exactly what they are because they’re from a module and I havent chosen to spoil myself by reading it.

As I said though, I was swinging using GWM so my effective to hit bonus was only +7, which leads to the ~20% miss chance I calculated.

But frankly, this is nitpicking. There ARE officially published creatures in the MM with ac15, and the maths applies equally to them. Even if your miss chance is very small, small probability events can happen quite frequently if the dice are bad and you’re rolling a lot. Reducing a 4-in-20 chance to closer to 1-in-20 for three PCs, for a duration long enough to cover most combats, AND getting the save bonus too, all for a mere first level spell, is a bargain in anyone’s book.

 

[Stalker0]

Also noting, that paladin's +12 is quite high. Normal paladin has +9 through +5 strength/+4 proficiency. So that's a +3 coming from magic and/or other circumstances. +1 weapon, sure completely expected, but there's an extra +2 that is not going to be commonly available to a lot of players.

 

[Stalker0]

All of this debate about bless though proves it doesn't deserve to be on the cruddy spell list. We can disagree that bless is "god tier" vs "just solid", but....."garbage tier".....absolutely not.

There are plenty of spells on this list that majority of the community can nod and say "yeah that's not the best", bless isn't one of them.

 

[NotAYakk]

Cost/benefit matters. Concentration is a high cost but 5e is designed so the benefit of that spell are not needed and failure on a roll doesn’t really matter. Sure it looks good on pwper, but so does the mpg results of hypermiling & both are beyond the point of being meaningful benefits for the cost... That's why it's listed.

Yes, that is why I described the benefit.

On 3 rounds on 3 melee PCs, it comes to more than a melee PC's worth of damage if they had 100% accuracy, if they do nothing to optimize having it.

If they do GWM/SS because they have it and aren't idiots, the benefit will be even larger.

Concentration is there, sure. Bless is a slot-efficient way to turn level 1 spell slots plus concentration into combat power. Most better concentration spells are level 3 or above.

Aura of Vitality -- awesome! Level 3.
Spirit Guardians -- awesome! Level 3.
Haste -- takes as long as Bless to generate as much offensive power, and level 3. Main benefit is speed boost really.
Faerie Fire - requires a save, or does nothing.
Zephyr Strike -- mobility spell with a small damage finisher. Not really competing.
Improved Invisibility -- awesome! Level 3. Accuracy boost is larger, but applies to 1 PC. So roughly similar yield.
Heat Metal -- Requires enemy to have armor, level 2.
Fly -- awesome mobility! Level 3.
Hypnotic Pattern -- awesome crowd control! Level 3.
Polymorph -- unless you are a sorcerer, how do you have both spells? Anyhow, awesome! Level 4.

Bless is a 1st level slot. At low levels, it is what you have. At high levels, the slot cost is nearly free, while the competition slots aren't until late T3/T4.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes, that is why I described the benefit.

On 3 rounds on 3 melee PCs, it comes to more than a melee PC's worth of damage if they had 100% accuracy, if they do nothing to optimize having it.

If they do GWM/SS because they have it and aren't idiots, the benefit will be even larger.

Concentration is there, sure. Bless is a slot-efficient way to turn level 1 spell slots plus concentration into combat power. Most better concentration spells are level 3 or above.

Aura of Vitality -- awesome! Level 3.
Spirit Guardians -- awesome! Level 3.
Haste -- takes as long as Bless to generate as much offensive power, and level 3. Main benefit is speed boost really.
Faerie Fire - requires a save, or does nothing.
Zephyr Strike -- mobility spell with a small damage finisher. Not really competing.
Improved Invisibility -- awesome! Level 3. Accuracy boost is larger, but applies to 1 PC. So roughly similar yield.
Heat Metal -- Requires enemy to have armor, level 2.
Fly -- awesome mobility! Level 3.
Hypnotic Pattern -- awesome crowd control! Level 3.
Polymorph -- unless you are a sorcerer, how do you have both spells? Anyhow, awesome! Level 4.

Bless is a 1st level slot. At low levels, it is what you have. At high levels, the slot cost is nearly free, while the competition slots aren't until late T3/T4.

Every single spell you just mentioned is also concentration save one extreme technicality that doesn't seem to exist. In the case of that exception it's more likely the fact that the concentration spell greater invisibility exists & was the intended reference. The cost however is short duration and concentration in a system where the bonus provided is less "force multiplier" more "maybe useful insulation against bad luck".

Those spells all make a meaningful impact when cast, bless is still a bonus designed for an earlier edition where monsters had better ac relative to tohit & the meaningful impact was making later attacks in the attack chain go from luck to good or ok odds. It doesn't matter how good a buff cast by Alice could be for Bob's specific build if casting it doesn't make Alice feel like she contributed something of value that the group needed. At best bless is just a spell for bob to offload the cost of his minmax to Alice by getting her to give up concentration for bob to go from "probably going to hit most every attack against d&d monsters" to "almost certainly going to hit most every attack". In the case of GWM Bob doesn't even need to say that he's using it or that bless impacts it making it a spell Alice might not even be aware of the result even if it matters against generally low AC monsters.

 

[humble minion]

Every single spell you just mentioned is also concentration

Um, that was the point. @NotAYakk was deliberately listing other concentration spells, to demonstrate that the opportunity cost of using your concentration on Bless isn't that massive, as most of the best spells competing for your concentration slot are significantly higher level and so casting them is more of an investment (assuming you're high enough level to cast them at all)

 

[tetrasodium]

Um, that was the point. @NotAYakk was deliberately listing other concentration spells, to demonstrate that the opportunity cost of using your concentration on Bless isn't that massive, as most of the best spells competing for your concentration slot are significantly higher level and so casting them is more of an investment (assuming you're high enough level to cast them at all)

That's not how concentration works. You can have only one concentration spell active at a time, it doesn't matter what level the first and second spell are if you want to cast a second.

 

[humble minion]

That's not how concentration works. You can have only one concentration spell active at a time, it doesn't matter what level the first and second spell are if you want to cast a second.

How did you get that from what I wrote? I know that you can only have one concentration spell active at a time. My point is that both concentration and spell slots are limited resources. Spirit Guardians IS a more powerful spell than Bless - that's why it is 3rd level and Bless is 1st. But it's not a simple choice between one or the other. For the expenditure of a 1st level slot, a 3rd level slot, and Concentration, I can get Spirit Guardians and maybe Command, or Sanctuary. Alternatively I can also get Bless, and maybe something like Counterspell, or Revivify, or even Fireball if i'm a Light cleric. In addition, concentration spells can be interrupted early by damage and failed concentration checks. It;s less painful to lose a first-level spell prematurely after one round when you haven't gotten much benefit out of it, than it is to lose a 3rd level spell in the same circumstances.

Also, it's worth noting that most of the powerful concentration spells listed above aren't routinely available to PCs who can cast Bless, unless via domain spells. So in some cases, the choice is no choice at all.