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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8728770" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Is the spell supposed to hurt people in metal armor badly, or is it supposed to be a slap on the wrist?My suggestions are clearly a reduction in power for the spell. Make a save and you exchange "do nothing this turn" instead of damage. That makes this spell analogous to a more-powerful sleep against a narrow subset of targets.Are you legitimately suggesting that the spell should be something someone encased in metal armor can just shrug off no problem?Further, I find it a little hard to buy that 20d8 damage (90 on average) is something most armored opponents can just shrug off like nothing. Doubly so when heat metal can only target one object. (Upcasting raises the damage, not the number of affected objects.) Spending a spell and concentration to lock down a single target with Disadvantage seems hardly like a horrible affront (admittedly, it does affect attack rolls, but not saving throws.) Hold person is the same spell level, upcasting it makes it affect more targets, and its effects are much nastier, Paralyzed as opposed to merely Incapacitated. A Paralyzed target cannot move at all, automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saves, and grants advantage on all attack rolls against it. Hold person offers a save each round, but it's still way worse than heat metal, even against metal-armor-wearing targets. And against the huge swathe of targets that aren't wearing metal armor? Hold person remains exactly as useful as it always was, unless the target just isn't a humanoid, while heat metal becomes near-useless.Narrow-application spell with moderately powerful effects and less ability to resist for the few targets it applies to as opposed to a generically useful and (much) more powerful spell that allows repeated save attempts? That sounds fairly balanced to me--at least within the barn door of "balance" 5e ascribes to.</blockquote>

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