D&D 5E Imposing dis-advantage on saves

[MoutonRustique]

BTW, out of curiosity, what made your elementals so bad? I've found that a modest squad of three or four air elementals is actually terrifyingly good in combat, and if you're 11th level you're at the point where you can actually accomplish that fairly easily. Remember to Mage Armor them for the AC 18 boost, and strongly consider having them grapple + lift + drop physically weak targets instead of making regular attacks. Earth Elementals are also quite good from inside Stinking Clouds/Cloudkill, because they get advantage to attack and attackers get disadvantage to hit them, from heavy obscurement + tremorsense. And some DMs might let Earth Elementals grapple targets and then drag them below the surface of the earth, which... would be bad. I haven't had a player try to do that but I might just let it work if he did.

-Max

Basically, I had 4 chances at summoning an elemental. I took the higher CR ones (Salamander once, Earth Elemental the other times). All in all, considering ALL they did - and I'm not exaggerating here - one of my earth elementals was "instrumental" in finishing the fight slightly faster as they provided a "ledge" for the other characters to get to a balcony. And the other, helped get us down from a high ledge (not in combat, was just made easier).

While that was nice, it's not really "5th level spell" kind of nice...

Note: I included all damage done here (i.e. 0) and all damage received instead of someone else (i.e. 0) and all possible grantings of advantage and cover and everything else.

The Salamander dealt around ~10 hp of damage, and that's about it...

I'm quite certain there would have been better uses of them - but that's kind of my point, in a way, the base system requirement to be minimally effective is pretty freakin' high...

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Basically, I had 4 chances at summoning an elemental. I took the higher CR ones (Salamander once, Earth Elemental the other times). All in all, considering ALL they did - and I'm not exaggerating here - one of my earth elementals was "instrumental" in finishing the fight slightly faster as they provided a "ledge" for the other characters to get to a balcony. And the other, helped get us down from a high ledge (not in combat, was just made easier).

While that was nice, it's not really "5th level spell" kind of nice...

Note: I included all damage done here (i.e. 0) and all damage received instead of someone else (i.e. 0) and all possible grantings of advantage and cover and everything else.

The Salamander dealt around ~10 hp of damage, and that's about it...

I begin to see, I think. I'm still surprised that your elementals received and dealt so little damage--was it a mobility issue? Summoning Air Elementals instead of Earth/Fire Elementals ought to fix that right up--but the key point is that you were casting the spells on the fly, instead of binding the elementals in advance with Planar Binding a la Shadowrun. I'd encourage you if at all possible to give it another shot. Conjure an Air Elemental and spend 1000 gp and a 6th level spell slot to Planar Bind it for ten days. Repeat at least once. Then when combat time comes around, you can add a third Air Elemental if you feel like it, but I guarantee you you will be pleasantly surprised how much they contribute in combat. 270 HP and 84 potential DPR at +8 to hit, plus a 10' diameter AoE attack, is pretty nice.

At higher levels you Planar Bindings will last for much longer than 10 days, but 2000 gp for a mini-Brute Squad should be quite affordable in most campaigns.

 

[Chocolategravy]

The character started out in 3e - as a conjurer of infernal creatures. It was heading in the "True Word" PrC.

It was converted to 4e - as a conjurer of infernal creatures (easy re-fluffing of powers)

It was converted to 5e (11th level) - and played horribly... (i.e. not as I envisioned my character)

Unfortunately they're rather liberal with things that flat out screw over casters. Giving resistance to most fiends is just one example.

Your best bet is to just stick with 3E as it has far far far more options for players than 5E will ever have and it is far easier to modify too. Not even the Warlock comes close to doing the things you want and it has fiend pact and can Hurl Through Hell.

The Oath of Vengeance Paladin's Channel Divinity is almost what you want but it frightens rather than dominates.

 

[Gadget]

I think I understand what you want a little better now, and you're right 5e does not have the specific things you seem to want out of the box. However, summoning spells are often cited as the most potentially broken spells in the game. This may be a bit counter intuitive coming from older editions, as the creatures summoned don't appear to be all that on paper, especially compared with what one could summon in older editions of the game. Yet 5e's concept of Bounded Accuracy makes even weaker creatures quite powerful in the right situation. I'm not sure how your elementals were so ineffective as to hit numbers and AC scale slowly in 5e and the main measure of increased stature is hit points and damage.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I've found precious few ways of imposing disadvantage on saves. (My character is an 11th level wizard.)

I get that the more "dramatic" effects have been put behind saves as opposed to attack rolls, and I understand the need for restraint when forcing disadvantage on saves.

This being said, my character really needs to find a way to make this happen - he's supposed to be a "summoner" and able to take control of fiends and whatnot. As the rules stand, this is, in effect, impractical (to avoid saying impossible) - as most targets of pertinence have advantage on saves vs spells and my summonings require significant advanced warning of impending combat (this isn't a dungeon-based game.)

It's kind of strange that banish works better on non-classically-appropriate-targets and I'm being torn between what the rules tell me to do and what my character should be able to do. It's not a situation I appreciate. Having my most powerful resources work ~18% of the time (in theory) has, in effect, meant that my 5th and 6th level spells do... nothing. 100% of the time. Not fun.

All this being said - my system mastery of 5e is quite low. I am not confident in my assessment of my options - and so, I turn to the forums.

The best fix for this will be to custom make your own feat that better achieves your summoner concept.

 

[Staffan]

The best fix for this will be to custom make your own feat that better achieves your summoner concept.

Yeah, there are already feats that nullify the effects of elemental resistance, and others that negate other monster abilities (Alert vs sneaky monsters, Sentinel vs mobile ones). I don't think it would be a stretch to make one that nullifies spell resistance as well - perhaps limited to a particular class of spells (just like Elemental Adept is limited to one element). Or maybe not, I'm not sure there are enough monsters with spell resistance to justify such a limit.

 

[MoutonRustique]

Thank you all for the input and advice.

I'm not a huge fan of 5e to date and so I may not have put in the work for the required system mastery to make my character work - I kind of went "Well, I'm seeing non-stop praise. I don't get it, but I'll give it a "fresh"* whirl and see how it goes. When building my character.
*meaning, no studying the monsters for optimal summons, choosing spells based on "history"/role-playing considerations, etc.

Binding my conjured elementals hadn't even occurred to me! It might be a pretty big stretch to make that work in the game... but I'll see what my DM thinks off it**
**Explanation: my character is a very dour, very strict, evil-cult hunter. He uses the forces of "Hell" to fight these evil-cults. His long-time companion is an "Inquisitor" paladin. There is a great deal of trust between the two characters and, while the extant of my character's use of infernal power isn't know, that he does is fairly open.

He is "saved" by his iron discipline and his intransigent helping of the defenseless (~ "spiderman philosophy"^10 / "Constantine methods"). On the other hand, the fact that his familiar is an imp (as opposed to the crow it appears) is a secret his companion does not know.

Should I bind air elementals in this more "permanent" manner - it would mean (in game) a binding of air-devils of some kind that I would then need to try and convince my friend of allowing, or attempt to hide them from him... A thing made very difficult in this edition ("demon sense"). Also, from my character's point of view, binding of an imp is a lesser threat as, should it get free, it is easy to destroy. These elementals would, on the other hand, represent bringing much more powerful demons into the world. Should I lose control of them, it would possibly incur a great deal of harm to others - which isn't acceptable.

Lastly! we are currently fighting a demonic-plague that serves as a gateway for demons to enter the material realm. This is important (besides the obvious) because we are currently in a geographical region in which the gods do not hold sway and extra-dimensional travel is extremely difficult - demons should not be able to enter this realm at-all / aside from very time-limited summonings.

So yeah, this is from a campaign that's been going on for over 20 years now, so there's a lot of back-story and things to hold in consideration when looking at spells (conjurations and such, most especially).

As to gameplay style : we tend to have "dungeons" that are ruins and castles and such, but with a time-frame that goes more "hours" of exploration over "minutes" of exploration. Which makes hour-long spells, not long enough to see certain use and one-minute cast spells much to long to use one the action starts - in many instances. On the other hand, pretty much everyone else found their characters to fit excellently to their concepts - so I'm the odd duck in this case (which I prefer, not being the duck, just that there's just the one duck).

I'll fiddle with the build a bit, but there's a possible out for my character at this point in the campaign, so I might take it and build a new one - one built around the 5e assumptions. We'll see.

In any case, thank you very much for the conversation, the advice and the information. Have a great one!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Should I bind air elementals in this more "permanent" manner - it would mean (in game) a binding of air-devils of some kind that I would then need to try and convince my friend of allowing, or attempt to hide them from him... A thing made very difficult in this edition ("demon sense"). Also, from my character's point of view, binding of an imp is a lesser threat as, should it get free, it is easy to destroy. These elementals would, on the other hand, represent bringing much more powerful demons into the world. Should I lose control of them, it would possibly incur a great deal of harm to others - which isn't acceptable.

Since you're re-fluffing the elementals as "air devils", maybe you could negotiate with your DM to also have them vanish into a pocket dimension (like familiars do) when you're not actively commanding them? Then you could summon an air devil with an action, and not have it vanish in an hour. Mechanically it's no different from having them around all the time, but your companion might find it more acceptable, and at least in my opinion it fits just fine with the "binder of demons" fluff.

 

[MoutonRustique]

Since you're re-fluffing the elementals as "air devils", maybe you could negotiate with your DM to also have them vanish into a pocket dimension (like familiars do) when you're not actively commanding them? Then you could summon an air devil with an action, and not have it vanish in an hour. Mechanically it's no different from having them around all the time, but your companion might find it more acceptable, and at least in my opinion it fits just fine with the "binder of demons" fluff.

Could work - have a 5th or 6th level "custom" spell : "Recall previously bound creature"... Actually... yeah, I might use this to have the "base spell" be an action cast, but require a "focus component" that shatters if the creature is destroyed - creating the focus would require down-time and resources equivalent to the casting of the summons and the binding.

... yep, yep, making sense and not requiring much work/house rules... I like it!

It's actually better the the regular spells - it works with the "true name" thing and researching a particular demon to summon and bind : each focus is sort of an "summon this dude amulet". Quite nice, quite nice.

 

[77IM]

At 9th level the Arcane Trickster rogue archetype gets the ability to impose disadvantage on saving throws when hidden from the target of the spell.