D&D General In defense of Shocking Grasp

[Dessert Nomad]

The funny thing is, I don’t recall there being a major public outcry about the 2014 version being overpowered. So I’m not sure why they nerfed it in the first place. But, personally, I think I’ll homebrew the “advantage if the target is wearing metal armor” back in for my campaigns.

It's probably a combination of wanting to avoid defining exactly what metal armor is and who's wearing it for a common cantrip, the fact that it's something that will be used against PCs much more often than monsters so it's really a penalty, and not wanting to sort out a precedent of what lightning effects throughout the game have extra effect against metal armor.

"What exactly counts as metal armor" is something that came up a lot with the weird 5.0 druid rules that stated that druids "will not use armor or shields made of metal". The best RAW argument I've seen is that armors that say they are metal are metal (so full plate, half plate, splint, chain, chain shirt, scale mail are metal but padded, leather, hide, studded leather, spiked armor, and ring mail aren't), but that also doesn't tell you if there's a way to use alternate materials and how much it costs, and whether exotic metals still count as 'metal' for things like shocking grasp (are mithril and/or adamantine conductive?).

Defining 'metal armor' is something they should still do since they still have Heat Metal in the game - obviously a DM can ad-hoc rule whether a stat block has metal armor and what armor a person can get, but it really seems like something that should have a better starting point.

 

[Silam]

[…] not wanting to sort out a precedent of what lightning effects throughout the game have extra effect against metal armor.

I think it could have been an interesting opportunity to lean into this whole elements business a bit more. Painting with broad brushes, there could be something along the lines of:

• Immersing yourself in water gives you resistance to fire, but vulnerability to cold.
• Immersing yourself in salt water specifically furthermore (in addition to the previous bullet) gives you resistance to acid, but vulnerability to electricity.
• Wearing or wielding more than X pounds of common metal gives you vulnerability to electricity (if any kind of special material is a metal but otherwise non-conductive, it will specify it).
• Immersing yourself in oil or other combustible material gives you vulnerability to fire, but oil or other slippery materials also give you resistance to (advantage against) grappling.

Stuff like that. Then it’s not just "oh dang, not a red dragon again, cancel all fire attacks folks, it’ll be a long slog but let’s go, gotta empty that HP bag", but rather "ok wizard, are you ready to send that tsunami spell on our backs to catch both us and the red dragon, so we can do this combat wet and resist its breath better? — dang, is this a wand of cone of cold the dragon has levitating around them? Abort abort! splash oh crap, too late!"