D&D 5E In your opinion, what is the most underrated spell in the PHB and why?

[UngeheuerLich]

Heavy obscurement cuts both ways. The attacker can't see the defender so he takes disadvantage; the defender can't see the attacker, so the attacker gets advantage. No net effect. (However, as a DM that kind of offends me, and I'm tempted to houserule it differently--so that you get advantage against a defender who can't see you if and only if you can see him. That would make spells like Stinking Cloud/Fog Cloud/Sleet Storm defensively good.)

I can see Sleet Storm buying you an extra round or two against trolls. If the trolls fall prone, they lose 15' of movement getting back up, so if trolls fail DX saves they make 22.5' of progress each turn and therefore take two turns to cross. If you have a party ranged DPR of 55-ish per round against trolls, Sleet Storm effectively buys you time to kill an extra troll. Web on the other hand will give you advantage to attack the trolls while slowing the trolls for a similar amount of time (20 feet of difficult terrain takes a full round of Dashing to cross, plus any time lost to the Restrained condition on a failed Dex save) while also giving you advantage to attack them while restrained, and making them attack you at disadvantage.

If you liked Sleet Storm against trolls, you would probably like Web even more. It's cheaper and better. However, Sleet Storm is better at breaking enemy spellcasters' concentration, so there's that.

I need to look at the web spell!

 

[TarionzCousin]

featherfall is literally used every session.

Is your campaign world full of chasms???

 

[I'm A Banana]

Is your campaign world full of chasms???

One of the many quirks of the Super Mario World campaign setting.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Is your campaign world full of chasms???

I

No, but someone or something always ends up in the air...

 

[Celtavian]

Heavy obscurement cuts both ways. The attacker can't see the defender so he takes disadvantage; the defender can't see the attacker, so the attacker gets advantage. No net effect. (However, as a DM that kind of offends me, and I'm tempted to houserule it differently--so that you get advantage against a defender who can't see you if and only if you can see him. That would make spells like Stinking Cloud/Fog Cloud/Sleet Storm defensively good.)

I can see Sleet Storm buying you an extra round or two against trolls. If the trolls fall prone, they lose 15' of movement getting back up, so if trolls fail DX saves they make 22.5' of progress each turn and therefore take two turns to cross. If you have a party ranged DPR of 55-ish per round against trolls, Sleet Storm effectively buys you time to kill an extra troll. Web on the other hand will give you advantage to attack the trolls while slowing the trolls for a similar amount of time (20 feet of difficult terrain takes a full round of Dashing to cross, plus any time lost to the Restrained condition on a failed Dex save) while also giving you advantage to attack them while restrained, and making them attack you at disadvantage.

If you liked Sleet Storm against trolls, you would probably like Web even more. It's cheaper and better. However, Sleet Storm is better at breaking enemy spellcasters' concentration, so there's that.

I wonder if the intent is to speed up combat since both combatants are effectively penalized. The combatants would also have to choose the correct square to attack into, especially from range.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I wonder if the intent is to speed up combat since both combatants are effectively penalized. The combatants would also have to choose the correct square to attack into, especially from range.

In my game, ToTM is common, and there would be no such thing as "have to choose the correct square." Instead it's binary: if you're hidden, you (effectively) can't be attacked[1]. If you've given away your position with attacks/spells, you can be attacked at disadvantage until you hide again.

"Have to choose the correct square" is unappealingly gamey and also unrealistic, since most missile weapons arc through multiple squares. It makes obscurement waaaaay too powerful and hard to adjudicate.

-Max

[1] If an enemy started randomly spraying missile weapons in all directions, I would do something on a case-by-case basis depending on terrain. In a tunnel, maybe as high as 50% chance to hit something (i.e. 50% chance to make an attack roll at disadvantage). In the open, essentially zero probability.

 

[Celtavian]

In my game, ToTM is common, and there would be no such thing as "have to choose the correct square." Instead it's binary: if you're hidden, you (effectively) can't be attacked[1]. If you've given away your position with attacks/spells, you can be attacked at disadvantage until you hide again.

"Have to choose the correct square" is unappealingly gamey and also unrealistic, since most missile weapons arc through multiple squares. It makes obscurement waaaaay too powerful and hard to adjudicate.

-Max

[1] If an enemy started randomly spraying missile weapons in all directions, I would do something on a case-by-case basis depending on terrain. In a tunnel, maybe as high as 50% chance to hit something (i.e. 50% chance to make an attack roll at disadvantage). In the open, essentially zero probability.

It's easy to adjudicate if you use a grid and have reasonable players. Obscurement is usually in tight little zones with the player having an idea of last known location as well as a general idea of where to fire due to the sounds of combat and general size of their target. Not to mention larger targets are easier to target even when obscured.

As far as realism, a great many people fire blind in real combat. If they don't pick the right place to shoot, they don't hit their target. If they do fire in the right area, they hit. Pretty easy to follow the line of fire and account for targets in-between. Communication is essential to making sure you fire at the right target. A group should be communicating. Fortunately for D&D adventurers there isn't crossfire with non-combatants, so they don't have to worry about that aspect of firing blind.

Many players choose to not fire blind into obscurement because of the risk of hitting other PCs. I like making PCs hesitate in combat with obscurement. Seems more realistic as in general most combatants are trained not to fire blind when friendlies are in the area.

From a game mechanics standpoint I look at it similar to the game battleship. Pick grid coordinates to fire at within the obscured area and we adjudicate from there.

If I were doing TotM, I would keep it simple as well. If you can't track the path of the projectile, no use trying to do so unless you want to add some messed up drama between PCs. "You shot me, you bastard."...."Sorry."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You mention 1.) realism, and 2.) ease of adjudication. I'll address your comments in this order.

RE: realism, yes, people fire blind in combat, but as far as I can tell don't fire blindly at coordinates, they fire blindly at certain vectors: "up this corridor" and not "at a five-foot square 45 feet up this corridor." If there's an enemy in the dark 55 feet up the corridor instead, guess what? Your arrow aimed at 45 feet away will probably hit him. Ergo, having to guess the exact five-foot square that someone is in is unrealistically harsh, and also gamey--unless you're firing at someone so far away that projectile drop is a real factor. (D&D tends to neglect projectile drop anyway. Who says "You can't fire that longbow indoors because it will hit the ceiling"?)

RE: ease of adjudication, "obscurement is usually in tight little zones." In my experience, obscurement comes in huge swathes. When fighting at night or underground, everything not within 40' of a torch or 60' of a character with darkvision is heavily obscured unless there is a particularly brilliant moon. If I have four PCs and eight monsters in combat, trying to track the location of all twelve characters without showing any of them on the battlefield except the ones carrying torches/within darkvision range of each other would be an amazing amount of hassle. Even if I'm using a grid as I sometimes do, it would do me very little good because to keep the game fair I couldn't actually show anything on the grid, and I'd have to have my players keep their coordinates secret as well.

N.b. under the "can't hit me unless you guess where I am" rules, the winning strategy is have a high-AC guy like a monk or paladin carry a torch around to follow the bad guys while using his action to Dodge while the other PCs pelt the bad guys with advantage from outside the light radius. Result: the entire party basically gets advantage to attack and the enemy has to attack your toughest target at disadvantage. This does rely on a saner interpretation than RAW of what "heavy obscurement" means, since RAW (PHB 183) says that you can't actually see a guy holding the torch unless you're within the torch's light radius, which is bonkers and can't possibly be RAI.

 

[Kobold Stew]

N.b. under the "can't hit me unless you guess where I am" rules,

Player 1: "B-9"
DM: "You sunk my Lizardfolk!"

 

[Celtavian]

You mention 1.) realism, and 2.) ease of adjudication. I'll address your comments in this order.

RE: realism, yes, people fire blind in combat, but as far as I can tell don't fire blindly at coordinates, they fire blindly at certain vectors: "up this corridor" and not "at a five-foot square 45 feet up this corridor." If there's an enemy in the dark 55 feet up the corridor instead, guess what? Your arrow aimed at 45 feet away will probably hit him. Ergo, having to guess the exact five-foot square that someone is in is unrealistically harsh, and also gamey--unless you're firing at someone so far away that projectile drop is a real factor. (D&D tends to neglect projectile drop anyway. Who says "You can't fire that longbow indoors because it will hit the ceiling"?)

RE: ease of adjudication, "obscurement is usually in tight little zones." In my experience, obscurement comes in huge swathes. When fighting at night or underground, everything not within 40' of a torch or 60' of a character with darkvision is heavily obscured unless there is a particularly brilliant moon. If I have four PCs and eight monsters in combat, trying to track the location of all twelve characters without showing any of them on the battlefield except the ones carrying torches/within darkvision range of each other would be an amazing amount of hassle. Even if I'm using a grid as I sometimes do, it would do me very little good because to keep the game fair I couldn't actually show anything on the grid, and I'd have to have my players keep their coordinates secret as well.

N.b. under the "can't hit me unless you guess where I am" rules, the winning strategy is have a high-AC guy like a monk or paladin carry a torch around to follow the bad guys while using his action to Dodge while the other PCs pelt the bad guys with advantage from outside the light radius. Result: the entire party basically gets advantage to attack and the enemy has to attack your toughest target at disadvantage. This does rely on a saner interpretation than RAW of what "heavy obscurement" means, since RAW (PHB 183) says that you can't actually see a guy holding the torch unless you're within the torch's light radius, which is bonkers and can't possibly be RAI.

You are overcomplicating the situation. I've thrown RAW, RAI, and that trash from 3E out the window. Never, ever liked that rubbish from 3E. Never heard either term prior to 3E. Don't intend to listen to much of it in 5E. I hope by the end of 5E's run, those terms are dead in the water. I run things by what makes sense using the simple rules system in place like I did in editions prior to 3E. Rule lawyers can go play some other game as far as I'm concerned. Worst part of 3E was rule lawyers trying to hold DM's hostage to problematic rule interpretations. No prior edition to 3E had ever allowed such a thing. The overly large rule set in 3E allowed that type of player to thrive. Glad it's gone.

In my experience, obscurement comes in small areas like tunnels or rooms underground or inside a structure, clouds, small areas of darkness, and the like. You must fight outside an awful lot to have your common experience be large areas of obscurement. Creatures with darkvision don't worry about light too much, so obscurement would only matter if you had a group with a darkvision advantage. As far as your crazy scenario with the guy running around with the torch, I guess that would work in very specific conditions outside with a wide unobstructed area. It wouldn't work too well in dungeon tunnels or rooms since an opponents darkvision would extend that far or dense forests or swampy regions where obstacles obscuring sight would create problems. Though it wouldn't be unheard of as keeping light on enemies while denying them the ability to see you has always been a desirable combat advantage.

We tend to keep it simple using the following guidelines:
1. A PC can in general fire at the last known location of an enemy.

2. If you choose to fire blind while following the direction of someone shouting that can see, you can generally target the correct square. For example, if the warlock with Devil Sight is fighting opponents whose last known location you know of is shouting where they moved, you can take a shot.

3. If you fire blind without any awareness, you risk hitting the PCs if they are in the path of fire. You will make a hit roll against any target in the path of the projectile doing damage to the first target you hit.

We keep it simple adding enough verisimilitude to provide a sense of the danger of firing blind. We don't want the situation to become overly complicated to the point it slows down play. I don't worry about realism so much as verisimilitude. If I worried about realism, I wouldn't be letting longbow users fire two or three times in six seconds. Many weapons would do next to nothing against plate armor. And trolls and dragons wouldn't exist. It's always a matter of maintaining some semblance of verisimilitude to maintain the suspension of disbelief as much as possible. We feel firing blind should have some consequences and came up with simple guidelines to follow to make it at least slightly dangerous.

We're a group that enjoys discussing what we think might happen in a given situation whether based on real world or cinematic experience...as long as it doesn't slow the game down too much.