D&D 5E (2014) Primeval Awareness and other hidden gems

[Riley37]

"Realism" is that when your life is on the line, you do what you have to in order to stay alive.

Mountain climbers routinely practice a degree of methodical caution which IMO is way more inconvenient than chanting for six seconds every minute. Some of it's vocal: on belay, belay on, climbing, climb on, then ongoing requests for more or less slack. If that would drive you insane, then I strongly recommend you avoid technical climbing.

I've heard military patrolling or escorting a convoy described as boredom combined with terror, for hours on end, because any one of those humdrum moments could be the moment before a mine or an ambush, and maybe, just maybe, keeping your eyes moving might keep you (and your comrades) alive. Yes, by civilian standards, that's hard on sanity. There's a reason some veterans have a difficult transition back to civilian life and NOT scanning every rooftop for snipers.

I've done some rock climbing. I would chant, six seconds every minute, if I were at risk of a fatal fall and chanting could reduce that risk. From what I've heard of military situations, chanting for 6 every 60, to have a better chance on init when an ambush starts, would be a drop in the bucket, as an addition to the level of mental fatigue that's inherent to hostile-territory patrol or convoy missions.

Is dungeoneering less tense? Varies. He-Man sneaking into Skeletor's lair, not so tense. Gandalf and Aragorn in the Mines of Moria, yes, that tense. (Pippin, meanwhile, was in the bored-civilian frame of mind, even after the Watcher in the Water's tentacle attack. "Fool of a Took!")

Strain on voice? Hah. Anyone who works in a call center is using their voice much more than 10% of the time, all day long except for a Short Rest at lunch hour.

None of that means you have to allow a cleric to maintain Guidance. You want a cool-down? Sure, just as there is for Augury and so forth. For gameplay reasons, or for how-divine-magic-works reasons. For realism? No way.

 

[thalmin]

For me, casting Guidance once per minute means 10% of the time I will not be able to cast another spell. That's not a trade-off I'm always willing to take.

 

[Stalker0]

All, the Guidance discussion is starting to push this thread Off Topic. Lets continue that discussion in a new thread.


For me the big gem is the Eagle Barbarian sight ability. I can see things 1 mile away as if it was right next to me. Think of the possibilities!

 

[TwoSix]

For me the big gem is the Eagle Barbarian sight ability. I can see things 1 mile away as if it was right next to me. Think of the possibilities!

I don't have the books right with me, but can the totem barbarian freely pick and choose the different animal abilities? Seems like a good way to make a BraveStarr clone.
"Eyes of the Hawk, Ears of the Wolf!"

 

[Stalker0]

I don't have the books right with me, but can the totem barbarian freely pick and choose the different animal abilities? Seems like a good way to make a BraveStarr clone.
"Eyes of the Hawk, Ears of the Wolf!"

Yes, at each level they get an ability they can choose from any of the totems. And I totally thought BraveStarr myself

 

[Warmaster Horus]

It'd be a poor cleric who had the ability to offer his god's Guidance for the benefit of the party, and declined to do so at every opportunity.

Guidance has limitations. It requires touch, requires concentration and can only effect 1 person at a time. If you have the time and ability to use it, fine. If pressed for time, have the need to cast other concentration spells, etc, then it's not as useful.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

(Apologies for continuing off-topic, but I didn't see another guidance thread.)

Would you require it specifically for Guidance, or for Concentration on all cantrips, or would you also require chanting for all Concentration spells, eg if a PC spent went scouting while maintaining Invisibility for an (in-game) hour?

Other cantrips with Concentration:
Dancing Lights; can the caster renew Dancing Lights every minute as the party progresses into a cave, and does that require chanting?
If a PC casts Friends, do they have to chant to maintain Concentration, during their social interactions and stat checks?
Also: Resistance and True Strike. It would be nice to always have those ready in case you get attacked...

I can't object if you have a chant-to-concentrate house rule; but I encourage consistency.

I'd actually require the same thing for any spell that has to be re-cast in a short time frame (like 1 minute), except dancing lights. I just feel it should get an exception for some reason.

I would not require it for concentration spells, because concentrating on a spell doesn't require any sort of casting action. You don't chant, or gesture, or grab components. You simply keep a low-resource subroutine running in a segment of RAM that only has space for one subroutine at a time.

Even if the DM artificially (and punitively) limits the cleric's use of guidance, it's still not that hard to gain the bonus. Just cast it whenever you are about to enter a room in a dungeon. The DM can't really claim that's unreasonable -- there's bound to be some kind of nasty surprise in there, right?

I have no problem letting my cleric cast it every time they enter a room etc. In fact, my cleric doesn't use it enough. Heck, I'd even let him tell me, "I'm going to cast guidance before we enter each new room," and then not have to keep saying it. But for reasons of immersion, if any character kept casting a spell every minute throughout the day, I'd want to represent how annoying that would be for the rest of the party. If he was by himself, I wouldn't make the player chant, though I might ask for a Constitution check to keep going after an extended (multiple hours) period of time.

My ruling (which has never come up) wouldn't be about punishing a player for doing cool things. I like cool and inventive uses for abilities. It's about maintaining the first-person sort of immersion we play with.

 

[Bayonet]

I've heard military patrolling or escorting a convoy described as boredom combined with terror, for hours on end, because any one of those humdrum moments could be the moment before a mine or an ambush, and maybe, just maybe, keeping your eyes moving might keep you (and your comrades) alive. Yes, by civilian standards, that's hard on sanity. There's a reason some veterans have a difficult transition back to civilian life and NOT scanning every rooftop for snipers.

.

Infantry guy here, fought in Afghanistan. I can confirm this is what's it's like. You can be trained (or train yourself) into doing stuff like this automatically, but it really becomes a part of you. Hyper-vigilance, overactive fight or flight responses, not being able to concentrate on "minor" things due to spending a lot of mental energy on the "major" stuff.

So, it makes sense that seasoned dungeon crawler of a PC would likely do something like this, but it would take a toll. Maybe exhaustion levels after a certain time of constantly casting the spell? Morale failures?

 

[Riley37]

All, the Guidance discussion is starting to push this thread Off Topic. Lets continue that discussion in a new thread.

Guidance might be a hidden gem; that's adequate for the purposes of this thread. Let's post about some more "hidden gems" in this thread.

Another example: Cutting Words against enemy damage rolls. I didn't know when to use Cutting Words on my first few sessions. Now I rely on it and quickly run out of uses. (It's not really hidden, but I overlooked it, anyways.)

I would like to welcome any further discussion of Guidance, such as chanting, cooldown, exhaustion, RAW, RAI etc. in the following linked thread...
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?393552-Best-Utility-Spell

 

[aramis erak]

My players came up with a non-combat use for Entangle. It holds with Strength equal to the Save DC... so they used it to hold the rope to climb up to the dungeon. (They lacked a grappling hook.)

Continual flame is a definite go-to spell for the money conscious castle or dungeon owner.