D&D 5E Silvery Barbs - How has it looked in play?

[ECMO3]

Reducing the chance of a negative outcome from 20% to 4% may only be a "16% chance it actually made a difference", but it's also an 80% reduction in the rate of undesirable outcomes, and of the total 84% of situations in which it "didn't make a difference", you were not using it, and expended no resources, in 80% of those.

Sure but that means it is still not usually relevant.

When an outcome is already rare, making it more rare does not usually matter.

If need a 3 to hit a Zombie then giving me a +1 to attack decreases my chance to miss by 50%, but it is not that relevant. Giving me a +6 to attack when I need a 13 to hit decreases my chance to miss by the same 50%, but it is MUCH MUCH more powerful.

So if your party forces 5 saves on enemies over the course of a battle, and each of those have an 80% chance the enemy fails, 32% of the time, they fail all of them. Great! You won! The other 68% of the time, one or more of those saves are succeeded, and you're in a situation where Silvery Barbs can come into play, and in the situations where it comes into play, 80% of the time it results in the save being failed instead.

But you are not considering stacked probability here and this is unrealistic for multiple reasons:

1. First off 5 saves on a high level spell is a lot. If you have a party of 5 14th level characters with 2 full casters they only have 4 spells of 6th level total, so using 5 of them in one battle is a bit unrealistic. Further if it is a truely powerful spell only the first failed save matters.

2. We are talking about powerful spells. If the enemy fails a single save against a spell of this magnitude you should win the battle. Your scenario is based on the idea that it matters to change the save, so failing the save means a win for the good guys. If you are using it to cause a failure for fireballs or dissonant whispers this is an entirely different discussion, but he has to make 5 saves for you to get a chance to use 5 SBs and hold true to those numbers..


That said even if you do this:
Chance enemy fails every single save and silvery barbs is irrelevant: 33%
Chance enemy saves at least once and silvery barbs does not change the outcome: 13%
Chance enemy saves at least once and silvery barbs changes the outcome: 54%

So in this highly unlikely scenario you have presented Silvery Barbs is still only effective half the time.

But like I said this is very unrealistic if we are talking about game cahnging spells. You only need to land one of them to win. In this case Silvery Barbs only has a 17% chance of chaging the outcome if the first landed spell wins (with 16 of that 17% coming on the very first spell cast).

Thus, the chance it makes a difference in the outcome = 54%, for a cost of 1 spell slot.

Only if he actually gets to make 5 saves and enemy should not be getting 5 saves agaisnt a high level spell and still be in the fight.

That is the point.

Casting dominate monster 5 times so the numbers for silvery barbs look better is not a relevant test. One failure and the fight is over.

Your 'math' seems to focus primarily on how unlikely it is to come up in isolated incidents. In a party of 6, for a given single target attack, one could say that Shield only 'makes any difference to the outcome' if they are targeted, hit, and hit by an amount where +5 AC would change the result. So you could 'calculate' the potential impact as 4%. But such 'calculations' would ignore how impactful it is in the situations where it Does come up, and I feel strongly that you're making the same mistake here.

Shield is far more powerful in play than SB because the opportunity to use it and its effectiveness is higher. Also the enemy can not save against it. It works to increase your AC every time it is used and it usually effects more than one roll, especially at high level).

 

[ECMO3]

Vs a Dragon, Absorb Elements is great, but if they Just Used their Breath weapon, it would behoove you to use the opportunity to get them to where they can be put into a SoS situation as soon as possible.

If they just used their breath they have a 33% chance of getting it back and if you are within 60 feet (range on SB) they can take you rto the cleaners with attacks and Legendary actions without using his breath.

Further more when you are saying "if" that means situational.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I've seen it as "the party never gets critted" spell, which makes 5E's fairly dull and predictable combat even more predictable. I'm tempted to rule that it can't override a natural 20.

 

[jgsugden]

I've seen it as "the party never gets critted" spell, which makes 5E's fairly dull and predictable combat even more predictable. I'm tempted to rule that it can't override a natural 20.

I have real bad news for you out of the One D&D Playtest materials if you consider monster crits essential.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I have real bad news for you out of the One D&D Playtest materials if you consider monster crits essential.

Yeah, I know... I honestly didnt think there was an easier setting than 5E as is. Regardless, this is talking about a 5E spell in 5E with crits.

 

[ECMO3]

I've seen it as "the party never gets critted" spell, which makes 5E's fairly dull and predictable combat even more predictable. I'm tempted to rule that it can't override a natural 20.

It works well for this .... but under DNDone enemies are not going to crit any more anyway.

Edit: Seems I was late as someone already said this..

 

[Stalker0]

It works well for this .... but under DNDone enemies are not going to crit any more anyway.

So it is WAY WAY WAYYY too early to be looking at playtest stuff and declaring "so this is how it is now everyone, get used to it". If 5e versus its playtest is anything to go off of, many changes you in the playtests today will not make the cutting room floor.

 

[jgsugden]

So it is WAY WAY WAYYY too early to be looking at playtest stuff and declaring "so this is how it is now everyone, get used to it". If 5e versus its playtest is anything to go off of, many changes you in the playtests today will not make the cutting room floor.

Note that the 5E playtest was coming from 4E and was a substantial departure from both 3.5 and 4E. This is more of a tweak to 5E than anything else. The core of the mechanics are pretty well understood. I would be very surprised if they reverse the 'crits are only for PCs' entirely, although I do expect some monsters (specifically legendary ones) will be able to crit PCs.

 

[Stalker0]

I would be very surprised if they reverse the 'crits are only for PCs' entirely, although I do expect some monsters (specifically legendary ones) will be able to crit PCs.

Your saying that if the polling came back where a huge portion of the fanbase was against it, that WOTC would just keep it in "because"?

Like not only have we only seen one playtest document, we haven't even heard the survey feedback from that that playtest yet. We are 100% in the dark here, I wouldn't be surprised by anything at this point.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Seen a couple of characters with it so far. Overall it is an extremely powerful spell. While I've seen it used as a cheap way of punching through saves (and counterspell!) it has also been used to negate crits and on quite a few ability checks. It is this sheer versatility as well as raw power that has made it the most common spell cast by at least one character.

It has definitely contributed to my decision to not allow some setting-specific material into my current game.