D&D 5E Silvery Barbs, how would you fix it? Does it need fixing?

[tomBitonti]

Does this suffer from the bag o’ rats trick with cleave and attacks of opportunity from 3e? it seems to be easily convertible to an attack spell by a similar mechanic. Let out a bag of mostly harmless but angry critters and leach advantage from their attacks to power high level effects which are subject to saving throws.
Granting advantage to virtually anything of any level seems powerful, as does granting disadvantage to virtually anything of any level. The spell is nearly a 3x power amplifier.
TomB

 

[ECMO3]

What is the interplay when the enemy target has advantage? Silvery barbs does not say it imposes disadvantage on the attack you change, so it would not make it a neutral roll.

Technically advantage is sequential, you roll once, then you roll again and you take the highest. So if playing silvery barbs is it like this:

Enemy with advantage rolls once, would succeed on his first roll, you decide you are going to use a reaction and make him reroll the first roll .... he does and replaces it with the lower roll of the two .... then he rolls a third time and takes the higest of the replaced roll or the third roll.

Alternatively enemy rolls first roll and fails .... rolls second roll and succeeds .... you replace 2nd roll with silvery barbs so he rolls again and replaces the 2nd roll with the 3rd if it is lower .... then takes the highest of the 1st or 3rd because of advantage.

Is that the correct way this is supposed to work?

 

[ECMO3]

Does this suffer from the bag o’ rats trick with cleave and attacks of opportunity from 3e? it seems to be easily convertible to an attack spell by a similar mechanic. Let out a bag of mostly harmless but angry critters and leach advantage from their attacks to power high level effects which are subject to saving throws.
Granting advantage to virtually anything of any level seems powerful, as does granting disadvantage to virtually anything of any level. The spell is nearly a 3x power amplifier.
TomB

It only lasts 1 minute so this does not work well. You have 4 1st level slots, so you let out your 4 rats and hit each of them with something like toll the dead over the next 4 turns to give 4 party members advantage. Now you are out of 1st-level spell slots and the first guy you gave advantage to only has 36 seconds left to use his advantage. This does not seem very useful, nor does it seem practical. In combat it is 4 lost turns for 4 advantage rolls. Out of combat you need to know combat is imminent and have 4 rounds to set it up.

A Ranger using a 2nd-level pass without trace on the party could do better on one slot and it would be advantage for an entire action sequence on enemies you surprise. You would have a long time after casting to use it (potentially more than 1 battle if he maintains concentration).

 

[darjr]

What is the interplay with advantage and silvery barbs. The spell does not say it imposes disadvantage on the attack you change, so it would not make it a neutral roll.

Technically advantage is sequential, you roll once, then you roll again and you take the highest. So if playing silvery barbs:

Enemy with advantage rolls once, succeeds on his first roll, you decide you are going to use a reaction and make him reroll the first roll .... he does and replaces it with the lower roll .... then he rerolls the second roll and takes the highest of the two. Is that the correct way this is supposed to work?

You roll both before a success or failure is decided.

 

[HammerMan]

Does this suffer from the bag o’ rats trick with cleave and attacks of opportunity from 3e? it seems to be easily convertible to an attack spell by a similar mechanic. Let out a bag of mostly harmless but angry critters and leach advantage from their attacks to power high level effects which are subject to saving throws.
Granting advantage to virtually anything of any level seems powerful, as does granting disadvantage to virtually anything of any level. The spell is nearly a 3x power amplifier.
TomB

the side bar from 4e telling DMs not to let 'bag of rats' tricks works needs to be in the 50th anniversary PHB

 

[billd91]

Enemy with advantage rolls once, would succeed on his first roll, you decide you are going to use a reaction and make him reroll the first roll .... he does and replaces it with the lower roll of the two .... then he rolls a third time and takes the higest of the replaced roll or the third roll.

Alternatively enemy rolls first roll and fails .... rolls second roll and succeeds .... you replace 2nd roll with silvery barbs so he rolls again and replaces the 2nd roll with the 3rd if it is lower .... then takes the highest of the 1st or 3rd because of advantage.

Is that the correct way this is supposed to work?

I wouldn't think so. The spell's trigger is a successful attack/save/check and success is determined by considering the advantage dice together, not sequentially. You don't determine if an attack has succeeded based on one die of the pair rolled for advantage, you determine it with the larger of the two results.

 

[NotAYakk]

<shrug> The worst thing that happens if shield is too strong is that the PC survives; and that was probably going to happen anyway.

Naw, the worst thing that happens is that AC diverges so far, that the DM ends up either boosting monster ATK to such a level that non-insane-AC PCs cannot avoid being hit, or the PC with such AC becomes invulnerable to attacks. So either there is an invulnerable PC, or the DM rotates away from vs-AC attacks.

The ideal narrative is that "Shield" spell is an interesting dramatic ability that isn't infallible, and attack rolls on any PC have dramatic meaning. Pretty much every case I can see with divergent-AC doesn't do this.

I want combat to generate an interesting turn by turn narrative via the mechanics. The "high AC PC with shield spell" narrative works against that.

 

[Mort]

Naw, the worst thing that happens is that AC diverges so far, that the DM ends up either boosting monster ATK to such a level that non-insane-AC PCs cannot avoid being hit, or the PC with such AC becomes invulnerable to attacks. So either there is an invulnerable PC, or the DM rotates away from vs-AC attacks.

The ideal narrative is that "Shield" spell is an interesting dramatic ability that isn't infallible, and attack rolls on any PC have dramatic meaning. Pretty much every case I can see with divergent-AC doesn't do this.

I want combat to generate an interesting turn by turn narrative via the mechanics. The "high AC PC with shield spell" narrative works against that.

Has this "invulnerable" PC come up in play for you? Certainly hasn't for me.

Now granted, I haven't seen many eldritch knights or bladesingers in play - but even there it's a decent resource drain AND there are plenty of other ways to menace PCs that have nothing to do with AC.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Has this "invulnerable" PC come up in play for you? Certainly hasn't for me.

I've played an EK in full plate packing shield. It's very strong, but it very quickly runs out of spell slots.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Naw, the worst thing that happens is that AC diverges so far, that the DM ends up either boosting monster ATK to such a level that non-insane-AC PCs cannot avoid being hit, or the PC with such AC becomes invulnerable to attacks. So either there is an invulnerable PC, or the DM rotates away from vs-AC attacks.

The ideal narrative is that "Shield" spell is an interesting dramatic ability that isn't infallible, and attack rolls on any PC have dramatic meaning. Pretty much every case I can see with divergent-AC doesn't do this.

I want combat to generate an interesting turn by turn narrative via the mechanics. The "high AC PC with shield spell" narrative works against that.

This feels like one of those very theoretical concerns to me. I have huge difficulty picturing a real-world situation where being able to pull out 4 points of AC for part of a round, a few times in an adventure, "ruins the narrative" or makes a PC "invulnerable".

You posit this situation where the DM decided to "boost ATK" but why on earth would any DM who isn't a bit foolish do that? Why wouldn't you just chuck more abilities and spells that don't require a to-hit roll, just a saving throw (whether to inflict a condition, or do damage) at the Shield-using PC? It seems like that would really make this a small issue at most whilst not being unfair on the other PCs.

Can you explain the real-world game where this is a real problem, maybe?

EDIT - I mean, just as a note, I've had a lot of experience lately dealing with ludicrous joke ACs thanks to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and sure that's PF1E, and doesn't have bounded accuracy, but the solutions are the same - you work around the AC with stuff that doesn't need to roll to hit, or has an effect even on a miss. It's not like D&D is short on this stuff.