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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Patryn of Elvenshae" data-source="post: 5522937" data-attributes="member: 23094">Absolutely.Generally speaking, DMs design encounters for which the party has a decent chance of winning (probably not guaranteed, but pretty close for most purposes).Therefore, anything you can do to break that single encounter into multiple encounters can turn 1 hard fight into 2 or 3 cake walks.  Spells that enable this are those like the various wall spells, sleep, web, entangle, etc., and at higher levels various transportation spells and stoneshaping spells (e.g., rock to mud followed by mud to rock).I'm replaying through the Temple of Elemental Evil PC game, and there's a particularly nasty fight when you leave the Moathouse - a bunch of PC-classed enemies, some gnolls, and some militia-type archers.  They outnumber your party anywhere from 2-to-1 to 4-to-1 depending on how many people you've recruited and how many animal companions you've got.In this fight, my wizard spent 2 2nd-level spells to turn the whole thing into a cakewalk: he webbed the left half of the battlefield, and glitterdusted the right.  This resulted in, essentially, two battles: 1 against a bunch of blind folks, and 1, several rounds later, against a bunch of people who couldn't move (though my archer ranger had killed a couple of them by that point).Now, those 2 2nd-level spells were also his highest level spell slots, so he was pretty tapped out at that point, but those two spells remain so useful for so long.Review your long-term buffing options.  Mage Armor is the best form of light armor, and it lasts for 1 hour per level; the chances of a low-level party adventuring for much more than an hour or two are pretty low - you don't have the resources to stretch your Hit Points out that long.  Ergo, Mage Armor is essentially +4 Armor all day - and then, at higher levels, it actually lasts all day.If you've got a Monk or a Rogue in the party, look into a 1st-level Pearl of Power (or two) - and make them help pay for it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  If you can craft them yourself, then for 1,000gp (2 1st-level Pearls) and a 1st-level spell slot you've got a +4 Force-effect Armor bonus for three people for nearly all the time for which it matters.  In comparison, bracers of armor +4 are 16k gp each.</blockquote>

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