• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

D&D 5E Totally underwhelmed by 5e bladesinger, am I missing something?

Wrong, you don't have to be moving to stay in bladesong, it's not rage. The conditions that end it are, incompacitated, don medium or heavy armor, or a shield, or use two hands to make an attack with a weapon.

Like I said, its DM dependent. Many DMs would rule being unable to move or act due to the lethargy of haste dropping = you cant dance anymore.

Well if you close your eyes to attack, it's the same as looking away, you give yourself disadvantage and give your attacker advantage.

Technically all attacks are made simultanously though, so I agree that looking away (closing your eyes) is a 'whole of round' thing (you can do it, but the effects last till the start of your next turn).

Also, it doesn't prevent you from hitting the mirror image.

It does. Read the spell. You need sight for it to work. If you cant see the images (fighting in darkness, or closing your eyes, or the caster is invisible for example) you are unaffected by the spell.

A creature is unaffected by this spell if it can’t see, if it relies on senses other than sight, such as blindsight, or if it can perceive illusions as false, as with truesight.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

The person is still relying on sight for his attack. Just because he closed his eyes for the swing only means he's dumb. He still relies on sight for figuring out where I am. Like I stated, only the conditions that defeats it.

Sent from my SM-T813 using Tapatalk
 

The person is still relying on sight for his attack. Just because he closed his eyes for the swing only means he's dumb. He still relies on sight for figuring out where I am. Like I stated, only the conditions that defeats it.

Considering that sight is not an exclusive (as in "either you see or you can't target") requirement to target a creature, it's not a requirement to target the person under mirror image. Not that i do not find the approach gamey, but he has a point about "taking disadvantage" over you rolling for mirror images. But the act of closing the eyes requires knowledge of the spell, which is not automatic.
 
Last edited:

1st of all songblade is not a dance, and no one is singing...
think of Syrio Forel...
now hitting 4th level bladesinger and I see it as a melee caster. yeah, I'm not a buffer (we have a land druid) can do godly once in a while but i like swinging.
if we take half caster it will mean I have a 4th level 3 1st level slots, right?
as a full caster I have 4 slots from level 1 and 3 slots from level 2.
so if I burn 4 slots (like mirror image and 2 shields) i'm still valid as a half arcane caster. this will compensate me for lack oh HP and inferior AC comparing to let's say Paladin.
now, maybe playing a god wizard is more optimized, which i say is party dependent but I don't think that portent is more helpful than Bladesong. 'cause maybe the BBEG is affected by hold person, but breaking concentration is easy, and hitting is easier. In flavor, to my opinion, Bladesinger wins big time. eversince the fighter/wizard elf from 2nd edition.
 

Closing eyes to defeat Mirror Image is pretty similar to closing eyes to defeat a Medusa's stare; in the latter case, they explicitly word it so that you can do so, but gaming it by 'opening your eyes after taking your turn' instantly slaps the penalty back on. It seems like saying 'I close my eyes' is such an easy counter to the spell that it is unlikely you're meant to be able to do it.
 

Pertaining to realism, it depends on how you picture the mirror images and how much they are confusing you. 5e moves away from the miniatures-on-a-grid model, but honestly, the spell ought to be a case of "place the wizard and each image in a separate square, keep which one is real a secret, then have the opponent select which image they are going after" situation. If you don't do that, then they really need to define blind fighting better. Otherwise, we do run into these conundrums.

For myself, if my players said that their PCs were closing their eyes to avoid the mirror image spell, I would ask them, "so how do you know where your opponent is to swing your sword at them?" And we can start debating how effective a blind person can realistically fight (which will be a messy discussion, but at least it won't be a gamist one).

As to the rules-- outside of the monster description of medusas, is there even a rule for closing your eyes? If we are going to be RAW-uber-alles-minded, should we even be assuming that closing one's eyes is a game-rule-relevant option?
 

I would just give them the blinded condition for that round, but that's pretty much how I would handle any situation like that, including medusa.
 

I would just give them the blinded condition for that round, but that's pretty much how I would handle any situation like that, including medusa.
That's basically how the rules handle it, without specifically saying you're blinded.

Sent from my SM-T813 using Tapatalk
 

If you think so.

The ruling seems pretty clear to me. The only potential problem is the way 5e deals with attacking invisible targets (which is effectively what the person would be with your eyes closed). The default rules have the player "guess" where they are attacking, and the GM has them roll (even if the target isn't there). That particular rule is one that is mechanically useless, and requires the usage of a combat grid, or some on-the-fly ruling.

If the GM is OK with the player being able to "guess" the right location of the real enemy with his eyes closed (sort of how actual blindfighting tends to work -- you aren't swinging wildly to your right when the guy is moving around to your left), then closing his eyes means he just gets the disadvantage to hit and otherwise ignores the images.

But if your GM does something like setup 4 extra identical pieces on the board, so that the player has to choose which square to attack in, then closing his eyes would make things worse by not only getting disadvantage, but also because he's still having to randomly figure out which square the mage is in.

Anyway, it's the kind of thing should probably be cleared up beforehand.
 


Into the Woods

Remove ads

Top