D&D 5E Treantmonk's Guide to Everything Xanathar

[shawnellsworth]

Awesome work. Thanks!

 

[gyor]

Storm Sorceror really benefits from some of the new spell choices in XGTE.

Storm Sphere is nice for the Storm Sorceror, but it's Dragon's Breath and Thunder Step are really great with Heart of the Storm, Tempesteous Magic, and Careful Spell.

Example Thunder Step, use TM to get better positioned, then teleport and if allies are still in the way, careful spell to protect them.

Careful Spell Dragon Breath's lightening, benefits from TM when you cast it, but then when you use it, it benefits from Heart of the Storm, and careful spell. What is really cool is as far as I can tell, once you choose an ally to be protected from the spell, they stay that way each time you use a bonus action to unleash the Dragon's Breath.

 

[Mephista]

Hmm... one thing I find rather confusing is how you do rankings. Like, take Horizon Walker. Magic is rated at green, portals is red, and planar warrior is purple. What's the overall judgement of level 3, then? (( While we're on the subject, detect portal is going to be AMAZING in a Planescape game. ))

I feel like that each level needs to be judged on its own merits, rather than breaking them up. Gives kind of an odd message when broken up.

 

[Mario J. Hesles]

Regarding Create Homunculus, in one of the interview videos, the reasons given as to why it costs 1000gp, and why it is a 5th level spell, is because the creature acts as a permanent, concentration-less scrying spell.

In your guide for wizards, you give Scrying a purple rating. I think this deserves at least a purple rating as well. For one, there's no concentration, and as long as the creature's alive...it's "permanent". Also, you can have a familiar and a homunculus, at the same time. The disadvantages compared to scrying are that you need your homunculus to actually get to the place you need to scry, and it's not invisible, like the scrying sensor is. The gold cost for both of the spells is the same.

I consider it on par with scrying in terms of utility.

 

[gyor]

Hmm... one thing I find rather confusing is how you do rankings. Like, take Horizon Walker. Magic is rated at green, portals is red, and planar warrior is purple. What's the overall judgement of level 3, then? (( While we're on the subject, detect portal is going to be AMAZING in a Planescape game. ))

I feel like that each level needs to be judged on its own merits, rather than breaking them up. Gives kind of an odd message when broken up.

Detect Portal should be Orange its situationally useful, and doesn't come at the expense of having a more useful feature at that level. When you combine all thoses features at level 3 I'd say sky blue.

Honestly I'd say Horizon Walker should be Green or Sky Blue.

 

[Rofel Wodring]

Few things about Circle of the Shepherd:
The Bear spirit is better for summoning, true, but assuming you don't need the Unicorn Spirit it's pretty much a no-questions-asked free hit on all of your buddies even if you're not into summoning. Which you should be.
The Unicorn spirit is massive amounts of healing. I'm surprised you counted it so low. Healing is usually kind of a crummy thing to do in combat, but a level 10 druid healing 1d4+15 damage as a bonus action? A 5th-level Shepherd druid healing 50 gp with goodberries
Also, note the word on Faithful Summons; you can trigger it just by wildshaping into a rat or a spider and having someone step on you. Or running into your own Create Bonfire. Then it becomes an hour-long, concentration-free additional 4 polar bears or whatever.

About Summon Greater Demon and Infernal Calling:
You can force most demons and all devils to tell you their true name if they're under your control. The DMG explicitly states that. That's not super-relevant for Infernal Calling, but it's a huge deal for Summon Greater Demon. It means that at DC 16, a Babau only has a 1/16th chance of breaking free. At DC 19 (the highest you can get without magic items or special events), the Babau has about a 2% chance.

 

[Mephista]

A note on Dragon's Breath. With wizards, you could put it on the wizard's familiar. Keep the familiar on your shoulder, and you're carrying around a living flamethrower? Dunno if that's worth adding to your notes about the spell, since it involves less planning.

 

[Rofel Wodring]

Regarding Create Homunculus, in one of the interview videos, the reasons given as to why it costs 1000gp, and why it is a 5th level spell, is because the creature acts as a permanent, concentration-less scrying spell.

Scrying is only worth anything because you can use it to spy on faraway locations you've never been to before. If you're only able to scry locations close to where you are and/or have seen before, its value goes way down.

 

[gyor]

Double checked, Empowered Healing allows you to reroll any of the dice on a spell it has empowered, although it can be an allies spell now, but you can only empower one spell per turn.

It can also be used on allies spells which is weird. If, you have say a Druid cast healing spirit one turn, a bard cast mass heal wounds the next turn, and you cast a twinned high level cure wounds on your turn, you can choose to empower healing on all of them, for three Sorcery points.

Someone did the math and suggested it can increase the healing of a spell by 20%-25%.

 

[Ritorix]

Good stuff. I do think you need to take another look at the Divine Soul.

Divine Magic is insane, a sky-blue ability that is rated purple - not because of what it does, but because of the number of spells known that sorcs get. But what if every spell known you have is the highest-rated spell of two classes? An entire guide could be written on divine soul spell selection, metamagic interactions and multiclass possibilities.

Empowered Healing can reroll any number of dice, not just one. Definitely not red, maybe purple.