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

[Iguanacus]

Fair.
So maybe not brown, but a brownish red.

You're also losing out on any bonus you would get from a magical bow.

I try to never consider magic items or weapons as a given in my evaluation of abilities. A magic bow could be something you see in your campaign, it could not. Random loot tables are fickle and if the DM is letting you buy items nothing stops him from giving you a similar item that works with radiant sun bolt.

Unless you view anything but using stunning strike as waste of ki I don't see how it could be rated poorly. Medium at worst imo.

 

[Rofel Wodring]

Well... I double-checked just to make sure, but the Scrying spell doesn't let you spy on faraway locations you've never been to before... just the opposite, it can only be somewhere you've seen... and that's the secondary purpose of the spell. It's primarily an invisible remote surveillance drone that tracks a person or a creature.

I don't rate the base Scrying spell particularly high in my own guide, though. It can be good, but the fun part of the spell (spy on faraway locations you've never been to before) requires a bit of thought and downtime to it -- that is, spying on a low-level minion, getting a view of their surroundings, and chain-scrying from there. That said, I didn't rate it higher than Green; situationally very useful but too dependent on table-to-table parameters to give it a firm rating.

Using Scrying to look on locations you've already been to before straight-up chews, though. When has that ever been useful in a campaign?

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

There are so many comments that appeared overnight (thank you!) that individually addressing them would either involve a stupidly long post, or a stupid amount of posts. So, firstly, I have read every comment, I assure you, and here are some general replies:

1) I made an error on the Divine Soul's empowered healing, the error is now corrected

2) I'm of mixed opinion on whether I underrated the Conquest Paladin's fear ability. I'm going to think about it.

3) I have made changes to the Summon Greater Demon spell thanks to some great feedback from readers. I'm still rating it green, but it's close to blue. It's good, but I want to see it in play.

4) Questions were raised on whether a TWF College of Blades Bard needed Warcaster since they can use a weapon as a focus. I've linked the relevant official information in the guide

5) Shadow of Moil: Yes, I've almost certainly underrated this spell, yes probably by multiple rating points. I think I misread the "heavily obscured" portion of the spell, this requires some thought about just how big a
deal this is. Expect a re-evaluation soon. The Sky-Blue I keep getting told to change it to probably isn't going to happen though.

6) Healing spirit: OK, this would require a lot of room to completely cover, but I'm happy with my "good" rating. Yes, I'm aware Jeremy Crawford aknowledged "they were keeping an eye" on it. Yes, it's good out of combat healing, I mean as far as healing spells go, as good as it gets. I do think that the excitement is overblown though. I think it's good, but not broken. It is my expectation that eventually, the hype over this is going to blow over. I could be wrong.

7) Gift of the Ever-Living ones (Warlock invocation) maybe should be orange, because there are some combos that can improve effectiveness. I'm considering it.

8) I made a mistake on the Tipsy-Sway redirect ability for Drunken Masters. It has been corrected

9) I have re-evaluated Steel Wind Strike. I'm still happy with its current rating. Maybe I'll take it at some point and give it a try, but I'm not expecting the dramatic success that I've been told I should.

10) It's been pointed out that I didn't mention that Samurai + Elven Accuracy work well together. I don't think this needs special mention, because there are lots of ways to get advantage.

11) I realize that the color scheme (or color coding in general, or color coding non options, or providing different colors to abilities gained at the same level) has a definite divide in popularity. I really encourage everyone to read the text, it will give you a much better and more nuanced evaluation than any rating I could give. Frankly, I could almost give up color coding altogether, as any feedback I get is universally negative on it, but it helps me organize my own thoughts on things.

12) (This one is for Mellowred) To be clear, I use the brown rating exclusively for the worst traps. Things that are objectively much worse than other options, so you actually screw yourself over for using them. Changing damage type from piercing to radiant (as a non-random example) is generally useless, but doesn't actually make it worse. Normally, that would be a red rating, but in this case, it actually could be really useful in certain circumstances (say you are fighting a lycanthrope for example). Things that are normally useless but there are specific circumstances where they are quite good get rated orange. That's why the orange rating on that ability. Now we can discuss various circumstances of Ki points for additional attack and magic weapons etc, but we are really just looking at an ability that we both think isn't very good, on a subclass we both recommend against, and our disagreement is only about how strongly we don't like it. How much time should we invest?

13) I don't rate by "Best in class". This isn't new for this guide, and I've explained in much greater detail why somewhere in the comment section of my Wizard guide when talking about higher level blast spells.

14) I made a mistake on Maelstrom, it has been corrected

15) Circumstantially good spells get an orange rating. No reason to tell me, "If you are playing X, and Y condition is present, this spell is blue!", nope, it's orange. That's what orange means.

16) "Tortle" was someting unheard of to me until I read the comment (ToA apparently), and it's not referenced in Xanathar's to my knowledge, which is why it's not in my guide.

17) Please understand that we aren't going to agree on everything, we will never have group consensus, this is subjective stuff. I am always glad when someone disagrees and they explain why they disagree, but understand I will not always be persuaded. I still appreciate the feedback. I can't reference every "I can't believe you rated X this way", there are too many. I do read every comment, and I do consider your reasons. Sometimes I do change my mind, but often I've already considered what you mention, or I simply am not persuaded.

18) Metamagic + Cleric spells: This is not something I gave much (or apparently enough) consideration to. I will do some research, and may or may not change ratings.

19) As for Divine Soul being great because you can select the best of 2 different class spell lists, that is not persuasive at all to me. A regular sorcerer can't even get the all the best of one spell list. Imagine I present you with 3 stacks of money. Each stack has $1,000 in different denominations. I tell you that you can select on stack to keep. Is it that much better if I gave you 6 different stacks to choose from? Or 60? Now granted, there are some instances, and some builds, where the spell on the Cleric list is simply BETTER than anything on the Sorcerer list, but I really don't think it's all that commonplace. For the most part, I think the Sorcerer list is better.

20) In response to Peryton's being the best option available with a small character (for the find greater steed spell), I've been trying to find the rules for what size mount you can use when you are small (or any size for that matter) and have been unsuccessful. If a small rider can ride a large mount, I do think Pegasus and Griffon remain the superior choices. However, if I could be pointed to the rules on mount sizes vs rider sizes, I would appreciate it.

21) In regards to Homunculus, to a large degree, I find using it as a "scry" alternative is very similar to using a familiar as a "scry" alternative. Useful beyond 100' though, but to a large degree, redundant. As for comparing it to scry, your enemies or traps, or environmental conditions can't see or kill your scry sensor, which is kind of a big deal. Homunculus has a +2 stealth and cannot turn invisible.

22) If something is circumstantially useful, but those circumstances are so rare that in most campaigns, they will never come up even once, that's not orange, that's red.

23) Rofel Wodring: I don't think Unicorn Spirit and Goodberry interact the way you think, or at least the way I read it. As for Demon true names, generally, I'm thinking of these things as combat spells. Now if my DM allows me to have the Demon take some useful combat action AND tell me its true name at the same time, that's a no-brainer, but I'm not sure I would be able to do that. For the most part, I'm thinking that spell is best just throwing a Demon into the midst of the enemies and have it lay into them and make itself a prime target for attacks. Not really thinking about it being particularly useful for an extended time.

24) A familiar cannot attack. Now by RAW I think you have a good case to say that activating Dragon's Breath isn't an attack action, so it's fine. Not sure my DM would agree, RAW or no.

25) Nodachi is a great weapon for Samurai, thanks!


Thanks everyone for the feedback! I read every comment (most twice), but if I missed commenting on something you were looking for my specific comment to, please comment again. Keep it coming!

 

[CapnZapp]

My conclusion is I gave you 1 example of a spell that is better then fireball.

When we're talking "why does these other spells exist when you simply use Fireball" what made you think it would help pointing out there's at least one spell (arguably) better than Fireball? How does that help?

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Rofel Wodring]

23a) You're right about Unicorn Spirit. It doesn't add to the healing of the spell, the aura itself heals. If there was only some way to heal with both your action and bonus action, we'd be talking about some serious healing but, eh, spell limitations. Maybe if you had that Elixir cantrip from UA.

23b) Why not? You can tell a demon to cast Fear and walk over to where you are on the same round, so why can't you tell a demon to tell you its true name and blast someone with a Fear?

24) The Sage Advice FAQ straight-up says that an attack only consists of an attack roll. Meaning, Magic Missile is not an attack despite the fact the spell says that it hits the target.


0.) By the way, Treantmonk, I get the impression that you don't use summoning spells all that much in your 5E D&D games. I think you should. Bounded accuracy makes those things killer. I was sort of skeptical about spells like Conjure Animals, too, but summoning a pack of Dimetrodons and giving them all 30 hit points + temp hit points? Nasty. Summoning a Korred and telling the Korred to summon another Earth Elemental/Xorn/Galeb Duhr? Nasty. Summoning a Cuoatl and having it bounce-shapechange into a Hobgoblin Devastator/Variant Human Illusionist? Nasty.

-1.) It probably won't affect your rating of the spell, but Wrath of Nature only hands out difficult terrain to your enemies, not to your friends. That is significantly more valuable. Also, you can use Awaken on a bunch of trees in downtime so that you can make sure that the tree auto-damage triggers.

 

[CapnZapp]

Unless you view anything but using stunning strike as waste of ki I don't see how it could be rated poorly. Medium at worst imo.

Since radiant sun bolt doesn't work together with stunning strike it is truly dire.

If you could pay Ki to load the sun bolts with stunning (or perhaps blinding) energy, THEN the ability could be rated "Medium at worst".

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

23b) Why not? You can tell a demon to cast Fear and walk over to where you are on the same round, so why can't you tell a demon to tell you its true name and blast someone with a Fear?

I can't argue with that. I'm going to add your recommendation to the spell description.

24) The Sage Advice FAQ straight-up says that an attack only consists of an attack roll. Meaning, Magic Missile is not an attack despite the fact the spell says that it hits the target.

To be more specific, an attack roll or something labelled an attack, but yes, I do agree about the RAW. Based on our conversation, I'm certain that if we each tried this, then our DM reminded us that a familiar can't attack, then we pointed them to the sage advice and pointed out that burning enemies with dragon breath is technically not an attack according to the rules, we would get two entirely different responses.

0.) By the way, Treantmonk, I get the impression that you don't use summoning spells all that much in your 5E D&D games. I think you should.

I did use summoning in 5e, but I've largely stopped after that it was clarified that you don't get to choose what you summon, your DM picks (you do get to pick one aspect apparently)

I was sort of skeptical about spells like Conjure Animals, too, but summoning a pack of Dimetrodons and giving them all 30 hit points + temp hit points? Nasty.

Or you could cast Conjure Animals and select 8 beasts of challenge rating 1/4 or lower, then your DM rolls a die, flips through the MM, "Lizard. You get 8 Lizards."

Edit: I should point out that the DM is supposed to PICK what you get, not randomly roll, but I've now had 2 different DM's pull out the dice, because that's how they feel it should be. "DM picks" of course does not mean they can't pick randomly, so you can't really argue.

-1.) It probably won't affect your rating of the spell, but Wrath of Nature only hands out difficult terrain to your enemies, not to your friends. That is significantly more valuable. Also, you can use Awaken on a bunch of trees in downtime so that you can make sure that the tree auto-damage triggers.

I thought I made it clear in my description that it "works against your enemies", but perhaps it needs further clarification.

 

[Rofel Wodring]

I did use summoning in 5e, but I've largely stopped after that it was clarified that you don't get to choose what you summon, your DM picks (you do get to pick one aspect apparently)

In my experience, gained from playing with at least 8 different DMs at conventions and in AL? DMs generally let you pick what you want to use with summoning spells as long as you don't try the Pixie Bomb. Which is understandable, because that dumbass Sage Advice of "the DM picks for you" is hellish to do in actual play. Have you seen a DM actually try to do that on a table? It's hilarious and sad, especially when you use a spell that has sparsely populated monsters for a CR like Conjure Fey and Conjure Minor Elementals.

The Circle of the Shepherd L14 ability explicitly lets you choose the creature, though. And it's easy to trigger if you don't mind a little cheese. Along with Summon Greater Demon and Infernal Calling. I'd like to think that 5E D&D is apologizing for that backhanded nerf.

 

[Rofel Wodring]

About Infernal Calling:
Getting a demon to make the check requires a Charisma (whatever) check versus their own Insight check. Now, a lot of devils in the DMG don't have good insight checks. They top out at +5 and are usually significantly worse. The problem is that it's very likely that your own Charisma check probably chews if you're a wizard unless you're being juiced by someone else. Friends is very much recommended. If you're a Warlock, though, you're good to go. The command you can give is pretty open-ended, too, so a command like 'follow my party and fight our designated enemies' won't have you making multiple checks so long as you don't want the devil to be doing something complicated like scouting between clearing out dungeons.

I'd say that this spell beats out Summon Greater Demon on efficiency if you have the prep time for it. SGD is a lower-level spell slot and can be cast as an action. However, even if you're forcing a CHA 8 demon to make a DC 17 save with disadvantage, they're eventually going to make it in a few minutes. As long as you're careful with the initial command, there's no chance of a rebellion with Infernal Calling.

 

[Ancalagon]

Seems great so far! Though maybe you could change either brown or orange to a different color? Maybe a darker shade of one of them? They're both pretty bright on my monitor and its hard to tell the difference between the two at a glance.

I concur - the brown needs to be darker