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

[MakerCaker]

Excellent guide. Good work!

 

[gyor]

My guide to Xanathar's Guide to Everything, where I assess the options, then you use the comments below to either shower me with praise (yay!) or tell me how terrible it is (boo!)

Seriously though, I value feedback. I'm not too concerned about the occassional grammatical mess up, but if I read something wrong, or you noticed something I didn't, I would love to hear about it!

Treantmonk's Guide to Everything Xanathar

I thought this was updated, it still has Empowered Healing as red with the falsely saying it only rerolls one die? Just curious.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

I thought this was updated, it still has Empowered Healing as red with the falsely saying it only rerolls one die? Just curious.

Could you have downloaded a PDF or something? I changed it to say you can, "Use a sorcery point to reroll healing dice". All reference to one die was removed when I made the correction.

I did not change the rating.

 

[Phazonfish]

Big fan of your wizard guide so this was fun to read too. Just a couple of thoughts...

Firstly, I notice you seem to consider targeting Str saves to be a sizable flaw. While it's true that enemies with good Str are common, I feel like having spells that target it is not so bad, because it is more visibly apparent when something has low Str. If your enemy is a humanoid and not wearing plate/wielding a weapon as big as you, such spells seem like a safe bet. Honestly I think Watery Sphere's biggest problem isn't that it targets Str, but rather that it becomes a lot less valuable 2 levels later when you get Wall of Force; WS isn't as good as Wall of Force and doesn't have the benefit of using a small spell slot like Phantasmal Force or Hold Person. I agree with your logic on Earthbind though, most flying foes you would want to single out are gonna be able to save against it, seems kinda bad.

Secondly...

I have a fair amount of experience with summoned/created/called creatures with my wizards, and one of the primary uses of them is that any attacks and damage to them is damage you and your party don't take. I really can't imagine a case where I would want to reverse that benefit by expending my own HP to provide HP to a created creature. I hadn't noticed that feature though, and it's worth mentioning, but I can't recommend that use under any circumstance I can think of.

Not even the circumstance of being a necromancer with a bunch of sketons and zambos on their last legs and having hp and spell slots left over before you take a long rest? I imagine one can only find so many easily accessible medium/small corpses and this saves you one. Still not worth a spell selection, but if I were a necromancer who found it written I would scribe it in a heartbeat, especially since it benefits from Necromancy Savant.

Thirdly, you don't seem to be a big fan of Grave Domain Clerics. Would giving them heavy armor proficiency bump them up a bit for you? I know you don't value healing a lot, but I feel like if you want to make a healer, Grave Domain is on par with Life Domain just because of Circle of Mortality; other clerics would pop you up with a Healing Word and you'd fall in one hit. If you upcast Cure Wounds and this feature maximizes the healing, you could maybe take two, possible averting a death spiral.

 

[CapnZapp]

I thought this was updated, it still has Empowered Healing as red with the falsely saying it only rerolls one die? Just curious.

Just a friendly heads up:

Feel free to consider not using the word "falsely" in this context as it implies falsification, that is, a deliberate falsehood.

The friendlier word is "erroneous". This way you still say the claim is in error (that is, false), but without any implied wrongdoing.

In short, "falsely saying" implies covering something up, suspicious behavior. While saying "in error" only suggests something much more simple: an honest-to-gawd mistake, something we all do.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[CapnZapp]

Not even the circumstance of being a necromancer with a bunch of sketons and zambos on their last legs and having hp and spell slots left over before you take a long rest? I imagine one can only find so many easily accessible medium/small corpses and this saves you one.

I really don't think there's any such thing as "having hp and spell slots left over".

I mean, of course - that can happen. But isn't that case by definition an easy combat, where you don't need to take an optimal course of action?

It seems a poor rating is entirely justified when your argument basically says to use it when what you do don't matter much?



Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[gyor]

Could you have downloaded a PDF or something? I changed it to say you can, "Use a sorcery point to reroll healing dice". All reference to one die was removed when I made the correction.

I did not change the rating.

I checked and you right I don't know what happened before.

 

[Darkcloud]

Your guides are always good stuff. Here are my thoughts:
Forge Domain - This looks very attractive for the Cleric1/Wiz X; not so much for the searing smite, but for the AC boost over other cleric domains with heavy armor proficiency. Maybe it isn’t exclusively Dwarfy themed - I’m about the start playing a rock gnome cleric 1/wiz x, and the domain seems to match the flavor of the tinkering rock gnome somewhat well.

Insightful Fighting (3rd): Use your bonus action to potentially get sneak attack against an opponent you normally wouldn’t get sneak attack against. When I’ve played rogues, the occasion for this would not occur often. When you don’t have an ally within 5’ of an enemy, often you can use cunning action for a hide/attack from hidden quick advantage. Not saying this will never come up, but I don’t think it will come up a lot.

I’m hoping to not derail discussion much here. It has been argued that you can’t successfully hide when opponents can see you attempting to hide (excluding some sort of special, DM-approved distraction). Even though cunning action allows you to take the hide action in combat quickly, it doesn’t make the action always work. I became aware of this when I watched a Youtube video by DawnforgedCast called How Stealth Works in Dungeons and Dragons. (I’m not sure about linking rules here) That video and comments offers a more complete discussion than I should attempt here. The point of the whole thing is: if a DM decides on a tight interpretation of hiding rules, then Insightful Fighting is more useful than you thought.

I agree with you, that much point for the game designers to create this ability if rogues can already freely hide in combat.

Shawang, wang, wang.

I guess this is sad music, but without cues from listening to a person speak it is confusing. The color coding helps clarify this and the occasional sarcasm elsewhere in the document. This guide has a more upbeat and playful tone than your wizard guide. (See, I had a good thing to say about the colors!)

The description of Elven Accuracy cuts off mid-sentence. No big deal, as the thought is mostly complete already. After re-reading a few times I suspect that you may have intentionally stopped for a segue for the gnome feat. If so, then it is a bit confusing since a character can’t normally get both of those feats. An ellipsis might help….

Prodigy - I’m no expert on grappling, but prodigy may be highly prized for the option to get expertise athletics without multiclassing.

Toll the Dead – Any Death domain clerics will take note of a new necromancy cantrip for the Reaper ability. Toll outclasses Chill Touch, and sounds an upgrade for the domain’s offence.

 

[Phazonfish]

I really don't think there's any such thing as "having hp and spell slots left over".

I mean, of course - that can happen. But isn't that case by definition an easy combat, where you don't need to take an optimal course of action?

It seems a poor rating is entirely justified when your argument basically says to use it when what you do don't matter much?

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

I mean, isn't the point of being a necromancer to have your minions take the hits for you so that you DO have hp left over. Furthermore, my point isn't that you should depend on having spell slots left over so much as this is nice to have in the off chance you have slots left over. I'm not saying its a great spell, just that it isn't 100% useless.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Am I the only one who thinks that the Spectre feature is more interesting?

I think it is interesting, but I've been looking more into the Curse and the Armor of Curses abilities. Creating a 1/day undead that hates the light can be either worthless or pretty powerful, depends on the situations.