Robert Charles
First Post
Synaptic Static.
D&D 5E Treantmonk's Guide to Wizards 5e
Synaptic Static.
smbakeresq
Explorer
Well its unfriendly, that's big limitation. Otherwise though it does look pretty good. I like Enemies abound too, it appears that the creature will use its movement to get to its new enemy provoking OPP attacks from other creatures.
Robert Charles
First Post
The forced opportunity attack might be the best part, against a caster, for example. Ex: BSF Forcing it to use its reaction on a melee basic attack instead of counterspelling you could be pretty sweet.
Rofel Wodring
Explorer
The problem isn't 'targeting various saves'. The problem is 'After CR 15, target INT/DEX or GTFO'. You don't target various saves past a certain point. That's a fool's game and a waste of your precious resources.
There is no >CR15 monster with bad or even mediocre CON saves, most of them have great WIS and CHA saves, and only a couple have bad STR saves. There are only like 3 high-level monsters out of 20 in the basic monster manual that have good INT saves.
There simply will not be a time when it's useful to target CON once you reach a certain point in the game. CON and WIS generally have the worst effects, but there are as of XGE more than enough INT-targeters (along with spells that target checks, target AC, don't require a save) to get you through.
CapnZapp
Legend
There's no such thing as "after CR 15"
Even when you target INT on CR 20s, you can still get good mileage out of CON when you target a bunch of CR 5s.
Plus, actual play experience is NOT equal to the average MM stat block. Nope, no way, not even close.
You can have a heavy NPC-centric campaign, where Hold Person or CON spells are awesome at every CR.
That said, targeting physical stats have always been a losing game when you're up against titans. And targeting any stats at all was a lose vs magic resistant beings.
In short, this is a smaller problem than what you make it out to be, and even then, it's not a new revelation.
Again, what IS the problem, specific to 5e, is the way saves generally don't scale with DCs. It simply is no fun and bad sloppy design to ask a player to make a DC 22 save with a +1 bonus. This should not happen even once!
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Rofel Wodring
Explorer
You get even better mileage continuing to target INT. Granted, there's not a lot of good mass INT disablers. But WIS saves aren't as lopsided in favor of Team Monster at the <CR 10 level and almost no monster has good CHA saves. At any rate, if you're fighting a bunch of sub-CR monsters that won't go down to two rounds of fireballs, you're better off with STR and DEX spells like Whirlwind and Transmute Rock and Reverse Gravity and Otiluke's Resilient Sphere and Black Tentacles and Watery Sphere -- it's not like CON has a bunch of effective (note the word, effective) mass disablers other than Blindness/Deafness and Sunbeam, anyway.
Unless you're fighting against a bunch of Archmages, Hobgoblin Devastators, Warpriests, specialist mages, and Archdruids (in which case attacking them with save-favorable spells might be too hard), an NPC-centric campaign is the party playing on EZ-Mode. Who cares what spells are super-effective against EZ-Mode enemies? And while a lot of spellcaster NPCs do tend to have great Intelligence and even WIS saves, they tend to have crummy STR and DEX and even CON saves. But good luck getting past the layers of Counterspell / Dispel Magic to land a spell in the first place.
No, targeting INT/DEX is still a good bet. A balor against a typical high-level wizard (DC 19, no stat tomes or save boosters) will fail an INT save about 49% of the time and a DEX save 75% even with their magic resistance.CaptainZapp said:
I'm amazed that you apparently haven't noticed that this complaint and my complaint about monster design aren't related. Care to guess what the intelligence saving throw bonus of a Storm Giant is?
But that's my point. If the spells don't exist to choose, you can't target various saves.
smbakeresq
Explorer
Has anyone tried or can we have a thought experiment here about an effective wizard build that’s casts only spells with no saves or uses spells like polymorph on friends who don’t want to save? Walls, fogs, polymorph, etc.
I would think you could be pretty effective. I generally build wizards as non-damages dealers as it’s more effective, but still use plenty of debilitating spells.
I had a cleric that just cast Bless, Spirit Guardians, heals, etc as a test and she was remarkably effective.
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I would think you could be pretty effective. I generally build wizards as non-damages dealers as it’s more effective, but still use plenty of debilitating spells.
I had a cleric that just cast Bless, Spirit Guardians, heals, etc as a test and she was remarkably effective.
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Treantmonklvl20
Explorer
I tend to recommend 3 types of spells. Buffs, Debuffs and Battlefield Control.
Buffs don't require saving throws, and battlefield control often don't provide saves, so yeah, it can be done. Even a number of blasts don't provide saving throws, if you don't mind rolling to hit.
