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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7245860" data-attributes="member: 58172">@<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=5889" target="_blank">Stalker0</a>In the Minor Spells, I created a new category called ‘DM Gives A Hint’, and moved those specific divination spells there, so they can be managed separately.Re Detect Thoughts. Moreorless the Insight skill can do what this spell can do. Note, the 5e version of the spell cannot ‘detect creatures around you’. It can only target a creature that is within Close Range (30 feet), and the caster must be able to ‘see’ it. In other words, the caster must already know the creature is there and be looking right at it. This is normally true when using the Insight skill too, albeit the skill might be slightly better such as discerning something in the next room by the tone of someones voice, or so. The spell fails if the target has Intelligence 3 or lower. Possibly, the Insight skill might still work at the empathic emotional level of animals, but arguably, the Animal Handling skill should be used instead for creatures of Intelligence 3 or lower. So here the spell and the skill are the same. Both the spell and the skill can be used to discern ‘what is most on the mind at the moment’. With regard to going ‘deeper’ to empathize with the emotional state and motivations of the target, the Insight skill is roughly the same as the Detect Thoughts spell. Where the skill requires a skill check, the spell grants a save, so both require a success on a d20 roll. The skill is better because the skillster can do the discernment discretely, while the spell is intrusive, and the target automatically knows if the caster probing around in the targets mind. Heh, regarding the skill, the target of Insight could likewise make an Insight check on the skillster to discern if the skillster is trying to make Insight attempts to analyze it. The spell grants no special features to detect lies. By contrast, an attempt to lie requires a Deception skill check, and the Insight skill is required to discover the lie and penetrate it. Good or bad, that is the rules as written for the Insight skill. In this sense the Insight skill is strictly better than the Detect Thoughts spell. In all cases, the spell is either redundant with the skill or inferior to the skill.In the comparison between the Insight skill and the Detect Thoughts  spell, it seems the skill is strictly better.The things in the ‘Perhaps Skill Check’ category are intended to be ‘perhaps’. Their status is debatable. But what these Minor Spells offer is so close to what skills can do, that the skills must be taken into account before deciding what to do with these minor spells.So for example, Blade Ward is comparable to what the Dodge or Charge combat action can do. Technically, a combat action isnt a skill, but hypothetically could involve a skill check. Charge might involve an Athletics skill check, Dodge might involve an Acrobatics skill check, depending on what the DM has in mind while adjudicating a particular narrative.Personally, I am less a fan of Blade Ward. Cantrips are precious resource. A caster only knows a few, chooses them for life, and cannot access unknown cantrips. Because the other cantrips are so much better, Blade Ward fails to compete as a Cantrip. But its relative position among Minor Spells might move ‘lower’. Its utility seems to be something like, ‘I am ready for absolutely anything that might hurt me, whatever it might be’. In that sense, it could be a combat action, sorta like a fighting stance? As an action it could be called ‘Ready For Anything’, or ‘On Guard’.As an aside, I am thinking of renaming the ‘Less Useful’ category as ‘Marginal’, ‘Cusp’, or ‘Threshold’. The idea is, the less useful spells, in the sense of being highly situational, are now in the Setup category. So the stuff that remains in the Less Useful category is probably too powerful for the next lower level, but not power enough relative to the spells in the same level, and thus are somewhere in between on the cusp.All the spells in this thread rank depending on how good they are compared to other spells. It doesnt really matter which class is casting it. To help ensure a single standard metric to evaluate all of them, the Wizard class is considered the reference point, and is casting all of them. (Imagine there is a Thaumaturge tradition that accesses healing spells, similar to the way the Divine Soul of the Sorcerer class does.)The category of the Eldritch Knight is a special case for spell that involve weapon attacks and melee range. A Wizard would normally avoid the spells in this category. However, an Eldritch Knight can prefer them, so for it, may be excellent. Also, some players who are skilled at character optimization might build a gishy Wizard that is finds more use for Eldritch Knight spells, perhaps building a Bladesinger tradition. Heh, so the Eldritch Knight category is sort of like a hiccup at each spell level, in the continuum from worst to best.When evaluating a spell like Warding Bond, a Wizard is likely to avoid it because of the self-damage. But an Eldrich Knight with lots of hit points might employ it well. So the spell works well in this category. As an Eldrich Knight, looking at the Eldritch Knight category, which spells would you probably prefer over Warding Bond, and over which would you probably prefer Warding Bond? I have never seen Warding Bond chosen by a player, but your group seems to get alot of mileage out of it. I am thinking it is a ‘Not Bad’ choice for an Eldrich Knight spell?</blockquote>

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