The General D&D thread

That's your right.

Thing is though... For all the shenanigans that an Arcane Trickster can get up to, they don't get the ability casts spells with their hands full for free, they don't get the ability to give their opponents disadvantages on their saves against their spells and they don't get near immunity to having their Concentration broken through a combination of having damage resistance to the most common damage types and getting to take ten on concentration checks.

And while Wolf Totem and Bear Totem Barbarians and Ancestal Warrior Barbarians are incredibly cool and I like them a lot, they're still vulnerable to the age old trick of keeping away from the Barbarian so their Rage ends. The Bloodrager can cast a Cantrip like Firebolt at a distant enemy and keep their Rage up. That alone is pretty frickin' powerful.

I will come to your house and cover your door with lambs' blood to protect your first born.

So part of my new campaign is Goblins are suddenly a dire threat. I don't want to just mob the party with them I need something a bit more nuanced. Like better-organized Goblins or even a properly set up goblin civilization that can possibly match the other races but has been hidden away for a period before deciding to return to their old lands kicking off a war.

Thoughts?

Flashbacks to Goblin Slayer's Goblin Paladin. You can easily flavor other monster statblocks into that of goblins. If we're talking pure goblins, and not just goblinoids, nothing's stopping you from turning a Hobgoblin Warlord or Devastator (or any of the Hobgoblin variants) into just those small little buggers. Put a HobGoblin Warlord and a Devastator with a bunch of regular gobbos and those two's Martial Advantage and Arcane Advantage, respectively, can wreak havoc on any unsuspecting parties.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Feb 27th 2021 at 9:36:35 AM

Well, they do get the ability to give opponents disadvantage on saves. It's a class feature. It's called Magical Ambush. They're quite good at it.

They do get the ability to essentially cast with their hands full because rogues usually fight one handed. Barbarians almost always use two handed weapons as well, meaning that they can just hold the weapon in one hand. They could theoretically use sword and shield but I don't view shoring your terrible AC up as a good move in the long run and two weapon fighting is bad in general. The hands thing is basically academic for a two handed subclass.

A Ts don't get almost unbreakable concentration but they do get better skills and can use their spells better with skills, as well as pseudo-resistance with Uncanny Dodge and simply the ability to be hit less. Besides, unbreakable concentration is a lot less powerful for somebody who is as bad at casting as the Bloodrager.

As for the last one, literally throw javelins, man. It doesn't matter if you hit or not. You just need to make an attack. Firebolt is nice and all for the range but javelin long range is literally 120 feet. You're less accurate but the point is to keep rage up, not do damage.

Edited by Cwest5538 on Feb 28th 2021 at 12:06:30 PM

Huh, guess what's overpowered depends a lot on which rule interpretations the DM enforces.

For instance it's up to the DM whether wielding a Two-Handed weapon means you can have a hand free for casting (the Two-Handed property specifies that you need two hands for attack, not for just holding, but wielding the weapon in combat is different from just carrying it around too). I know some D Ms permit spellcasting with one hand while holding a two-handed weapon in the other, but every DM I've played with has ruled that you can't and as a DM I do the same, because otherwise I feel I'd have to rule that the character wielding a sword and shield can also 'just hold the sword with their shield hand for a bit while casting' and then no one ever has their hands full.

Same goes for throwing a javelin if you've been wielding a two-handed weapon up to that point without taking an action to stow your two-handed weapon or dropping it and then spending an action to pick it back up next turn.

Those small details in how rules are handled can massively change what is and isn't overpowered.

You can't compare letting go of a handle for a bit with juggling a sword and shield between your hands...

I can tell you from personal experience that holding a sword and shield in the same hand for, like, six seconds is not remotely hard.

I’ve never done it myself, but I imagine that taking one hand off a two-handed weapons without adjusting the other hand is a good way to drop the entire thing.

I’d probably let a player use their bonus action to engage in the weapon juggling needed to free a hand while either keeping hold of a two-handed weapon or a weapon and a shield (maybe with a dex check). I’d also take away any ability to use the equipment (for an attack of opportunity with the weapon or the AC bonus with the shield) until they juggled things back.

Why would you think that? Two-handed weapons aren't that heavy.

Also using a bonus action for that would be excessive IMO. The free object interaction exists for that kind of thing.

Tucker's Kobolds would seem like a good source for inspiration:

https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/TuckersKobolds.pdf

Thanks folks.

Mara: Gold. That was awesome. Exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of.

Also, Kobolds are my favorite DND monster.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Feb 28th 2021 at 9:38:02 AM

x7 It isn't up to the DM, though; at least not if we're talking RAW here. The Two-handed property specifically limits requiring both hands for attacking. RAI you can argue that carrying a zweihander in combat requires both hands to be ready (which is a flimsy excuse, frankly; it's not that difficult to carry or even shoulder a two-handed weapon for a few seconds), but there is nothing RAW about limiting an Eldritch Knight from freeing one hand from his zweihander to cast Firebolt. Just seems like an unnecessary limitation to place on an EK.

As for shields, just reading the description of a shield already precludes juggling a weapon with it to free up a hand, emphasis mine:

Your off hand is already occupied with the shield, so RAW you can't transfer a weapon to it, no matter how your player argues that technically, their shield is only a tiny buckler or whatever. You can flavor your shield however you want, but strictly speaking you can't juggle a weapon and a shield in the same hand. Sure, you can argue that IRL you can do so, but matching reality isn't what we're trying to achieve here.

Also, your ruling about spending an action to pick up a weapon is disregarding the rule of players having one free object interaction in tandem with their movement and/or action; it shouldn't cost your players an action to pick up a weapon they dropped the previous round if they haven't used up their free object interaction yet. By that ruling spellcasters should have to use an action to draw a cost material for their spells and wait until their next turn before casting said spell like, say, a Wizard drawing a diamond worth 50 gp to cast Chromatic Orb.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Feb 28th 2021 at 8:12:32 AM

I think IRL it would be even more impractical to juggle a shield and a weapon in the same hand. Even shields with built-in weapons (blades or spikes) are troublesome, because the balance can easily be off.

Someone was inspired by the tale of Tucker, so they made their own list of dice roll-results for different ways how the kobolds can attack you.

https://mfov.magehandpress.com/2016/12/tuckers-kobolds.html

Edited by Mara999 on Feb 28th 2021 at 6:44:18 PM

For my part, I would argue that it's a clear mechanical necessity that you can't carry a shield and a weapon the same hand and fight effectively with it. This is the trade-off between carrying a sword and shield vs a greatsword.

Unless it's a magical item like the Guardian Shield, which gives you protection while also being a sword.

After managing to skip 3/5 of what i had planed for the session (and me in absolute panic mode because THEY WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE AT THE DUNGEON YET AND THERE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CLUES FOR THE FUTURE IN MY ROLEPLAYING, WHICH I DID NOT PREPARE YET!) my players managed to level up to lvl 4 and now for the first time they get to deal with ability score improvements and maybe feats.

I hope so so much one of my players takes the "Keen Mind" feat, the party so often forgets or misremembers important messages or facts (example: the message said "the wizards clone" and they remembered "the wizards twin". Rather cloese but the story has both an evil wizard with a lot of clones and a pair of friendly wizard twins...) and the players absolutly don´t want me to remind them out of character. Also the wizard player is annoying me because among other things they had a spellshop 3 houses down the street for the last 7 sessions and he just doesn´t want to go in there, despite haven close to 400gp (he hasn´t added a single spell outside of level up in his spellbook...).

Also tbh the whole casting with hands full isn't even a balance thing. It's mostly flavour.

That's why when they create gishes now, they give them the "weapon is spellcasting focus" ability fairly liberally, because it's a quality of life fix. Older gish subclasses don't get it because they deliberately don't update old subclasses to use the new design.

Have they given recent gish subclasses that, though? As far as I can tell none of the recent gish subclasses have "weapon as a focus" as a feature, outside of the Artificer being able to use anything from a pair of flipflops to a bathrobe to a suit of plate armor as their focus. Even with Tasha's the only expansion of foci are Rangers getting to use druidic foci as an optional class feature.

The only thing I know of is the Ruby of the War Mage, but that's a (common) magic item that takes up an attunement slot.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Feb 28th 2021 at 12:53:55 PM

College of Swords & Hexblade, the two gish options in XGTE, same place they printed the ruby of the war mage which was intended for things like EK and Ranger - because they're not going to change those directly.

Those are the only gish options we've had, Tasha's lacked any new "martial gains spellcasting / spellcaster gains extra attack" classes, only reprinting bladesinger which is forced to have a hand free by design.

I know the feeling on players inadvertently causing me to have to rethink encounters on the fly.

Last night my players tried to sneak into that Yuan-ti temple I'd talked about a while ago. The guard rolled a Natural 20 on their Insight check and so they had to fight their way in. Had to have two different fights than what I'd originally planned xD

7X @Samaldin

I feel your pain regarding the incurious wizard. Due to real life the party Wizard has been unable to play for weeks, but the Warlock player has managed to take up a lot of that slack. Since he took the Pact of The Tome, I've been fudging what spells come up in random loot where it's thematic to include at least 1 Ritual spell so he can slowly beef up his tome and out of combat utility.

To date, I think he's transcribed one, maybe two spells.

It's not like the party lacks funds, they're level 8 and have around 1,000 GP saved up, they're really frugal. I got a bit inspired and home-brewed a magic inkwell that reduced transcription costs and time to entice him. Still no dice. I think I'll apply some advice that's mentioned pretty often in this thread and just talk to him between session, and low key ask him if he's aware he has a bunch of ritual spell scrolls he can transcribe.

More generally, maybe I should just ask if he knows websites where he can check spell descriptions for the ritual tag. Despite gaming for a while I get the feeling that he's still new to a lot of D&D.

Edited by Earnest on Feb 28th 2021 at 4:57:15 AM

Mara: Thanks again.

... Hexblade doesn't let you use your weapon as a spellcasting focus.

There's a specific Eldritch Invocation for Pact of the Blade Warlocks for that, but every Pact of the Blade Warlock has access to that regardless of their Patron, also the other part of that Invocation involves being able to make a ranged weapon your Pact Weapon. Notably Hexblades who go with Pact of the Book or Pact of the Chain (or Pact of the Talisman, from Tasha's) do not get to use their weapon as a Spellcasting focus at all.

Hexblade lets you use Charisma in place of Strength or Dexterity with one specific weapon you choose at the end of a long rest that you're proficient with and that doesn't have the two-handed property.

As for College of Swords Bards: Spellcasting foci can be used to perform the Somatic components of spells, Bards can use any tool they perform with as a spellcasting focus, Bards of the College of Swords use weapons as a performance tool.

The College of Whispers, also from Xanathar's, is also a Bard gish (if one that leans more towards thief/mage than fighter/mage) and that one explicitly doesn't get to use their weapons as a spellcasting focus.

Edited by Robrecht on Feb 28th 2021 at 4:35:09 PM

I forgot that it was a separate invocation, but I know what Hexblade does.

Still, XGTE saw the ruby, swords bard, and pact weapon invocation all printed at once. They wanted those options to be available to support the characters that needed it.

College of Whispers has a melee feature but I don't think I'd call it a Gish, it doesn't get extra attack or any martial proficiencies. And since they don't gain shield proficiency or TWF benefits they have much less need for a focus - swords bard meanwhile gets weapon foci because TWF is one of the intended paths for it.