D&D 5E Is silence pointless?

[ad_hoc]

 

[Hriston]

Oh, wait, that wouldn't work at all. They wouldn't be able to hear each other. The funny thing is I think that's how it worked in Get Smart too.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I almost TPKd a party with silence as a ritual.

Their opponents knew they were coming, and created fortifications that involved trapping* the party inside a tower with a winding stairway. With the lookouts being able to see the party quite a ways away, the caster was able to estimate a good time to start casting the spell. I believe he might have even started re-casting it as soon as he finished, just in case they got there too late and it had expired.

So the party ends up inside a tower unable to cast spells, while their foes at the top are raining spells and arrows on them. They could have retreated back into the burning entry room and closed the door to shut out the silenced area, but they didn't think of that. Or they were too afraid of dying from the smoke. The wizard actually did run back to the edge of the entry room where she was just far enough outside of the area of silence to dispel it, but it was then immediately recast (not as a ritual). I don't think she had the slots for another dispel.

Moral of the story--trap spellcasters in a confined area that you have silenced. Should works just as well for the PCs.

*It wasn't actually hard to get out, as the sole survivor discovered, but you had to be willing to run back into the burning smoke clouded room and dig your way out of the rocks that had blocked the doorway.

 

[Yaarel]

In the OP, the suggestion to remove the Verbal component of the Silence spell is a good one.

 

[Iosue]

I don't know if silence is pointless, exactly, but it's certainly...



...unsound.

YYYYEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHhhhhh!!!!

 

[PnPgamer]

You're asking if the spell is pointless as a ritual, right?

Since you can cast it as a ritual from 120 back from the actual area you need to be sneaking around in, you can set up a guaranteed silent area, where the party members won't need to be sneaky to be sneaky. For example, cast Silence as a ritual onto a wall, then blow up the wall to make a new entrance. Nobody is going to hear that because it's in the silent area.

hmm is the area of the silence set at the exact moment when it is cast? Like does the wall block it and when they explode it does the area of silence stay vertically blocked, and not extend through the new hole?

 

[NotActuallyTim]

I don't think the Area of Effect of the Silence spell is stopped by physical objects anyways. I think it would already extend to the other side of the wall.

 

[PnPgamer]

on a slightly voice-related note, watched this movie today
[video]https://youtu.be/IIgyr1_Z_qA[/video]

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I don't think the Area of Effect of the Silence spell is stopped by physical objects anyways. I think it would already extend to the other side of the wall.

This is correct it's not stopped by anything. So smash that wall. No one is going to hear it.

 

[PnPgamer]

double post