D&D (2024) 2024 Player's Handbook preview: "New Spells"

New article dropped about spells: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1762-4-key-changes-to-spells-in-the-2024-players

I only saw two things I didn't know from the playtest or the video.

A number of spells that saw little use from the 2014 Player’s Handbook version also saw some tweaks to make them more functional and enticing for you to add to your repertoire. Blade Ward, for example, was a fairly underused cantrip because it cost an action, only lasted a turn, and only granted resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage for that one turn. Now, while it still takes a Magic action, this cantrip lasts for a full minute, with Concentration, and forces all enemies attacking you to subtract 1d4 from their attack roll for the duration.

Jallarzi, a Celestial Patron Warlock with the distinction of being a non-Wizard member of the Circle of Eight, has a powerful namesake spell, Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance. This spell creates a raging 40-foot cylinder storm that deals Radiant and Thunder damage. It also gives creatures within it the Blinded and Deafened condition and makes them unable to cast spells with a Verbal component.

I'm... debating about Blade Ward. I was using the reaction version in a few games, and it was pretty fun and didn't seem to be that bad. This version is decent, but concentration makes it rough to use. But, essentially being a "bane" against all attacks against you? Not a bad effect. I'll have to sit with it.

Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance sounds like a great spell, seems like it would need to be concentration, but a 40 ft cylinder that acts as blind, deaf and silence, while doing damage? Nasty, nasty stuff.
 

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New article dropped about spells: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1762-4-key-changes-to-spells-in-the-2024-players

I only saw two things I didn't know from the playtest or the video.





I'm... debating about Blade Ward. I was using the reaction version in a few games, and it was pretty fun and didn't seem to be that bad. This version is decent, but concentration makes it rough to use. But, essentially being a "bane" against all attacks against you? Not a bad effect. I'll have to sit with it.

Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance sounds like a great spell, seems like it would need to be concentration, but a 40 ft cylinder that acts as blind, deaf and silence, while doing damage? Nasty, nasty stuff.
Jeez Blade Ward sounds pretty serious - if you can drop on someone enemies will regularly be attacking before combat, that's a big advantage until the Concentration slot becomes too costly. Seems fine because eventually it will stop being valid most of the time, but surprising.

Jallazri seems like an even-meaner version of Hunger of Hadar.
 

Shield is a spell that is very different depending on your character's setup and their role. I have a Hexblade/Sword Bard who uses it all the time. I'm right up in front hitting foes and setting up flanks for my allies (it's sort of my cheap Inspiration). For this character, I'd say the spell needs some work.

For my other character, a Bladesinger, I also have Shield, but I'm usually on other duty and not right up in front. It's for emergency situations. In that case, it's awesome when I need it, but I'm Counterspelling or Silvery Barbs-ing to help the team, so I don't need it.

I think Shield is thought of as a spell you just take. And I think that "no brainer" spells like that need a look at. But I am not sorry if nothing happens to it.
 

On the four listed changes:

1) Spells boosted, esp. healing. We knew about this from the UA, and I remember doing some math even before the UA that, in order to make healing in combat in D&D which wasn't yoyo healing, you'd want to boost them by pretty much exactly the amount they did. That pushes them to like, minimum viability, but I guess that's fine.

2) Class spells with the class - I mean, it makes sense. It'll make the PHB slightly more awkward and also stress how biased in favour of casters 5E is (which is to say, mildly, but there is a bias). Conjure/summon changes are slightly dull but probably sensible.

3) New spells - always good imho, so long as they're not simply outclassing existing spells.

4) Emanation is better way of putting it than the old "PBAoE" that we used to use in EQ and DAoC and so on.
 

Why are you sidestepping the basic fact that if a player can trivially/cheaply attain the "cannot be hit" ability the game works (much) less well.

Why contort yourself around this issue when the simple (and correct) solution is to make it substantially more costly to attain this ability?

GMs should not have to work around a character that can only be hit on a 20. Characters should not be given this ability in the first place.

I'm not because they aren't?

They aren't obtaining it "trivially" or "cheaply", generally these are builds, and they are functioning mostly as expected. Shield+Mage Armor is not an issue, unless it is on a Bladesinger who then activates bladesong. And, using three daily resources is rather significant.

But, let's work this out. Either the Bladesinger or the Eldritch Knight. Both can't happen until level 3, both are going to be able to bump their AC to 24. And yeah, at level three? That's crazy. But for level 3 characters, an Ogre with a +6 to hit is a fair fight, and he can hit them on an 18 thru 20. Also, the Bladesinger can only use Bladesong twice per day, and the Eldritch Knight can only use Shield twice per day.

So we are talking two rounds of combat, max, at level 3 for the Knight, and maybe three or four for the wizard. Which seems fine to me? It is costing all of the Knight's spell slots, and doing this once is costing the wizard a total of two spells and half their subclass resource.

Bump up to level 6. Let's say the knight has platemail now, so they can push their AC to 26, and the Wizard has more spells, more uses, and can reach an AC of 25. At this level a Venom Troll isn't a bad match up. With a +7 to hit it can hit the wizard on an 18 to 20, and the fighter on a 19 to 20. IT also auto-damages anyone within 5 ft of it when it takes damage, and can cause a con save versus large damage and the poison condition. So, even if the troll can't hit the party in melee... it is still going to potentially kill either of these characters from its other abilities.

And to be clear, I'm not speaking from ignorance here. I played with a guy who multi-classed bladesinger and got a staff of shielding to get mutliple free casts of the Shield spell. He was nearly untouchable... but the DM also never bothered to send anything against us that wasn't a very simple "roll to hit" enemy, and even then, the one time he did get hit... nearly dropped his character because he didn't have the HP to back up his build.

So, I legitimately don't see the issue. Tank characters with high AC are hard to hit with melee attacks. That sounds like things working as intended. It costs them some fairly significant resources early on, and later on the enemies are much more likely to simply bypass AC entirely. It can be annoying as the DM, but no more so than any of a thousand other player strategies. And this one has a very simple solution.
 

In my experience, 3E healing spells were mostly irrelevant, since wands of Cure Wounds were basically free and unlimited.

(Yes they cost gold, but they were stupid cheap)
So much this. We joked about sitting around after each fight poking each other with sticks. Eventually we just ruled that you healed to full for fee if you could take a couple minute breather.
 





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