Quote from UltimoPanda>>Have I missed any? One is not anywhere near as useful. One is offensive spell that isn't comparable. The last has advantages, mostly that it lasts a round rather than just the one off. On the other hand, SB is far more flexible, which makes it more useful in my opinion. I do think SB is above the other L1 spells.
You missed Absorb Elements and, at a higher level, Counterspell (note that spell slot difference aside, you still only get one reaction so you'll have to pick). The reason SB is balanced that people seem to be missing is you only have one reaction and, again, stiff competition.
Anyone who said Silvery Barbs is roughly equivalent to Shield in the domain of avoiding physical attacks is just mistaken. They're about the same value against one attack (with SB being better against a single crit, because Shield can't stop a crit), but typically Shield is going to be used against a pile of attacks coming your way. Attack rolls are much more common than saving throws, and against piles of attacks? Shield just wins, full stop, not even close. The value of +5 AC for a round is being compared to the value of one attack being rerolled with the same slot and reaction and maybe missing.
Not saying SB is bad, but it's not the game changer people seem to think it is. I've played a Chronurgist, they get baaasically the same thing as a class feature. Is it useful? Yes, very useful. But I used my reaction on Shield and Counterspell a lot more than I did on Chronal Shift. If you're going to use your reaction to adjust a roll, it needs to be a very important single roll to be worth using over something else.
A class feature that you get one per day and if you use it again you get a level of exhaustion....
This is a first level spell that can be cast many more tiles per day.
And your comparison to counterspell is more apt... But that's a 3rd level spell!
Shield is needed or else spell casters would die very fast at high levels....at best you are looking at 16 AC before shield.... It's honestly not even an optional spell so it's not like you aren't going to take in. Addition to SB anyway...
I'm all for the spell existing.... Just not as a 1st level.
2nd level it's fine
Chronal Shift is the 2nd level feature - it has 2 uses per day, and is functionally a more versatile version of Silvery Barbs (since it can be used on failures). You're thinking of their 14 feature that automatically can cause a success or failure at the cost of exhaustion.
I think the main point of their post was that despite having access to two free uses of an even more flexible version of Silvery Barbs each day, it wasn't this completely dominant, go-to reaction that a lot of people think that Silvery Barbs will be. Your reaction has a high amount of competition, as do your spell slots.
Quote from UltimoPanda>>Have I missed any? One is not anywhere near as useful. One is offensive spell that isn't comparable. The last has advantages, mostly that it lasts a round rather than just the one off. On the other hand, SB is far more flexible, which makes it more useful in my opinion. I do think SB is above the other L1 spells.
You missed Absorb Elements and, at a higher level, Counterspell (note that spell slot difference aside, you still only get one reaction so you'll have to pick). The reason SB is balanced that people seem to be missing is you only have one reaction and, again, stiff competition.
Anyone who said Silvery Barbs is roughly equivalent to Shield in the domain of avoiding physical attacks is just mistaken. They're about the same value against one attack (with SB being better against a single crit, because Shield can't stop a crit), but typically Shield is going to be used against a pile of attacks coming your way. Attack rolls are much more common than saving throws, and against piles of attacks? Shield just wins, full stop, not even close. The value of +5 AC for a round is being compared to the value of one attack being rerolled with the same slot and reaction and maybe missing.
Not saying SB is bad, but it's not the game changer people seem to think it is. I've played a Chronurgist, they get baaasically the same thing as a class feature. Is it useful? Yes, very useful. But I used my reaction on Shield and Counterspell a lot more than I did on Chronal Shift. If you're going to use your reaction to adjust a roll, it needs to be a very important single roll to be worth using over something else.
A class feature that you get one per day and if you use it again you get a level of exhaustion....
This is a first level spell that can be cast many more tiles per day.
And your comparison to counterspell is more apt... But that's a 3rd level spell!
Shield is needed or else spell casters would die very fast at high levels....at best you are looking at 16 AC before shield.... It's honestly not even an optional spell so it's not like you aren't going to take in. Addition to SB anyway...
I'm all for the spell existing.... Just not as a 1st level.
2nd level it's fine
Chronal Shift
2nd-level Chronurgy Magic feature
You can magically exert limited control over the flow of time around a creature. As a reaction, after you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can force the creature to reroll. You make this decision after you see whether the roll succeeds or fails. The target must use the result of the second roll.
You can use this ability twice, and you regain any expended uses when you finish a long rest.
You're limited to two but you don't get exhaustion.
I'd argue that [Silvery Barbs] does comparable things to the other 1st level reaction spells.
Like which, though?
Silvery Barbs imposes pseudo disadvantage on the enemy (meaning that you don't ever waste it on an event that was always going to go un your favour anyway (by my calculations that's a little less than double bang for your buck for other disadvantage spells), and it's also stackable with real disadvantage as well as not being cancelled by advantage, meaning that even if they'd normally have advantage, you can cancel that with disadvantage and then use SB to impose what is effectively a disadvantage, if needs be) and gives advantage to an ally. Additionally
Yeah OK, it's not the "I Win" button, but, outside of specific situations, that's doing a lot more than the other L1 Reaction spells that I can think of.
Feather Fall saves you from falling. So far, I've never had a use for it, but it doesn't seem to be comparable to SB.
Shield gives you +5AC each is roughly the equivalent to what SB would do (according to others on the board, I havent done the maths, but it can only apply to you and doesn't give advantage to an ally on top. Im also unclear as to when Shield can be used, can you know if +5AC would make a difference before casting?
Have I missed any? One is not anywhere near as useful. One is offensive spell that isn't comparable. The last has advantages, mostly that it lasts a round rather than just the one off. On the other hand, SB is far more flexible, which makes it more useful in my opinion. I do think SB is above the other L1 spells.
Just gonna point out a few things.
Feather Fall is a niche spell, yeah. It also saves campaigns. Heh, Feather Fall is one of those spells that can shape your tactics or planning in a way Barbs cannot, since you can actively plan to jump off of skyscrapers or cliffs during the course of a job/quest knowing it won't hurt you at all - or it can simply sit on your spell list, feeling like a spell tax, except for the one time where you're counting your lucky stars you took it and kept it around. Feather Fall: the spell nobody really needs, until they really, really need it. Frankly, a wizard or artificer spending the time to craft a Scroll of Feather Fall or three is one of the better uses of crafting downtime you can do.
Hellish Rebuke is often held to be anemic and pointless, but it can actually be quite useful in mage duels. It's another chance for you to trigger a concentration check against enemy spellcasters and disrupt their buffs or disruptive debuffs, and it can make it noticeably harder for your spellcaster to get mobbed by weenies. For certain casting (sub)classes, it also allows more chances to active abilities that work when you hit with a spell - the Graviturgist can use Rebuke on their Gravity Well feature, as just one example. Again, it's niche, but it's by no means a bad spell.
Shield's usage is a little ambiguous, but in most games the DM announces the final attack roll, i.e. the d20 plus the creature's modifier, when checking for a hit and the character can then choose whether or not to use Shield. To me that makes intuitive sense - the caster can tell when they're about to be hit and interposes their magical defense the same way a swordsman can tell when they're about to be hit and interposes their blade. If this is the way your table runs, then Shield will always turn at least one hit into a miss. And as others have stated, its effects only get better the higher your native AC is. Adding +5AC to a native 18AC for an armored, shield-wielding caster is a drastically better deal than adding +5AC to your 8-Dex, 9 total AC poindexter. Shield is a supremely potent defensive spell that laughs off any allegation that Barbs is 'better'. Barbs can do one thing Shield can't - negate a crit. That's definitely something, but Barbs cannot save you from a Pit Fiend's flesh-rending, life-crushing, soul-harvesting multiattack. Shield maybe just might.
Barbs' versatility comes at the price of its overall effect generally being weaker than any more niche, focused spell. Barbs stands zero chance of saving you from a thousand-foot fall, it can't trigger concentration checks or erase weenies, it can't save you from a red dragon's blast breath like Absorb Elements can, and it can't stop a powerful monster from mangling your flesh with an evil multiattack. It's good in a lot of situations. It's fantastic in very few, and it does not remotely replace a proper set of defensive or utility reaction spells.
Have watched about half this Treantmonk video so far. Two things, mostly:
1.) I still absolutely hate this guy. Watching this video is physically painful.
2.) I'm confused by why folks are citing his video as a reason Barbs is egregiously overpowered, because most of what he says seems to agree with everything I wrote at the very beginning of this thread. There's been ways to impose disadvantage on saves since 5e was printed, and literally nobody uses/likes them. The Arcane Trickster is considered one of the worst rogue subclasses outside Booming Blade nonsense despite Magical Ambush being very nearly on-demand disadvantage on saves, and the sorcerer's Heightened Spell has been doing this forever and is still considered one of the worst metamagic options. Even Treantmonk - the poster child for "your stuff sucks and you should feel bad for playing it" - is telling people to chill the hell out and stop fretting, because Barbs isn't really all that bad. Good, yes, absolutely, not not a game-shattering nightmare monster like people keep saying it is.
1. Yea
2. Everyone keeps trying to compare it with ways to grant disadvantage to your save or suck spells. But it is far...vastly, worse than that. Why? Because One, it isn't just spells, it is any and all types of saves. And Two, more importantly, it isn't to your saves, it is to any saves.
The power of this ability is that your pal might cast a save or die/suck/etc or might use a class feature or whatever and anyone in your party with this spell can now chime in to force the result. You don't have to use it on your own abilities, your optimal party will all have this spell and now anytime something needs to stick your whole team can statistically ensure that it does.
It is game breaking in a way other abilities rarely are, and when they are they limited to a small number of uses. This spell begs to be used on repeat because it is consuming an easily replenishable and accessible resource, a generic resource found on basically every class of one subclass or another, except maybe what, barbarian? The whol gang can force the enemy to fail their save against the party's wizard's disintegrate. Or the fighter's shove, or the monk's stun, or whatever is critically important they fail at.
Fighting BBEG? Save succeeds against the monk's stuns? Wizard barbs them for a forced reroll. Saves again? Cleric Babs them for a reroll. Still saves? Bard barbs em again. Still save? Arcane Trickster tosses out a Barb. Even if the BBEG had an 80% chance to save they're now as low as only 16% chance to escape this round without getting stunned. Plus everyone has advantage on whatever.
Just wait until you see parties rolling out where more than just one guy is trying to use this spell on his own save spells. Yall don't know what you're in for yet.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
If a DM doesn't want Barbs to stack, they don't have to permit Barbs to stack. It's an exceptionally easy houserule to say "A creature can only be affected by one casting of Silvery Barbs per round, just like the Advantage portion of the spell." It is a valid reading of the spell that one cannot use Barbs after another caster already has - the trigger "when a creature succeeds on its attack, check, or save" happens once, not every time the critter defeats a Barbs. It's within a DM's right to demand that everybody who can Barbs a target declares whether they're doing so or not once the first Barbs is declared, rather than letting them daisy-chain. Again, this is not Magic: the Gathering. There is no 'stack'. Effects resolve in the order the DM says they do, unless a rule in the books states otherwise.
And frankly, if a team of players is going out of their way to ensure everybody has access to the same spell for purposes of reaction abuse, that's more of a table problem than a the-spell problem. Clerics need to multiclass or take a feat to get Barbs, and the only way they gain access to Barbs more than once a day is via Fey-Touched. Which I covered already earlier in the thread - a DM should not be giving away Fey-Touched for free, a player should be able to tell a DM why their character is touched by the fey. And if a DM decides otherwise? That's their decision to make.
A table with 5+ characters all able to Barbs, actively looking to do so, and with no restriction on Barbs-ing is not a normal, typical table. It's an edge case. Generally, most tables will have twoish characters at most that can take the spell, and that's if the DM permits Barbs outside Strixhaven as it is. Remember - the DM specifically exists to adjudicate edge cases and keep the game flowing smoothly even when players try to cock it up. If a table is using Barbs in an overbearing, un-fun way, a DM is encouraged almost to the point of obligation to step in and say "Hey guys, this is really starting to get oppressive. Can we figure out some houserules for this thing to make it fun for everybody again?"
And before you say "if you have to houserule it, that means it's BROKEN!", then yes. Technically correct. Here's the thing - everything in moderation. Silvery Barbs is perfectly fine when used by a single caster to do single caster things. Only when a table stacks it to the rafters and expects everybody to get their chance to burn it does it become overbearing, and at that point the party is burning resources madly on something the DM can stop if they need to. Allowing players to have a cool, powerful option that makes them feel like an awesome luck-stealing magical badass is good. Allowing players to get away with Magic: the Gathering-style stack nonsense is not the spell's fault.
Hopefully Wizards can chime in on this one as well and remind players that triggers happen once, not in infinite succession, so we can move beyond this whole 'Barbs stacks with itself and I take that personally' issue.
I'd argue that [Silvery Barbs] does comparable things to the other 1st level reaction spells.
Like which, though?
Silvery Barbs imposes pseudo disadvantage on the enemy (meaning that you don't ever waste it on an event that was always going to go un your favour anyway (by my calculations that's a little less than double bang for your buck for other disadvantage spells), and it's also stackable with real disadvantage as well as not being cancelled by advantage, meaning that even if they'd normally have advantage, you can cancel that with disadvantage and then use SB to impose what is effectively a disadvantage, if needs be) and gives advantage to an ally. Additionally
Yeah OK, it's not the "I Win" button, but, outside of specific situations, that's doing a lot more than the other L1 Reaction spells that I can think of.
Feather Fall saves you from falling. So far, I've never had a use for it, but it doesn't seem to be comparable to SB.
Shield gives you +5AC each is roughly the equivalent to what SB would do (according to others on the board, I havent done the maths, but it can only apply to you and doesn't give advantage to an ally on top. Im also unclear as to when Shield can be used, can you know if +5AC would make a difference before casting?
Have I missed any? One is not anywhere near as useful. One is offensive spell that isn't comparable. The last has advantages, mostly that it lasts a round rather than just the one off. On the other hand, SB is far more flexible, which makes it more useful in my opinion. I do think SB is above the other L1 spells.
Just gonna point out a few things.
Feather Fall is a niche spell, yeah. It also saves campaigns. Heh, Feather Fall is one of those spells that can shape your tactics or planning in a way Barbs cannot, since you can actively plan to jump off of skyscrapers or cliffs during the course of a job/quest knowing it won't hurt you at all - or it can simply sit on your spell list, feeling like a spell tax, except for the one time where you're counting your lucky stars you took it and kept it around. Feather Fall: the spell nobody really needs, until they really, really need it. Frankly, a wizard or artificer spending the time to craft a Scroll of Feather Fall or three is one of the better uses of crafting downtime you can do.
Hellish Rebuke is often held to be anemic and pointless, but it can actually be quite useful in mage duels. It's another chance for you to trigger a concentration check against enemy spellcasters and disrupt their buffs or disruptive debuffs, and it can make it noticeably harder for your spellcaster to get mobbed by weenies. For certain casting (sub)classes, it also allows more chances to active abilities that work when you hit with a spell - the Graviturgist can use Rebuke on their Gravity Well feature, as just one example. Again, it's niche, but it's by no means a bad spell.
Shield's usage is a little ambiguous, but in most games the DM announces the final attack roll, i.e. the d20 plus the creature's modifier, when checking for a hit and the character can then choose whether or not to use Shield. To me that makes intuitive sense - the caster can tell when they're about to be hit and interposes their magical defense the same way a swordsman can tell when they're about to be hit and interposes their blade. If this is the way your table runs, then Shield will always turn at least one hit into a miss. And as others have stated, its effects only get better the higher your native AC is. Adding +5AC to a native 18AC for an armored, shield-wielding caster is a drastically better deal than adding +5AC to your 8-Dex, 9 total AC poindexter. Shield is a supremely potent defensive spell that laughs off any allegation that Barbs is 'better'. Barbs can do one thing Shield can't - negate a crit. That's definitely something, but Barbs cannot save you from a Pit Fiend's flesh-rending, life-crushing, soul-harvesting multiattack. Shield maybe just might.
Barbs' versatility comes at the price of its overall effect generally being weaker than any more niche, focused spell. Barbs stands zero chance of saving you from a thousand-foot fall, it can't trigger concentration checks or erase weenies, it can't save you from a red dragon's blast breath like Absorb Elements can, and it can't stop a powerful monster from mangling your flesh with an evil multiattack. It's good in a lot of situations. It's fantastic in very few, and it does not remotely replace a proper set of defensive or utility reaction spells.
I'd argue that [Silvery Barbs] does comparable things to the other 1st level reaction spells.
Like which, though?
Silvery Barbs imposes pseudo disadvantage on the enemy (meaning that you don't ever waste it on an event that was always going to go un your favour anyway (by my calculations that's a little less than double bang for your buck for other disadvantage spells), and it's also stackable with real disadvantage as well as not being cancelled by advantage, meaning that even if they'd normally have advantage, you can cancel that with disadvantage and then use SB to impose what is effectively a disadvantage, if needs be) and gives advantage to an ally. Additionally
Yeah OK, it's not the "I Win" button, but, outside of specific situations, that's doing a lot more than the other L1 Reaction spells that I can think of.
Feather Fall saves you from falling. So far, I've never had a use for it, but it doesn't seem to be comparable to SB.
Shield gives you +5AC each is roughly the equivalent to what SB would do (according to others on the board, I havent done the maths, but it can only apply to you and doesn't give advantage to an ally on top. Im also unclear as to when Shield can be used, can you know if +5AC would make a difference before casting?
Have I missed any? One is not anywhere near as useful. One is offensive spell that isn't comparable. The last has advantages, mostly that it lasts a round rather than just the one off. On the other hand, SB is far more flexible, which makes it more useful in my opinion. I do think SB is above the other L1 spells.
Just gonna point out a few things.
Feather Fall is a niche spell, yeah. It also saves campaigns. Heh, Feather Fall is one of those spells that can shape your tactics or planning in a way Barbs cannot, since you can actively plan to jump off of skyscrapers or cliffs during the course of a job/quest knowing it won't hurt you at all - or it can simply sit on your spell list, feeling like a spell tax, except for the one time where you're counting your lucky stars you took it and kept it around. Feather Fall: the spell nobody really needs, until they really, really need it. Frankly, a wizard or artificer spending the time to craft a Scroll of Feather Fall or three is one of the better uses of crafting downtime you can do.
Hellish Rebuke is often held to be anemic and pointless, but it can actually be quite useful in mage duels. It's another chance for you to trigger a concentration check against enemy spellcasters and disrupt their buffs or disruptive debuffs, and it can make it noticeably harder for your spellcaster to get mobbed by weenies. For certain casting (sub)classes, it also allows more chances to active abilities that work when you hit with a spell - the Graviturgist can use Rebuke on their Gravity Well feature, as just one example. Again, it's niche, but it's by no means a bad spell.
Shield's usage is a little ambiguous, but in most games the DM announces the final attack roll, i.e. the d20 plus the creature's modifier, when checking for a hit and the character can then choose whether or not to use Shield. To me that makes intuitive sense - the caster can tell when they're about to be hit and interposes their magical defense the same way a swordsman can tell when they're about to be hit and interposes their blade. If this is the way your table runs, then Shield will always turn at least one hit into a miss. And as others have stated, its effects only get better the higher your native AC is. Adding +5AC to a native 18AC for an armored, shield-wielding caster is a drastically better deal than adding +5AC to your 8-Dex, 9 total AC poindexter. Shield is a supremely potent defensive spell that laughs off any allegation that Barbs is 'better'. Barbs can do one thing Shield can't - negate a crit. That's definitely something, but Barbs cannot save you from a Pit Fiend's flesh-rending, life-crushing, soul-harvesting multiattack. Shield maybe just might.
Barbs' versatility comes at the price of its overall effect generally being weaker than any more niche, focused spell. Barbs stands zero chance of saving you from a thousand-foot fall, it can't trigger concentration checks or erase weenies, it can't save you from a red dragon's blast breath like Absorb Elements can, and it can't stop a powerful monster from mangling your flesh with an evil multiattack. It's good in a lot of situations. It's fantastic in very few, and it does not remotely replace a proper set of defensive or utility reaction spells.
Shield can't save you from a crit....
Barbs can though.... Just to be fair
Barbs can’t save you from a crit; its trigger is a successful saving throw, not a successful attack roll.
And this one is really edge-casey, but shield CAN save you from a crit if the crit isn’t a natural 20 (e.g. with the champion fighter’s class feature or something similar) 🤪
If a DM doesn't want Barbs to stack, they don't have to permit Barbs to stack. It's an exceptionally easy houserule to say "A creature can only be affected by one casting of Silvery Barbs per round, just like the Advantage portion of the spell." It is a valid reading of the spell that one cannot use Barbs after another caster already has - the trigger "when a creature succeeds on its attack, check, or save" happens once, not every time the critter defeats a Barbs.
Being able to houserule a spell away doesn't have any effect on how powerful the published spell is...
And frankly, if a team of players is going out of their way to ensure everybody has access to the same spell for purposes of reaction abuse, that's more of a table problem than a the-spell problem. Clerics need to multiclass or take a feat to get Barbs, and the only way they gain access to Barbs more than once a day is via Fey-Touched. Which I covered already earlier in the thread - a DM should not be giving away Fey-Touched for free, a player should be able to tell a DM why their character is touched by the fey. And if a DM decides otherwise? That's their decision to make.
A table with 5+ characters all able to Barbs, actively looking to do so, and with no restriction on Barbs-ing is not a normal, typical table. It's an edge case. Generally, most tables will have twoish characters at most that can take the spell, and that's if the DM permits Barbs outside Strixhaven as it is. Remember - the DM specifically exists to adjudicate edge cases and keep the game flowing smoothly even when players try to cock it up. If a table is using Barbs in an overbearing, un-fun way, a DM is encouraged almost to the point of obligation to step in and say "Hey guys, this is really starting to get oppressive. Can we figure out some houserules for this thing to make it fun for everybody again?"
All I'm hearing here is "DMs can just not allow it". That isn't an argument about how broken the spell is.
Obviously if a DM doesn't allow it at your table...then, at your table it isn't OP because it isn't at your table. This is not a great argument...
And before you say "if you have to houserule it, that means it's BROKEN!", then yes. Technically correct.
Well, no. If you homebrew something you could do it for a million reasons. People homebrew stuff that already worked fine, like, all the time. Homebrewing or not homebrewing something doesn't directly inform anyone of anything. BUT. Just because you can fix the spell by homebrewing it doesn't mean the spell is OK. <---- By that logic you could publish anything, the most broken OP ability imaginable, and claim it is fine because DMs are free to homebrew it. It isn't even a real argument it is an admission that nothing published will ever be broken enough for you to ever think it is OP. You're not arguing about what is or isn't balanced because you've entered the conversation with the presupposition that nothing ever could be broken because DMs can freely fix them.
Here's the thing - everything in moderation. Silvery Barbs is perfectly fine when used by a single caster to do single caster things. Only when a table stacks it to the rafters and expects everybody to get their chance to burn it does it become overbearing, and at that point the party is burning resources madly on something the DM can stop if they need to. Allowing players to have a cool, powerful option that makes them feel like an awesome luck-stealing magical badass is good. Allowing players to get away with Magic: the Gathering-style stack nonsense is not the spell's fault.
So, your argument here is that it is a broken OP spell, but, still manageable when only one character is using the broken OP spell. If too many of the characters do it then it does become unmanageable, and into "Magic: the Gathering-style stack nonsense".
I agree. It is OP. And if too many people use it it does become unmanageable.
Hopefully Wizards can chime in on this one as well and remind players that triggers happen once, not in infinite succession, so we can move beyond this whole 'Barbs stacks with itself and I take that personally' issue.
The reroll of the Barbs either determines the save/check/attack was successful or not. If it didn't, then it'd be unable to change the outcome of the initial roll.
You are arguing here that if they roll a nat 20 on a save, and succeed, that if they were to get Barb'd and had to reroll, that they couldn't fail even with a roll of a 1, because they already succeeded the roll and Barbs does recheck that again, and because it doesn't check again that's why you can't repeat another Barb at them.
But obviously that is wrong. Barbs forces a new roll and that roll can either fail or succeed. Otherwise the spell wouldn't do anything at all.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Barbs can’t save you from a crit; its trigger is a successful saving throw, not a successful attack roll.
I believe it triggers on a successful d20 roll.
Yes.
This: "which you take when a creature you can see within 60 feet of yourself succeeds on an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw"
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
What your argument essentially comes down to, and the argument I've seen from many, many other people, is "if you do absolutely everything in your power to deliberately go out of your way to break Silvery Barbs, then Silvery barbs is broken."
Ahem: doiy? The same could be said for Crossbow Expert, Sentinel, half the game's spells, almost all the game's Greater Arcana spells, The Great 5e Charisma Caster Multiclass ********, and ever so much more. A game in which Wish exists should not have to deal with this sort of nonsense. And yes, I know - "Wish is a ninth-level spell, it's supposed to be overpowered!" Query: why is it that the DM is allowed to have leeway over Wish, and/or players are expected to play nice, behave, and not go out of their way to break their games with Wish, but the exact same principles somehow don't apply to Barbs?
People who deliberately go out of their way to break 5e in unfun, uncool ways already have an absolute myriad of options available to do so. The answer has always been "the DM should do something about that". Why is that answer insufficient for Barbs, especially when the only 'bad' use case for Barbs is the entire party warping themselves unnaturally to take it?
What your argument essentially comes down to, and the argument I've seen from many, many other people, is "if you do absolutely everything in your power to deliberately go out of your way to break Silvery Barbs, then Silvery barbs is broken."
Ahem: doiy? The same could be said for Crossbow Expert, Sentinel, half the game's spells, almost all the game's Greater Arcana spells, The Great 5e Charisma Caster Multiclass ********, and ever so much more. A game in which Wish exists should not have to deal with this sort of nonsense. And yes, I know - "Wish is a ninth-level spell, it's supposed to be overpowered!" Query: why is it that the DM is allowed to have leeway over Wish, and/or players are expected to play nice, behave, and not go out of their way to break their games with Wish, but the exact same principles somehow don't apply to Barbs?
People who deliberately go out of their way to break 5e in unfun, uncool ways already have an absolute myriad of options available to do so. The answer has always been "the DM should do something about that". Why is that answer insufficient for Barbs, especially when the only 'bad' use case for Barbs is the entire party warping themselves unnaturally to take it?
Everything you listed there is past a level 1 spell unless you take a specific race. There are no spells at level one or two with the versatility of silvery barbs. Yes other spells beat it occasionally. But it is NEVER irrelevant. Shield and absorb elements have specific things they deal with. Outside of what they deal with they do nothing. Barbs is relevant in ALL situations and then gives people advantage just for funsies along with it.
it needs to be made second level and probably stop the advantage. Let it be good. Don’t let it be THAT cheap. Because if the dm had two enemies with silvery barbs the players would be calling bull pretty fast.
What your argument essentially comes down to, and the argument I've seen from many, many other people, is "if you do absolutely everything in your power to deliberately go out of your way to break Silvery Barbs, then Silvery barbs is broken."
"absolutely everything" includes just having the spell???? roflmao. No, you're misrepresenting my argument.
The spell is, itself, broken. Just having it is broken. Having it on more than one character in a party, even more broken.
People who deliberately go out of their way to break 5e in unfun, uncool ways already have an absolute myriad of options available to do so. The answer has always been "the DM should do something about that". Why is that answer insufficient for Barbs, especially when the only 'bad' use case for Barbs is the entire party warping themselves unnaturally to take it?
Because you don't have to optimize to break it, though you could. You don't need to strategize to break it, though you could do that too. It just comes out of the box, by default, already broken.
Just it, by itself, is bad for the game. The more of it you have, the less good the game gets.
Able to cast it often? Even worse. Have it on more characters than one? Even worse.
The more of this spell you have in your game, the worse your game gets.
So is the spell broken and OP? Yea. Can a DM fix it? Yeah. But the more of it you inject into a game the unhealthier that game is going to get, and the harder it is going to be for the DM to keep it from spiraling out of control other than to just outright homebrew or ban it.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
I can't believe that people are still fighting over this lol. The spell has been in the game I run and in the game I play in for three weeks and it hasn't caused any issues. In fact, it most often burns a spell slot and a reaction for zero effect. In both games it has negated a critical hit but didn't stop either hit all together. Every other time it was used it failed to do anything. People need to stop theorizing about the spell and see what it actually does in play.
I can't believe that people are still fighting over this lol. The spell has been in the game I run and in the game I play in for three weeks and it hasn't caused any issues. In fact, it most often burns a spell slot and a reaction for zero effect. In both games it has negated a critical hit but didn't stop either hit all together. Every other time it was used it failed to do anything. People need to stop theorizing about the spell and see what it actually does in play.
... you have no idea what other people have experienced in play or if they're only theorizing or speaking from experience. It has been published and plenty of people have experienced it in action. You're not at the only table to see it.
From my experience, week 1 people wasted uses of it on random weird stuff just to try it out. Week 2 it started getting used to great effect and by week 3 actual strategies of use are forming and it is already feeling entirely too powerful. People have started working out combos they could pull off with it and these aren't even characters that were designed with it in mind...
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
I'm heckin' trying, Gol. Hueh. I haven't gotten to play D&D once since Thanksgiving because the holidays keep boning everybody's schedules. It's thrown off the game I was tryin'a join up with, though I did finally figure out a decent way to get Barbs on that 12th-level bard. Gonna put it to the test if/when the game ever gets going, or if I can get it into my artificer(/wizard)'s spellbook when Grave of Saints finally resumes.
But yeah. Too many people have decided that Barbs is terrible horrible no good very bad awful and anyone who doesn't throw it from their game is Bad At D&D Forever. Nobody's willing to test it. Nobody's willing to try it. Nobody's willing to pit it against its brethren in gladiatorial combat and see who emerges the strongest. If I can get my games back on track I intend to see for myself whether it's all that and a wedge of cheese.
Like, y'all want a busted spell? The original Mind Thrust/Tasha's Mind Whip. Bonus action second-level spell that dealt a bit of psychic damage and forced the enemy to do nothing save Dash or Disengage on their turn. I tried that spell out, in conjunction with the then-new Mind Sliver. Sliver into Thrust, for as many turns as one has slots for, and a typical big gnarsty evil critter can do nothing. The DM unilaterally banned it from existence after one fight. THAT spell was a nightmare - I 100% agreed with the DM's ban on that spell.
THAT is what a "Broken" spell looks like. Barbs is nowhere remotely close. Frankly Barbs isn't even on the level of Healing Spirit. Remember - Barbs cannot do anything that the DM couldn't do just by rolling low in the first place. The whole "the entire party can burn half a dozen first-level slots to force a Stunning Strike to work!" thing is not any worse than the critter simply failing its first roll against Stunning Strike. Barbs cannot do ANYTHING a DM should not be prepared to have happen in the first place, and that is a hill I am prepared to defend.
I can't believe that people are still fighting over this lol. The spell has been in the game I run and in the game I play in for three weeks and it hasn't caused any issues. In fact, it most often burns a spell slot and a reaction for zero effect. In both games it has negated a critical hit but didn't stop either hit all together. Every other time it was used it failed to do anything. People need to stop theorizing about the spell and see what it actually does in play.
It's especially hilarious considering multiple people have come and said that exact same thing. Amunsol said they were going to playtest it, so I'm curious to see how it works out at their table.
And frankly, if a team of players is going out of their way to ensure everybody has access to the same spell for purposes of reaction abuse, that's more of a table problem than a the-spell problem
I'd also like to add that this is true of just about *any* spell. If multiple people take Fireball and spam it? That gets tedious. Suggestion? That gets tedious. Eldritch blast? Dear god, that gets tedious...
Chronal Shift is the 2nd level feature - it has 2 uses per day, and is functionally a more versatile version of Silvery Barbs (since it can be used on failures). You're thinking of their 14 feature that automatically can cause a success or failure at the cost of exhaustion.
I think the main point of their post was that despite having access to two free uses of an even more flexible version of Silvery Barbs each day, it wasn't this completely dominant, go-to reaction that a lot of people think that Silvery Barbs will be. Your reaction has a high amount of competition, as do your spell slots.
Chronal Shift
2nd-level Chronurgy Magic feature
You can magically exert limited control over the flow of time around a creature. As a reaction, after you or a creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can force the creature to reroll. You make this decision after you see whether the roll succeeds or fails. The target must use the result of the second roll.
You can use this ability twice, and you regain any expended uses when you finish a long rest.
You're limited to two but you don't get exhaustion.
Just gonna point out a few things.
Feather Fall is a niche spell, yeah. It also saves campaigns. Heh, Feather Fall is one of those spells that can shape your tactics or planning in a way Barbs cannot, since you can actively plan to jump off of skyscrapers or cliffs during the course of a job/quest knowing it won't hurt you at all - or it can simply sit on your spell list, feeling like a spell tax, except for the one time where you're counting your lucky stars you took it and kept it around. Feather Fall: the spell nobody really needs, until they really, really need it. Frankly, a wizard or artificer spending the time to craft a Scroll of Feather Fall or three is one of the better uses of crafting downtime you can do.
Hellish Rebuke is often held to be anemic and pointless, but it can actually be quite useful in mage duels. It's another chance for you to trigger a concentration check against enemy spellcasters and disrupt their buffs or disruptive debuffs, and it can make it noticeably harder for your spellcaster to get mobbed by weenies. For certain casting (sub)classes, it also allows more chances to active abilities that work when you hit with a spell - the Graviturgist can use Rebuke on their Gravity Well feature, as just one example. Again, it's niche, but it's by no means a bad spell.
Shield's usage is a little ambiguous, but in most games the DM announces the final attack roll, i.e. the d20 plus the creature's modifier, when checking for a hit and the character can then choose whether or not to use Shield. To me that makes intuitive sense - the caster can tell when they're about to be hit and interposes their magical defense the same way a swordsman can tell when they're about to be hit and interposes their blade. If this is the way your table runs, then Shield will always turn at least one hit into a miss. And as others have stated, its effects only get better the higher your native AC is. Adding +5AC to a native 18AC for an armored, shield-wielding caster is a drastically better deal than adding +5AC to your 8-Dex, 9 total AC poindexter. Shield is a supremely potent defensive spell that laughs off any allegation that Barbs is 'better'. Barbs can do one thing Shield can't - negate a crit. That's definitely something, but Barbs cannot save you from a Pit Fiend's flesh-rending, life-crushing, soul-harvesting multiattack. Shield maybe just might.
Barbs' versatility comes at the price of its overall effect generally being weaker than any more niche, focused spell. Barbs stands zero chance of saving you from a thousand-foot fall, it can't trigger concentration checks or erase weenies, it can't save you from a red dragon's blast breath like Absorb Elements can, and it can't stop a powerful monster from mangling your flesh with an evil multiattack. It's good in a lot of situations. It's fantastic in very few, and it does not remotely replace a proper set of defensive or utility reaction spells.
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1. Yea
2. Everyone keeps trying to compare it with ways to grant disadvantage to your save or suck spells. But it is far...vastly, worse than that. Why? Because One, it isn't just spells, it is any and all types of saves. And Two, more importantly, it isn't to your saves, it is to any saves.
The power of this ability is that your pal might cast a save or die/suck/etc or might use a class feature or whatever and anyone in your party with this spell can now chime in to force the result. You don't have to use it on your own abilities, your optimal party will all have this spell and now anytime something needs to stick your whole team can statistically ensure that it does.
It is game breaking in a way other abilities rarely are, and when they are they limited to a small number of uses. This spell begs to be used on repeat because it is consuming an easily replenishable and accessible resource, a generic resource found on basically every class of one subclass or another, except maybe what, barbarian? The whol gang can force the enemy to fail their save against the party's wizard's disintegrate. Or the fighter's shove, or the monk's stun, or whatever is critically important they fail at.
Fighting BBEG? Save succeeds against the monk's stuns? Wizard barbs them for a forced reroll. Saves again? Cleric Babs them for a reroll. Still saves? Bard barbs em again. Still save? Arcane Trickster tosses out a Barb. Even if the BBEG had an 80% chance to save they're now as low as only 16% chance to escape this round without getting stunned. Plus everyone has advantage on whatever.
Just wait until you see parties rolling out where more than just one guy is trying to use this spell on his own save spells. Yall don't know what you're in for yet.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
If a DM doesn't want Barbs to stack, they don't have to permit Barbs to stack. It's an exceptionally easy houserule to say "A creature can only be affected by one casting of Silvery Barbs per round, just like the Advantage portion of the spell." It is a valid reading of the spell that one cannot use Barbs after another caster already has - the trigger "when a creature succeeds on its attack, check, or save" happens once, not every time the critter defeats a Barbs. It's within a DM's right to demand that everybody who can Barbs a target declares whether they're doing so or not once the first Barbs is declared, rather than letting them daisy-chain. Again, this is not Magic: the Gathering. There is no 'stack'. Effects resolve in the order the DM says they do, unless a rule in the books states otherwise.
And frankly, if a team of players is going out of their way to ensure everybody has access to the same spell for purposes of reaction abuse, that's more of a table problem than a the-spell problem. Clerics need to multiclass or take a feat to get Barbs, and the only way they gain access to Barbs more than once a day is via Fey-Touched. Which I covered already earlier in the thread - a DM should not be giving away Fey-Touched for free, a player should be able to tell a DM why their character is touched by the fey. And if a DM decides otherwise? That's their decision to make.
A table with 5+ characters all able to Barbs, actively looking to do so, and with no restriction on Barbs-ing is not a normal, typical table. It's an edge case. Generally, most tables will have twoish characters at most that can take the spell, and that's if the DM permits Barbs outside Strixhaven as it is. Remember - the DM specifically exists to adjudicate edge cases and keep the game flowing smoothly even when players try to cock it up. If a table is using Barbs in an overbearing, un-fun way, a DM is encouraged almost to the point of obligation to step in and say "Hey guys, this is really starting to get oppressive. Can we figure out some houserules for this thing to make it fun for everybody again?"
And before you say "if you have to houserule it, that means it's BROKEN!", then yes. Technically correct. Here's the thing - everything in moderation. Silvery Barbs is perfectly fine when used by a single caster to do single caster things. Only when a table stacks it to the rafters and expects everybody to get their chance to burn it does it become overbearing, and at that point the party is burning resources madly on something the DM can stop if they need to. Allowing players to have a cool, powerful option that makes them feel like an awesome luck-stealing magical badass is good. Allowing players to get away with Magic: the Gathering-style stack nonsense is not the spell's fault.
Hopefully Wizards can chime in on this one as well and remind players that triggers happen once, not in infinite succession, so we can move beyond this whole 'Barbs stacks with itself and I take that personally' issue.
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Shield can't save you from a crit....
Barbs can though.... Just to be fair
Barbs can’t save you from a crit; its trigger is a successful saving throw, not a successful attack roll.
And this one is really edge-casey, but shield CAN save you from a crit if the crit isn’t a natural 20 (e.g. with the champion fighter’s class feature or something similar) 🤪
I believe it triggers on a successful d20 roll.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Being able to houserule a spell away doesn't have any effect on how powerful the published spell is...
All I'm hearing here is "DMs can just not allow it". That isn't an argument about how broken the spell is.
Obviously if a DM doesn't allow it at your table...then, at your table it isn't OP because it isn't at your table. This is not a great argument...
Well, no. If you homebrew something you could do it for a million reasons. People homebrew stuff that already worked fine, like, all the time. Homebrewing or not homebrewing something doesn't directly inform anyone of anything. BUT. Just because you can fix the spell by homebrewing it doesn't mean the spell is OK. <---- By that logic you could publish anything, the most broken OP ability imaginable, and claim it is fine because DMs are free to homebrew it. It isn't even a real argument it is an admission that nothing published will ever be broken enough for you to ever think it is OP. You're not arguing about what is or isn't balanced because you've entered the conversation with the presupposition that nothing ever could be broken because DMs can freely fix them.
So, your argument here is that it is a broken OP spell, but, still manageable when only one character is using the broken OP spell. If too many of the characters do it then it does become unmanageable, and into "Magic: the Gathering-style stack nonsense".
I agree. It is OP. And if too many people use it it does become unmanageable.
The reroll of the Barbs either determines the save/check/attack was successful or not. If it didn't, then it'd be unable to change the outcome of the initial roll.
You are arguing here that if they roll a nat 20 on a save, and succeed, that if they were to get Barb'd and had to reroll, that they couldn't fail even with a roll of a 1, because they already succeeded the roll and Barbs does recheck that again, and because it doesn't check again that's why you can't repeat another Barb at them.
But obviously that is wrong. Barbs forces a new roll and that roll can either fail or succeed. Otherwise the spell wouldn't do anything at all.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Yes.
This: "which you take when a creature you can see within 60 feet of yourself succeeds on an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw"
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
What your argument essentially comes down to, and the argument I've seen from many, many other people, is "if you do absolutely everything in your power to deliberately go out of your way to break Silvery Barbs, then Silvery barbs is broken."
Ahem: doiy? The same could be said for Crossbow Expert, Sentinel, half the game's spells, almost all the game's Greater Arcana spells, The Great 5e Charisma Caster Multiclass ********, and ever so much more. A game in which Wish exists should not have to deal with this sort of nonsense. And yes, I know - "Wish is a ninth-level spell, it's supposed to be overpowered!" Query: why is it that the DM is allowed to have leeway over Wish, and/or players are expected to play nice, behave, and not go out of their way to break their games with Wish, but the exact same principles somehow don't apply to Barbs?
People who deliberately go out of their way to break 5e in unfun, uncool ways already have an absolute myriad of options available to do so. The answer has always been "the DM should do something about that". Why is that answer insufficient for Barbs, especially when the only 'bad' use case for Barbs is the entire party warping themselves unnaturally to take it?
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Everything you listed there is past a level 1 spell unless you take a specific race. There are no spells at level one or two with the versatility of silvery barbs. Yes other spells beat it occasionally. But it is NEVER irrelevant. Shield and absorb elements have specific things they deal with. Outside of what they deal with they do nothing. Barbs is relevant in ALL situations and then gives people advantage just for funsies along with it.
it needs to be made second level and probably stop the advantage. Let it be good. Don’t let it be THAT cheap. Because if the dm had two enemies with silvery barbs the players would be calling bull pretty fast.
"absolutely everything" includes just having the spell???? roflmao. No, you're misrepresenting my argument.
The spell is, itself, broken. Just having it is broken. Having it on more than one character in a party, even more broken.
Because you don't have to optimize to break it, though you could. You don't need to strategize to break it, though you could do that too. It just comes out of the box, by default, already broken.
Just it, by itself, is bad for the game. The more of it you have, the less good the game gets.
Able to cast it often? Even worse. Have it on more characters than one? Even worse.
The more of this spell you have in your game, the worse your game gets.
So is the spell broken and OP? Yea. Can a DM fix it? Yeah. But the more of it you inject into a game the unhealthier that game is going to get, and the harder it is going to be for the DM to keep it from spiraling out of control other than to just outright homebrew or ban it.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
I can't believe that people are still fighting over this lol. The spell has been in the game I run and in the game I play in for three weeks and it hasn't caused any issues. In fact, it most often burns a spell slot and a reaction for zero effect. In both games it has negated a critical hit but didn't stop either hit all together. Every other time it was used it failed to do anything. People need to stop theorizing about the spell and see what it actually does in play.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
... you have no idea what other people have experienced in play or if they're only theorizing or speaking from experience. It has been published and plenty of people have experienced it in action. You're not at the only table to see it.
From my experience, week 1 people wasted uses of it on random weird stuff just to try it out. Week 2 it started getting used to great effect and by week 3 actual strategies of use are forming and it is already feeling entirely too powerful. People have started working out combos they could pull off with it and these aren't even characters that were designed with it in mind...
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
I'm heckin' trying, Gol. Hueh. I haven't gotten to play D&D once since Thanksgiving because the holidays keep boning everybody's schedules. It's thrown off the game I was tryin'a join up with, though I did finally figure out a decent way to get Barbs on that 12th-level bard. Gonna put it to the test if/when the game ever gets going, or if I can get it into my artificer(/wizard)'s spellbook when Grave of Saints finally resumes.
But yeah. Too many people have decided that Barbs is terrible horrible no good very bad awful and anyone who doesn't throw it from their game is Bad At D&D Forever. Nobody's willing to test it. Nobody's willing to try it. Nobody's willing to pit it against its brethren in gladiatorial combat and see who emerges the strongest. If I can get my games back on track I intend to see for myself whether it's all that and a wedge of cheese.
Like, y'all want a busted spell? The original Mind Thrust/Tasha's Mind Whip. Bonus action second-level spell that dealt a bit of psychic damage and forced the enemy to do nothing save Dash or Disengage on their turn. I tried that spell out, in conjunction with the then-new Mind Sliver. Sliver into Thrust, for as many turns as one has slots for, and a typical big gnarsty evil critter can do nothing. The DM unilaterally banned it from existence after one fight. THAT spell was a nightmare - I 100% agreed with the DM's ban on that spell.
THAT is what a "Broken" spell looks like. Barbs is nowhere remotely close. Frankly Barbs isn't even on the level of Healing Spirit. Remember - Barbs cannot do anything that the DM couldn't do just by rolling low in the first place. The whole "the entire party can burn half a dozen first-level slots to force a Stunning Strike to work!" thing is not any worse than the critter simply failing its first roll against Stunning Strike. Barbs cannot do ANYTHING a DM should not be prepared to have happen in the first place, and that is a hill I am prepared to defend.
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It's especially hilarious considering multiple people have come and said that exact same thing. Amunsol said they were going to playtest it, so I'm curious to see how it works out at their table.
I'd also like to add that this is true of just about *any* spell. If multiple people take Fireball and spam it? That gets tedious. Suggestion? That gets tedious. Eldritch blast? Dear god, that gets tedious...
So yes it can save you from a crit and no shield cannot even if you're dealing with the expanded CRIT range...
A crit is a crit.
That's part of the problem is it seems people don't seem to understand the extent of the spell.
This is a prime example.
Absolutely correct, thank you, I let myself get caught up in the saving throw topic that has dominated the conversation.