"Held in reserve" you say? Huh. Was that because unlike Silvery Barbs you had a hard limit of only 2 uses of chronal shift per day? Yes. That feature is incredibly strong and yet the balancing factor for it is the limited uses. Imagine, since you hit 20 on this character, you could at-will cast Silvery Barbs because of your wizard feature that gives infinity uses of a low level spell. And you could essentially force rerolls every round.
No, it actually wasn't. It's because at high levels reactions are too precious to waste on one roll if you're up against swarms, and that roll isn't likely to be key to influencing the fight. I also sometimes was very frustrated with the ability because the battlefield would make it impractical. I remember a few really fun moments where it worked and helped someone make a key save, or negated a crit, but I also remember times I used it and then get smacked with a spell I couldn't counter, or really needed to hit Shield and got smacked five times because I couldn't.
And it has a range. Absorb Elements/Shield don't care how far away something attacking you is, but Silvery Barbs (also Chronal Shift and Counterspell) all need you to be within 60 ft. Your mileage can vary on this one, but I actually found that to be prohibitive several times. Though that's a small point, and won't affect people playing "Theater of the Mind" style.
Yes it is. You can ban the spell and the game works just fine without it. In no cases is it mandatory, it is only ever nice-to-have.
If Shield is gone an optimizer has to start rethinking how their defensive strategy works. Silvery Barbs really doesn't change builds in a fundamental way, Shield does. Though I guess depending on your outlook every spell is just "nice to have." Though some spells, like Shield, Spirit Guardians, and Conjure Animals I view to be core to a class and its design. Take it away and the class needs to start reevaluating how it operates. Without Shield (and if you use Treantmonk's other house rule, stopping wizards from getting armor, this is magnified), a big tool for getting out of the hit range (barring crits, which is why I also tend to take lucky) of creatures is Shield.
I can say as a player, but more importantly as a DM, if there's a group from 17-20 and half the characters have shield and the other half don't... the half that don't feel much, much more vulnerable. Even if they are ostensibly the 'tank' classes like fighters and... okay, fine, barbarians are still plenty durable without Shield.
I think it is odd when people say stuff like this. How exactly is any of those more reliably useable than Silvery Barbs???
Because they will always do what they save and have higher impacts on the tempo of a fight. Silvery Barb only has a high impact if used on a key roll, at a key time. You influence one roll with your reaction, and it might go your way. Or not.
With Shield, you aren't (typically) adjusting one roll. If it's just one attack leaking through, unless it's a really big thing swinging at you. Shield has way more impact against attack rolls, which are the most common way enemies are going to engage you. I guess I can't speak for everyone on this, but in my experience a "small" fight has at minimum one creature with multiattack, so the base assumption, the bare minimum I will ever assume I'm dealing with, is three swings. That's the basement, honestly if the enemy has any less than that, they are just going to get action economy avalanched and get smacked around.
Ok, yes, if you get hit, then shield can probably protect you. But, what if you ally gets hit? Is shield going to protect your ally? Silvery Barbs can. So barbs wins this hands down. If you're doing a good job being a caster you shouldn't even be getting targeted most of the time, so being able to use your reaction to help an ally will, should, come up far far far more often than trying to save your own behind. Unless you're like an Eldritch Knight or something.
I agree! That's why it's a good spell and not a useless spell. It impacts ability checks (initiative comes to mind, though if an enemy rolls well on initiative can you nerf it, does a high roll count as 'succeeding' on a d20?), saving throws, attack rolls, and can be used to help your allies too. Those are nice things. Those are good uses of a reaction at certain points if you have a spell slot to spare (at low levels), or if you're sure you aren't going to need your reaction for something that's more important (at high levels).
Though it isn't even as good as Chronal Shift, now that I'm reading over it again. Chronal Shift can be used to help an ally make a saving throw. If the d20 has to be triggered on a success, Silvery Barbs can't do that. It can make the enemy reroll a save, or reroll an attack, but with Chronal Shift you can give an ally another shot at a saving throw too.
Absorb Elements is fantastic, and I'm not sure anyone has argued that barbs replaces it, they have different triggers that don't overlap in any way. But which is more likely to let you use your reaction in a meaningful way? How often do you get hit with enough elemental damage that it is worth cutting it in half with a spell slot -Vs- A d20 succeeds that you don't want to succeed. I find it hard to imagine a single round of combat, ever, in which you couldn't barbs something if you wanted to but there are entire combat scenarios where absorb elements is entirely useless let alone every round. Easily more reliably useful.
It's not about being replaced. It's about comparing Silvery Barbs to other reactions. They do different things. But does Silvery Barbs bring more power than comparable reaction options? I am arguing it does not. It brings more range in the situations it will be useful. I doubt you'll ever have a round where it won't be useful to tweak some roll. But when it does come up, it's impact is almost always going to be smaller than comparable spells and their value when they come up. It has more versatility, less power. I keep repeating myself, but it influences one key roll vs. having a more specific but potent effect that lasts an entire round.
Counterspell is great for stopping spells and that's it. So only when vs spellcasters. Maybe you fight only spellcasters and can reliably counterspell every round but I am confident that isn't the standard at most tables. Any fight, any round, where there isn't an enemy spellcaster casting a spell even worthy of counterspelling, is a round barbs could still have a use. There is just no way you'll be able to counterspell reliably as often as you could barbs.
That's true, but also a point I have already conceded. My point isn't that you're going to use these reactions as often as you could hypothetically use Silvery Barbs, but that when they come up they are much more powerful uses of a spell and reaction.
You mentioned a couple times Shield only benefits you, and not allies. That's another point that I've already conceded. And also one of the reasons Silvery Barbs is a good spell. It's still only changing the one roll, though. In a swarm situation, if a party member is surrounded by nasty things, it can get rid of one crit. They can still be boned in such a situation. (They should have taken Shield! :D)
If a thief succeeds on Deception, that DM is under no obligation to reveal that fact no matter what Silvery Barbs' spell text says. If, to you, that means the spell text is bad and the spell needs to die? Then kill it. But please stop assuming everyone else is a mindless dogmatic robot unable to do anything but execute their programming.
When the spell is used as intended, it's a neat trick spellcasters can use to manipulate luck in a minor, very spellcaster-y way. If people are ******canoes with it, that's a table problem. The spell might've caused the table problem, but that doesn't make it a universal-to-D&D problem.
But that is as intended. The spell is designed to force a reroll on ability checks so if someone did a deception check, in front of you, that is an ability check for which the spell offers you a trigger to cast. This is exactly what the spell is for this isn't some weird scenario or twisting of the language it straight up allows you to force rerolls on ANY ability check a creature within 60ft of you makes.
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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.
But that is as intended. The spell is designed to force a reroll on ability checks so if someone did a deception check, in front of you, that is an ability check for which the spell offers you a trigger to cast. This is exactly what the spell is for this isn't some weird scenario or twisting of the language it straight up allows you to force rerolls on ANY ability check a creature within 60ft of you makes.
You cannot use reactions when surprised. Events you are not aware are happening are a surprise.
So this thread has kept going on, and I've found a few more interesting points pointed out... and in my case it just means that the spell would be allowed at my table (both when Im DMIng and when the main friend goes back to DMing.)
I mean they clarified (which makes perfect sense, and I know their was a camp stating it would be that way before we got clarification) that it doesn't double use a legendary resistance... and I agree with Yurei that a player can't just go "is there a reason to use Barbs"... besides that would be metagaming anyways.. which also, to me at least, doesn't make sense why that even has an argument saying that would be allowed.
I mean it's still like one of those "to each your own" scenarios... at least that is my current stance/camp.
When the spell is used as intended, it's a neat trick spellcasters can use to manipulate luck in a minor, very spellcaster-y way. If people are ******canoes with it, that's a table problem. The spell might've caused the table problem, but that doesn't make it a universal-to-D&D problem.
Err, but people trying to break the $hi7 out of a spell doesn't always count as a game fouling jerk move, sometimes that's just the playstyle.
Just like we have to design systems for the rather inept, we also have to design systems assuming that some of our user base is going to be very adept at breaking the turds out of our system. If it's possible and rules legal to use a part of the game in a certain way and if using it in that way will produce mechanically rewarding results you can be sure that it will be used that way and plan accordingly.
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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!
If a thief succeeds on Deception, that DM is under no obligation to reveal that fact no matter what Silvery Barbs' spell text says.
Explicit caveat (since I know how these threads like to derail) that no DM is ever under any obligation to do anything because they can explicitly override anything they want.
But with that aside, if we're discussing following the game rules, then logic like what you're claiming breaks a lot more than Silvery Barbs. The game is full of abilities that do absolutely nothing unless they come with a meta-ability that leaks information to the owner of the ability. If the DM doesn't provide such leaks, none of them do anything.
I'll give you one example of myriad, deliberately chosen to be one where an ability check the owner has no way to be aware of may be occurring:
When a creature you can see within 60 feet of you is about to roll a d20 with advantage or disadvantage, you can use your reaction to prevent the roll from being affected by advantage and disadvantage.
That's a level one ability (from Clockwork Soul sorcerers) that does absolutely nothing unless it leaks information PCs don't have access to, which is whether or not a roll is about to be made with advantage or disadvantage. Including, of course, ability checks, as you listed. Across the board, 5E assumes that any ability that absolutely requires hidden information in order to function must leak that information. It's also specifically bad form to do this to Silvery Barbs without simply banning the spell or at a minimum telling your PCs that you're removing 2/3 of its functionality, because the spell won't work on any ability checks or saving throws, ever, as knowing one of those is even occurring is hidden information PCs don't generally get, let alone that one was just succeeded on. And you'll be hard-pressed making a general rule that shuts down Silvery Barbs without, as I just mentioned, shutting down or severely nerfing a truly incredible number of abilities, some of them in classes rather than races/subclasses/etc that can simply be avoided. For example, if the L14 Monk ability "Diamond Soul" doesn't tell you when you fail a saving throw, it's absolutely, utterly useless - as Xanathar's explicitly spells out for anyone who missed it beforehand, you don't know when you fail a saving throw by default.
I think one thing to consider is that they may know that there was a successful roll, but not what the roll was for or who the roll was against. In combat it is easy to tell what a roll is for, such as an attack roll, grapple check or save. Outside of combat, die rolls could be for any number of things that the players are completely unaware of. Barbs is triggered by a successful d20 roll, but are players willing to cast Barbs every time the DM rolls a dice without out knowing why?
I think one thing to consider is that they may know that there was a successful roll, but not what the roll was for or who the roll was against. In combat it is easy to tell what a roll is for, such as an attack roll, grapple check or save. Outside of combat, die rolls could be for any number of things that the players are completely unaware of. Barbs is triggered by a successful d20 roll, but are players willing to cast Barbs every time the DM rolls a dice without out knowing why?
How does this interaction look, though?
"You see a mysterious stranger standing in the road. Would you like to use Silvery Barbs on the successful roll they just made?" "What did they do? Was it an attack roll? An ability check?" "You don't know that." "Well can you describe what they were doing?" "Nothing as far as you can tell, just standing in the road." "How can I even tell I should use the spell if I can't even tell that they did something that could be affected by the spell!?"
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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!
I think one thing to consider is that they may know that there was a successful roll, but not what the roll was for or who the roll was against. In combat it is easy to tell what a roll is for, such as an attack roll, grapple check or save. Outside of combat, die rolls could be for any number of things that the players are completely unaware of. Barbs is triggered by a successful d20 roll, but are players willing to cast Barbs every time the DM rolls a dice without out knowing why?
How does this interaction look, though?
"You see a mysterious stranger standing in the road. Would you like to use Silvery Barbs on the successful roll they just made?" "What did they do? Was it an attack roll? An ability check?" "You don't know that." "Well can you describe what they were doing?" "Nothing as far as you can tell, just standing in the road." "How can I even tell I should use the spell if I can't even tell that they did something that could be affected by the spell!?"
Yes. That is pretty much exactly how it would go. The spell does not tell the players anything about the roll other than that it succeeded.
That's a level one ability (from Clockwork Soul sorcerers) that does absolutely nothing unless it leaks information PCs don't have access to, which is whether or not a roll is about to be made with advantage or disadvantage.
There are a gazillion situations in which a PC would know whether someone had advantage or disadvantage and would want to nix it -- for instance, your party member just got knocked out and is now prone, and is about to get attacked again. Quick, get rid of the advantage to give them a better chance of avoiding the autocrit.
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Yes. That is pretty much exactly how it would go. The spell does not tell the players anything about the roll other than that it succeeded.
That can't be intended to work that way ... it's annoying and frustrating and utterly immersion breaking.
I didn't write the spell. Spells only do what they say they do is a common phrase used on these forums, and it applies here. Barbs is only broken, if you give it more power than it actually has.
"You see a mysterious stranger standing in the road. Would you like to use Silvery Barbs on the successful roll they just made?" "What did they do? Was it an attack roll? An ability check?" "You don't know that." "Well can you describe what they were doing?" "Nothing as far as you can tell, just standing in the road." "How can I even tell I should use the spell if I can't even tell that they did something that could be affected by the spell!?"
I think the bolded section is where I break from how D&D is usually/is supposed to be run? I feel like maybe it's not the DM's job to know all the ins and outs of every PC's every ability and check at every possible opportunity if they want to use them. Rather I think there is supposed to be more transparency about the meta-mechanics of what's going on in the game. It's not just about Silvery Barbs, but also other similar effects like the Clockwork Sorcerer ability.
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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!
"You see a mysterious stranger standing in the road. Would you like to use Silvery Barbs on the successful roll they just made?" "What did they do? Was it an attack roll? An ability check?" "You don't know that." "Well can you describe what they were doing?" "Nothing as far as you can tell, just standing in the road." "How can I even tell I should use the spell if I can't even tell that they did something that could be affected by the spell!?"
I think the bolded section is where I break from how D&D is usually/is supposed to be run? I feel like maybe it's not the DM's job to know all the ins and outs of every PC's every ability and check at every possible opportunity if they want to use them. Rather I think there is supposed to be more transparency about the meta-mechanics of what's going on in the game. It's not just about Silvery Barbs, but also other similar effects like the Clockwork Sorcerer ability.
As DM, I am not going to tell the players that a particular person in a crowded market square is making a stealth check to hide from them or has attempted to pick their pockets. That is immersion breaking. I also I don't believe that it was the point of Silvery Barbs in the first place. Kind of like how Healing Spirit wasn't broken unless it was used in a way that it was never intended to be used. The Clockwork Sorcerer ability has work perfectly fine under these same conditions, just like Lucky and Chronal Shift. None of these complaints happened with these abilities, just Silvery Barbs.
As DM, I am not going to tell the players that a particular person in a crowded market square is making a stealth check to hide from them or has attempted to pick their pockets. That is immersion breaking. I also I don't believe that it was the point of Silvery Barbs in the first place. Kind of like how Healing Spirit wasn't broken unless it was used in a way that it was never intended to be used. The Clockwork Sorcerer ability has work perfectly fine under these same conditions, just like Lucky and Chronal Shift. None of these complaints happened with these abilities, just Silvery Barbs.
Lucky isn't a factor, it applies to your own rolls and attack rolls made against you, neither of which is going to be immersion breaking to reveal (also, it isn't even a reaction). However, other mechanics that do have the same issue include:
Bard, Lore, Cutting Words
Druid, Stars, Cosmic Omen
Fighter, Rune Knight, Storm Rune
Sorcerer, Clockwork Soul, Restore Balance
Sorcerer, Wild Magic, Bend Luck
Wizard, Diviner, Portent
I suspect it's intended that you can never react to something you are not aware of, which eliminates the excess information aspects of these abilities.
I personally do not just think this spell is perfectly fine, but that it is fundamentally a GOOD spell for the game.
It solves many of the level 1 party balance problems (in particular the "The Bugbear gets a critical hit for *roll dice* 24 damage, yeah, roll up a new toon buddy!" that is legit a far too likely outcome in an official module for beginners) and reduces one of the most annoying parts of being a caster, your spell that costs a lot of resources to use failing and doing absolutely nothing. Is it strong? Absolutely! I will go out of my way and pick a feat just to get this spell on my Cleric. But that does not make it bad for the game.
Also, the scenarios people talk about when someone can cast this to ruin a DMs secret rolls from an NPC that tries to stay hidden or stuff like this ignores an important limitation of this spell: It requires you to see the target. If you do not see or are unaware of the target, then you can't cast this spell on them.
The one problem I have with this spell (yet, this is not unique to this spell, and Shield, a spell that has been around forever, is a far worse offender to this) is that it makes casters better at handling taking attacks then fighters, but that was not a fact introduced with this spell, and there are spells that are much worse in this regard, so I think I would sooner remove Shield from the table than Silvery Barbs (yes, I know Silvery Barbs can be used offensively/as a control spell reroll but that imo is not a problem as it does not directly hurt some other class' spotlight time), and I do think you will be hard pressed to find players who want to do that, so I find no reason to then ban this spell which imo is less problematic (not worse from a power perspective) than Shield, which you let stay at the table.
Yes. That is pretty much exactly how it would go. The spell does not tell the players anything about the roll other than that it succeeded.
That can't be intended to work that way ... it's annoying and frustrating and utterly immersion breaking.
How is this immersion breaking? You don't know what that person is doing, are they making an insight roll, are they trying to remember if they've seen your party beforehand, you as a player just don't know. Knowing what they have been doing would expect an almost omniscient awareness of the world. Players just don't have that.
As DM, I am not going to tell the players that a particular person in a crowded market square is making a stealth check to hide from them or has attempted to pick their pockets. That is immersion breaking. I also I don't believe that it was the point of Silvery Barbs in the first place. Kind of like how Healing Spirit wasn't broken unless it was used in a way that it was never intended to be used. The Clockwork Sorcerer ability has work perfectly fine under these same conditions, just like Lucky and Chronal Shift. None of these complaints happened with these abilities, just Silvery Barbs.
Lucky isn't a factor, it applies to your own rolls and attack rolls made against you, neither of which is going to be immersion breaking to reveal (also, it isn't even a reaction). However, other mechanics that do have the same issue include:
Bard, Lore, Cutting Words
Druid, Stars, Cosmic Omen
Fighter, Rune Knight, Storm Rune
Sorcerer, Clockwork Soul, Restore Balance
Sorcerer, Wild Magic, Bend Luck
Wizard, Diviner, Portent
I suspect it's intended that you can never react to something you are not aware of, which eliminates the excess information aspects of these abilities.
This was the point I was trying to make, but I was too tired and lazy to look up the relevant abilities last night. Thank you.
As DM, I am not going to tell the players that a particular person in a crowded market square is making a stealth check to hide from them or has attempted to pick their pockets. That is immersion breaking. I also I don't believe that it was the point of Silvery Barbs in the first place. Kind of like how Healing Spirit wasn't broken unless it was used in a way that it was never intended to be used. The Clockwork Sorcerer ability has work perfectly fine under these same conditions, just like Lucky and Chronal Shift. None of these complaints happened with these abilities, just Silvery Barbs.
Right, I would expect a Perception roll first and I think a reasonable interpretation of Silvery Barbs, Cutting Words, et al. is that the character must notice their target doing something in order to be able to use their abilities. Pretty sure that's how all the other abilities have been run by most reasonable DM's as well.
Let's put hidden actions aside in their own hypothetical by assuming that all actions are taken out in the open and perceivable, even if not understandable. With that assumption, do you think it is reasonable to say that it would be quite burdensome for a DM to check with the players at each and every possible action and ask, "Would you like to use your reaction on this?" and that it is more feasible for it to be the player's responsibility to know their character's abilities and when to use them?
Given that, I can see two ways to approach it. I'm sure there are more, but these are what I can think of at the moment: 1) DM narrates the world with no mechanics and the players are allowed to shoot off their reaction abilities freeform during the narrative whenever they suspect it might land. I can see this being better for immersion, but I can also see it leading to a lot of either wasted spell slots or hoarded spell slots because of a lack of understanding or a non-sympatico rapport of the flow of the story between the DM and the players. I would expect such a DM to allow some takebacks and do overs from misunderstandings. 2) DM is open about the mechanical goings on at the meta level so the players can more accurately and tactically respond with their abilities when it is appropriate. This requires the players to also participate in building the game on a meta level along with the DM to create a smoother game at the narrative level, but some may not like this intrusion of meta mechanics into their play.
In the end I guess it depends on whether dice rolls or do-overs break one's immersion worse. I know I prefer the second approach.
How is this immersion breaking? You don't know what that person is doing, are they making an insight roll, are they trying to remember if they've seen your party beforehand, you as a player just don't know. Knowing what they have been doing would expect an almost omniscient awareness of the world. Players just don't have that.
You mean Player Character, right? And yes, but then who is it that's casting the spell? Is it the character, who doesn't even know anything is going on and thus has no reason to cast a spell? Or is it the player who was just given the meta knowledge that something triggered the spell? See I think my example is a weird halfway approach that frustrates me. Either only tell me what my character can perceive, or tell me the mechanics of what's going on at the meta level and trust that I will be a fellow architect of our shared narrative working towards building a satisfying experience for all involved. I lean toward the latter.
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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!
Character gathers information Player analyzes information Player decides on a plan of action Character executes the plan of action.
That's the best method I've come up with to decide what counts as 'metagaming', how to tell players what their characters see in the game world, and solving things like The Charisma Problem. It also very neatly solves the whole Silvery Barbs thing. People who say "Silvery Barbs lets you know about literally every check in the entire game within sixty feet of you" are ignoring Step 1 - the character gathers information. If the character is not aware of something? They cannot gather information about it, and thus the player cannot plan around that information or direct their character to execute actions based on that information. That includes executing the action of casting Silvery Barbs.
No, that does not 'devalue' Silvery Barbs. Being able to muck with d20 rolls you are aware of is still very powerful. You can't break a stealth check or muck with an NPCs Insight because your character isn't aware of those things...but you can help a buddy break out of a grapple check, help that same buddy make their own grapple stick longer, or stop an enemy creature from successfully Athletics-ing to leap over a chasm and follow you, or jank them whenever a spell of yours like Telekinesis calls for a contested check. You can futz with a bad attack roll, and you can futz with a saving throw against a critical spell. All of that is more than sufficient to make Barbs an absolutely fantastic spell without also making it a Universal Everything Detector because of an overly literal rules-lawyering approach to the spell text.
Players don't complain when an unseen attack from an ambushing attacker doesn't let them trip Shield, even if the DM isn't using the surprise rules correctly. Players similarly shouldn't be complaining when they don't get to Barbs a check they had no reasonable way of knowing happened, or have no reasonable way of knowing the outcome of a'la Insight. They still have a very good tool in the toolbox, and the game world continues to work the way everyone intuitively assumes it should. Victory for everybody. Or at least everybody reasonable.
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No, it actually wasn't. It's because at high levels reactions are too precious to waste on one roll if you're up against swarms, and that roll isn't likely to be key to influencing the fight. I also sometimes was very frustrated with the ability because the battlefield would make it impractical. I remember a few really fun moments where it worked and helped someone make a key save, or negated a crit, but I also remember times I used it and then get smacked with a spell I couldn't counter, or really needed to hit Shield and got smacked five times because I couldn't.
And it has a range. Absorb Elements/Shield don't care how far away something attacking you is, but Silvery Barbs (also Chronal Shift and Counterspell) all need you to be within 60 ft. Your mileage can vary on this one, but I actually found that to be prohibitive several times. Though that's a small point, and won't affect people playing "Theater of the Mind" style.
If Shield is gone an optimizer has to start rethinking how their defensive strategy works. Silvery Barbs really doesn't change builds in a fundamental way, Shield does. Though I guess depending on your outlook every spell is just "nice to have." Though some spells, like Shield, Spirit Guardians, and Conjure Animals I view to be core to a class and its design. Take it away and the class needs to start reevaluating how it operates. Without Shield (and if you use Treantmonk's other house rule, stopping wizards from getting armor, this is magnified), a big tool for getting out of the hit range (barring crits, which is why I also tend to take lucky) of creatures is Shield.
I can say as a player, but more importantly as a DM, if there's a group from 17-20 and half the characters have shield and the other half don't... the half that don't feel much, much more vulnerable. Even if they are ostensibly the 'tank' classes like fighters and... okay, fine, barbarians are still plenty durable without Shield.
Because they will always do what they save and have higher impacts on the tempo of a fight. Silvery Barb only has a high impact if used on a key roll, at a key time. You influence one roll with your reaction, and it might go your way. Or not.
With Shield, you aren't (typically) adjusting one roll. If it's just one attack leaking through, unless it's a really big thing swinging at you. Shield has way more impact against attack rolls, which are the most common way enemies are going to engage you. I guess I can't speak for everyone on this, but in my experience a "small" fight has at minimum one creature with multiattack, so the base assumption, the bare minimum I will ever assume I'm dealing with, is three swings. That's the basement, honestly if the enemy has any less than that, they are just going to get action economy avalanched and get smacked around.
I agree! That's why it's a good spell and not a useless spell. It impacts ability checks (initiative comes to mind, though if an enemy rolls well on initiative can you nerf it, does a high roll count as 'succeeding' on a d20?), saving throws, attack rolls, and can be used to help your allies too. Those are nice things. Those are good uses of a reaction at certain points if you have a spell slot to spare (at low levels), or if you're sure you aren't going to need your reaction for something that's more important (at high levels).
Though it isn't even as good as Chronal Shift, now that I'm reading over it again. Chronal Shift can be used to help an ally make a saving throw. If the d20 has to be triggered on a success, Silvery Barbs can't do that. It can make the enemy reroll a save, or reroll an attack, but with Chronal Shift you can give an ally another shot at a saving throw too.
It's not about being replaced. It's about comparing Silvery Barbs to other reactions. They do different things. But does Silvery Barbs bring more power than comparable reaction options? I am arguing it does not. It brings more range in the situations it will be useful. I doubt you'll ever have a round where it won't be useful to tweak some roll. But when it does come up, it's impact is almost always going to be smaller than comparable spells and their value when they come up. It has more versatility, less power. I keep repeating myself, but it influences one key roll vs. having a more specific but potent effect that lasts an entire round.
That's true, but also a point I have already conceded. My point isn't that you're going to use these reactions as often as you could hypothetically use Silvery Barbs, but that when they come up they are much more powerful uses of a spell and reaction.
You mentioned a couple times Shield only benefits you, and not allies. That's another point that I've already conceded. And also one of the reasons Silvery Barbs is a good spell. It's still only changing the one roll, though. In a swarm situation, if a party member is surrounded by nasty things, it can get rid of one crit. They can still be boned in such a situation. (They should have taken Shield! :D)
But that is as intended. The spell is designed to force a reroll on ability checks so if someone did a deception check, in front of you, that is an ability check for which the spell offers you a trigger to cast. This is exactly what the spell is for this isn't some weird scenario or twisting of the language it straight up allows you to force rerolls on ANY ability check a creature within 60ft of you makes.
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.
You cannot use reactions when surprised. Events you are not aware are happening are a surprise.
So this thread has kept going on, and I've found a few more interesting points pointed out... and in my case it just means that the spell would be allowed at my table (both when Im DMIng and when the main friend goes back to DMing.)
I mean they clarified (which makes perfect sense, and I know their was a camp stating it would be that way before we got clarification) that it doesn't double use a legendary resistance... and I agree with Yurei that a player can't just go "is there a reason to use Barbs"... besides that would be metagaming anyways.. which also, to me at least, doesn't make sense why that even has an argument saying that would be allowed.
I mean it's still like one of those "to each your own" scenarios... at least that is my current stance/camp.
Err, but people trying to break the $hi7 out of a spell doesn't always count as a game fouling jerk move, sometimes that's just the playstyle.
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Explicit caveat (since I know how these threads like to derail) that no DM is ever under any obligation to do anything because they can explicitly override anything they want.
But with that aside, if we're discussing following the game rules, then logic like what you're claiming breaks a lot more than Silvery Barbs. The game is full of abilities that do absolutely nothing unless they come with a meta-ability that leaks information to the owner of the ability. If the DM doesn't provide such leaks, none of them do anything.
I'll give you one example of myriad, deliberately chosen to be one where an ability check the owner has no way to be aware of may be occurring:
That's a level one ability (from Clockwork Soul sorcerers) that does absolutely nothing unless it leaks information PCs don't have access to, which is whether or not a roll is about to be made with advantage or disadvantage. Including, of course, ability checks, as you listed. Across the board, 5E assumes that any ability that absolutely requires hidden information in order to function must leak that information. It's also specifically bad form to do this to Silvery Barbs without simply banning the spell or at a minimum telling your PCs that you're removing 2/3 of its functionality, because the spell won't work on any ability checks or saving throws, ever, as knowing one of those is even occurring is hidden information PCs don't generally get, let alone that one was just succeeded on. And you'll be hard-pressed making a general rule that shuts down Silvery Barbs without, as I just mentioned, shutting down or severely nerfing a truly incredible number of abilities, some of them in classes rather than races/subclasses/etc that can simply be avoided. For example, if the L14 Monk ability "Diamond Soul" doesn't tell you when you fail a saving throw, it's absolutely, utterly useless - as Xanathar's explicitly spells out for anyone who missed it beforehand, you don't know when you fail a saving throw by default.
I think one thing to consider is that they may know that there was a successful roll, but not what the roll was for or who the roll was against. In combat it is easy to tell what a roll is for, such as an attack roll, grapple check or save. Outside of combat, die rolls could be for any number of things that the players are completely unaware of. Barbs is triggered by a successful d20 roll, but are players willing to cast Barbs every time the DM rolls a dice without out knowing why?
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
How does this interaction look, though?
"You see a mysterious stranger standing in the road. Would you like to use Silvery Barbs on the successful roll they just made?"
"What did they do? Was it an attack roll? An ability check?"
"You don't know that."
"Well can you describe what they were doing?"
"Nothing as far as you can tell, just standing in the road."
"How can I even tell I should use the spell if I can't even tell that they did something that could be affected by the spell!?"
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I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
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Yes. That is pretty much exactly how it would go. The spell does not tell the players anything about the roll other than that it succeeded.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
That can't be intended to work that way ... it's annoying and frustrating and utterly immersion breaking.
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There are a gazillion situations in which a PC would know whether someone had advantage or disadvantage and would want to nix it -- for instance, your party member just got knocked out and is now prone, and is about to get attacked again. Quick, get rid of the advantage to give them a better chance of avoiding the autocrit.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I didn't write the spell. Spells only do what they say they do is a common phrase used on these forums, and it applies here. Barbs is only broken, if you give it more power than it actually has.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
If I may break down my own example:
I think the bolded section is where I break from how D&D is usually/is supposed to be run? I feel like maybe it's not the DM's job to know all the ins and outs of every PC's every ability and check at every possible opportunity if they want to use them. Rather I think there is supposed to be more transparency about the meta-mechanics of what's going on in the game. It's not just about Silvery Barbs, but also other similar effects like the Clockwork Sorcerer ability.
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As DM, I am not going to tell the players that a particular person in a crowded market square is making a stealth check to hide from them or has attempted to pick their pockets. That is immersion breaking. I also I don't believe that it was the point of Silvery Barbs in the first place. Kind of like how Healing Spirit wasn't broken unless it was used in a way that it was never intended to be used. The Clockwork Sorcerer ability has work perfectly fine under these same conditions, just like Lucky and Chronal Shift. None of these complaints happened with these abilities, just Silvery Barbs.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Lucky isn't a factor, it applies to your own rolls and attack rolls made against you, neither of which is going to be immersion breaking to reveal (also, it isn't even a reaction). However, other mechanics that do have the same issue include:
I suspect it's intended that you can never react to something you are not aware of, which eliminates the excess information aspects of these abilities.
I personally do not just think this spell is perfectly fine, but that it is fundamentally a GOOD spell for the game.
It solves many of the level 1 party balance problems (in particular the "The Bugbear gets a critical hit for *roll dice* 24 damage, yeah, roll up a new toon buddy!" that is legit a far too likely outcome in an official module for beginners) and reduces one of the most annoying parts of being a caster, your spell that costs a lot of resources to use failing and doing absolutely nothing. Is it strong? Absolutely! I will go out of my way and pick a feat just to get this spell on my Cleric. But that does not make it bad for the game.
Also, the scenarios people talk about when someone can cast this to ruin a DMs secret rolls from an NPC that tries to stay hidden or stuff like this ignores an important limitation of this spell: It requires you to see the target. If you do not see or are unaware of the target, then you can't cast this spell on them.
The one problem I have with this spell (yet, this is not unique to this spell, and Shield, a spell that has been around forever, is a far worse offender to this) is that it makes casters better at handling taking attacks then fighters, but that was not a fact introduced with this spell, and there are spells that are much worse in this regard, so I think I would sooner remove Shield from the table than Silvery Barbs (yes, I know Silvery Barbs can be used offensively/as a control spell reroll but that imo is not a problem as it does not directly hurt some other class' spotlight time), and I do think you will be hard pressed to find players who want to do that, so I find no reason to then ban this spell which imo is less problematic (not worse from a power perspective) than Shield, which you let stay at the table.
How is this immersion breaking? You don't know what that person is doing, are they making an insight roll, are they trying to remember if they've seen your party beforehand, you as a player just don't know. Knowing what they have been doing would expect an almost omniscient awareness of the world. Players just don't have that.
This was the point I was trying to make, but I was too tired and lazy to look up the relevant abilities last night. Thank you.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Right, I would expect a Perception roll first and I think a reasonable interpretation of Silvery Barbs, Cutting Words, et al. is that the character must notice their target doing something in order to be able to use their abilities. Pretty sure that's how all the other abilities have been run by most reasonable DM's as well.
Let's put hidden actions aside in their own hypothetical by assuming that all actions are taken out in the open and perceivable, even if not understandable. With that assumption, do you think it is reasonable to say that it would be quite burdensome for a DM to check with the players at each and every possible action and ask, "Would you like to use your reaction on this?" and that it is more feasible for it to be the player's responsibility to know their character's abilities and when to use them?
Given that, I can see two ways to approach it. I'm sure there are more, but these are what I can think of at the moment:
1) DM narrates the world with no mechanics and the players are allowed to shoot off their reaction abilities freeform during the narrative whenever they suspect it might land. I can see this being better for immersion, but I can also see it leading to a lot of either wasted spell slots or hoarded spell slots because of a lack of understanding or a non-sympatico rapport of the flow of the story between the DM and the players. I would expect such a DM to allow some takebacks and do overs from misunderstandings.
2) DM is open about the mechanical goings on at the meta level so the players can more accurately and tactically respond with their abilities when it is appropriate. This requires the players to also participate in building the game on a meta level along with the DM to create a smoother game at the narrative level, but some may not like this intrusion of meta mechanics into their play.
In the end I guess it depends on whether dice rolls or do-overs break one's immersion worse. I know I prefer the second approach.
You mean Player Character, right? And yes, but then who is it that's casting the spell? Is it the character, who doesn't even know anything is going on and thus has no reason to cast a spell? Or is it the player who was just given the meta knowledge that something triggered the spell? See I think my example is a weird halfway approach that frustrates me. Either only tell me what my character can perceive, or tell me the mechanics of what's going on at the meta level and trust that I will be a fellow architect of our shared narrative working towards building a satisfying experience for all involved. I lean toward the latter.
Canto alla vita
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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!
Character gathers information
Player analyzes information
Player decides on a plan of action
Character executes the plan of action.
That's the best method I've come up with to decide what counts as 'metagaming', how to tell players what their characters see in the game world, and solving things like The Charisma Problem. It also very neatly solves the whole Silvery Barbs thing. People who say "Silvery Barbs lets you know about literally every check in the entire game within sixty feet of you" are ignoring Step 1 - the character gathers information. If the character is not aware of something? They cannot gather information about it, and thus the player cannot plan around that information or direct their character to execute actions based on that information. That includes executing the action of casting Silvery Barbs.
No, that does not 'devalue' Silvery Barbs. Being able to muck with d20 rolls you are aware of is still very powerful. You can't break a stealth check or muck with an NPCs Insight because your character isn't aware of those things...but you can help a buddy break out of a grapple check, help that same buddy make their own grapple stick longer, or stop an enemy creature from successfully Athletics-ing to leap over a chasm and follow you, or jank them whenever a spell of yours like Telekinesis calls for a contested check. You can futz with a bad attack roll, and you can futz with a saving throw against a critical spell. All of that is more than sufficient to make Barbs an absolutely fantastic spell without also making it a Universal Everything Detector because of an overly literal rules-lawyering approach to the spell text.
Players don't complain when an unseen attack from an ambushing attacker doesn't let them trip Shield, even if the DM isn't using the surprise rules correctly. Players similarly shouldn't be complaining when they don't get to Barbs a check they had no reasonable way of knowing happened, or have no reasonable way of knowing the outcome of a'la Insight. They still have a very good tool in the toolbox, and the game world continues to work the way everyone intuitively assumes it should. Victory for everybody. Or at least everybody reasonable.
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