Hardly. I have seen this "one check for the room" as standard operating procedure at almost every 5e table I have sat at over the past 8 years. It should take at least in-game 20 minutes to investigate a room that size (DM Discretion on time, and the DM rolling for wandering monsters) , and should require at least one check every 10 linear feet of wall, let alone the floor. Now, is THAT in the rules? I don't think so. This is one of the areas that was not codified. The fact that a player can spam Guidance for each and every check is a major flaw in the game.
The player could spam firebolt at 5' intervals to see if any wall section reacts differently and thus might be a secret door. Or at each and every object in every room just in case it might be a mimic.
So ban all cantrips?
Then what happens if they do the same with a long stick, instead? Ban long sticks?
Most players are sane and would get bored with / realize the futility of that after the first couple rooms, if they even make it that long. There is no idiot proof set of rules.
Huh? Fire Bolt detects traps and secret doors? Not in any universe. And a 10 foot pole should be standard equipment, to trigger traps, and sure, pound on wall sections/floor sections to see if a section is hollow. No one needs to have any spammable magic, of any kind, to perform basic game functions.
You seem to be missing the fundamental point of cantrips; to be basic game functions.
No, you miss the point. Fundamental game functions should in no way be handled by cantrips.
The designers who made cantrips able to handle fundamental game functions and without a cost to boot appear to disagree with you.
No, you miss the point. Fundamental game functions should in no way be handled by cantrips.
That's what cantrips are designed for. The problem is that guidance isn't a basic game function, it's a buff.
It’s a marginal buff that averages maybe 10% increase in odds of success, assuming the caster is in a position to use it at the time. You cannot seriously tell me it’s more disruptive to this purported “balance” to skill checks than Expertise or Help are. You might as well say +X weapons should be banned because they unbalance combat.
It’s a marginal buff that averages maybe 10% increase in odds of success, assuming the caster is in a position to use it at the time. You cannot seriously tell me it’s more disruptive to this purported “balance” to skill checks than Expertise or Help are. You might as well say +X weapons should be banned because they unbalance combat.
Expertise (all skills) would be disruptive. There are a variety of ways the capabilities of Guidance could be narrowed by enough to make it reasonable, but it needs something to make it work less often. As for Help, RAW help is pretty broken but has sufficiently vague rules that people just ignore it.
Having the challenge scale with the ability of the PCs is pretty standard in D&D. I don't think many of us have L20s facing off against Goblins. If you essentially universally boost the abilities of the players in a significant manner, you have to boost the challenge commensurately or the game becomes too easy.
Is Guidance boosting the player's significantly? Well, a point to note is that it can stack with Help. The former contributes, on average, 2.5. the latter contributes, on average, 3.1 (I can't remember the exact number, but it was something like that or a bit higher, so we'll go with that more conservative number), for 5.6 together. Combine that with the golden success of about 60%, that means that boosting the success rate from 60% to 88%, reducing the rate of failure by almost 75%. You're changing the the odds from "probably will succeed, but a decent chance of failure" to "you'll almost certainly succeed, it would take some pretty bad luck to fail".
That's something that you'd have to account for. The fact that it's effectively resourceless and unlimited (other than time) makes it something that, if used regularly, you'd have to account for and change the DC's of your challenges (which is really bad for reasons already cited) or introduce strict time limits and pressures to stop this from being routine (which is very narratively limiting). The fact that either can be used to boost all the skill rolls of everyone is really problematic.
In practice:
My players almost never use either. They will occasionally use one for important rolls (that generally have naturally high DCs anyway), and I don't think I've ever had them use both simultaneously even when available. I'm absolutely fine with the fact that in the high stakes moments, they have options to do something to improve their chances - which is precisely the effect of what scarce resource abilities are for, right? These seem to have found that usage niche without the bureaucracy of having to track how many times they've been used that day, which is the ideal.
At least at my table, they both seem fine.
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It’s a marginal buff that averages maybe 10% increase in odds of success, assuming the caster is in a position to use it at the time. You cannot seriously tell me it’s more disruptive to this purported “balance” to skill checks than Expertise or Help are. You might as well say +X weapons should be banned because they unbalance combat.
Expertise (all skills) would be disruptive. There are a variety of ways the capabilities of Guidance could be narrowed by enough to make it reasonable, but it needs something to make it work less often. As for Help, RAW help is pretty broken but has sufficiently vague rules that people just ignore it.
Well, they were tweaking it in the UA, so you might get your wish (though that adjustment was so restrictive it would essentially have been a trap pick). But really the issues with it are more just establishing the basic table etiquette/procedure so it gets applied naturally as opposed to the caster needing to interject it mid-roll. Unless you're a DM who is trying to run a campaign on rails and wants players to essentially always fail high DCs, 1d4 is honestly more likely to be unneeded or insufficient rather than critical in terms of skill performance.
Well, yes, if you don't use something, it isn't a problem. In practice overuse of either mechanic will annoy the DM and other players so reasonably socially aware players will self-limit, but that's not a great way to balance a feature.
No, you miss the point. Fundamental game functions should in no way be handled by cantrips.
That's what cantrips are designed for. The problem is that guidance isn't a basic game function, it's a buff.
It’s a marginal buff that averages maybe 10% increase in odds of success, assuming the caster is in a position to use it at the time. You cannot seriously tell me it’s more disruptive to this purported “balance” to skill checks than Expertise or Help are. You might as well say +X weapons should be banned because they unbalance combat.
Guidance is far far more than a "10% buff". And with bounded accuracy, the higher the DC set by the DM, the bigger the buff. The actual math of this so-called 10%:
We will look at 3 cases, all with the same PC ability, but against DC's of 16, 18, and 20. I am also going to go with the assumption of a +2 on Guidance, as opposed to the actual +2.5 expected value, which make this even a greater buff. Assume we are dealing with a Rogue with a +7 in say, I dunno, Investigation, and he is looking for a Trap. The DM has deemed Investigation as the proper Prof to use. The Bard, she casts Guidance on the Rogue and the Rogue is now at +9.
Against a DC of 16, the Rogue without Guidance has an expected value of 60% success (9 or higher on the die). With Guidance, that is 70%. That is a 16.7% improvement, of 10%/60%.
Against a DC 18, the Rogue without Guidance has an expected value of 50% success. With Guidance, that is 60%. That is a 20 % improvement, of 10%/50%.
Against a DC 20, the Rogue without Guidance has an expected value of 40% success. With Guidance, that is 50%. That is a 25 % improvement, of 10%/40%.
Those are enormous differences, for a zero cost cantrip.
I don't even want to begin to do the math on how much a game-changer Silvery Barbs is to a game. Suffice to say, it is a far more massive impact, and wildly broken.
Well, they were tweaking it in the UA, so you might get your wish (though that adjustment was so restrictive it would essentially have been a trap pick).
Actually, the UA2 version of Guidance would have been perfectly useful, just a strange design for a cantrip.
Hardly. I have seen this "one check for the room" as standard operating procedure at almost every 5e table I have sat at over the past 8 years. It should take at least in-game 20 minutes to investigate a room that size (DM Discretion on time, and the DM rolling for wandering monsters) , and should require at least one check every 10 linear feet of wall, let alone the floor. Now, is THAT in the rules? I don't think so. This is one of the areas that was not codified.
So you agree there's no rule for perception in the way you described, just houserules your DMs/tables have used that you disagree with. Have you tried talking with them?
The fact that a player can spam Guidance for each and every check is a major flaw in the game.
Again, devising checks/skill challenges where casting Guidance (either version) would be a problem, ill-advised, or suboptimal - and therefore a meaningful tradeoff - is trivial.
No, you miss the point. Fundamental game functions should in no way be handled by cantrips.
That's what cantrips are designed for. The problem is that guidance isn't a basic game function, it's a buff.
It’s a marginal buff that averages maybe 10% increase in odds of success, assuming the caster is in a position to use it at the time. You cannot seriously tell me it’s more disruptive to this purported “balance” to skill checks than Expertise or Help are. You might as well say +X weapons should be banned because they unbalance combat.
Guidance is far far more than a "10% buff". And with bounded accuracy, the higher the DC set by the DM, the bigger the buff. The actual math of this so-called 10%:
We will look at 3 cases, all with the same PC ability, but against DC's of 16, 18, and 20. I am also going to go with the assumption of a +2 on Guidance, as opposed to the actual +2.5 expected value, which make this even a greater buff. Assume we are dealing with a Rogue with a +7 in say, I dunno, Investigation, and he is looking for a Trap. The DM has deemed Investigation as the proper Prof to use. The Bard, she casts Guidance on the Rogue and the Rogue is now at +9.
Against a DC of 16, the Rogue without Guidance has an expected value of 60% success (9 or higher on the die). With Guidance, that is 70%. That is a 16.7% improvement, of 10%/60%.
Against a DC 18, the Rogue without Guidance has an expected value of 50% success. With Guidance, that is 60%. That is a 20 % improvement, of 10%/50%.
Against a DC 20, the Rogue without Guidance has an expected value of 40% success. With Guidance, that is 50%. That is a 25 % improvement, of 10%/40%.
Those are enormous differences, for a zero cost cantrip.
I don't even want to begin to do the math on how much a game-changer Silvery Barbs is to a game. Suffice to say, it is a far more massive impact, and wildly broken.
10% is still 10%.
Now please describe the adventure situation where (a) the rogue is facing a DC 20 check and (b) the adventure does not fall apart if the rogue fails? Or, alternatively, is completely broken if the rogue succeeds?
And if if the adventure would fall apart on a fail, then why is the rogue allowed to fail?
If the adventure would be completely broken on a success, why is there the opportunity for a success to break the adventure?
Looking for a trap, remember that the guidance spell tosses stealth out the window, since Verbal components have to be loud enough to be heard. That is a pretty big drawback, that DM's should not ignore.
It is not 10%. This is math. There is no debate.
As for any narrative value, it is irrelevant. If I put a trap, or a secret door, or a lock, or whatever, in an adventure, it may or may not alter the game dramatically. I have had cases where if the players don't look for secret doors, they miss out on treasure, or have to go about killing the BBEG in a much more difficult manner. More than one PC has been brought to 0 HP because of blowing a skill check. But as I said, that is irrelevant to the topic.
The math is clear. Silvery Barbs, Guidance et al make setting up the game much harder for the DM, and trivializes challenges. Now, if you believe that the DM is merely a service provider for the players, and the DM's enjoyment of the game is irrelevant, and players' enjoyment of the game is maximized by them steamrolling every challenge so they are not really challenges at all, then yeah, Silvery Barbs and Guidance are awesome.
Well, they were tweaking it in the UA, so you might get your wish (though that adjustment was so restrictive it would essentially have been a trap pick).
Actually, the UA2 version of Guidance would have been perfectly useful, just a strange design for a cantrip.
It would be useful as a race feature, not as a cantrip. Once per day per target like that just means they'll almost never use it and it's likely to just be a waste. Too much of a trap just for a small boost to skill check.
It would be useful as a race feature, not as a cantrip. Once per day per target like that just means they'll almost never use it and it's likely to just be a waste.
You could decide to use it after the roll was made and declared a failure. This greatly reduces the odds of wasting it, as you'd only actually use it if you had reason to think your roll was close.
It would be useful as a race feature, not as a cantrip. Once per day per target like that just means they'll almost never use it and it's likely to just be a waste.
You could decide to use it after the roll was made and declared a failure. This greatly reduces the odds of wasting it, as you'd only actually use it if you had reason to think your roll was close.
Needs to at least be a d6 if they're limiting the number of uses. If it's gonna be a Hail Mary, particularly if the one per is regardless of success or failure, in needs more potential to swing the results.
As for any narrative value, it is irrelevant. If I put a trap, or a secret door, or a lock, or whatever, in an adventure, it may or may not alter the game dramatically. I have had cases where if the players don't look for secret doors, they miss out on treasure, or have to go about killing the BBEG in a much more difficult manner. More than one PC has been brought to 0 HP because of blowing a skill check.
But the other side of that coin is true too. If the players need to chant loudly every time they look for a secret door, they could alert the BBEG's minions and make the fight more difficult. Or the cleric/druid could break their concentration on the hour-long buff/summon they were hoping to bring into that fight, making it more difficult (2014 version). Or they might need to stand next to the rogue as they try disarming a trap, thereby being in the damage radius if they fail (2024 version), and lacking both evasion or their own reaction to use Absorb Elements on the ensuing blast. And in both cases, there are plenty of checks where casting Guidance is wholly impractical, like being stealthy, or mid-conversation.
It's not WotC's job to introduce drawbacks to using a cantrip repeatedly, because that's precisely how cantrips are designed to work (PHB 201). Rather, it's your job as the DM mix up your encounter design so that sometimes that approach can be suboptimal, while the rest of the time it works as expected.
The math is clear. Silvery Barbs, Guidance et al make setting up the game much harder for the DM, and trivializes challenges. Now, if you believe that the DM is merely a service provider for the players, and the DM's enjoyment of the game is irrelevant, and players' enjoyment of the game is maximized by them steamrolling every challenge so they are not really challenges at all, then yeah, Silvery Barbs and Guidance are awesome.
It's not WotC's job to tell your players that you're not having fun either; their job is to design spells the majority of their audience will enjoy. If you find Guidance to be un-fun or too difficult to design challenges for, have that conversation with your players and either tweak or ban it. And Silvery Barbs is already setting-specific if you need a justification to ban or alter it.
Not really true. From my 2.5 years in this thread, my observation is that the dichotomy is better stated as:
People who fear change: Busted
People who embrace change: Perfectly fine
The reality is that there are a great deal of people unaccounted for in even that dichotomy who fall somewhere in the middle: Slightly overtuned but acceptable or I would make slight change X.
Or like me that feels that it doesn't fit nicely in the granular nature of the system and therefore not sure what change to make. It's fine as a spell, but a bit much for L1 and not really enough for L2.
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Or like me that feels that it doesn't fit nicely in the granular nature of the system and therefore not sure what change to make. It's fine as a spell, but a bit much for L1 and not really enough for L2.
Given how often it seems to get forgotten about/go unused, just ditch the "give advantage" part and leave it at 1st level if you're going to tweak it
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The designers who made cantrips able to handle fundamental game functions and without a cost to boot appear to disagree with you.
That's what cantrips are designed for. The problem is that guidance isn't a basic game function, it's a buff.
So are cantrips Blade Ward, Friends, Resistance, and Shillelagh.
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It’s a marginal buff that averages maybe 10% increase in odds of success, assuming the caster is in a position to use it at the time. You cannot seriously tell me it’s more disruptive to this purported “balance” to skill checks than Expertise or Help are. You might as well say +X weapons should be banned because they unbalance combat.
Expertise (all skills) would be disruptive. There are a variety of ways the capabilities of Guidance could be narrowed by enough to make it reasonable, but it needs something to make it work less often. As for Help, RAW help is pretty broken but has sufficiently vague rules that people just ignore it.
Theory crafting:
Having the challenge scale with the ability of the PCs is pretty standard in D&D. I don't think many of us have L20s facing off against Goblins. If you essentially universally boost the abilities of the players in a significant manner, you have to boost the challenge commensurately or the game becomes too easy.
Is Guidance boosting the player's significantly? Well, a point to note is that it can stack with Help. The former contributes, on average, 2.5. the latter contributes, on average, 3.1 (I can't remember the exact number, but it was something like that or a bit higher, so we'll go with that more conservative number), for 5.6 together. Combine that with the golden success of about 60%, that means that boosting the success rate from 60% to 88%, reducing the rate of failure by almost 75%. You're changing the the odds from "probably will succeed, but a decent chance of failure" to "you'll almost certainly succeed, it would take some pretty bad luck to fail".
That's something that you'd have to account for. The fact that it's effectively resourceless and unlimited (other than time) makes it something that, if used regularly, you'd have to account for and change the DC's of your challenges (which is really bad for reasons already cited) or introduce strict time limits and pressures to stop this from being routine (which is very narratively limiting). The fact that either can be used to boost all the skill rolls of everyone is really problematic.
In practice:
My players almost never use either. They will occasionally use one for important rolls (that generally have naturally high DCs anyway), and I don't think I've ever had them use both simultaneously even when available. I'm absolutely fine with the fact that in the high stakes moments, they have options to do something to improve their chances - which is precisely the effect of what scarce resource abilities are for, right? These seem to have found that usage niche without the bureaucracy of having to track how many times they've been used that day, which is the ideal.
At least at my table, they both seem fine.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Well, they were tweaking it in the UA, so you might get your wish (though that adjustment was so restrictive it would essentially have been a trap pick). But really the issues with it are more just establishing the basic table etiquette/procedure so it gets applied naturally as opposed to the caster needing to interject it mid-roll. Unless you're a DM who is trying to run a campaign on rails and wants players to essentially always fail high DCs, 1d4 is honestly more likely to be unneeded or insufficient rather than critical in terms of skill performance.
Well, yes, if you don't use something, it isn't a problem. In practice overuse of either mechanic will annoy the DM and other players so reasonably socially aware players will self-limit, but that's not a great way to balance a feature.
Guidance is far far more than a "10% buff". And with bounded accuracy, the higher the DC set by the DM, the bigger the buff. The actual math of this so-called 10%:
We will look at 3 cases, all with the same PC ability, but against DC's of 16, 18, and 20. I am also going to go with the assumption of a +2 on Guidance, as opposed to the actual +2.5 expected value, which make this even a greater buff. Assume we are dealing with a Rogue with a +7 in say, I dunno, Investigation, and he is looking for a Trap. The DM has deemed Investigation as the proper Prof to use. The Bard, she casts Guidance on the Rogue and the Rogue is now at +9.
Against a DC of 16, the Rogue without Guidance has an expected value of 60% success (9 or higher on the die). With Guidance, that is 70%. That is a 16.7% improvement, of 10%/60%.
Against a DC 18, the Rogue without Guidance has an expected value of 50% success. With Guidance, that is 60%. That is a 20 % improvement, of 10%/50%.
Against a DC 20, the Rogue without Guidance has an expected value of 40% success. With Guidance, that is 50%. That is a 25 % improvement, of 10%/40%.
Those are enormous differences, for a zero cost cantrip.
I don't even want to begin to do the math on how much a game-changer Silvery Barbs is to a game. Suffice to say, it is a far more massive impact, and wildly broken.
Actually, the UA2 version of Guidance would have been perfectly useful, just a strange design for a cantrip.
So you agree there's no rule for perception in the way you described, just houserules your DMs/tables have used that you disagree with. Have you tried talking with them?
Again, devising checks/skill challenges where casting Guidance (either version) would be a problem, ill-advised, or suboptimal - and therefore a meaningful tradeoff - is trivial.
It is not 10%. This is math. There is no debate.
As for any narrative value, it is irrelevant. If I put a trap, or a secret door, or a lock, or whatever, in an adventure, it may or may not alter the game dramatically. I have had cases where if the players don't look for secret doors, they miss out on treasure, or have to go about killing the BBEG in a much more difficult manner. More than one PC has been brought to 0 HP because of blowing a skill check. But as I said, that is irrelevant to the topic.
The math is clear. Silvery Barbs, Guidance et al make setting up the game much harder for the DM, and trivializes challenges. Now, if you believe that the DM is merely a service provider for the players, and the DM's enjoyment of the game is irrelevant, and players' enjoyment of the game is maximized by them steamrolling every challenge so they are not really challenges at all, then yeah, Silvery Barbs and Guidance are awesome.
It would be useful as a race feature, not as a cantrip. Once per day per target like that just means they'll almost never use it and it's likely to just be a waste. Too much of a trap just for a small boost to skill check.
You could decide to use it after the roll was made and declared a failure. This greatly reduces the odds of wasting it, as you'd only actually use it if you had reason to think your roll was close.
Needs to at least be a d6 if they're limiting the number of uses. If it's gonna be a Hail Mary, particularly if the one per is regardless of success or failure, in needs more potential to swing the results.
But the other side of that coin is true too. If the players need to chant loudly every time they look for a secret door, they could alert the BBEG's minions and make the fight more difficult. Or the cleric/druid could break their concentration on the hour-long buff/summon they were hoping to bring into that fight, making it more difficult (2014 version). Or they might need to stand next to the rogue as they try disarming a trap, thereby being in the damage radius if they fail (2024 version), and lacking both evasion or their own reaction to use Absorb Elements on the ensuing blast. And in both cases, there are plenty of checks where casting Guidance is wholly impractical, like being stealthy, or mid-conversation.
It's not WotC's job to introduce drawbacks to using a cantrip repeatedly, because that's precisely how cantrips are designed to work (PHB 201). Rather, it's your job as the DM mix up your encounter design so that sometimes that approach can be suboptimal, while the rest of the time it works as expected.
It's not WotC's job to tell your players that you're not having fun either; their job is to design spells the majority of their audience will enjoy. If you find Guidance to be un-fun or too difficult to design challenges for, have that conversation with your players and either tweak or ban it. And Silvery Barbs is already setting-specific if you need a justification to ban or alter it.
DM's vote: busted
Player's Vote: perfectly fine
Not really true. From my 2.5 years in this thread, my observation is that the dichotomy is better stated as:
People who fear change: Busted
People who embrace change: Perfectly fine
The reality is that there are a great deal of people unaccounted for in even that dichotomy who fall somewhere in the middle: Slightly overtuned but acceptable or I would make slight change X.
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Or like me that feels that it doesn't fit nicely in the granular nature of the system and therefore not sure what change to make. It's fine as a spell, but a bit much for L1 and not really enough for L2.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Given how often it seems to get forgotten about/go unused, just ditch the "give advantage" part and leave it at 1st level if you're going to tweak it
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