I've seen a lot of discussion surrounding the new Silvery Barbs spell (http://dnd5e.*******.com/spell:silvery-barbs) and I wanted to throw my hat into the ring. Some people deem it too strong and ban-worthy, while others claim that it is overrated. It is often compared to Shield as a defensive 1st level spell. Because of this I went ahead and compared how well these two spells perform and I would like to share the data with you.
First off: I calculated the "coverage" for each spell, by which I mean "if a spellcaster has this spell prepared and is willing to use it, what is the chance that an incoming attack would miss?"
In other words: how hard are they to hit when they have the spell available?
For the Shield spell we have:
And for Silvery Barbs we have:
If we are just looking at how much harder it is to hit a spellcaster that has Silvery Barbs prepared, it would in most circumstances be roughly equivalent to adding between +3 and +5 to their armor class. Quite strong!
Perhaps not that interesting on its own, so let's look at the difference in coverage:
As you can see here, as long as the To-hit bonus of any attacker is within a reasonable range of what might be expected for the level, the difference in coverage is quite marginal (less than 5 percentage points). Though, Shield does outperform Silvery Barbs most of the time (if only slightly)!
This does not tell the whole story, of course, as Silvery Barbs can be used and still fail. While, if we assume that the player would know the total attack roll before using the Shield spell then it, in comparison, cannot fail. This is how many DMs handle it as far as I know.
So, given we are hit with an attack and we use Silvery Barbs, what is the chance the spell is wasted?
Now, bear in mind that the risk of the spell being wasted is already accounted for in the coverage calculation! The coverage is still the same!
So you might look at it this way: If you have a 55% chance to waste the spell slot, we could see that as the spell costing an average 1.55 spell slots for the same effect. Taking opportunity cost and action economy into account is a bit too complicated, so I will simply leave it up for you to judge how much of a downside it is in actual gameplay.
As a bonus I would also like to include a table showing the coverage of a spellcaster benefiting from BOTH spells (i.e. they use Shield on themselves, and an ally casts Silvery Barbs):
I would like to draw your attention to the bottom left field (highlighted in red).
When an attacker with a +10 To-hit bonus attacks a spellcaster with an AC of 10, having both spells available would give that character a 36% coverage. In other words, an attack that would otherwise have a 95% chance to hit, would instead only have a 64% chance to hit once both spells are in play. Make of that what you will!
In summary:
If I were to compare the Silvery Barbs and Shield spells, then I would consider the following:
Shield is slightly stronger when used defensively.
Shield lasts a full round and nullifies Magic Missiles.
Shield cannot be wasted.
Silvery Barbs will nullify critical hits 95% of the time.
Silvery Barbs grants advantage to an ally.
Silvery Barbs has more versatility.
Which spell is the stronger defensive tool? - I'd say Shield, but only by a small margin. They are definitely comparable.
Is the added use-cases of Silvery Barbs worth the difference, and the risk of it failing? - I dunno, you tell me! :P
I hope this has been at least a somewhat interesting and constructive addition to the discussion!
I mean, nobody uses Silvery Barbs that way defensively.
Defensively Silvery Barbs is used to prevent a critical hit (usually on a ally, cause Shield is range:self, Silvery Barbs is not)
This is cause usually you're either fighting lots of small enemies (makes SB less effective), or fighting one enemy who attacks multiple times (makes SB less effective).
Very rarely do you fight a single enemy who has one attack. Both spells have a purpose defensively, but eh. Most people don't really care about using SB defensively anyways, the argument is usually actually presented as if using SB offensively (to boost your/other people's spell) is worth a reaction as a reaction prevents you from casting Shield/Absorb Elements.
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Hiya!
Long time reader, first time poster!
I've seen a lot of discussion surrounding the new Silvery Barbs spell (http://dnd5e.*******.com/spell:silvery-barbs) and I wanted to throw my hat into the ring. Some people deem it too strong and ban-worthy, while others claim that it is overrated. It is often compared to Shield as a defensive 1st level spell. Because of this I went ahead and compared how well these two spells perform and I would like to share the data with you.
First off: I calculated the "coverage" for each spell, by which I mean "if a spellcaster has this spell prepared and is willing to use it, what is the chance that an incoming attack would miss?"
In other words: how hard are they to hit when they have the spell available?
For the Shield spell we have:
And for Silvery Barbs we have:
If we are just looking at how much harder it is to hit a spellcaster that has Silvery Barbs prepared, it would in most circumstances be roughly equivalent to adding between +3 and +5 to their armor class. Quite strong!
Perhaps not that interesting on its own, so let's look at the difference in coverage:
As you can see here, as long as the To-hit bonus of any attacker is within a reasonable range of what might be expected for the level, the difference in coverage is quite marginal (less than 5 percentage points). Though, Shield does outperform Silvery Barbs most of the time (if only slightly)!
This does not tell the whole story, of course, as Silvery Barbs can be used and still fail. While, if we assume that the player would know the total attack roll before using the Shield spell then it, in comparison, cannot fail. This is how many DMs handle it as far as I know.
So, given we are hit with an attack and we use Silvery Barbs, what is the chance the spell is wasted?
Now, bear in mind that the risk of the spell being wasted is already accounted for in the coverage calculation! The coverage is still the same!
So you might look at it this way: If you have a 55% chance to waste the spell slot, we could see that as the spell costing an average 1.55 spell slots for the same effect. Taking opportunity cost and action economy into account is a bit too complicated, so I will simply leave it up for you to judge how much of a downside it is in actual gameplay.
As a bonus I would also like to include a table showing the coverage of a spellcaster benefiting from BOTH spells (i.e. they use Shield on themselves, and an ally casts Silvery Barbs):
I would like to draw your attention to the bottom left field (highlighted in red).
When an attacker with a +10 To-hit bonus attacks a spellcaster with an AC of 10, having both spells available would give that character a 36% coverage. In other words, an attack that would otherwise have a 95% chance to hit, would instead only have a 64% chance to hit once both spells are in play. Make of that what you will!
In summary:
If I were to compare the Silvery Barbs and Shield spells, then I would consider the following:
Shield is slightly stronger when used defensively.
Shield lasts a full round and nullifies Magic Missiles.
Shield cannot be wasted.
Silvery Barbs will nullify critical hits 95% of the time.
Silvery Barbs grants advantage to an ally.
Silvery Barbs has more versatility.
Which spell is the stronger defensive tool?
- I'd say Shield, but only by a small margin. They are definitely comparable.
Is the added use-cases of Silvery Barbs worth the difference, and the risk of it failing?
- I dunno, you tell me! :P
I hope this has been at least a somewhat interesting and constructive addition to the discussion!
Friendly regards, Rubi
I mean, nobody uses Silvery Barbs that way defensively.
Defensively Silvery Barbs is used to prevent a critical hit (usually on a ally, cause Shield is range:self, Silvery Barbs is not)
This is cause usually you're either fighting lots of small enemies (makes SB less effective), or fighting one enemy who attacks multiple times (makes SB less effective).
Very rarely do you fight a single enemy who has one attack. Both spells have a purpose defensively, but eh. Most people don't really care about using SB defensively anyways, the argument is usually actually presented as if using SB offensively (to boost your/other people's spell) is worth a reaction as a reaction prevents you from casting Shield/Absorb Elements.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.