our party consists of a bard/druid, a bard, a cleric, an artificer, a rouge, a paladin, and a wizard. Basically, the part has used silvery barbs every encounter for the last about 7-9 sessions making it so that my monsters don’t get a chance to attack or even take a turn in combat. My codm has been trying to make the encounters more difficult but they always find a way to cheese them. I’ve also been attempting to work with them but was unable to find a work around. I hope me giving a little bit more info helps. If you need to know anything else do not hesitate to ask.
I definitely recommend Helmed Horror even if you have to reskin them (use their stat block but have them appearing differently). They just then are flat out immune to Silvery Barbs.
In addition adjust the CR to a higher level. If the party are walking every encounter it's time to power and level up the enemies they are facing.
it's not 'cheating' or cheap to enable the players to have more fun more often. this is their preferred play style? they're having fun? okay, then send more encounters/monsters/skills/saves their way so they can have more fun. illusions/disguises and poison gas in particular jump out to me. doesn't have to hurt, just trigger a challenge.
... except that you just listed off seven players. yikes. seven players means a lot of spell slots to sap before getting to an encounter that matters. that's enough rolling even without throwing silvery barbs in to the mix. you might find that some players would prefer if the spell just wasn't there. try talking it out in the open.
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it's not 'cheating' or cheap to enable the players to have more fun more often. this is their preferred play style? they're having fun? okay, then send more encounters/monsters/skills/saves their way so they can have more fun. illusions/disguises and poison gas in particular jump out to me. doesn't have to hurt, just trigger a challenge.
... except that you just listed off seven players. yikes. seven players means a lot of spell slots to sap before getting to an encounter that matters. that's enough rolling even without throwing silvery barbs in to the mix. you might find that some players would prefer if the spell just wasn't there. try talking it out in the open.
I tried talking to my players about the topic but they were not interested is completely getting rid of the spell I’ll keep trying to find an agreed upon solution until something works
I think at this point, I have everything I need. Thank you all for the assistance with the matter. I will take into consideration everything and work it out with my players
While there are ways to workaround things like silvery barbs, I'm very much of the opinion that we shouldn't have to put in extra work every session just because Wizards of the Coast put out a broken spell. It's not even balanced within its own publication (just compare the 1st-level Silvery Barbs to the other campus signature spells, all of which are 2nd-level), and it's unbalanced compared to a huge number of other spells.
Although I do try to think of the party composition when designing encounters, I don't like thinking down to the level of specific spells, and I certainly don't want to be thinking "okay, I want this to be a tough fight so my enemy must be able to do X", as that limits my choices and/or creativity, and I don't think it's to anyone's benefit if encounters become too similar. In general I don't want things like all my boss monsters having some form of counter-magic (counterspell, antimagic field etc.), or to get into an arms race with my players (they used silvery barbs on me, so I'll use it on them). It's no fun when you spend the resources to do something and nothing happens. I prefer for players to feel like they need to counter the bosses, not the other way around, especially since they are the ones with far more options at their disposal usually.
The problems as I see it with the spell come down to two main things:
It can be used against saving throws, including those that you yourself have triggered. This enables you or your allies to cast higher level spells like hold monster and if the target succeeds, you can force a re-roll, which is effectively the same as casting the spell a second time for only the price of your reaction and 1st-level spell slot.
It imposes "super-disadvantage" (a full additional re-roll, so it stacks with regular disadvantage). This is already a powerful effect, and not one that you commonly see, and certainly not this easily obtained, and with the way this can stack with regular disadvantage the players can easily engineer saving throws that cannot possibly succeed, meaning they can shut down even high level monsters if they want to.
Since I'm loathe to ban anything outright, my groups' solution in the end was to use an alternative homebrew version of the spell, which you can find published here. Basically we limited it to attacks and checks only (which is still extremely versatile) and made it impose disadvantage only so it can't be stacked with other disadvantage causing effects (but still stacks with effects that apply other penalties). It still grants the bonus advantage to further increase its versatility.
Our groups have been using this version of the spell in a long running Strixhaven campaign since not long after that book came out in 2021, and we're pretty happy with it. It's no longer a no-brainer to take on any character that can get it, but it remains solid value as one of your limited spell choices due to how many potential uses it has (shield is better at stopping attacks, but only works if you are attacked, while even this modified silvery barbs is likely to have multiple opportunities for use during most adventuring days), so while it's nerfed to a degree, that versatility range of uses keeps it appealing, and roughly balanced against other 1st-level spells in our opinion.
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I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
our party consists of a bard/druid, a bard, a cleric, an artificer, a rouge, a paladin, and a wizard. Basically, the part has used silvery barbs every encounter for the last about 7-9 sessions making it so that my monsters don’t get a chance to attack or even take a turn in combat. My codm has been trying to make the encounters more difficult but they always find a way to cheese them. I’ve also been attempting to work with them but was unable to find a work around. I hope me giving a little bit more info helps. If you need to know anything else do not hesitate to ask.
So the size of the party is the primary problem here, one that can't be fixed as easily. they can setup with the other classes and use the bards to force a lot of it through. However, it's not impossible.
enhance the proficiency bonus by 3 or 4 stages as a start, have your maps dealing some occasional random damage (support ballistas/cannons firing in the distance from pirate ships, command in the back releasing more enemies onto the field when he sees troops getting overwhelmed (ticks at a certain hp% value). add legendary resistances, and use them as an additional balance if the above doesn't work. Make it to where players get barbed, knocked prone, disarmed, grappled, etc from the opposition. Make some non-combat exchanges that influence the difficult of battle happen before the battle to give them a chance to want to burn some spells in advance (so they can either silvery barbs ahead of time to make the fight more manageable or go into the fight needing them to survive if they dont).
If the group cares little for you frustrations, then they've lost the plot of DND to be quite honest. I'd personally be looking to wrap the campaign as a smaller scale one if thats how they are about it. Sounds harsh, maybe is harsh, but it's a 2 way street not a 1 way street and it seems from what you've said they dont care.
Have you considered having your 'encounters' play by the same rules as the players? Ie...give your bad guys the same spell capabilities as the players including feats and spell selections?
In my homebrew, I threw in the rule that on a crit, you calculate the damage plus any applicable bonuses (as opposed to just doubling the damage dice) before doubling the damage. However, I made it clear that this counted for the enemies as well.
I don't know what level your characters are, but at your next encounter, try throwing enemies with the fey-touched and silvery barbs right back at them. That should at the very least even the playing field.
I think that should work. Thanks for the idea of throwing what they send at me right back. It should help make the encounters a lot more engaging and longer.
You're very welcome. The challenging thing with most parties, is you always have one or two trying to hack the game to become the unstoppable, unyielding, merciless gods of murder-hobo-ing. I've been DM'ing since the late 80's and there are always challenges to crafting a campaign that is fun for everyone. If the players aren't having fun, they won't want to play. If the DM isn't having fun, they won't want to DM. The hard part is finding a balance between the two.
The other thing I think that gets overlooked a lot is variety in the combat encounters. Gnolls, kobolds, goblins, etc...they can all be challenging in certain ways, but people rarely play them as anything other than what they are on the stat card. Why can't a Gnoll be a sorceror or hexblade or a rouge-assassin? What's to stop a goblin battlemaster fighter from dual-wielding and getting extra attacks? Or action surge? I would say think outside the box when it comes to those things.
One of my old DM's used a group of around 10 kobolds, a horn of fog, and good hit-and-run tactics to nearly TPK a group of 10th levels and that was one of the greatest campaigns we ever had. We got our a$$es kicked, but had a blast overcoming the challenge.
Anyways, just my $0.02.
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I threw about 12 kobolds in one room and 8 in another at a group of 5 level 2 players. they were basic outside of the boss room (2 with slightly upgraded weapons, and 1 with a crown and a few spells on him via the cursed crown). the party didn't have too many additional problems to worry about, and while a few had to limp away after the battle with 20% or less health remaining, it was an early encounter.
They came much closer to losing someone on the second encounter 4 levels later roughly. The party had to deal with kobolds that made a deal (pact) with a devil (literally), received additional equipment, received masters and flying creatures to work in tandem with, and were tasked with being the group that pushed through the front line at any cost and went for anything in the rear of the party. That didn't go nearly as well for the group, the rogue had to convert to someone that took some damage rather than hit and run tactics on the front line. The Devil's own in-house troops had special tricks that occasionally aided in this effort, but otherwise made escaping them on the front line near impossible for the Barbarian and the Paladin. They have since not treated any creature as if they knew it's exact stat block in this campaign.
They probably will encounter some again at or around 11 or 12 (depends on how long they are on their 100% completionist kick tbh), and they'll get some really rude ones in that to be sure. Horn of fog might not be the tool, but thats a good offering as an example of an item you can given an enemy and then give a party after. You could get equally creative with most anything, there are tools to help you attach CR's to them, there are tools to give you a basic creature of CR X and some effects and hp values that would make rough sense, and you then can reskin creatures to have that stat block.
I still maintain i'd punish this group a little bit to push back on the somewhat unenjoyable (in your shoes) tactic of silvery barbs, not TPK but make it less than enjoyable for them to hit.
A couple of limitations you could place on the spell that I haven't noticed (though I skimmed over the last couple of posts):
-To counteract the super-disadvantage factor that it can be, if a creature has advantage, don't factor in the lower of the two dice originally rolled. Some people interpret the spell as using the lowest die rolled of all of them, but doing it this way means it gets the higher of two then the lower of that and the new roll. (Lucky can be balanced the same way with disadvantage, just make the Lucky die its own thing and they have to pick between it and the result of a regular roll.) -Limit the use of the spell to once per trigger, no matter who casts it. So if player A casts Silvery Barbs on an attack and the new roll would still hit, player B can't also use Silvery Barbs on that same attack. -Change the spell to a 2nd-level spell. A higher resource required to use it taxes the party harder.
Additionally, I agree with the above posters. D&D 5e's balance is built around having so many encounters per day. The primary caster/martial imbalance comes from DMs running far fewer encounters and not burning enough resources per day. Not every adventuring day should necessarily tax the players, and not every encounter has to be combat, but if you're not running enough encounters per day, that's going to cause you problems with player resources.
Run more than one encounter per day and have more than just one creature fighting the party at a time. Silvery Barbs is a reaction. They can't cast it "on basically everything" unless there's a limited number of rolls against them.
And remember that enemy NPCs can have Luck Points & Silvery Barbs as well.
Greater Invisibility Monsters. Force more saves on the players. Give monsters wands of magic missiles or the magic missile spell. Have creatures bully spell casters. Lower CR creatures but in bigger numbers to make reaction spells more important. Antimagic frield.
our party consists of a bard/druid, a bard, a cleric, an artificer, a rouge, a paladin, and a wizard. Basically, the part has used silvery barbs every encounter for the last about 7-9 sessions making it so that my monsters don’t get a chance to attack or even take a turn in combat. My codm has been trying to make the encounters more difficult but they always find a way to cheese them. I’ve also been attempting to work with them but was unable to find a work around. I hope me giving a little bit more info helps. If you need to know anything else do not hesitate to ask.
As other posters have pointed out, increasing the number of enemies is a valid option, especially with this party's make up. One thing you need to account for is that with a party of seven (7) that gives the players up to twenty-one (21) opportunities per round to influence the encounter. You are not cheating or doing the players a disservice by adding in more monsters and challenges so that you divide the player characters' focus and action economy. Finding ways to take a player character out of the combat or force them to use action economy is a viable and fair strategy to implement.
Few other thoughts:
1) Legendary Resistance. Even if the main boss' stat sheet doesn't offer it, you can still apply it to the monster. Depending on the player characters' level you can adjust the number of resistances the monster has. For example one or two instances might be more than enough to throw off the use of the spell.
2) Lair Actions: I have heard and read this is a commonly underused element in encounter building; and it is a great option to increase the challenge to the players without directly making the monster stronger. This can be done by making the lair have magical elements or having some symbiotic relationship to the monster; but it can also be simply conditions of nature or influenced by an act. I mentioned previously an example of a cabin on fire; using this example you can make up to 2 liar actions (2 points per rnd) occurring at Initiative Number 12 and 8: a) All players must make a CON Save due to smoke mixing in the air. On a failure the player is poisoned and cannot take a Reaction until the start of their next turn (2 points) b) Roll to select a random player. That player takes 1d4 fire damage (1 point) c) Roll to select a random player. Debris fall from the ceiling and the player must make a DC 12 DEX save or take 1d4 fire damage, and be knocked prone and restrained. On their turn the player can attempt a DC 8 Athletics check (no action required) to free themselves. On a fail they remain prone and restrained; On a success the retrained condition is removed but the character is still prone. (2 point) d) Roll to select a random player. The player must make a DC 12 DEX save or catch on fire. On a failure, the player may opt to use their action to extinguish the flame by succeeding on a DC 8 DEX save. If the player is still on fire at the end of their turn they suffer 1d4 fire damage (1 point). There are other scenarios you can develop and explore. So have fun and be creative.
3) Give the monsters ways to attack by forcing the party to make saving throws. Some creatures have spells, breath weapons, and other effects that achieve this; but for the ones that do not then consider having them develop strategies and prepare the battlefield in anticipation of the party. For example, the bugbear can have barrels that release a greasy liquid that creates difficult terrain and cause characters to fall prone; a bandit captain may hid behind statues and attempt to shove them on top of party members; the dwarven lord may order two of his clan to spill over a vat of molten ore onto his attackers. By taking away attack rolls but still allowing the party to be in danger will now limit their frequency to us the spell.
4) Terrain. The battle map itself can provide the solutions you are looking. Let's say you have narrow areas for the party to maneuver and they are at risk of falling into an area where they can take damage. Now impose a creature or act that can push the players off the safe terrain. If they are pushed, let them use their Reaction to grab hold and prevent falling. No roll require; but they are consider prone and then use half movement to"stand up" and be back on sturdy grounds. Simple, no major penalty or hardships to the player character. But you implemented away to use their Reaction. Terrain can also hinder line of site, limit movement, and isolate characters.
5) Let them use it. Seriously, it is an asset they have and they are allow to use them. But as a DM you can plan for this. One strategy is do not have all the monsters be present and attack at once. Delay their arrivals. Let the players use the spell slots in the first 2-4 rounds but you have rolled initiative for creatures that have not appeared on the battle map yet. Then when the players think they are close to ending the combat, you can add the additional monsters. I am not saying increase the CR; I am saying delay tactics and see if the players burn resources at an expedited rate. They will learn and establishing this precedent will make them think twice about when they should burn the spell or take an unfavorable outcome early in the battle.
Several of the above strategies can be applied to educate players they need to conserve their spell slots and burning them too quickly can put them in more peril.
6) Do not prioritize battles and fights as an encounter. Have the monsters flee, retreat, hide, or just let them all die for a cause. The point is you can have the encounter progress to a point where the objective that must be achieved is no longer about a contest of shorts with other beings. Puzzles, traps, riddles, dooms day devices, escape rooms; these are elements that will for the players to be creative and roll die, potentially incur damage (even die); but you have taken away the ability to use the spell. Enjoy the devastation form a rock slide or slowly snapping ropes of a dangling bridge. Being the DM, you have a near universe of chaos in your control. Learn to enjoy it! Is it fun to have an ogre smash a player character with the club? Absolutely. But cant' it also be fun to design a scenario where the Rouge must navigate through an ancient temple to obtain a golden figurine; or the Paladin must withstand radiant pain to while trying to activate the powers of magical item; or the Bard must decipher a riddle that will provide a melody that when played correctly on an ancient harpsichord will open vault to great treasures (and deadly consequences when played incorrectly); or the Wizard when attempting to read sacred text and accidentally release magical surges that the party must now deal with.
Novels, movies, comic books, and mythology provides more than enough motivation for creating encounters that do not rely on having monsters who make attack rolls, ability checks, and are subject to saving throws. I encourage you to embrace the challenge the players have presented to you and create encounters that will force them to rethink their strategies, maybe even change up their spell selections and feats, and keep them on their toes so they have constantly adjust to what you throw their way. I can say this enough, have fun with this and enjoy.
1) As many suggested (and I would recommend to folks starting a new game :) ), ban the spell and possibly the entire Strixhaven book unless you are playing a game in that specific setting.
2) Other than that, there are several other approaches.
A) - have the opponents use the same spell. This requires that you put casters in the opposing side. However, if the spell is really that good then it isn't just the PCs that would be aware of it. Any NPC that has spells from the same spell lists would also have it. You do not need to stick to the spells listed for NPCs in the monster manual since many of these spells didn't even exist when the monster manual was written AND the monster manual is unlikely to ever include NPCs/monsters with non-core spells that would require access to other source books. So, as DM, you should not feel badly about changing the spell lists of NPCs to suit your campaign. Since Silvery Barbs exists in your game world, NPCs would also have access to it.
B) - create better encounters. You commented that sometimes the creatures in your encounters don't even get a turn or a chance to attack. This likely has more to do with the action economy and facing a party of 7 characters than to the effect of Silvery Barbs. Even without that one spell, a large party will likely wipe out challenging single opponents without legendary or lair actions, or allies to supplement their one turn in the initiative order. There are several techniques you can use.
- have several "bosses". Instead of having one obviously more powerful opponent for the party to focus their attacks on, have four or five equally powerful opponents and a handful of weaker support monsters. This helps balance out the action economy so that the party just can't walk over the more powerful opponents. You can also do this by having one more powerful boss but have them supported by three or so almost as powerful sub-bosses. This way if they decide to focus on the more powerful opponent, the sub-bosses which are almost as powerful have an opportunity.
- use creatures with multiple attacks and use a larger number of creatures. The best use of silvery barbs is to mitigate critical hits. If the party uses the spell on any attack that hits then the character using the spell will have already used their reaction and can't cast it again that turn when a crit does happen. The more die rolls you make, the more likely a crit will be.
- use waves of attackers. Have secondary or tertiary groups of opponents enter the combat on later rounds. If the characters have used all their resources in the first round or two using silvery barbs they may start worrying about spell slots.
- create situations where the party can't long rest at will. A long rest is only allowed once every 24 hours. If the party uses up all their spells on the first encounter in the morning then they can't take a long rest until the end of the day. As a result, further encounters when they are traveling or exploring a dungeon or adventuring will rely on depleted resources. Basically, if you are running 1/day encounters then the party can freely use all their spells to make these encounters very easy. However, if there are plot reasons like time constraints or no good place to rest or wandering creatures that make resting dangerous .. then the party may need to consider managing resources and will save silvery barbs for the situations where is matter.
- NPCs don't typically care about spell slot use since it is a single encounter for them. Having some NPCs from time to time with counterspell and available spell slots can prevent the use of silvery barbs. You don't want to use this all the time but it can be fun from time to time.
- Silvery Barbs only works on creatures that succeed on their attack. This means that when the opponent casts a spell at the party (like fireball), silvery barbs does nothing and can't be used to protect the party. This means that opposing spell casters with fireball and similar can be effective against the party and silvery barbs can't prevent it.
There are lots of different ways to structure encounters to mitigate the effect of silvery barbs if you find it a problem. However, in your case, I suspect the problem is more the action economy with a group of 7 players and not just the silvery barbs spell.
3) Rules
- you can clarify the rules of the spell.
"The triggering creature must reroll the d20and use the lower roll."
What this means in the context of advantage and disadvantage is open for discussion. However, Silvery Barbs can only be used on a success. So an attack must have hit BEFORE the spell is cast. There are different ways you can rule this. Keep in mind that it is the triggering creature that decides what d20 to re-roll if there is a choice.
- the attack has hit or the save succeeded. The creature rerolls the successful die and takes the lower result of that die and the re-roll (any additional dice made as part of the original roll are not relevant because the attack must have already hit for silvery barbs to be cast). e.g. advantage or disadvantage is resolved prior to the application of silvery barbs.
- if someone argues that advantage or disadvantage is applied after silvery barbs is cast then simply point out that the target could choose to re-roll the lower d20 in this case which would result in the spell being unable to mitigate the successful hit of an attack made with advantage.
Silvery barbs requires a "target you can see within 60'" to trigger. Attackers with light crossbows from 70' Spells from that distance or any other attack roll made from a distance also work. In addition, darkness, fog, blindness, hidden attackers (a rogue using the hide action etc) and other effects can easily prevent the trigger being fulfilled.
"You magically distract the triggering creature and turn its momentary uncertainty into encouragement for another creature. The triggering creature must reroll the d20 and use the lower roll.
You can then choose a different creature you can see within range (you can choose yourself). The chosen creature has advantage on the next attack roll, ability check, or saving throw it makes within 1 minute. A creature can be empowered by only one use of this spell at a time.
* - 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"
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TL;DR Design encounters with multiple powerful opponents at least (party_size /2) + 1. Include spell casters. Use waves of attackers. Have multiple encounters in an adventuring day. Include terrain, vision effects. Apply the same rules to NPCs as to PCs - make sure the NPCs are also using Silvery Barbs.
Honestly, a boss adequate for dealing with a party of 7 PCs isn't going to be significantly affected by silvery barbs, because it needs bonuses high enough that it will probably just succeed on the reroll, as it needs a CR of about triple the average party level to even stand a chance. However, the cheap way to deal with silvery barbs is vision blocking effects.
As someone who has played in a large party, I agree with the comments that if your enemies aren't getting a chance to attack, more enemies will substantially help.
A horde of even a relatively low CR enemy can significantly complicate things by creating attacks of opportunity, flanking, breaking concentration, and simply having more turns than the party.
Make it a wave of attacks so they don't know how long those spell slots need to last. Also, a lot of enemies doing relatively low damage per attack should encourage them to consider area of effect spells. You shouldn't waste a spell slot to prevent an attack for 5 damage.
Legendary actions give your big boss extra turns, and anything that can regenerate is very tough to fight, whether it's an enemy that can heal or one that summons another dozen skeletons when the first dozen are dusted.
I just feel like sending hordes of enemies to burn their spell slots is kind of cheating. These are somewhat lower level characters and I don’t want to overwhelm them. Especially considering that most of them are spell-casters.
Not at all cheating. Resource management is part of the game.
It's also a trope of the genre to have lots of encounters before the boss - fight through waves of mooks, deal with obstrucive beuarocrats, wild animals, the boss' dragon, and so on.
1st: Lean into the limitations of Silvery Barbs. Instead of having attack rolls vs your party, use features that require a save. You can not Silvery Barb a failed save.
2nd: the spell rerolls a single d20 and that’s it, no cheesing where you turn advantage into super disadvantage.
3rd: hobgoblins, they have the saving face ability ( at least the player race used to), where you could add a +3 or something to a failed save/attack
4th: battlemaster precision dice, divination wissard portent, soul knife psi dice… there are a handful of subclasses that allow you to modify failed rolls.
it's not 'cheating' or cheap to enable the players to have more fun more often. this is their preferred play style? they're having fun? okay, then send more encounters/monsters/skills/saves their way so they can have more fun. illusions/disguises and poison gas in particular jump out to me. doesn't have to hurt, just trigger a challenge.
... except that you just listed off seven players. yikes. seven players means a lot of spell slots to sap before getting to an encounter that matters. that's enough rolling even without throwing silvery barbs in to the mix. you might find that some players would prefer if the spell just wasn't there. try talking it out in the open.
I tried talking to my players about the topic but they were not interested is completely getting rid of the spell I’ll keep trying to find an agreed upon solution until something works
I don't think you understand the role of a DM. You TELL the players that spell is banned. You have that power. If they don't like your decision, they can choose to quit the game, or not. Those that stay, no problem. Those that leave, also no problem.
OP is not the one who doesn't understand the role of a DM. (First of all, there is no singular role of a DM. It changes to various degrees from table to table.)
The DM is another player in a cooperative game, albeit one with a unique role. Yes, due to their role, they have the ability to make changes to the baseline rules the game is being played under, and ultimately the players' only recourse is to walk.
That does not mean that this behavior is to be encouraged. It is not a sign of a healthy table dynamic.
OP's attempts are a better approach. Unfortunately, the players find the spell to be fun, while it's interfering with OP's fun. This likely can be resolved without a unilateral action -- as I've said previously, I think that Silvery Barbs is only a symptom of the problem, which is that it's legitimately hard to balance encounters, especially for a large group.
(OP: see if you can get your players to agree to play without the spell for a couple of sessions. This will give you a better idea if your encounters are any better balanced without it, and it encourages them to find other reaction spells to use.)
our party consists of a bard/druid, a bard, a cleric, an artificer, a rouge, a paladin, and a wizard.
That means there are three characters who could have the spell (without using a feat like magic initiate).
So, each round of combat the party has a maximum of three uses of the spell, and that's if those characters are not using counterspell, shield, absorb elements, and so on. That's also assuming they are choosing to spend the spell slots.
As a GM, I'd be hitting a party that big (seven is a big group) with at least 10 monsters in every encounter, possibly up to 20, some of which will have multiattack. That's 10 to 20 attack rolls and saving throws to choose the three uses of silvery barbs on. Action economy means that the characters will block a few (which is cool - characters should feel like badasses) but plenty of attacks will get through.
Silvery barbs is a choice with consequences. Does the bard use the spell to block an attack against themself, or save it to block an attack on the rogue, or save it to block a shove attempt on the paladin, or…
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I definitely recommend Helmed Horror even if you have to reskin them (use their stat block but have them appearing differently). They just then are flat out immune to Silvery Barbs.
In addition adjust the CR to a higher level. If the party are walking every encounter it's time to power and level up the enemies they are facing.
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it's not 'cheating' or cheap to enable the players to have more fun more often. this is their preferred play style? they're having fun? okay, then send more encounters/monsters/skills/saves their way so they can have more fun. illusions/disguises and poison gas in particular jump out to me. doesn't have to hurt, just trigger a challenge.
... except that you just listed off seven players. yikes. seven players means a lot of spell slots to sap before getting to an encounter that matters. that's enough rolling even without throwing silvery barbs in to the mix. you might find that some players would prefer if the spell just wasn't there. try talking it out in the open.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
I tried talking to my players about the topic but they were not interested is completely getting rid of the spell I’ll keep trying to find an agreed upon solution until something works
I think at this point, I have everything I need. Thank you all for the assistance with the matter. I will take into consideration everything and work it out with my players
While there are ways to workaround things like silvery barbs, I'm very much of the opinion that we shouldn't have to put in extra work every session just because Wizards of the Coast put out a broken spell. It's not even balanced within its own publication (just compare the 1st-level Silvery Barbs to the other campus signature spells, all of which are 2nd-level), and it's unbalanced compared to a huge number of other spells.
Although I do try to think of the party composition when designing encounters, I don't like thinking down to the level of specific spells, and I certainly don't want to be thinking "okay, I want this to be a tough fight so my enemy must be able to do X", as that limits my choices and/or creativity, and I don't think it's to anyone's benefit if encounters become too similar. In general I don't want things like all my boss monsters having some form of counter-magic (counterspell, antimagic field etc.), or to get into an arms race with my players (they used silvery barbs on me, so I'll use it on them). It's no fun when you spend the resources to do something and nothing happens. I prefer for players to feel like they need to counter the bosses, not the other way around, especially since they are the ones with far more options at their disposal usually.
The problems as I see it with the spell come down to two main things:
Since I'm loathe to ban anything outright, my groups' solution in the end was to use an alternative homebrew version of the spell, which you can find published here. Basically we limited it to attacks and checks only (which is still extremely versatile) and made it impose disadvantage only so it can't be stacked with other disadvantage causing effects (but still stacks with effects that apply other penalties). It still grants the bonus advantage to further increase its versatility.
Our groups have been using this version of the spell in a long running Strixhaven campaign since not long after that book came out in 2021, and we're pretty happy with it. It's no longer a no-brainer to take on any character that can get it, but it remains solid value as one of your limited spell choices due to how many potential uses it has (shield is better at stopping attacks, but only works if you are attacked, while even this modified silvery barbs is likely to have multiple opportunities for use during most adventuring days), so while it's nerfed to a degree, that versatility range of uses keeps it appealing, and roughly balanced against other 1st-level spells in our opinion.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
So the size of the party is the primary problem here, one that can't be fixed as easily. they can setup with the other classes and use the bards to force a lot of it through. However, it's not impossible.
enhance the proficiency bonus by 3 or 4 stages as a start, have your maps dealing some occasional random damage (support ballistas/cannons firing in the distance from pirate ships, command in the back releasing more enemies onto the field when he sees troops getting overwhelmed (ticks at a certain hp% value). add legendary resistances, and use them as an additional balance if the above doesn't work. Make it to where players get barbed, knocked prone, disarmed, grappled, etc from the opposition. Make some non-combat exchanges that influence the difficult of battle happen before the battle to give them a chance to want to burn some spells in advance (so they can either silvery barbs ahead of time to make the fight more manageable or go into the fight needing them to survive if they dont).
If the group cares little for you frustrations, then they've lost the plot of DND to be quite honest. I'd personally be looking to wrap the campaign as a smaller scale one if thats how they are about it. Sounds harsh, maybe is harsh, but it's a 2 way street not a 1 way street and it seems from what you've said they dont care.
You're very welcome. The challenging thing with most parties, is you always have one or two trying to hack the game to become the unstoppable, unyielding, merciless gods of murder-hobo-ing. I've been DM'ing since the late 80's and there are always challenges to crafting a campaign that is fun for everyone. If the players aren't having fun, they won't want to play. If the DM isn't having fun, they won't want to DM. The hard part is finding a balance between the two.
The other thing I think that gets overlooked a lot is variety in the combat encounters. Gnolls, kobolds, goblins, etc...they can all be challenging in certain ways, but people rarely play them as anything other than what they are on the stat card. Why can't a Gnoll be a sorceror or hexblade or a rouge-assassin? What's to stop a goblin battlemaster fighter from dual-wielding and getting extra attacks? Or action surge? I would say think outside the box when it comes to those things.
One of my old DM's used a group of around 10 kobolds, a horn of fog, and good hit-and-run tactics to nearly TPK a group of 10th levels and that was one of the greatest campaigns we ever had. We got our a$$es kicked, but had a blast overcoming the challenge.
Anyways, just my $0.02.
Aut Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam (Find a way or make one) - Hannibal Allegedly
Lessons learned in blood are not soon forgotten. - Clyde Shelton
The truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is and you must bow to it's power or live a lie. -Miyamoto Musashi
to show the above example:
I threw about 12 kobolds in one room and 8 in another at a group of 5 level 2 players. they were basic outside of the boss room (2 with slightly upgraded weapons, and 1 with a crown and a few spells on him via the cursed crown). the party didn't have too many additional problems to worry about, and while a few had to limp away after the battle with 20% or less health remaining, it was an early encounter.
They came much closer to losing someone on the second encounter 4 levels later roughly. The party had to deal with kobolds that made a deal (pact) with a devil (literally), received additional equipment, received masters and flying creatures to work in tandem with, and were tasked with being the group that pushed through the front line at any cost and went for anything in the rear of the party. That didn't go nearly as well for the group, the rogue had to convert to someone that took some damage rather than hit and run tactics on the front line. The Devil's own in-house troops had special tricks that occasionally aided in this effort, but otherwise made escaping them on the front line near impossible for the Barbarian and the Paladin. They have since not treated any creature as if they knew it's exact stat block in this campaign.
They probably will encounter some again at or around 11 or 12 (depends on how long they are on their 100% completionist kick tbh), and they'll get some really rude ones in that to be sure. Horn of fog might not be the tool, but thats a good offering as an example of an item you can given an enemy and then give a party after. You could get equally creative with most anything, there are tools to help you attach CR's to them, there are tools to give you a basic creature of CR X and some effects and hp values that would make rough sense, and you then can reskin creatures to have that stat block.
I still maintain i'd punish this group a little bit to push back on the somewhat unenjoyable (in your shoes) tactic of silvery barbs, not TPK but make it less than enjoyable for them to hit.
A couple of limitations you could place on the spell that I haven't noticed (though I skimmed over the last couple of posts):
-To counteract the super-disadvantage factor that it can be, if a creature has advantage, don't factor in the lower of the two dice originally rolled. Some people interpret the spell as using the lowest die rolled of all of them, but doing it this way means it gets the higher of two then the lower of that and the new roll. (Lucky can be balanced the same way with disadvantage, just make the Lucky die its own thing and they have to pick between it and the result of a regular roll.)
-Limit the use of the spell to once per trigger, no matter who casts it. So if player A casts Silvery Barbs on an attack and the new roll would still hit, player B can't also use Silvery Barbs on that same attack.
-Change the spell to a 2nd-level spell. A higher resource required to use it taxes the party harder.
Additionally, I agree with the above posters. D&D 5e's balance is built around having so many encounters per day. The primary caster/martial imbalance comes from DMs running far fewer encounters and not burning enough resources per day. Not every adventuring day should necessarily tax the players, and not every encounter has to be combat, but if you're not running enough encounters per day, that's going to cause you problems with player resources.
Run more than one encounter per day and have more than just one creature fighting the party at a time. Silvery Barbs is a reaction. They can't cast it "on basically everything" unless there's a limited number of rolls against them.
And remember that enemy NPCs can have Luck Points & Silvery Barbs as well.
Greater Invisibility Monsters.
Force more saves on the players.
Give monsters wands of magic missiles or the magic missile spell.
Have creatures bully spell casters.
Lower CR creatures but in bigger numbers to make reaction spells more important.
Antimagic frield.
As other posters have pointed out, increasing the number of enemies is a valid option, especially with this party's make up. One thing you need to account for is that with a party of seven (7) that gives the players up to twenty-one (21) opportunities per round to influence the encounter. You are not cheating or doing the players a disservice by adding in more monsters and challenges so that you divide the player characters' focus and action economy. Finding ways to take a player character out of the combat or force them to use action economy is a viable and fair strategy to implement.
Few other thoughts:
1) Legendary Resistance. Even if the main boss' stat sheet doesn't offer it, you can still apply it to the monster. Depending on the player characters' level you can adjust the number of resistances the monster has. For example one or two instances might be more than enough to throw off the use of the spell.
2) Lair Actions: I have heard and read this is a commonly underused element in encounter building; and it is a great option to increase the challenge to the players without directly making the monster stronger. This can be done by making the lair have magical elements or having some symbiotic relationship to the monster; but it can also be simply conditions of nature or influenced by an act. I mentioned previously an example of a cabin on fire; using this example you can make up to 2 liar actions (2 points per rnd) occurring at Initiative Number 12 and 8:
a) All players must make a CON Save due to smoke mixing in the air. On a failure the player is poisoned and cannot take a Reaction until the start of their next turn (2 points)
b) Roll to select a random player. That player takes 1d4 fire damage (1 point)
c) Roll to select a random player. Debris fall from the ceiling and the player must make a DC 12 DEX save or take 1d4 fire damage, and be knocked prone and restrained. On
their turn the player can attempt a DC 8 Athletics check (no action required) to free themselves. On a fail they remain prone and restrained; On a success the retrained
condition is removed but the character is still prone. (2 point)
d) Roll to select a random player. The player must make a DC 12 DEX save or catch on fire. On a failure, the player may opt to use their action to extinguish the flame by
succeeding on a DC 8 DEX save. If the player is still on fire at the end of their turn they suffer 1d4 fire damage (1 point).
There are other scenarios you can develop and explore. So have fun and be creative.
3) Give the monsters ways to attack by forcing the party to make saving throws. Some creatures have spells, breath weapons, and other effects that achieve this; but for the ones that do not then consider having them develop strategies and prepare the battlefield in anticipation of the party. For example, the bugbear can have barrels that release a greasy liquid that creates difficult terrain and cause characters to fall prone; a bandit captain may hid behind statues and attempt to shove them on top of party members; the dwarven lord may order two of his clan to spill over a vat of molten ore onto his attackers. By taking away attack rolls but still allowing the party to be in danger will now limit their frequency to us the spell.
4) Terrain. The battle map itself can provide the solutions you are looking. Let's say you have narrow areas for the party to maneuver and they are at risk of falling into an area where they can take damage. Now impose a creature or act that can push the players off the safe terrain. If they are pushed, let them use their Reaction to grab hold and prevent falling. No roll require; but they are consider prone and then use half movement to"stand up" and be back on sturdy grounds. Simple, no major penalty or hardships to the player character. But you implemented away to use their Reaction. Terrain can also hinder line of site, limit movement, and isolate characters.
5) Let them use it. Seriously, it is an asset they have and they are allow to use them. But as a DM you can plan for this. One strategy is do not have all the monsters be present and attack at once. Delay their arrivals. Let the players use the spell slots in the first 2-4 rounds but you have rolled initiative for creatures that have not appeared on the battle map yet. Then when the players think they are close to ending the combat, you can add the additional monsters. I am not saying increase the CR; I am saying delay tactics and see if the players burn resources at an expedited rate. They will learn and establishing this precedent will make them think twice about when they should burn the spell or take an unfavorable outcome early in the battle.
Several of the above strategies can be applied to educate players they need to conserve their spell slots and burning them too quickly can put them in more peril.
6) Do not prioritize battles and fights as an encounter. Have the monsters flee, retreat, hide, or just let them all die for a cause. The point is you can have the encounter progress to a point where the objective that must be achieved is no longer about a contest of shorts with other beings. Puzzles, traps, riddles, dooms day devices, escape rooms; these are elements that will for the players to be creative and roll die, potentially incur damage (even die); but you have taken away the ability to use the spell. Enjoy the devastation form a rock slide or slowly snapping ropes of a dangling bridge. Being the DM, you have a near universe of chaos in your control. Learn to enjoy it! Is it fun to have an ogre smash a player character with the club? Absolutely. But cant' it also be fun to design a scenario where the Rouge must navigate through an ancient temple to obtain a golden figurine; or the Paladin must withstand radiant pain to while trying to activate the powers of magical item; or the Bard must decipher a riddle that will provide a melody that when played correctly on an ancient harpsichord will open vault to great treasures (and deadly consequences when played incorrectly); or the Wizard when attempting to read sacred text and accidentally release magical surges that the party must now deal with.
Novels, movies, comic books, and mythology provides more than enough motivation for creating encounters that do not rely on having monsters who make attack rolls, ability checks, and are subject to saving throws. I encourage you to embrace the challenge the players have presented to you and create encounters that will force them to rethink their strategies, maybe even change up their spell selections and feats, and keep them on their toes so they have constantly adjust to what you throw their way. I can say this enough, have fun with this and enjoy.
There are several ways to deal with the spell.
1) As many suggested (and I would recommend to folks starting a new game :) ), ban the spell and possibly the entire Strixhaven book unless you are playing a game in that specific setting.
2) Other than that, there are several other approaches.
A) - have the opponents use the same spell. This requires that you put casters in the opposing side. However, if the spell is really that good then it isn't just the PCs that would be aware of it. Any NPC that has spells from the same spell lists would also have it. You do not need to stick to the spells listed for NPCs in the monster manual since many of these spells didn't even exist when the monster manual was written AND the monster manual is unlikely to ever include NPCs/monsters with non-core spells that would require access to other source books. So, as DM, you should not feel badly about changing the spell lists of NPCs to suit your campaign. Since Silvery Barbs exists in your game world, NPCs would also have access to it.
B) - create better encounters. You commented that sometimes the creatures in your encounters don't even get a turn or a chance to attack. This likely has more to do with the action economy and facing a party of 7 characters than to the effect of Silvery Barbs. Even without that one spell, a large party will likely wipe out challenging single opponents without legendary or lair actions, or allies to supplement their one turn in the initiative order. There are several techniques you can use.
- have several "bosses". Instead of having one obviously more powerful opponent for the party to focus their attacks on, have four or five equally powerful opponents and a handful of weaker support monsters. This helps balance out the action economy so that the party just can't walk over the more powerful opponents. You can also do this by having one more powerful boss but have them supported by three or so almost as powerful sub-bosses. This way if they decide to focus on the more powerful opponent, the sub-bosses which are almost as powerful have an opportunity.
- use creatures with multiple attacks and use a larger number of creatures. The best use of silvery barbs is to mitigate critical hits. If the party uses the spell on any attack that hits then the character using the spell will have already used their reaction and can't cast it again that turn when a crit does happen. The more die rolls you make, the more likely a crit will be.
- use waves of attackers. Have secondary or tertiary groups of opponents enter the combat on later rounds. If the characters have used all their resources in the first round or two using silvery barbs they may start worrying about spell slots.
- create situations where the party can't long rest at will. A long rest is only allowed once every 24 hours. If the party uses up all their spells on the first encounter in the morning then they can't take a long rest until the end of the day. As a result, further encounters when they are traveling or exploring a dungeon or adventuring will rely on depleted resources. Basically, if you are running 1/day encounters then the party can freely use all their spells to make these encounters very easy. However, if there are plot reasons like time constraints or no good place to rest or wandering creatures that make resting dangerous .. then the party may need to consider managing resources and will save silvery barbs for the situations where is matter.
- NPCs don't typically care about spell slot use since it is a single encounter for them. Having some NPCs from time to time with counterspell and available spell slots can prevent the use of silvery barbs. You don't want to use this all the time but it can be fun from time to time.
- Silvery Barbs only works on creatures that succeed on their attack. This means that when the opponent casts a spell at the party (like fireball), silvery barbs does nothing and can't be used to protect the party. This means that opposing spell casters with fireball and similar can be effective against the party and silvery barbs can't prevent it.
There are lots of different ways to structure encounters to mitigate the effect of silvery barbs if you find it a problem. However, in your case, I suspect the problem is more the action economy with a group of 7 players and not just the silvery barbs spell.
3) Rules
- you can clarify the rules of the spell.
"The triggering creature must reroll the d20 and use the lower roll."
What this means in the context of advantage and disadvantage is open for discussion. However, Silvery Barbs can only be used on a success. So an attack must have hit BEFORE the spell is cast. There are different ways you can rule this. Keep in mind that it is the triggering creature that decides what d20 to re-roll if there is a choice.
- the attack has hit or the save succeeded. The creature rerolls the successful die and takes the lower result of that die and the re-roll (any additional dice made as part of the original roll are not relevant because the attack must have already hit for silvery barbs to be cast). e.g. advantage or disadvantage is resolved prior to the application of silvery barbs.
- if someone argues that advantage or disadvantage is applied after silvery barbs is cast then simply point out that the target could choose to re-roll the lower d20 in this case which would result in the spell being unable to mitigate the successful hit of an attack made with advantage.
Silvery barbs requires a "target you can see within 60'" to trigger. Attackers with light crossbows from 70' Spells from that distance or any other attack roll made from a distance also work. In addition, darkness, fog, blindness, hidden attackers (a rogue using the hide action etc) and other effects can easily prevent the trigger being fulfilled.
"You magically distract the triggering creature and turn its momentary uncertainty into encouragement for another creature. The triggering creature must reroll the d20 and use the lower roll.
You can then choose a different creature you can see within range (you can choose yourself). The chosen creature has advantage on the next attack roll, ability check, or saving throw it makes within 1 minute. A creature can be empowered by only one use of this spell at a time.
* - 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"Honestly, a boss adequate for dealing with a party of 7 PCs isn't going to be significantly affected by silvery barbs, because it needs bonuses high enough that it will probably just succeed on the reroll, as it needs a CR of about triple the average party level to even stand a chance. However, the cheap way to deal with silvery barbs is vision blocking effects.
As someone who has played in a large party, I agree with the comments that if your enemies aren't getting a chance to attack, more enemies will substantially help.
A horde of even a relatively low CR enemy can significantly complicate things by creating attacks of opportunity, flanking, breaking concentration, and simply having more turns than the party.
Make it a wave of attacks so they don't know how long those spell slots need to last. Also, a lot of enemies doing relatively low damage per attack should encourage them to consider area of effect spells. You shouldn't waste a spell slot to prevent an attack for 5 damage.
Legendary actions give your big boss extra turns, and anything that can regenerate is very tough to fight, whether it's an enemy that can heal or one that summons another dozen skeletons when the first dozen are dusted.
Try to force a party split in certain situations to keep them at a disadvantage, perhaps with traps or a kidnapping / rescue mission? Antimagic field?
Not at all cheating. Resource management is part of the game.
It's also a trope of the genre to have lots of encounters before the boss - fight through waves of mooks, deal with obstrucive beuarocrats, wild animals, the boss' dragon, and so on.
1st: Lean into the limitations of Silvery Barbs. Instead of having attack rolls vs your party, use features that require a save. You can not Silvery Barb a failed save.
2nd: the spell rerolls a single d20 and that’s it, no cheesing where you turn advantage into super disadvantage.
3rd: hobgoblins, they have the saving face ability ( at least the player race used to), where you could add a +3 or something to a failed save/attack
4th: battlemaster precision dice, divination wissard portent, soul knife psi dice… there are a handful of subclasses that allow you to modify failed rolls.
Attack: [roll]3d20dl2+6[/roll] Damage: [roll](if([roll:-1:critical], =0, 1d8, 2{1d8}.expand()))+4[/roll] Sneakattack: [roll](if([roll:-2:critical], =0, 2d6, 2{2d6}.expand()))[/roll]OP is not the one who doesn't understand the role of a DM. (First of all, there is no singular role of a DM. It changes to various degrees from table to table.)
The DM is another player in a cooperative game, albeit one with a unique role. Yes, due to their role, they have the ability to make changes to the baseline rules the game is being played under, and ultimately the players' only recourse is to walk.
That does not mean that this behavior is to be encouraged. It is not a sign of a healthy table dynamic.
OP's attempts are a better approach. Unfortunately, the players find the spell to be fun, while it's interfering with OP's fun. This likely can be resolved without a unilateral action -- as I've said previously, I think that Silvery Barbs is only a symptom of the problem, which is that it's legitimately hard to balance encounters, especially for a large group.
(OP: see if you can get your players to agree to play without the spell for a couple of sessions. This will give you a better idea if your encounters are any better balanced without it, and it encourages them to find other reaction spells to use.)
That means there are three characters who could have the spell (without using a feat like magic initiate).
So, each round of combat the party has a maximum of three uses of the spell, and that's if those characters are not using counterspell, shield, absorb elements, and so on. That's also assuming they are choosing to spend the spell slots.
As a GM, I'd be hitting a party that big (seven is a big group) with at least 10 monsters in every encounter, possibly up to 20, some of which will have multiattack. That's 10 to 20 attack rolls and saving throws to choose the three uses of silvery barbs on. Action economy means that the characters will block a few (which is cool - characters should feel like badasses) but plenty of attacks will get through.
Silvery barbs is a choice with consequences. Does the bard use the spell to block an attack against themself, or save it to block an attack on the rogue, or save it to block a shove attempt on the paladin, or…