Hi y'all! So, the player for my party's warlock takes immense joy in finding every spell loophole possible (which I'm gathering seems to be a common problem with warlocks) and thanks to the Obojima and Ebon Tides potions (which I don't want to exclude my characters from using altogether, some of them will be either really thematically appropriate or really funny for our campaign), the potential for his chaos has just increased immensely thanks to the fact that next level, he's going to get access to Tasha's Bubbling Cauldron.
His character is a Genie Patron warlock, and he has the Magical Cunning pact magic (gets a spell slot back with a minute of rest) and the 10th level "rest in your genie vessel for 10 minutes to get a short rest" thing going, which... he already has enough chaos potential with just that. The problem is, he has the Dream spell. And while having him be theoretically able to cast Dream on a creature approximately 25 times during their long rest is bad enough, he has spent way too long looking through the potions list and has come up with a combo that allows him to take a long rest in twelve seconds. Which... makes things so much worse.
(First, drink the Meditative Trance potion, which gives you the effects of a long rest whenever you take your next short rest, even if you've had a long rest in the last 24 hours — then drink the Philter of Boundless Joy, which causes you to immediately gain the effects of a short rest. These are both uncommon potions, so the spell can summon both potions.)
The main limitation here is that Tasha's Bubbling Cauldron takes 10 minutes to complete. But now he can cast Dream hundreds of times per long rest on an enemy. And with the thing about Dream stopping the effects of a long rest when it successfully lands as a nightmare, his plan is to either kill enemies from afar with mass psychic damage or by keeping them from sleeping 6 days in a row. And the problem is, he intends to do this to a black-dragon wizard who was supposed to... y'know, be at least somewhat important? And he can just do this to anyone he doesn't like or doesn't want to fight face-to-face? It's irritating enough dealing with him doing this to people 25 times per night, but I refuse to roll like 200+ wisdom saving throws every time an enemy boss goes to sleep.
We have a house rule that if you try to cast Dream on a spellcaster who has the Dream spell prepared, they can contest your Dream spell by casting Dream back at you, and if you fail your saving throw, they seize control of the spell from you and now they're the one casting Dream on you. This has at least made the Dream spell a lot more interesting and offers a bit of an advantage, but once we reach level 11, which the party is due to do soon, there's no way this house rule can do anything to stop him.
Does anyone have any ideas for a way to combat this that *isn't* just me invoking DM veto powers? I would prefer to find a loophole I can use to catch him on this or an in-game way to block him from casting hundreds of dreams spells. I'll use DM veto powers if I have to, since I need to make sure the rest of my party can still enjoy the game too, but... yeah. Any ideas?
TL;DR; my party's warlock is a menace and I need to stop him from breaking the plotline by casting Dream on people literally hundreds of times per day
It seems obvious to me that you would want to rule the "special" duration of dream includes the 8 hours' duration of a long rest non-optionally. Since the emphasis is on finding some other way... Dreams don't need to be a safe space--even for those who have the benefit of 5th level slots...
Unfortunately, the spell specifies that the messenger can choose to wake up at any time — and so the loophole here is that you cast the nightmare, wake up again, cast the nightmare, wake up again, cast the nightmare... and so on.
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Hi y'all! So, the player for my party's warlock takes immense joy in finding every spell loophole possible (which I'm gathering seems to be a common problem with warlocks) and thanks to the Obojima and Ebon Tides potions (which I don't want to exclude my characters from using altogether, some of them will be either really thematically appropriate or really funny for our campaign), the potential for his chaos has just increased immensely thanks to the fact that next level, he's going to get access to Tasha's Bubbling Cauldron.
His character is a Genie Patron warlock, and he has the Magical Cunning pact magic (gets a spell slot back with a minute of rest) and the 10th level "rest in your genie vessel for 10 minutes to get a short rest" thing going, which... he already has enough chaos potential with just that. The problem is, he has the Dream spell. And while having him be theoretically able to cast Dream on a creature approximately 25 times during their long rest is bad enough, he has spent way too long looking through the potions list and has come up with a combo that allows him to take a long rest in twelve seconds. Which... makes things so much worse.
(First, drink the Meditative Trance potion, which gives you the effects of a long rest whenever you take your next short rest, even if you've had a long rest in the last 24 hours — then drink the Philter of Boundless Joy, which causes you to immediately gain the effects of a short rest. These are both uncommon potions, so the spell can summon both potions.)
The main limitation here is that Tasha's Bubbling Cauldron takes 10 minutes to complete. But now he can cast Dream hundreds of times per long rest on an enemy. And with the thing about Dream stopping the effects of a long rest when it successfully lands as a nightmare, his plan is to either kill enemies from afar with mass psychic damage or by keeping them from sleeping 6 days in a row. And the problem is, he intends to do this to a black-dragon wizard who was supposed to... y'know, be at least somewhat important? And he can just do this to anyone he doesn't like or doesn't want to fight face-to-face? It's irritating enough dealing with him doing this to people 25 times per night, but I refuse to roll like 200+ wisdom saving throws every time an enemy boss goes to sleep.
We have a house rule that if you try to cast Dream on a spellcaster who has the Dream spell prepared, they can contest your Dream spell by casting Dream back at you, and if you fail your saving throw, they seize control of the spell from you and now they're the one casting Dream on you. This has at least made the Dream spell a lot more interesting and offers a bit of an advantage, but once we reach level 11, which the party is due to do soon, there's no way this house rule can do anything to stop him.
Does anyone have any ideas for a way to combat this that *isn't* just me invoking DM veto powers? I would prefer to find a loophole I can use to catch him on this or an in-game way to block him from casting hundreds of dreams spells. I'll use DM veto powers if I have to, since I need to make sure the rest of my party can still enjoy the game too, but... yeah. Any ideas?
TL;DR; my party's warlock is a menace and I need to stop him from breaking the plotline by casting Dream on people literally hundreds of times per day
It seems obvious to me that you would want to rule the "special" duration of dream includes the 8 hours' duration of a long rest non-optionally. Since the emphasis is on finding some other way... Dreams don't need to be a safe space--even for those who have the benefit of 5th level slots...
Unfortunately, the spell specifies that the messenger can choose to wake up at any time — and so the loophole here is that you cast the nightmare, wake up again, cast the nightmare, wake up again, cast the nightmare... and so on.