Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Ok So one of my players has asked a question of me and I know my opinion but what would all the other DM's out there think.
A Cleric can use war God's Blessing to cast Shield of faith with out using concentration to add +2 AC
Then he would like to upcast Song of the Shield wall to add another +4 to AC
Should these be able to stack this way? Mainly I am looking for opinions and explanations to why or why not this should or shouldn't be allowed.
Thank you for your comments my friends
Well, I don't know song of the shield wall, but 5e RAW has no rules preventing stacking unless it's the same effect. There's a decent argument that 5e should have more general anti-stacking rules, since unlimited stacking completely breaks bounded accuracy, but the bonus type stacking rules in prior editions were obnoxious to work with.
So If you were the DM, Would you allow this stacking or would you say that one Barrier would cancel out the other?
RAW no, they don’t cancel out, there’s nothing that mechanically has them be physical barriers in any way.
I would not have a special rule to cover this case, though I can imagine deciding to have general restrictions on stacking.
Song of the Shield Wall does not seem to be a real D&D ability / spell. But rather an actual musical song.
IMO the problem here is not with stacking, it is with whatever this Song of the Shield Wall thing is.
There is no rule that would prevent them stacking and this particular player will likely feel you are being unfair if you specifically ban this particular combo. Note, there is also nothing preventing Song of the Shield Wall (or Shield of Faith) from stacking with the Shield spell or the Defensive Duelist ability (both of which can give more than +4 bonus to AC).
It's a 3rd party spell (kobold press, northlands) and getting +4 AC out of it requires an 8th level spell slot and concentration, so I'm by no means convinced it's overpowered.
Song of the Shield Wall is a 3rd party spell. Which I own and give my players access to, So I can not blame them for using the full extent of the content provided. With no RAW preventing this level of stacking It looks like I am going to have a bit of fun. I do appreciate all the input everyone has contributed
I guess I should have also included some context to the game that we are playing. So currently my players are at level 6 but an upcoming session is on one of the players Birthdays . He has requested a one shot using their current characters at level 20 coming from the future to stop an event in the past from screwing up their campaign. (Terminator style was his words) So I am putting it together for him. I guess on his Birthday I will not prevent the stacking of the barrier shields and hope that I do not over power the enemies so that it does not influence the ongoing campaign.
Thank you again and look forward to the continued input from this community
At level 20, adding 6 to his ac probably won’t matter too much. Monsters at that point have to hits in the neighborhood of +17-20. Even if the cleric ends up with an ac of 30, they’re still getting whacked. And, it’s a cleric, have it make a dex save where it will still be at a +1 or something.
Ah I stand corrected. If it is a level 20 one-shot for a birthday, don't worry about it. Treat it as an experiment that could always end up as a bad dream by one or more of the PCs if things don't go as you planned.
I may make it have an impact on the rest of the campaign so that they feel the effects of the one shot through our the campaign. So Sort of a one shot lol