I want to like Psychic Scream, I really do. But in evaluating 9th-level sorcerer spell options, I am having a hard time justifying it against Meteor Swarm.
I have an aberrant mind sorcerer that specializes on mind manipulation and psychic damage. Psychic Scream would be a very thematic pick for a 9th-level spell. However, I am failing to see a compelling argument for it mechanically vs. Meteor Swarm. Psychic Scream's benefits include Int save, psychic damage, and the ability to select targets within range (to a maximum of 10). However, the damage is less than half of that of Meteor Swarm, and the value of the stun condition is unclear to me. Int saves are the least common, but how reliable the stun would be at character level 17+ is unclear. Moreover, both Psychic Scream and Meteor Swarm serve as minion killers. Under what circumstances would one want the no-concentration multi-target stun instead of the extra damage from Meteor Swarm? It seems to me that the best CC is death, and on a sorcerer Meteor Swarm can do this better than Psychic Scream. The scenario of having 10 high-level minions with middling Intelligence and more HP than can be addressed via Meteor Swarm seems niche to me.
Additionally, as a sorcerer, I can take transmuted spell metamagic. With this, Meteor Swarm's liability against fire resistance and immunity can be wholly mitigated. Thus, the spell's only downside becomes its Dex save (and arguably the difficulty had in avoiding friendly fire). While not great, Dex is also not the worst save, and even if a target makes its save, Meteor Swarm will do more damage than Psychic Scream when the save is failed.
Am I missing something? I know that Treantmonk thinks highly of Psychic Scream, and I agree with his thoughts on most things. Please help me like Psychic Scream...
Stunned is a very strong condition that can help other party members tremendously.
Furthermore, psychic scream is selective and rather subtile (only S component). Especially, if you fight in populated areas, or regions you need to preserve, meteor swarm does a lot of collateral damage.
Meteor swarm is a rare spell that specifically calls out that it damages objects, which makes it difficult to use in many places — unless you’re ok with turning the town to rubble. Meteor swarm also damages anyone in the area: allies, civilians, horses. Psychic scream is much more surgical.
I found a 2019 video from Treantmonk where he rated Psychic Scream as orange and not worth taking (for a wizard). His beefs were mainly intelligence restrictions (>2 but low enough to fail save repeatedly), no condition effect on monsters with legendary resistance (an issue I'd not thought of previously), and "low damage for a 9th level spell" (in spite of the fact that I believe DMG cites 14d6 as the benchmark for 9th level multi-target spell damage). Interestingly, it appears he changed his tune from the 2018 GitP form post that I cite above (in which he wrote: "Mass Stun - no concentration - Int save. This was my final cut from my best 9th level spells list. Very good spell.").
Psychic scream is definietely not worth it for a 9th level spell against a solo legendary opponent. Not even, trying to strip a legendary resistance off of it.
Yeah, I agree though I don't think that is what TM was thinking. I believe he was simply noting the degree to which legendary resistances become more commonplace at high level. Nevertheless, the role of Psychic Scream (and Meteor Swarm) is to eviscerate a group of mooks, not the BBEG.
This spell is good for a fight against a group of pretty strong enemies, such as the group of fire giants I fought recently (At level 13, but nine or ten of them it could challenge 18th level characters). For anyone who has every played with a monk in the party, you know how powerful stunlocking an enemy is. This spell basically goes "roll your commonly low stat or take rarely resisted damage and be stuck not taking turns until you succeed on a save." Plus, it fits you character better and lets you make enemies heads explode. I say choose psychic scream.
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Int save is weakest save. Psychic Scream is non-concentration so you can use spells like Mind Sliver and Bane (easily obtainable through multiple methods). That's lowest save type plus -2d4 penalty to saves. So you can get a good few turns of stun lock and do decent damage.
And stun means advantage for everyone, instant fail dex saves and the target can't do anything.
Yeah, Psychic Scream can be quite spiffy, used right.
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Psychic Scream is amazing for battlefield control. Last night I cast it in a battle against 4 swarms of warforged, 3 dragons, a mage and the Lord of Blades, doing a collective 341 psychic damage, stunned 2 of the dragons causing them to plummet (extra falling damage), popped warforged heads and stunned the mage. The mage and dragons were out of the fight for multiple rounds as they kept failing their saves (I could use Bend Luck to help keep them stun-locked).
Meteor Swarm is just indiscriminate damage. Psychic Scream is damage, stun condition on multiple enemies, and only requires a somatic casting component, so is completely silent. Sure, not great against a single enemy but amazing in a huge epic battle.
I would say Psychic Scream is the winner, there are enough reasons in the previous comments (they convinced me ;) ), but to me is something you pick to let your party clean the field easily without hitting them which is a big disadvantage of meteor swarm: need a big group of enemies in a non populated area above ground that are far from you (i can only think is usefull to kill an army or destroy a city or frotress and all the loot with it). If you want high damage spell pick Blade Of Disaster (but is not AOE).
It depends a lot on the circumstances, usually you try to cast meteor swarm before the opposing sides have engaged so unless the bad guys have innocents as hostage or you do not want to damage the objects in the area the collateral damage issue ceases to be a problem. Evocation wizards and sorcerers with subtle spell spell can mitigate those risks as well.
If the enemy makes the save unless there are resistances / immunities meteor swarm does nearly 3 times the damage of psychic scream and against creatures with legendary resistances they will make ther save.
A lot has been made of the more subtle nature of psychic scream but the range of meteor swarm is 1 mile casting it from that far away noone will know who did it.
So if you are fighting a group a 10 or less enemies that are engaged with you and all within 90 ft of you and dont have legendary resistances psychic scream may be the better option especialy if they are low intelligence and therefore likely to stay stunned for a number of rounds.
Psychic scream isn't useless but I would expect 8 times out of 10 it is better to use your 9th level slot on meteor swarm rather than psychic scream.
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I want to like Psychic Scream, I really do. But in evaluating 9th-level sorcerer spell options, I am having a hard time justifying it against Meteor Swarm.
I have an aberrant mind sorcerer that specializes on mind manipulation and psychic damage. Psychic Scream would be a very thematic pick for a 9th-level spell. However, I am failing to see a compelling argument for it mechanically vs. Meteor Swarm. Psychic Scream's benefits include Int save, psychic damage, and the ability to select targets within range (to a maximum of 10). However, the damage is less than half of that of Meteor Swarm, and the value of the stun condition is unclear to me. Int saves are the least common, but how reliable the stun would be at character level 17+ is unclear. Moreover, both Psychic Scream and Meteor Swarm serve as minion killers. Under what circumstances would one want the no-concentration multi-target stun instead of the extra damage from Meteor Swarm? It seems to me that the best CC is death, and on a sorcerer Meteor Swarm can do this better than Psychic Scream. The scenario of having 10 high-level minions with middling Intelligence and more HP than can be addressed via Meteor Swarm seems niche to me.
Additionally, as a sorcerer, I can take transmuted spell metamagic. With this, Meteor Swarm's liability against fire resistance and immunity can be wholly mitigated. Thus, the spell's only downside becomes its Dex save (and arguably the difficulty had in avoiding friendly fire). While not great, Dex is also not the worst save, and even if a target makes its save, Meteor Swarm will do more damage than Psychic Scream when the save is failed.
Am I missing something? I know that Treantmonk thinks highly of Psychic Scream, and I agree with his thoughts on most things. Please help me like Psychic Scream...
Stunned is a very strong condition that can help other party members tremendously.
Furthermore, psychic scream is selective and rather subtile (only S component). Especially, if you fight in populated areas, or regions you need to preserve, meteor swarm does a lot of collateral damage.
I think it really has its use.
Meteor swarm is a rare spell that specifically calls out that it damages objects, which makes it difficult to use in many places — unless you’re ok with turning the town to rubble. Meteor swarm also damages anyone in the area: allies, civilians, horses. Psychic scream is much more surgical.
I found a 2019 video from Treantmonk where he rated Psychic Scream as orange and not worth taking (for a wizard). His beefs were mainly intelligence restrictions (>2 but low enough to fail save repeatedly), no condition effect on monsters with legendary resistance (an issue I'd not thought of previously), and "low damage for a 9th level spell" (in spite of the fact that I believe DMG cites 14d6 as the benchmark for 9th level multi-target spell damage). Interestingly, it appears he changed his tune from the 2018 GitP form post that I cite above (in which he wrote: "Mass Stun - no concentration - Int save. This was my final cut from my best 9th level spells list. Very good spell.").
Psychic scream is definietely not worth it for a 9th level spell against a solo legendary opponent. Not even, trying to strip a legendary resistance off of it.
Yeah, I agree though I don't think that is what TM was thinking. I believe he was simply noting the degree to which legendary resistances become more commonplace at high level. Nevertheless, the role of Psychic Scream (and Meteor Swarm) is to eviscerate a group of mooks, not the BBEG.
This spell is good for a fight against a group of pretty strong enemies, such as the group of fire giants I fought recently (At level 13, but nine or ten of them it could challenge 18th level characters). For anyone who has every played with a monk in the party, you know how powerful stunlocking an enemy is. This spell basically goes "roll your commonly low stat or take rarely resisted damage and be stuck not taking turns until you succeed on a save." Plus, it fits you character better and lets you make enemies heads explode. I say choose psychic scream.
Pronouns: he/him/his.
My posting scheduled is irregular: sometimes I can post twice a week, sometimes twice a day. I may also respond to quick questions, but ignore harder responses in favor of time.
My location is where my character for my home game is (we're doing the wild beyond the witchlight).
"The Doomvault... Probably full of unicorns and rainbows." -An imaginary quote
Int save is weakest save. Psychic Scream is non-concentration so you can use spells like Mind Sliver and Bane (easily obtainable through multiple methods). That's lowest save type plus -2d4 penalty to saves. So you can get a good few turns of stun lock and do decent damage.
And stun means advantage for everyone, instant fail dex saves and the target can't do anything.
Yeah, Psychic Scream can be quite spiffy, used right.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Psychic Scream is amazing for battlefield control. Last night I cast it in a battle against 4 swarms of warforged, 3 dragons, a mage and the Lord of Blades, doing a collective 341 psychic damage, stunned 2 of the dragons causing them to plummet (extra falling damage), popped warforged heads and stunned the mage. The mage and dragons were out of the fight for multiple rounds as they kept failing their saves (I could use Bend Luck to help keep them stun-locked).
Meteor Swarm is just indiscriminate damage. Psychic Scream is damage, stun condition on multiple enemies, and only requires a somatic casting component, so is completely silent. Sure, not great against a single enemy but amazing in a huge epic battle.
Psychic Scream is for a sneaky person.
Advantages:
1) Silent already, if you add subtle means you are undetectable as the caster. Cannot counter.
2) Allies are unaffected even if they are in the area of effect
3) stunned for some amount of time.
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The damage is less, you cannot affect unseen people, it only affects 10 people in 90 ft, and the truly stupid are immune.
I would say Psychic Scream is the winner, there are enough reasons in the previous comments (they convinced me ;) ), but to me is something you pick to let your party clean the field easily without hitting them which is a big disadvantage of meteor swarm: need a big group of enemies in a non populated area above ground that are far from you (i can only think is usefull to kill an army or destroy a city or frotress and all the loot with it). If you want high damage spell pick Blade Of Disaster (but is not AOE).
It depends a lot on the circumstances, usually you try to cast meteor swarm before the opposing sides have engaged so unless the bad guys have innocents as hostage or you do not want to damage the objects in the area the collateral damage issue ceases to be a problem. Evocation wizards and sorcerers with subtle spell spell can mitigate those risks as well.
If the enemy makes the save unless there are resistances / immunities meteor swarm does nearly 3 times the damage of psychic scream and against creatures with legendary resistances they will make ther save.
A lot has been made of the more subtle nature of psychic scream but the range of meteor swarm is 1 mile casting it from that far away noone will know who did it.
So if you are fighting a group a 10 or less enemies that are engaged with you and all within 90 ft of you and dont have legendary resistances psychic scream may be the better option especialy if they are low intelligence and therefore likely to stay stunned for a number of rounds.
Psychic scream isn't useless but I would expect 8 times out of 10 it is better to use your 9th level slot on meteor swarm rather than psychic scream.