They had those size modifiers in 3e, they weren't that complicated, but they could be a pain. But they offered drawbacks as well as benefits.
For example, everyone only seems to focus on the benefits of larger size, which comes down to wanting bigger weapon damage because their sword got bigger. But there's drawbacks, too. For example, you're a bigger target, and should be easier to hit, so there should be a drop in AC. Your sudden growth should effectively reduce your dex score since you'll be really awkward. (Anyone who's seen a kid go through a puberty-related growth spurt in middle school can verify how clumsy they get, and that's growing a couple inches over the course of a year, not a couple feet in an instant. It takes time to adjust.) Not to mention larger creatures are simply less nimble than smaller ones, as a general rule.
So, if they are going to start piling on mechanical benefits in the name of "realism" and being able to wield a bigger sword, then it seems like that same "realism" should impose some penalties as well.
Yeah the rules work pretty good at a PC level but don't scale well. The Enlarge spell is more accurate by saying a creature that doubles in size increases its weight by 8 times. That's at least based on the square-cube law.
An Elephant can comfortably carry almost 2800 pounds (25% of its own body weight) on its back all day. But it can 'only' lift about 700 pounds with its trunk. That's because they aren't built the same as people. In DnD an Elephant is Huge and has a Strength of 22. So in game terms it could carry just 1,320 lbs, or about half of the real world amount. But it's pretty well made to carry a lot of weight on its back.
A Silverback Gorilla is incredibly strong, and built for lifting. They can pick up at least twice what the strongest human can, and are estimated to be able to lift at least 10 times their body weight. And they would just be Medium sized in DnD.
We don't have any real Giants around to ask to do some tests on, so all of this is to say it really just depends. Actually large animals like dinosaurs don't just grow up, they have to grow out as well to balance it all. A human that was just 20 feet tall would have hundreds of physical issues to overcome. They wouldn't be shaped like a normal human. They would need massively thick legs, bigger hearts, and all kinds of other adaptations to actually survive. And while they would be much stronger, they'd also have to carry so much more of their own body weight. But DnD has magic, so none of that matters.
A giant can weight and carry whatever works for the game. Just because I like the idea of Giants and Dragons smashing down castle walls, I'd probably make their weight capacity increase exponentially. And I'd just let Enlarged creatures double their damage dice the way the monsters do. But then you have to balance for that. *shrug*
We don't have any real Giants around to ask to do some tests on, so all of this is to say it really just depends.
Actually, giants are a relatively easy situation because, unlike the elephant, they really are just 'human, only bigger' (this requires ignoring the square/cube law), which gives us:
Hill Giant (16'): 19x the weight and lifting ability of a 6' human of similar build. The illustration is pudgy but reasonably muscular, so figure something like 25x the lifting ability of a Str 10 human with a weight in the 5,000 lb range.
Stone Giant (18'): 27x the weight and lifting ability of a 6' human of similar build. The illustration is actually pretty thin, so unless they're increased density they're probably in the same 5,000 lb range, but lifting ability should be considerably higher, maybe around 35x.
Frost Giant (21'): 42x the weight and lifting ability of a 6' human of similar build. The illustration is solidly built and muscular but not fat, so probably in the 8-9,000 lb range, and maybe around 50x lifting ability.
Fire Giant (18'): 27x the weight and lifting ability of a 6' human of similar build -- but their build is completely ridiculous; figure 10,000 lb or more and 60x
Cloud Giant (24'): 64x the weight and lifting ability of a 6' human of similar build. The illustration is in good shape but not absurd, figure in the 12,000 lb range and some like 80x lifting ability.
Storm Giant (26'): 81x the weight and lifting ability of a 6' human of similar build. The illustration is in good shape but not absurd, figure in the 15,000 lb range and something like 100x lifting ability.
Of course, using those numbers tends to lampshade that a human going toe to toe with one is... highly cinematic.
*Re-reads the Holy Orders bit about Martial Weapon and Heavy Armour proficiencies specifically*
Well... Hello there CoDzilla. You were never truly gone, but you were at least keeping to the background a bit for while there. You weren't missed, why are you back?
They had those size modifiers in 3e, they weren't that complicated, but they could be a pain. But they offered drawbacks as well as benefits.
For example, everyone only seems to focus on the benefits of larger size, which comes down to wanting bigger weapon damage because their sword got bigger. But there's drawbacks, too. For example, you're a bigger target, and should be easier to hit, so there should be a drop in AC. Your sudden growth should effectively reduce your dex score since you'll be really awkward. (Anyone who's seen a kid go through a puberty-related growth spurt in middle school can verify how clumsy they get, and that's growing a couple inches over the course of a year, not a couple feet in an instant. It takes time to adjust.) Not to mention larger creatures are simply less nimble than smaller ones, as a general rule.
So, if they are going to start piling on mechanical benefits in the name of "realism" and being able to wield a bigger sword, then it seems like that same "realism" should impose some penalties as well.
This is very true. Real world scaling by size is frought with both benefits and weaknesses. Volume and mass scales to the power of 3, but strength scales to the power of 2, and the speed of electrical impulses used by nerves is fixed. So there is fundamentally a limitation on how big terrestrial creatures can get before their own bulk crushes them, which is why beached whales die, and why whales are the largest creatures to ever live. Big creatures are also fundamentally slower than small ones because nerve impulses must travel further (to be realistic a size increase should reduce your Dex, and size decrease increase your Dex), Strength increases but at an power of 2/3 (aka more similar to a square root function than a straight line) so the change in score should be less than the change in Dex score.... Hence why waving a hand to with "its magic" makes the most sense as most fantasy creature violate physical laws anyway.
They had those size modifiers in 3e, they weren't that complicated, but they could be a pain. But they offered drawbacks as well as benefits.
I think it was a mistake to ditch proper size balancing in 5e; though I can see why they did it as it can be very tricky, as it's really hard to find things to add as drawbacks that some classes and builds won't simply ignore.
For example, let's say for simplicity you change the STR/DEX maximums based on size such that Medium is 20/20 like it is now, Small is 18/22 (higher max. DEX) and Large is 24/16 (higher max. STR). At face value it's a nice and simple system, but Small's limit on STR is no concern to a mage who wants high DEX for mage armor and was never going to carrying anything themselves anyway (that's what a bag of holding or tenser's floating disk is for), while a lower DEX limit is no concern to a Medium armoured Barbarian.
Damage dice scaling is likewise difficult because anything weapon based will be heavily biased towards Large, while most casters won't care and so-on.
While it can be fun to play a build with some intentional weaknesses, it's probably not desirable to have a situation where you feel like you're being punished for wanting to play certain species/class combinations.
On the other hand I really want more variety in race sizes going forward; I hated being limited to a Medium-size minotaur so much that I made my own Large alternative, but it was very hard to balance. In fact in the end I opted for encouraging the DM to push back against over-optimisation, because none of the other penalties I tried were fun to play with (they over-penalised certain builds and didn't affect others). Maybe Wizards can think of something?
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On the other hand I really want more variety in race sizes going forward; I hated being limited to a Medium-size minotaur that I made my own Large alternative, but it was very hard to balance. In fact in the end I opted for encouraging the DM to push back against over-optimisation, because none of the penalties I tried were fun to play with (they over-penalised certain builds and didn't affect others). Maybe Wizards can think of something?
D&D is somewhat in a trap, because the classic cinematic balance is that a creature might be accurate or hard hitting, but by making everything single-attribute-dependent, and by not clearly differentiating 'hard to hit' from 'hard to hurt', that's not actually a distinction you can reliably make in D&D.
I've always thought that Powerful Build and other related features were a sort of 'Honorary Large' sort of thing. Like, yeah, we know, medium Minotaurs are BS, so here's some features that make you play sort of like a large character. With that in mind, there should be features that makes a large PC 'Honorary Medium'. Call it, I dunno, Shrimpy Build or something, making it so you can't wield large weapons and don't have to squeeze into medium sized spaces. Other considerations need to be taken, but I think that's the start of how you could balance it.
Some of these spell changed just do not sit well with me. Like can banishment even reliably do its supposed in lore job anymore? If a creature has a 25% chance of meeting the DC, they have an ~5.6% chance of failing all 10 saves to be fully banished. Doesn't even seem like the spell would be even worth taking.
Spritual Weapon and Aid were both good spells and didn't seen like they need this nerf. Increased damage does not compensate for needing concentration; spiritual weapon went from an amazing spell to one you forget about at higher levels. Aid just seems really redundant with all the spells that offer temporary hit points.
To answer the question of how much a Goliath can lift, we can do the math. It depends on their Strength so I'll look at a few different scores to give you an idea. The basic rule is that you can comfortably carry 15 times your Strength score, and Push, Drag, or Lift 30 times the score. Every size over Medium doubles the amount of the size below it. So a Goliath normally doubles the total, as they are considered Large for this calculation:
That means a Goliath with 20 Strength and using their Large Form can lift over a ton of weight.
So perhaps instead of weapon size growing like enlarge or advantage on STR checks / saves give them a base strength increases by 4 for the duration. This will increase the probability of success of strength checks and saves as well as the damage done by weapons attacks.
Some of these spell changed just do not sit well with me. Like can banishment even reliably do its supposed in lore job anymore? If a creature has a 25% chance of meeting the DC, they have an ~5.6% chance of failing all 10 saves to be fully banished. Doesn't even seem like the spell would be even worth taking.
Spritual Weapon and Aid were both good spells and didn't seen like they need this nerf. Increased damage does not compensate for needing concentration; spiritual weapon went from an amazing spell to one you forget about at higher levels. Aid just seems really redundant with all the spells that offer temporary hit points.
Yeah I'm not sure about the spells until I test them. Spiritual weapon seems like a hard downgrade. But it's so good in 5e that you see it on almost every Cleric, in almost every combat, and that's not great. So maybe it's a good thing it gets balanced some. Aid's temp HP is very sad. Probably more so than Spiritual Weapon for me.
Some of these spell changed just do not sit well with me. Like can banishment even reliably do its supposed in lore job anymore? If a creature has a 25% chance of meeting the DC, they have an ~5.6% chance of failing all 10 saves to be fully banished. Doesn't even seem like the spell would be even worth taking.
Spritual Weapon and Aid were both good spells and didn't seen like they need this nerf. Increased damage does not compensate for needing concentration; spiritual weapon went from an amazing spell to one you forget about at higher levels. Aid just seems really redundant with all the spells that offer temporary hit points.
Banishment does need something. I'd be tempted by something like:
If applied to a creature from another plane, after every failed save, roll 4d10 (+1d10 per spell level above 4). If the result exceeds the target's hit points, it is immediately returned to its home plane. Otherwise, it takes that much force damage.
As for the other spells, I think they wanted to limit the use of spiritual weapon, because that bonus action every turn does slow things down. The question is whether what's left is worth casting. It's not amazing, but I think there's a fair number of situations where it still beats out bless, at least in tier 1.
The existing aid is a weird special snowflake mechanic, so I see why to change it, but it probably does need something additional; maybe a bit of healing on top of the temp hit points.
Some of these spell changed just do not sit well with me. Like can banishment even reliably do its supposed in lore job anymore? If a creature has a 25% chance of meeting the DC, they have an ~5.6% chance of failing all 10 saves to be fully banished. Doesn't even seem like the spell would be even worth taking.
Spritual Weapon and Aid were both good spells and didn't seen like they need this nerf. Increased damage does not compensate for needing concentration; spiritual weapon went from an amazing spell to one you forget about at higher levels. Aid just seems really redundant with all the spells that offer temporary hit points.
Banishment does need something. I'd be tempted by something like:
If applied to a creature from another plane, after every failed save, roll 4d10 (+1d10 per spell level above 4). If the result exceeds the target's hit points, it is immediately returned to its home plane. Otherwise, it takes that much force damage.
As for the other spells, I think they wanted to limit the use of spiritual weapon, because that bonus action every turn does slow things down. The question is whether what's left is worth casting. It's not amazing, but I think there's a fair number of situations where it still beats out bless, at least in tier 1.
The existing aid is a weird special snowflake mechanic, so I see why to change it, but it probably does need something additional; maybe a bit of healing on top of the temp hit points.
If they are going to add break effects every round to spells they need the spells to have some limited effect when the target makes it save. Pathfinder 2e does this to a decent effect, they also buffed non casters quite a bit along with some weakening to casters. But using ocnfuision as a example it does this.
Critical Success The target is unaffected. Success The target babbles incoherently and is stunned 1. Failure The target is confused for 1 minute. It can attempt a new save at the end of each of its turns to end the confusion. Critical Failure The target is confused for 1 minute, with no save to end early.
So if banishment was something similar where even on a save they are stunned 1(honestly no idea what that is outside its the first level of stunned, I don't play the game just somewhat aware of it)or dazed for 1 round on a successful save at least the risk would not be so great the spell stopped being worth it.
Or like in the case of banishment don't break the spell when they save temporarily suppress it. So for example they fail the save and are banished, round 2 they save and pop out, end of round 3 they make another save fail and are re-banished. Make the permanent banish happen if they fail the 10th round save whether or not they saved on round rounds 2-9. At its playtest level, assuming all other similar spells have similar nerfs spell casters will just go for damage.
So if banishment was something similar where even on a save they are stunned 1(honestly no idea what that is outside its the first level of stunned, I don't play the game just somewhat aware of it)or dazed for 1 round on a successful save at least the risk would not be so great the spell stopped being worth it.
Action denial effects need to be really heavily limited, stunlock is not good game play. A better option would be damage on save.
Some of these spell changed just do not sit well with me. Like can banishment even reliably do its supposed in lore job anymore? If a creature has a 25% chance of meeting the DC, they have an ~5.6% chance of failing all 10 saves to be fully banished. Doesn't even seem like the spell would be even worth taking.
Spritual Weapon and Aid were both good spells and didn't seen like they need this nerf. Increased damage does not compensate for needing concentration; spiritual weapon went from an amazing spell to one you forget about at higher levels. Aid just seems really redundant with all the spells that offer temporary hit points.
Banishment does need something. I'd be tempted by something like:
If applied to a creature from another plane, after every failed save, roll 4d10 (+1d10 per spell level above 4). If the result exceeds the target's hit points, it is immediately returned to its home plane. Otherwise, it takes that much force damage.
As for the other spells, I think they wanted to limit the use of spiritual weapon, because that bonus action every turn does slow things down. The question is whether what's left is worth casting. It's not amazing, but I think there's a fair number of situations where it still beats out bless, at least in tier 1.
The existing aid is a weird special snowflake mechanic, so I see why to change it, but it probably does need something additional; maybe a bit of healing on top of the temp hit points.
If they are going to add break effects every round to spells they need the spells to have some limited effect when the target makes it save. Pathfinder 2e does this to a decent effect, they also buffed non casters quite a bit along with some weakening to casters. But using ocnfuision as a example it does this.
Critical Success The target is unaffected. Success The target babbles incoherently and is stunned 1. Failure The target is confused for 1 minute. It can attempt a new save at the end of each of its turns to end the confusion. Critical Failure The target is confused for 1 minute, with no save to end early.
So if banishment was something similar where even on a save they are stunned 1(honestly no idea what that is outside its the first level of stunned, I don't play the game just somewhat aware of it)or dazed for 1 round on a successful save at least the risk would not be so great the spell stopped being worth it.
Or like in the case of banishment don't break the spell when they save temporarily suppress it. So for example they fail the save and are banished, round 2 they save and pop out, end of round 3 they make another save fail and are re-banished. Make the permanent banish happen if they fail the 10th round save whether or not they saved on round rounds 2-9. At its playtest level, assuming all other similar spells have similar nerfs spell casters will just go for damage.
Yeah, Banishment is a weird spell that doesn't affect most low level monsters. Or when it does, it's kind of not worth the effort. But then high level monsters, and even many BBEGs, can just be removed from the game with one action. So it needs to be fixed for sure.
But the UA version is too much. No one is going to fail 10 saves in a row. It will buy you a few rounds at best. That's still good, but maybe not something anyone wants to risk.
I like the ideas of a Sleep style HP roll. At least you have to beat the monster up first. Or Dazing them on a successful save. Those are both solid solutions.
I think it would be really cool if Magic Circle had a casting time on 1 action. So you could Banish the monster, then protect the area with a ward so they couldn't come back. That feels really thematic, but we don't really have any spell combos built into descriptions like that, so it's probably not likely.
Have we considered that maybe part of the reason they specifically nerfed Spiritual Weapon, Aid, and Banishment is because they're so good?
They often end up becoming "must-picks", and that might be a factor in their decision to change them? Banishment in particular also has the added factor of being able to trivialize encounters if the situation is just right. And I wouldn't be surprised if Aid was changed because they never intended for it to be a healing spell that can just get your party members back up.
Yeah, absolutely. A second level spell should not be used in every combat for your whole career like Spiritual Weapon often is. At some point there has to be a better option. I'm all for fixing these spells. It will just take testing to know if this is the right way to do it.
Have we considered that maybe part of the reason they specifically nerfed Spiritual Weapon, Aid, and Banishment is because they're so good?
Of course. The question is whether they over-nerfed.
Banishment I think they did. It's basically a limited duration crowd control effect at this point, with the flaw that you can't attack the CCed target. That's not useless, but it's not 4th level spell worth of useful, confusion is going to be pretty reliably more useful CC.
I think Aid could use a kind of secondary effect, much like what heroism or armor of agathys does.
For Banishment, maybe one possible option to bring it back up to 4th level status is to make the jail actually harmful? Like the creature takes some kind of damage each round while in there so they come back with fewer hit points than when they started. Or perhaps when they come back, the sheer trauma of being in that demiplane unable to do anything leaves them stunned or something for a round. Just spit-balling ideas if they opt to keep the per-round save.
While I am not necessarily against the idea of giving Aid a secondary effect, even in its new form it has a lot of utility through the fact that it affects multiple creatures instead of only one like Heroism of Armor of Agathys.
I like your second idea for Banishment, the target being stunned when they return. It still requires them to miss at least one save to be affected at all but adds a round for them to be beaten upon after they inevitably return in a couple of rounds.
I think the idea behind the banishment change is that simply removing an enemy from a fight for a few rounds is already a powerful effect on its own, but it no longer being an automatic banish means your DM doesn't have to burn a legendary resistance on the initial save; if we're talking about a fight against a legendary enemy with a bunch of allies, then banishing them temporarily while you deal with those allies is still a big boost, and the DM letting that go through to save the resistances for later is a legitimate way to run it.
While it does make actually banishing things a lot less likely, there are still ways to tip the odds in your favour; combo'ing with bane for example, plus anything else that can interfere with saves. Plus if it makes narrative sense your DM can always just have an enemy be fully banished if they feel you've done enough to justify it. Personally I view the changes to banishment as changes to how it behaves in general combat where as a DM you want the fight to play out, but for something that must be banished I'd still let it go through.
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Have we considered that maybe part of the reason they specifically nerfed Spiritual Weapon, Aid, and Banishment is because they're so good?
Of course. The question is whether they over-nerfed.
Banishment I think they did. It's basically a limited duration crowd control effect at this point, with the flaw that you can't attack the CCed target. That's not useless, but it's not 4th level spell worth of useful, confusion is going to be pretty reliably more useful CC.
Confusion isn't guaranteed to remove an affected target's action, it also doesn't affect Legendary Actions, it is also a Wisdom save which enemies usually have a higher modifier for than Charisma for Banishment. Confusion is also an AoE so can be difficult to pull off without affecting your allies as well.
This change makes Banishment about equal in power to Confusion but different usage, which is exactly where it should be since they are both 4th level spells.
They had those size modifiers in 3e, they weren't that complicated, but they could be a pain. But they offered drawbacks as well as benefits.
For example, everyone only seems to focus on the benefits of larger size, which comes down to wanting bigger weapon damage because their sword got bigger. But there's drawbacks, too. For example, you're a bigger target, and should be easier to hit, so there should be a drop in AC. Your sudden growth should effectively reduce your dex score since you'll be really awkward. (Anyone who's seen a kid go through a puberty-related growth spurt in middle school can verify how clumsy they get, and that's growing a couple inches over the course of a year, not a couple feet in an instant. It takes time to adjust.) Not to mention larger creatures are simply less nimble than smaller ones, as a general rule.
So, if they are going to start piling on mechanical benefits in the name of "realism" and being able to wield a bigger sword, then it seems like that same "realism" should impose some penalties as well.
Yeah the rules work pretty good at a PC level but don't scale well. The Enlarge spell is more accurate by saying a creature that doubles in size increases its weight by 8 times. That's at least based on the square-cube law.
An Elephant can comfortably carry almost 2800 pounds (25% of its own body weight) on its back all day. But it can 'only' lift about 700 pounds with its trunk. That's because they aren't built the same as people. In DnD an Elephant is Huge and has a Strength of 22. So in game terms it could carry just 1,320 lbs, or about half of the real world amount. But it's pretty well made to carry a lot of weight on its back.
A Silverback Gorilla is incredibly strong, and built for lifting. They can pick up at least twice what the strongest human can, and are estimated to be able to lift at least 10 times their body weight. And they would just be Medium sized in DnD.
We don't have any real Giants around to ask to do some tests on, so all of this is to say it really just depends. Actually large animals like dinosaurs don't just grow up, they have to grow out as well to balance it all. A human that was just 20 feet tall would have hundreds of physical issues to overcome. They wouldn't be shaped like a normal human. They would need massively thick legs, bigger hearts, and all kinds of other adaptations to actually survive. And while they would be much stronger, they'd also have to carry so much more of their own body weight. But DnD has magic, so none of that matters.
A giant can weight and carry whatever works for the game. Just because I like the idea of Giants and Dragons smashing down castle walls, I'd probably make their weight capacity increase exponentially. And I'd just let Enlarged creatures double their damage dice the way the monsters do. But then you have to balance for that. *shrug*
Actually, giants are a relatively easy situation because, unlike the elephant, they really are just 'human, only bigger' (this requires ignoring the square/cube law), which gives us:
Of course, using those numbers tends to lampshade that a human going toe to toe with one is... highly cinematic.
*Reads the new UA*
*Re-reads the Holy Orders bit about Martial Weapon and Heavy Armour proficiencies specifically*
Well... Hello there CoDzilla. You were never truly gone, but you were at least keeping to the background a bit for while there.
You weren't missed, why are you back?
This is very true. Real world scaling by size is frought with both benefits and weaknesses. Volume and mass scales to the power of 3, but strength scales to the power of 2, and the speed of electrical impulses used by nerves is fixed. So there is fundamentally a limitation on how big terrestrial creatures can get before their own bulk crushes them, which is why beached whales die, and why whales are the largest creatures to ever live. Big creatures are also fundamentally slower than small ones because nerve impulses must travel further (to be realistic a size increase should reduce your Dex, and size decrease increase your Dex), Strength increases but at an power of 2/3 (aka more similar to a square root function than a straight line) so the change in score should be less than the change in Dex score.... Hence why waving a hand to with "its magic" makes the most sense as most fantasy creature violate physical laws anyway.
I think it was a mistake to ditch proper size balancing in 5e; though I can see why they did it as it can be very tricky, as it's really hard to find things to add as drawbacks that some classes and builds won't simply ignore.
For example, let's say for simplicity you change the STR/DEX maximums based on size such that Medium is 20/20 like it is now, Small is 18/22 (higher max. DEX) and Large is 24/16 (higher max. STR). At face value it's a nice and simple system, but Small's limit on STR is no concern to a mage who wants high DEX for mage armor and was never going to carrying anything themselves anyway (that's what a bag of holding or tenser's floating disk is for), while a lower DEX limit is no concern to a Medium armoured Barbarian.
Damage dice scaling is likewise difficult because anything weapon based will be heavily biased towards Large, while most casters won't care and so-on.
While it can be fun to play a build with some intentional weaknesses, it's probably not desirable to have a situation where you feel like you're being punished for wanting to play certain species/class combinations.
On the other hand I really want more variety in race sizes going forward; I hated being limited to a Medium-size minotaur so much that I made my own Large alternative, but it was very hard to balance. In fact in the end I opted for encouraging the DM to push back against over-optimisation, because none of the other penalties I tried were fun to play with (they over-penalised certain builds and didn't affect others). Maybe Wizards can think of something?
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D&D is somewhat in a trap, because the classic cinematic balance is that a creature might be accurate or hard hitting, but by making everything single-attribute-dependent, and by not clearly differentiating 'hard to hit' from 'hard to hurt', that's not actually a distinction you can reliably make in D&D.
I've always thought that Powerful Build and other related features were a sort of 'Honorary Large' sort of thing. Like, yeah, we know, medium Minotaurs are BS, so here's some features that make you play sort of like a large character. With that in mind, there should be features that makes a large PC 'Honorary Medium'. Call it, I dunno, Shrimpy Build or something, making it so you can't wield large weapons and don't have to squeeze into medium sized spaces. Other considerations need to be taken, but I think that's the start of how you could balance it.
Some of these spell changed just do not sit well with me. Like can banishment even reliably do its supposed in lore job anymore? If a creature has a 25% chance of meeting the DC, they have an ~5.6% chance of failing all 10 saves to be fully banished. Doesn't even seem like the spell would be even worth taking.
Spritual Weapon and Aid were both good spells and didn't seen like they need this nerf. Increased damage does not compensate for needing concentration; spiritual weapon went from an amazing spell to one you forget about at higher levels. Aid just seems really redundant with all the spells that offer temporary hit points.
So perhaps instead of weapon size growing like enlarge or advantage on STR checks / saves give them a base strength increases by 4 for the duration. This will increase the probability of success of strength checks and saves as well as the damage done by weapons attacks.
Yeah I'm not sure about the spells until I test them. Spiritual weapon seems like a hard downgrade. But it's so good in 5e that you see it on almost every Cleric, in almost every combat, and that's not great. So maybe it's a good thing it gets balanced some. Aid's temp HP is very sad. Probably more so than Spiritual Weapon for me.
Banishment does need something. I'd be tempted by something like:
If applied to a creature from another plane, after every failed save, roll 4d10 (+1d10 per spell level above 4). If the result exceeds the target's hit points, it is immediately returned to its home plane. Otherwise, it takes that much force damage.
As for the other spells, I think they wanted to limit the use of spiritual weapon, because that bonus action every turn does slow things down. The question is whether what's left is worth casting. It's not amazing, but I think there's a fair number of situations where it still beats out bless, at least in tier 1.
The existing aid is a weird special snowflake mechanic, so I see why to change it, but it probably does need something additional; maybe a bit of healing on top of the temp hit points.
If they are going to add break effects every round to spells they need the spells to have some limited effect when the target makes it save. Pathfinder 2e does this to a decent effect, they also buffed non casters quite a bit along with some weakening to casters. But using ocnfuision as a example it does this.
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target babbles incoherently and is stunned 1.
Failure The target is confused for 1 minute. It can attempt a new save at the end of each of its turns to end the confusion.
Critical Failure The target is confused for 1 minute, with no save to end early.
So if banishment was something similar where even on a save they are stunned 1(honestly no idea what that is outside its the first level of stunned, I don't play the game just somewhat aware of it)or dazed for 1 round on a successful save at least the risk would not be so great the spell stopped being worth it.
Or like in the case of banishment don't break the spell when they save temporarily suppress it. So for example they fail the save and are banished, round 2 they save and pop out, end of round 3 they make another save fail and are re-banished. Make the permanent banish happen if they fail the 10th round save whether or not they saved on round rounds 2-9. At its playtest level, assuming all other similar spells have similar nerfs spell casters will just go for damage.
Action denial effects need to be really heavily limited, stunlock is not good game play. A better option would be damage on save.
Yeah, Banishment is a weird spell that doesn't affect most low level monsters. Or when it does, it's kind of not worth the effort. But then high level monsters, and even many BBEGs, can just be removed from the game with one action. So it needs to be fixed for sure.
But the UA version is too much. No one is going to fail 10 saves in a row. It will buy you a few rounds at best. That's still good, but maybe not something anyone wants to risk.
I like the ideas of a Sleep style HP roll. At least you have to beat the monster up first. Or Dazing them on a successful save. Those are both solid solutions.
I think it would be really cool if Magic Circle had a casting time on 1 action. So you could Banish the monster, then protect the area with a ward so they couldn't come back. That feels really thematic, but we don't really have any spell combos built into descriptions like that, so it's probably not likely.
Yeah, absolutely. A second level spell should not be used in every combat for your whole career like Spiritual Weapon often is. At some point there has to be a better option. I'm all for fixing these spells. It will just take testing to know if this is the right way to do it.
Of course. The question is whether they over-nerfed.
Banishment I think they did. It's basically a limited duration crowd control effect at this point, with the flaw that you can't attack the CCed target. That's not useless, but it's not 4th level spell worth of useful, confusion is going to be pretty reliably more useful CC.
While I am not necessarily against the idea of giving Aid a secondary effect, even in its new form it has a lot of utility through the fact that it affects multiple creatures instead of only one like Heroism of Armor of Agathys.
I like your second idea for Banishment, the target being stunned when they return. It still requires them to miss at least one save to be affected at all but adds a round for them to be beaten upon after they inevitably return in a couple of rounds.
I think the idea behind the banishment change is that simply removing an enemy from a fight for a few rounds is already a powerful effect on its own, but it no longer being an automatic banish means your DM doesn't have to burn a legendary resistance on the initial save; if we're talking about a fight against a legendary enemy with a bunch of allies, then banishing them temporarily while you deal with those allies is still a big boost, and the DM letting that go through to save the resistances for later is a legitimate way to run it.
While it does make actually banishing things a lot less likely, there are still ways to tip the odds in your favour; combo'ing with bane for example, plus anything else that can interfere with saves. Plus if it makes narrative sense your DM can always just have an enemy be fully banished if they feel you've done enough to justify it. Personally I view the changes to banishment as changes to how it behaves in general combat where as a DM you want the fight to play out, but for something that must be banished I'd still let it go through.
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Confusion isn't guaranteed to remove an affected target's action, it also doesn't affect Legendary Actions, it is also a Wisdom save which enemies usually have a higher modifier for than Charisma for Banishment. Confusion is also an AoE so can be difficult to pull off without affecting your allies as well.
This change makes Banishment about equal in power to Confusion but different usage, which is exactly where it should be since they are both 4th level spells.