I swapped out a few things in Widowgast's Web of Fire to make it match my Shadow Sorcerer but I ran into a slight problem with one of the passives. Widowgast's Web of Fire is as reads:
Striking both palms down upon the ground, a web of flame crackles out around you and five streaks of fire rapidly snake along the ground toward up to five enemies that you can see within range, leaping towards their target and exploding into a column of flame upon reaching them. Each target must make a Dexterity saving throw, taking 8d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
Alternatively, all five streaks of fire can instead converge toward a single target, dealing 12d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
The fire can travel over obstacles up to 5 feet high, and ignites flammable objects along its path that aren't being worn or carried.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 4th.
So the issue I'm facing here is how to swap the flammable passive for something more..shadowy? I was considered giving them disadvantage on the save or increasing the range by a few feet if the enemy was in shadow, as well as allowing it to avoid partial cover (because, you know, shadows). The range one seemed the only fair option but another one would just be to allow it to travel up walls equally as well.
Anyways, tell me what you think and which minot passive you feel would fit in it's stead. Feel free to come up with your own ideas, I was just spitballing concepts.
Maybe change all mention of flames to darkness and make it do necrotic or some other type of damage? Either that or drop 2 dice of damage to up the range for fairness sake. Or don't change the range or damage at all and just make it ignore cover with advantage for saves by the target when it's around noon if you're keeping track of time (since the high sun reduces shadows).
Interesting... I didn't pay super close attention to the intricacies of the spell on CR, so I assumed it was just a reskinned Chain Lightning.
As for a replacement for igniting objects... the tricky thing about that is that, for fire, it's a risk/reward thing and not necessarily a bonus to the spell. Maybe you're in a situation surrounded by objects you don't want to ignite, so setting fire to them would actually be a bad thing. Honestly, in my experience, igniting flammable objects is usually a downside more often than not.
I think something that has that similar "maybe good, maybe bad" effect would be something like... "the web of shadows cast by this spell remain on the ground until the start of your next turn, with those spaces considered dimly lit". If your team is smart, they can take advantage of the dimly lit spaces to impose disadvantage on attacks against them, but the enemy has the same ability. It won't be a huge factor... so many races have darkvision that they'll mostly be unaffected. But it imposes a new tactical factor on the battlefield which gives an additional risk/reward element to the spell. And there are some spells/abilities that are affected by shadowy spaces... in a well-lit room this could give a Way of Shadows monk in the party a sudden burst of versatility they would have lacked earlier in the fight.
Hey all!
I swapped out a few things in Widowgast's Web of Fire to make it match my Shadow Sorcerer but I ran into a slight problem with one of the passives. Widowgast's Web of Fire is as reads:
Striking both palms down upon the ground, a web of flame crackles out around you and five streaks of fire rapidly snake along the ground toward up to five enemies that you can see within range, leaping towards their target and exploding into a column of flame upon reaching them. Each target must make a Dexterity saving throw, taking 8d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
Alternatively, all five streaks of fire can instead converge toward a single target, dealing 12d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
The fire can travel over obstacles up to 5 feet high, and ignites flammable objects along its path that aren't being worn or carried.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 4th.
So the issue I'm facing here is how to swap the flammable passive for something more..shadowy? I was considered giving them disadvantage on the save or increasing the range by a few feet if the enemy was in shadow, as well as allowing it to avoid partial cover (because, you know, shadows). The range one seemed the only fair option but another one would just be to allow it to travel up walls equally as well.
Anyways, tell me what you think and which minot passive you feel would fit in it's stead. Feel free to come up with your own ideas, I was just spitballing concepts.
Maybe change all mention of flames to darkness and make it do necrotic or some other type of damage? Either that or drop 2 dice of damage to up the range for fairness sake. Or don't change the range or damage at all and just make it ignore cover with advantage for saves by the target when it's around noon if you're keeping track of time (since the high sun reduces shadows).
Maybe instead of lighting objects on fire, all shadowy illumination - darkness is considered rough terrain in the path
Which book is this spell from, might I ask?
It's a custom spell made by Liam O'Brien and Matthew Mercer of Critical Role
Interesting... I didn't pay super close attention to the intricacies of the spell on CR, so I assumed it was just a reskinned Chain Lightning.
As for a replacement for igniting objects... the tricky thing about that is that, for fire, it's a risk/reward thing and not necessarily a bonus to the spell. Maybe you're in a situation surrounded by objects you don't want to ignite, so setting fire to them would actually be a bad thing. Honestly, in my experience, igniting flammable objects is usually a downside more often than not.
I think something that has that similar "maybe good, maybe bad" effect would be something like... "the web of shadows cast by this spell remain on the ground until the start of your next turn, with those spaces considered dimly lit". If your team is smart, they can take advantage of the dimly lit spaces to impose disadvantage on attacks against them, but the enemy has the same ability. It won't be a huge factor... so many races have darkvision that they'll mostly be unaffected. But it imposes a new tactical factor on the battlefield which gives an additional risk/reward element to the spell. And there are some spells/abilities that are affected by shadowy spaces... in a well-lit room this could give a Way of Shadows monk in the party a sudden burst of versatility they would have lacked earlier in the fight.
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Maybe instead of igniting objects, it can suppress light sources.