Has anyone experimented with making True Strike a bonus action and making it last UNTIL your next turn or even just until the end of your current turn so it can actually be useful?
It’s been discussed that a cantrip with built in advantage is too powerful. Vut making True Strike a bonus action and usable on the current turn I don’t think would be op. You’d have to burn a cantrip slot to take it. What do you guys think?
At one point I thought about making a version where you make a weapon attack as part of the action (similar to booming blade and green flame blade), but I never got around to trying that out. Plus after thinking some more on it, didn't think that was the best call since normally it had a minute to do so, but also worked with spell attack and weapon attacks.
Specifically on the question of making it, or something similar, a Bonus Action, there aren't a lot of Bonus Action cantrips in the game. If you look at some of the cantrips that can be cast as a Bonus Action, usually they also consume your Action (or require you to use it to gain the benefit), for example Green Flame Blade or Shillelagh.
So if you were going to go for a Bonus Action True Strike you'd maybe do it as "As part of casting this cantrip you must use your Action to make a single weapon attack with advantage", but that'd probably still be too powerful for a cantrip I think (though it's hard to say how to stacks up against Green Flame Blade).
Personally I think True Strike is fine as it is, the only tweak I'd maybe make is increase its duration to a minute, and have it only apply to the first attack you make, so it gives you the option of setting it up earlier and/or drop concentration, as it's incredibly annoying in situations where you can get the most out of the spell to have it interrupted.
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True strike as it currently exists has some marginal use cases -- specifically, if you're using a high level spell that has an attack roll, it might well be worth an extra action to cause it to hit more reliably, and it is helpful if you have disadvantage you need to negate. If you want it to be worthwhile in general use, though, I suggest:
True Strike: You point a finger at a target in range. Your magic grants you a brief insight into the target's defenses. On your next turn, you gain advantage on your first attack roll against the target, provided that this spell hasn't ended. If this attack hits, you cause an additional 1d6 damage of the same type as the attack. This increases to 2d6 at level 5, 3d6 at level 11, 4d6 at level 17.
That's not amazing, but it's good enough to be worth casting against higher ac targets.
Adding damage is an interesting idea, but it feels too powerful; the cases where True Strike makes most sense are cases where you're already trading your action (or some Sorcery Points) to ensure a powerful attack succeeds for maximum effect, so in most cases you're already going to be using this to either do more damage overall or to conserve some vital resource (finite uses/spell slots).
D6 damage is also nothing to sniff at on a cantrip, it's only one die lower than cantrips like Sacred Flame, and it's implicitly not as risky as many other cantrips; Sacred Flame can be completely negated by the target passing its save, Fire Bolt has to make a regular attack roll or do no damage and so-on. For your proposal you're not only more likely to hit than the average cantrip (because of advantage), but doing pretty similar damage to many of them, on top of having advantage on the attack you really want to succeed. If you were to go for a damage bonus it should be d4 max, and even then I'd be unsure about that, as it's not about the damage that True Strike does (or doesn't do), but the attack that you're using True Strike to hit with.
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Has anyone experimented with making True Strike a bonus action and making it last UNTIL your next turn or even just until the end of your current turn so it can actually be useful?
It’s been discussed that a cantrip with built in advantage is too powerful. Vut making True Strike a bonus action and usable on the current turn I don’t think would be op. You’d have to burn a cantrip slot to take it. What do you guys think?
At one point I thought about making a version where you make a weapon attack as part of the action (similar to booming blade and green flame blade), but I never got around to trying that out. Plus after thinking some more on it, didn't think that was the best call since normally it had a minute to do so, but also worked with spell attack and weapon attacks.
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It would be very powerful, almost an auto include. This was the most balanced alternative I could come up with:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/421057-strike-true
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Questions about whether True Strike could, or should, be made "better" come up quite a bit, here's the last one I participated in where I gave my thoughts about why True Strike is actually fine the way it is.
Specifically on the question of making it, or something similar, a Bonus Action, there aren't a lot of Bonus Action cantrips in the game. If you look at some of the cantrips that can be cast as a Bonus Action, usually they also consume your Action (or require you to use it to gain the benefit), for example Green Flame Blade or Shillelagh.
So if you were going to go for a Bonus Action True Strike you'd maybe do it as "As part of casting this cantrip you must use your Action to make a single weapon attack with advantage", but that'd probably still be too powerful for a cantrip I think (though it's hard to say how to stacks up against Green Flame Blade).
Personally I think True Strike is fine as it is, the only tweak I'd maybe make is increase its duration to a minute, and have it only apply to the first attack you make, so it gives you the option of setting it up earlier and/or drop concentration, as it's incredibly annoying in situations where you can get the most out of the spell to have it interrupted.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
True strike as it currently exists has some marginal use cases -- specifically, if you're using a high level spell that has an attack roll, it might well be worth an extra action to cause it to hit more reliably, and it is helpful if you have disadvantage you need to negate. If you want it to be worthwhile in general use, though, I suggest:
True Strike: You point a finger at a target in range. Your magic grants you a brief insight into the target's defenses. On your next turn, you gain advantage on your first attack roll against the target, provided that this spell hasn't ended. If this attack hits, you cause an additional 1d6 damage of the same type as the attack. This increases to 2d6 at level 5, 3d6 at level 11, 4d6 at level 17.
That's not amazing, but it's good enough to be worth casting against higher ac targets.
Adding damage is an interesting idea, but it feels too powerful; the cases where True Strike makes most sense are cases where you're already trading your action (or some Sorcery Points) to ensure a powerful attack succeeds for maximum effect, so in most cases you're already going to be using this to either do more damage overall or to conserve some vital resource (finite uses/spell slots).
D6 damage is also nothing to sniff at on a cantrip, it's only one die lower than cantrips like Sacred Flame, and it's implicitly not as risky as many other cantrips; Sacred Flame can be completely negated by the target passing its save, Fire Bolt has to make a regular attack roll or do no damage and so-on. For your proposal you're not only more likely to hit than the average cantrip (because of advantage), but doing pretty similar damage to many of them, on top of having advantage on the attack you really want to succeed. If you were to go for a damage bonus it should be d4 max, and even then I'd be unsure about that, as it's not about the damage that True Strike does (or doesn't do), but the attack that you're using True Strike to hit with.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.