In my current campaign my paladin has found a Helm of Brilliance with a lot of fire opals on it. One of the uses is 'As long as the helm has at least one fire opal, you can use an action and speak a command word to cause one weapon you are holding to burst into flames.' which adds 1d6 fire damage. The helm doesn't say that this is a concentration spell or anything, so could my paladin also apply something like Ensnaring strike or Searing Smite alongside this effect? Or would the helmet effect be overwritten by a stronger spell effect?
I'm currently running it so they can stack but want to get clarity on how thing like this are in RAW and RAI for the future
There is no reason why the effects can not stack, this is where care needs to be given with magic items as they can easily disrupt the balance of the game. Helm of Brilliance is a Very Rare Magic Item and thus it should have quiet the impact on the character using it.
I would not remove the item now that the character has it, but it will definitely need a bit of rebalancing of encounters due to the slightly higher damage. As a Very Rare, I assume the character in question is probably level 11 or above? Meaning they have Improved Divine Strikes/Radiant Strikes too, so I can see where the damage might be a little crazy.
For comparison's sake, A paladin with a +2 longsword at level 11 would be doing what, an average of around 18 DPR for a normal hit with duelling fighting style, increasing that too 21.5 is not the most broken thing and ensnaring strike itself is 1d6 (so would also be 18DPR to 21.5 DPR) so total average DPR of around 25 DPR before taking accuracy on attack rolls into consideration. Paladin is already on the weaker side of sustained DPR anyway, so this is probably manageable. I'd probably just look to balance the power a little so other characters have something as meaningful and just notch up creature HP or add a few more creatures to encounters.
The characters are actually a bit on the lower side, the paladin is level 7. We're playing CoS and they managed to get into Strahd's vault after having dinner with him, so they're sitting on quite a lot of good loot following that. At the moment the bigger issue actually seems to be a paladin having access to fireball, but everyone has some kind of item I've either made or they have found so no one is left behind. I've tuned the encounters places too, so the balance doesn't feel that bad right now! Still challenging enough for the players.
I was really just curious on whether this was a thing that could stack since it's not a very common effect from what I can see and I couldn't find info on it anywhere online. Thanks for the help!
It sounds like too powerful an item for level 7, if they are getting fireball from the helm, they can only do that 3 times and using the 3rd fireball would leave no fire opals for getting the 1d6 fire damage on the weapon.
It's definitely extremely strong for level 7 characters, but I didn't want to remove stuff from the book since it's really hard to get to helmet anyways. I'll most likely just have monsters try and steal it back off of them since it's stolen from the bad guy.
Can't you use fireball once for every fire opal the helmet has? In the book it didn't specify how many of each gem the helmet should have so my player rolled for them. the current helmet has 15 fire opals left, so I thought that would be 15 uses of fireball.
It's definitely extremely strong for level 7 characters, but I didn't want to remove stuff from the book since it's really hard to get to helmet anyways. I'll most likely just have monsters try and steal it back off of them since it's stolen from the bad guy.
Can't you use fireball once for every fire opal the helmet has? In the book it didn't specify how many of each gem the helmet should have so my player rolled for them. the current helmet has 15 fire opals left, so I thought that would be 15 uses of fireball.
oh right, apologies, I misremembered it as 3, it's 3d10. Well, it'll still run out at some point... Anyway, it needs 1 fire opal to maintain the 1d6 fire damage
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Hi new DM here,
In my current campaign my paladin has found a Helm of Brilliance with a lot of fire opals on it. One of the uses is 'As long as the helm has at least one fire opal, you can use an action and speak a command word to cause one weapon you are holding to burst into flames.' which adds 1d6 fire damage. The helm doesn't say that this is a concentration spell or anything, so could my paladin also apply something like Ensnaring strike or Searing Smite alongside this effect? Or would the helmet effect be overwritten by a stronger spell effect?
I'm currently running it so they can stack but want to get clarity on how thing like this are in RAW and RAI for the future
There is no reason why the effects can not stack, this is where care needs to be given with magic items as they can easily disrupt the balance of the game. Helm of Brilliance is a Very Rare Magic Item and thus it should have quiet the impact on the character using it.
I would not remove the item now that the character has it, but it will definitely need a bit of rebalancing of encounters due to the slightly higher damage. As a Very Rare, I assume the character in question is probably level 11 or above? Meaning they have Improved Divine Strikes/Radiant Strikes too, so I can see where the damage might be a little crazy.
For comparison's sake, A paladin with a +2 longsword at level 11 would be doing what, an average of around 18 DPR for a normal hit with duelling fighting style, increasing that too 21.5 is not the most broken thing and ensnaring strike itself is 1d6 (so would also be 18DPR to 21.5 DPR) so total average DPR of around 25 DPR before taking accuracy on attack rolls into consideration. Paladin is already on the weaker side of sustained DPR anyway, so this is probably manageable. I'd probably just look to balance the power a little so other characters have something as meaningful and just notch up creature HP or add a few more creatures to encounters.
The characters are actually a bit on the lower side, the paladin is level 7. We're playing CoS and they managed to get into Strahd's vault after having dinner with him, so they're sitting on quite a lot of good loot following that. At the moment the bigger issue actually seems to be a paladin having access to fireball, but everyone has some kind of item I've either made or they have found so no one is left behind. I've tuned the encounters places too, so the balance doesn't feel that bad right now! Still challenging enough for the players.
I was really just curious on whether this was a thing that could stack since it's not a very common effect from what I can see and I couldn't find info on it anywhere online. Thanks for the help!
It sounds like too powerful an item for level 7, if they are getting fireball from the helm, they can only do that 3 times and using the 3rd fireball would leave no fire opals for getting the 1d6 fire damage on the weapon.
It's definitely extremely strong for level 7 characters, but I didn't want to remove stuff from the book since it's really hard to get to helmet anyways. I'll most likely just have monsters try and steal it back off of them since it's stolen from the bad guy.
Can't you use fireball once for every fire opal the helmet has? In the book it didn't specify how many of each gem the helmet should have so my player rolled for them. the current helmet has 15 fire opals left, so I thought that would be 15 uses of fireball.
oh right, apologies, I misremembered it as 3, it's 3d10. Well, it'll still run out at some point... Anyway, it needs 1 fire opal to maintain the 1d6 fire damage