Why is it that there are some very powerful cantrips, like guidance, that can be used to a great extent outside of combat, and then there are practically useless cantrips like Blade Ward, Resistance, and True Strike.
You get one action inside of combat, and using it to gain a small boost on your NEXT TURN ends up being a detriment more than a benefit!
Technically, you can take the metamagic adept feat and take Quickened spell, but that ends up being limited use, and usable for other things.
The only possible benefit I see is as an immediately prior to combat measure, where you give yourself a little edge before fighting.
Do you agree? Have their been instances where you have used these cantrips to a great effect?
I had a use for resistance once and only once (I usually don't take it) because I knew I was walking into a saving throw roll. True strike on one of the cantrips being improved in one dnd (like spare the dying). see below:
In an ideal world all cantrips would be equally useful and when selecting cantrips for your character you would chose those that fit your character character concept best, over a few campigns you would see all the cantrips used.
No cantrip is completely useless (but true strike gets very close) if you are going though a kobald base where you know there are likely to be lots of traps resistance can be useful to cast on the scout as it is quite likely they will set off a trap. Friends can be useful if you want a fight but don't want ot be seen to start it. The problem with these is they are so situationally useful you will alsways take cantrips that are going to be useful far more often.
Guidance is a problem spell for the opposite reason it is so powerful you feel as if you have to take it, a wizard at level 1 gets ot pick 3 cantrips in theory but in practice they get to pick two to add to guidance.
It isn't just a issue with cantrips, Pretty much every character that can get shield and find familiar as 1st level spells if it is on their list, but I have never seen anoyone take spells like cause fear, illusory script or jump because they are nowhere near as powerful. Right though to level 9 where wish is incredibly powerful (mainly due to its flexibility) but noone takes Wierd (I wouldn't say wierd is useless, it is on a par with a lot of 5th level spells but it is Massively less useful than any other 9th (or 8th and probably 7th) level spell.
Blade ward only really makes sense on classes that can do something useful with their bonus action, or anything similar. So an Arcane Trickster, a Bladesinger once they get Extra Attack, Eldritch Knight once they get War Magic or a Sorcerer with Quickened Spell. But it's a pretty hard sell most of the time as the protection it gives is limited, and for Arcane Trickster and Sorcerer with Quickened Spell you might as well just take the Dodge action instead (nothing prevents damage better then not being hit in the first place). The benefit to the Bladesinger and Eldritch Knight is they can boost defence while still making an attack, but the amount this reduces your damage by is rarely going to be worth it.
True strike is another tricky one; Arcane Trickster is again one of the easier ones to use this one as it gives you a way to gain advantage, but the optional Steady Aim class feature added by Tasha's Cauldron of Everything lets you do that pretty easily already. True strike only has the advantage when you're setting up an ambush as you can cast it before attacking, and still have full use of your bonus action and no reduction in speed, but that's pretty situational.
Blade ward only really makes sense on classes that can do something useful with their bonus action, or anything similar. So an Arcane Trickster, a Bladesinger once they get Extra Attack, Eldritch Knight once they get War Magic or a Sorcerer with Quickened Spell. But it's a pretty hard sell most of the time as the protection it gives is limited, and for Arcane Trickster and Sorcerer with Quickened Spell you might as well just take the Dodge action instead (nothing prevents damage better then not being hit in the first place). The benefit to the Bladesinger and Eldritch Knight is they can boost defence while still making an attack, but the amount this reduces your damage by is rarely going to be worth it.
True strike is another tricky one; Arcane Trickster is again one of the easier ones to use this one as it gives you a way to gain advantage, but the optional Steady Aim class feature added by Tasha's Cauldron of Everything lets you do that pretty easily already. True strike only has the advantage when you're setting up an ambush as you can cast it before attacking, and still have full use of your bonus action and no reduction in speed, but that's pretty situational.
Blade ward is better than dodge is two circumstances, first, if the enemy(s) have a greater than 50% chance of hitting you on their attacks and can only attack with bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, while this is quite often the case it is very rarely worth learning a spell to do be able to do something slightly better than dodge where n oenemies have acces to other forms of damage as an attack. The only case I would think blade ward would be worth considering is if you want to be hit but not take much damage, for example a character that uses Armor of Agythis might find blade ward useful.
I was thinking True strike would be useful for a caster making spell attacks but there are very few spells that make a single spell attack for significant damage and the best of those that do (inflict wounds and guiding bolt) are hard to combine with a character that can do something useful with their bonus action.
Guidance is a problem spell for the opposite reason it is so powerful you feel as if you have to take it, a wizard at level 1 gets ot pick 3 cantrips in theory but in practice they get to pick two to add to guidance.
Wizards get to pick 3 cantrips in practice because Guidance is not in the Wizard spell list.
Also True Strike has no redeeming feature whatsoever. It is hot garbage. It takes a Action AND your concentration to get advantage on your NEXT turn during which time you may suffer damage of some sort and lose concentration resulting in just a wasted Action. Instead you can just normally make 2 attacks over the 2 turns without requiring concentration which is basically the same as getting advantage on one attack with the added benefit to potentially hit both attacks. Even in fringe cases like a Rogue's Sneak Attack there are better methods to generate advantage by hiding or using the Steady Aim feature. Even Quickened Spell can't save True Strike.
Guidance is a problem spell for the opposite reason it is so powerful you feel as if you have to take it, a wizard at level 1 gets ot pick 3 cantrips in theory but in practice they get to pick two to add to guidance.
Wizards get to pick 3 cantrips in practice because Guidance is not in the Wizard spell list.
Also True Strike has no redeeming feature whatsoever. It is hot garbage. It takes a Action AND your concentration to get advantage on your NEXT turn during which time you may suffer damage of some sort and lose concentration resulting in just a wasted Action. Instead you can just normally make 2 attacks over the 2 turns without requiring concentration which is basically the same as getting advantage on one attack with the added benefit to potentially hit both attacks. Even in fringe cases like a Rogue's Sneak Attack there are better methods to generate advantage by hiding or using the Steady Aim feature. Even Quickened Spell can't save True Strike.
Correct, I usually take artificer adept or the Quandrix (strixhaven) background to get Guidance as a wizard.
I was thinking True strike would be useful for a caster making spell attacks but there are very few spells that make a single spell attack for significant damage and the best of those that do (inflict wounds and guiding bolt) are hard to combine with a character that can do something useful with their bonus action.
Pre-Tasha's you could maybe make a case for Sorcerer via Quickened Spell, because if you knew you were going to cast a big opening attack you could true strike to reduce the chance of wasting it. But with the Seeking Spell Metamagic (2 Sorcery Points to re-roll) there's less need for it, though I guess the cantrip still saves a Metamagic choice, and it stacks if you take both (so you're potentially re-rolling with advantage for four chances to hit). Sorcerers at least get quite a few cantrip choices so it's less of a burden for them to take it, but it's still pretty niche.
My conclusion really is that while blade ward and true strike aren't useless they're very tough to justify taking. The updated true strike in the last playtest does seem a lot better, I don't remember if they've done an updated blade ward yet? They were trying a lot of cantrips as reactions at one point but that would risk tipping blade ward in the other direction if they did it for that (it would be like a lesser Uncanny Dodge you can just choose to have).
Taking true strike on an Arcane Trickster is the one I actually consider useful, because the more ways you have to gain advantage the better IMO. It's still going to be pretty rare that you get a situation where true strike is the one you use, but on those occasions it usually really feels worth having kept it. One example from my experience was a tense stand-off where a Rogue with distant backup was trying to talk someone out of fighting, but just in case it went wrong they had true strike active on the person next to them. When the persuasion failed, they were able to Sneak Attack and Disengage in the opening round, which made the fight a lot easier as they took out the nearest threat and were able to outpace the rest of the enemies. Very, very rare and specific case to come up, but in that moment no other cantrip could have been better IMO (you could argue friends but it was a low Intelligence Arcane Trickster that didn't really use attack/save spells, with higher Charisma to be more of a face).
Resistance has its benefits as a cantrip and can be used out of combat. Cast it on your scout as they are looking for traps. Or a party member who needs to make saves to alleviate a condition.
Blade Ward is an option to help spellcasters maintain concentration. Not being hit is always a better option, but the character's AC may be such that attacks with disadvantage may still have a high percentage of hitting. Having an option to lessen damage results in a more favorable DC for your CON saves.
True Strike has conditions that just make it far too difficult to be effective. There is almost always a better use for your Action and the situations where True Strike might be effective are too few and far between. Some instances I can think of:
1) Casting before the combat: However, this can easily be negated if the GM doesn't allow casting before initiative. 2) Use in lieu of Readying your Action: This means you want to wait until your next turn to attack rather than taking your action when a condition is met. But the benefit here is if the condition is not met, you don't lose your action and have the option to attach with advantage on your upcoming turn. 3) Retreat or Withdrawing: As the party pulling out of a confrontation, casting this cantrip on the enemy as a precaution if the creature chooses to pursue the party. 4) You are attempting to kill Smaug: If your campaign is based on limited resources, and in particular, limited resources that are required to defeat an enemy, then setting up Advantage on your attacks might be necessary. The bard that has the Alchemist's fire to kill the troll; a horror themed campaign where creatures are homebrewed to be killed by specific items; enchanted ammo; a "one and done" attack that is required to end a confrontation.
You would use your action to cast a cantrip instead of something else?
IamSposta is probably referring to one benefit of bladesingers which is that they can cast a cantrip as part of their Extra Attack feature, so they could trigger blade ward and still make one attack with a shadow blade in the same turn, which combined with Blade Song can make for a pretty formidable melee character, at least in short bursts when you feel like it.
Pretty economical too as you can always back off again and revert to ranged blasting, control etc. if you need to, so it's not a bad thing for a Bladesinger to have in their repertoire. Definitely one of the stronger options for blade ward. You have to weigh up the benefits vs. attacking twice instead for more damage (or more attempts to hit) but since you can do the cantrip + attack in any order you can wait to see if your first attack hits before deciding.
I like having some Cantrips that can do damage and others for utility, gives a nice balance. While they dont do as much damage as other Spells (from a wizard standpoint) being consistently able to do damage while your spell slots are expended, is nice
I was going to make a point in True Strike's favor, but I was wrong. It doesn't kick in until your next turn so it does absolutely nothing to opportunity attacks. If this were a BA and affect your next attack, then it would suddenly jump to an A tier cantrip easily!
A bit late to this, I've made this suggestion on other threads but I'll make this niche case usage of True Strike in case you've not seen it before: You do not use it for combat but for information gathering. If you are playing a Divination Wizard, or something similar, this can become a very useful cantrip/tool in your aresnal that can tell you if someone is immune to divination magic, the cantrip can avoid some wasted spell slots on things like Hunters Mark or Mind Spike and you then have a good inkling that spells such as Arcane Eye, Clairvoyance, Detect Magic and Scrying will not be able to see the individual in question.
Its one of those spells that has a use, just a very limited one.
A bit late to this, I've made this suggestion on other threads but I'll make this niche case usage of True Strike in case you've not seen it before: You do not use it for combat but for information gathering. If you are playing a Divination Wizard, or something similar, this can become a very useful cantrip/tool in your aresnal that can tell you if someone is immune to divination magic, the cantrip can avoid some wasted spell slots on things like Hunters Mark or Mind Spike and you then have a good inkling that spells such as Arcane Eye, Clairvoyance, Detect Magic and Scrying will not be able to see the individual in question.
Its one of those spells that has a use, just a very limited one.
That feels like a bit of a stretch; a creature being immune to the effect doesn't prevent the cantrip from being cast, and it doesn't actually do anything unless you then attack the target so that rules out "out of combat" use unless your DM allows an attack out of initiative order. Strictly speaking your DM could let you roll with advantage and then just ignore the second result, so until you know what the target's AC is you wouldn't know it's immune.
You could argue it says "your magic grants you a brief insight into the target's defenses" so maybe you notice the lack of any insight, but it could also be argued that you don't actually gain the insight until you attack (i.e- there is a future event to actually respond to, such as the target dodging as you strike). Basically if you cast the cantrip with no intention of using it then there's no insight for it to give you.
It's a creative idea but I'm not sure there's enough Rules As Written to support this working as-is.
Blade Ward is a perfectly ok cantrip but True Strike is seriously beyond redemption. I think people that consider True Strike useable do not fully realize how truly awful it really is so I am going to break it down a bit more. This experience comes from taking and regretting trying to use True Strike in a campaign.
You need to point a finger (S component) to a target within 30 ft of you. This means you have to potentially get within range of whatever ranged attacks the enemy possesses just to cast the spell. The S component also means you cannot cast this spell if your hands are full (eg. sword and board) without the Warcaster feat.
The spell does not trigger until your next turn. I already laid out why this is terrible in a previous post so no need to repeat myself.
The advantage only works on the target you pointed to meaning if the target dies or gets out of your attack range will just result in you wasting your Action.
You cannot concentrate or will require breaking concentration on another spell while you cast this.
I am sorry but this is just too many drawbacks just to get advantage on ONE attack.
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Why is it that there are some very powerful cantrips, like guidance, that can be used to a great extent outside of combat, and then there are practically useless cantrips like Blade Ward, Resistance, and True Strike.
You get one action inside of combat, and using it to gain a small boost on your NEXT TURN ends up being a detriment more than a benefit!
Technically, you can take the metamagic adept feat and take Quickened spell, but that ends up being limited use, and usable for other things.
The only possible benefit I see is as an immediately prior to combat measure, where you give yourself a little edge before fighting.
Do you agree? Have their been instances where you have used these cantrips to a great effect?
I had a use for resistance once and only once (I usually don't take it) because I knew I was walking into a saving throw roll. True strike on one of the cantrips being improved in one dnd (like spare the dying). see below:
One D&D's Latest Cantrip Updates Make Spellcasters Even More Overpowered (screenrant.com)
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In an ideal world all cantrips would be equally useful and when selecting cantrips for your character you would chose those that fit your character character concept best, over a few campigns you would see all the cantrips used.
No cantrip is completely useless (but true strike gets very close) if you are going though a kobald base where you know there are likely to be lots of traps resistance can be useful to cast on the scout as it is quite likely they will set off a trap. Friends can be useful if you want a fight but don't want ot be seen to start it. The problem with these is they are so situationally useful you will alsways take cantrips that are going to be useful far more often.
Guidance is a problem spell for the opposite reason it is so powerful you feel as if you have to take it, a wizard at level 1 gets ot pick 3 cantrips in theory but in practice they get to pick two to add to guidance.
It isn't just a issue with cantrips, Pretty much every character that can get shield and find familiar as 1st level spells if it is on their list, but I have never seen anoyone take spells like cause fear, illusory script or jump because they are nowhere near as powerful. Right though to level 9 where wish is incredibly powerful (mainly due to its flexibility) but noone takes Wierd (I wouldn't say wierd is useless, it is on a par with a lot of 5th level spells but it is Massively less useful than any other 9th (or 8th and probably 7th) level spell.
Blade ward only really makes sense on classes that can do something useful with their bonus action, or anything similar. So an Arcane Trickster, a Bladesinger once they get Extra Attack, Eldritch Knight once they get War Magic or a Sorcerer with Quickened Spell. But it's a pretty hard sell most of the time as the protection it gives is limited, and for Arcane Trickster and Sorcerer with Quickened Spell you might as well just take the Dodge action instead (nothing prevents damage better then not being hit in the first place). The benefit to the Bladesinger and Eldritch Knight is they can boost defence while still making an attack, but the amount this reduces your damage by is rarely going to be worth it.
True strike is another tricky one; Arcane Trickster is again one of the easier ones to use this one as it gives you a way to gain advantage, but the optional Steady Aim class feature added by Tasha's Cauldron of Everything lets you do that pretty easily already. True strike only has the advantage when you're setting up an ambush as you can cast it before attacking, and still have full use of your bonus action and no reduction in speed, but that's pretty situational.
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Blade ward is better than dodge is two circumstances, first, if the enemy(s) have a greater than 50% chance of hitting you on their attacks and can only attack with bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, while this is quite often the case it is very rarely worth learning a spell to do be able to do something slightly better than dodge where n oenemies have acces to other forms of damage as an attack. The only case I would think blade ward would be worth considering is if you want to be hit but not take much damage, for example a character that uses Armor of Agythis might find blade ward useful.
I was thinking True strike would be useful for a caster making spell attacks but there are very few spells that make a single spell attack for significant damage and the best of those that do (inflict wounds and guiding bolt) are hard to combine with a character that can do something useful with their bonus action.
Wizards get to pick 3 cantrips in practice because Guidance is not in the Wizard spell list.
Also True Strike has no redeeming feature whatsoever. It is hot garbage. It takes a Action AND your concentration to get advantage on your NEXT turn during which time you may suffer damage of some sort and lose concentration resulting in just a wasted Action. Instead you can just normally make 2 attacks over the 2 turns without requiring concentration which is basically the same as getting advantage on one attack with the added benefit to potentially hit both attacks. Even in fringe cases like a Rogue's Sneak Attack there are better methods to generate advantage by hiding or using the Steady Aim feature. Even Quickened Spell can't save True Strike.
Correct, I usually take artificer adept or the Quandrix (strixhaven) background to get Guidance as a wizard.
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By my opinion, many of these "useless" cantrips and also leveled spells (like Weird for example) are intended to be used by enemies and NPC.
Pre-Tasha's you could maybe make a case for Sorcerer via Quickened Spell, because if you knew you were going to cast a big opening attack you could true strike to reduce the chance of wasting it. But with the Seeking Spell Metamagic (2 Sorcery Points to re-roll) there's less need for it, though I guess the cantrip still saves a Metamagic choice, and it stacks if you take both (so you're potentially re-rolling with advantage for four chances to hit). Sorcerers at least get quite a few cantrip choices so it's less of a burden for them to take it, but it's still pretty niche.
My conclusion really is that while blade ward and true strike aren't useless they're very tough to justify taking. The updated true strike in the last playtest does seem a lot better, I don't remember if they've done an updated blade ward yet? They were trying a lot of cantrips as reactions at one point but that would risk tipping blade ward in the other direction if they did it for that (it would be like a lesser Uncanny Dodge you can just choose to have).
Taking true strike on an Arcane Trickster is the one I actually consider useful, because the more ways you have to gain advantage the better IMO. It's still going to be pretty rare that you get a situation where true strike is the one you use, but on those occasions it usually really feels worth having kept it. One example from my experience was a tense stand-off where a Rogue with distant backup was trying to talk someone out of fighting, but just in case it went wrong they had true strike active on the person next to them. When the persuasion failed, they were able to Sneak Attack and Disengage in the opening round, which made the fight a lot easier as they took out the nearest threat and were able to outpace the rest of the enemies. Very, very rare and specific case to come up, but in that moment no other cantrip could have been better IMO (you could argue friends but it was a low Intelligence Arcane Trickster that didn't really use attack/save spells, with higher Charisma to be more of a face).
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Resistance has its benefits as a cantrip and can be used out of combat. Cast it on your scout as they are looking for traps. Or a party member who needs to make saves to alleviate a condition.
Blade Ward is an option to help spellcasters maintain concentration. Not being hit is always a better option, but the character's AC may be such that attacks with disadvantage may still have a high percentage of hitting. Having an option to lessen damage results in a more favorable DC for your CON saves.
True Strike has conditions that just make it far too difficult to be effective. There is almost always a better use for your Action and the situations where True Strike might be effective are too few and far between. Some instances I can think of:
1) Casting before the combat: However, this can easily be negated if the GM doesn't allow casting before initiative.
2) Use in lieu of Readying your Action: This means you want to wait until your next turn to attack rather than taking your action when a condition is met. But the benefit here is if the condition is not met, you don't lose your action and have the option to attach with advantage on your upcoming turn.
3) Retreat or Withdrawing: As the party pulling out of a confrontation, casting this cantrip on the enemy as a precaution if the creature chooses to pursue the party.
4) You are attempting to kill Smaug: If your campaign is based on limited resources, and in particular, limited resources that are required to defeat an enemy, then setting up Advantage on your attacks might be necessary. The bard that has the Alchemist's fire to kill the troll; a horror themed campaign where creatures are homebrewed to be killed by specific items; enchanted ammo; a "one and done" attack that is required to end a confrontation.
Blade ward is a fantastic spell for a blade singer to take. Just putting that out there.
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You would use your action to cast a cantrip instead of something else?
IamSposta is probably referring to one benefit of bladesingers which is that they can cast a cantrip as part of their Extra Attack feature, so they could trigger blade ward and still make one attack with a shadow blade in the same turn, which combined with Blade Song can make for a pretty formidable melee character, at least in short bursts when you feel like it.
Pretty economical too as you can always back off again and revert to ranged blasting, control etc. if you need to, so it's not a bad thing for a Bladesinger to have in their repertoire. Definitely one of the stronger options for blade ward. You have to weigh up the benefits vs. attacking twice instead for more damage (or more attempts to hit) but since you can do the cantrip + attack in any order you can wait to see if your first attack hits before deciding.
Characters: Bullette, Chortle, Dracarys Noir, Edward Merryspell, Habard Ashery, Legion, Peregrine
My Homebrew: Feats | Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Races
Guides: Creating Sub-Races Using Trait Options
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Please don't reply to my posts unless you've read what they actually say.
Ah, thank you.
I like having some Cantrips that can do damage and others for utility, gives a nice balance. While they dont do as much damage as other Spells (from a wizard standpoint) being consistently able to do damage while your spell slots are expended, is nice
I was going to make a point in True Strike's favor, but I was wrong. It doesn't kick in until your next turn so it does absolutely nothing to opportunity attacks. If this were a BA and affect your next attack, then it would suddenly jump to an A tier cantrip easily!
A bit late to this, I've made this suggestion on other threads but I'll make this niche case usage of True Strike in case you've not seen it before: You do not use it for combat but for information gathering. If you are playing a Divination Wizard, or something similar, this can become a very useful cantrip/tool in your aresnal that can tell you if someone is immune to divination magic, the cantrip can avoid some wasted spell slots on things like Hunters Mark or Mind Spike and you then have a good inkling that spells such as Arcane Eye, Clairvoyance, Detect Magic and Scrying will not be able to see the individual in question.
Its one of those spells that has a use, just a very limited one.
That feels like a bit of a stretch; a creature being immune to the effect doesn't prevent the cantrip from being cast, and it doesn't actually do anything unless you then attack the target so that rules out "out of combat" use unless your DM allows an attack out of initiative order. Strictly speaking your DM could let you roll with advantage and then just ignore the second result, so until you know what the target's AC is you wouldn't know it's immune.
You could argue it says "your magic grants you a brief insight into the target's defenses" so maybe you notice the lack of any insight, but it could also be argued that you don't actually gain the insight until you attack (i.e- there is a future event to actually respond to, such as the target dodging as you strike). Basically if you cast the cantrip with no intention of using it then there's no insight for it to give you.
It's a creative idea but I'm not sure there's enough Rules As Written to support this working as-is.
Characters: Bullette, Chortle, Dracarys Noir, Edward Merryspell, Habard Ashery, Legion, Peregrine
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I used True Strike all the time on my character who found an Iron Bands. https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/5354-iron-bands-of-bilarro
I used Blade Ward all the time on both my bladesinger and on my Earth Genasi characters.
Fully disagree they're useless. They're just situationally useful, and you haven't found the situation yet.
I got quotes!
Blade Ward is a perfectly ok cantrip but True Strike is seriously beyond redemption. I think people that consider True Strike useable do not fully realize how truly awful it really is so I am going to break it down a bit more. This experience comes from taking and regretting trying to use True Strike in a campaign.
You need to point a finger (S component) to a target within 30 ft of you. This means you have to potentially get within range of whatever ranged attacks the enemy possesses just to cast the spell. The S component also means you cannot cast this spell if your hands are full (eg. sword and board) without the Warcaster feat.
The spell does not trigger until your next turn. I already laid out why this is terrible in a previous post so no need to repeat myself.
The advantage only works on the target you pointed to meaning if the target dies or gets out of your attack range will just result in you wasting your Action.
You cannot concentrate or will require breaking concentration on another spell while you cast this.
I am sorry but this is just too many drawbacks just to get advantage on ONE attack.