Hey, hey, look over here! Allow us to grab your attention with the magical distraction that is silvery barbs. This intriguing 1st-level enchantment spell, introduced in Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, has the potential to turn the tide of a battle by shifting fortune away from your enemy and into the hands of yourself or your party.
Let's take a look at this flustering spell and how to best use it to gain an advantage over your enemies!
What Does Silvery Barbs Do?
The best way to think of silvery barbs is as a transference of luck. First, when a creature you can see within 60 feet succeeds on an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can use a reaction to make that creature reroll the d20, using the lower roll. Then, you can choose a different creature within range, including yourself, to give advantage on the next attack roll, ability check, or saving throw they make within 1 minute—without using concentration!
Power and Limitations
Silvery barbs can be a pretty powerful spell, for sure. When everything goes exactly as you plan, it can cause a creature to fail a roll they had already succeeded at and cause an ally or yourself to succeed on a roll you may have failed on. But the first limitation of the spell is that in neither case is the failure or success automatic. The triggering target could still succeed on the second roll of their dice, and the creature you choose to give advantage to still could fail on their roll. Regardless of the outcome, you will have used up a spell and your reaction for the round. Compare that to shield, another 1st-level reaction spell, which you can use with the certainty that it will be successful if an enemy’s attack roll is below your improved AC the spell provides. Also, silvery barbs is a “one and done” spell while shield remains active until the start of your next turn, giving you a higher AC against all attacks until then.
At a 1st-level spell slot, silvery barbs might seem at first glance like an economical spell, but remember that every spell slot you use to cast it is one that you cannot use later for a vital attack or healing spell. Dungeon Masters who want to limit the potential abuse of the spell could do so simply by creating a scenario where spell slots are at a premium. Also, since silvery barbs only affects one roll from an enemy, having multiple opponents or enemies that utilize multiattack will help keep combat balanced and challenging.
Elective Courses
Silvery barbs is from Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, one of the Magic: The Gathering setting books. As a player, you should make sure that your DM approves the use of material from that setting in their game before bringing it into play.
The D&D Beyond character builder requires you to toggle “Magic: The Gathering content” on the Character Preferences page in order to access the spell.
Who Can Cast Silvery Barbs?
Flavor-wise, silvery barbs feels like it was crafted with bards in mind, as the spell has similar buffing and debuffing vibes as bard subclass features like Cutting Words, Unsettling Words, or Mote of Potential. The spell fits nicely into the way that bardic magic ties into inspiring allies and distracting foes.
The spell is also made available to wizards and sorcerers, which fits the setting of Strixhaven as a school of magic.
Other ways that characters could get access to silvery barbs would be with a feat or magic item that allows you access to a 1st-level enchantment spell of your choice, such as Fey Touched and Magic Initiate.
Why We Love This Spell
One of our favorite aspects of this spell is how nicely it fits within the bards’ skillset. If another member of the party is already serving as the primary healer, then having a spell that plays to a bard’s strengths in buffing and debuffing can be a lovely supplement. It gives bards a way to utilize their flavor as a reaction in combat when moves requiring the use of Bardic Inspiration wouldn’t normally be available. It feels like a sibling to vicious mockery, the magical ideal of having a wit so quick it can make your enemies trip in their step while pumping up your friends.
But what really appeals to us for the spell is its potential for use out of combat in skill challenges with more of a competitive, roleplay aspect to them. Perhaps when challenging a rival adventuring party to some pub games or trying to beat an enemy henchman in a game of chance to gain information. Whether in combat or out, the spell has the potential for some pretty triumphant moments, being utilized in those critical moments where just a nudge of fate in another direction could mean the difference between a sound victory or a bitter defeat.
FAQ: Silvery Barbs
What effect does silvery barbs have on Legendary Resistance?
Silvery barbs cannot negate Legendary Resistance, as creatures with this ability do not need to succeed on a roll in order to utilize it. So even if a spellcaster used their silvery barbs to make a monster fail its saving throw, the DM could still use Legendary Resistance to pass the save.
What components are required for silvery barbs?
Silvery barbs only requires a vocal component for casting.
Can you use Twinned Spell to cast silvery barbs on more targets?
No. Silvery barbs cannot increase its targets via Twinned Spell as it targets more than one creature.
Can silvery barbs be used in combination with the Order Domain cleric feature Voice of Authority?
Yes. An Order Domain cleric with access to silvery barbs via multiclassing, feats, or magic items, could also allow the targeted ally to make their one weapon attack with advantage using that ally’s reaction.
How does silvery barbs work if a creature is rolling with advantage or disadvantage?
The triggering effect of silvery barbs occurs when the intended target succeeds on a roll. So, if the target had advantage or disadvantage on an attack, saving throw, or skill check, they would first roll the two d20s to determine if the roll was ultimately a success or failure. If it is a success, then you could use your reaction to cast silvery barbs.
Can silvery barbs be used to disrupt a death saving throw?
Yes. Death saves are considered saving throws, so silvery barbs could be used.
How does silvery barbs interact with counterspell?
If the use of counterspell requires an ability check, such as when trying to counter a spell at a higher level without using a higher spell slot, you could make your target reroll that ability check using silvery barbs. A use of counterspell could also negate the casting of silvery barbs. Since it is a 1st-level spell, no roll would be required to interrupt the spell.
What does silvery barbs look like?
While there is no official visual flavor text for what silvery barbs looks like when cast, the spell's description implies distraction for one target and encouragement for the other. It can be inferred that the intention is for the spell to function as words spoken by you via the vocal component, similar to a spell such as vicious mockery or Tasha’s hideous laughter.
However, if you would prefer to picture the spell as actual literal barbed plants made of silver, stealing luck from an enemy and bestowing it to your friends, the optional personalizing spells rules from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything encourages precisely that kind of creative spin on your spellcasting.
Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for the Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast-sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
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Posted Nov 8, 2022We enjoy using all new content, but this spell is definitely too powerful for its level. We have two long campaigns going on (tier 3 and tier 4) and in each of them the players and DM decided unanimously to ban this spell. While helping a team-mate to pass a roll is usually good, the fact that you can use it against enemies as well becomes too troublesome. As other people stated, one can easily overcome a high level spell/ability with this spell. The designers should have further tested this spell before releasing it. Our groups hope it gets redesigned in an upcoming errata or in One D&D.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022Silvery barbs is powerful but its not broken. Shield is mathematically more powerful in preventing hits, silvery barbs just annoys dms by canceling crits and it enables allot of the single target debuff spells which have been difficult to use in the past.
To give an idea of the math. Basically shield has a 25% chance to change the outcome of a roll before it happens and you know before you spend the slot if it will work making it more efficient. Silvery barbs has a chance to change the outcome based on your ac and the monsters hit chance which can be up to but cannot exceed 25% and you don't know if it will succeed before spending the slot so it is less efficient. To clarify while once you know the first roll the probability of silvery barbs changing the out come can be higher than 25% at this point you also know the probability of shield changing the outcome as being 0% or 100% so silvery barbs apparent higher probability than 25% here is actually just that it is not an all or nothing prospect and so can be used in more situations.
The combination of being used allot and being able to cancel high energy moments like crits probably makes silvery barbs feel very powerful in the moment but this power largely disappears when you look across the whole game.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022One PC having this spell is fine.
3+ PCs having this spell is such a pain in the balls.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022Yeah, I agree with that. Its time consuming to have nearly every roll redone or sometimes the same roll redone many times. I have a party where nearly everyone has it and the sheer spam makes me want to ditch it but it's very thematic for my potty mouthed arcane trickster rogue and is another source of advantage for sneak attack.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022Silvery barbs is a multi-purpose spell, with one of its possible uses being the chance of preventing a single attack from hitting. Yes, it does not fully replace the utility of casting shield (which does not always have a 25% chance to change the outcome of a hit, since the probability that the enemy rolls within 5 points of your AC depends on your AC and their attack bonus). When compared to shield, it can arguably be less powerful, but its versatility is what makes it too powerful of a 1st-level spell. Because it is able to also alter ability checks or saving throws (including death saves), the spell is able to significantly change the outcome of an encounter and it is easily "spammable" due to its level. Other reaction-spell options are not as versatile or readily available. For example, counterspell, for which the spellcaster has to balance if it is worth it burning a 3rd-level spell to counter what normally is an unknown spell from being cast (even then, counterspell may not necessarily work). At higher levels the use of silvery barbs can become even more problematic, as spell slots of level 1 and 2 are rarely used (absorb elements has some utility, but shield becomes less useful as most characters/NPCs have very high hit bonuses), and forcing the re-roll of a die + choosing the lowest outcome carries more weight. Even more, granting advantage on a roll to a companion (or yourself) is always useful, all with a single reaction-spell.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022The way shield interacts with ac and to hit chance makes it so that situations where it doesn't represent a 25% chance change should be extremely rare. I.e its only not 25% chance if hit bonus => ac. It's relatively easy for players to get an ac of at least 15 by the time they are fighting cr 17 which is when monsters start to push the minimum of player ac for shield (10) and if they can achieve that then shield will have a 25% chance for all monsters below cr 20. It's also worth noting that in this situation silvery barbs will also not be achieving 25% as it achieves that 25% as the probability to hit approaches 15% for silvery barbs to over take shield in this way then hit bonus- ac would need to be greater than 3.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022As a DM this is a must spell for my casters. The wizard in my group uses this as well. Neither side has hit crits for weeks.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022Players are not supposed to know what a monster's total to-hit result was, they're only supposed to know that they were hit; using shield is supposed to be a gamble.
If a DM tells players what a hit roll was then it turns a bunch of abilities into automatic, consequence-free "nope" buttons, and makes them significantly stronger than they're meant to be. But that's again another reason why silvery barbs is too strong, because it doesn't matter what the roll was, there's always a chance of forcing the enemy to fail.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022Bad spell, shooo! It is even more egregious than Counter spell when it comes to killing pace and fun.
Most people are on its mechanics but what I detest how it comes up in gameplay. It's too spammable for what it is.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022That's a good rework of the spell, wouldn't mind allowing that one.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022Instant ban on all my tables.
I have allowed custom spells that combine Haste and Slow, allowing the caster to selectively decide who gets what within the range of the spell (6th level).
I have allowed custom spells that give d20 bardic inspiration for 1 minute to one creature (1st level spell, learned at lv 14, upcastable for +1 ally per level).
I have allowed a Quiver with infinite arrows that deal 3d8 additional elemental damage (per arrow) to a battle master archer fighter (damage type can be changed as a bonus action).
Yet, as soon as this spell was published, even my unstable sense of game balance (or lack there of) went: NOPE!
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Posted Nov 9, 2022It was in a book that only introduced other 2nd level spells, and as a 2nd level spell it seems much more reasonable. Not sure why they didn't set it there.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022While it's probably not too broken as a hit-prevention/critical cancelling spell, the big problem with silvery barbs is that that's not all that it can do; where it gets most broken is in using it to force re-rolls of your own saving throw spells (since you can cast it during your own turn, as only bonus action spells limit you to cantrips).
Enemy saved against [spell]dominate monster[/monster]? Not to worry! A 1st-level spell will give you another shot at it, and it even stacks with Heightened Spell or anything else that imposes regular disadvantage, so you can effectively force three saving throws against a single spell!
Remove saving throws as an option and it's mostly fine, but I still think it should be regular disadvantage, as the potential for stacking it on top of other similar effects is too high in the current game, as it means that with very few resources you can make opposed ability checks effectively guaranteed. While regular disadvantage would be less useful for crit-cancelling, it still lets you protect vulnerable allies and make opposed ability checks a lot more likely to succeed, while still granting yourself or an ally advantage as an added bonus.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022You've only described your Sorcadin using it to cancel critical hits though; have they used it at all to force re-rolls on saving throws? Do they have any saving throw based spells or abilities they use often? What about the rest of the party?
Again, if critical cancelling is all it's being used for then that's probably not so bad for a 1st-level spell, it makes it not dissimilar to the grave cleric's limited use ability (at 6th-level? I forget), but that isn't all silvery barbs does, and it has a lot of scope for abuse; I'm glad you haven't encountered that, but the problems remain with the spell.
Narratively it has great potential; I love moments in the game when one player wants to cast a spell, and others pitch in to help it succeed, but silvery barbs isn't a spell that only comes up in rare cases to make for that cool moment, you can pretty much effortlessly use it whenever you want, and it has so much potential versatility that if it's allowed at a table of optimisers then every caster that can take it, will (and those that can't, will find a way to). It combines abilities from across multiple classes and spells into one convenient reaction spell that's arguably the best of all the strixhaven signature spells (though I do like vortex warp) and for some reason is 1st-level when the others are all 2nd-level.
It's just such a weirdly poorly considered spell for them to have printed, especially without ever releasing it to UA (which might have reigned it in); now I'm not saying it can't be used in a perfectly reasonable way by a respectful player who isn't there to "win" at any cost and just wants to roleplay with their friends, but this is a discussion thread on the D&D Beyond forums, so the issue is that the spell might as well have been purpose designed for abuse by optimisers because it makes it so easy to do it.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022On average it won't, shield has a higher expected number of cancelled hits.
" Supposed to " is really just a preference here. It doesn't really you should play that way any where you just like the style of game that plays to silvery barbs strengths. For example this article shares my interpretation that you know when shield will work.
Still in that case it becomes a question of if you are likely to face multiple attacks or just one. As levels increase shield would again take over in power as attack numbers increase with level. As soon as you are likely to take two attacks for example shield would again be the better option.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022I was just pointing out where the problems lie with the spell, it's not an attempt at an anecdote-off; it's great that your group isn't having any problems with it, but others have, are and will, as the comments here and elsewhere should make pretty clear.
Under what circumstances and by what measure?
If preventing a critical hit means you or an ally don't need to spend resources on healing then it can easily pay for itself, if using it to force a re-roll on a saving throw means that you don't waste a higher level spell (or can actually justify attempting a save-or-suck at all) then it pays for itself because it's better to spend a 1st-level slot than waste one of 3rd-level or higher and so-on.
While silvery barbs can't force a failure (target could roll well again) unless you're using it when it's unwise to (enemy is likely to roll well again, i.e- you know it has a high modifier) then you shouldn't be wasting it most of the time. 1st-level slots are also generally easier to recover; a Wizard's Arcane Recovery can refresh all of their 1st-level spell slots with room to spare, a Sorcerer's Font of Magic can replace them fairly economically (some sub-classes even more so) and so-on. Any Charisma based caster may multi-class in Warlock for a couple of short rest refreshing 1st-level slots, or you might pick up a free use with a feat etc. Plenty of ways to push the resource further if you want to, and that's ignoring the combination with allies.
The cost isn't simply what you spend to use it, it's weighed against what you've lost, or will lose, if you don't.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022Can you use it with an arcane trickster rouge?
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Posted Nov 9, 2022Completely unrelated but some of the thickest players I've met have been wonderfully intelligent and highly skilled in their fields so that's not a one to one.
Are you perhaps playing in low tiers as I've found it start bening and really become a problem tier 3 and afterwards when a level one spellslots isn't a high cost.
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Posted Nov 9, 2022This spell is banned for me. Its so overpowered and it needs to be reworked asap. Seriously how did this make it through QA? Please address this!
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Posted Nov 10, 2022Yes. Since it's a enchantment spell, you can use any of your choices for it not just one of your four open selections.