Level
4th
Casting Time
1 Action
Range/Area
90 ft.
(20 ft. )
Components
V, S, M *
Duration
Concentration
1 Minute
School
Conjuration
Attack/Save
STR Save
Damage/Effect
Bludgeoning
Squirming, ebony tentacles fill a 20-foot square on ground that you can see within range. For the duration, these tentacles turn the ground in that area into Difficult Terrain.
Each creature in that area makes a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, it takes 3d6 Bludgeoning damage, and it has the Restrained condition until the spell ends. A creature also makes that save if it enters the area or ends it turn there. A creature makes that save only once per turn.
A Restrained creature can take an action to make a Strength (Athletics) check against your spell save DC, ending the condition on itself on a success.
* - (a tentacle)
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Posted Sep 13, 2024Lost the Auto Hit effect on targets already restrained
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Posted Jan 13, 2025Also changed to a strength saving throw. Albeit has a sidegrade upgrade of only targeting strength.
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Posted Feb 21, 2025But it does deal dmg on repeating fails of the saving throw, aye?
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Posted May 22, 2025I suppose the cyclical wording "A creature also makes that save if it enters the area or ends it turn there" would suggest that they would take damage and potentially become/remain restrained on a fail. But it doesn't explicitly say it, which makes figuring out what it does RAW kind of difficult. We shouldn't have to infer meaning. Add it to the list of inconsistencies that is WotC's inability to make rules clear.
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Posted May 27, 2025Yes, an affected creature both takes damage and is Restrained, and it can happen to them more than once (though not more than once per turn). This type of wording is pretty standard and lots of other spells work this way; there's no actual ambiguity here.
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Posted Jun 25, 2025Kinda weird for aberrant sorcerers to get both this and hunger of hadar. I understand they're heavily tentacle themed but both spells are concentration tentacle themed damaging control area of effect spells, and Hunger of Hadar actually scales with spell level and has twice the range. Maybe if you desperately needed to restrain a creature or the enemy has really good dex saves so you need to target strength saves, even though monsters are much more likely to have better strength saves than dex.
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Posted Jun 27, 2025i think it's great to have both options. enemy like assassin or mage will have more dex than str. especially dex type monster tend to have proficiency in dex saving throw. so black tentacles now a great choice now.
same for DM, if your party don't have much/any str based class... this new tentacles can really shut them down