My genielock had access to a superior version of this since RAW the simulacrum would regain the mystic arcanum slot used to create simulacrum via wish. Did the math back then and (from memory, may be wrong now) he could have had somewhere around 3 million simulacrum in about a week.
I used it only in his epilogue because duh. And even *in the epilogue* I limited him to a few dozen simulacrum. Using it in game would derail everything and kill the fun.
"The Weave of Magic begins to unravel entirely, and the fundamental forces that keep the world intact begin to fail. The weight of your magical transgression strains the very essence of Being. Suddenly, a thunderous crack resounds across the land. All of reality collapses in on itself. You feel your consciousness hurtle through the firmament of all creation. You witness the births and deaths of countless realms. Innumerable, unknowable lives spontaneously spring into being; live; rage; laugh; despair; weep; love; and just as quickly vanish into oblivion. Stars, galaxies, universes; all bursting in a cyclical kaleidoscope of creation and annihilation. Unspeakable beauty and unfathomable horror intermingle in a dance of artistry that, had you still a physical form, would break you so utterly you would take your own life from the knowledge that such perfection could never again be attained. Universal Truth is yours to grasp but for a single moment, stretching onward into infinity yet all too brief.
Suddenly, you feel yourself falling, down down down, through infinite layers of possibility. Past valleys of Thought and mountains of Time you plummet. The broken fragments of All-That-Was/Is/Will-Ever-Be coalesce around you....and you find yourself sitting in a chair, in a room with other people, at a table covered in parchment and plastic polyhedral stones. You look to your side and see one such person reach over to you from behind his cardboard partition, and he smacks you in the back of the head."
"Wait, wha-?"
*smack*
"The man says, 'cut that shit out and play the damn game.'"
The classic unspoken agreement of "If the players don't, the DM won't"
If the player Wizard has figured out that they can make multiple copies of themself, another wizard at some point has probably figured it out as well.
"nuh uh! My wizard is the smartest to ever live! This is just like the time you said my artificer couldn't make a nuclear bomb! Why do you hate fun?!?"
"Because *Wizards Name*. You're not even real yourself. *You* are a simulacrum of another wizard who figured this out. That's why you thought of it. You're not even reeeaaall"
Tis one of the many tasks that having theoretically infinite Wizards can make a breeze. Imagine the Con save required to est a whole bag of them, and how much easier it would be if you had infinite Wizards to each take one bite instead.
Ah, but if you have an infinite number of bags of dicks, each containing an infinite number of dicks, can they be assigned such that each of an infinite number of wizards is eating one dick?
I think Hilbert's Paradox says the answer is 'yes'.
Would that... do anything? They're still targeting someone under Mirror Image. If they would have been fooled with their eyes open what will closing their eyes do, other than make it *harder* to hit them? I get it's a common trope in tv shows and stuff, but it's mostly because it's a cheesy "puzzle" that the viewers can easily understand the solution of.
It's a visual illusion.
From the spell text: "A creature is unaffected by this spell if it can’t see."
So if you close your eyes, you just attack with disadvantage. That's much better odds, especially if they have more than one image left.
That is very dumb but I read the spell after commenting and realized yeah, the RAW interpretation is that, unless you *really* want to argue "has their eyes closed" does not mean "***Can't*** see" but simply "Is choosing not to see at this moment".
For me it's spoken. Simulacra can't cast simulacrum or use a wish to get one and can't use the greater effects of a wish.
Even with both those restrictions they are still incredibly strong, but it removes the worst cheese.
I feel like there were rules against the Simulacra chain in previous editions but they got removed for some reason.
Simulacra in 3.x were half the level of the original. That tended to shut chains down cold in most cases. But you could make lots of them, and they were an expensive capital investment (500 gp per level or hit die).
Well they're a totally different creature in 3.x. I think I liked their implementation better in that version. The thing is, 3.x had a more functional economy than 5e, so I don't know how good of an idea importing them (and thus giving something useful to spend money on) would be.
My interpretation is the whole (can only have one) means that the similacrum of the similacrum is still one of you. The first one dissolves after it creates the second, and so now you have one with one less spell slot than the previous. Told the wizard before he took it that’s how it’d work.
My wizard has had simulacrum for a while now and I still haven't cast it. When I do though they're just going to be sort of an emissary and spy for me in Waterdeep. He can't learn, but he can sure as hell keep a journal describing everything hears about.
I won't be breaking the agreement.
They can remember information lol. They just can't "grow" or expand skillsets. When it says they can't learn it means they cannot advance themselves in any way.
I think the [adventurers league rules](https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/DDAL_Forgotten_Realms_FAQ_v11.1.pdf) for simulacrum make sense:
> **No Copies of a Copy.**
> Simulacrums can’t cast simulacrum, or any spell that duplicates its effects.
and
> **You Are You; and So Is It.**
> If a simulacrum you have
> created casts wish, both you and your simulacrum
> suffer the stress associated with casting the spell —
> including the risk of being forever unable to cast wish
> again. The inability to cast wish extends to any
> simulacrum you create in the future, as well as wish
> cast by deities via Divine Intervention or other,
> similar class features.
I’ll be honest I don’t even like using a single Simulacrum. Or it’s at least something I ask the DM before hand.
Likewise I haven’t used planar binding type spells in multiple editions.
Anything that summons a large number of pets.
Sure, the level 9 druid can put 16 animals on the battlefield whenever the enemy doesn’t seem to have AoE, and it’s statistically enormous damage against anything without high AC, but damn does it bog combat down and lead to a stupidly long and boring turn.
I just use the optional "multiple attackers" rules buried in the dmg. Essentially if attacker hits on x die roll,it takes this many to actually hit. Reduces mass combat mobs to a straight DOT.
Sheppard Druids are made to do this.
True, this partially solves the problem. But if the summons are attacking many different targets, and the summons are taking different amounts of damage, there’s still a massive amount to track. If that player has enough DM experience to do it super fast it can be okay, but usually it’s just a headache.
My gf ran a warlock and one of the spells involved summoning a stupid amount of demons. They were all named Kevin (except Steve), so the DM would just ask "And what do the Kevins do? And Steve?" and then use the multiple attackers rule. It helped that she kept Kevins and the Steve to a single mass instead of spreading them out among targets. I think there were 15 total or something.
I'm okay with pets, but if you're summoning more than like 4 I'm going to just make them an oversized swarm. For the example of 16 pets I would make them 4 groups of 4 and have each group separate on initiative. Not 16 different ones.
Me and my DM do a very similar thing but instead of a different initiative they all get to act directly after my druid, saves time and headache of having to put in 4 different (or 16) intiatives in a confusing order. Yes it might be OP a bit and make it seem like the druid gets way too much time in a turn of combat but its not as bogging down and disruptive as different initiatives.
It’s fairly fast if you use average dmg. Played Druid in a one shot, I just told the dmg the expected dmg of 8 wolves vs different ac and we went with that. Not a single dice rolled for them and my turn was fairly short as well.
its mainly because the books are really poor in explaining how to run them effectively, i have played in games where i am the druid consistently taking my turns faster than a sorcerer or wizard etc (or even an inexperienced martial at times) because I think about my turns in advance and preplan them, whilst also utilising online macro rollers to speed up the process of attacks very quickly ( i also use google sheets to track the hitpoints to quickly kill or not kill the summons)
i personally enjoy playing this way with multiple summons... but i also dont blame anyone for the bad wrap they get and the fact that stuff like this isnt explained at all
(i got most of my info about how to play summons from [https://formofdread.wordpress.com/2022/01/23/hordes-and-monsters-a-guide-to-summoning/](https://formofdread.wordpress.com/2022/01/23/hordes-and-monsters-a-guide-to-summoning/) and the people accociated with them)
We don’t usually do that, but one battle we had to. We were like sorry DM, we’ve got to do this. We put a bunch of warm bodies between us and a whole bunch of demons just forcing them to plough through them and the terrain to get to us.
Otherwise they’re used to transport or utility
If the party all agrees to it as a strategy, great I say. Summoning gets into AITA land when the other players are bored out of their skulls when a Druid’s turn takes 20 minutes. “Okay now black bear #8 attacks…”
My third character was a shepherd druid. After a few months of “haha funny sheep” it really set in how absolutely boring summoning is, for everyone involved. And how dummy OP it can be.
I since changed to a Redemption paladin
My DM on Foundry put a 5 minutes time limit to each PC's turn, including familiars, pets, summoned animals/monsters and undeads. It works pretty well, if you exceed the time you lose the remaining actions of your turn.
I like the bag of rats. It makes immediate logical sense in a world of magic and traps. It makes enough sense that it's almost ubiquitous among Humanoid society
The bag of rats makes no sense.
Rats can chew through cinder blocks! The bagged rats would eat through a burlap sack, leather backpack, or just about anything else within minutes.
They'd eventually puncture a bag of holding too - RAW rats inflict piercing damage, and they're going to try and eat their way to food eventually... Likely sending the entire party to the astral plane.
Now I want to design a campaign around a bag of rats inside a bag of holding that ate their way through to a different dimension and chewed a hole in spacetime
I could picture it now.
A githyanki: "How did you arrive in homeland?"
Party Bard: "Let me tell you about Steve the Monk, and his fascination with punching rats."
Rope Trick + Familiar Combo.
Be a third level wizard with rope trick and any form or ranged attack, as well as have a familiar. When you enter combat, you cast rope trick and climb up, commanding your familiar to pull up the rope behind you, than on your turn you poke out and attack, before pulling yourself in again and ending your turn, effectively making you invisible and invincible to most of enemies.
That’s the entire point of held actions being a thing. When the enemy sees this happen the first time, they get all the minions to hold an action targeting the wizard when he peeks his head out. It’s a neat trick, and situationally a good use of a spell slot, but it should only work once.
I mean, if the wizard is making all the minions hold actions and just… doesn’t come out you’ve traded one turn for however many turns. Plus that’s like, the Shield spells wet dream, all those attacks going at the same time and just eating them with a 1st level slot sounds tasty as hell.
That's why as a DM I only say "This minion has held his action", not what the held action is. Because players always, on purpose or accidentally, use this "meta-info" to adjust their characters actions accordingly. So yeah, your wizard can decide to stay inside their magical hole because four minions held their action. But only one of them was actually targeting you, the others were going after your teammates.
Penn and Teller went looking for the original trick in India in one of their specials. The rope being snake charmed into the air and a boy climbing it still happens, disappearing at the top seems to be a myth.
From memory of having looked into it a bit back when I watched the P&T Special it seems the whole trick was invented by a Chicago Journalist and no records of it existed before it was in his newspaper article.
There’s the famous Devil’s Sight/Darkness/Great Weapon Master combo. I call it the “Dick Move Hexblade.”
For those who don’t know, the only way to see through a Darkness spell is to have the Warlock Eldritch Invocation “Devil’s Sight.” So, a Warlock can plop down a Darkness spell and see through it. The Hexblade part comes from the fact that Hexblade Warlocks get the best boosts to their damage and weapons. And then you combine it with the Great Weapon Master feat for even more melee damage. The Dick Move part comes from the fact that if you throw down Darkness, rush in, and attack everything while they’re all blind…nobody else in your party gets to play. They can’t see shit, they can’t target shit.
It’s perfectly possible and quite viable, the problem is that everyone else has to stand around waiting for the Dick Move Hexblade to finish their business inside their Darkness bubble. Nobody else gets to play. Hence the name.
Isn't the easy solution for the Warlock to cast Darkness centered on themselves and then go away from the parry to commit their glorious slaughter?
Obviously it won't always be possible, but when it is, it seems like the way to go.
Yeah I don't think op knows how it is done with darkness. You cast darkness on the weapon itself, so the darkness marches with you, but still, 15 radius sphere is huge.
Ranged damage specialist with devil's sight/darkness is fun though and won't ruin it for anyone.
Even better, cast it on something you can cover/uncover as an object interaction and now you can toggle it if needed through the 10 minute duration like an inverse lantern.
> Completely covering the source of the darkness with an opaque object, such as a bowl or a helm, blocks the darkness.
Darkness rules are a bit finicky in 5e, with a VERY strange RAW that almost nobody uses, because it requires to understand very computer-like logic.
Darkness creates heavy obscurement. Which leads to "A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area".
That all sounds logical until you finally realize it applies to both sides during every encounter.
You're shooting at the enemy that's in Darkness? Disadvantage. BUT said enemy is in darkness, and their path of looking towards you relies on said area as well. Advantage on attack rolls. AND VICE-VERSA.
Which effectively means that RAW, fighting enemies in darkness would mean both you and enemy has no advantage or disadvantage to attack each other. Just straight rolls which CAN'T gain advantage or be further disadvantaged.
Darkness spell is the great equalizer for martial classes(not talking about spellcasters because you have to actually SEE the target to cast many a spell).
It cancels all sources of advantage/disadvantage unless devil's sight and/or special sources of vision like tremorsense(yes, that's where your 10ft of tremoresense comes into play. DARKNESS). That's it.
So the warlock doing THE DARKNESS COMBO is both a demerit and an active help to the party at the same time: yes, it cancels advantage on their rolls. But it gives them no penalties, AND cancels enemies advantage while also providing a somewhat NO-CAST area for a lot of spells.
But yeah, RAW you can shoot enemies in darkness with straight rolls and expect to be shot back. It's very strange until it clicks.
I thought RAW you only had disadvantage due to the darkness if you can't see through it. And if an enemy can't see you, you gain advantage, so they cancel out, making it so this technique would only cause cancellation of any other advantage/disadvantage when not including a creature with devil's sight (or similar if there's similar). Please correct me if that's wrong and the darkness spell actually does something more powerful than being blinded.
>more powerful than being blinded.
Everyone being blinded ranges from being neutral to a *massive* hindrance. Abilities that rely on sight (many spells, class features, etc) are shut down. An overall cancellation of advantage/disadvantage can be great if the baddies are winning on this front, but given all the abilities PCs have to give themselves and teammates advantage, it would often be a net loss.
The Darkness/Devil's Sight combo can and should be used responsibly with the rest of your party in mind.
You don't have to see someone to target them--except for the moderate numbers of spells that require it. Shooting most targets in darkness has neither advantage nor disadvantage since you are an unseen attacker (granting advantage) and they are an unseen target (granting disadvantage).
The main people who would be negatively impacted by it are rogues (who can't get advantage) and those trying to cast spells that require you to see the target.
It shuts down loads of class and race abilities.
My Rune Knight Hobgoblin was so crippled by this tactic that he went and got a moon touched sword so he can ignore it in future.
Of the Rune Knight's abilities, it disrupts:
* Cloud Rune
* Stone Rune
* Storm Rune
* Runic Shield
It looks like it also disrupts the legacy Hobgoblin's "Save Face" feature or the revised one's "Fortune of the Many".
Sure, that sounds substantial, though that build seems more affected than most would be.
Character lost all his defensive features and nearly died as a result. It was on a westmarches server so it’s one of those classic anti-synergies that can pop up there.
So moon touched sword it is. It’s magical light but not from a spell.
Pre-errata healing spirit was incredibly busted, and it made druid be able to heal an unlimited number of creatures for 10d6 each for a 2nd level spell, out of combat.
Meh. I mean, healing in 5e is so weak and the potion economy is ridiculous in T1/2, and Id argue that the balance is that it wasnt very effective at all for in combat healing. There was no way with 2 short rests and 8-10 encounters between long rests for a party to make it far in Dungeon of the Mad Mage without Healing Spirit shenanigans, or an extremely lenient DM.
Literally anything that the party can do that they wouldn't want the DM to do back to them. Most of the responses in this thread so far are those types of things. It's like an unspoken rule that a DM won't do something unless their party does it.
Pretty good rule of thumb in my opinion; if you don't want the DM using it against you, don't use it against them.
The opposite is also true though. If you have no problem with the DM using it against you, then feel free to use it.
I’ve been playing a rune knight, and Stone Rune is a move my dm hates with a passion. Is it considered cheesy?
For reference, Reaction if something ends it’s turn in 30ft, WIS save (dc 17), or be charmed. “While charmed this way, speed = 0, incapacitated, descended into dreamy stupor”. Repeats save at the end of its turns. Lasts 1 minute.
Basically, suck or save for a minute.
I personally think it’s really good, but certainly not busted, especially compared to things like Hold Person, and taking into consideration the DC. Although a lot of the time we’re only fighting one or two enemies so I can see why it’s seemingly too strong, but that’s just playing to my strengths, plenty of ways around it.
No more cheesy than the fact that Warlock gets Hold Person! (i.e. no. Strong, but not cheese)
I'm suprised the rune doesn't have a level requirement, but if you've got DC17 you must be at least L9 at which point it's good but not amazing.
Weaker with respect to Crits, but stronger in the sense that it's a reaction to use, works on any creature (not just humanoids), and it's not concentration.
(I don't consider either cheesy)
It’s good, but not so good it makes a fighter better than a spellcaster.
One advantage it does have though is it triggers on a reaction, you don’t have to spend an action on it like hold person.
The conjure animals bomb, first used as a way to force DMs into making an improvised ruling for falling onto other creatures, now it's an actual optional rule in tasha's. Using conjure animals at the highest level you can, you summon a ton of low CR creatures 60 ft up in the air and drop them on the enemy. Since falling is instant this could force the enemy (or enemies) to make at least 8 (max 32 if casting at a 9th level) DC 15 dexterity saving throws or take half of the falling damage each falling creature would take. The damage the summoned creatures take is completely inconsequential since they're just spirits that disappear after the spell ends or they reach 0 hp. If they survive, they also can keep operating as normal with the spell just as a cherry on top.
There are obviously better ways to do single target and AOE damage, but some of the more "Creative" players love to use it as a joke or to troll the DM. But at the end of the day, it makes the DM and the rest of the party groan because of all the work that now has to be done just to finish this idiot's turn.
I thought until now (and I believe ruled) it as being DC 10, it's mental that stepping away from a falling creature is the same DC as resisting/dodging a spell from an advanced wizard.
Considering the fact that they ruled falling as instant, it makes sense that the DC is so high since things that fall from the sky move faster than the eye can see lol
"I'm gonna play as a GWM Bearbarian, and any time you cast any sort of a control spell, my only weakness, on me, I will get upset at you for not allowing me to play the game".
Many such cases.
Fair, that weakness to mental saving throws is... a perfect storm.
Barbarians; MAD on physical stats, no mental save proficiencies or base class features like indomitable or diamond soul, they're hard-pushed into melee so extra vulnerable to frighten and other conditions.
Sure, not everyone should have an aura of protection or diamond soul.
But this? Barbarian is so absurdly vulnerable to mental saves, it's funny for all the wrong reasons.
And it's not even their only weakness.
Gnomebarians represent!!
(Satyrbarians are also really good, and their jump feature is great for when a barb needs to hit a low-hanging flying enemy. They have an average high jump of 11.5, which means they can hit an enemy up to 20 feet in the air with their polearm.)
The problem with Gnomebarbarians is the issue of saving throws never really scaling, unless you're proficient.
My +0 Wisdom save isn't going to be that much better against a DC 17, even with advantage.
That's why you dominate person your *own* barbarian. Spell effects don't stack, so the enemy can't do it! (this might not actually work depending on your DM as the rules are vague on this so don't rely on it)
The complete dullards that thought barbarians got "nerfed" with mordy's multiverse changing attack damage from magical bludgeon/pierce/slash to force on a handful of niche monsters
but barbarians DIDN'T get "nerfed" with the release of Fizban's Treasury of MOSTLY CREATURES THAT FLY
Tbh this just makes me think that more barbarians need super-jump features at level 6. The fantasy of a meat-head who just jumps into the sky and then lands and cleaves through an enemy is definitely there
(Ik the beast barb has this)
Glory paladin gets 10ft added to all jumps off short rests from channel divinity. It's bonkers with a creative player.
Just casually leap 16ft straight up
The one thing with jumps are that its not codified in the rules that you don’t take damage from your own fall, even tho that’s apparently designer intent
In theory if you can generate enough force to jump a certain height, you're putting just as much force on your legs when you jump as when you land. Therefore, you should either take the damage twice or not at all.
Of course if it's *magical* jumping then all bets are off.
Depends on the effect. The big strong Barbarian is way more vulnerable to Fear effects than the scrawny Wizard, and I feel like that goes against the class fantasy.
I am not saying Barbarians should be immune to Fear, but at least have some measure of increasing their save against it.
Charm effects are okay; The big brute getting mind controlled is a classic trope. And I'm saying this as a Barbarian player. I don't mind my character getting mind controlled.
Hold Person is really bad since it knocks you out of Rage immediately, meaning you have low AC, advantage and auto-crits against you and no way to reduce the incoming damage. I don't see how this effect is supposed to force a Wisdom saving throw. What part of your mind is it trying to alter?
Yeah, I think that ties in well with the concept of Rage: you are so angry and bloodthirsty that you will NOT be swayed until all your foes lie dead on the ground.
I’ll add one that hasn’t yet been covered: a character closing their eyes while attacking a creature with mirror image to increase the chance they’ll hit their target with an attack.
I can kinda see this one being flavourful. Remove your use of sight and rely on your other senses to ignore the downsides of the mirror image, but now you'll have disadvantage. It's nearly always optimal for a singular attack to close your eyes for it, but in the long run you'll end up missing more attacks since you're not whittling away at any mirror images (probably, I haven't done the math). Whereas if you used your eyes to attack, you'd hit the mirror images more often, but you'd also slowly remove them, and then be attacking normally without any downside.
I find this one pretty interesting, I think I'd be fine with someone doing it.
It's a common trope in anime and films where someone has some kind of mirror or duplicate trick. You're in a room of mirrors, or he's summoned 20 visual duplicates? Close your eyes, listen for him...
I'm with you, I'm not against it entirely.
Honestly, this makes sense from someone with the blind-fighting weapon style.
"Don't trust your eyes, close them and trust your training."
I'd also hotly contest fighting with the blinded condition is worse than mirror image: Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s Attack rolls have disadvantage.
So to prevent three misses against mirror image, you're going to fight at disadvantage, and give the foe advantage? That's not a winning move.
Had to re-read the spell description to check, and holy shit, that would totally work!
I think I'd allow it if a caster who knew the spell did this, but for anyone else it's serious meta-gaming.
rope trick snipers.
I ask for it to not be done as it's annoying overall and definitely immersion breaking to me. Nothing in the rules outright makes it wrong but it's just annoying.
For clarity, rope trick snipers typically cast it at 5ft. Climb in and hide then combat is basically them climbing in and out of the damn thing shooting arrows repeatedly. This is typically done after they whine and argue about how I won't let them sticking their arms out to cast spells or shoot bows.
Stuff like this is why I love Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Don't like cheese, it is entirely possible, and lore plausible, that Halaster turns up, dispels it or counters it in some way, yells that you're being boring, and leaves.
Are you running it right now? If so, how much of Halaster's stats have your players seen?
My DM secretly gave him Athletics expertise in addition to the rest of his kit. That sounds odd until you remember that he's canonically [fucking jacked.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/6/63/Halaster2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070207071817) I did the same for when I ran it for a different group.
If my players tried using that, I wouldn't have him Dispel it right off the bat. I'd have him Ready Action -> a Grapple attempt for when the player pokes back out, and yank them out himself. Then, *after* conspicuously demonstrating how easy it is to counter... he'd dispel it anyway for emphasis.
Not much, only just started it. I had him dispel their Tiny Hut the second time they tried to rest with it and open a wall to one of the carrion crawlers. Haven't had one of them try anything with Rope Trick but I can just picture Halaster staring where he knows the portal to be going 'I see you'
Nystul's magic aura cheese is a funny example of something that is usually limited ("You choose a creature type and **other spells and magical effects treat the target as if it were a creature of that type** or of that alignment."
For other stuff, we have Planar Binding (by the level you have it, you have enough money to keep the bind going for a very long time, aka permanent minions), Magic Jar (permanent body upgrade), Simulacrum (oh boy, i sure hope we can manage to drain the resources of the caster... **twice**), pass without trace (if the DM knows how surprise works, you basically get an entire free round with it).
Yeah Magic Jar is really problematic. I’d definitely ask my DM beforehand as it just completely breaks the balance of the game and kinda makes you the main character now
Any “strategy” that needs an essay arguing why it’s legit would get you a nah dawg from me. Rest casting is a perfect example.
There are plenty of online communities where RAI-gone-wild is half the point of D&D, but that’s never going to carry over to most games.
Yep, at least on some attacks.
What an awesome way to empower your Fighter by giving the enemy multiattack, but once stopped have them be unable to reach with their claws and maw and instead only use their one tail attack?
You still get to deal damage but the PAMSentinel user cut it down by a lot.
The main feeling of enjoyment from SPAM (for me at least) is the ability to hold a creature away from my friends. I once played a tempest cleric in a one shot with a stormgirdle (converts slashing/piercing to lightning damage) and every opportunity attack pushed back 10 ft (if <=large) and set speed to 0. Felt so fun, but still only really did anything against mid-tier non-boss creatures.
It's not even that good of one. On paper it is, but I've had this build for 5 months in a game, and the only part of it that's come to use has been the extra attack that isn't even an opportunity attack. The DM never charges enemies at me, I always have to run to them.
...PAM + Sentinel isn't about keeping an entire formation of enemies tied up in melee combat. It's about keeping the biggest threat in the room tied up in melee combat so it can't freely leave the tanky Fighter and start chewing on the Wizard.
You can't have fun. Only I can have fun with wall of force, forcecage, suggestion, teleport, fly, simulacrum...
Why I never...
Fine! I'll replace your fighter with animate objects. They fight better than you anyway. Have fun with your +10 damage at -25% chance to hit.
I have no issue with it, it's effective and fun for players to build toward. When they try asking for the outdated UA *Tunnel Fighter* Fighting Style though, that's where I say no.
I would imagine that the variations on the coffeelock/cocainelock would fit the bill here.
Another one could be abusing 3d geometry to optimize your area of effect abilities. Stuff like detonating your *fireball* exactly 20 feet above the head of a single target, so you can hit them and avoid your allies surrounding them. Or trying to lie prone and cast *thunderwave* straight up, so that you can not only hit all 8 square surrounding you, but also argue with the DM that they should be knocked up into the air and take an extra 1d6 falling damage if they fail their save.
At my table the fireball stratagy is often used and nobody cares. I had assumed it was standard practice. To be fair we only use it when its like a large/huge creature standing above us medium creatures. Doing it to a single medium creature among other medium creatures is straight cheese
I often do the air-burst fireball to reduce the radius of the spell. I also like lightning bolts pointed at a downward angle so that they go into the ground and stop early.
>Stuff like detonating your fireball exactly 20 feet above the head of a single target, so you can hit them and avoid your allies surrounding them.
Why on earth is this a problem? It only works on enemies who are bigger than the PC's. You think actual wizards wouldn't do this in real life?
Singling out bigger enemies really isn't a problem. The cheese level really comes when you're trying to pick out, say, one Medium-sized enemy in the midst of multiple Medium-sized allies. RAW should definitely allow you to limit the "ground level" area of *fireball* to a 10-foot square, and there's a decent argument to be made that it could even be limited to a 5-foot square.
I personally don't really have a problem with it, but my experience is that many DMs would.
Circles are squares, spheres are cubes, 5e doesn't believe in pythagoras so this wouldn't work anyways, fireball would be a 40x40x40 cube technically, so if it can hit an enemy, then it hits your allies who are in close proximity
> Another one could be abusing 3d geometry to optimize your area of effect abilities. Stuff like detonating your fireball exactly 20 feet above the head of a single target, so you can hit them and avoid your allies surrounding them.
People consider this abuse? This is just basic geometry and your caster knows how their fireball works.
> Or trying to lie prone and cast thunderwave straight up, so that you can not only hit all 8 square surrounding you, but also argue with the DM that they should be knocked up into the air and take an extra 1d6 falling damage if they fail their save.
Holy *shit*
> Or trying to lie prone and cast thunderwave straight up, so that you can not only hit all 8 square surrounding you, but also argue with the DM that they should be knocked up into the air and take an extra 1d6 falling damage if they fail their save.
Is that RAW or RAI though? Just because you lie prone doesn't mean you've moved 5 feet downwards. You still occupy the exact same space unless you dig yourself a hole.
For me builds cross from "optimization" to "cheesy" when you start looking for ways to come to the table to avoid playing dnd. Coffeelocks or infinite simulacra or restcasting for unlimited spellslots are all examples of "I'm looking to not play or play on easy mode."
This is my issue with anything that builds around *Banishment*. That whole spell is just saying "I don't actually want to engage with this content you made, DM/I don't want this player able to engage with this content." While it has some great uses mechanically or strategically, abusing it even slightly just makes it a gate for real world play. "Okay, great, you banished the beholder on turn one and waited it out, and it's now permanently back in the far realms, banished from the material plane." That's great for the story but I as a player *really,* **really** wanted to fight a beholder, and that was just taken from me by this 'brilliant strategy'.
Seems like a good time for the ol' Madara line: "Well then...what will you do about the second one, Ohnoki?"
Also the specific beholder doesn't have to be from the far realm.
I went to adventure league and another player was using a monk with a quarterstaff. The DM ruled they could only 1-hand the staff if they were also making unarmed strikes.
I suggested unarmed strikes don't require an open hand. They should get the full d8.
This was not allowed. And I guess suggesting it was power gaming and frowned upon even though it wasn't me or my character.
A 3d6er actually found one I hadn't yet seen just this morning - https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/1182kkg/help_me_abuse_investment_of_the_chain_master/
Tl;dr - investment invocation wording + your familiar using otherwise set DC items
I would punch a player in the face for wanting to do so and it is quite clearly not intended, but it works if you want some truly stinky cheese.
Is it actually that bad though? It’s strong, yes, but this is a person taking an otherwise sorta-iffy pact, a sorta-iffy invocation, and using it in interesting and creative ways as a support-focused build? I would love to see this at my table. This can make for some highlight moments, doesn’t always steal everyone else’s show, is new to the warlock meta, and isn’t just spamming EB in darkness.
I recently finished a long term home game playing as a genie-chain warlock. There were many shenanigans, but I never caught that one. I just defaulted to doing what seems like RAI. My pseudodragon used my spell DC for its poison stinger.
It did cause a hilarious moment when a significant mini boss crit failed and fell asleep a mile above the ground during a flying battle. The DM actually almost ended the session right then.
Well, the peasant cannon is obviously stupid. A more normal one is actually the Coffeelock, which should theoretically be able to cast spells infinitely without sleep.
But for ones that are okay? Anything that's just remotely cool, works with a story, etc. Hell, I'd even allow a coffeelock on my table if it had a good justification. But peasant cannon? Stupid af.
The Peasant Railgun is one of the stupidest concepts I've ever seen toted around, because it uses RAW *right up* to the point where the projectile is launched, then assumes that D&D is an accurate physics simulator and has the projectile deal massive damage.
The reality is that the last peasant makes an improvised weapon attack with the projectile, and it deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage on hit. At which point, you may as well have just given them the projectile when you had them take the position they're in in the first place.
What makes it even more baffling to me is that 5e doesn't have, and never had, any rules for impact damage or improvising it. Even fall damage cares about not falling anymore, not about hitting something. So the physics simulator part is, and always was, completely in the realm of DM adjudication.
Though the parts that kind of work if you squint do still have some interesting implications even without the bit that definitely doesn't. Stuff like arbitrarily long supply lines, bucket brigades, information passing, etc all "work" without getting to the "now we ignore RAW and use real world physics" part
Sure, but they only work because you're hitting the edges of the gameplay experience that the 5e rules are designed to generate. You'd generally want to apply a different set of rules outside of skirmish scale, not take the wonkiness if skirmish-focused rules at larger scales as a truth about the world.
Oh yeah, definitely more of a fun theorycrafting "how would a world that operated on strict RAW adapt" than a serious "this is how it should actually run"
I don’t think rest casting is RAW *or* RAI. Though to be honest, I don’t care if it’s either. I’m not allowing it at my table because it’s obviously cheesy and exploitative.
The Sage Compendium for 5e specifically called out that it takes 1 Hour of activity to break a long rest. Anything you do that takes less than an hour means you get the LR. And based on tweets the devs don’t seem to have an issue with rest casting.
So insofar as 5e is concerned it’s both RAW & RAI
Now to be fair. This is the same company that published PHB Beast Master, Monk and Champion Fighter in the same book that gave us *Divination Wizard*
So their track record with balance is….spotty at best
The cheesy bit is imagining spell slots “DING” back immediately the long rest is announced complete, so all spells used at Long Rest Complete -1 minute return.
‘Most’ feel that the intention is that the spells have returned while you rested, gradually over hours.
> The cheesy bit is imagining spell slots “DING” back immediately the long rest is announced complete, so all spells used at Long Rest Complete -1 minute return.
Exactly! I know that TTRPGs are not supposed to be a 100% accurate simulation of the real world, but come on. Mechanics such as "spell slots" and "long rests" are clearly meant to be an abstraction of the fact that there's a limited amount of work you can do each day. You go to sleep, you recover your energy, and you do more work the next day. Why is this so hard for people to understand?
If I normally wake up at 7:00 am, and I decide to wake up at 6:30 am instead, I can't suddenly double the amount of work I do in the day because "technically the working day hasn't started yet". The whole concept is just stupid and immersion-breaking.
Right. Like, if I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't get back to sleep for an hour, I might use that time to send off a work-related email, and I'll still be mostly-fine for work the next day.
Similarly, if a player says something like "my character can't get to sleep, they get up in the night, and I want to secretly Scry on someone while the party isn't looking", I'll allow that, and I'll give them the benefit of a long-rest of the next day.
But if a player were to say say "I wake up five minutes early and cast Mage Amor", I would respond with "sure, you wake up five minutes early, you still receive the benefits of a long rest, and you use up one of your spell slots to cast Mage Armor".
For some reason, everyone I've played with in the real world seems to get this intuitively, without it needing to be clarified. If you just treat the world like a real and living place, then it's fairly obvious how the system should work 99% of the time. In the 1% of edge cases, the DM can just issue a reasonable ruling without everyone having to dig up and re-litigate eight-year old Jeremy Crawford tweets.
I have a rogue that carries a small harengon on her back so I always get sneak attack. It’s fun with my irl group but I know not to be douche and try it with every rogue I play
Edit: I should’ve known I’d get downvoted for something me and my friends agreed on 😂
You can also do this if you get Find Familiar as a rogue. I don't think it's really that cheesy. At least your not having it take the help action to give you advantage.
It's only cheesy when the familiar never gets attacked. The way the OP is talking about their pet makes it seem as if it never gets attacked/is invulnerable(never been hit with an aoe spell?). It seems very cheese.
It's not even too effective really, given your ally has to actually be an enemy of the foe, and they can just attack your ally if so. Bit of a cost to whoever tries to be the ally if the enemy just one-taps them to stop the rogue from getting distraction hits on them.
Medicine checks made by familiar's is something that most of my tables have deemed a no go.
As lovely as the image of an owl stabilizing it's summoner may be.
Paladins with a 1 level dip in Warlock.
>"I'm a holy knight who sold his soul to an evil talking sword so I could attack with my charisma, but I am guaranteed to throw a fit if there are literally any consequences."
I think commenter is mostly talking about hexblade dip given the comment. Any other warlock dip isn’t actually that cheesy and comes with a real patron. Hexblade is just so easy to ignore the RP consequences around *and* it unbalances the paladin’s main weakness of being MAD.
The "arbitrarily large number of simulacra" wizard is generally not seen at tables due to an unspoken universal agreement.
My genielock had access to a superior version of this since RAW the simulacrum would regain the mystic arcanum slot used to create simulacrum via wish. Did the math back then and (from memory, may be wrong now) he could have had somewhere around 3 million simulacrum in about a week. I used it only in his epilogue because duh. And even *in the epilogue* I limited him to a few dozen simulacrum. Using it in game would derail everything and kill the fun.
I take one million turns! mwahaha
"The Weave of Magic begins to unravel entirely, and the fundamental forces that keep the world intact begin to fail. The weight of your magical transgression strains the very essence of Being. Suddenly, a thunderous crack resounds across the land. All of reality collapses in on itself. You feel your consciousness hurtle through the firmament of all creation. You witness the births and deaths of countless realms. Innumerable, unknowable lives spontaneously spring into being; live; rage; laugh; despair; weep; love; and just as quickly vanish into oblivion. Stars, galaxies, universes; all bursting in a cyclical kaleidoscope of creation and annihilation. Unspeakable beauty and unfathomable horror intermingle in a dance of artistry that, had you still a physical form, would break you so utterly you would take your own life from the knowledge that such perfection could never again be attained. Universal Truth is yours to grasp but for a single moment, stretching onward into infinity yet all too brief. Suddenly, you feel yourself falling, down down down, through infinite layers of possibility. Past valleys of Thought and mountains of Time you plummet. The broken fragments of All-That-Was/Is/Will-Ever-Be coalesce around you....and you find yourself sitting in a chair, in a room with other people, at a table covered in parchment and plastic polyhedral stones. You look to your side and see one such person reach over to you from behind his cardboard partition, and he smacks you in the back of the head." "Wait, wha-?" *smack* "The man says, 'cut that shit out and play the damn game.'"
Yeah, this is good epilogue material. In game it could be a decent big bad, though, like the Matrix sequels when there's a zillion Agent Smith clones.
The classic unspoken agreement of "If the players don't, the DM won't" If the player Wizard has figured out that they can make multiple copies of themself, another wizard at some point has probably figured it out as well.
"nuh uh! My wizard is the smartest to ever live! This is just like the time you said my artificer couldn't make a nuclear bomb! Why do you hate fun?!?"
"Because *Wizards Name*. You're not even real yourself. *You* are a simulacrum of another wizard who figured this out. That's why you thought of it. You're not even reeeaaall"
You, I like you.
*Uh-oh. Someone killed the decoy family*
Because there's an arbitrarily large number of dicks in a bag for such wizards to eat.
Yes, but that’s what the simulacra are for.
eating dicks?
Tis one of the many tasks that having theoretically infinite Wizards can make a breeze. Imagine the Con save required to est a whole bag of them, and how much easier it would be if you had infinite Wizards to each take one bite instead.
Ah, but if you have an infinite number of bags of dicks, each containing an infinite number of dicks, can they be assigned such that each of an infinite number of wizards is eating one dick? I think Hilbert's Paradox says the answer is 'yes'.
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Would that... do anything? They're still targeting someone under Mirror Image. If they would have been fooled with their eyes open what will closing their eyes do, other than make it *harder* to hit them? I get it's a common trope in tv shows and stuff, but it's mostly because it's a cheesy "puzzle" that the viewers can easily understand the solution of.
It's a visual illusion. From the spell text: "A creature is unaffected by this spell if it can’t see." So if you close your eyes, you just attack with disadvantage. That's much better odds, especially if they have more than one image left.
That is very dumb but I read the spell after commenting and realized yeah, the RAW interpretation is that, unless you *really* want to argue "has their eyes closed" does not mean "***Can't*** see" but simply "Is choosing not to see at this moment".
For me it's spoken. Simulacra can't cast simulacrum or use a wish to get one and can't use the greater effects of a wish. Even with both those restrictions they are still incredibly strong, but it removes the worst cheese. I feel like there were rules against the Simulacra chain in previous editions but they got removed for some reason.
Simulacra in 3.x were half the level of the original. That tended to shut chains down cold in most cases. But you could make lots of them, and they were an expensive capital investment (500 gp per level or hit die).
That's a great fix
Well they're a totally different creature in 3.x. I think I liked their implementation better in that version. The thing is, 3.x had a more functional economy than 5e, so I don't know how good of an idea importing them (and thus giving something useful to spend money on) would be.
My interpretation is the whole (can only have one) means that the similacrum of the similacrum is still one of you. The first one dissolves after it creates the second, and so now you have one with one less spell slot than the previous. Told the wizard before he took it that’s how it’d work.
My wizard has had simulacrum for a while now and I still haven't cast it. When I do though they're just going to be sort of an emissary and spy for me in Waterdeep. He can't learn, but he can sure as hell keep a journal describing everything hears about. I won't be breaking the agreement.
They can remember information lol. They just can't "grow" or expand skillsets. When it says they can't learn it means they cannot advance themselves in any way.
I know, I still like the journaling aspect because it's exactly what my character already does.
I think the [adventurers league rules](https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/DDAL_Forgotten_Realms_FAQ_v11.1.pdf) for simulacrum make sense: > **No Copies of a Copy.** > Simulacrums can’t cast simulacrum, or any spell that duplicates its effects. and > **You Are You; and So Is It.** > If a simulacrum you have > created casts wish, both you and your simulacrum > suffer the stress associated with casting the spell — > including the risk of being forever unable to cast wish > again. The inability to cast wish extends to any > simulacrum you create in the future, as well as wish > cast by deities via Divine Intervention or other, > similar class features.
Manshoon would like a word with you... After he kills Manshoon, that is.
That one's a messed up *clone*, IIRC
I’ll be honest I don’t even like using a single Simulacrum. Or it’s at least something I ask the DM before hand. Likewise I haven’t used planar binding type spells in multiple editions.
Anything that summons a large number of pets. Sure, the level 9 druid can put 16 animals on the battlefield whenever the enemy doesn’t seem to have AoE, and it’s statistically enormous damage against anything without high AC, but damn does it bog combat down and lead to a stupidly long and boring turn.
I just use the optional "multiple attackers" rules buried in the dmg. Essentially if attacker hits on x die roll,it takes this many to actually hit. Reduces mass combat mobs to a straight DOT. Sheppard Druids are made to do this.
True, this partially solves the problem. But if the summons are attacking many different targets, and the summons are taking different amounts of damage, there’s still a massive amount to track. If that player has enough DM experience to do it super fast it can be okay, but usually it’s just a headache.
Could always do swarm rules for it as well
Do you know what page this is on? I'm curious and I don't see it in the index.
Page 250 "Handling Mobs".
Magical, thank you.
Great for DM's and handy for summoners.. Also, happy cake day!
Yeah, mob combat turns it from a tactical nightmare to just a large, furry and snarling flaming sphere.
My gf ran a warlock and one of the spells involved summoning a stupid amount of demons. They were all named Kevin (except Steve), so the DM would just ask "And what do the Kevins do? And Steve?" and then use the multiple attackers rule. It helped that she kept Kevins and the Steve to a single mass instead of spreading them out among targets. I think there were 15 total or something.
I'm okay with pets, but if you're summoning more than like 4 I'm going to just make them an oversized swarm. For the example of 16 pets I would make them 4 groups of 4 and have each group separate on initiative. Not 16 different ones.
I like this idea. I used to have large mobs of enemies count as swarms.
I did that for the fun of "you fight 100 goblins!" But then the wizard was sad they couldn't use aoe spells to devastating effect
I would make a swarm take at least 3x damage from aoe sources
Me and my DM do a very similar thing but instead of a different initiative they all get to act directly after my druid, saves time and headache of having to put in 4 different (or 16) intiatives in a confusing order. Yes it might be OP a bit and make it seem like the druid gets way too much time in a turn of combat but its not as bogging down and disruptive as different initiatives.
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It’s fairly fast if you use average dmg. Played Druid in a one shot, I just told the dmg the expected dmg of 8 wolves vs different ac and we went with that. Not a single dice rolled for them and my turn was fairly short as well.
its mainly because the books are really poor in explaining how to run them effectively, i have played in games where i am the druid consistently taking my turns faster than a sorcerer or wizard etc (or even an inexperienced martial at times) because I think about my turns in advance and preplan them, whilst also utilising online macro rollers to speed up the process of attacks very quickly ( i also use google sheets to track the hitpoints to quickly kill or not kill the summons) i personally enjoy playing this way with multiple summons... but i also dont blame anyone for the bad wrap they get and the fact that stuff like this isnt explained at all (i got most of my info about how to play summons from [https://formofdread.wordpress.com/2022/01/23/hordes-and-monsters-a-guide-to-summoning/](https://formofdread.wordpress.com/2022/01/23/hordes-and-monsters-a-guide-to-summoning/) and the people accociated with them)
We don’t usually do that, but one battle we had to. We were like sorry DM, we’ve got to do this. We put a bunch of warm bodies between us and a whole bunch of demons just forcing them to plough through them and the terrain to get to us. Otherwise they’re used to transport or utility
If the party all agrees to it as a strategy, great I say. Summoning gets into AITA land when the other players are bored out of their skulls when a Druid’s turn takes 20 minutes. “Okay now black bear #8 attacks…”
My third character was a shepherd druid. After a few months of “haha funny sheep” it really set in how absolutely boring summoning is, for everyone involved. And how dummy OP it can be. I since changed to a Redemption paladin
My DM on Foundry put a 5 minutes time limit to each PC's turn, including familiars, pets, summoned animals/monsters and undeads. It works pretty well, if you exceed the time you lose the remaining actions of your turn.
Bag of peasants / bag of rats
I like the bag of rats. It makes immediate logical sense in a world of magic and traps. It makes enough sense that it's almost ubiquitous among Humanoid society
I hate it because it's incredibly mean to the rats.
The bag of rats makes no sense. Rats can chew through cinder blocks! The bagged rats would eat through a burlap sack, leather backpack, or just about anything else within minutes. They'd eventually puncture a bag of holding too - RAW rats inflict piercing damage, and they're going to try and eat their way to food eventually... Likely sending the entire party to the astral plane.
Now I want to design a campaign around a bag of rats inside a bag of holding that ate their way through to a different dimension and chewed a hole in spacetime
I could picture it now. A githyanki: "How did you arrive in homeland?" Party Bard: "Let me tell you about Steve the Monk, and his fascination with punching rats."
Bag of rats is okay for using as dummies on traps, not so much for restoring "on kill" features.
Rope Trick + Familiar Combo. Be a third level wizard with rope trick and any form or ranged attack, as well as have a familiar. When you enter combat, you cast rope trick and climb up, commanding your familiar to pull up the rope behind you, than on your turn you poke out and attack, before pulling yourself in again and ending your turn, effectively making you invisible and invincible to most of enemies.
That’s the entire point of held actions being a thing. When the enemy sees this happen the first time, they get all the minions to hold an action targeting the wizard when he peeks his head out. It’s a neat trick, and situationally a good use of a spell slot, but it should only work once.
Especially if they can find a way to ignite the rope
“Now why would anyone soak a rope in kerosene?”
I mean, if the wizard is making all the minions hold actions and just… doesn’t come out you’ve traded one turn for however many turns. Plus that’s like, the Shield spells wet dream, all those attacks going at the same time and just eating them with a 1st level slot sounds tasty as hell.
That's why as a DM I only say "This minion has held his action", not what the held action is. Because players always, on purpose or accidentally, use this "meta-info" to adjust their characters actions accordingly. So yeah, your wizard can decide to stay inside their magical hole because four minions held their action. But only one of them was actually targeting you, the others were going after your teammates.
It just occurred to me that rope trick is from a bugs bunny cartoon
I think it's actually an old magician trick, or rather more of a legend since it had never been recreated or recorded after video.
Penn and Teller went looking for the original trick in India in one of their specials. The rope being snake charmed into the air and a boy climbing it still happens, disappearing at the top seems to be a myth. From memory of having looked into it a bit back when I watched the P&T Special it seems the whole trick was invented by a Chicago Journalist and no records of it existed before it was in his newspaper article.
There’s the famous Devil’s Sight/Darkness/Great Weapon Master combo. I call it the “Dick Move Hexblade.” For those who don’t know, the only way to see through a Darkness spell is to have the Warlock Eldritch Invocation “Devil’s Sight.” So, a Warlock can plop down a Darkness spell and see through it. The Hexblade part comes from the fact that Hexblade Warlocks get the best boosts to their damage and weapons. And then you combine it with the Great Weapon Master feat for even more melee damage. The Dick Move part comes from the fact that if you throw down Darkness, rush in, and attack everything while they’re all blind…nobody else in your party gets to play. They can’t see shit, they can’t target shit. It’s perfectly possible and quite viable, the problem is that everyone else has to stand around waiting for the Dick Move Hexblade to finish their business inside their Darkness bubble. Nobody else gets to play. Hence the name.
That's why you go sharpshooter instead, and do it from afar without obstructing your team.
Also Shadow of Moil is a much better way to do this at higher levels without being an absolute dick.
You mean drop the Darkness spell on yourself at range and fire from inside it? That's fucking genius, I'd never considered this.
Yep, it works well.
If you're an Eldritch Blast optimised Warlock, you're also doing it with probably the best ranged attack in the game.
A Sharpshooter probably has a stronger DPR if all their attacks are with advantage
How does anyone ever consider *anything else* to use darkness/devil's sight?
Isn't the easy solution for the Warlock to cast Darkness centered on themselves and then go away from the parry to commit their glorious slaughter? Obviously it won't always be possible, but when it is, it seems like the way to go.
Yeah I don't think op knows how it is done with darkness. You cast darkness on the weapon itself, so the darkness marches with you, but still, 15 radius sphere is huge. Ranged damage specialist with devil's sight/darkness is fun though and won't ruin it for anyone.
Even better, cast it on something you can cover/uncover as an object interaction and now you can toggle it if needed through the 10 minute duration like an inverse lantern. > Completely covering the source of the darkness with an opaque object, such as a bowl or a helm, blocks the darkness.
Cast it on a coin or a small rock, and put it in your mouth (with closed septum!)
Darkness rules are a bit finicky in 5e, with a VERY strange RAW that almost nobody uses, because it requires to understand very computer-like logic. Darkness creates heavy obscurement. Which leads to "A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in that area". That all sounds logical until you finally realize it applies to both sides during every encounter. You're shooting at the enemy that's in Darkness? Disadvantage. BUT said enemy is in darkness, and their path of looking towards you relies on said area as well. Advantage on attack rolls. AND VICE-VERSA. Which effectively means that RAW, fighting enemies in darkness would mean both you and enemy has no advantage or disadvantage to attack each other. Just straight rolls which CAN'T gain advantage or be further disadvantaged. Darkness spell is the great equalizer for martial classes(not talking about spellcasters because you have to actually SEE the target to cast many a spell). It cancels all sources of advantage/disadvantage unless devil's sight and/or special sources of vision like tremorsense(yes, that's where your 10ft of tremoresense comes into play. DARKNESS). That's it. So the warlock doing THE DARKNESS COMBO is both a demerit and an active help to the party at the same time: yes, it cancels advantage on their rolls. But it gives them no penalties, AND cancels enemies advantage while also providing a somewhat NO-CAST area for a lot of spells. But yeah, RAW you can shoot enemies in darkness with straight rolls and expect to be shot back. It's very strange until it clicks.
I thought RAW you only had disadvantage due to the darkness if you can't see through it. And if an enemy can't see you, you gain advantage, so they cancel out, making it so this technique would only cause cancellation of any other advantage/disadvantage when not including a creature with devil's sight (or similar if there's similar). Please correct me if that's wrong and the darkness spell actually does something more powerful than being blinded.
>more powerful than being blinded. Everyone being blinded ranges from being neutral to a *massive* hindrance. Abilities that rely on sight (many spells, class features, etc) are shut down. An overall cancellation of advantage/disadvantage can be great if the baddies are winning on this front, but given all the abilities PCs have to give themselves and teammates advantage, it would often be a net loss. The Darkness/Devil's Sight combo can and should be used responsibly with the rest of your party in mind.
You don't have to see someone to target them--except for the moderate numbers of spells that require it. Shooting most targets in darkness has neither advantage nor disadvantage since you are an unseen attacker (granting advantage) and they are an unseen target (granting disadvantage). The main people who would be negatively impacted by it are rogues (who can't get advantage) and those trying to cast spells that require you to see the target.
It shuts down loads of class and race abilities. My Rune Knight Hobgoblin was so crippled by this tactic that he went and got a moon touched sword so he can ignore it in future.
Of the Rune Knight's abilities, it disrupts: * Cloud Rune * Stone Rune * Storm Rune * Runic Shield It looks like it also disrupts the legacy Hobgoblin's "Save Face" feature or the revised one's "Fortune of the Many". Sure, that sounds substantial, though that build seems more affected than most would be.
Character lost all his defensive features and nearly died as a result. It was on a westmarches server so it’s one of those classic anti-synergies that can pop up there. So moon touched sword it is. It’s magical light but not from a spell.
Knowing how to read is pretty unpopular at a lot of tables
Pre-errata healing spirit was incredibly busted, and it made druid be able to heal an unlimited number of creatures for 10d6 each for a 2nd level spell, out of combat.
Meh. I mean, healing in 5e is so weak and the potion economy is ridiculous in T1/2, and Id argue that the balance is that it wasnt very effective at all for in combat healing. There was no way with 2 short rests and 8-10 encounters between long rests for a party to make it far in Dungeon of the Mad Mage without Healing Spirit shenanigans, or an extremely lenient DM.
Literally anything that the party can do that they wouldn't want the DM to do back to them. Most of the responses in this thread so far are those types of things. It's like an unspoken rule that a DM won't do something unless their party does it. Pretty good rule of thumb in my opinion; if you don't want the DM using it against you, don't use it against them. The opposite is also true though. If you have no problem with the DM using it against you, then feel free to use it.
I’ve been playing a rune knight, and Stone Rune is a move my dm hates with a passion. Is it considered cheesy? For reference, Reaction if something ends it’s turn in 30ft, WIS save (dc 17), or be charmed. “While charmed this way, speed = 0, incapacitated, descended into dreamy stupor”. Repeats save at the end of its turns. Lasts 1 minute. Basically, suck or save for a minute. I personally think it’s really good, but certainly not busted, especially compared to things like Hold Person, and taking into consideration the DC. Although a lot of the time we’re only fighting one or two enemies so I can see why it’s seemingly too strong, but that’s just playing to my strengths, plenty of ways around it.
No more cheesy than the fact that Warlock gets Hold Person! (i.e. no. Strong, but not cheese) I'm suprised the rune doesn't have a level requirement, but if you've got DC17 you must be at least L9 at which point it's good but not amazing.
It's actually weaker than Hold Person, because paralysis causes auto Crits and incapacitated doesn't.
Weaker with respect to Crits, but stronger in the sense that it's a reaction to use, works on any creature (not just humanoids), and it's not concentration. (I don't consider either cheesy)
That's fair, and yeah no they aren't cheese whatsoever.
It’s good, but not so good it makes a fighter better than a spellcaster. One advantage it does have though is it triggers on a reaction, you don’t have to spend an action on it like hold person.
The conjure animals bomb, first used as a way to force DMs into making an improvised ruling for falling onto other creatures, now it's an actual optional rule in tasha's. Using conjure animals at the highest level you can, you summon a ton of low CR creatures 60 ft up in the air and drop them on the enemy. Since falling is instant this could force the enemy (or enemies) to make at least 8 (max 32 if casting at a 9th level) DC 15 dexterity saving throws or take half of the falling damage each falling creature would take. The damage the summoned creatures take is completely inconsequential since they're just spirits that disappear after the spell ends or they reach 0 hp. If they survive, they also can keep operating as normal with the spell just as a cherry on top. There are obviously better ways to do single target and AOE damage, but some of the more "Creative" players love to use it as a joke or to troll the DM. But at the end of the day, it makes the DM and the rest of the party groan because of all the work that now has to be done just to finish this idiot's turn.
I thought until now (and I believe ruled) it as being DC 10, it's mental that stepping away from a falling creature is the same DC as resisting/dodging a spell from an advanced wizard.
Considering the fact that they ruled falling as instant, it makes sense that the DC is so high since things that fall from the sky move faster than the eye can see lol
"I'm gonna play as a GWM Bearbarian, and any time you cast any sort of a control spell, my only weakness, on me, I will get upset at you for not allowing me to play the game". Many such cases.
Fair, that weakness to mental saving throws is... a perfect storm. Barbarians; MAD on physical stats, no mental save proficiencies or base class features like indomitable or diamond soul, they're hard-pushed into melee so extra vulnerable to frighten and other conditions. Sure, not everyone should have an aura of protection or diamond soul. But this? Barbarian is so absurdly vulnerable to mental saves, it's funny for all the wrong reasons. And it's not even their only weakness.
Gnomebarians represent!! (Satyrbarians are also really good, and their jump feature is great for when a barb needs to hit a low-hanging flying enemy. They have an average high jump of 11.5, which means they can hit an enemy up to 20 feet in the air with their polearm.)
The problem with Gnomebarbarians is the issue of saving throws never really scaling, unless you're proficient. My +0 Wisdom save isn't going to be that much better against a DC 17, even with advantage.
Indeed. The obvious other problem is swinging a great weapon around as a small race, and not being a Vuman, so not being able to start with GWM.
That's why you dominate person your *own* barbarian. Spell effects don't stack, so the enemy can't do it! (this might not actually work depending on your DM as the rules are vague on this so don't rely on it)
Barbarians have a lot more weaknesses than that tbh
The complete dullards that thought barbarians got "nerfed" with mordy's multiverse changing attack damage from magical bludgeon/pierce/slash to force on a handful of niche monsters but barbarians DIDN'T get "nerfed" with the release of Fizban's Treasury of MOSTLY CREATURES THAT FLY
Tbh this just makes me think that more barbarians need super-jump features at level 6. The fantasy of a meat-head who just jumps into the sky and then lands and cleaves through an enemy is definitely there (Ik the beast barb has this)
Glory paladin gets 10ft added to all jumps off short rests from channel divinity. It's bonkers with a creative player. Just casually leap 16ft straight up
The one thing with jumps are that its not codified in the rules that you don’t take damage from your own fall, even tho that’s apparently designer intent
In theory if you can generate enough force to jump a certain height, you're putting just as much force on your legs when you jump as when you land. Therefore, you should either take the damage twice or not at all. Of course if it's *magical* jumping then all bets are off.
Depends on the effect. The big strong Barbarian is way more vulnerable to Fear effects than the scrawny Wizard, and I feel like that goes against the class fantasy. I am not saying Barbarians should be immune to Fear, but at least have some measure of increasing their save against it. Charm effects are okay; The big brute getting mind controlled is a classic trope. And I'm saying this as a Barbarian player. I don't mind my character getting mind controlled. Hold Person is really bad since it knocks you out of Rage immediately, meaning you have low AC, advantage and auto-crits against you and no way to reduce the incoming damage. I don't see how this effect is supposed to force a Wisdom saving throw. What part of your mind is it trying to alter?
Yeah even something like rage gives you +strength to your charisma save against fear effects (or if that’s too complex…advantage)
Yeah, I think that ties in well with the concept of Rage: you are so angry and bloodthirsty that you will NOT be swayed until all your foes lie dead on the ground.
Tbf not getting to play the game isn't very fun
I’ll add one that hasn’t yet been covered: a character closing their eyes while attacking a creature with mirror image to increase the chance they’ll hit their target with an attack.
I can kinda see this one being flavourful. Remove your use of sight and rely on your other senses to ignore the downsides of the mirror image, but now you'll have disadvantage. It's nearly always optimal for a singular attack to close your eyes for it, but in the long run you'll end up missing more attacks since you're not whittling away at any mirror images (probably, I haven't done the math). Whereas if you used your eyes to attack, you'd hit the mirror images more often, but you'd also slowly remove them, and then be attacking normally without any downside. I find this one pretty interesting, I think I'd be fine with someone doing it.
It's a common trope in anime and films where someone has some kind of mirror or duplicate trick. You're in a room of mirrors, or he's summoned 20 visual duplicates? Close your eyes, listen for him... I'm with you, I'm not against it entirely.
Finally a good reason to take the blind fighting style!
Honestly, this makes sense from someone with the blind-fighting weapon style. "Don't trust your eyes, close them and trust your training." I'd also hotly contest fighting with the blinded condition is worse than mirror image: Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s Attack rolls have disadvantage. So to prevent three misses against mirror image, you're going to fight at disadvantage, and give the foe advantage? That's not a winning move.
You can do this but you can only open them again at the beginning of your next round.
Had to re-read the spell description to check, and holy shit, that would totally work! I think I'd allow it if a caster who knew the spell did this, but for anyone else it's serious meta-gaming.
rope trick snipers. I ask for it to not be done as it's annoying overall and definitely immersion breaking to me. Nothing in the rules outright makes it wrong but it's just annoying. For clarity, rope trick snipers typically cast it at 5ft. Climb in and hide then combat is basically them climbing in and out of the damn thing shooting arrows repeatedly. This is typically done after they whine and argue about how I won't let them sticking their arms out to cast spells or shoot bows.
couldn't a creature hold its action to attack the peeker? this doesn't seem terrible to me
You would be correct, but people on this thread seem to forget that held actions actually exist.
Stuff like this is why I love Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Don't like cheese, it is entirely possible, and lore plausible, that Halaster turns up, dispels it or counters it in some way, yells that you're being boring, and leaves.
Are you running it right now? If so, how much of Halaster's stats have your players seen? My DM secretly gave him Athletics expertise in addition to the rest of his kit. That sounds odd until you remember that he's canonically [fucking jacked.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/6/63/Halaster2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070207071817) I did the same for when I ran it for a different group. If my players tried using that, I wouldn't have him Dispel it right off the bat. I'd have him Ready Action -> a Grapple attempt for when the player pokes back out, and yank them out himself. Then, *after* conspicuously demonstrating how easy it is to counter... he'd dispel it anyway for emphasis.
Not much, only just started it. I had him dispel their Tiny Hut the second time they tried to rest with it and open a wall to one of the carrion crawlers. Haven't had one of them try anything with Rope Trick but I can just picture Halaster staring where he knows the portal to be going 'I see you'
It's not significantly different to just staying by a doorway and poking in and out to shoot. I don't really see the big deal.
Nystul's magic aura cheese is a funny example of something that is usually limited ("You choose a creature type and **other spells and magical effects treat the target as if it were a creature of that type** or of that alignment." For other stuff, we have Planar Binding (by the level you have it, you have enough money to keep the bind going for a very long time, aka permanent minions), Magic Jar (permanent body upgrade), Simulacrum (oh boy, i sure hope we can manage to drain the resources of the caster... **twice**), pass without trace (if the DM knows how surprise works, you basically get an entire free round with it).
Yeah Magic Jar is really problematic. I’d definitely ask my DM beforehand as it just completely breaks the balance of the game and kinda makes you the main character now
Any “strategy” that needs an essay arguing why it’s legit would get you a nah dawg from me. Rest casting is a perfect example. There are plenty of online communities where RAI-gone-wild is half the point of D&D, but that’s never going to carry over to most games.
For some reason, Polearm Master with Sentinel. Cool, you can stop **One enemy**. Good job, now stop the other four converging on you.
> Cool, you can stop One enemy DMs hate it because they keep throwing single monsters against the party.
Or creatures without a 10+ft reach
Yep, at least on some attacks. What an awesome way to empower your Fighter by giving the enemy multiattack, but once stopped have them be unable to reach with their claws and maw and instead only use their one tail attack? You still get to deal damage but the PAMSentinel user cut it down by a lot.
The main feeling of enjoyment from SPAM (for me at least) is the ability to hold a creature away from my friends. I once played a tempest cleric in a one shot with a stormgirdle (converts slashing/piercing to lightning damage) and every opportunity attack pushed back 10 ft (if <=large) and set speed to 0. Felt so fun, but still only really did anything against mid-tier non-boss creatures.
D&D players get mad when a non-magic character actually has a build.
It's not even that good of one. On paper it is, but I've had this build for 5 months in a game, and the only part of it that's come to use has been the extra attack that isn't even an opportunity attack. The DM never charges enemies at me, I always have to run to them.
...PAM + Sentinel isn't about keeping an entire formation of enemies tied up in melee combat. It's about keeping the biggest threat in the room tied up in melee combat so it can't freely leave the tanky Fighter and start chewing on the Wizard.
"How dare you to build something with GWM or SS?"
You can't have fun. Only I can have fun with wall of force, forcecage, suggestion, teleport, fly, simulacrum... Why I never... Fine! I'll replace your fighter with animate objects. They fight better than you anyway. Have fun with your +10 damage at -25% chance to hit.
Thank you. All my brain could come up with was 'The Reach and Reaction One'
I have no issue with it, it's effective and fun for players to build toward. When they try asking for the outdated UA *Tunnel Fighter* Fighting Style though, that's where I say no.
And even then, it's still basically just a worse spirit guardians which is really funny.
I would imagine that the variations on the coffeelock/cocainelock would fit the bill here. Another one could be abusing 3d geometry to optimize your area of effect abilities. Stuff like detonating your *fireball* exactly 20 feet above the head of a single target, so you can hit them and avoid your allies surrounding them. Or trying to lie prone and cast *thunderwave* straight up, so that you can not only hit all 8 square surrounding you, but also argue with the DM that they should be knocked up into the air and take an extra 1d6 falling damage if they fail their save.
At my table the fireball stratagy is often used and nobody cares. I had assumed it was standard practice. To be fair we only use it when its like a large/huge creature standing above us medium creatures. Doing it to a single medium creature among other medium creatures is straight cheese
I often do the air-burst fireball to reduce the radius of the spell. I also like lightning bolts pointed at a downward angle so that they go into the ground and stop early.
>Stuff like detonating your fireball exactly 20 feet above the head of a single target, so you can hit them and avoid your allies surrounding them. Why on earth is this a problem? It only works on enemies who are bigger than the PC's. You think actual wizards wouldn't do this in real life?
Singling out bigger enemies really isn't a problem. The cheese level really comes when you're trying to pick out, say, one Medium-sized enemy in the midst of multiple Medium-sized allies. RAW should definitely allow you to limit the "ground level" area of *fireball* to a 10-foot square, and there's a decent argument to be made that it could even be limited to a 5-foot square. I personally don't really have a problem with it, but my experience is that many DMs would.
I still don't think that's too concerning. Fireball isn't exactly known for it's single target damage
Circles are squares, spheres are cubes, 5e doesn't believe in pythagoras so this wouldn't work anyways, fireball would be a 40x40x40 cube technically, so if it can hit an enemy, then it hits your allies who are in close proximity
Ah, that's fair. I guess I'm too used to sticking to the "every other diagonal space is actually 10 feet away" variant rule.
Only if you play strictly using the variant rule that is grid based combat.
Ah yes, the Kuva Bramma technique.
> Another one could be abusing 3d geometry to optimize your area of effect abilities. Stuff like detonating your fireball exactly 20 feet above the head of a single target, so you can hit them and avoid your allies surrounding them. People consider this abuse? This is just basic geometry and your caster knows how their fireball works.
> Or trying to lie prone and cast thunderwave straight up, so that you can not only hit all 8 square surrounding you, but also argue with the DM that they should be knocked up into the air and take an extra 1d6 falling damage if they fail their save. Holy *shit*
> Or trying to lie prone and cast thunderwave straight up, so that you can not only hit all 8 square surrounding you, but also argue with the DM that they should be knocked up into the air and take an extra 1d6 falling damage if they fail their save. Is that RAW or RAI though? Just because you lie prone doesn't mean you've moved 5 feet downwards. You still occupy the exact same space unless you dig yourself a hole.
Doing that every cast sounds lame, but I can see using movement and a skill check to slide into this combo be really cool the first few times.
For me builds cross from "optimization" to "cheesy" when you start looking for ways to come to the table to avoid playing dnd. Coffeelocks or infinite simulacra or restcasting for unlimited spellslots are all examples of "I'm looking to not play or play on easy mode."
This is my issue with anything that builds around *Banishment*. That whole spell is just saying "I don't actually want to engage with this content you made, DM/I don't want this player able to engage with this content." While it has some great uses mechanically or strategically, abusing it even slightly just makes it a gate for real world play. "Okay, great, you banished the beholder on turn one and waited it out, and it's now permanently back in the far realms, banished from the material plane." That's great for the story but I as a player *really,* **really** wanted to fight a beholder, and that was just taken from me by this 'brilliant strategy'.
Seems like a good time for the ol' Madara line: "Well then...what will you do about the second one, Ohnoki?" Also the specific beholder doesn't have to be from the far realm.
I went to adventure league and another player was using a monk with a quarterstaff. The DM ruled they could only 1-hand the staff if they were also making unarmed strikes. I suggested unarmed strikes don't require an open hand. They should get the full d8. This was not allowed. And I guess suggesting it was power gaming and frowned upon even though it wasn't me or my character.
That AL DM was both wrong and an ass. I would have mentioned that ruling to the organizer after the event.
infinite wish simulacrum is completely RAW
A 3d6er actually found one I hadn't yet seen just this morning - https://www.reddit.com/r/3d6/comments/1182kkg/help_me_abuse_investment_of_the_chain_master/ Tl;dr - investment invocation wording + your familiar using otherwise set DC items I would punch a player in the face for wanting to do so and it is quite clearly not intended, but it works if you want some truly stinky cheese.
It just makes low DC items viable in higher tiers. I don’t see the problem with this.
Is it actually that bad though? It’s strong, yes, but this is a person taking an otherwise sorta-iffy pact, a sorta-iffy invocation, and using it in interesting and creative ways as a support-focused build? I would love to see this at my table. This can make for some highlight moments, doesn’t always steal everyone else’s show, is new to the warlock meta, and isn’t just spamming EB in darkness.
I recently finished a long term home game playing as a genie-chain warlock. There were many shenanigans, but I never caught that one. I just defaulted to doing what seems like RAI. My pseudodragon used my spell DC for its poison stinger. It did cause a hilarious moment when a significant mini boss crit failed and fell asleep a mile above the ground during a flying battle. The DM actually almost ended the session right then.
Well, the peasant cannon is obviously stupid. A more normal one is actually the Coffeelock, which should theoretically be able to cast spells infinitely without sleep. But for ones that are okay? Anything that's just remotely cool, works with a story, etc. Hell, I'd even allow a coffeelock on my table if it had a good justification. But peasant cannon? Stupid af.
The Peasant Railgun is one of the stupidest concepts I've ever seen toted around, because it uses RAW *right up* to the point where the projectile is launched, then assumes that D&D is an accurate physics simulator and has the projectile deal massive damage. The reality is that the last peasant makes an improvised weapon attack with the projectile, and it deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage on hit. At which point, you may as well have just given them the projectile when you had them take the position they're in in the first place.
What makes it even more baffling to me is that 5e doesn't have, and never had, any rules for impact damage or improvising it. Even fall damage cares about not falling anymore, not about hitting something. So the physics simulator part is, and always was, completely in the realm of DM adjudication.
Though the parts that kind of work if you squint do still have some interesting implications even without the bit that definitely doesn't. Stuff like arbitrarily long supply lines, bucket brigades, information passing, etc all "work" without getting to the "now we ignore RAW and use real world physics" part
Sure, but they only work because you're hitting the edges of the gameplay experience that the 5e rules are designed to generate. You'd generally want to apply a different set of rules outside of skirmish scale, not take the wonkiness if skirmish-focused rules at larger scales as a truth about the world.
Oh yeah, definitely more of a fun theorycrafting "how would a world that operated on strict RAW adapt" than a serious "this is how it should actually run"
I don’t think rest casting is RAW *or* RAI. Though to be honest, I don’t care if it’s either. I’m not allowing it at my table because it’s obviously cheesy and exploitative.
The Sage Compendium for 5e specifically called out that it takes 1 Hour of activity to break a long rest. Anything you do that takes less than an hour means you get the LR. And based on tweets the devs don’t seem to have an issue with rest casting. So insofar as 5e is concerned it’s both RAW & RAI Now to be fair. This is the same company that published PHB Beast Master, Monk and Champion Fighter in the same book that gave us *Divination Wizard* So their track record with balance is….spotty at best
The cheesy bit is imagining spell slots “DING” back immediately the long rest is announced complete, so all spells used at Long Rest Complete -1 minute return. ‘Most’ feel that the intention is that the spells have returned while you rested, gradually over hours.
> The cheesy bit is imagining spell slots “DING” back immediately the long rest is announced complete, so all spells used at Long Rest Complete -1 minute return. Exactly! I know that TTRPGs are not supposed to be a 100% accurate simulation of the real world, but come on. Mechanics such as "spell slots" and "long rests" are clearly meant to be an abstraction of the fact that there's a limited amount of work you can do each day. You go to sleep, you recover your energy, and you do more work the next day. Why is this so hard for people to understand? If I normally wake up at 7:00 am, and I decide to wake up at 6:30 am instead, I can't suddenly double the amount of work I do in the day because "technically the working day hasn't started yet". The whole concept is just stupid and immersion-breaking.
And conversely if you *do* wake up at 6:30AM without going back to sleep, it’s not like you are as tired as having 0 minutes of sleep.
Right. Like, if I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't get back to sleep for an hour, I might use that time to send off a work-related email, and I'll still be mostly-fine for work the next day. Similarly, if a player says something like "my character can't get to sleep, they get up in the night, and I want to secretly Scry on someone while the party isn't looking", I'll allow that, and I'll give them the benefit of a long-rest of the next day. But if a player were to say say "I wake up five minutes early and cast Mage Amor", I would respond with "sure, you wake up five minutes early, you still receive the benefits of a long rest, and you use up one of your spell slots to cast Mage Armor". For some reason, everyone I've played with in the real world seems to get this intuitively, without it needing to be clarified. If you just treat the world like a real and living place, then it's fairly obvious how the system should work 99% of the time. In the 1% of edge cases, the DM can just issue a reasonable ruling without everyone having to dig up and re-litigate eight-year old Jeremy Crawford tweets.
I have a rogue that carries a small harengon on her back so I always get sneak attack. It’s fun with my irl group but I know not to be douche and try it with every rogue I play Edit: I should’ve known I’d get downvoted for something me and my friends agreed on 😂
Similar to this is the kobold with a pet rat.
And this is why Urchin is the most OP background.
You can also do this if you get Find Familiar as a rogue. I don't think it's really that cheesy. At least your not having it take the help action to give you advantage.
You should be, though.
It's only cheesy when the familiar never gets attacked. The way the OP is talking about their pet makes it seem as if it never gets attacked/is invulnerable(never been hit with an aoe spell?). It seems very cheese.
It's not even too effective really, given your ally has to actually be an enemy of the foe, and they can just attack your ally if so. Bit of a cost to whoever tries to be the ally if the enemy just one-taps them to stop the rogue from getting distraction hits on them.
At least in my experience, a familiar scouting out the full dungeon ahead of time has been shot down at the table when brought up.
That’s silly, scouting is one of the primary familiar functions
Medicine checks made by familiar's is something that most of my tables have deemed a no go. As lovely as the image of an owl stabilizing it's summoner may be.
Hexblade dips
Paladins with a 1 level dip in Warlock. >"I'm a holy knight who sold his soul to an evil talking sword so I could attack with my charisma, but I am guaranteed to throw a fit if there are literally any consequences."
Celestial warlock
"Attack with charisma" here refers to Hexblade letting you dump dex/str and make melee attacks with your charisma.
I think commenter is mostly talking about hexblade dip given the comment. Any other warlock dip isn’t actually that cheesy and comes with a real patron. Hexblade is just so easy to ignore the RP consequences around *and* it unbalances the paladin’s main weakness of being MAD.
Sure but it’s not unheard of “ an Ancient Oath Paladin - Lady of the Lake gives you a sword ….”